Psychoanalysis K - Michigan7 2014 GRAMS

Psychoanalysis7WS GRAMS Lab
***Horrorism K (Death Drive)***

Cut by Saul Forman
1NCHorrorism K (Death Drive Core)

Their depictions of war as nationalized violence and subsequent calculation of the
result ignores the role of the death wish and craving for horroristic depictions of
state-on-state conflictthat blurs the line between civilian and military disorder
Cavarero, 11 Italian philosopher and feminist thinker, holds the title of Professor of Political
Philosophy at the Universit degli studi di Verona, held visiting appointments at the University
of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara, at the New York University and Harvard (Adriana,
Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Ch. 12, The Warriors Pleasure, Columbia
University Press, January 2011, pp. 60-65, book)//SJF
W hen Arendt insists on the relation between theories that look for the sublime in the infamous, elevating cruelty to the highest
virtue, and the experience of the front generation, she brings an important theme into focus. The First World War was
not just one of the many wars that, from Homers day to ours, have covered the planet with blood. It
inaugurated the model of total war, perfected in the 1939 1945 conflict and characterized by the placing of
civilians on the same level as military personnel, and the propensity to exterminate them
without hesitation. 1 The traditional, even heroic conception that defined it as a duel on a larger scale, a fair battle between
uniformed soldiers, was definitively abolished. Soldiers continued to fight, obviously, while terror and horror, as essential
forms of the phenomenology of war, beset them more than ever. But the scenario changed radically. It changed for
the soldiers themselves, sent to be slaughtered in droves. But, with a decisive acceleration in the Second World
War, it changed above all for civilians, who, in the overall victim count, grew in number to become the large majority. Organized
destruction, heightened by the technology of modern weapons while still pretending to focus on
the classic figure of the warrior, redirected its aim at the defenseless, revealing a distinct
horrorist signature, over the course of the twentieth century.
According to Marcello Flores, it has been calculated that, in round figures, those killed during the twentieth
century in acts of mass violence numbered between one hundred and one hundred and fi ft y
million (some have even spoken of a figure of two hundred million).
Th e proportion of civilians killed reached 50 percent in the course of the Second World War and exceeded 90
percent during the last decade of the century. As for the first years of the new millennium, it would seem from the
sources available that the figure is even higher. Confining ourselves to the twentieth century and civilian victims in Europe, when it
comes to horrorism we are compelled to begin with the series of genocides that, reactualizing a long tradition, 3 imparted a new
meaning to the phrase slaughter of the innocents. The view is by now widely shared that the massacre of millions of
men, carried out with complete impunity, could succeed precisely because those men were
innocent. 4 The quoted passage refers to the Stalinist Lagers that began to swallow up Soviet
citizens in 1937, but the list obviously must commence with the million Armenian citizens of the Ottoman
Empire deported to their deaths in the desert, before moving on to the mass extermination that
totaled almost six million dead among Jews alone in the Nazi camps. In different geographical settings, and
including the victims of induced famines, 5 victims numbering in the millions are also reported
in the case of the Maoist regime in China and Pol Pots Cambodia, which achieved the
extermination of 20 percent of the population.
Any review of the refined arts of war developed over the course of the century would have to dedicate a separate chapter to the aerial
bombardments inaugurated by German forces over Guernica and Coventry. The thesis, shown to be totally unrealistic,
was that mass mortality among the inhabitants of populous cities would sap their morale and that of the troops at
the front. Churchill thought so, ordering the bombardment of German cities so that those who have
loosed these horrors upon mankind will now in their homes and persons feel the shattering strokes of just
retribution. 6 Under the bombs of the Royal Air Force, which used both explosives and incendiaries in such a way that even in
shelters the victims died, by being cooked, one hundred and fifty thousand people died in Dresden alone, and the total for
Germany was six hundred thousand; in Tokyo, more than two hundred thousand died. The victims of the great horrorist
mushroom inaugurated by the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 exceeded two hundred
thousand. Passing to the second half of the century after the Geneva Convention of 1949 defined the killing of innocent
civilians as a war crime the three million dead in the Vietnam War, the majority of them defenseless victims of napalm bombing,
deserve mention. In the realm of civil war, there is the primitive horror of genocide by machete that
reached a daily average of forty-nine hundred victims in Rwanda. And in the intestine war in the Balkans,
the Dayton accords signed on 21 November 1995 left a heritage of two hundred and fifty thousand dead, fifty thousand persons
tortured, and an equal number of women raped. 7 As for rape, the most notorious episode of the twentieth century remains the
Nanking massacre in which, in 1937, Japanese troops unleashed their fury on the civilian population, especially women, old people,
and children. During the early years of the present century, t he area of greatest suff ering has been Iraq, where
from 2003 through the fi rst half of 2006 the
estimated total number of deaths among the population comes close

to six hundred thousand. 8 This list is obviously arbitrary and incomplete.
Nor is it a question of numbers, even if a focus on quantities is inevitable when we are dealing with mass homicide. 9
The numbers serve merely to emphasize how butchery and carnage are now directed in the bulk of cases,
although not exclusively at the civilian population. In an epoch of mass death unprecedented in history, 10 to
continue to discuss war in terms of regulated conflict between states, in line with the classical and
symmetrical model of a clash between men in uniform, is, in this sense, misleading. The kind of
war that matured in the twentieth century and looms over the new millennium is not only asymmetric, as were and
are all colonial wars, but, like them, consists predominantly of the homicide, unilateral and sometimes
planned, of the defenseless. Nor does the rhetorical expedient , typical of military language, of collateral
damage do any good: on the factual plane, it does not succeed in masking the existence of the blownoff limbs, the punctured eardrums, the shrapnel wounds, and the psychological horror that are
caused by heavy bombardment. 11 Struck one by one, in the singularity of their vulnerable bodies,
the helpless ones stand at the center of modern destruction and highlight its drift into horrorism.
This places them in a position of perspective on horror that, in speaking of war, no discussion
ought any longer ignore.
Oft en execrated as a tremendous evil and as the maximal expression of human violence, war has been regarded as
inevitable for millennia. But the modern age especially has been able to make use of theories
that, variously articulated and cutting across different disciplinary levels, have succeeded in endowing this
inevitability with a natural foundation. I refer to theories, originating in the early twentieth century and not untouched
by the eroticization of horror already discussed, that trace violence back to aggressiveness, defined as an
instinctual drive, [that] is said to play the same functional role in the household of nature as the nutritive and sexual instincts
in the life process of the individual and the species. 12 This is Arendts characterization, in an essay from the 1960s in which she
imputes this naturalistic acceptation of violence primarily to the modern social sciences. As the author implies, the term social
sciences is not to be taken in a narrow sense. It is meant simply as a comprehensive label for the various fields of knowledge that
emphasize the pulsional origin of the phenomenon of violence. At the dawn of the modern era, for that matter, Hobbes was already
speaking of war as part of human nature, in his celebrated description of the state of nature as a state of war. The modern
social sciences, to stay with Arendts thesis, go a step further, however: they ascribe war, like violence, not just
to an irrepressible instinct of aggression but also to a secret death wish of the human species.
13 Thus Freud and psychoanalysis inevitably come to the foreground.
The Freudian idea of a death wish is well known: a death instinct, the task of which is to lead
organic life back into the inanimate state. 14 He describes it as a drive that, albeit originally directed
inward in the form of self-destructiveness, also projects outward, against the external world
and other organisms. 15 In other words, and to adopt the technical imprecision of Arendtian terminology, it is a desire
for death that is at the same time an instinct of aggression. As is equally well known, Freud developed this
theme during the final phase of the writings in which, from 1914 to 1922, he described the functioning of psychic activity. The
background is the period during and shortly after the First World War, an epoch in which death and destruction were operative on a
vast scale. It should also be noted that, as proof of the plausibility of the intrinsic linkage between the death wish and the impulse of
destruction, he resorts to an argument taken from the field of biology; to be precise, he describes the passage from
single-cell organisms to multicellular ones in terms of a death wish that, instead of directing its
destructive impulse inward toward the single cell, is redirected outward. So when Arendt denounces the
naturalistic conception of violence derived from the modern social sciences, she hits the mark: the incursion into the
field of the natural sciences is a salient trait of psychoanalytic theory in its formative phase. Rather
than at Freud, though, the denunciation ought to be directed at the immense success of certain Freudian categories in the second
half of the twentieth century, especially at the way they have been absorbed and reworked, if not hypostasized, by the various
disciplines that have intersected with psychoanalysis, one way or another, over the course of the century. The phenomenon
is, to put it mildly, conspicuous. Especially on the plane of media popularization, the century saw the
expansion of a horizon of meaning within which the death wish along with the destructive
impulses, and not seldom their horrorist side la Bataille, acquired the status of established, unquestionable,
and evident principles. Any reflection on violence in general and war in particular was virtually obliged to
take them into account.
At the start of the third millennium, in other words in the era of so called global war, a prime example of this is a book published in
the United States by James Hillman in 2004. It is entitled A Terrible Love of War and is based on the Jungian theory of archetypes.
But the book stands out not because of the reference to Jung, or to psychoanalysis in general, but because of the nonchalance with
which Hillman recuperates and mixes together the main strands of twentieth-century naturalistic thought on violence to
corroborate his thesis. He maintains
that war belongs to our souls as an archetypal truth of the

cosmos 16 and that this archetypal truth is, as the title of his second chapter puts it, normal. He proceeds with
an analysis of the theme of a horror that remains human even in its atrocious inhumanity, adding that
war is sublime and belongs to the sphere of religion. 17 If war is sublime, we must acknowledge its liberating transcendence
and yield to the holiness of its call. 18 This does not mean, obviously, that Hillman wishes for a perpetual state of war. His aim is
rather to get rid of the pacifist rhetoric that, in denying the natural psychic root of the
phenomenon, impedes comprehension of it.
As the reader will easily intuit, while the authors cited (oft en inappropriately) are highly disparate, it is principally categories
deriving from psychoanalysis, the sociology of the sacred, and the anthropology of sacrifi ce that
underpin the articulation of Hillmans discourse. The theoretical density, as well as the internal problematics of
these categories, which in his text are forced to undergo drastic simplification, are transformed into banal clichs. In order to justify
war as an unrenounceable and vital experience, Hillman oft en appeals not just to the authority of his authors but to a so-called
common opinion that by now constitutes the vulgate, in the form of the stereotypical and the obvious, of those same authors. An
example is the facility with which he takes for granted our fascination with war films, with
weapons of mass destruction, with pictures of blasted bodies and bombs bursting in the air. 19
To this Hillman adds, on a confessional note, the fascination, the delight in recounting the dreadful details
of butchery and cruelty. Not sublimation, the sublime. 20 Typical as well in the way it casts a shadow of
abnormality if not pathological stupidity or obtuseness over those who do not share the fascination with
butchery, Hillmans thesis has its own stringent logic. Once violence is rooted in the natural realm of the impulses or, if one
prefers, in the archetypical order of the cosmos, the horror of war cannot fail to transmit its fascination both to everyones visual
experience and to the literary practice of some. And, even more logically, it is combatants with firsthand experience in the field who
savor the full fascination. The words of the soldiers that Hillman diligently reports in his text for the purpose of documenting his
theory prove it. Among them, the words of a cinematographic version of General Patton stand out, when, faced with the devastation
of battle and kissing a dying officer, he exclaims, I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life. Then there is the
authentic declaration of a marine who confesses, The thing I wish Id seen I wish I could have seen a grenade go into someones
body and blow it up. No one else, though, rivals the laudable capacity to synthesize of the anonymous American soldier who, in
describing a bayonet charge, defines it as awful, horrible, deadly, yet somehow thrilling, exhilarating. 21
In the name of a realism grounded in the power of clich, the entire repertory of wars horror is thus
reduced by Hillman to the realm of enjoyment. The savage fury of the group, all of whose members are out for one
anothers blood, which the celebrated work of Ren Girard inscribes in the phenomenology of ritual, 22 becomes the trivial wage of
the warrior. For that matter the stereotype of the soldier excited by killing has a long and prestigious history. A certain arousal
by violence was already characteristic of Homers warriors, and the warmongering rhetoric of
every age, ennobled by writers and poets, is full of soldiers made happy by death. The events of the
twentieth century, and even more those occurring right now, might suggest to the singers and scholars of
massacre that they change register. Today it is particularly senseless that the meaning of war and its
horror as well, obviously, as its terror should still be entrusted to the perspective of the warrior . If it is true,
as the historian Giovanni De Luna laments, that wars, with the violence and cruelty they unleash, appear to have a common ground
(killing and getting killed), always the same and impervious to chronology, 23 it is also true that only warriors, after all, fi t this
paradigm. The civilian victims, of whom the numbers of dead have soared from the Second World War on, do not share
the desire to kill, much less the desire to get killed. Nor does the pleasure of butchery, on which Hillman insists,
appear to constitute a possible common ground in this case. You would have to ask the victims of the bombing, cooked by incendiary
bombs in the shelters of Dresden, or those whose skin was peeled off by phosphorous bombs in the Vietnamese villages, where the
pleasure and excitement was for them. And you would have to put the same question to the children blown up in many parts of the
world by antipersonnel mines or to the engaged couple who, falling like marionettes from the Twin Towers in flames, took final flight
in New York on the morning of September 11.
This lack of distinction blinds politics to the vulnerable, autonomous human

victimonly defined by their fear of violent death, this subject is always abject
signified in opposition to sovereign
Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Ch. 5, The Vulnerability of the Helpless,
Columbia University Press, January 2011, pp. 20-24, book)//SJF
The uniqueness
that characterizes the ontological status of humans is also in fact a constitutive

vulnerability, especially when understood in corporeal terms. If, as Hannah Arendt maintains, everyone is unique because,
exposing herself to others and consigning her singularity to this exposure, she shows herself such, this unique being is vulnerable by
definition. 1 Arendt does not dwell on this vulnerability, perhaps because she has little interest in the body. But in emphasizing birth
as the decisive category of the ontology of the unique person, she does illuminate the first scene on which the vulnerable being
presents itself. Even though, as bodies, vulnerability accompanies us throughout our lives, only in
the newborn, where the vulnerable and the defenseless are one and the same, does it express itself so
brazenly. The relation to the other, precisely the relation that according to Arendt makes each of us unique, in this
case takes the form of a unilateral exposure. The vulnerable being is here the absolutely exposed and
helpless one who is awaiting care and has no means to defend itself against wounding. Its relation to the
other is a total consignment of its corporeal singularity in a context that does not allow for
reciprocity.
In a collection of essays written after September 11, Judith Butler reflects on the conditions of heightened
vulnerability and aggression that followed from those events. 2 Registering the surprise of a country
that thought it could not be attacked and condemning a reaction that is multiplying the violence
with war and destruction, Butler ponders the possibility of finding a basis for community starting from the condition of
vulnerability. 3 Her thesis is that vulnerability, understood in physical and corporeal terms, configures a human
condition in which it is the relation to the other that counts, that allows an ontology of linkage
and dependence to come to the fore. In this relational context, to recognize oneself as vulnerable signifies
recuperating our collective responsibility for the physical lives of one another. 4 In other words, after
the losses of September 11, it signifies moving the narcissistic preoccupation of melancholia . . . into a
consideration of the vulnerability of others. 5
From the wound suffered and perceived as a trauma on the part of a country that considered
itself invulnerable attention shift s to the wound of the other, to the end of recognizing our
common condition of vulnerability. In the historical moment that solicits this reflection, Butler is preoccupied above all
by the reactive logic of reprisal and revenge, a logic facilitated by the philosophical postulate of an
autonomous and sovereign subject that, like the state to which it corresponds, thinks of itself as closed
and self-sufficient. This is the well-known subject, also called the individual, that shores itself up, seeks to
reconstitute its imagined wholeness, but only at the price of denying its own vulnerability, its
dependency, its exposure. 6 For the purpose of understanding the basis of non-violent responses to injury, 7
individualistic modern ontology, refusing to admit dependency and relationship, must be radically
rejected. In the words of Alasdair MacIntyre, the entire history of philosophy from Plato onward has ignored human
vulnerability and affliction and the connections between them and our dependence on others in the
name of a rational and independent subject. 8 Already inscribed in the birth of philosophical discourse, the illusion of the
self-sufficient I achieves in modernity merely its best-known and most prominent affirmation.
Against this illusion and its perverse political effects, Butler chooses to emphasize that the I is not closed but rather open and
exposed: What is prematurely, or belatedly, called the I is, at the outset, enthralled, even if it is to a violence, an abandonment. 9
For the I there is at the outset the natal scene, in which the infant is a vulnerable being entirely consigned to the other and thus
open to a reply that Butler tends to read in terms of violence. With respect to the category of birth on which Hannah Arendt focuses,
the shift of perspective is important. Contemplating the natal scene, Butler holds it important to specify that the relation by which
we are, from the start and by virtue of being a bodily being, already given over, beyond ourselves, implicated in lives that are not our
own, 10 can take the form, in the case of a baby, of an essential need for sustenance, which is however followed by a reply of
abandonment, or violence, or starvation [that gives it over] to nothing, or to brutality, or to no sustenance. 11 The emphasis is
thus placed on a vulnerable being who is consigned above all to the vulnus , to the wound that the
other may inflict on it. That this other, given the setting, is identifiable with the maternal figure is more than obvious. But,
perhaps because she is convinced that there is no reason to assume that these caregivers must be oedipally organized as father and
mother. 12 Butler does not foreground this question.
Thomas Hobbes, a great understander of human violence, examines the same scene and by contrast alludes forcefully to the
maternal role. Following a scheme repeated in his major works, he begins by noting that dominion over the child belongs to the
mother. 13 The context is a reflection, typical of his age, on so-called paternal dominion; this designation he contests, arguing that it
is not the father but the mother who, by nature, has absolute power over the child. Since it is Hobbes we are dealing with, obviously
we must take the expression by nature seriously. It indicates the state in which [ hu]mankind finds itself, outside and
apart from any political or civil institution. In the case at hand, maternal dominion over children is referred to a
setting where there is no matrimony or any other form of contract between the parents. In this natural condition, according to the
Englishman, dominion over children belongs precisely to the mother. Not, however, as we might expect and as the author is at
pains to point out because in giving birth she has given them life but because the very survival of the newborn depends on her:
The title to dominion over a child, proceedeth not from the generation, but from the preservation of it; and therefore in the estate of
nature, the mother in whose power it is to save or destroy it, hath right thereto by that power. 14
Rigorous as always, Hobbes renders the power of generation void, abstracting it from the mother and replacing it with the power of
salvation or destruction. Maternal dominion is therefore observed, as it were, from the perspective of the newborn. It is indeed a new
life, but above all it is a life totally exposed to others for its own self-preservation, in other words a life vulnerable in the highest
degree and, on top of that, defenseless. Indeed Hobbes immediately adds that, if the mother shall think fi t to abandon or expose
her child to death, whatsoever man or woman shall find the child so exposed, shall have the same right which the mother had
before. Apparently cynical and pitiless, the logic of the argument is utterly clear . In context, the
procreative act does not matter; what counts is an effort to remain in existence, a passion for
ones own survival. In utterly Hobbesian fashion, the discourse on the newborn is developed on the basis
of a conception of the human being as individual life aiming essentially at its own selfpreservation. We must not forget that the author was one of the prime begetters of modern individualism, being in fact the
principal conceiver of an ontology of unbinding, the protagonists of which are described as atomized, self-referential subjects, closed
on themselves and focused on the desire to keep themselves alive, each at the expense of the other. What unites them in the
state of nature according to the familiar expression homo homini lupus is the fear of violent death, which
every man is afraid of suffering at the hands of every other, fear of the war of all against all. So it
should occasion no surprise that the mother, as a potential assassin, should also take her place in this general panorama of
reciprocal and natural violence. Nevertheless, precisely because of the reciprocity that is missing here, along with a reply that admits
violence but also care, we do feel a certain surprise. Not just because, compared to the individualistic ontology of unbinding, the
relation between mother and infant winds up being a strange exception but because in this relation the imbalance
between the parties is obvious. Here there are not in fact two, so to speak, equal wolves (born, in a
curious and symptomatic Hobbesian expression, like mushrooms) 15 able to attack each other in turn, as the
protagonists of the war of all against all do, in their perfect and symmetrical autonomy. Bound to the other and
dependent on the other for its very existence, the newborn infant is not a combatant . Absolutely
helpless, although already characterized by its effort to survive, it is vulnerable in a unilateral way. So
much so that, to guarantee it any hope of life, Hobbes is forced to attribute to the mother a power over her off spring that,
abandoning the generally lupine nature of mankind, plays on the alternative between saving it and destroying it. This is not so much
a depiction of denatured motherhood as a drastic revision of the traditional iconography of the maternal, through which Hobbes
ultimately supplies us with a perfect figure of the vulnerable being, lucidly presented in accordance with its two essential
dimensions: its openness both to wounding and to care.
It is worth emphasizing that, apart from Hobbes and as Butler well knows, it is precisely the thematization of infancy
that allows the vulnerable being to be read in terms of a drastic alternative between violence and
care. In the case of the biblical story of the sacrifi ce of Isaac, the alternative assumes a diff erent aspect: the choice posed is
between a hand that strikes and one that does not rise to do so. For the situation of the infant, however, the arresting of a
violent hand is not enough. It is necessary that the alternative inscribed in its primary
vulnerability should also bring into account a hand that cares, nourishes, and attends. Th at means
that the other, incarnated in this scene by the mother, cannot limit herself to the gesture of refraining from
wounding. By necessity, the vulnerability of the infant always summons her active involvement. On
the other side of care, between the blow that kills and simple abandonment between infanticide and uncaring there is thus,
in a certain sense, only a diff erence in the degree of intensity of the atrocity of the gesture. As though
mothers who imitate Medea were only at the top of a descending scale.
1NCHorrorism K (Emnity Link)

