1NC Rubbish
Historical Materialism
Vital materialism mystifies the commodity as having agency on its own which
replicates commodity fetishization – instead, everything thing is a product of human
labor
Dochterman 10 (Zen Dochterman, a student pursuing his PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA.
Zen’s thoughts arose in response to my UCLA paper a couple of weeks ago,
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/guest-post-object-oriented-marxism/)
Tiqqun may have hit upon this problem in their statement that the commodity is “objectivized being-for-itself presented as something external
to man” and therefore the social fetish resides not in “crystallized labor” but rather in “crystallized being-for-itself” (On the Economy
Considered as Black Magic #34). At
the same time that the commodity alone among objects appears as selfsufficient, singular in its being, it can enter into relations of absolute equivalence with all other
commodities. The orange we see in the supermarket appears to be the self-sufficient orange — extracted from its past on the tree, from
the hand that picked it, from the dirt on which it fell. The orange that falls on the ground is not — in strictly Marxist terms — the same orange
that we look at in the supermarket. In the first instance, the orange has no proper “being-for-itself,” (while it is still one object in OOO terms) as
it exists in relation with other objects — the tree, the grass, the sunlight and water that nourished it. By the same token, an object given as gift
or grown so as to feed people would not be a commodity and therefore have no being-for-itself, because it does not yet have an abstract
character but is circulated in relation to concrete social needs. The
commodity becomes a commodity only when the sets
of object relations that determine it are extracted from this level of “need” or direct human interaction
— and become subsumed by its infinite exchangability with other objects. This is what paradoxically
makes it appear as a being-for-itself at the very moment that it becomes one being that can be replaced
by any other. For the commodity “it is only to realize its essence as a pure, immediate, and abstract
presence that it must be made to look like a singularity,” meaning that its apparent phenomenological
singularity is the after-effect of its infinite exhchangeability (ibid. 33). Yet the singularization of the object
into a sort of phenomenolgical self-sufficiency and being-for-itself (which we can differentiate from its
ontological individuation) covers over the abstract character as an exchange value.
Capitalism is the primary cause of the exploitation of ocean ecologies-Turns entire
case
Clausen and Clark ‘5
Rebecca Clausen and Brett Clark. University of Oregon. 2005. “The Metabolic Rift and Marine Ecology”.
Organization & Environment 18:4.
In the early 1800s, scientists used metabolism to describe the material ex- changes within a body. Justus von Liebig, the great German chemist,
applied the term on a wider basis, referring to metabolic processes at the cellular level of life, as well as concerning the process of exchange for
organisms as a whole. By the 1850s and 1860s, the term took on greater significance in relation to the depletion of soil nutrients. Agricultural
chemists and agronomists in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States noted how the transfer of food and fiber from the country to the
cities resulted in the loss of necessary soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (Foster, 2000, pp. 157-159). Whereas
traditional agriculture tended to involve the return of essential nutrients to the soil, capitalist agriculture, which involved the division between
town and country given the concentration of land ownership, transported nutrients to city centers where they accumulated as waste. Liebig
(1859) described the intensive methods of British agriculture as a system of robbery, which was opposed to a rational agriculture. The
expansion of this form of agriculture led to the exhaustion of the soil, as it continually depleted the soil of its nutrients. With further
concentration of ownership, more intensive methods of pro- duction were used, including the application of artificial fertilizers. The attempts to
solve the rift in soil nutrients created additional rifts, as other resources were exploited to produce artificial fertilizers, and failed to resolve the
primary problem driving the exhaustion of the soil: an economic system premised on the escalating accumulation of capital.
Marx found that Liebig’s analysis complemented his critique of political econ- omy. Marx (1964), quite aware of human dependence on nature,
noted that nature provides the means and material that sustain human life. There is a necessary “met- abolic
interaction” between humans and the earth (Marx, 1976, pp. 637-638). Thus, Marx employed the concept of metabolism to refer to “the
complex, dy- namic interchange between human beings and nature” (Foster, 2000, p. 158). Through
labor, humans interact with
nature, exchanging organic matter. Humans confront the nature-imposed conditions and processes of the physical world, while
influencing these conditions at the same time. The state of nature was, in part, “bound up with the social relations of the time” (Marx, 1971,
pp. 162-163). Although transformation was part of the human-nature relationship, Marx (1991) noted that humans needed to organize their
lives in a manner that allowed for a social metabolism that followed the prescribed “natural laws of life itself” (pp. 949-950). But the operation
of the capitalist system, in its relentless drive to accu- mulate capital, violates these principles, as it creates “irreparable rifts” in the meta- bolic
interaction between humans and the earth. In agriculture, large-scale pro- duction, long-distance trade, and synthetic inputs only intensify the
rift. The
pursuit of profit sacrificed reinvestment in the land, causing the degradation of nature through
the depletion of soil nutrients and the accumulation of waste in cit- ies. Marx explained that under capitalist
operations, humans are unable to maintain the conditions necessary for the recycling of nutrients,
because the pursuit of profit imposes an order where the basic conditions of sustainability are seen as
an obsta- cle to be overcome, in order for the economic system to increase its scale of operations. As
capital attempts to overcome natural barriers (including those that it cre- ates), it continues to contribute to a
metabolic rift and to create new ones. The introduction of artificial fertilizers has contributed to the incorporation of
large quantities of oil into agricultural production, which leads to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions and the pollution of
waterways (Foster & Magdoff, 2000). Con- stant inputs are required to sustain and expand capitalist production. Ecological problems remain a
pressing concern, increasing in severity as time passes.
The metabolic rift
has become a powerful conceptual tool for analyzing human interactions with nature
and ecological degradation. Foster (1999, 2000) illustrates how Marx’s conception of the metabolic rift under capitalism illuminates
social- natural relations and degradation in a number of ways: (a) the decline in soil fertil- ity as a result of disrupting the
soil nutrient cycle; (b) scientific and technological developments, under capitalist relations, increase the
exploitation of nature, inten- sifying the degradation of soil; (c) capitalist operations lead to the
accumulation of waste, which become a pollution problem; and (d) capital’s attempts to surmount
environmental problems fail to resolve the immediate metabolic rift, thus contrib- uting to further
environmental problems.
We extend the theory of the metabolic rift to marine ecosystems. A metabolic rift is a rupture in the metabolic processes of a system. Natural
cycles, such as the reproduction rate of fish or the energy transfer through trophic levels, are inter- rupted.
We situate the human-marine relationship within the period of global capi- talism, which is the primary force organizing the social metabolism
with nature. By historically contextualizing this metabolic rift, we can highlight the oceanic crisis in the making. Marine
ecosystems are
experiencing the same exploitive disconnect recognized between soil ecology and capitalist agriculture
due to aquaculture’s intensification of production and concentration of wastes. Intensification and concentration
of fisheries production creates a quantitative increase in the rate of biomass depletion and aquatic pollution.
However, the qualitative changes to the conditions of the marine ecosystem resulting from aquaculture’s productive re- organization
may present an even greater challenge to the stability of human-ocean interactions and the resiliency of
the oceans themselves. The qualitative changes taking place extend beyond ecosystem disruption and include the interaction between
humans and the ocean. As capitalist production in the aquatic realm expands, the alienation of humans from
nature increases. Through the application of metabolic rift analysis, we can gain a greater understanding
of the dynamic relationships involved in the oceanic crisis. To begin the analysis, a review of marine ecological processes
is required.
Rap ROB
Roll Of the Ballot is to go to who best Explores the relationship between us and the
things that have afflicted our lives and come to terms with the structural violence that
has caused a cataclysm with you and humanity and through performance we have the
best method of solving... This matters because the Role of the Ballot argument forces
us to embrace the examined life, recognizing our position in the community and the
world through our social location which subsumes the affs self-examination and
examination of relationship.
Thrown down to the bottom being born as a minority crushed because our beliefs in
our deities but that’s the oppression of the society at least that’s my peoples
observation needed somewhere to solve the hide in this fuckin nation of all the mass
bringing down the rich gave us on our occupation. The structural violence my people
have faced keep us shrugged and have our heads facing down being ostracized treated
like a clown has us being able to do nothing but frown. Anyways were mocked cause
my peoples come in flocks and I hope it aint no shock but all were trying is to escape a
nation of poverty and crime but arrive to the same place with this nation on rotten
foundation
We come to the disgraced place but nothing to do cause that’s what the sqo does. It
seems as though we can’t escape the poverty that were placed in but that’s just
what our plan does in this we try to improve the conditions that we have even cut
emissions and we give people what they need to survive and what we need to do is
endure and stay alive.
Case
Biosimplicity Turn
Mass extinctions prevent complete extinctions
Boulter ‘5
Michael Boutler, professor for paleobiology at the Natural History Museum and the University of East London.
Launched Fossil Record 2, editor Palaeontological Association, secretary International Organisation of
Palaeobotany and UK representative at the International Union of Biological Sciences, 15-1-05 "Extinction:
Evolution and the End of Man" p. 182-184.
The system of life on Earth behaves in a similar way for all its measurable variables, whether they are communities or ecosystems. For sand
grains, substitute species or genes. For avalanches, substitute extinctions. Power laws tell us that large avalanches or large extinctions arc
much less common than small ones. The controlling factors for the sand piles arc weight and angle of the sides of the pile; for mammals
they arc space and food within the ecosystem. We can kick the sand pile with our feet, and we can reduce the space and the food by
changing the environment. But what would happen to the life-Earth system without these external changes? Could it be like a pile without
avalanches, eventually collapsing into a mess of white noise? The answer lies in our theory of exponential diversification within macroevolution; the curve ever rising towards the vertical when the Fossil Record 2 Family data are plotted (see figure 3,c). The situation starts to
become critical when numbers rise above a comfortable quantity, whether the system is a pile of sand, cars on a motorway or large
mammals in America. If
there were no mass extinctions, that exponential curve really could have risen to
the truly vertical. It could have happened long ago, and it could happen again if there were no
extinctions holding it back from the vertical. If that were so, all life on planet Earth would cease. It
would need to start again from scratch. But that would be impossible. For example, when a teacher cleans the
blackboard of the lesson's writing, specks of chalk dust are reflected in the rays of sunlight pouring through the windows. There's no way
the dust can be put back into the writing on the board, let alone into the stick of chalk. Could this one-way process, entropy, be like evolution facing the exponential? There is no going backwards, only forwards. To stay still is impossible. As with the chalk dust and the universe
leading towards higher entropy, it may be true to say that
within the history of life there is forever the unrelenting
trend to less order and at the same time towards greater complexity, until bits of the system reach a
critical edge.