The sublime nature of violence depends upon the existence of absolute enmity
war as theatre justifies infinite sacrifice of the civil in a quest to annihilate the
abject other
Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Ch. 13, Worldwide Aggressiveness, Columbia
Hillmans book, published in 2004, is exemplary in many respects, one of which is this interesting particular. Although it does
include a few references to the events of September 11, 2001, it does not address the problem of distinguishing between war and
terrorism. As Arendt would put it, the naturalistic basis of the modern social sciences does not concern
itself with isolating the criteria that ultimately defi ne the various forms of violence. Observed from
the point of view of a carnage that is enjoyment and excitation, one is as good as another. As
long as the horror is sublime, the historical question of who gets it started is just an unimportant
detail.
Th e sciences of politics understood here in a broad sense follow the opposite reasoning. Although they are
oft en disposed to defi ne violence in terms of an energy (very natural, alas!) that revitalizes the realm of
politics through wars and revolutions, they specialize in distinguishing its various forms . In the
modern epoch, this distinction generally emphasizes the diff erence between regular and irregular
violence, tendentially based on the opposition legal/illegal in the juridical meaning of
international and constitutional law. Tied to historical contingency and the parabola of the sovereign state, the
discourse about this, as well as being a crucial object of debate, is, to put it mildly, complex. But in its elementary grammar, still
invoked today when one wishes to distinguish between war and terrorism, it actually refers to a fairly simple schema. Violence
connected to the classic model of war between states is seen as regular, indeed legitimate and
legal. Violence perpetrated by nonstate actors, on the other hand, is seen as irregular and hence
criminal. With its propensity typical of modern political thought to ground itself in juridical categories, the argumentation
goes on to distinguish among the modes and objectives of war, listing its principles, customs, and rules in detail. Foremost among
them is the distinction between military personnel and civilians or, if one prefers, between combatants and noncombatants. From
one perspective, this distinction is apparently obvious and traditional, but from another, and perhaps precisely because of a tradition
that no longer holds, it is a principle that the events of the twentieth century have laden with telling ambiguity. It is not diffi
cult to point to the forcing of perspective in a theory that insists on formulating the regularity of
war in terms of the regularity of the combatants in an age when the victims of violence, regular wars
included, are civilians by a wide majority. It would seem that, even for modern political science, the warriors point of
view is hard to let go of. Albeit analyzed in juridical terms rather than in terms of enjoyment and excitation, the scene
of violence is still observed from the soldiers viewpoint rather than through the eyes of the
defenseless victims. Not that the victims, in their quality as noncombatants and oft en labeled as collateral damage, are
entirely outside the frame in which the regularity or irregularity of violence is adjudicated. It is well known that the Geneva
Convention of 1949, together with all the international law it inspired, inscribes the killing of innocent civilians among war crimes.
Yet within this frame the fi ghter still remains the predominant fi gure. Th rough a strange
persistence in the contemporary imaginary of the baroque idea that conceives of war as
theater, as a series of battles that take place on a battlefi eld where the outcome of it is decided, 1 the fi gure of the
warrior remains at the center of the inquiry and substantiates its criterion.
Made famous by the aphorism that defi nes war as a continuation of politics by other means, the Prussian general Clausewitz,
who distinguished himself on the Napoleonic battlefi eld, is among the most lucid analysts of the phenomenon
of war. 2 His great merit, according to Carl Schmitt, is to have perfected the model of regular war between states, although he did
go so far, without drawing out all the implications of his astonishingly telling remarks, 3 as to insert the anomalous fi gure of the
modern irregular combatant, or what Schmitt calls the partisan, into his theory of war. Th e quotation is from a text of Schmitt
published in Berlin at the beginning of the 1960s entitled Theory of the Partisan . In the context of his argument, to be a
partisan is precisely to avoid carrying weapons openly, the partisan being the one who fi ghts
from ambushes, who wears the enemy uniform and whatever insignia serves his turn, as well as
civilian clothing, as decoys. 4 In other words, it indicates the irregular combatant as opposed to the
soldier in uniform who is the classic protagonist of confl ict conducted between states by
regular armies of states, between standard-bearers of a jus belli who respect each other at war as enemies. 5 It is well
known that the notion of the enemy, as a special category of the political, is of central concern to Schmitt. 6 His thesis in the book in
question is that the fi gure of the irregular combatant compels a rethinking of this category, in other words, that the partisan, as
Clausewitz had intuited, changes the interstate model of war and hence of politics. Th us in the 1960s, before globalization was
spoken of, much less global terror, Schmitt was already positing the need to search for a new political control of hostilities, in a now
post-state age. 7 What he thematizesawareness of the radical collapse of the traditional political form, 8
in other words, of the decline of the state is
not just the distinction between regular and irregular violence

based on the status of the combatant but above all the mode in which, in this new context, the question of the
enemy is posed. He highlights the shift from a situation that assumes the reciprocal recognition of the
combatants in uniform as enemies to one that allows for attack by combatants without
uniforms, invisible because they wear no badges of identifi cation, since secrecy and darkness are
[their] strongest weapons. 9 To label them enemies on the basis of the old model of regular warfare
becomes improper. To label them criminals is part of the problem, more a symptom of it than a
solution to it, which Schmitt, with great lucidity, registers punctually.
It should be noted that, as Carlo Galli points out in Theory of the Partisan , Schmitt
does not examine the fi

gure of the terrorist, which would have provided him with a perfect example . 10 As we make our way
through the linguistic and conceptual confusion that characterizes todays debate on the war on terror, Schmitts text nevertheless
proves extremely useful, especially when, utilizing a range of examples from the Spanish guerrilleros of the Napoleonic era to the
revolutionaries of Maoist China, Schmitt draws a fundamental distinction between two types of partisan:
those who have a real enemy and those who have an absolute enemy . Th e enemy, the central category
of the classic model of war between states, is here examined from the perspective of the irregular combatant.
A real enemy, according to Schmitt, occurs in the case of a partisan tied to his own land and able to
move easily on it, a tellurian partisan who is fi ghting against an invading or occupying army or against government forces
against which he feels enmity. Albeit irregular, he is in substance a defender of his native soil: a resistance fi
ghter or, as we could also call him, an insurgent. An absolute enemy, on the other hand, occurs in the case of
a partisan who, cutting loose from the tellurian dimension, wages a struggle that aims at world revolution
because he identifi es his enemy as a class or as the characteristics of any kind of identity (including the Western
lifestyle, to give an up-to-date example). Characterized by a worldwide aggressiveness, 11 he is structurally inclined to
criminalize his enemy and make every eff ort to annihilate him. It is worth noting, as Schmitt suggests, that
in both cases the history of the West furnishes abundant cultural legitimation to the fi gures
delineated here. Albeit irregular when measured against the criterion of military and state legality in the classic sense, both
the insurgent and the international revolutionary can count on an authoritative tradition that
declares legitimate, sometimes even ex post facto, their resort to violence. Th e problem is obviously highly complex,
but, demonstrating the utility of the refl ections that Schmitt develops in this text, it succeeds at any rate in illuminating the reasons
why, in todays debate on terrorism claiming a basis in Islam and more specifi cally on the bloody explosions in Baghdad and
Jerusalem, the label insurgents is a crucial topic of discussion. An example is the choice of the BBC following an editorial debate
focused on just this question in 2003 to call those who were fi ghting against the British and American occupying troops
insurgents and to use the same term generally for many of the armed opponents of the Iraqi government. 12 Beneath the choice of
labels, today particularly urgent and insidious, there is always a problem of concepts. 13 Schmitt notes that, as a European observer
of the old tradition, one has to avoid falling back precisely in this context on conventional, classical concepts of war and peace which,
when they speak of war and peace, assume the contained European war of the nineteenth century, with its implication of merely
relative and containable enmity. 14
As Clausewitz had intuited, already with Napoleon, who, according to Marx and Engels, perfected the Terror by substituting
permanent war for permanent revolution , 15 the old tradition was showing signs of strain. But on the historical plane, the
decisive turn comes in the twentieth century, when the concept of absolute enemy enters defi
nitively into the lexicon of intraspecies violence . Introduced by the partisan who has abandoned the tellurian
dimension, it has to do with a new type of war in which the global space of combat is characterized
by pure means of destruction, in other words, weapons of absolute annihilation [that] require an
absolute enemy lest they should be absolutely inhuman. 16 If the concept of enemy were to lack this
qualifi cation of absolute that makes it possible to dehumanize him and see him as a morally
abject criminal, those who annihilate him are themselves criminal and inhuman. 17 Insisting on the
theme, Schmitt even goes so far as to hypothesize that, in future, enmity will be so terrifying that one perhaps mustnt even speak
any longer of the enemy or of enmity. Becoming totally abstract, destruction will need only to appeal to
another, ostensibly objective attainment of highest values, for which no price is too high to pay. 18
An interesting hypothesis, if not prophetic, to put it mildly.
1NCHorrorism K (Night Alt)

The alternative is not a rejection, but rather an affirmation of peace de-linked
from accommodation with war or calculations of sacrificeonly this affirmation
allows for the solidarity of the shaken, a movement able to confront the forces of
the day that defines the terms of modern conflict
Crpon, 13 professor at cole Normale Suprieure in Paris, director of research at the
Archives Husserl, researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Marc, The
Thought of Death and the Memory of War, War and the Death Drive, Ch. 4, Unrelenting War,
University of Minnesota Press, 2013, pp. 1-10, book)//SJF
Now, however, comes the upheaval, shaking that peace and its planning, its programs and its ideas of
progress indifferent to mortality.
All everydayness, all visions of future life pale before the simple peak on which humans find
themselves standing. In face of that, all the ideas of socialism, of progress, of democratic spontaneity, of
independence and freedom appear impoverished, neither viable nor tangible.
They achieve their full meaning not in themselves but only where they are derived from that peak and lead back to it in turn.
Where they lead humans to bring about such a transformation of their whole lives, their entire existence.15
If we are to take up the question of the meaning of the world anew, we must therefore begin with our condition as
mortal beings. This is where we should have started long ago so as to destabilize the pretensions of the
forces of the day and the imperious constraints of an everyday existence exposed to the fear of
death. Patoka, developing a cosmology that recalls the thought of Heraclitus, calls this destabilization the preponderance
of the Night.16 But what is the nature of this preponderance? The response to this question must include three
elements. The first is the affirmation that death is not a trifle [nest pas rien], and that nothing can
justify it. As long as peace, however organized, is grounded in the denial [dni] of war, as long as it
assumes an accommodation with war, or resignation regarding some number of sacrificed lives,
wherever the sacrifice might occur and for whatever reason, and as long as peace demands calculations of this
kind, peace is using war as much as it is rejecting it. In opposition to so many evasions, rebuttals, and so much
denial of the fact of violence, and in opposition to so much heedlessness and resignation including fatalistic interpretations the
superiority of the night means first of all restoring to death its absolute nature. The second constitutive
element of this superiority is that, given the first point, it alone is able to accept war as suchthat is to say, to
entertain no illusions about peace. Resignation regarding the sacrifice of millions of lives (in denial of
the absoluteness of death) always accompanies what Patoka calls demobilization. It consists in imagining that
force and power, where they exist, guarantee that war is a remote possibility that war is a peripheral
event, inessential and secondary. Finally, the third element, the ultimate and essential superiority, is
that the night alone is ableif not to change or overturn the meaning of the world at least to understand it and
so to destabilize it. The night is in - scribed in a logic that is not one of apportionment or
partitioning of force and power, forever unequal and therefore potentially conflic - tual. Patoka gives a name to
this other logic: the solidarity of the shaken. All the meditations on history, war, and politics found in
Heretical Essays seem to converge on this concept: The means by which this state is overcome is the
solidarity of the shaken; the solidarity of those who are capable of understanding what life and death
are all about, and so what history is about. That history is the conflict of mere life, barren and chained by fear,
with life at the peak, life that does not plan for the ordinary days of a future but sees clearly that the
everyday, its life and its peace, have an end. Only one who is able to grasp this, who is capable of conversion, of metanoia, is
a spiritual person.17
What is life at the peak? It can only be understood within the context of Patokas concurrent reflections, as found notably in Plato
and Europe, on what he calls the care for the soul, which he will claim in Heretical Essays is inseparable from care for death
which becomes the true care for life.18 Life at the peak is that life for which the meaning of the
world and the relation to death are inseparable from this care. It grants that war goes on,
because nothing seems to Patoka to be more fragile and threatened than to maintain oneself,
precisely, at the peakthat is, to persevere in ones elevation . It plumbs the depthsas does Patokaof the
gravity of resignation, renunciation, and compromise, of the petty arrangements with force and power (always fascinating), of great
cowardice, and of the dead and burdensome weight of the thousand and one forms of nihilism. Life
reasons, a
at the peak is, for all these
life in truth.
But this life has no meaning unless it is shared. It
can only be lived in the idiomatic invention of the multiple

forms of this other sharing, forever uncertain, which unsettles the meaning of the world because it apportions the world
differently [parce quil fait autrement la part du monde]. Life at the peak, the concern for the soul, and the care for death
are not the business of one or even of several isolated individuals, locked in heroic resistance
against force and power. Patokas concepts demand first of all a shared understanding, which cannot be
reduced to some slogan, or to some facile formula.19 In this respect, and only in this respect, can they
become the cement of the kind of solidarity that transcends all affiliations , a solidarity that cannot
be reduced to (or identified with) some profession, some social class, some party, nation, or
civilization. Because it is arrayed against the forces of the day, such solidarity unsettles the
terms of the conflict.
Into continuous warfare [la guerre continue] for the apportionment of force and power, the solidarity of
the shaken drives the wedge of a different conflict, a different war: the combat that each of us must
wage against the confinement of the meaning of the world within the ever more exclusive, deadly, and
imperious limits of such an apportionment.
Patoka claims without hesitation that such solidarity makes the meaning of the world our responsibility ,
that of each and every one of us. He writes, with a sobriety that has lost none of its relevance:
The solidarity of the shaken is built up in persecution and uncertainty: that is its front line, quiet, without fanfare or sensation even
there where this aspect of the ruling Force seeks to seize it. It does not fear being unpopular but rather seeks it out and calls out
quietly, wordlessly. Humankind will not attain peace by devoting and surrendering itself to the criteria of
everydayness and of its promises.

All who betray this solidarity must realize that they are sustaining war and are the parasites on the
sidelines who live off the blood of others. The sacrifices of the front line of the shaken powerfully
support this awareness.20
1NCHorrorism K (Impact)
The Affs calculations for maintaining the status quo are grounded in psychological
investment in the apportionment of force and powerthat generates endless
conflicts to keep the threat of violent mortality looming over the civil realm
What should we remember of the wars of the twentieth century? How can the memory of the millions upon millions of lives
sacrificed on all fronts, of the countless victims of organized famine, forced labor, deportation, and the extermination camps be
inscribed in our thought? And what form should that memory assume? What is thoughts re - sponsibility in opening itself to that
memory? In all probability no great philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century has evaded these questions, no matter
how implicitly or allusively they may have been treated. Such questions could not fail to have an impact on ethics, political thought,
law, history, and even thought on science and technology.
We saw how true this was of Levinass work, in which the primacy of ethics (the exposure to the irreducible alterity of the other) over
ontology (reflection on being and nothingness) is inseparable from the memory of war. It is equally true of Patoka, whose Heretical
Essays culminate in reflections of a rare dramatic intensity on the wars of the twentieth century.
Patokas thought, however, is not merely or even principally the product of remembrance. Responsibility for Patoka is
inscribed in neither obligation nor in mourning, but rather in successionin the descriptive
analysis of the patterns underlying these wars (what they teach us about the world), in the declaration of
the convulsions that the wars should have produced (our relation to the world), and finally in the examination
of the reasons why they utterly failed to produce them. Patokas work presents itself, therefore, both as a
meditation on war and as a critique of the illusion of peace. It measures the extent to which, despite the sacrifice of
millions of victims (and perhaps even because of it), war continues [continue] in peace. The world remains the same, and
our existence remains subject to the same im - peratives as those that produced war, to what
Patoka calls the forces of the day. What are these forces? How are they able to bind existence as if in chains, and in so
doing confiscate the memory of war?
Why is it that every peace seems ineluctably to lay the ground for new wars to come? The originality of Patokas approach is in
showing how war is inseparable from our relation to death. The forces of death bind us through
our fear of death. The thread that unifies this chapter is thus to understand, in the light of Heretical Essays, the articulation
between the meaning of the world, as revealed by war, and the thought of death as organized by war. We will also try to grasp how an
alternative meaning of both the world and death might emerge from the experience of the front, understood as sacrifice (whose
generalizability we must try to determine).
What then do the wars of the twentieth century teach us about the world? This is the question that Patoka seeks to answer in the
first pages of the essay devoted to them by proposing, as did Rosenzweig sixty years earlier, an interpretation of the motivations that
led to the First World War.1But whereas the author of The Star of Redemption understood the war as the result of the mortal combat
that the peoples of Europe inflicted on themselves with a view to their election (which presupposed the appropriation of the world),
the author of Heretical Essaysmaintains that the war revealed how much the world finds its meaning through an apportionment
[partage] of force and power [puissance]:2 The shared idea in the background of the first world war was the
slowly germinating conviction
that there is nothing such as a factual, objective meaning of the world

and of things, and that it is up to strength and power to create such meaning within the realm accessible
to humans.3
Patokas portrayal of the belligerents highlights their relation to this apportionment as it stood on the eve of war. Whereas the allies
(essentially France and Great Britain) were attached to a global status quo that had long favored them, Germany stood out by its
desire to change that status quo in pursuit of new principles that it had de - fended in Europe, and which justified, in its estimation,
its claim to a position of preponderance. These new principles emerged from the ever deepening techno-
scientific aspect of [German] life, whereby German society vehemently and ruthlessly pursued the
accumulation of building, organizing, transforming energy.4 It was the will to maintain the status quo,
or alternatively the decision to reject it, that dictated the alliances. At stake was the power to transform
Europe into a formidable energetic complex, and the exploitation and liberation of the worlds energy reserves.
The war was the manifestation, or the blunt translation, of what Patoka, reading Husserl and Heidegger, describes (in
other work that is contemporary with Heretical Essays) as a new world age, a new era the technical erathat had dawned on
the world: Because the technical age is one of calculable resources and their use which can be on
order, and because that age seeks to isolate and squeeze out of everything and everyone the utmost possible
performance, it is also an age of unaccustomed unfolding of power. The most powerful means of its
escalation, however, proved to be contradiction, dissension and conflict. In conflict it becomes especially clear
that man as such is not understood as dominant but is included as something that is on order.5
It is not difficult to discern in this evocation of the technical, as the disposing [mise disposition] and the setting-upon
[rentabilisation] of quantifiable resources, the very terms of Heideggers analysis of technology [technique] (as Gestell), to which
Patoka will return again and again in the 1970s. Beyond its heritage and historical context, the reading that Patoka proposes, and
the application of Heideggers terms to make sense of the wars of the twentieth century, enable the author of Heretical Essays to
discern two outcomes that will lend considerable importance to his analysis. First, by relating the wars to the
apportionment of force and power (conceptualized as the exploitation and liberation of the worlds
energy reserves), he ex - plains why, in times of peace and in defiance of all the institutions that
strive to prevent war, of all the rules of law, and of all the agreements and treaties, war continues.
The forces of the day that ordain and organize the peace are the same forces as those that
propelled millions upon millions of human beings into the torment of war. They forever prepare
humanity for new wars because, whatever one might think about the apportionment of forces and the occasional
guarantees that accompany it, nothing is ever definitive and nothing is ever acceptable to everyone. If the
great lesson of the First World War was to show that while the world found its meaning in the
struggle for force and power, peace (which, it would seem, brought an end to war) opened no perspective on
an alternative meaning. As Patoka reviews the balance of forces during the interwar period, prior to the outbreak of
World War Two, and during the Cold War, he can only confirm this observation . There is no doubt that in our day
the wars of the Near and Middle East, the multiple threats linked to the appropriation of oil
reserves, and the availability of nuclear energy would confirm Patoka in his conviction that the
imperatives of peace are the same as those that lead to war. On the one hand these imperatives are
grounded in the fact that the defense of the status quo (concerning the apportionment of force
and power) is unacceptable for some and of vital importance for others; and on the other hand they
are grounded in the need for accumulated force to be discharged: Why must the energetic transformation of
the world take on the form of war? Because war, acute confrontation, is the most intensive means for the
rapid release of accumulated forces. Conflict is the great instrument which , mythologically speaking,
Force used in its transition from potency to actuality. In this process humans as well as individual
peoples serve merely as tools.6
The second outcome of Patokas analysis (an analysis that Heidegger, by the way, never attempted) is its ability
to help us understand how the meaning of the world imposed by force and power is doubly
linked to the relation to death. It is linked first by the high pricethe millions of sacrificed lives
that the forces of the day exact to satisfy the requirements of their calculations. From this perspective,
understanding the wars of the twentieth century in Patokas terms means dropping the mask and measuring,
with unnerving clarity, the significance of the war deaths for peace, when peace , from whatever angle we look at
it, is itself nothing other than the continuation of war. What does it mean to die for the fatherland, or
to die for freedom? Although the questions provoked by these expressions have haunted philosophy and literature in the
twentieth century, Patoka measures the extent to which they can be instrumentalized when appropriated by the peace for which the
dead paid the price when, in other words, the forces of the day claim them as they nevertheless prepare for
other wars. Reflecting on the wars of the twentieth century and their countless victims, both civilian and military, one is
forced to return to the unfathomable, sometimes scandalous, and always disturbing question, What for? [Pour
quoi?]. The question has not been put to rest in the decades that separate us from the Second World War and from Patokas death.
On the contrary, each new conflict, each new sacrifice of whole generations, on all fronts, bearing the
proper names of places (Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and so many others), raises the question anew.
The power of the last chapter of Heretical Essays will always be felt because of its willingness once the celebrations, the
commemorations, the customary tributes, the official histories and speeches are over and doneto risk the question of the why and
wherefore of this cult of those who died for the fatherland, those who died on the field of honor those who died for . . . , a cult
that, in times of peace, tames and hijacks wars horrors and the irreducible and absolute character of
the experience of the front (in the broadest understanding of that term). What is always being camouflaged is
nothing other than the ends, the objectives, the interests, the apportionment of force and power for
which these lives were sacrificed: Peace and the day necessarily rule by sending humans to death in order to
assure others a day in the future in the form of progress, of a free and increasing expansion, of
possibilities they lack today. Of those whom it sacrifices it demands, by contrast, endurance in the face of death. That indicates a
dark awareness that life is not everything, that it can sacrifice itself. That self-sacrifice, that surrender,
is what is called for.7
But this
appropriation of the victims of war, this confiscation of their sacrifice, is merely one of
two aspects of the relation to death that are brought to light by an interpretation that places the
wars of the twentieth centurythe world wars, or the world at warunder the sign of a death struggle for the
(technical and energetic) disposing [disposition] of force and power. Because war continues in peacetime, and
because the forces of the day are always preparing the ground for more sacrificesincluding the sacrifice of entire generations to
whom they had promised life and durable peace (as is always the case in the aftermath of war)and because no promise of peace can
resist the imperative of force and power that gives the world meaning, humanity lives forever under the threat of
violent death. War casts this threat as a shadow over the lives of every one of us. It binds the
memory of war (and its continuation) to life (which means a certain relation to death) in ways that Patoka is
at pains to decipher. For one must separate the significance of this threat into two components. On the one hand, the forces of
the day (the reign of peace, that is, of the peace that prepares the ground for war) attach each of us to a life (our life)
that becomes for each of us the supreme value. The forces of the day multiply protections,
guarantees, and assurances.
They make of each singular existence a life that is protected from the thousand and one perils that
might befall it. On the other hand, however (and because anything is possible in war), these same forces of the day
(which are calculating their power and force) consider death of negligible importance . They are ready to
renounce all the protections they provide and to expose each and every one of us (and in the most direct
manner) to the peril of death if their computations de - mand it. What disappears in this case is the
meaning of death itself. Death ceases to be meaningful. It becomes something of no consequence, given the
imperatives revealed by the calculations of the forces of the day ( as every war proves, every day, year after year, on
every continent, as newspapers and television networks amass data on the number of wars
victims): For the forces of the day, conversely, death does not exist, they function as if there was no death, or, as noted, they plan
death impersonally and statistically, as if it were merely a reassignment of roles. Thus in the will to war, day and life
rule with the help of death. . . . Those who cannot break free of the rule of peace, of the day, of life in a
mode that excludes death and closes its eyes before it, can never free themselves of war .8
The paradox of the forces of the day is that their apparent protection of lifetheir attachment to lifeboils down
to a failure to recognize the meaning of death. They use death; they turn it into an ever-available
means with which to pursue their ends; and at the same time they inscribe it with an abstract,
subsidiary, and accidental significance.
The dead always end up being registered in some macabre catalog that presumes to be the last
word regarding their sacrifice.
2NCHorrorism K (Impact/AT: Perm)