Change is more healthy than enforcing rigid diversity
NPR ‘7
Donald J. Dodds M.S.P.E., President of the North Pacific Research, “the Myth of Biodiversity”, 05/30/07,
northpacificresearch.com/downloads/The_myth_of_biodiversity.doc.
Humans are working against nature when they try to prevent extinctions and freeze biodiversity. Examine the curve
in figure one, at no time since the origin of life has biodiversity been constant. If this principal has worked for 550
million years on this planet, and science is supposed to find truth in nature, by what twisted reasoning can fixing biodiversity be considered
science? Let alone good for the environment. Environmentalists are now killing species that they arbitrarily term invasive, which are in reality
simply better adapted to the current environment. Consider the Barred Owl, a superior species is being killed in the name of biodiversity
because the Barred Owl is trying to replace a less environmentally adapted species the Spotted Owl. This is more harmful to the ecosystem
because it impedes the normal flow of evolution based on the idea that biodiversity must remain constant. Human
scientists have
decided to take evolution out of the hands of Mother Nature and give it to the EPA. Now there is a good
example of brilliance. We all know what is wrong with lawyers and politicians, but scientists are supposed to be trustworthy. Unfortunately,
they are all to often, only people who think they know more than anybody else. Abraham Lincoln said, “Those who know not, and know not
that the know not, are fools shun them.” Civilization has fallen into the hands of fools. What is suggested by geologic history is that the world
has more biodiversity than it ever had and that it maybe overdue for another major extinction. Unfortunately, today many
scientists
have too narrow a view. They are highly specialized. They have no time for geologic history. This appears
to be a problem of inadequate education not ignorance. What is abundantly clear is that artificially
enforcing rigid biodiversity works against the laws of nature, and will cause irreparable damage to the
evolution of life on this planet and maybe beyond. The world and the human species may be better served if we stop trying
to prevent change, and begin trying to understand change and positioning the human species to that it survives the inevitable change of
evolution. If
history is to be believed, the planet has 3 times more biodiversity than it had 65 million years
ago. Trying to sustain that level is futile and may be dangerous. The next major extinction, change in
biodiversity, is as inevitable as climate change. We cannot stop either from occurring, but we can
position the human species to survive those changes.
Adaptations actually improve ecosystem resiliency as a whole by creating complex
mosaics of habitats
Bosselman ‘1
Fred, Proffessor in energy and environmental law, 10/04, “What Lawmakers Can Learn From Large-Scale Ecology”
http://www.law.fsu.edu/faculty/2001-2002workshops/lessons.pdf
Ecologists who study microbes point out that we
humans are ourselves heterogeneous habitats. As biological technology
increasingly allows more effective study of microorganisms, we have become aware of the variety and complex
relationships of the microscopic species within our own bodies; like other animals, we harbor a
heterogeneous mix of living creatures, some of which are essential to our survival while others can be harmful. Many biologists
have observed a long-range trend toward greater complexity in organisms and heterogeneity in their interrelationships. The same
processes that create non-equilibrium time dynamics may also create heterogeneous physical structure;
it seems likely that the more that ecological systems change over time, the more these changes will
result in complex mosaics of habitat in various stages of change.
Solvency
1. Exploring trash fails—there are no alternatives for waste disposal in status quo
Burdokovska et al ‘12
Valentina Burdokovska. With Heng Chen and Minodora David. 2012. “Possible Methods for Preventing Plastic
Waste From Entering the Marine Environment”. Roskilde University. Pages 26-28.
There are three main advantages of plastic. First, it is relatively light compared to most metals. This property is a result of the organic
compounds it contains, which are made of light elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. Second, the plastic can be easily
processed. Plastic exhibits plasticity, which means it can be deformed at high temperatures or under pressure, and keep their shape when
cooled or released from pressure. This makes it possible for plastic to be processed into a product of a particular shape by extrusion or
injection. Third, the plastic will not decompose or rust. However, this also brings a serious problem for human beings. The large amount of
plastic waste cannot be naturally decomposed and as a result can cause severe environmental pollution. Since it is hard to treat this problem,
once plastic has been released into the environment, the focus has to be set on preventing irresponsible
disposal at its source. The pyramid of waste is the most obvious concept that should be applied when dealing with waste
management issues. Reducing the amount of plastics¶ The first step in preventing plastics from polluting the environment is to reduce
to amount of plastic produced. Even though it is hard to accomplish this, since plastics play an important role in our consumer lives, the
levels of hazardous compounds usually found in plastics should be decreased or replaced by less harmful substitutes. Similar to how China
applied the law for taxing the use of plastic bags and how the USA banned plastic bags in several cities, strategies like these should be more
widely practiced.¶ Another way of reducing is by redesigning products so that they require less resources and/or energy in the manufacturing
phase. As an example, in the USA the 2-liter plastic soft drink bottle was reduced from weighing 68 grams in 1977 to 51 grams today,
representing a 25% reduction per bottle. This saved more than 93,400 tonns of packaging each year (WM, 2012). Reusing plastic bags and other
plastics that have a reusing potential Reusing also plays an important role in waste management. Reusing can be most efficiently
practiced at an industrial level by investments in new technologies and by creating industrial symbiosis networks between companies. Also,
reuse could be done on an individual basis. Plastic bags, for example, could be reused until they become unusable. As for other plastics, they
should at least be designed is such a way that once their initial purpose is exceeded they could be reused with a different function. This is
where concepts such as cradle-to-cradle and biomimicry could radically change the way in which we perceive plastic products. For example,
perhaps a plastic container used to transport food items could be later reused for storing miscellaneous objects. Besides shape and function,
the design of the plastic product should also have a desirable appearance that could persuade the consumer to reuse it. Recycling and better
options for sorting When it comes to plastic, the most obvious solution is recycling. As presented in the Country profiles section of
the report, all the key countries which are contributing to the existing plastic waste in the North Pacific Ocean are using this method of waste
treatment to some extent. Of course, all these countries should continue to increase the amount of recycled plastic waste. Recycling is
important for every country as it helps in creating new job opportunities, offers an environmentally friendly way of treating waste and most
importantly, it transforms waste into materials which can be reused by industry (EEA, 2011). Countries in the same situation as China
should try to redirect more of their plastic waste from landfills to recycling stations. To further improve recycling, better
practices of sorting plastic products should be applied and/or researched. Manual sorting is a common way of separating different plastics. The
problems associated with this method are those related to efficiency and human health (Stenmark, 2005). To avoid endangering people,
automated sorting should be prioritized.¶ When it comes to the latter, there are multiple techniques that could be applied, such as:¶
Spectroscopy based methods (identifies the plastics by their light absorbance peaks); ¶ Density based methods (identifies plastics by their
densities); ¶ Sorting by using the differences in melting points; ¶ Selective dissolution (using chemicals for separating particles of different plastic
types by altering their hydrophobicity); (Stenmark, 2005) When it comes to choosing the right method, each country should look for the BAT
which suits their current technologic and economic level of development. It is most likely that a combination of several of these methods will
lead to maximum recycling efficiency. Energy recovery If reduction,
reuse and recycling cannot be applied, recovery is a
better alternative than landfilling. By incinerating waste, energy can be extracted and thus, to some extent, compensate
for the initial energy input in the production of plastic. Incineration might not be an accessible option for a lot of countries
since it requires high investments. On the other hand, every country should consider investing in incineration plants since it reduces the
amount of waste landfilled. Currently, Switzerland and Japan are competing with Denmark for the highest amount of waste burned per capita
(Kleis et. al., 2007). In Denmark, thanks to the strong support by the government, combustion facilities are capable to sell their heat all year
around and the system is working very efficiently. In order to better promote recycling plastics, higher taxes should be applied on landfilling and
waste incineration. There is an ongoing competition between incineration plants and recycling facilities because plastics give higher energy
yields when burned compared to other materials (EEA, 2011). In some countries (i.e. USA) the local public seems to be skeptical about waste
combustion plants in terms of possible air pollution and increased traffic surrounding the facility (EPA, 2012). To avoid such problems, people
should be informed about the benefits of incineration plants, for as nowadays, incinerators as subject to strict environmental regulations.
Technological improvements and replacement of materials¶ To make waste treatment even more effective, countries should constantly invest
in technological improvements which could include better sorting methods, more efficient energy recovery plants and so forth.¶ When it comes
to plastic packaging, all the non-degradable compounds should be gradually eliminated and replaced with ones that can safely decompose if
they end up in the environment. Better international guidelines (i.e. EU requirements for waste management)
Waste management guidelines
should be established at an international level and all the countries should agree and respect the terms. This task must be undertaken by worldwide¶ organizations (i.e. NOAA, EAA, EPA), which would have to collaborate in creating universally available and realistic guidelines that take
into consideration different development stages of countries.¶ As an example, the European Union has already implemented directives on
waste handling. While the European countries have been improving their waste management systems for years, there are still many countries
which do not have well developed ways of dealing with their waste. These differences should be leveled out and the countries in difficulty
should be offered counseling and/or economic support.¶ Even though we have not taken into consideration the shipping industry, as it does not
seem to be regulated by any particular legislation (except in harbors), it is important that strict rules are applied in this sector. Capacity
building¶ In our context, the countries that surround the North Pacific have different economies and the main waste treatment solutions differ
for each of them. Therefore, capacity
building is important for the countries that are less developed and which
do not know how to efficiently use their available resources. By being aware of their capacity for waste handling,
different countries could focus more on education and gaining competence in implementing new
technologies. Awareness and collection campaigns¶ In order to make the 3R strategy work, a certain level of public awareness is required.
Often, people need to be reminded of environmental issues so they do not end up neglecting the importance of reusing products or recycling
waste. By constantly promoting awareness campaigns, environmental agencies in collaboration with NGOs could turn people’s attention
towards these matters. Other types of campaigns such as recollecting campaigns in which producers take responsibility for their products at the
end of their life should also be encouraged. Possibility to recycle¶ It
is not enough to spread information. The possibility to
recycle should also be offered to the consumers. This can be done by establishing sorting places with
selective containers in which people could dispose of their waste.
2. No impact to ocean pollution—their authors are exaggerating
Floyd ‘11
Mark Floyd. Press for Oregon State University. January 4 2011. “Oceanic “garbage patch” not nearly as big as
portrayed in media”. Oregon State University. http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2011/jan/oceanic%E2%80%9Cgarbage-patch%E2%80%9D-not-nearly-big-portrayed-media.