The system of peace grounded in fear generates an endless search for security in
an attempt to hide from deaththat causes an objectification and externalization
of war onto humans as mere pawns to be sacrificed for the nationthe Affs
attempt to hide it in sustaining <<democracy/hegemony/etc>> only feeds the
psychological investment in death
Such is the fundamental ambivalence of the relation to death (and thus to life) that emerges from a
world that derives meaning from the sole apportionment of force and powerin contempt of every
legislative structure and every international institution that exists. Day, peace, and life to reprise
Patokas interrelated termstighten their grip on the body and soul of each individual by means of
death. By making life the supreme value, the forces of the day turn death into the supreme
threat. To satisfy the growing demands of the citizenry they promise to protect life, and they
multiply the measures that seek to secure this end. Science and technology are themselves made to
service this need for security. In his portrayal of the twentieth century, as in the portrayals of so many of those who came
before and after him, the author of Heretical Essays underscores the extent to which the postwar decades, in Europe and in other
parts of the de veloped world, went down this path. Whatever their degree of economic prosperity, however
important their social achievements, the peoples of the developed world all moved in the direction
of a reciprocal growth in their demand for protection and their feeling of security, which now applied to all spheres of
life. There loomed everywhere the vital need to construct ramparts against death, so as no longer
to have to think about it. Europe succeeded in this regard at the cost no doubt of what Patoka calls, without hesitation,
its demobilization, the illusion of a peace that has definitively removed the specter of war.
And yet war continuedand still continuesbecause this increased protection was and still is nothing more than the complement of
the unequal apportionment of force and power. Misery, famine, the lack of access to the most elementary level of care, which prevail
in much of the world, present the other side of this protection of the affluent. The relation to death (to all that threatens life)
divides the world, just as does the apportionment of force and power : The gigantic work of economic
renewal, the unheard-of, even undreamed-of social achievement which blossomed in a Europe excluded from world history,
shows that this continent has opted for demobilization because it has no other option. That
contributes to the deepening of the gap between the blessed haves and those who are dying of
hunger on a planet rich in energythus intensifying the state of war.9
The final chapter of Heretical Essays, in this regard, does not deviate from that apprehensiveness that characterizes Patokas
reflections on Europe, beginning with his introduction, also written in the 1970s, to Plato and Europe.10 If the two world wars were
first and foremost European wars (which drew the rest of the world in), if they trace their origins back to the apportionment of force
and power in Europe, the continuation of these wars in the second half of the twentieth century and the first years of the
twenty-first century is linked inseparably to the shift in this apportionment [dcentrage de ce partage].
It now engages Europes relation to its alteritiesthat is, the gap, which has become insupportable, between, on the one hand,
those whom the apportionment favors, who cling at any price to the advantages and privileges (to the relation to death, everywhere
secured and protected) that this apportionment enables, and, on the other, those whom this apportionment condemns to misery.
There can be no doubt that if Patoka could see, on the one hand, how Europe protects itself from its
alterities, the ramparts it erects (e.g., against migration flows) so as to assure its security and
protect its comfort, and, on the other hand, the increasingly desperate attempts to overcome these
barriers, he would perceive better than anyone the veneer that the continuation of war has assumed
in our day.11
The forces of the day benefit from the ambivalence in our relation to death. The
fear of death (which shackles life) is the

principal motif that plunges humanity into violence and war. It makes humanity available for
the conflicts of the day and continually renews its predisposition toward possible sacrifice . Proof of
this predisposition is the fact that, despite all the promises heard in the aftermath of war promises made in the name
of future generationsno generation is ever assured of not being sacrificed in some conflict to
come. However
great the commitment to peace, however important the degree of demobilization, the unequal
apportionment [partition] of force and power foments conditions such that the desire for peace ,
among both those who have benefited from it and those who have been disadvantaged, capitulates one day to the will to
war incited by the perils that inequality has wrought, whether real, fictitious, fantasized, or
instrumentally invented: Peace, the day rely on death as the means of maximal human unfreedom, as
shackled humans refuse to see, but which is present as vis a tergo, as the terror that drives humans even
into firedeath, chaining humans to life and rendering them most manipulable. 12
This is the cord that ties the meaning of a world to the relation to death. It is a world destined to be
dominated by technology and the exploitation (unto exhaustion) of energy resources. The temptation is
great to surrender to nihilism, whose specter is certainly one that haunts Heretical Essays, and one that the essays seek to confront.
But how does one escape the despair and discouragement that this continuation of war in peace ineluctably produces, and the fear
and dismay that no institution, no system of protection can placate? The final pages of Patokas work grapple forcefully with these
questions, and engage with them from the most difficult and puzzling angle. If it is true that the reduction of the
world to an apportionment of force and power dramatically culminates in the sacrifice of human
lives as the price for victory (as well as in other forms of contempt for life, like the compromise with misery, with famine,
with the refusal of assistance, and with all the terrors that this apportionment implies), then our analysis must begin with
this sacrifice. It must start here because the deaths themselves cannot be reduced to the ciphers of
some kind of morbid balance sheet, even though the forces of the day, imitated by the printed press
and the television networks, attempt to do just that.
The death of the victims, of the millions upon millions of lives that are sacrificed, transcends passing
calculations regarding life and peace. Patoka makes this claim with great force in a study of technology that he wrote
at about the same time as Heretical Essays, a study that echoes with the remembrance of the tribute of war as well as of revolution
(and thus required courage to write in the 1970s), neither of which escapes the fascination of such calculations: The experience of a
sacrifice . . . is now one of the most powerful experiences of our epoch, so powerful and definitive that humankind for the most part
has not managed to come to terms with it and flees from it precisely into a technical understanding of being. . . . Revolutionary
and warlike conflicts of our century were born of and borne by the spirit of a technical domination of
the world; but those who had to bear the cost were in no case a mere store of disposable resources,
but something quite irreducible to that. That precisely comes to the fore when we speak of
sacrifices.13
One question remains. In what sense does the sacrifice of soldiers , on all fronts, as well as of the victims, both
civilian and military, of all warsincluding economic wars that are hardly less deadly than armed
conflictstranscend the apportionment of force and power? It is no accident that Patoka uses the word
transcendence at precisely the point where attention is directed to the victims, as victims. Patokas use of the word brings his
thought in proximity to that of Levinas, for whom, as we saw, the question of sacrifice is a familiar one. Moreover, as we have
observed, it becomes increasingly clear that the question of sacrifice, along with that of death (and heroism, and
dying for . . . ) is
one of the axes around which philosophy in the last half of the twentieth century has
tenaciously revolved. The organizing thread that guides the author of Heretical Essays, and which confers on his thinking its
singularity, is provided by the experience of the front (notably that of the First World War) as narrated by a Teilhard de Chardin or
an Ernst Jnger. Patoka focuses on the survivors [reve - nants]on those who, having endured this absolute experience, cannot
assent to the relativity of the sacrifice, to the relativity of the renunciation of life that the forces of everydayness have exacted.
Two meanings of sacrifice enter into oppositionand with them two relations to death, whose radical
incompatibility must be exposed.
The first involves thinking about life and death, as characterized, at every stage, as we have seen, by its power of
alienation and bondage.
The victims of war, of all wars, are, according to this thinking, nothing more than the tribute offered up
for all our attachments (for all that roots life in a complex system of fears and protections ):
Peace transformed into a will to war could objectify and externalize humans as long as they
were ruled by the day, by the hope of everydayness, of a profession, of a career, simply possibilities for which
they must fear and which feel threatened.14
The second consists in turning the sacrifice inflicted upon millions and millions of human beings on all
fronts back against the forces of everydayness. This second understanding of sacrifice resists the power
of alienation (which has its source in the instrumentalization of sacrifice) with a countervailing power
to emancipate and destabilize. To discern in sacrifice its absolute meaning, as Patoka tries to do, is not to
sacramentalize itand certainly not to promote or enjoin itbut to acknowledge that its significance,
which cannot be reduced to some or other calculation for peace, provokes unease by its very abso luteness,
and indeed casts doubt on the authority and selfevidence of this same calculation. This acknowledgment comes
from the
refusal to see the victims, sacrificed on the altar of peace as interest, continue to serve this same interest
unto death and beyond. Writing in the 1970s, the author of Heretical Essays was easily able to measure the extraordinary
vacuity of oratory (of all oratory) that advanced one or the other of these claims in order to justify past fatalities and future sacrifices.
If the radical incompatibility of these two understandings of sacrifice is in fact meaningful, it is because of
the abyss that separates the unjustifiability of death, as demanded and granted, from its justifications. Whether
these latter go by the name of socialism, democratic freedom, progress, independence, or by the many other
complements of dying for . . . or dying in the name of . . . none holds up, as justification, if
inscribed in the apportionment, forever bellicose, of force and power. No justification holds up if it
subscribes, over and over again, to the multiple imperatives of a world divided , whose entire meaning is
concentrated in this distinctive apportionment, which is to say in the figures, the statistics, the quantified studies that depict it, and
in the reports, plans, and programs that exacerbate it:
2NCHorrorism K (Psycho Key)

Their depictions of mass war result from a disillusionment with peacethey use
the Aff as a distraction from the violence of the status quo. However, our
investment in conflict exposes cracks in the system, leaving nothing to stop total
annihilation
But disillusionment can occur only against the backdrop of some prior illusion. What is the nature of
this first [premire] illusion? Is it the same as that evoked above? Because the following pages will measure its importance over
and over again (though by following a very different path), it is appropriate to pursue our reading of Freud further and to attend to
the interpretation that he provides.
That interpretation emphasizes the importance of those impulses that the requirement of human
community classifies as either egotistic and cruel, on the one hand, or altruistic and social on the other
hand. But it does not posit the eradication of the former in favor of the latter , but rather their
recomposition or transformation based on erotic additions , following a bimodal path. On the one hand, this
transformation reflects a generic disposition, which all humans inherit at birth, and as such is innate. On the other hand,
it is the object of an acquisitionthat is, an education, imparted during the lifetime of each of us: If
we call a persons individual capacity for transforming his egotistical impulses under the
influence of love his cultural adaptability, we can say that this consists of two parts, one congenital
and the other acquired, and we may add that the relation of these two to each other and to the untransformed part of the
emotional life is a very variable one.3
Under these conditions, the illusion
is easily deciphered. It derives, on the one hand, from the

overestimation of civilizations aptitudes, in contrast to the abidingly primitive life of impulses. It derives, on the
other hand, from the conviction that our submission to civilization is synonymous with a
definitive and irreversible ennoblement of the impulsesthat is, that it acts in us like a kind of
second nature that insulates us from cruelty and evil. But the variability of the innate and the acquired attest, on
the contrary, to the foundational complexity, variety, and fragility of the causes [or patterns: motifs] of both civilizational
adaptability and submission. The exaggerated confidence that we grant to both the one and the other overlooks
the
ongoing impulse repression from which, in the majority of cases, they proceed, and the reactive and
compensatory manifestations that impulse repression always tends to engender, and which make our confidence illusory. Wherein
lies civilization? Wherein lies the repression of cruelty and of evil? In very little. And yet we always assume that
repression is more solid, more anchored in nature, than it actually is. For nothing disappears, nothing is
abolished. As developed as civilized society might be, the egotistical and cruel tendencies (what
Freud calls primitive animism) do not go away. Nothing prevents the transformation of impulses
upon which our aptitude for culture rests4 from being defeated, whether temporarily or durably, and
thus nothing prevents evil and cruelty, once unleashed, from surmounting the protective barriers
that society has erected. The horrors of war, all wars, recall us to this painful truth. It forms the most
unfathomable part of the memory that we retain of war. The author of Reflections on War and Death, in 1915, says as much in words
that sound the knell of the still-future death of our illusions: These discussions have already afforded us the consolation that our
mortification and painful disappointment on account of the uncivilized behavior of our fellow world citizens in this war were not
justified. They rested upon an illusion to which we had succumbed . In reality they have not sunk as deeply as
we feared because they never really rose as high as we had believed.5
The second phenomenon that Freud relates to our feeling of strangeness in a world engulfed by the abomination of war is
the way in which evil (which warand its memoryexemplifies and propagates) perturbs our relation to death.
In the course of our lives we obviously have a tendency to shunt death off to the side, as if we cannot believe, in our own case as in
that of others, in our ineluctable demise (however much sickness or bereavement of a loved one might intervene to remind us of it).
War, however, brutally and cruelly amplifies the experience of death. It suspends our customary
relation to death be - cause nothing enables us to deny it any longer. Wartime is nothing other than the
time of this invasion and deluge. When we preserve the memory, when we commemorate the victims, when we make of the
remembrance of sacrifice an ethical and political responsibility, it is above all this time that is remembered:
Death is no longer to be denied; we are compelled to believe in it. People really die and no longer one
by one, but in large numbers, often ten thousand in one day. It is no longer an accident . Of course, it still seems
accidental whether a particular bullet strikes this man or that but the survivor may easily be struck down by a second bullet, and
the accumulation of deaths ends the impression of accident .6
What is recalled from this time is not limited to this memory. If
the disturbance of our attitude toward death

cannot be dissociated from the disillusionment discussed above it is because both the one and the
other call attention to the fiction of the primitive man that Freud is still calling the man of earliest
times.7What is the nature of primitive mans relation to death? The originality of Freuds approach consists in emphasizing two
points of decisive importance. First, he places what he is trying to conceptualize as a primitive relation to
death under the sign of a partition. On one side, primitive man had to deny the ineluctable character
of his own death. He could only live by imagining himself to be immortal. On the other side, as soon as the question
arose of putting an end to the life of another , a stranger, an enemythat is, as soon as he derived benefit, for his
own life, from annihilating that of anotherthis same primitive man knew very well that he had to take
death seriously and to take full account of its consequences. Therefore, what is primitive in this
regard is as much the evasion of death (through distractions, diversions, deflection, negation) as
the possibility of murder. Second, Freud, with regard to this partition, highlights the ambivalence (and therefore the
reversibility) of the place of loved ones. On the one handand because the attachment is irreducibletheir death is, for the ego who
loves them, a disaster from which ego struggles to recover. Each disappearance takes away part of egos own meby reminding
him that he, too, could die.8 On the other hand, each disappearance frees him from a strangeness (that of the other) that could
nothing can rule this outturn hostile. However much loved or cherished, the other (the loved one, the brother) was loved only for
an uncertain duration (during which love could turn into hatred)a duration that retains the trace of innumerable murders (among
them the first murder of all) and which, as such, is the sign of our finitude.
Hence Freuds great lesson, without which war is inexplicable: if humanity has always made a distinction between those whose death
brought grief, though not without ambiguity, and those whom one could see die and cause to die without being affected (as if their
death had nothing to do with death per se; that is, ones own death and that of ones own loved ones); and if it is true that the
difference, the separation, or the partition which emerged from this distinction is infinitely variable, then ethics (and politics, as we
will see below) has no other object than the becoming or the destiny of this distinction:
The first and most important prohibition of the awakening conscience declared: Thou shalt not kill. This arose as a reaction against
the gratification of hate for the beloved dead which is concealed be - hind grief, and was gradually extended to the unloved stranger
and finally also to the enemy. . . . What no human being desires to do does not have to be forbidden, it is self-exclusive. The very
emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of
generations of murderers, whose love of murder was in their blood as it is perhaps also in ours. The ethical strivings of mankind,
with the strength and significance of which we need not quarrel, are an acquisition of the history of man; they have since become,
though unfortunately in very variable quantities, the hereditary possessions of people of today.9
It is this inheritance that war puts in question , to our great bewilderment, over and over again. It effaces
the culture that transmits this inheritance and escorts us back through the murderous paths of
primitive man. Freuds observation is unforgivingand if we re - member the wars of the last century, it is only because of
the haunting pertinence of the four propositions that war proclaims:
1. War strips off the deposits of civilization and allows the primitive
man in us to reappear. 2. It forces

stamps all strangers as enemies whose death
we ought to cause or wish. 4. It counsels us to rise above the death of those whom we love .10
us once again to be heroes who cannot believe in their own death. 3. It
We are far from having fully realized the ramifications of these four propositions. Freud declares, toward the end of his analysis (as if
better to dispel our illusions), that we have no other solution, when confronted with the ineluctable recurrence of war (evils
tenacity), than to alter our cultural and customary attitude toward death. There is no other path
available to us than the lucid and tragic recollection of this unconscious relation to death, which ,
he adds, we have until now so carefully repressed.11 We must admit to ourselves that we have become
more disarmed, discouraged, if not crushed by the unleashing of the violence and cruelty that
war signifies, to the ex - tent that we have forgotten the place occupied in this relation by the
possibility of murder. We have overestimated civilizations powers of resistance.
2NCHorrorism K (Civilization Link)

Intra-civilizational prohibitions on violence have developed an internal,
psychological desire to deflect violence onto those we deem uncivilized
Nanovic Institute for European Studies, The Culture of the Enemy: A Critique of Huntington
from Freud and Nietzsche, University of Notre Dame, The Nanovic Institute Lecture Papers,
Paper Number 12, pp. 9-26, https://nanovic.nd.edu/assets/24414/crepon_paper_12.pdf)//SJF
What can we retain from the hypothesis developed in Totem and Taboo? In what way does it allow us to
move forward on the thread of our investigation: the elucidation of the possibility of murder, the recurrence of violence, the return
of barbarism, the importance of civilization but also of religion in protecting us from it, the reverse instrumentalization in the service
of destruction of cultural and religious membership(s) in whatever shape they come? In what ways do they combine [mler] the
ontogenetic and the phylogenetic analysis of this possibility? The answer to all these questions is twofold. The
first is historical or archeological. It concerns the genealogy of our instincts and consists in
the identification of what Freud designates as our oldest instinctsinstincts which civilization, society,
and religion have as their function to proscribe satisfaction and thus actively repress, generating a
privation, itself a source of suffering. If we recall the interpretation of totemism proposed in Totem and Taboo, we can
observe that there are three of such instincts: incest (which stands at the origin of the revolt of the sons against the jealous and
exclusivist father), cannibalism (first instigated by the act of devouring the father and recalled by the totemic feast), and the
pleasure-desire of murder (first found in the elimination of the father and then in the brothers rivalry). This identification
is not self-evident. Reading this listing, our first reaction would probably be to affirm that they do not concern us at all; we civilized
beingsbelieving that nothing is more alien to us than the phobia of incest described at length in Totem and Taboo, to say nothing
of cannibalism. As for the pleasure-desire of murder, we would tend to say that it is exceptional and
circumstantial, but that it can in no way be made a universal component of (our) instinctual life ,
we that live at the dawn of the twenty-first century. As far as cannibalism is concerned, Freud recognized this difficulty. Its
prohibition appears universaland no one doubts that it belongs to a foregone pastexcept precisely for the analyst who wonders
how there remains in human life traces of its ancestral psychic life. But what about the other instincts? Wars, calls to murder
and for vengeance, the thirst for blood, the pleasure we draw (unless we participate directly in these acts) in
their dramatic mise-en-scne (movies, video games, war games), or their successful commercial
exploitation: everything reminds us in the most frightening way of the place of these instincts in
our lives. What will we say of incest, what will we say of murder? The proof that their drive is still part of our
psychic lifethat we have never done away with thempresupposes shifting from the
phylogenetic domain to the ontogenetic one. It implies that we measure (which is, essentially, the work of
the analyst) how these instincts are reborn with each childindeed, how everything is played out again in
everyones childhoodbecause the satisfaction of these instincts must each time be forbidden by a
complex mechanism [dispositif ] (which remains to be analyzed), and because this prohibition constitutes a
cause of suffering.
Distinguishing between those instincts whose satisfaction is refused only to certain individuals (on the basis of this or that criteria of
belonging) and those marked by a universal prohibition (incest, cannibalism, murder), Freud adds the following concerning the
latter, the most ancient prohibition: . . . with the prohibitions that established them, civilization who knows how many
thousands of years ago? began
to detach man from his primordial animal condition. We have found

to our surprise that these privations are still operative and still form the kernel of hostility to
civilization. The instinctual wishes that suffer under them are born afresh with every child; there is
a class of people, the neurotics, who already react to these frustrations with asocial behaviour .
(Freud, The Future Of An Illusion, 13)
We will return shortly to the crucial question of the irreducible hostility suggested by this text a
trans-generational and
trans-cultural hostility towards civilization common to all cultures. This hostility becomes with Freud an
incontrovertible dimension of humanitys mental life as soon as it civilizes itself, and appears as the
permanent result of the constant pressures of civilization(s) on the development of its instincts. But first we must return to the
second teaching Freud encourages us to retain from Totem and Taboo: it concerns the paternal aspect granted to gods and
goddesses, the infantile relationship between man and the deities that he gives himself. Freuds analysis must be favored because it
allows us to understand, in light of totemism, how religion can arise at the junction of two imperativeswhy and how it corresponds
to a dual necessity. This twofold cause corresponds to the two types of hostile forces (pressure or
violence) afflicting human life. The first, to which we will return, is the set of constraints imposed on it
by civilizationand we will see here the ambivalent (Derrida would say Pharmaklogical) role played by religion. The
second is the overwhelming power of natureits capacity for nuisance and destruction, the
resistances it continues to oppose to its domestication. Freud is probably simply re-appropriating a very
old topos of the critique of religions, seeing in this exposure to the forces of nature one of the grounds (but it is precisely not the only
one) for their origin. Many have highlighted the way that the human response to this hostility
consisted, in a first time, in humanizing the forces of nature, and in a second time, in deifying them .
But the originality of Freuds approach lies elsewhere, and radicalizes this critique. It consists in understanding this deification itself
as a form of infantilizationit presupposed, in other words, that the protection we hope to receive from the gods, the respect we
have for them (not without ambiguity), and, in a general manner, most aspects of religious life are of the same nature and follow the
same motivations as the ambivalent feelings that the sons feel for their father in the form revealed to us by the Oedipal complex.
Here, Freuds tour de force is therefore multiple. It first consists in the conjunction, if not the superimposition, of two orders of
motivation, the first deeper and less evident (drawing from the resources of phylogenesis and ontogenesis), the second more
manifest: first, the paternal complex as portrayed in Totem and Taboo, and second, human frailty in face of the perennially
mysterious and uncontrollable forces of nature (and that in spite of all the progress of sciences and techniques).
Freuds achievement also consists in avoiding assigning to the instituted religions (i.e., to monotheistic religions: Christianity,
Judaism, and Islam) a motivation of a different nature than that of totemism and polytheism. All things considered, this
achievement lies in the connections allowing one to move from totemism to monotheisma connection, a path, a bridge whose
interpretive key is given by infantile neurosis:
The connections are not hard to find. They consist in the relation of the childs helplessness to the helplessness of the adult which
continues it. So that, as was to be expected, the motives for the formation of religion which psycho-analysis revealed now turn out to
be the same as the infantile contribution to the manifest motive. (23)
Accordingly, Freuds analysis is not as simple as it may appear. On the one hand it recognizes, in relatively conventional
terms, the
frailty of man in the universe, the fact that he is always overcome by forces greater than
him. Disarmed by the blows of fortune (the unpredictability of ones destiny as exemplified by the
everpossible eruption of death), he calls for protection, a saving force. He must find not only a reason but also an
authority to which he can address himself and turn to for comfort. And so he comes to humanize,
then divinize, nature. This is what Freud calls the manifest motivation of religions. But, on the other hand,
his analysis does not explain the peculiar nature of the relations that man develops with the god(s) he gives himself: the fear and love
on his side, the benevolence, unyielding character or wrath of the deity (or deities) on the other. It also does not explain why the
gods that man gives himself are created in the image of the father.
2NCHorrorism K (War Link)