There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims
that the “Great Garbage Patch” between California and
twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to an analysis by an Oregon State University
scientist. Further claims that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has
been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, pointed out Angelicque “Angel” White, an
assistant professor of oceanography at Oregon State. “There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this
kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We have data that allow us to make reasonable
estimates; we don’t need the hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate
to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic.” White has
pored over published literature and participated in one of the few expeditions solely aimed at
understanding the abundance of plastic debris and the associated impact of plastic on microbial communities. That
expedition was part of research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the Center for
Japan is
Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education. The studies have shown is that if you look at the actual area of the plastic itself, rather than
the entire North Pacific subtropical gyre, the
hypothetically “cohesive” plastic patch is actually less than 1 percent
of the geographic size of Texas. “The amount of plastic out there isn’t trivial,” White said. “But using the highest concentrations ever
reported by scientists produces a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size.” Another way to look at it, White said, is
to compare the amount of plastic found to the amount of water in which it was found. “If
we were to filter the surface area of
the ocean equivalent to a football field in waters having the highest concentration (of plastic) ever
recorded,” she said, “the amount of plastic recovered would not even extend to the 1-inch line.” Recent
research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at
least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn’t increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production and consumption of materials
made from plastic, she pointed out. “Are we doing a better job of preventing plastics from getting into the ocean?” White said. “Is more plastic
sinking out of the surface waters? Or is it being more efficiently broken down? We just don’t know. But the
data on hand simply do
not suggest that ‘plastic patches’ have increased in size. This is certainly an unexpected conclusion, but it may in part
reflect the high spatial and temporal variability of plastic concentrations in the ocean and the limited number of samples that have been
collected.” The hyperbole about plastic patches saturating the media rankles White, who says such exaggeration
can drive a wedge
between the public and the scientific community. One recent claim that the garbage patch is as deep as the Golden Gate
Bridge is tall is completely unfounded, she said. “Most plastics either sink or float,” White pointed out. “Plastic isn’t likely to be evenly
distributed through the top 100 feet of the water column.”
2NC
HM
Perm
Negativity is key – the perm doesn’t solve because pure negation of current political
coordinates is necessary to open new forms of resistance
Bruce-Novoa, Lecturer in Mexican and Latino Literature and Culture @ UC Irvine, 2005
[“Eroticism, Counterculture, and Juan García Ponce.”CR: The New Centennial Review 5.3, 1-33]
In One-Dimensional Man, a less optimistic Marcuse analyzed the manipulation by advanced industrial societies of communication media and
concepts of modernity to stifle cultural revolution, voiding any possibility of the erotic liberation of the masses. Instead
of facilitating
expression of creative instincts, society created an array of imaginary needs and desires, the
acquisition of which—through participation in the rites of consumption—constituted a sinister, complex, and highly developed form of
sublimating human sexual energy. By
making individuals feel part of an illusory integration of national life, the
potentially great variety of modes of social expression were funneled into a one-dimensional
system in which the capacity to think and act freely in manners other than those sanctioned
by the system eventually disappeared. By monopolizing the means of consumption as well
alternative or oppositional forms of expression, advanced societies blocked development of an
eroticized society. Marcuse warned that control mechanisms even provided outlets for eroticism that channeled its energy into merely
distracting and addictive consumption. All expression of rebellion, including literature and the arts, would be
turned into chips in the game of competition and economic gain. The efforts to recapture the Great
Refusal in the language of literature suffer the fate of being absorbed by what they refute . As
modern classics, the avant-garde and the beatniks share the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of
good will. This absorption is justified by technical progress; the refusal is refuted by the alleviation of misery in the advanced industrial society.
The liquidation of high culture is a by-product of the conquest of nature, and of the progressing conquest of scarcity. (Marcuse 1991, 70)
Marcuse's answer: a Great Refusal beyond what the scandalous but ineffectual vanguards had
achieved, a break he called a "rupture"—especially and significantly in the chapter "The New Sensibility" in An Essay on
Liberation (1969a, 33–34, 36). This rupture signaled the withdrawal from the system of organized social conduct ,
or in 1960s parlance, the "establishment." Borrowing elements of his analysis from Eros and Civilization, Marcuse postulated that a
society that had won the basic struggle for survival and eliminated excessive domination and
repression should open itself to the development of a new being, an orphic-narcissist who
would reject utilitarian goals or social standing in favor of love, pleasure, play, and
contemplation. This eroticized being would be a product of an essentially new human reality, able to achieve the ultimate "break, the
turn of quantity into quality" (1991, 231) and establish "the realm of the irrational [that] becomes the home of the really rational—of the ideas
which may 'promote the art of life'" (247). This
rupture must not fall into the trap of oppositional
collaboration; rather it must counter the system's capacity for appropriating everything in its
path with "the politically impotent form of the 'absolute negation'" (Marcuse 1991, 255). To support his claim
while simultaneously offering an example of such an act of refusal in the guise of surrendering to appropriation, Marcuse cites Maurice
Blanchot, a writer whose work would also become key reading for counterculture intellectuals in their passage to postmodernity, particularly
for García Ponce. [End Page 7] What
we refuse is not without value or importance. Precisely because of
that, the refusal is necessary. There is a reason which we no longer accept, there is an
appearance of wisdom which horrifies us, there is a plea for agreement and conciliation
which we will no longer heed. A break has occurred. We have been reduced to that frankness
which no longer tolerates complicity. (Blanchot, quoted in Marcuse 1991, 256)
Other
Vital materialism’s choice of objects to analyze is mediated through and serves as a
tool of capitalism
Berry 12 (David Berry, professor at Oslo University, Posted 25th May 2012 by , The Uses of ObjectOriented Ontology, http://stunlaw.blogspot.com/2012/05/uses-of-object-oriented-ontology.html)
To see what "shows up" to the philosographer one is unsurprised to see lists that are
often contaminated by the products of neoliberal capitalism, objects which could not
just appear of themselves, but required actual concrete labour of human beings to
mediate their existence. For some reason, object-oriented ontology is attracted to the
ephemerality of certain objects, as if by listing them they doubly affirm their
commitment to realism, or that the longer the list the more ‘real’ it is. There is also the tendency to
attempt to shock the reader by the juxtaposition of objects that would normally be thought to be categorically different – see Bogost (2009) for a discussion of
whether including Harry Potter, blinis, and humans in a list was a striking enough example. These rhetorical strategies are interesting in thermselves, but I do
This demonstrates that the speculative realists have not
escaped the so-called ‘correlationist circle’ (Harman 2009b), nor provided a model for thinking about the anti-correlationist
paradox which remains present in their own work. We should therefore ask object-oriented ontologist to
move beyond merely staring at the objects they see around them and catch sight of
what is being listed in their descriptive litanies. That is, examining the lists they produce,
we can see what kind of objects they see as near, and which they see as far, and
therefore question their claims to see objects all the way down (see Bogost 2012: 83-84). Yet as we
examine these lists there appears to be a profound forgetting of Being, as it were, as
they write both for and as subjects of Late Capitalism – a fact which remains hidden
from them – and a seemingly major aporia in their work
not see them as replacements for philosophy.
(Anthro Turns K arg.) the root cause of everything bad in the world cant be through
anthro the only root cause impact you have in the round is structural violence which
attempts to erase individuals through day to day forms of violence this reigns true
throughout the debate because anthro on the violence continuum is under structural
violence. We concede that anthro was happening before capitalism but capitalism
definitely gave anthro a thicker and wider ground to expand its ideology on with
chicken cages for production to produce fat chickens that can’t even walk on their two
talons without being in pain because they’re so fat.
Roll Of the Ballot is to go to who best Explores the relationship between us and the
things that have afflicted our lives and come to terms with the structural violence that
has caused a cataclysm with you and humanity and through performance we have the
best method of solving...
Will
Yes, I’m a bastard, functionally hazardous, egotistical, schizophrenist with a love of obsession
and glamour. Poetry with me is something you don’t want to have because I’ll explain to you
what I am till you have no offense to the slam. Christians say my number is 666 and I have no
name… in this capitalistic state of mind I have nothing to receive or gain. The government
wants all my words intercept which is why I came here to explain my concept.
Every day I prayed that I would find my daddy’s grave.
Till I stopped believing and god and walked away from the church in shame.
The streets is no way for a young boy to live on his own.
Billionaires deciding the fate of the sidewalk I slept on.
Billionaires deciding what food I get to eat.
Billionaires deciding what goes in my pipe they say no, not leaf...
Daddy issues have controlled my life.
Like the blood down the street who mugged me and cut me with his knife.
As I gaze at my ever glowing memory from time to time.
I’m now explaining what happens within the solitary mind of a boy in juvie at the age of 9.
Dear Dad, You’ve been an inescapable thought coming in and out throughout my mind.
You wanna see me well sorry I have to decline.
Sorry pops, I can’t continue with this petty hope, for you to get better and show you’re off
dope.
Although, You say all of your scars on your arm have gone away.
the memories of you and mom leaving me still remain.
The best way you would describe it’s like heroin through your veins knowing that its not over
and it may not ever be too late.
But I’m spitting to show it’s too late to see who your sons trying to be… I reconcile with you
dad I know it’s hard to see. But you never noticed me or the things I tried to shove
underneath.
The scars from mental obstruction and physical alteration have impersonated my image and
it’s inadvertently hurting me.
As I fall deeper into a feral state
I can’t see my future as being any other than the same.
I love you dad but it’s so hard thinking of how it used to be.
For you and me to be is just another memory.
Signed, Willie D.
So what, I’m a bastard. Poetry with me is something you don’t want to have because I’ll
explain to you what I am till you have no offense to the slam. Christians say my number is 666
and I have no name… in this capitalistic world I have nothing to receive or gain. The
government wants all my words intercept which is why I came here to explain my concept.
The perm solves nothing within the status quo because nothing the 2AC does shifts from
capitol.
Through performance we have the best method to solve for the exploration of self
and self-affliction and come to terms with the structural violence each of us has felt.
Prefer ROB because not only have we proven solvency for it but the affs evidence
doesn't give the best specificity as to why their advocacy which monitors trash and
explores the relationship between it and humanity solves better... ours is a pre
requisite because we can monitor our trash within the debate round. before we can
talk about our relationship with waste we have to talk about the things that afflict us
most. right now worker fetishization has used workers and used their bodies as tools
for a well oiled machine. It is a Necessary pre req to overthrow Capitol and stop this
disconnect before we even think about the plan both critically and politically.