The Affs interrogation of the violence they claim to prevent ultimately confronts
the inherent reversibility of itthat drives a desire to push the boundary and see
how far we can go before civilization sweeps us up and saves us. However, it wont
be there when we need it the most and leaves us in a cycle of endless violence
War, religions, civilization(s). Whoever lingers in thinking about the relation between these terms falls prey at once to confused
images imbued with the most diffuse fears of our time. Concerning religions, we apprehend the ever possible fanatical, extremist,
or fundamentalist excesses and outbursts, of which we know the homicidal nature, knowing that they can lead to murder and that
the wars claiming legitimacy from these beliefs, the wars of religion (in which many see wars of civilization), refuse themselves no
violence and no destruction. Concerning civilization, we believe it should integrate all the mechanisms that
protect us from that which we conceive in an equally confused manner as barbarism: the
massacre of civilian populations, mass murder , the rape of women, and all injuries we would like to
believe belong to another age, a bygone era. But we are reminded of the very opposite at the occasion
of each new war and on each continent: civilization (s) protect(s) us from nothing. Whether in the
singular or the plural declension, the result is the same. While we reckon it as a cultural capital common to all
humanity, its sharing does not preclude the possibility that neighbors and friends , as well as the
brothers of yesterday, may become the targets of tomorrow , and that those with whom we used to live in
peace become persecuted, chased, deported, imprisoned, tortured, or assassinated. But if, on the other hand, it is the
diversity of social memberships upon which we reflectwhether one defines them as civilizational areas or otherwise (on whatever
scope) and irrespective of the role that religion(s) play(s) therein nothing is more evident than the easiness and
efficacy with which they can be instrumentalized by one authority and turned against anotheras if nothing
that each of these memberships imagined to hold distinctly was assured not to be turned and used against the others.
Whatever humanity is taught, prescribed, or led to believe by all the wisdom and philosophies of the world, it
seems
never to be done with (never able to be done with) the possibility of murder. And yet its prohibition exists
and is not devoid of history. Nothing could be always as before time immemorial. For one to be able to fear or
identify a return or an eruption of violence, the latter must clearly have been damned up,
controlled, and repressed by civilization(s).
Its (or their) future(s) must have something to do with the destiny of this repressionin other words, there must exist
something like a psychic history of the possibility of murder, as of all violence. What is the nature of such a
history, how are we to understand it, and who is its subject? Humanity? Or each and every individual singularly?
It is here, at the point where all these questions converge, where the ontogenesis (the development of the
individual) and the phylogenesis (the development of the species) do
not allow themselves to be dissociated,

allows us to think about the ways in which the prohibition of
murder, cannibalism, and incest are legacies [acquis] from civilization that each child reclaimsand
civilization measures the consequences of this reclaiming, its difficulties, the suffering
associated with it, and the malaise it causes at the same time that it interrogates its possible
reversibility. Texts like Totem and Taboo (1918), The Future of an Illusion (1927), and Civilization and its Discontents (1930), as
that the reading of Freud is essential. It
well as the two essays on war, Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1915) and the long and beautiful letter to Einstein of 1932,
all articulate the relationship between ontogenesis and phylogenesis. Taking murder not only as our question but also as the
discussion thread we will follow to understand the relations between war, civilization(s) and
religion (s)that is to say, the way civilization(s) with or without religion(s) can turn against
itself (or themselves) and destroy what they should by its (their) very essence protectamounts
to questioning how the destiny of its possibility conjoins [mle] the history of the individual and that of the
species, how the auto-destruction of civilization that war always signifies is dependent on one and
the other.
But to be imaginable, such
a psychic history requires two conditions, to which Freud attended. The first is that,
at the level of ontogenesis as phylogenesis, nothing is lost or erased, that nothing or almost nothing
disappears, that all, in one way or another, is conservedin other words, that the human species, as well as individuals,
retains a trace of the psyche. We keep a memory; there persists in us a trace of what has
happened. In us, that is to say, in humanity as well as in the individual. The second condition is manifest therein.
It mandates that among these conserved traces there be something indicative of the possibility, the
desire, or the accomplishment of murder. At the level of phylogenesis, it amounts to supposing that in the
psychic history of humanity there exists a foundational event that can be thought of as the
putting to death of the other. At the level of ontogenesis, it (at least) implies that a desire to murder is
part of the individual psychic development. Those of you who have read even some Freud will recognize that what
we encounter here are two fundamental elements of the Freudian doctrine (which have given rise to infinite development and
critical discussions): the primitive murder of the father that Freud recounts in Totem and Taboo (1918) and the Oedipal complex
that he exposes, for instance, in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905).
2NCHorrorism K (IR Link)

International relations is always grounded in memory of warthat constantly
transforms the foreigner into the enemythe libidinal economy necessitates
circulation of hostilities
Thought of Death and the Memory of War, War and the Death Drive, Ch. 5, The Imaginary of
Death, University of Minnesota Press, 2013, pp. 1-10, book)//SJF
However we judge the past or the future, our judgment will be haunted, marked by the seal of war
in the twentieth century. The memory of war intervenes inescapably in the relations among states , whether
bringing them together or driving them apart. It gives rise, year after year, at predetermined dates and in
predetermined places, to appeals for forgiveness, symbolic gestures of reconciliation, just as, here and there, it is used
to recall unpaid debts and persistent misapprehensions, as well as absolutions that wait enduringly upon unuttered pleas for
forgiveness. Our memory on occasion abides in some or other survival of prejudice, in the characterizations and caricatures of
peoples that are propagated in wartime. The memory of war, in the form of commemorations, punctuates
our political calendar with its most sacred datesNovember 11, June 6 and 18, and May 8 in France.
On such dates the memory of war is essentially the memory of those who died in war, the recollection
of lives sacrificed, etched in the stone of war memorials and in the bronze of commemorative plaques which
governments, in the wake of conflicts, have always erected as reminders, as factors, or instruments of cohesion, and sometimes of
union sacre and mobilization. Finally, the memory of war is in - flicted on us, over and over again, as an
element of political discourse and action. Memory, by this very fact, informs the judgments we make
of one another. Because memory can be insulted, wounded, outraged; because it lends itself to falsification, to denials and dene
- ga tions; because it is rendered fragile as much by the possibility of being forgotten as by that of being instrumentalized,
memory be - comes the object of ethical as well as political responsibility. The historian cannot adequately
address this responsibility. One can neither do just anything with nor do nothing with memory; one can neither make just anything
from nor nothing from memory. So why do we remember wars? Why does their remembrance occupy so much space in the collective
imaginary? Why are we dealing with something very different from historical knowledge, however necessary this might be? Because
memory as responsibility is about our past, present, and future attitude toward death.
Freud would suggest as much in a 1915 text, Zeitgemsses ber Krieg und Tod, or Reflections on War and Death, written when
World War I had been raging for more than a year already, though (nearly all) the worst was still to come.1 Future decades would
not controvert his reflections. As he endeavored to analyze why the evil was experienced with excessive force in warand we know
that, with the passage of time, that excess would not abate Freud pointed to the convergence of two
phenomena: the disillusionment that war induced, and the change in our attitude toward death
that war engendered. The one and the other shall serve as my point of departure.
What caused disillusionment? Like many who followed him, Freud explains that disillusionment was provoked by the
incapacity of the belligerents common civilizationthat great humanistic civilization that had given to the
nations of Europe their titles of nobilityto efface or contain the transformation of the foreigner into the
enemy. That incapacity was aggravated by the inability to slow the pace at which, from that point forward,
another civilizationone characterized by hostility, hatred, and repulsionasserted itself and prevailed
against the moral and political restrictions that were the legacy of humanism:
It [war] places itself above all the restrictions pledged in times of peace , the so-called rights of nations, it
does not acknowledge the prerogatives of the wounded and of the physicians, the distinction between
peaceful and fighting members of the population, or the claims of private property. It hurls down in blind
rage whatever bars its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace after it is over. It tears asunder all community bonds
among the struggling peoples and threatens to leave a bitterness which will make impossible any re-establishment of these ties for a
long time to come.2
Exposed to the disastrous impact of filtered news [information] and monitored communications
(instruments of this other civilization), encouraged
to approve if not to acclaim the violation of moral principles

whose transgression they could not have imagined they would one day accept , nothing in their history,
their traditions, art, literature, law, or medicine stopped those whom Freud calls the participants in humanitys highest civilization
from surrendering to cruelty however one might define it. Cruelty, as we shall see below, is not unrelated to
the complex question of change in the relation to death.
The author of The Interpretation of Dreams was assuredly not the only one to witness disillusionment on such an unprecedented
scale.
As we know, the echo of that disillusionment reverberated more forcefully as the century progressed
and as the mass of victims swelled to millions upon millions . Our present time, still today, is fashioned from
these reverberations, however diverse the traces (artistic, literary, historical, and even statistical) that evince their resonance. The
echo was perceptible, as early as the 1930s, in the shadow cast by, among other things, the persecutions whose victims were the
Jewish communities, first, of Germany, then, of the greater part of Europe.
So many witnesses, so many images of suffering and destruction congregate around this
persecution that they make an illusion of any civilizationthat is, of any moral and political systemthat
will not invoke them or answer for them.
2NCHorrorism K (Terror Link)

The idea of the terrorist is a diversion to legitimize the violence of the nationstatethat deepens the warriors psyche that makes everyone a target of statecentered legitimate violence
In the epoch of the war on terror, when we are being forced to acknowledge that the distinction
between war and terrorism is a crucial problem and likewise to recognize the novelty of the
context, both scholars of political and military aff airs and the media who simplify their opinions still in fact tend to
refer to the classic model of interstate war. Within a theoretical framework created to justify war
and even the highly anomalous concepts of preventive war and humanitarian warterrorism is, in
substance, accused of diff ering from it as regards both subjects and methods, of being a criminal form of violence, given that
both its actors and its acts are incompatible with the conventional system of destruction. Even if
this criterion which we might call the criterion of the warrior is oft en fl anked by a principle that, in
contrast, takes the status of the victims into account, distinguishing civilian and military ones, the
general framework doesnt shift away from the classic model. To put it diff erently, the argumentation never goes so far
as to embrace exclusively, or at any rate radically, the criterion of the defenseless. Instead it tends to repeat, in line with the
tradition, that the regular combatant directs his fi re against other combatants or the enemys strategic sites, hitting civilians only by
mistake. Th e terrorist not only does not follow this rule, he most oft en does aim to kill civilians. Th is renders him doubly criminal
and makes his violence distinct from that of regular troops who have a legitimate government and a state behind them. But when
the theory is applied on the plane of events, ambiguities soon emerge.

An example is a thesis to which Charles Townshend alludes in a recent study of terrorism, the brevity of which is accompanied by a
rare intellectual honesty. 21 Published in 2002, the book is informed by the specifi c questions raised by the events of September 11
and aft er, among which the distinction between war and terrorism appears decisive. Th e issue of defi nition, of distinguishing
terrorism from criminal violence or military action, 22 is the main theme of the current debate, Townshend asserts. Adducing the
customary authority of Clausewitz and well aware that he is dealing with a problem rather than a solution, he notes that war is
battle, the collision of two living forces, 23 whereas terrorism avoids frontal battle, attacking its targets in a way that inhibits (or
better prohibits) self-defence. In synthesis: the essence of terrorism is the use of violence by the armed
against the unarmed, given that, albeit not necessarily innocent in an objective sense, targets . . . must be in
practical terms defenseless (soft ). 24 Th e criteria of the warrior and that of the defenseless are
thus mingled. On the one hand, emphasis is placed on the regularity of war on the basis of the usual
principle that defi nes it as a clash, fair and equal, so to speak, between armies, a duel on a large scale in
which the violence is reciprocal. On the other hand, the criterion that diff erentiates it from terrorism is identifi ed in
victims who are defenseless and so are struck by unilateral violence. It suffi ces, though, to cite
Hiroshima and Nagasaki recently listed by Michael Walzer among cases of war terrorism 25 as well as
the carpet bombing of cities during the Second World War and subsequent wars, to reveal how weak, above all
from the viewpoint of the populations attacked (and certainly limited in self-defense), the overall framework of the argumentation is.
On top of that, and with due acknowledgement of the problems of translation, the so-called Islamic terrorists declare themselves
soldiers in a just or holy war, and their lexicon, although drenched in religious language that loads it with a particular meaning, is
rich in terms that evoke the ardor of battle. To cite Schmitt once again , even the irregular combatant declares the
enemy a criminal and all concepts of law, statute, and honor an ideological fraud . 26 From the
point of view of the warrior, the distinction between war and terrorism does indeed lead to
ambiguous results. When the warriors point of view is mixed with that of the defenseless , on the
basis of the conviction that they are congruent, the ambiguity immediately becomes contradiction.
Worthy of note, in this sense, is the explanation furnished by the Court of Assizes of Milan for the sentence it delivered on 9 May
2005, concerning international terrorism. Stating that judges cannot base themselves on a vague and generic sociological notion
of terrorism that claims to derive from an ungraspable common sense and referring to the case of Iraq, the president of the court
specifi es that only aft er the installation of the government of Allawi, the interim prime minister, were the attacks on soldiers of the
coalition forces defi nable as terrorist acts. 27 Before that date, they were regular acts of war against an occupying enemy (in other
words, against what Schmitt calls a real enemy; the concord between him and the Milanese judges in qualifying the terrorists as
insurgents is signifi cant). Th e courts sentence in fact excludes any violent action against military forces in a situation of war,
independently of its subjects and the mode in which it is carried out, from being called terrorism. As the sentence emphasizes,
though, this only holds good in cases in which soldiers are the target. Even in war settings, violent conduct perpetrated against
civilians or persons who are not taking part in the hostilities that are going on loses its legitimacy and falls squarely into the
category of terrorism. Th e text specifi es that such violent conduct is understood to include (signifi cantly, putting them in
parentheses): bombings in schools, car bombs, the capture and killing of hostages. A new series of ambiguities thus
arrives once more to upset the logical framework of the argumentation. On one hand, a typical
unconventional weapon like a car bomb (and, by obvious extension, suicide bombing) ends up appearing to be regular as long as its
victims are occupying soldiers and not civilians. In this case, we would supposedly have not terrorists but insurgents. On the other
hand, the equation between terrorism and civilian victims ends by consigning the distinction
between war and terrorism to the rhetorical operation that renames civilian victims as collateral
damage. As Collins and Glover note, the need for such language derives from the simple fact that the
violence itself is abhorrent, and its aim is to avert our mental gaze from the physical eff ects of
violence. 28 Given the logic set out here, on what basis does a missile fi red by the occupying army at a crowded restaurant in a
densely populated quarter of Baghdad not amount to terrorism? Like the vague and generic sociological notion of terrorism that
the president of the Milanese court rightly rejected, the theory that assumes the regularity of war to distinguish it from terrorism
also leads to equivocal and contradictory results. Th e defenseless person is correctly designated as the
illegitimate victim par excellence, but there remains a signifi cant reluctance to take him or her
as the exclusive criterion for separating illegitimate from legitimate violence. For that matter, it is not
the job of judges to resolve problems of this type, strengthening the state against terrorism. Th e task of questioning the
conceptual apparatus of modernity about war and violence falls rather to the work of theory,
which must make the eff ort, at last, to break free of the criterion of the warrior , all the more so when
the intermediate link in the modern international order represented by the nationstate has
ruptured.
What is certain is that the problem of distinguishing war from terrorism even understood in terms of the procedures for naming
that characterize the current debate would gain much clarity if the criterion of the defenseless were not contaminated with that of
the warrior. One might begin by emphasizing that, although war also kills the defenseless in fact it now kills them in
very high proportions modern
terrorism tends to slaughter them exclusively. It makes a precise

strategic choice, as is oft en noted, in which the killing of some aims to produce a terrorizing eff ect on everyone. It is precisely
this eff ect that has earned terrorism its very name. It is worth pointing out that, in the case of modern violence summed up under
the rubric of Islamist terrorism, we have to force the perspective somewhat to see this eff ect as part of
the physics of terror. Only those who fi nd themselves in physical proximity to the bombing tremble and fl ee. For the others,
the everyone at whom the terrorizing eff ect is strategically aimed, trembling and fl ight are replaced by imagining themselves among
the actual victims and knowing that it could happen to them. Phantasmic and ungraspable, distant and yet near the televised
images on which the authors of terrorist attacks are counting see to that terror is there, and it is, classically, fear of
violent death. In its instinctual movement, the physics of terror is blocked, however, dispersing
into the unforeseeable contingency of future time and everywhere. Terror today is fi rst of all the
terror of the next attack. 30
2NCHorrorism K (War Impact)

The jouissance of the warrior psyche justifies global massacre for strategic ends
Disengaged from the intensive continuity of war, the time of violence thus dilates and fi nishes by
coinciding, through unfathomable intermittence, with the banal dimensions of daily life: a sort of
homicidal version of so-called glocal. Th e object of looming destruction that menaces him
everywhere and anyhow, the defenseless person becomes the fi gure of a vulnerability the more
perfect in that it is chance that makes him into an exemplary victim. Th at this exemplarity is involuntary
forms part of the so-called strategic framework; indeed, in the era of globalization, it ends by acquiring a sinister,
universal valence. Th ough not for all, for a large proportion of the inhabitants of the globe today, every moment, with greater
or less probability according to geography, is now the possible and arbitrary hour of their chance
assassination. Obviously, random death has to multiply and renew itself, keep its potential victims on
edge and massacre a few, in order for its eff ects not to be canceled by adaptation to the perpetual
menace of terror, of which human beings have shown they are capable. But is this really terror?
It may be defi ned more prudently, in Schmittian terms, as a form of violence, stripped
of visible markers
and characterized by a worldwide aggressiveness that identifi es the infi del as the absolute enemy
and merges him with the defenseless. Notwithstanding Schmitt and others, the viewpoint of the defenseless
must not only be adopted here, it must be adopted exclusively; that is what really matters. If seen on the basis of
the warrior criterion, the same scene, while remaining atrocious, ends by losing its peculiarity and becoming
ambiguous once more. On one hand, it represents a self-described combatant who, making war on infi dels in the name of
true Islam, identifi es the absolute enemy with a category so wide that it comprises both soldiers and civilians and is, above all,
structurally ill suited to supplying any reason to diff erentiate between them. On the other hand, it represents a use of
terror that, with respect to the objective of annihilating the infi dels , unarmed or in uniform, can only
appear to be strategic and thus raise the classic question of means and ends typical of traditional
political and military doctrine.
Th e attitude of separating strategy and goals, including in terms of juridical or moral evaluation, is
well known to belong to the mentality of the warrior and the state actor that legitimates him. Th
e history of modern warfare, to restrict our focus to that, is full of irregular strategies, genuine massacres of
defenseless people, and slaughters on a large scale justifi ed in the name of higher, more just ends. Th ere
is no question here of bringing in the theme, which has become notoriously topical, of so-called just war, 31 but of registering
that the policy of attacking the civilian population in order to induce an enemy to surrender, or to
damage his morale, seems to have been widely accepted in the civilized world, and seems to be accepted still, on the
basis of a moral conviction that the deliberate killing of non-combatants women, children, and old
people is permissible if enough can be gained by it. 32 Nor would it be worthwhile, in this setting, to mention
once more the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were it not that their tragic example attests how problematic it is, from the
warrior point of view, to apply the name terrorism to a strategy in the same context in which one distinguishes terrorism from war
in order to criminalize it. If the name is to be maintained, then it falls to whomever fi nds themselves in the involuntary position of
defenseless victim to authorize that. From their point of view, the strategy that strikes them is, as violence unilaterally
undergone, the
entire substance. Neither means nor end, it consists in the unappealable actuality of mere
destruction.
It befalls the defenseless person today to get killed because she happens to pass through certain crowded places, ones chosen by her
killers not so much because of the high number of victims to be obtained and the consequent media impact, as because anyone
could fi nd herself there at that time. It is the defenseless person without qualities , interchangeable and random,
who takes the center of the contemporary stage on which the specialists in violence against the
defenseless perform. In this sense, to emphasize that terrorism is the culminating moment of that
lack of distinction between civilians and military personnel that has progressively characterized
the twentieth century 33 or that the division between civilian and military space is erased by it is still
too little. 34 Compared to the violence against civilians shamefully perpetrated by all modern wars for cynical instrumental
reasons or even as crude reprisal, the form that is spreading today accomplishes a quantum leap. And not just because todays
specialists deliberately aim at the slaughter of innocents but because in this massacre there are not even innocents
anymore, given that, whoever they are, each one is as good as the next in the abstract role of example.
Although called infi del or miscreant, the absolute enemy loses all quality and assumes the role of anyone
at all, with respect to whom the eventual faith of every singular victim who sometimes, and certainly in modern Iraq, believes in
the same god as his murderers is just an accident. Indeed, it is the very singularity of the victims that is accidental, in observance
of the well-known principle of the superfl uity of men that is now being put into practice by unforeseeable and ubiquitous violence,
measured against which any concept of war evaporates. As Arjun Appadurai notes, we are dealing with a paradoxical quotidian war,
war as an everyday possibility, waged precisely to destabilize the idea that there is an everyday for anyone outside the space and
time of war. 35 An everyday occurrence, no longer circumscribed in space and time all the more global in
that they are potential and undetermined it becomes, in other words, an organized violence that
nullifi es the familiar aspects of its traditional forms. Th at it resorts to the use of terror is past doubt. But this is
a terror that, as Arendt would say, has lost its goals and thus cannot be defi ned as strategic. It could be called global, rather
than total, terror, but the phenomena in which it materializes tend rather toward the realm of
horrorism.
Th e reference to Arendt but it could have been to Levi, Rousset, or Margarete Buber-Neumann is not casual here. As a scene
of extreme horrorism, governed by a system that does not merely strike the defenseless being
but actually manufactures his perverted fi gure, the Nazi Lager remains a unicum .
Contemporary horrorism, in the concrete form of so-called global terrorism, especially Al-Qaeda and jihadism, has diff
erent traits. Th e fi rst is a technique of annihilation that focuses on the instant rather than on
the process. Th e defenseless being is not fabricated with methodical persistence but only killed or
wounded or mutilated. But not before the circumstance that makes her helpless is dilated into
the indeterminacy of a space and a time corresponding to the everyday dimension of the
everywhere. Such that, rather than of circumstance we ought properly to speak of an ongoing
condition, or, if you like, of a mode of being, that adheres to a great many inhabitants of the planet,
albeit with peaks of intensity in hot zones, that makes vulnerability coincide with
defenselessness. Exposed unilaterally to vulnus , the defenseless are the targets of a violent death that
surpasses the event, atrocious in itself, of death, because it has degraded each of them beforehand
from singular being to random being.
Th e English language designates the victims of violent death as casualties. It is a curious expression, inasmuch as casual literally
means by chance or at random, so a casualty would literally be a randomness. Th e term is applied in various contexts:
hurricanes, fl oods, buildings that collapse, wars, bombings, and others. As its usage in connection with natural disasters attests, it
tends to suggest that we are not dealing with a violence for the purpose of killling a precise individual but with a violence without
specifi c objectives, whose victims turn out to be, precisely, casual. In a hurricane, some die and some survive, randomly, by good or
bad luck, not on account of their singular identities, much less on account of their responsibilities or guilt. Soldiers who are killed in
war are also victims of chance, but they have already taken that into account, so to speak. For the civilian victims of war,
this prior reckoning is less obvious, and the chance occurrence is thus more tragic . But it is
todays horrorism above all that makes the term casualties correspond to the reality of helpless
victims, assuming a particularly pregnant and etymologically exact sense . More than their death,
casualness is what really gives their status as victims substance . Struck just because they are
casual, their only value lies in this randomness, which makes them interchangeable and
exemplary.
In this sense, albeit dripping with horror (indeed being its most apt theater), war can still count on a certain
distinction from pure horrorism. Its casual victims, all the helpless ones it massacres, are diffi cult to fi t
into an explicit framework in which their casualty rises to exemplary status. Th e ontological off
ense to singularity is there, and it is conspicuous. But it is not yet undergirded by the theoretical coherence
that inspires todays masters of horror. 36 At the level of the butchery, the distinction is much less easy, however,
since the balance tips strongly toward war and its propensity to technologize massacre. Precisely because of the technological stamp
from intelligent bombs to weapons of mass destruction there is, however, a certain crucial diff erence. More than to
advanced technology, the masters of horror tend to entrust the task of dismembering bodies
directly to bodies. As the scene of suicide bombing attests, the butchery is substantially an operation of bodies that blow
themselves up so as to undo other bodies. Peculiar on account of its stamp of repugnance, this signals a diff erence not
only between the modes of contemporary horrorism and those of war but also between
horrorism and terrorism as generally understood. Th e various historical phenomena grouped under the name
terrorism, although they specialize in the massacre of the defenseless, actually do not present any scenario in which the peculiar
weapon is the body of a suicide. Th e latter remains a specialty of the horrorism of our own times. Th e fact that the history
of terrorism, albeit complex and articulated, can acknowledge this specialty as its own ultimate and most
recent chapter creates not a little perplexity. Very new, at any rate, is this perverse mix of sacrifi cial fi
deism and calculating-instrumental rationality, which makes the bodies of the actors an
organic component of the technological device of destruction.
AT: Not Psychological2NC