Overcorrection and hyper-vigilance are key to prevent invisible atrocities
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois ‘4
(Prof of Anthropology @ Cal-Berkely; Prof of Anthropology @ UPenn)
(Nancy and Philippe, Introduction: Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in War and Peace, pg. 19-22)
This large and at first sight “messy” Part VII is central to this anthology’s thesis. It encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized,
and utterly banal violence of children dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African
Americans dying of heat stroke in Mayor Daly’s version of US apartheid in Chicago’s South Side (Klinenberg, Chapter 38) to the racialized class
hatred expressed by British Victorians in their olfactory disgust of the “smelly” working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these readings violence
is located in the symbolic and social structures that overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal bloodshed, and
racially patterned incarcerations that characterize the US “inner city” to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant, Chapter 39).
Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred and adolescent self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e.
Absolutely central to our approach is a
blurring of categories and distinctions between wartime and peacetime violence. Close
attention to the “little” violences produced in the structures, habituses, and mentalites of
everyday life shifts our attention to pathologies of class, race, and gender inequalities . More
preventable), rawly embodied physical suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34).
important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of “violence studies” that risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are often forced into
complicity with social and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this
anthology we are positing a violence continuum comprised of a multitude of “small wars and invisible genocides” (see also Scheper- Hughes
1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted in the normative social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms, hospital wards, nursing homes,
courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons, detention centers, and public morgues. The
violence continuum also refers to
the ease with which humans are capable of reducing the socially vulnerable into expendable
nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill, maim, or soul-murder. We realize that
in referring to a violence and a genocide continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues for the absolute
uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and for vigilance with respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985; Chaulk
1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and alternative view that, to the contrary, it
is absolutely necessary
to make just such existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts in normal times to those
of abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If (as we concede) there is a moral risk in
overextending the concept of “genocide” into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to find it (and there
is), an even greater risk lies in failing to sensitize ourselves, in misrecognizing protogenocidal
practices and sentiments daily enacted as normative behavior by “ordinary” good-enough
citizens. Peacetime crimes, such as prison construction sold as economic development to impoverished communities in the
mountains and deserts of California, or the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar institution for managing race
relations in the United States (Waquant, Chapter 39), constitute
the “small wars and invisible genocides” to which we
refer. This applies to African American and Latino youth mortality statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York
City. These
are “invisible” genocides not because they are secreted away or hidden from view,
but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the things that are hardest to perceive are those which
are right before our eyes and therefore taken for granted. In this regard, Bourdieu’s partial and unfinished theory of
violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his concept of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday forms of
violence hidden in the minutiae of “normal” social practices - in the architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the
exchange of gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader meanings and status of violence, especially the links between the
violence of everyday life and explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglia’s notion of “peacetime crimes” - crimini di pace imagines a direct relationship between wartime and peacetime violence. Peacetime
crimes suggests the possibility that
war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday crimes of public consent applied systematic- ally and
dramatically in the extreme context of war. Consider the parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family
resemblances between the legalized violence of US immigration and naturalization border raids on “illegal aliens” versus the US governmentengineered genocide in 1938, known as the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.” Peacetime crimes suggests that everyday forms of state violence make a
certain kind of domestic peace possible. Internal “stability” is purchased with the currency of peacetime crimes, many of which take the form
of professionally applied “strangle-holds.” Everyday forms of state violence during peacetime make a certain kind of domestic “peace” possible.
It is an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a public secret by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace.
Most subtly, but no less politically or structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United States of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial
complex has taken place in the absence of broad-based opposition, let alone collective acts of civil disobedience. The
public
consensus is based primarily on a new mobilization of an old fear of the mob, the mugger, the
rapist, the Black man, the undeserving poor. How many public executions of mentally deficient
prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more secure for the affluent? What can
it possibly mean when incarceration becomes the “normative” socializing experience for ethnic minority youth in a society, i.e., over 33 percent
of young African American men (Prison Watch 2002). In the end it
is essential that we recognize the existence of a
genocidal capacity among otherwise good-enough humans and that we need to exercise a
defensive hypervigilance to the less dramatic, permitted, and even rewarded everyday acts of
violence that render participation in genocidal acts and policies possible (under adverse political or
economic conditions), perhaps more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the violence continuum we include,
therefore, all expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization, depersonal- ization,
pseudospeciation, and reification which normalize atrocious behavior and violence toward
others. A constant self-mobilization for alarm, a state of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a
reasonable response to Benjamin’s view of late modern history as a chronic “state of
emergency” (Taussig, Chapter 31). We are trying to recover here the classic anagogic thinking that enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry,
C. Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia among other mid-twentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive the symbolic and structural
relations, i.e., between inmates and patients, between concentration camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes, and other “total
institutions.” Making
that decisive move to recognize the continuum of violence allows us to see the
capacity and the willingness - if not enthusiasm - of ordinary people, the practical technicians of
the social consensus, to enforce genocidal-like crimes against categories of rubbish people.