Even if the state provides the social conditioning, the foundational anxiety of the
Death Drive comes from civilizational monopolization of the super-ego
This whole series of interrogations would not be necessary if it did not also result in the following question:
who speaks, who pretends to be able to speak in the name of (or of one given) civilization? Who has interest in
forcing its coherence, constructing and instrumentalizing its fiction to interpret everything in terms of
civilizational membership, as if the latter would suffice to cover the whole spectrum of experience and the historical
causality; who needs to deny, ignore, or suppress all living traces of heterogeneity, intervals, differences, or deviancies? Posing the
question in these terms does not signify that one needs to give in, in any way whatsoever, to some conspiracy theory. It only
invites us to return, this time in a more attentive way, to the connection between civilizational constraints
in general and an identification with (or even regressive retreat toward) the imperatives, obligations, mores,
and customs of a civilization supposedly identical with itself. The question, it is now clear, is that of the
super-ego, of its organization and its control. Any reader paying some attention to the work of Freud will have
without a doubt noticed the following. It is at the moment when he interests himself explicitly in the problem of
civilization that he dedicates his most significant theoretical development to what he recognizes as an
insurmountable feature of the human psyche, that is, the existence of a considerable proportion of
aggressive tendencies (contrary to any angelic vision of human nature)the silent or manifest
enduring presence of a death drive, present at the core of the civilizational process as a hostile
force with which it must contend [avec laquelle il doit composer]. This is equivalent to affirming that the very idea
of civilization (in the singular) is only meaningful through the articulation of the life drive (eros or libido) and
the death drive.
I drew the conclusion that, besides the instinct to preserve living substance and to join it into ever larger units, there must exist
another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and to bring them back to their primaeval, inorganic state. That is to say, as
well as Eros there was an instinct of death. The phenomena of life could be explained from the concurrent or mutually opposing
action of these two instincts. (Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, 77-78)
Yet, when many postulate the hypothesis of a clash of civilizations and when others appeal to the
necessity of a dialogue, it is with a common awareness that this tendency to aggressive behavior
(whose repression is demanded by all civilization) remains availablethat nowhere is the work of civilization
sufficiently accomplished to protect us definitively from a return to its domination , as all new wars, the
endless succession of civilians massacres, mass murders, and genocides attest.
The narcissism of differences (small or great) designates the site where this return is always likely to
occur. The question therefore is to know if its homicidal exacerbation and the eruption of violence are
historical necessities or if they proceed from its political instrumentalization . And if the second
hypothesis must prevail, we must wonder how such a recuperation of its mortifying energy is possible in spite of its ever regressive
characterhow the tendency to aggression which constitutes the most formidable obstacle to civilization (in the singular) is placed
in the (regressive) service of one of these civilizations in particular.
This already presupposes that we understand how civilization, in ordinary times, protects itself from the
death drive. It can only do so, Freud tells us, by turning a part of the ego (the super-ego) against the
remaining partby displacing the aggression at the cost of an internal tension constituting no
more nor less than the origin of guilt. Here is not the place to reconstitute all the analysis deployed in Civilization and
its Discontents to account for this origin. We can still retain from it two essential points. The first is that, if it is true that
phylogenesis and ontogenesis converge [saccordent]meaning that the repressions of instincts
[pulsions] imposed by civilization reproduce these prohibitions which paternal authority incarnates
and if it is true that, consequently, the guilt felt by the sons towards their father always proceeds from the fear of a loss of love
[perte damour], then it is an analogous form of fear (infantile) that is imposed by the internalization of
authority through the constitution of a super-ego. What we call the work of civilization inherits its most singular
traits from the ambivalent and complex relationship the child has with his parents and vice versa (eros and thanatos, love and
hostility, protection and destruction). The second point is that the internalization of the super-ego implies that
it
appropriates integrally the aggressive force of the ego, and that, if guilt is present, it derives
essentially from the resistance to this appropriation. The more the work of civilization expands, the
more it enjoins men to unite, and the less therefore it leaves space for the death drive resisting it and the
more this guilt growsto the point, Freud explains, of becoming intolerable.
The forces overtaking the super-ego play precisely on the intolerable quality of this guilt. One does
not pass from civilization in general to particular civilizations other than through the organization of this monopolizing
appropriation [accaparement], which consists in alleviating the burden of guilt by inventing or allowing a
target
for aggressivenessan interior or exterior enemy, thereby favoring or authorizing what we refer to
as a culture of enmity [culture de lennemi]. Immediately, two questions capture our attention. Is this culture
inescapable? Does this mean that Freudian theory confirms the thesis of a clash of civilizations? Nothing is less clear. For the
super-ego never identifies exclusively with a civilizational membership [appartenance civilisationnelle]. Moreover, it is not
the case that the other civilization or the civilization of the others constitutes the only target or even the most
favored target that a so-called civilizational organization of the super-ego could accept. In other words,
nothing tells us that the death drive necessarily derives from this mode of belonging [ce type
dappartenance].
At work is what Camus called a
murdering consent [consentement meurtrier]. From the perspective of civilization, in

general, the super-ego prohibits murder. And yet, it happensand it is infinitely more difficult to think about
than any law of history. It happens, everywhere and all the time, on all continents and during all eras , that
when some authority with which one identifies (an authority at once loved and feared) designates an
enemy for whom murder is authorized and acceptable. What is important to understand therefore
is not the principle of general causality, but the multiplicity and diversity of the events producing this kind
of consent. These factors can never be reduced to a civilizational belonging [appartenance
civilisationnelle]. It is never the civilization which authorizes murder, even if the authority in question
invokes its name. And it is not always in the name of their belonging to such an identity that the potential victims are
designated. They proceed from no natural or essential division [dcoupage] of humanity, but always from
a culture deriving its agents, supports, and means of action from a particular monopolization of the
super-ego.
***Eco-Psychoanalysis K***
Cut by Evan Runburg
Explanation of defense mechanisms

Dodds, 11 [Joseph Dodds, lecturer in psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of New
York in Prague and at Charles Universitys CIEE Study Center, Psychoanalysis and Ecology at
the Edge of Chaos: Complexity Theory, Deleuze|Guattari and Psychoanalysis for a Climate in
Crisis, Eco-anxiety and defence, 53-55, Routlege, ISBN: 978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
Suppression is a conscious attempt to put the anxiety-provoking thought out of ones mind
and is seen in the way we skip over disturbing articles in the news, or avoid contemplating the
effects of driving. The conscious nature of suppression renders it less problematic but we might
find that once we confront our use of suppression, it can open a path to dealing with deeper and
more unconscious defensive processes, such as repression. Winter and Koger (2004: 37) give an
example of the latter from their own lives, when Winter realised she had unconsciously
repressed awareness of the nuclear waste problem just a few miles from her home, although the
information had been in the news for decades, adding that governments and other aspects of
the social system may support repression.
Reaction formation is a particularly bizarre but unfortunately common defence. In classic
reaction formation the person denies the impulse while giving intense expression to its opposite.
There is a certain theme in climate sceptic discourse involving a kind of perverse gloating over
the amount of waste they produce, as though people become more wasteful to convince
themselves that they dont believe and/or they dont care. Others (e.g. Rust 2008) have
suggested that compulsive consumption might increase as a means of blotting out the ecological
effects of compulsive consumption, involving another dangerous positive feedback loop. We may
expect that reaction formation might surface in environmentalists too, such as in harshly
condemnatory greener-than-thou attitudes.
Environmentalists and anti-environmentalists might also be seen to live in a mutual set of
projections and reprojections, embodying a split between good and bad (good
environmentalists versus evil developers, good businessmen helping to drive economic growth
in difficult times versus Luddite eco-terrorists, etc.). We should also consider how sea, land, air,
water, animals, trees, earth and Nature (whether or not a mother) can all act as containers for
our projections, reaching at times mythical proportions. Similarly industry, technology,
civilization, machines, etc. can also arouse and elicit different projections, and all structure our
relation to the environment in complex ways.
Zizek (2007) has called, following Morton (2007), for an ecology without nature, which we can
see as in part a call to take back the projections we have made onto a Romantic Nature.
Similarly, Jordan (2009) warns against the dangerous splits embodied in our attachments to
nature, warning against idealization as well as denigration. The non-active majority may also
project their own environmental concern (and guilt) onto activists who act so they dont have
to, while the non-acting public is uncaring and selfish so the activist doesnt have to be.
Psychoanalytic social theory suggests projective processes are crucial for structuring social
systems, and social responses to climate change are no exception.
Finally, in Freuds work sublimation was seen as the most mature defence, and occurs when
we channel unconscious anxiety and drives into socially acceptable projects which contribute to
society (and perhaps we might extend these contributions to the other-than-human world). In
sublimation we dont deny or repress our feelings or act them out directly, but instead channel
them into creative activities such as art and science, and perhaps also environmental concern
and activities. Both sublimation and reaction formation may lead to pro-environmental
behaviour but the latter, as Winter and Koger (2004) point out, will be accompanied by a certain
level of hostility, anxiety, overly judgmental attitudes, and unintentional behaviours which go
against the conscious ideal, creating the danger of a backlash. Sublimation is closer than
reaction formation to accepting the reality principle, but sticking to purely Freudian theories
means that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. Kleins reformulation of
sublimation which led her to the concept of reparation in the depressive position (Hinshelwood
1991) can take us further, as we shall see below.
1NCTechno-Control K
Technological fixes to environmental problems are efforts to cope with anxiety
that can never be totally successful, but only provide the fantasy of control where it
can never fully exist
Crisis, The phantasy of ecology: Psychoanalysis of climate change, 30-33, Routlege, ISBN:
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan] ***edited for gendered language
The important psychological point is that people are ready for such events, indeed eager for it
the psychosocial equivalent of a sandpile in a state of self-organized criticality (Palombo 1999;
Bak 1994), when a single grain can cause a major avalanche cascading through the whole
system. Understanding such subtle shifts, and the often unconscious motivations behind them,
is where psychoanalysis perhaps more than any other discipline has a lot to offer. As Lertzman
(2008) writes:
What if the core issue is more about how humans respond to anxiety ? . . . [E]nvironmental
problems . . . conjure up anxieties that . . . we are done for, and nothing can really be done . . . To
help me understand more, I turn to Freud . . . because I have found few others who speak as
eloquently, and sensitively about what humans do when faced with anxiety or anxiety-provoking
news.
Freud, civilization, nature and the dialectic of the Enlightenment
Is Freud really relevant to understanding our current crisis? While he was very much engaged in
relating psychology to social issues, from war to racism, group psychology and the discontents of
civilization (Freud 1913a, 1915, 1921, 1927, 1930), he was writing during a period when the
possibility that human activities could bring the Earths ecosystems to the brink of collapse
would have been hard to contemplate. Romanticism may have complained about unweaving
rainbows and industrys dark satanic mills, but by Freuds day this could be seen as Luddite
anti-progress talk, especially for those working within the Weltangschung of science and the
Enlightenment to which Freud (1933) pinned his psychoanalytic flag. However, much of our
current bewildering situation can be understood as rooted in part in a world view that was at its
zenith during Freuds day and, as Lertzman (2008) suggests, in our responses to anxiety. In
addition, Freud did offer us some crucial reflections on our relationship with nature:
The principle task of civilization, its actual raison dtre, is to defend us against nature. We all
know that in many ways civilization does this fairly well already, and clearly as time goes on it
will do it much better. But no one is under the illusion that nature has already been vanquished;
and few dare hope that she will ever be entirely subdued to [hu]man. (Freud 1927: 51)
Here we can see an interesting ambivalence in Freuds rhetorical style, which perhaps
unwittingly captures two crucial aspects of our civilizations relationship to Nature and thus
begins to open up a psychoanalytic approach to ecology. First, he depicts a series of binary
oppositions typical for his era, and not so different in our own: human versus nature, man
versus woman and (more implicitly) order versus chaos. Here we find the classic tropes of the
Enlightenment, modernity, patriarchy, industrialism and capitalism, which Jungian
ecopsychologist Mary-Jane Rust (2008) calls the myths we live by. The myths she is referring to
in particular are the myth of progress and the myth of the Fall. She argues that in order to
create a sustainable future, or indeed any future, we need to find other stories, other myths,
through which to live our lives, to rethink how we have fallen and what it means to progress.
Freuds work suggests that Western culture views civilization as a defence against nature, and
against wildness, inner and outer, but as Rust (2008: 5) writes, at this critical point in human
history we most urgently need a myth to live by which is about living with nature, rather than
fighting it. Thus, according to Rust,
we find ourselves . . . between stories (Berry 1999), in a transitional space . . . of great
turbulence, with little to hold onto save the ground of our own experience. Our therapeutic task .
. . is to understand how these myths still shape our internal worlds, our language, and our
defences . . . [S]omewhere in the midst of sustainability . . . lies an inspiring vision of
transformation . . . We need to dig deep, to re-read our own myths as well as find inspiration
from the stories of others. (ibid.)
The myth of progress enters the climate change debate in calls for geoengineering and utopian
techno-fixes such as putting thousands of mirrors in space, and in the dismissal of even gentle
questioning of current economic models of unlimited growth. We will later look at Harold
Searles (1972) approach to our fascination with technology and its role in the current crisis.
Returning to Freud, however, there is, as always, another side, an implicit awareness that the
feeling of mastery civilization gives us is in many ways a dangerous illusion . Behind our need
for mastery lies our fear and trembling in the face of the awesome power of mother nature.
There are the elements which seem to mock at all human control: the earth, which quakes and is
torn apart and buries all human life and its works; water, which deluges and drowns everything
in turmoil; storms, which blow everything before them . . . With these forces nature rises up
against us, majestic, cruel and inexorable; she brings to our mind once more our weakness and
helplessness, which we thought to escape through the work of civilization. (Freud 1927: 1516)
Here is the other side of Freuds writing on the relation between Nature and Civilization, with
humanity portrayed as a weak and helpless infant in awe and fear of a mighty and terrible
mother. The lure and horror of matriarchy lie behind the defensive constructs of patriarchal
civilization, just as Kleins paranoid-schizoid fears of fragmentation, engulfment, and
annihilation lie behind later castration threats (Hinshelwood 1991). With each new earthquake
or flood, nature erupts into culture similar to Kristevas (1982) description of the eruption of
the semiotic into the symbolic and we are thrown back into a state of terror. The illusion in
the title of Freuds 1927 essay The Future of an Illusion was meant to refer to how religion arose
to deal with these anxieties. However, the structural function of the myth of progress, while
undoubtably more successful in terms of practical benefits, can also be included here. In these
words of Freud we have already a deep understanding, albeit largely implicit, of our own current
crisis: a relationship to nature based on a masterslave system of absolute binaries, and an
attempt to maintain an illusory autonomy and control in the face of chaos.
There is often a tension in Freud, between the celebration of Enlightenment values found in
works such as The Future of an Illusion (1927) and the more Romantic Freud who won the
Goethe prize and constantly emphasized the elements Enlightenment rationality leaves out such
as jokes, dreams, slips and psychological symptoms. Thus, as well as being a perfect example of
the Enlightenment with its call to make the unconscious conscious and give the rational ego
greater power over the wilds of the id, psychoanalysis also provides a serious challenge to this
way of thinking. There will always be something beyond our control . We are not, and
never can be, masters in our own house, and the core of who we are is irrational, and often
frightening. Marcuse (1998) touched on a similar tension when declaring Freuds (1930)
Civilization and Its Discontents both the most radical critique of Western culture and its most
trenchant defence. Psychoanalysis, as always, is exquisitely ambivalent.
Ultimately, for Freud, both the natural world and our inner nature are untamable and the most
we can hope for are temporary, fragile, anxious compromises between competing forces (Winter
& Koger 2004). The chaos of nature we defend against is also the chaos of our inner nature, the
wildness in the depths of our psyche. Civilization does not only domesticate livestock but also
humanity itself (Freud & Einstein 1933: 214). However, attempts to eliminate the risk have in
many ways dangerously backfired, comparable to the ways that the historical programmes
aiming to eliminate forest fires in the United States have led to far bigger and more
uncontrollable fires taking the place of previously smaller and more manageable ones (Diamond
2006: 4347).
This orientation of control is a dangerous illusion that makes destruction
inevitable and turns their advantages
The control promised by the Enlightenment, the power of the intellect to overcome chaos
(environmental and emotional), is therefore at least partly a defensive and at times
dangerous illusion . In our age of anxiety, with the destruction of civilization threatened by
nuclear holocaust, ecosystemic collapse, bioweapons and dirty bombs, Freuds warning is more
relevant than ever:
Men [Humans] have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their
help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last [hu]man . . . hence
comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety. (Freud
1930: 135)
Freuds binaries masculine/Enlightenment/control/autonomy versus
feminine/nature/chaos/dependency also lead us to consider what Gregory Bateson (2000: 95)
called the bipolar characteristic of Western thought, which even tries to impose a binary
pattern upon phenomena which are not dual in nature: youth versus age, labor versus capital,
mind versus matter and, in general, lack[s] the organizational devices for handling triangular
systems. In such a culture, as with the child struggling to come to terms with the Oedipal
situation, any third party is always regarded . . . as a threat (ibid.).
Deleuze and Guattari describe such dualistic forms of thinking using the ecological metaphor of
the tree with its fork-branch patterns (although they would not use the term metaphor):
Arborescent systems are hierarchical systems with centers of signifiance and subjectification . . .
an element only receives information from a higher unit, and only receives a subjective affection
along preestablished paths (Deleuze & Guattari 2003a: 16). However, Freuds arborescent
system of binaries can also show us the way out, capturing the psychological bind we are now in.
As Deleuze and Guattari (2003a: 277) write: The only way to get outside the dualisms is . . . to
pass between, the intermezzo. Deconstructing these dualisms allows us to think about how our
destructive urge to dominate and control is connected to our fear of acknowledging dependency
on this largest of holding environments, the ultimate environment mother (Winnicott 1999,
1987).
This thesis is remarkably consistent with Adorno and Horkheimers (2002) discussion of
memesis in Dialectic of Enlightenment. In this work, they argue that the natural tendency or
defence to become like nature, to blend in with our surroundings, through camouflage, becomes
perverted in the development of civilization into a fear of becoming like nature that is
expressed as an urge to dominate and control initially external nature, and later our
psychological and social selves. For Adorno and Horkheimer (2002) this problem lies at the
heart of civilization, leading to the terrible symptoms of Fascism. However, as Deleuze and
Guattari (2003b: 122) write, there is always a line of flight which escapes: The most closed
system still has a thread that rises toward the virtual, and down which the spider descends.
Similarly for Freud (1930: 89): We shall never completely subdue nature; our body, too, is an
organism, itself a part of nature, and will always contain the seeds of dissolution, with its limited
powers of adaptation and achievement.
That causes extinction, destruction of value, and error replication
Crisis, Object relations theory: A more ecological approach to mind, 70-72, Routlege, ISBN:
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
Here there are echoes of Freuds (1916) idea of anticipatory mourning and the associated
attacks and spoiling that we will study below (see p. 72). However, for Searles the natural world
is not just a space for externalizing our conflicts. Rather, a healthy relationship to the nonhuman environment is essential for human psychological well-being. Furthermore, one
consequence of our alienation from nature is an omnipotent longing for fusion with our
technology, and a powerful anxiety should this fully occur.
Over recent decades we have come from dwelling in an outer world in which the living works of
nature either predominated or were near at hand, to dwelling in an environment dominated by a
technology which is wondrously powerful and yet nonetheless dead . . . [T]his technologydominated world [is] so alien, so complex, so awesome, and so overwhelming that we have been
able to cope with it only by regressing, in our unconscious experience . . . to a degraded state of
nondifferentiation from it . . . [T]his outer reality is psychologically as much a part of us as
its poisonous waste products are part of our physical selves. (Searles 1972: 368)
The further we are alienated from nature, the more we are driven into primitive regressive
identification and omnipotent fascination with our technology, a powerful positive
feedback loop . The inner conflict between our human and non-human selves, and our animal
and technological natures, is projected onto the environment , further rupturing the
relationship and leading to a spiral of destructiveness as we project this conflict upon, and
thus unconsciously foster, the war in external reality between the beleaguered remnants of
ecologically balanced nature and mans technology which is ravaging them (ibid.).
Here we are in Kleins paranoid-schizoid world, with a primitive ego unable to differentiate
between good and bad mother. While ecologists portray a good eco-mummy doing battle with
bad techno-mummy, things are not so simple. As we have seen, civilization (and its technology)
is a defence, a good mother to protect us from capricious and uncaring mother nature (Freud
1930), but, as Searles suggests, we are supposed to accept that our good mother is poisoning us
(Searles 1972: 369).
For Searles (1972), behind both nuclear danger and ecological catastrophe lies the raw
destructiveness Kleinians link to Thanatos, or what Erich Fromm (1992) understands in terms
of necrophilia. Searles (1972: 370) argues that at this level of functioning we project our own
pervasive, poorly differentiated and poorly integrated murderousness, born of our terror and
deprivation and frustration, upon the hydrogen bomb, the military-industrial complex,
technology. We may find the slow, more controllable death from pollution preferable to sudden
death from nuclear warfare or we might yearn for the quick relief of a nuclear blast to
the slow strangulation of environmental devastation (Searles 1972: 370). Living with such
apocalyptic threats leads to a kind of ultimate version of the defence Anna Freud (1936)
described as identification with the aggressor.
At an unconscious level we powerfully identify with what we perceive as omnipotent and
immortal technology , as a defense against intolerable feelings of insignificance, of
deprivation, of guilt, of fear of death . . . Since the constructive goal of saving the world can be
achieved only by ones working, as but one largely anonymous individual among uncounted
millions . . . it is more alluring to give oneself over to secret fantasies of omnipotent
destructiveness , in identification with the forces that threaten to destroy the world. This
serves to shield one from the recognition of ones own guilt-laden murderous urges, experienced
as being within oneself, to destroy ones own intrapersonal and interpersonal world. (Searles
1972: 370)
In this view, we are seeing a kind of repetition on a planetary level of an early intrapsychic
anxiety situation . In childhood a fantasied omnipotence protected us against the full
intensity of our feelings of deprivation, and now it is dangerously easy to identify with seemingly
limitless technology and to fail to cope with the life-threatening scarcity of usable air, food, and
water on our planet (ibid.). Unfortunately our technological powers have outstripped our
emotional maturity, and the omnipotent phantasies of infancy now have a frightening
objectivity. In place of a religion we no longer believe in , or hopes for future generations we
no longer have meaningful contact with, we identify with our immortal, inanimate
technology .
In this realm of omnipotent fantasy . . . mother earth is equivalent to all of reality . . . a drag . . .
to our yearnings for unfettered omnipotence . . . It may be not at all coincidental that our world
today is threatened with extinction through environmental pollution, to which we are so
strikingly apathetic , just when we seem on the threshold of technologically breaking the
chains that have always bound our race to this planet of our origin. I suspect that we collectively
quake lest our infantile omnipotent fantasies become fully actualized through mans becoming
interplanetary and ceasing thereby to be [hu]man . . . [W]e are powerfully drawn to suicidally
polluting our planet so as to ensure our dying upon it as [humans] men, rather than existing
elsewhere as . . . gods or robots . . . [T]he greatest danger lies neither in the hydrogen bomb . . .
nor in the more slowly lethal effect of pollution . . . [but] in the fact that the world is in such a
state as to evoke our very earliest anxieties and at the same time to offer the delusional promise
. . . of assuaging these anxieties, effacing them, by fully externalizing and reifying our most
primitive conflicts . . . In the pull upon us to become omnipotently free of human conflict, we are
in danger of bringing about our extinction . (Searles 1972: 371372)
The alts infusion of psychoanalysis with ecology is critical to reframe our
relationship to nature and prevent the devaluation of existence
Using a related theoretical framework, Erich Fromm, former Frankfurt School colleague of
Adorno and Horkheimer, came to a similar position with his concept of the fear of freedom.
Fromm (2001) suggests that the human project is one of gradually winning greater freedom
from external oppression but at the cost of a sense of isolation and aloneness, including
disconnection/isolation from nature. Humans are cast out of the garden after eating from the
tree of knowledge, a knowledge which condemns us to be free, alone with our desires. He
identified various mechanisms of escape through which we try to avoid the conflict, such as
automaton-conformity, authoritarianism and destructiveness, and defensive personality
structures and social characters, such as the marketing personality, each with their associated
social unconscious (Fromm 2006) and all of which are relevant to understanding our current
ecological crisis (Fisher 2009).
Fromms fear of freedom combines an intense anxiety/fear of becoming like nature with a
simultaneous longing for merger and (re)connection. Fromms solution is that there is no way
back to the garden (as some contemporary primitivists and ecopsychologists seem to suggest).
Instead we must reconnect with the world on a higher level (a higher synthesis), continuing the
path of human emancipation which will allow us to return in moments of love and empathy to a
freely given connection with the wider world, including the non-human environment, in what he
calls a positive freedom to. Interestingly, a term Fromm frequently uses to describe this love of
nature, humanity and life, in contrast to its opposite, necrophilia, is a term ecopsychology,
drawing on Wilson (2003), is especially fond of: the term biophilia (Fromm 1964). Whether or
not Fromms Hegelian optimism, with his belief in a higher synthesis between humanity and the
world, can bear fruit, we would do well to reflect on Gregory Batesons warning:
The materialistic philosophy which sees [hu]man as pitted against his environment is rapidly
breaking down as technological [hu]man becomes more and more able to oppose the largest
systems. Every battle that he wins brings a threat of disaster. The unit of survival . . . in ethics or
in evolution . . . is not the organism or the species but the largest system or power within which
the creature lives. If the creature destroys its environment, it destroys itself. (Bateson 2000:
332)
This engagement of critical theory with ecology is long overdue according to some writers. Ley
(2008) calls for a psychoanalytic critical ecology, conceiving of sustainability as a concept with
relevance to the internal world, requiring a more creative balance between ego and id, and
between human culture and the wilds of our internal and external nature. Fisher (2009)
similarly argues that ecopsychology requires a more nuanced political perspective, which he
suggests can be gained through a critical engagement with the work of the Frankfurt School to
provide a model of how to integrate psychological and social concerns, while taking the further
step of including the ecological. This book suggests that to achieve this latter step we need to
engage with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and in this case in particular
Guattaris (2000) idea of the three ecologies of mind, nature and society.
Links
Linkconservation
The drive to recreate the purity of the environment is a symptom of ecological
despairthis fails and makes life not worth living
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In Kleinian theory (Hinshelwood 1991), the depressive position (D) is characterized by wholeobject relationships and the object is seen to contain both good and bad aspects. This
conjunction, though painful, is tolerated. The object is now seen as separate and whole.
Mourning is now possible both for loss of unity and for the realization that phantasized attacks
on the bad object also attacked the good object, as they were in reality the same thing. An urge
to repair the imagined damage then emerges and the self becomes more integrated. D involves
deep psychological working through of mourning, loss, guilt and separation, and can also at
least potentially lead to authentic feelings of joy, love, gratitude and concern, as well as genuine
pain and sadness. Defences against depressive anxiety are developmentally more advanced and
include manic defences. Bion (1989) emphasized the volatility of these positions and the way
one can oscillate rapidly between them, especially in groups, by putting a double headed arrow
between them (PS$D).
In terms of ecology, anxieties related to Kleins depressive position involve mourning for the
losses involved in environmental destruction, guilt for the damage done and a reparative drive
to restore , repair and recreate the lost and damaged world (internal and external, the latter
including the non-human environment, following Searles [1960]). The difficulties infants face in
negotiating the depressive position may be seen in the difficulties in recognizing personal and
human culpability for climate change, and the difficulty in accepting that the lifestyle and
civilization we are so proud of are causing such damage to planetary ecosystems.
Reactions to the complexity and enormity of environmental problems can also lead to despair.
Our trust in the world can be affected as we feel the threat of the destruction of our holding
environment (Winnicott 1999; Winter & Koger 2004). Punitive guilt feelings may then arise
which are defended against with manic denials or manic reparation. At times, this may even lead
to a suicidal tendency which we have already seen in the world without us theme as
explored in eco-disaster films. This can now be understood not only in terms of the nirvana
principle of Freuds Thanatos, but also as a depressive reaction to guilt, and in Searles (1972)
view because modern life can be so empty as to not feel worth living .
Despite the clear advantages that Kleins theories provide, Kleinian thought, relentlessly focused
as it is on the internal world of phantasy (which is both its strength and its weakness we
cannot expect a microscope to function well as a telescope), is still not enough to encompass
our external ecology as well as our internal world . However, it can provide the basis for
such a new formulation.
Linkfiat
Their pretend wand of fiat reinforces the problems they try to prevent
Crisis, Object relations theory: A more ecological approach to mind, 68, Routlege, ISBN: 9780-203-15766-4, Evan]
Hoggett connects various unconscious (and conscious) alliances and collusions around climate
change with John Steiners (1985) re-reading of the ur-myth of psychoanalysis, which argues
that everyone knew what Oedipus was about to uncover, but there was a systematic collusion in
not knowing. Here we find Bions (1984) -K, which seizes on any chance to attack the truth,
becoming an active process of destructiveness in which thought itself is hated, as destructive
parts of the self are harnessed in an attack on truth-loving parts (Rosenfeld 1971), a process Bell
(2007) connects with Freuds Thanatos.
The crucial lesson of psychoanalysis here is that what is most perverse and destructive in human
nature is not only found in the criminal, the madman, or the most flagrant climate deniers, but
in all of us. Part of each of us is ready to be deceived, a phenomenon Hoggett (2009) links to
virtualism, involving an as if relation to reality. In terms of climate change this is captured
well in a very apt phrase of Monbiots: We wish our governments to pretend to act
(Monbiot, cited in Hoggett 2009).
LinkParanoia
The 1ac approaches nature through a lens of paranoiathat cements a violent
relationship to the environment and ensures psychological backlash
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
We have already looked at Western civilizations basically paranoid approach to nature, and we
have seen a number of paranoid conspiracies around the climate change issue which at least
create a clearly identifiable enemy. In this situation the bad sadistic enemy is fought against,
not in the solitary isolation of the unconscious inner world, but in co-operation with comradesin-arms in real life, where objective fear may be more readily coped with than phantasy
persecution (Jaques 1955, cited in Klein, Heimann & Money-Kyrle 1955: 483). The apocalyptic
threat of climate change may lead to extremely primitive persecutory anxieties and therefore the
employment of psychotic defences (splitting, disavowal, massive projective identification).
According to Jordan:
We are in a paranoid-schizoid place in relation to the environment in that we are not in relation
to it. This is an attempt to preserve some desperately needed sense of invulnerability in the face
of impending environmental catastrophe that can be experienced as potentially annihilating . . .
Omnipotence is an attempt by the infant to bring things under its control, to exert total power.
These defences can be seen in our attempts to dominate nature, in the sense of vulnerability we
feel at times in the face of its indifference to us and our dependencies on it, which causes us to
attempt to bring it under our total control. (Jordan 2009: 29)
Searles (1972: 369) points out that, ironically and terrifyingly, there is now a certain objectivity
to the paranoid threats. These are both from the threat of nuclear disaster which evokes, deep in
us, the frozen immobility of the child whose parent (equivalent to such godlike, vague entities as
the hydrogen bomb or the awesomely powerful military-industrial complex) chronically
threatens violence and the toxic poisoning we are subject to by unknown outside forces. This
can lead to many people intuitively feeling that the warnings of ecologists are crazy and we
shouldnt listen to them, partly out of fear of contamination, and partly because they touch a
crazy part of all of us . As Martin (cited in Searles 1972: 373) said, psychiatrists are familiar
with the fantasy met in the early stages of schizophrenia that the world is coming to an end . . .
In the second half of this century, the actual presence of this destructive potential makes
psychotic end-of-the-world fantasies not so obviously out of touch with reality.
We can also see more primitive levels of the mind functioning in what Paul Hoggett (2009)
describes as the increasingly perverse response to climate change. Drawing on Susan Longs
(2008) theory that we are moving from a culture of narcissism (Lasch 1991) to a culture of
perversion, Hoggett (2009) argues that perverse organizations emerge on all levels
(intrapsychic to social) where instrumental relations dominate, as a result of capitalisms effect
both on social relationships and our abusive relation to the natural world. Perverse
organizations lead to splitting, denial and collusion, with a particular emphasis on the role of the
accomplice, a role we are all placed into by the structural aspects of climate change.
Linkdiscourse
Their discourse makes people confront the fragility of existencethis makes
apathy and despair inevitable, and makes response to climate change impossible
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***note: cathexis = the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object
(especially to an unhealthy degree).
The environmental crisis forces us to face the traumatic aspects of transience, the fact that
nothing is permanent and everything, including our own civilization and even the wider
natural system of the Earth, will eventually disappear. Freud (1915) dealt with this issue in
his Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, written as the horror of the First World War was
sweeping the old world away in its destructive fury and bringing disillusionment in its wake, and
in On Transience (1916). In her discussion of the latter work De Mijolla-Mellor (2005) pointed
out that Freud subtly introduces a new aspect of mourning which many have still not fully
grasped, anticipatory mourning. For Rilke, who many identify as the nameless poet in Freuds
essay (Schur 1972), knowledge that a flower is temporary, that it will fade, die, and rot, removes
the beauty it still has while it is alive, to which Freud (1916: 306) replied with an inspiring
ecological vision: A flower that blossoms only for a single night does not seem to us on that
account less lovely.
In terms of Freuds economic model anticipatory mourning involves withdrawing cathexis from
the object before it is lost, as a narcissistic defence to avoid the painful process of a mourning,
while at the same time partly going through the mourning process prematurely. In addition we
can see in the poets reaction above disgust related to devaluation of the object, connected to a
sense of betrayal and combined with a revolt against the reality principle, against time itself
(timelessness being an important characteristic of Freuds unconscious, see Matte-Blanco
[1984]).
Bion (1961) similarly suggested that in the basic assumption group anything bringing an
awareness of time is hated and attacked. The lesson for us now is that these complex
psychological responses might help us to understand the ways individuals and societies
unconsciously deal with climate change. The first involves adopting the position of consciously
not caring about the environment or even the survival of our species, as a defence against the
mourning yet to come. The second involves engaging in premature anticipatory mourning,
falling into a despair which prevents the very action which might help to avoid the feared loss,
during a time when effective action may still be possible.
Freud (1916: 306) urges us to face with honesty and courage the fact that [a] time may indeed
come when the pictures and statues which we admire to-day will crumble to dust, or a race of
men may follow us who no longer understand the works of our poets and thinkers, or a
geological epoch may even arrive when all animate life upon the earth ceases. In the face of the
enormous pain and fear the ecological crisis evokes, we need to find effective means of
reparation, to restore and recreate the damaged world inside, and out. Without a hope that
meaningful, as opposed to manic, reparation is possible, we have only the choice between denial,
madness and despair.
Linkbystander effect
Cant confront climate changeno one person caused it, no clear enemy, and no
certainty -> Bystander effect and no solvencypsychology is key
In general it seems that we have evolved to deal optimally with threats which are immediate,
clear, visible, with simple causation, caused by a clearly identifiable enemy, and with obvious
direct personal consequences. Unfortunately climate change is invisible, highly complex,
highly uncertain in its impacts, and caused by all of us. It thus can also be seen as an example of
the ultimate bystander effect with its associated diffusion of responsibility (Hudson &
Bruckman 2004; Darley & Latane 1968).
To illustrate the unique ability of climate change to bypass our risk-thermostat Marshall
compares it with other potential or real threats. For example, the Y2K computer bug was
complex, caused by no one identifiable enemy, with highly uncertain effects, but its immediate
and known deadline led to a high level of public concern (in some cases virtual panic) and a
rapid global response involving the investment of $60 billion in mitigation measures (Marshall
2005). Or, to consider a potential future threat (and climate change already affects us now):
Let us imagine that astronomers discover that we are due to collide in fifty years with a
meteorite so large that an impact would provoke massive destruction and a permanent
alteration in the worlds weather patterns . . . we could be reasonably confident that there would
be a sustained global mobilization . . . There are a lot of rockets in the world, and a lot of people
who would very much like to play with them . . . even though the impacts would be the same as
climate change, action was enabled by the presence of a clear [and simple] external cause. (ibid.)
If the cause became an identifiable enemy human group (e.g. North Korea using chemical
weapons to alter the worlds climate) we would find a predictably greater response. On this
model, climate change is unique and almost perfectly designed to miss our usual buttons, in that
every single one of its aspects, unfortunately and tragically, lines up with the areas in which we
are least psychologically enabled to take action (ibid.). But is this the whole story? Is a deficit
model enough to account for our inaction on climate change? Bigda-Peyton asks:
Do people strike out against the natural world because the inevitability of death is so evident in
nature? . . . If individuals treat natural resources as limitless, then they can maintain the illusion
of their own limitlessness. Destroying nature is preferable to becoming aware of death
and the wish for it . (Bigda-Peyton 2004: 261)
Linkdeath
Their extinction scenarios force us to confront out own mortalitythis causes
conservative backlash, anxiety, and repressiononly the alternative can solve
***THIS EVIDENCE HAS BEEN EDITED FOR ABLEIST LANGUAGE
As psychoanalysts have long pointed out, even where there is a clear deficit, we need also to look
at how the mind dynamically adapts and deals with the deficit, an insight more recently applied
by neuropsychoanalysts to working with patients with focal brain lesions (Kaplan-Solms and
Solms 2000). In the case of climate change, this means that we need to think about our anxieties
and phantasies around death. Marshall (2005) writes:
I am also struck by the observation, drawn from my own emotional response . . . that climate
change correlates uncomfortably well with the one area in which denial is a psychological
strength; our response to our own mortality. Like death, climate change entails permanent and
irreversible loss. It means that the world as we currently experience it is no more than a passing
dream and is doomed as surely as we are ourselves . When I look out of my window and I
think all this will be gone that if we dont stop this thing, then this world will never exist again
except in fading memories or photographs it touches the same part of me as the thought of my
own passing.
It actually touches something even more fundamental. Terror Management Theory (TMT),
drawing on the work of the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker (1973), has demonstrated
empirically (e.g. Greenberg et al. 2000) that attachments to our world views become more
absolute and rigid, with less tolerance of dissent and outsiders, when we are confronted with
considering our own death. TMT argues that one important function of our world view is as a
cultural-symbolic defence against death anxiety which would otherwise [halt] paralyze us as
the only species able to contemplate (with certainty) its own death. World views, and the
civilizations they are a part of, provide symbolic immortality either through promises of a life
after death, or the knowledge that your culture/world view will continue after your own passing.
From a TMT perspective, the ecological threat would lead us to cling even more tightly to our
world view. But the latter is also threatened by climate change, either directly by climate chaos
or by the ecologists and scientists who point out that we need to change in radical ways, leading
to greater levels of death anxiety as this major defence seems less solid. We thus have another
potentially catastrophic positive feedback loop. It is always difficult for us to let go of our way of
life, but it is especially difficult now when it is most required . Here, splitting in various forms
becomes a common defence, including in our politics.
Our prime minister tells us that climate change is a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and
irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence. His chief scientific
advisor says it is the most severe problem we face . . . And yet, nothing in the governments
response reflects this rhetoric. Its work on climate change is incoherent, underfunded, and
constantly undermined by the support . . . [of ] high emitting industries. (Marshall 2005)
This brings up a fundamental question for ecopsychoanalytic research. Is the deficit or the
anxiety-defence model more appropriate for our current situation? In other words, is our
inaction due to anxiety and subsequent defence mechanisms (individual and social) or the
abstractness of the issue, which our evolved minds are unable to grasp? The answer determines
which strategies are likely to be effective and which will backfire. Should environmental
campaigners increase the emotional impact of their message and the sense of urgency to allow
people to connect viscerally to an otherwise abstract issue? Or is the ecology of fear (Zizek
2007) counterproductive as defences against anxiety become ever more rigid and extreme?
In the latter case a more effective strategy would be to try to identify and deal with the
underlying anxieties to enable us to move beyond our current stuck position ,
although the time for working though is unfortunately limited, especially on the global scale
required. The likely answer is that the two explanations interact. The very abstraction of climate
change is a paramount example of what Timothy Morton (2010c) calls hyper-objects, objects
which are massively distributed in time and space such that any particular (local) manifestation
never reveals the totality of the hyper-object (for more on hyper-objects see Chapter 8). Perhaps
these characteristics provide the ideal opportunity for the various defences, such as splitting,
denial and intellectualization, to be so easily and effectively employed. However, the relative
contribution of each will have major consequences when determining strategy from the point of
view of psychoanalytically enlightened ecological politics.
Linkcalling us ecofascists
Thats a link
Scapegoating mechanisms are always around but they tend to increase during times of anxiety
and uncertainty. A good example is the witch persecutions of the Early Modern Era, which
became a focal point, a lightning rod for all kinds of anxieties (religious, existential, sexual,
relational, social and psychological) connected to the transitional period from the medievalreligious to the modern-scientific world. (For psychoanalytic explorations of this history see
Lyndal Ropers [1994] Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion and Sexuality in Early
Modern Europe and Evelyn Heinemanns [2000] Witches: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the
Killing of Women.) Displacement can also result in blaming the ecological messenger, in a way
comparable to how the unpalatable insights of psychoanalysis still provoke enough emotion for
a whole Freud-burying (Tallis 2009) industry (but like the undead, one burial never seems
enough). As Marshall (2005) writes:
Climate change is deeply threatening to anyone whose world view sees increasing personal
consumption as a fair reward for a lifetimes dedication to the growth economy. We all feel small
and powerless in the face of a huge and daunting problem and although we are not actively
punished for speaking out against it, we are hardly well rewarded . . . Try bringing it up when a
friend shows you their holiday tan and you will see what I mean.
One relevant example here is the Czech President Vaclav Klaus who not only denies outright the
existence of anthropogenic climate change, but even compares environmentalism with Nazism,
Fascism and Stalinism (Dujisin 2007). Others evoke the phrase ecofascist to describe anyone
with a vaguely green agenda. All these responses need to be explored by psychoanalytically
informed social theorists and environmental researchers.
Linknew age environmentalism