There is no primary impulse out of which mass violence and genocide are born, it is ingrained in
the common sense of everyday social life. The mad, the differently abled, the mentally
vulnerable have often fallen into this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and
infirm, the sick-poor, and, of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of
the moment. Erik Erikson referred to “pseudo- speciation” as the human tendency to classify some individuals or social groups as less
than fully human - a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the unremark- able peacetimes that precede the sudden,
“seemingly unintelligible” outbreaks of mass violence
. Collective denial and misrecognition are prerequisites for
mass violence and genocide. But so are formal bureaucratic structures and professional roles. The practical technicians of
everyday violence in the backlands of Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example, include the clinic doctors who prescribe
powerful tranquilizers to fretful and frightfully hungry babies, the Catholic priests who celebrate the death of “angel-babies,” and the municipal
Everyday violence encompasses the implicit,
legitimate, and routinized forms of violence inherent in particular social, economic, and political
formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by “symbolic violence,” the violence that is often “nus-recognized” for
bureaucrats who dispense free baby coffins but no food to hungry families.
something else, usually something good. Everyday violence is similar to what Taussig (1989) calls “terror as usual.” All these terms are meant to
reveal a public secret - the hidden links between violence in war and violence in peace, and between war crimes and “peace-time crimes.”
Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and violence in the least likely places - in courtship and marriage, in the exchange of gifts, in systems of
classification, in style, art, and culinary taste- the various uses of culture. Violence, Bourdieu insists, is everywhere in social practice. It is
misrecognized because its very everydayness and its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies “rneconnaissance” as the prerequisite of the
social. The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of autonomy, independence, and progeny, within the structures of family farming in the
European countryside that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu, Chapter 42; see also Scheper-Hughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada, 1989).
Following Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern theorists of power-vio- lence, Bourdieu treats direct aggression and physical
violence as a crude, uneconomical mode of domination; it is less efficient and, according to Arendt (1969), it is certainly less legitimate. While
power and symbolic domination are not to be equated with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is to be understood as a
failure of power - violence, as we are presenting it here, is more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or
group of persons. Rather, we need to understand violence as encompassing all forms of “controlling processes” (Nader 1997b) that assault
basic human freedoms and individual or collective survival. Our task is to recognize these gray zones of violence which are, by definition, not
obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the discourses on genocide everyday, normative experiences of reification, depersonalization,
institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to help answer the question: What makes mass violence and genocide possible? In this
volume we are suggesting that
mass violence is part of a continuum, and that it is socially incremental
and often experienced by perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders - and even by victims
themselves - as expected, routine, even justified. The preparations for mass killing can be found in social sentiments
and institutions from the family, to schools, churches, hospitals, and the military. They
harbor the early “warning signs” (Charney 1991),
the “priming” (as Hinton, ed., 2002 calls it), or the “genocidal continuum” (as we call it) that push social
consensus toward devaluing certain forms of human life and lifeways from the refusal of social
support and humane care to vulnerable “social parasites” (the nursing home elderly, “welfare
queens,” undocumented immigrants, drug addicts) to the militarization of everyday life (super-maximum-security
prisons, capital punishment; the technologies of heightened personal security, including the house gun and gated communities; and reversed
feelings of victimization).
Structural violence outweighs any impact—don’t be fooled by neoliberal claims of
inevitability
Hintjens 7 [Helen Hintjens is Lecturer in the Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales, “MDF
Understanding Development Better,” http://udb.global-connections.nl/sites/udb.globalconnections.nl/files/file/2923317.051%20-%20Position%20Paper%20Helen%20Hintjens.pdf]
From Johan Galtung, famous Norwegian peace ‘guru’, still alive and heads up TRANSCEND University on-line, has been working since 1960s
on showing that violence is not OK. His Ghandian approach is designed to convince those who advocate violent means to restore social
justice to the poor, that he as a pacifist does not turn a blind eye to social injustices and inequality. He extended therefore our
understanding of what is violent, coercion, force, to include the economic and social system’s avoidable injustices, deaths, inequalities.
Negative peace is the absence of justice, even if there is no war. Injustice causes structural violence to health, bodies, minds, damages
people, and must therefore be resisted (non-violently). Positive peace is different from negative (unjust and hence violent) peace. Positive
peace requires actively combating (struggling peacefully against) social injustices that underpin structural violence. Economic and social,
political justice have to be part of peacebuilding. This is the mantra of most NGOs and even some agencies (we will look later at NGO
Action Aid and DFID as examples). Discrimination
has to end, so does the blatant rule of money, greater
equality is vital wherever possible. All of this is the opposite of neo-liberal recipes for success, which in
Holland as in Indonesia, tolerate higher and higher levels of social inequality in the name of efficiency. Structural
violence kills
far more people than warfare – for example one estimate in DRC is that 4 million people have been killed in war since 1998,
but NGOs estimate that an additional 6 million people have died in DRC since then, from disease, displacement and hunger, bringing the
total to an unthinkable 10 million of 90 million est. population. “Since
there exists far more wealth in the world
than is necessary to address the main economic causes of structural violence, the real problem is one
of priorities”…p. 307 “Structural violence…is neither natural nor inevitable”, p. 301 (Prontzos).
Our mindset shift accomplishes a revolution against capitol and a revolt against the
system that has denied access to success and has destroyed the laborer and created a
dis-connect from the labor and the laborer. They don’t know what exploring trash
does as long as we do it and reach a conclusion they are happy their mindset shift
doesn’t do anything because they don’t know what it is. This change accomplishes a
reform in how we think about our relationship to capitol and its byproducts including
trash thereby assuming the entire affirmative plan. Your lack of specificity and
evidence shows that you can solve for absolutely nothing all you do is look at the trash
floating around in the ocean, put your thumb and forefinger on your chin…. and think.
We make an epistemological revolt against capitalism to solve for the injustices within
today’s society.
Prefer my warranted analysis over any claims or assertions presented by the
affirmative.