New age environmentalism is a displacement of ecological anxiety that makes
everything worse
Crisis, Eco-anxiety and defence, 53, Routlege, ISBN: 978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
In terms of displacement, it is interesting also to consider Marshalls (2005) comments on
certain New Age trends, which, while leading many to care deeply about ecology through a
mother earth spirituality, may provide space for defensive displacements. He relates the story
of a manager of a chain of luxury hotels in Mauritius who said we take these environmental
problems very seriously . . . we are the first company in Mauritius to open a Feng Shui hotel
where people can reconnect with the natural environment including special Feng Shui meals
where everything is rounded to help the movement of the chi forces (ibid.). Marshall sees this
as emblematic of a certain response to ecological threat, shared by the tourists who identify with
the New Age marketing and will pay a premium for the eco-theming of their air conditioned
room (ibid.). Furthermore, on visiting a large well-known bookshop he found that while they
sold over 30 books on feng shui, they stocked not a single volume on home energy efficiency.
In the face of a problem which 80% of people say is a major issue, vastly more people wish to
control and manage the movement of chi energy around their house than the real energy going
out through their windows . . . It is hard not to think of Feng Shui as the ideological equivalent of
dioxins which occupy and block key receptors in the body which should be engaging with
nutrients . . . We chose to replace the daunting and terrifying environmental problems . . . with
manageable and entertaining pseudo-environmentalism. (ibid.)
Linkthanatos
The 1ac is obsessed with apocalypsetheir images of destruction are emblematic
of the death drive, numbing us to their impacts and making sustainability
impossible
Crisis, The phantasy of ecology: Psychoanalysis of climate change, 35-37, Routlege, ISBN: 9780-203-15766-4, Evan]
From the Freudian perspective, our planet is populated by a species systematically destroying its
own habitat. Although they think of themselves as intelligent and rational, the creatures, driven
by Eros, are destroying themselves through over-consumption and overpopulation. Rushing
through existence in order to procure more and more appetitive satisfaction, the animals instead
enjoy less and less. Filled with Thanatos, they unconsciously destroy their environment, at the
same time building weapons of mass destruction that threaten to destroy the whole of their
species. (Winter & Koger 2004: 3132)
Winter and Kogers (2004) The Psychology of Environmental Problems is one of the first books
to think psychoanalytically about the environmental crisis (although this mainly occupies just
the first chapter) and it therefore provides a good starting point for exploring this area. The
authors apply Freuds second drive theory of Eros and Thanatos, showing that Freuds eternal
adversaries are unfortunately unlikely bedfellows in their destructive effects on nature.
Both aspects of Thanatos can feed into our destructivity: the active destructive desires and the
more silent desires for non-existence and annihilation which Freud felt lay beneath this. The
latter are also visible in the rhetoric of the environmental movement which often includes
apocalyptic themes, sometimes as warnings but at times with almost utopian yearning . This
is also evident in recent eco-disaster films, as discussed in the following section. Deep Ecologys
call to move from an anthropocentrist to an ecocentrist position sometimes masks a highly
misanthropic or at least potentially fascist position. We may also see the nirvana principle
(Freud 1920) in the virtual indifference with which we face the worlds sixth great mass
extinction, from which there is no reason to assume we will be spared. This indifference to such
staggering loss stands in stark contrast to the reaction we are likely to make following the death
of our (Oedipal, or rather Oedipalized) pet (Deleuze & Guattari 2003a: 240).
In addition, Eros, through over-consumption and overpopulation, also unwittingly works
towards the potential collapse of the ability of the biosphere to sustain our complex civilization.
In her paper When Drives are Dangerous: Drive Theory and Resource Over-Consumption
Frances Bigda-Peyton (2004: 251) argues that harmful over-consumption occurs when psychic
structures dominated by destructive instincts succeed in overpowering life-sustaining impulses
and that over-consumption also functions as a defense against the awareness of death
wishes. In addition, she claims that narcissistic fixations keep individuals and groups from
maturing to the point of recognizing that they must give to the environment in order to be
provided for in a sustainable way. Evidence that denial and projection are involved here comes
from Schors (1998) study which showed that the majority regard other people as more
materialistic and more motivated to consume for social status than themselves.
Following Wachtel (2003), Bigda-Peyton (2004) suggests the need to look at structural aspects
of pathological consumption, related not only to an id that is chronically over-stimulated by
advertising, but also our cultures consumerist ego-ideal. In the form of biophilia (Wilson
2003; Kellert & Wilson 1993) Eros could, however, also work to reinvigorate our love of nature,
as ecopsychology is keen on suggesting. Sally Weintrobe (2011a: 12), for example, suggests that
our love of nature includes the erotic, that free play of sensual pleasure of all the senses. This
will be crucial if we are to turn back from the brink. As Freud (1930: 145) writes: It is to be
expected that the other of the two Heavenly Powers, eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert
himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what
success and with what result?
Linkextinction
Their extinction scenarios are a fantasy of nonexistencethis obsession with a
world without us is a coping mechanism that only the alt can resolve
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
There is a suicide motif (Searles 1972) in these films where we might discern the silent call of
Thanatos. Age of Stupid (Armstrong 2009) centres on the question of why humanitys last act
was an act of suicide, while The Happening (Shyamalan 2008) depicts plants which rebel
against human oppression by releasing a pheromone that causes people to commit mass suicide.
Destruction in The Day the Earth Stood Still (Derrickson 2008) comes from swarms of cyborg
insects stripping everything in their path, drawing on fears of genetic and nano engineering
and introducing a strange hybrid eco-techno agent that will bring about our demise.
Meanwhile, extra-terrestrial globes appear all over the planet, arks collecting every species
except humans to repopulate the world once humanity has been wiped out. Apart from the
discomfort ecologists feel when their ideas are connected to such anti-humanism, it is important
to think about their appeal.
Apocalypticism . . . is one of humanitys most powerful ideas . . . It is a very ancient
pattern of human thought . . . [concerning] the ultimate struggle between the forces of
order and chaos. It is deeply appealing at a psychological level because the idea of
meaninglessness is deeply threatening. Human societies have always tried to create some
kind of framework of meaning to give history and our own personal lives some kind of
significance. (Paul Boyer, cited in Rohrer 2008)
The green apocalypse is certainly one of its current forms. The fact that it is not only a fantasy
does not make its deep psychological appeal any less powerful (if the apocalypse didnt exist, we
would need to invent it). We are haunted and enthralled by the idea of a world without us
(Weisman 2007). Freud said we cannot really imagine our own death; when we try to do so we
are still present, as spectator to our own funeral. Similarly, in most imagined end of the world or
end of humanity scenarios, we implicitly count ourselves among the few survivors, able perhaps
to finally build the ecotopian dream.
We, humans, are reduced to a pure disembodied gaze observing our own absence. As
Lacan pointed out, this is the fundamental subjective position of fantasy . . . like the
fantasy of witnessing the act of ones own conception . . . or the act of witnessing ones
own burial . . . The world without us is thus fantasy at its purest: witnessing the Earth
itself retaining its pre-castrated state of innocence, before we humans spoiled it with our
hubris. (Zizek 2007)
Annalee Newitz (2008) suggests four reasons for the current popularity of this theme. First,
environmental guilt , where people overwhelmed with a sense of hopelessness . . . yearn for
stories about a world where humans arent around anymore to muck things up. Second, future
ennui , whereby we are liberated from the constant exhaustion of planning for the future by
removing ourselves from it. Third, fear of extinction , where, according to Newitz, were also
scared shitless that the future will smack us on the head and wipe us all out . . . We imagine the
world without ourselves as a coping mechanism, a way to accustom ourselves to the idea that no
matter how much we plan, we still may not make it as a species. Finally, evolution degree
zero reverses time and undoes all human mistakes, leaving open the possibility that we might
evolve again, better the second time. Psychoanalysis can prove useful in unmasking the depths
of human phantasy and motivation in such themes, where we can detect complex forms of
anxiety, and defence.
Alternative
Alt Solves Affect

The alternative is keyit allows us to face climate change straight on, to get past
our hangups, and facilitate the necessary affective responses to create change
This splitting or dissociation should not be understood as something only imposed from above,
as we all collude in the process which blinds us to our interdependency. There is a part of us that
longs to connect, but according to Lertzman (2009) when we do the experience can be
shattering and traumatic. Similarly, ecological campaigns which try to overcome this
dissociation through aggressive guilt may be counterproductive. Lertzman asks:
Is it ever OK for a parent to berate a child for misbehaving? Having known adults who were
raised in such environments, my answer is no. Such individuals are plagued with a chronic sense
of disempowerment, insecurity and self-loathing . . . Persecutory guilt plagues many newcomers
to our current ecological mess, is reinforced by environmental media campaigns . . . and has
been shown to rarely translate into good acts. (ibid.)
The psychoanalytic alternative, to listen and understand, rather than go on the attack, may seem
weak and ineffective, especially given the urgency of the situation. But Lertzman argues the
contrary: Its a powerful assertion of what is really happening, and a loving ability to face this
straight on (ibid.). She compares this to the Kleinian idea of moving towards the depressive
position and the desire for reparation and positive change, inner and outer. Facing our losses
and griefs and disappointments will be difficult, and we will undoubtably be angry and
frustrated and irritated, but its not a place to dwell in (ibid.).
The split can also take the form of an intellectualization, separating abstract awareness of the
crisis from real emotional engagement (by writing a book on psychoanalysis and climate change
or making a presentation to a conference on the ecological crisis, reached by flying on a low-cost
airline). General principles are at times more easy to face emotionally than our personal
contributions, the threats to other species easier to acknowledge than the threat to our own.
Thus the abstractness of the issue that can be such a barrier to action can be partly artificially
induced to protect us from feeling.
Failure to resolve this affect causes scapegoating and violence
The affect refused in intellectualization can also be dealt with through displacement onto a
different, less threatening target. Winter & Koger (2004: 36) suggest that environmental
concern can be displaced in ineffective but more comfortable activities such as buying a T-shirt
with a whale picture or reconnecting with nature by going on carbon-emitting flights to exotic
lands. On the other hand, eco-anxiety can be displaced onto other groups and scapegoats ,
exasperating existing hatred of immigrants or conflicts such as the War on Terror.
Scapegoating mechanisms are always around but they tend to increase during times of anxiety
and uncertainty. A good example is the witch persecutions of the Early Modern Era, which
became a focal point, a lightning rod for all kinds of anxieties (religious, existential, sexual,
relational, social and psychological) connected to the transitional period from the medievalreligious to the modern-scientific world. (For psychoanalytic explorations of this history see
Lyndal Ropers [1994] Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Religion and Sexuality in Early
Modern Europe and Evelyn Heinemanns [2000] Witches: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the
Killing of Women.) Displacement can also result in blaming the ecological messenger, in a way
comparable to how the unpalatable insights of psychoanalysis still provoke enough emotion for
a whole Freud-burying (Tallis 2009) industry (but like the undead, one burial never seems
enough). As Marshall (2005) writes:
Climate change is deeply threatening to anyone whose world view sees increasing personal
consumption as a fair reward for a lifetimes dedication to the growth economy. We all feel small
and powerless in the face of a huge and daunting problem and although we are not actively
punished for speaking out against it, we are hardly well rewarded . . . Try bringing it up when a
friend shows you their holiday tan and you will see what I mean.
Alt Solves Anxiety/Turns Case

The K turns and solves casethe aff is a sledgehammer approach that breeds
anxiety, while the alt resolves the defense mechanisms that underlie climate
denialism
Psychoanalysts have long known that defences need to be tackled carefully. Perhaps green
campaigns, as worthy and as truthful as they may be, might at times have caused more harm
than good , representing a sledgehammer approach to tackling eco-defences. The shift
following the email scandal which, almost inevitably, was quickly labelled climategate by the
media (Jonsson 2010) is indicative of how powerfully our motivations influence our perception
of events, leading us to seize on any opportunity to refuse the anxiety-provoking situation. As
Lertzman (2008) writes, we have a way to go . . . before we can fully appreciate the impact
environmental issues have on our mental and emotional health. She argues that those working
in communication arts . . . [should] look at what psychoanalysts have to say about the nature of
anxiety; we may find a whole new approach to getting our messages across that may inspire
fight, rather than flight. A good place to start is Marshalls (2001) description of his reactions on
first hearing about the climate threat:
My first real exposure to the issue of climate change was reading a newspaper article in the
Sydney Morning Herald in 1988, by a leading Australian climatologist. Climate change, he said,
had the potential to destroy our society and even threatened our continued survival as a species.
I was deeply moved . . . A highly qualified scientist had calmly and credibly outlined a process
which, were it to be believed, made all other news in the paper marginal if not irrelevant. Yet
the story . . . sunk without a trace. I could see only two explanations; either it was a hoax, which
seemed unlikely, or it was so conjectural that no one could seriously accept it. Either way, my
immediate instinctive drive to do something was squashed. (Marshall 2001)
Only much later did he consider a third more psychoanalytic explanation, that people can
accept the truth of what is said without accepting the implications (ibid.). Here we have an
example of what psychoanalysis calls denial. In the classic scenario, Freud (1925) suggested that
the fetish covers over a lack that is simultaneously accepted and denied; in the textbook case of
the maternal phallus this translates as I know very well that mummy does not have a penis,
nevertheless I do not really accept it. Are we dealing here with a kind of mass denial of the
castration of Mother Earth?
Freuds great insight in his topographical model is that we are not only looking at two different
psychological levels (conscious and unconscious) but also two different forms of mental
functioning (Freud 1911), embodied in the primary and secondary process for which there is now
some empirical support from experimental psychology and neuroscience (e.g. Shevrin 1996).
These ideas have also received a more rigorous mathematical-logical formulation in MatteBlancos (1998) bi-logic, which uses set theory to describe the unconscious as infinite sets and
as functioning according to the principle of symmetry opposed to the asymmetric logic of
consciousness. The understanding that conscious and unconscious refer not only to two
different levels of functioning, but also to two different logics is crucial to looking at
unconscious defensive and affective responses to the threat of climate change.
One of the characteristics Freud (1911) attributed to the functioning of the unconscious mind is
that it can tolerate mutual contradictions without difficulty Matte-Blancos (1998) symmetric
logic while consciousness experiences what we now call cognitive dissonance (Cooper 2007).
This can be illustrated using Freuds (1905: 62) borrowed kettle joke. A man is told that he
should replace a pot he has borrowed and returned damaged. He refuses, claiming: 1. When I
gave it back it was fine; 2. The hole was there when you gave it to me; 3. I never borrowed it in
the first place! These three mutually contradictory answers alert us to the presence of
unconscious processes, which in this case are united by the underlying motivation or desire to
be found innocent, to remove the blame, to prevent the need for any action or effort to remedy
the situation (see also the Irma injection dream in Freud 1900a: 106121).
This joke is particularly useful in our context because of its structure (mutual contradictions
united by a common motivation), the fact that a kettle is, like our climate, a container that can
be broken when heated up beyond a certain limit, and because the jokes formula corresponds
well to the many arguments against action on climate change (often argued by the same person
simultaneously). For the purposes of simplification these can be summarized in three positions,
progressively accepting more of the reality of the ecological crisis but all resulting in inaction: 1.
Its not happening; 2. Its not my fault; 3. Theres nothing we can do about it (so I can just get on
with my life as usual). What phantasies, anxieties and defences are expressed within these
positions?
1. Theres nothing wrong with the climate kettle
The first set of phantasies behind this position are basically paranoid in structure (e.g. a
conspiracy by Al Gore, the UN or communists trying to take away our freedom, or capitalists
trying to stop third world countries from developing so they remain exploitable, etc.). The
second set of ideas claims that the evidence is not conclusive, the implication being that we
need 100 per cent certainty to take the action scientists suggest is required (the IPCCs
unequivocal is just not unequivocal enough). At first this appears more logical, but when
compared with other evaluations of risk its irrationality becomes more apparent. Few would
agree to play Russian roulette (without some suicidal inclination) even with a 90 per cent
certainty of not getting the bullet, yet the scientific consensus is that we are all playing Russian
roulette with the entire planet with far, far worse odds.
2. There was a hole in the planet when you gave it to me
Here there are two main contradictory claims (often argued simultaneously): It is just a regular
pattern of climate variation, or its due to sunspots, or the earth is shrinking, it is not our
(humanitys) fault. Alternatively, It is caused by other people (India, China), not me, so theres
nothing I can (or should) do, so I may as well just ignore it. Both contradictory beliefs (not
human-caused and caused by other humans) support the unconscious deflection of guilt onto
the not-me. However, even if one were true, the deflection of guilt does nothing to stop the
disastrous consequences of climate change so we would still need to take urgent action. One
psychoanalytically interesting conclusion from this is that at least at times people can fear guilt
more than their own, or even everyones, destruction.
3. There is nothing we can do about it
All the kings horses and all the kings men cant put the climate back together again, so why
should we bother? This is also found in many pessimistic, burnt-out environmentalists filled
with overwhelming feelings of despair and disempowerment.
The different arguments over the planetary kettle boil down (pun intended) to defences against
specific anxieties. To use Kleinian terminology: Its not happening (the kettle is fine) involves
psychotic defences against paranoid-schizoid anxiety (destruction, fragmentation and
annihilation); Its not our/ my fault involves neurotic defences against depressive anxiety
(difficulty in acknowledging human culpability and guilt); It is happening and it is our fault, but
theres nothing I/we can do about it is closest to recognizing and engaging with the problem. But
without a realistic chance for reparation the individual is stuck with the despair and pain of the
depressive position without hope (the non-manic hope that reparation is possible, as opposed to
the manic hope leading to short-term activism which collapses when change is not rapid
enough). More primitive defences, such as splitting, may then need to be employed.
Alt Solves Consumption

Alt solvesover-consumption is just one symptom of an underlying identity crisis
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
The self-psychological work of Kohut (1985) and the independent object relations approach of
Winnicott (1987) both suggest that narcissistic disorders are related to a fragile sense of self. The
objects of consumer society may therefore function as self-objects in Kohuts (1985) sense,
which temporarily stave off the crisis, resulting in a cultural addiction to consumerism which
becomes an obstacle to developing more fulfilling object relations and authentic psychological
health, as well as being a major contributor to the ecological crisis. Wachtel (1989, cited in
Bigda-Peyton 2004) argues that a social level of analysis is also required. The alienation and
absence of community in the modern world, the fragmentation of friendship networks and job
insecurity, among other things, all lead to a vacuum into which the corporations step, with
major ecological and psychological consequences. In this context, Gomes and Kanner (1995b:
8081) argue that First World consumer habits are one of the two most serious environmental
issues the world faces, the other being the crisis of overpopulation.
Corporate advertising is likely the largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the
human race, yet its stunning impact remains curiously ignored by mainstream Western
psychology . . . [L]arge-scale advertising is one of the main factors in American society that
creates and maintains a peculiar form of narcissism . . . [I]n the United States during the
1920s . . . desire for non-essential goods and products was so weak that it needed active and
ongoing cultivation . . . Creating such false needs was not such an easy task . . . [T]oday, the
drenching of the psychological and physical environment with commercial messages has
become so complete that people are largely numb to it. (ibid.)
From an ecopsycological perspective, Gomes and Kanner (1995b) link over-consumption to
Winnicotts false-self, forming what they call the all-consuming self. Winter and Koger (2004:
44) similarly argue that without a firmly rooted internal organization, we are likely to use
external objects to express who we are, so that much of our over-consumption may be driven by
a false-self system. This needs to be understood developmentally. According to Bigda-Peyton
(2004: 253), early in development children learn to substitute what they are told to want for
what they truly want.
By the time they reach adulthood, authentic feelings lie buried and individuals have only the
vaguest sense that something is missing. The false self masks unacknowledged longings . . .
Gruen (1995) writes that this alienation from personal experience may account for why there
would be little empathy for the environment. How can there be true empathy for
externals if there is no empathy for the self? Further, he suggests that individuals may
create pain in the external world in order to know their own feelings of pain. (ibid.)
Theodore Roszaks (2009) research on consumerism suggests that shopping can serve multiple
psychological functions such as overcoming depression, providing a sense of control over ones
life through the power to decide what to buy, a way to deal with painful relationship break-ups,
and an addiction providing an experience to temporarily fill the void. He calls on

environmentalists to look at ecologically destructive behaviour as not the behaviour of
monsters, but of troubled human beings trying to cope with jobs and families while the world
around them seems to be turning to dust and ashes (Roszak 2009: 32). If indeed we are looking
at something which functions in some sense like an addiction, the lesson from psychotherapy is
that the worst thing to do with addicts is to shame them . . . making them feel more guilty may
only make things worse . . . [like] scolding a pyromaniac for setting fires (Roszak 2009: 33).
Ecopsychologists have long claimed that the roots of our psychological difficulties reflect our
damaged relationship to the natural world, which Michael Cohen (1997) calls nature-deficit
disorder. This kind of discussion remains highly controversial within psychoanalysis. The
traditional approach would be to analyze environmental concern as reflecting deeper feelings
relating to human objects, internal and external. However, might this not sometimes be the
other way round? Should psychoanalysis rule out the possibility from the outset that an
individual human conflict could be instead a displacement from anxiety concerning the
environment? Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are not used to thinking in these terms, but
thankfully this is beginning to change.
Alt Solves Environment

The alternative is key to move beyond an anthropocentric value system to an
interconnected environmental perspective that can solve environmental
destruction
Crisis, The ecology of phantasy, 81-82, Routlege, ISBN: 978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
Ecopsychologists aim to move beyond anthropocentrism by drawing on Deep Ecologys
neoSpinozist affirmation of value in nature, beyond any potential human practical or aesthetic
benefit (Naess 1988; Tobais 1985). Ecopsychology describes a historical process in psychology
which moves from a one-person focus on intrapsychic processes, to wider object relational,
social or systemic especially family systems (Koopmans 1998) perspectives. Beyond this
ecopsychology proceeds from the assumption that at its deepest level the psyche remains
sympathetically bonded to the Earth and suggests the psychoanalytic idea that, at least in part,
we can read our transactions with the natural environment . . . as projections of unconscious
needs and desires (Roszak 2002: 34).
Roszak (1995: 8) claims, in a way analogous to this books emphasis on the importance of
ecology and complexity theory to psychoanalysis, that psychology needs ecology to escape from
the atomistic materialism of 19th-century physics because ecology, perhaps the paradigm of the
new sciences, is the study of relationships. Mack (1995) relates the ecopsychological project to
Freuds psychoanalysis:
Freud and his followers . . . invented psychoanalysis in response to the fact that the extreme,
deceitful ordering of mens and womens sexual lives by a rigidified bourgeois society was
becoming emotionally intolerable and producing behavioral and physiological manifestations
that could not be understood or treated by the medicine or neuropsychiatry of the day. We
confront now a new kind of problem . . . the agonizing murder of the life systems of the Earth . . .
What would a psychology of the Earth be like? It would need to be comprehensive, holistic,
systemic . . . [and] dynamic . . . to explore profound, largely ignored conscious and unconscious
feelings, impulses, and desires in relation to the physical world . . . to tell unpleasant or
unwelcome truths about ourselves . . . as we have learned to do from psychoanalysis. (Mack
1995: 280282)
Freud is still relevant here as his psychology is already at least implicitly relational, exploring the
interactions between intrapsychic agencies, individuals and groups. For Mack (1995: 282),
however, a true relational psychology of the Earth would need to go further and include our
relation with other living beings and the Earth itself as a living entity. Part of the problem is
that we are not used to thinking in this way. Indeed Mack argues that Western culture views the
Earth primarily as a thing, a dead object to be
owned, mined, fenced, guarded, stripped, built upon, dammed, plowed, burned, blasted,
bulldozed, and melted to serve the material needs and desires of the human species at the
expense, if necessary, of all other species, which we feel at liberty to kill, paralyze, or domesticate
for our own use. (ibid.)
For Metzner (1993: 66) this gets to the heart of our current crisis, as he argues that the entire
culture of Western industrial society is dissociated from its ecological substratum, a
dissociative split also found in our religious and spiritual traditions where spirit is envisaged
as rising upward, into transcendent realms, whereas nature, which includes bodily sensations
and feelings, draws us downward toward the demonic. This split can also be observed in Freuds
description of conflict between the human ego consciousness, which has to struggle against the
unconscious, body-based, animal id, in order to attain consciousness and truly human culture
(Metzner 1993: 6667).
We dont get much further with Jung, according to Roszak (1995: 11 12), who claims that
Jungs collective unconscious . . . is filled, not with the tracks of beasts and . . . vegetative
energies, but . . . ethereal archetypes which is a conception . . . more to do with Plato than with
Darwin (although this critique of Jung within ecopsychology is unusual, as Jungian thought is
strong in this tradition; see for example Rust [2004, 2008] or Carter [2010]). Ecopsychology
sees itself as an attempt to heal such splits, and provide a psychology more sensitive to the
Earth. Roszak (2009: 36) asks us to recall the courage with which Freud faced the radical
madness of modern life in Civilization and Its Discontents where he was prepared to
psychoanalyze our entire culture. Ecopsychologists now working to liberate the ecological
unconscious are willing to do no less (ibid.).
Alt SolvesBecoming-Animal
Their apocalyptic rhetoric ruptures the holding environmentshattering
anthropocentrism through the alts viewpoint is key
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan] ***this evidence has been gender modified
Winnicotts (1987) important theory of the holding environment followed logically from his
distinction between the object mother (object of libidinous needs and desires) and what he
called the environment mother. The holding environment refers not only to the physical act of
holding but all phenomena resulting in feelings of being held, psychologically and emotionally
as well as physically. Holding applies to the good-enough mother expressing love for her infant,
and to therapists treating patients, and is especially applicable for treating those in more
regressed states. Winnicott suggested a line of development which connects the environment of
the womb to the stimulus barrier (Freud 1920), the holding environment of the (m)other and
family, and later social containers such as school, club or nation. Thus, the holding environment
can eventually become extended to include complex cultural and political organizations which
provide a sense of safety, of being looked after, held and protected, an idea with certain affinities
with the terror management theory (TMT) approach to world views.
Events such as 9/11 can be felt as rupturing the stimulus barrier and compromising the holding
environment (Rodman 2002). If we link these ideas to TMT, such events are equivalent to the
first realization that we will die , and force us to see that our civilization too may
eventually die . We have no rock on which to lean. Today, the Earths holding environment is
also threatened, a crisis of such enormity that full acknowledgement may lead to threats of
psychological disintegration and collapse. This is the mother of all holding environments which
contains all the others.
Dealing psychologically with environmental catastrophe (even more than terrorism) may seem
too apocalyptic, too difficult, and too painful to even contemplate . Instead we simplify, and
resort to splitting, projection, and denial. Using Winnicott we can begin to understand the
threatened trauma and may perhaps find more sensitive and effective ways of dealing with it.
We need to contain, process, and work through these anxieties, to allow a process of mourning
to take place, and to repair the damage and the deep splits in our social, psychological, and
ecological worlds.
Winnicott brought the environment into psychoanalytic consideration but Searles went further
in his book The Nonhuman Environment (1960), where he argued that we need to open up our
concept of transference beyond human object relations to include the non-human world ,
and to recognize the importance of these experiences for neurosis, psychosis, and for healthy
contact with nature. Searles took the first steps towards a truly ecopsychoanalytic approach
when he called for a psychoanalysis that takes into account not merely [hu]man in his [or her]
human environment, but [hu]man in his [or her] total environment (Searles, cited in Nelson
1961: 121), supporting the contention that internal and external (environmental) worlds are
deeply connected (Mishan 1996; Weintrobe 2011a).
Only very recently, as psychoanalysts have begun waking up to the ecological crisis, have a
number of writers referred to the prescience and importance of Searles paper (see for example
Jordan 2009). Referring to Mahlers concept of separation-individuation (Mahler, Pine &
Begman 2000), Searles argues that this should be thought of as referring to breaking the
symbiotic bond not only with (m)other, but also with the non-human world, a process which
takes place only gradually and never completely. It thus remains an important aspect of our
lived experience. Searles suggests that the schizophrenic shares with the infant the difficulty in
separating self not only from mother, but also from the wider world, and argues that there is a
powerful potential for similar experiences of merger in all of us.
Nicholsen (2003), who draws on both Winnicott and Searles, suggests that our relation to
nature is connected to our earliest experiences, and that nature provides a containing mental
space. Furthermore, due to its connection with our developmental origins, much of our
relationship with nature occurs beyond (or perhaps before) words. For Nicholsen, the preverbal
nature of this relationship may add to our difficulty in speaking or thinking about our
environmentally damaging behaviour. In nature we at times find a place to experience merger
and envelopment, an experience both longed for and feared.
I believe that we . . . have anxiety usually at an unconscious level, and under extraordinary
circumstances at a conscious level not merely that we regress ontogenetically (to an infantile
or an intrauterine state, for example) but also lest we regress further, phylogenetically as it were
to an animal, vegetable or even inorganic state. Such anxiety is particularly intense, in my
experience, in neurosis and psychosis above all, in the latter. (Searles 1960: 179, cited in Brody
1962: 105)
Here we have a psychoanalytic approach through which we might view Deleuze and Guattaris
striking idea of becoming-animal (an idea discussed in Chapters 9 and 10). Searles (1972) takes
this further in his powerful paper Unconscious Processes in Relation to the Environmental
Crisis where he postulates that:
An ecologically healthy relatedness to our nonhuman environment is essential to the
development and maintenance of our sense of being human and that such a relatedness has
become so undermined, disrupted, and distorted, concomitant with the ecological deterioration,
that it is inordinately difficult for us to integrate the feeling experiences, including the losses,
inescapable to any full-fledged human living. (Searles 1971: 368)
Alt SolvesConfrontation
Confrontation with the psychology solves
We cannot begin the difficult problem of environmental clean-up until we allow ourselves to feel
the anger, disgust, or guilt that confronting our waste sites might elicit . . . We must be willing to
acknowledge dismay, sadness, and fear about our environmental predicament in order to free
up the psychic energy now used by the defences to be used in more creative problem
solving. From a psychoanalytic perspective, being willing to experience discomfort is the first
step toward a solution to our problems. (Winter & Koger 2004: 3940)
We need to confront our own dirt, including both the disavowed aspects of ourselves that
we project outwards or otherwise defend against, and also the pollution and waste that
physically embodies the shadow side of our culture. This is also discussed in a different way by
Slavoj Zizek, who in the film Examined Life (Astra 2008) choose to discuss ecology not by
standing in a beautiful rainforest or by a pristine lake but in a rubbish dump, and he calls on
ecologists to love such places, or at least to be able to bear them.
Winter and Koger (2004: 4849) argue that the first step in solving environmental problems is
to allow ourselves to feel . However, as Mary- Jane Rust (2008: 6) writes, this is difficult
because if we allow ourselves to feel, we might find a whole range of strong emotions, such as
anxiety and fear about the future, despair at our lack of political will, grief for so many losses,
guilt that we continue to be part of the cause, and more. On the other hand, when we block out
our feelings, we lose touch with the urgency of crisis (ibid.). As painful as they are, these feelings
are legitimate reactions to our situation and without directly experiencing them part of our
psyche must be allocated toward arranging a defence of them, thus robbing our full intelligence
for finding creative solutions (Winter & Koger 2004: 48).
Alt SolvesEcological Self

the alt lets us connect with an ecological self that fosters a new relationship to the
environmentsolves the aff
The ecological self
The nonhuman environment is . . . considered entirely irrelevant to human personality
development . . . as though human life were lived out in a vacuum . . . alone in the universe,
pursuing individual and collective destinies in a homogeneous matrix of nothingness, a
background devoid of form, colour and substance. (Searles 1960: 3)
The concept of the ecological self builds on the work of Searles (1960) and is defined by
environmental philosopher Paul Shepard as a self with a permeable boundary. . . . Ecological
thinking registers a kind of vision across boundaries (cited in Roszak 1995: 13). Drawing on the
new sciences of complexity and open systems, Joanna Macy (1995: 254) argues that what had
appeared to be separate self-existent entities are now seen to be so interdependent that their
boundaries can be drawn only arbitrarily . . . As open systems we weave our world, though each
individual consciousness illumines but a small section of it, a short arc in vaster loops.
According to Shepard (1995: 36), from the beginning of life, the fetus is suspended in water,
tuned to the mothers chemistry and the biological rhythms that are keyed to the day and
seasonal cycles.
The concept of the ecological self is crucial for creating a psychology as if the Earth
mattered , with the claim that when the self is expanded to include the natural world . . .
behavior leading to destruction of this world will be experienced as self-destruction (Roszak
1995: 12). From a psychoanalytic point of view, Spitzform (2000: 265) argues that the ecological
self needs to be incorporated into our developmental and relational models, because
psychoanalytic developmental theory lacks a framework for understanding the role played by
relatedness to the natural world for the emerging human self. Furthermore, the very existence
of this gap is difficult to see, like clean air, because we are so immersed in the natural world . . .
there is a sense of self which emerges within an ecological context, and is maintained into
adulthood by relationship with a wide range of non-human others (ibid.).
Shapiro (1995: 235) writes that the ecological selfs more flexible boundaries need to remain
clear enough that we can hold our own as creative, responsible partners, yet pliable enough that
we can bond and identify not only with our immediate family and ethnic heritage, but also with
the whole spectrum of beings around us. Others suggest that in attempting to foster an
ecological self through reawakening the senses in natural surroundings people will experience
periods of guilt and shame over their previously negligent or destructive environmental
behavior, as well as a desire to make amends (Gomes & Kanner 1995b: 91). This reparation is
connected to a move to what could be called an ecological depressive position, entailing a sense
of environmental remorse arising as part of a healing process and in direct response to a
strengthening bond with the land (ibid.).
Gomes and Kanner claim that such experiences and the widening of vision they entail lead to
more substantial and pervasive change than that induced by moral condemnation and
other types of external coercion (ibid.). E. O. Wilson makes a similar point, where he imagines
humans surviving through the current crisis, but ending up lonely on a decimated Earth, with
the sense of loss growing in us as we begin to realise what we have done, and what we are still
doing at an alarming rate:
As habitats shrink, species decline wholesale in range and abundance. They slip down the Red
List ratchet, and the vast majority depart without special notice. Being distracted and selfabsorbed, as is our nature, we have not yet fully understood what we are doing. But future
generations, with endless time to reflect, will understand it all in painful detail. As awareness
grows, so will their sense of loss. There will be thousands of ivory-billed woodpeckers to think
about in the centuries and millennia to come. (Wilson 2003: 104)
As may be expected, ecopsychology often draws on the Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 2000) which
postulates that the biota, oceans, atmosphere, and soils are a self-regulating system that plays
an active role in preserving the conditions that guarantee the survival of life on Earth (Roszak
1995: 13). This can at times tend towards eco-mysticism, but it should not be too easily
dismissed. The eco-therapist Sarah Conn claims that the world is sick; it needs healing; it is
speaking through us; and it speaks the loudest through the most sensitive of us (cited in Roszak
1995: 1213).
AT: Psycho cant solve

Even if the alternative doesnt literally provide the perfect policy solution,
incorporating psychoanalysis is key to effective solutions and knowledge
production in the future
Psychoanalysis cannot provide the answer to how we should respond, but it can help us to think
about the difficult questions and to avoid overly simplistic and reassuring answers. It is
important to study not only the defensive aspects of anti-environmentalist beliefs, phantasies
and behaviours, but also those found in the green movement itself, including flights into
superego moralism, reaching for comforting pseudo-solutions, or the collapse into despair. In
whatever form they take, social phantasy systems are constructed incorporating differing
individual and collective needs, anxieties, and defences.
Impacts
ImpactDomination
Their relationship to the environment cements patriarchal domination
978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
Searles (1972: 364) claimed that Freud greatly underestimated how formidable an Oedipal rival
the son or daughter remains to both the parents and how frequently it is the youthful contestant
who becomes in essence the victor. From this point of view environmental destruction and war
can promise to extinguish an Oedipal rival one has never . . . finally conquered, showing our
unconscious hatred of succeeding generations . . . our vengeful determination to destroy their
birthright through its neglect, in revenge for the deprivations, in whatever developmental era,
we suffered at our parents hands (ibid.).
In addition, in our culture, thanks to relentless advertising, possessions such as cars become a
symbol of genital achievement. So much so that Margaret Thatcher even claimed, apparently,
that a man who reaches 30 and finds himself on a bus must consider himself a failure (Randall
2005: 173). Relinquishing such symbols of (male) genital primacy feels like a castration. In
our culture, cyclists who choose not to own a car are often seen as somehow not quite adult.
Randall argued that this occurs when the environment mother is dealt with through the
equation of maturity (particularly masculine maturity) with the ability to dominate and exploit
her. This in turn is connected with the desire to escape her control and influence and the
phantasy that she no longer matters and perhaps that she never did (ibid.).
As Randall writes, once cars become a cultural and psychological icon of maturity and grownup-ness, there is an equating of realism with consumerist acquisitions, any other approach
being viewed as idealistic, immature and childish. However, behind this devaluation lies
contempt for the mother: it is a deeply narcissistic version of maturity which turns away from
the real relationship to the natural world (Randall 2005: 174). It is important to stress that it is
not only men who feel this contempt. Many women may also feel that the mature and realistic
position is to be too busy or important to worry about environmental concerns leading to a
relationship to the environment-mother . . . as troubled as their male counterparts (ibid.).
ImpactAnthro
Their mindset guarantees anthropocentric domination
Crisis, Object relations theory: A more ecological approach to mind, 62, Routlege, ISBN: 9780-203-15766-4, Evan]
Various commentators have described our era of late capitalism or postmodernism as a culture
of narcissism (Lasch 1991; Vital-Brazil 2001). This is not the place to explore the wider concept,
but it is useful in understanding not only over-consumption but our general attitude to nature.
Narcissism leads to a view of nature as only existing for our gratification, which is the crux of the
ecopsychological critique of anthropocentrism. Winter and Koger (2004: 45) write that by
positing that we are on top of the biological spectrum, humans portray their immaturity and
narcissism which prevent recognition of our responsibilities to members of our own species so
that we live for the present and try to suppress fears about the well-being of the next
generation.
ImpactRoot Cause of Violence

The disconnect between self and nature is the root cause of all violence
This is where Jordan sees a potential place for a psychoanalytic ecopsychology, drawing us ìnto
relationship with nature in ways that celebrate the complexities of our emotional worlds,
acknowledging not only the destructive tendencies of the human race, but also its capacity for
love and reparation, and directing this capacity toward the natural world' (ibid.). Thus, as
psychoanalysis opens itself up to a greater awareness of the web of life, the object-related self
and the narcissistic self need to be viewed as developing alongside the ecological self.
How, then, should we envisage a new psychodynamic developmental psychology which takes
such a relationship with nature seriously? According to Barrow (1995: 108) `the toddler who
takes his first steps away from his mother makes active forays into the world . . . what the
toddler is moving toward is as critical to him as what he is moving away from', an idea which
seems supported by research on the process of a child's developing relationship with their nonhuman environment (Wilson 2003; Sobel 2001). Whereas the child analyst Frances Tustin
understands the àwareness of bodily separateness' as the basic tragic fact of human life, Barrow
argues the contrary, understanding this very sense of separateness as fundamentally an illusion.
For Barrow (1995: 109), `my skin is not separate from the air around it, my eyes are not
separate from what they see.'
Barrow suggests that this illusion is unwittingly lent support by our conventional developmental
theories as well as by our nature-disconnected society (Cohen 1997). Fundamentally, Barrow
(1995: 109) claims that it is this which àccounts for our loneliness, that isolates us
and leads us to exploit and violate one another, the world we live in, and,
ultimately, ourselves .' This is the heart of the ecopsychological critique. As Gomes and
Kanner put it:
From an ecopsychological perspective . . . It is clear that we depend on the Earth for our life . . .
Yet we in urban-industrial civilization have centered our identity as a species around the
renunciation of this truth . . . By dominating the biosphere and attempting to control natural
processes, we can maintain the illusion of being radically autonomous . . . By acknowledging our
dependence, we allow gratitude and reciprocity to come forth freely and spontaneously . . .
unacknowledged dependence makes us act as parasites on the planet, killing off our own host.
(Gomes & Kanner 1995a: 115)
ImpactExtinction
Complexity of systems and climate change causes extinctionaff cant solve
Crisis, Ecology at the edge of chaos, 18-20, Routlege, ISBN: 978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
Trying to think about the sheer range and levels of the ecological crisis can be overwhelming.
Climate change operates globally with effects at all scales, from psychological to planetary.
However, one principle is clear: we live on a finite planet but have an economic system
predicated on unending growth. Whether we make the conscious choice to live sustainably or
not, this will come to an end one way or another. We are like infants unwilling to accept that the
breast is not a source of infinitely increasing nourishment. In the present context, any
suggestion of weaning, however gentle, is still heresy. Scientists estimate that human demand
may have exceeded the biospheres regenerative capacity since the 1980s, and already reached
120 per cent by 1999 and this demand is still rapidly increasing (Wackernagel et al. 2002: 926;
Norgaard & Randers 2002). Schmuck and Vlek (2003: 71) warn that without fundamental
changes in population growth, consumption patterns, and environmentally harmful
technologies, modern industrial human beings are likely to leave a gradually worn-out earth to
future generations.
How is the complexity approach relevant here? Science has grown up largely working with the
concept of linear systems where x input = x output in predictable, stable ways. Increasingly,
science realises that these linear relationships represent merely a special minority case in an
otherwise fairly nonlinear world . Systems theory (Bertalanffy 1968) and cybernetics
(Francois 1999) focused in their early stages on negative feedback processes, which allow
systems to self-regulate within certain parameters, like the thermostat which responds to
fluctuations in temperature by initiating a process to bring it back to a fixed point. Increasingly
in science today there is an emphasis on the study of nonlinearities driven by positive feedback
where an increase in a variable feeds back recursively producing catastrophic runaway increases
if not reined in eventually by negative feedback.
We can think about this using the concept of attractors which are points towards which a system
tends to converge. Wherever you place a marble in a washbasin the marble will roll towards the
plug hole attractor. Like a black hole, any variation in starting point within the basin of
attraction is cancelled out by the powerful pull of the attractor. Within limits as our body or
global climate temperature increases, negative feedback processes act to draw the system back
to a more central point. This is known as a point attractor (other more complex attractors
include periodic attractors and strange or chaotic attractors). However, when the marble is
moved to the edge of the basin, the slightest movement or air vibration can move it either back
into the basin (of attraction) or into a completely different attractor (falling out and rolling on
the floor). At these bifurcation points, nonlinearities rule as the slightest difference in starting
conditions or the tiniest fluctuation causes a radical shift, a phase transition to a new attractor
or set of attractors (Guastello 2004).
Climate scientists suggest that our climate may well be approaching such a tipping point, with
potentially lethal positive feedback processes which are no longer capable of being damped out
by the various negative feedback mechanisms in the system. An example from ecology would be
the population explosion. In a natural state, rabbits and foxes form a coevolving system
(Thompson 1994; Barbosa & Castellanos 2004), keeping each others populations in check
through negative feedback. If the foxes are removed and the rabbits also discover new spaces the
result is an explosive exponential population growth. Eventually when they surpass the carrying
capacity (as we have already done on our planet) there will be a crash in population numbers
once all resources are depleted. Such crashes can in the worst case lead to the population
concerned being wiped out , an experience which is unfortunately all too familiar from the
history of human societies.
The latter is explored in Jared Diamonds (2006) timely book Collapse: How Societies Choose to
Fail or Survive, where he applies a five-point framework in understanding how human societies
have been brought to states of collapse, sometimes total. These key factors include
environmental damage and resource depletion, climate change, hostile neighbours, decreased
support from friendly neighbours, and the societys response to its problems. Historically, each
of the factors have interacted in complex (often nonlinear) ways to cause the collapse of
civilizations such as the Mayan cities in Central America, Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean, the
Anasazi in North America, Norse Greenland, Mycenean Greece and Minoan Crete in Europe,
and the Khmer Angkor Wat and Harappan Indus Valley cities in Asia.
Will our own civilization follow its predecessors? Were this to occur the collapse might well be
more total and more global than anything previously seen. In his chapter on Easter Island,
Diamond (2006: 119) points out that they were as isolated and lonely in the pacific as the Earth
is in space, so when their collapse came, there was literally nowhere for them to run, and no help
to expect from outside. According to Diamond, much depends for us on the fifth criterion, how
we respond to the crisis of the first two factors environmental damage and climate change.
ATs
AT: Psycho is Anthropocentric

The alternative dissolves the human/nature binary
Crisis, Preface, xi-xii, Routlege, ISBN: 978-0-203-15766-4, Evan]
However, despite being essential to studying environmentalism and its discontents,
psychoanalysis still remains, thus far at least, largely a psychology without ecology.
Ecopsychology attempts to move beyond anthropocentrism by combining insights from both
ecology and psychology, offering an ecology of phantasy stressing the importance of the nonhuman environment in human development and offering a broader understanding of the role of
nature in psychotherapy. However, while invaluable in correcting certain psychoanalytic blind
spots, ecopsychology runs the risk of idealizing and mystifying Nature, a danger Lacanian and
postmodern approaches aim to deconstruct through an ecology without nature. Taken too far,
however, this leads to nature dissolving entirely into the human, all too human, realm of the
signifier.
AT: Indicts to Dodds

Critics cant give up their established notionsepistemology indict to their indict
Jordan, 11 [Martin Jordan, Senior lecturer in counselling and psychotherapy, Ecopsychology
and European Journal of Ecopsychology, editorial board member; HPC and UKCP registered,
introduction to: Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos: Complexity Theory, Deleuze|
Guattari and Psychoanalysis for a Climate in Crisis, Foreword, xiv, Routlege, ISBN: 978-0-20315766-4, Evan]
No one group will be completely comfortable with his ideas. The growing field of ecopsychology
will be reluctant to give up on long-held notions of nature and indigenous wisdom. Since
humans first manipulated their environment they have been making species extinct, yet the
current human-driven mass extinction is not going to be answered by linguistic games or by
imagining a benevolent Gaia which can be pacified through ritual. We need new forms of
thinking and being. Many psychoanalysts will also be unhappy giving up their love of structure
and the linear, although the inherent nonlinearities in psychoanalytic practice and theory would
find a much more appropriate home in these new ideas than the outdated nineteenth-century
models of science it still so often clings to. Scholars of Deleuze and Guattari will argue that they
oppose psychoanalysis on nearly every point so may be deeply sceptical of any project which
involves bringing these two fields together, although, as Dodds writes, in many ways this move
may be necessary to more fully develop Guattaris ideas of schizoanalysis, especially as applied
to the clinic.
AFF
2ACAlt Cant Solve

Alt cant solvethe drives the neg criticizes are inevitable, and attempts to make
people conscious of them causes backlash
Winter and Koger, 04 [Susan M. Koger, Deborah DuNann Winter, The Psychology of
Environmental Problems: Psychology for Sustainability, p. 32, google books, Evan]
Thus, the strong unconscious drives of Eros (sexual pleasure and reproduction) and Thanatos
(aggression, violence, and destruction) rule our actions, despite our most sophisticated attempts
to deny and conceal them. Becoming aware of our environmental problems does not mean
that we can easily stop ourselves from ruining our habitat, and it should be no surprise that we
continue to proceed even while we become conscious of our environmental crises.
Because behavior results from deeply buried instinctual drives, it is not easy to change. Freud
might say, if he were alive today, that our environmental predicament is inevitable. Like an
iceberg that has 80% of its mass below the surface, the human psyche, Freud believed, is
predominantly unconscious and unobservable, Freud posited that if we became aware of our
unconscious sexual and aggressive motivations, we would be greatly disturbed , Instead, our
psyches expend energy to keep impulses below the surface so that we can fool ourselves into
thinking that we behave for rational or moral reasons, when in fact much of our behavior is
driven by subversive needs, wishes, fears, and impulses that are quite selfish and
unacknowledged.
***Naturalism K***
Cut by Saul Forman
1NCNaturalism K (Oceans Link)

Theres an inherent interconnection between the external, oceanic environment
and the internal, oceanic psyche the Affs focus on increasing efficiency of ocean
development is a call of psychic trauma if we wish to save the planet, we must
begin with individual transformation
Chalquist, 3/17 Dept. Chair of East-West Psychology, California Institute of Integral Studies
(Craig, A Psyche the Size of the Sea, Huffington Post, 3/17/14,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-chalquist-phd/a-psyche-the-size-of-the_b_4976005.html)//SJF
A foundational observation of ecopsychology is that mental health is intertwined with the health of our planet .
As Theodore Roszak, a spokesman for the field, stated in his 1992 book The Voice of the Earth:
"Ecopsychology holds that there is a synergistic interplay between planetary and personal wellbeing. The term 'synergy' is chosen deliberately for its traditional theological connotation , which once
taught that the human and divine are cooperatively linked in the quest for salvation. The contemporary ecological
translation of the term might be: the needs of the planet are the needs of the person, the rights
of the person are the rights of the planet."
Andy Fisher expressed this concisely in his book Radical Ecopsychology: " Ecopsychology is a psychological
undertaking that essentially says 'we too are part of nature.'"
Why, then, don't we feel responsible for how we treat nature , place, and Earth? Perhaps because since the
Agricultural Revolution of ten thousand years ago we've shifted, as a species increasingly dependent on
mechanized farming, from revering the world as sacred to objectifying it as a resource . Institutional
religion and scientific industrialization cooperate exactly here, where the first demeans Earth as a
stage prop for divine doings and the second digs it up for the furnaces of mass consumption. The
argument that humans are separate from or somehow high above the rest of nature always
works in the end as an apologetics for nature's exploitation.
Those of us who read the news know we all face catastrophic climate change, but we see few reports about the decline
of our oceans. The sea around and below us forms a kind of collective unconscious , out of
sight but not out of psyche.
The depths that absorb the outpourings of carbon we pump into the air are acidifying and
overheating. Most of the large fish are gone, and the rest are perishing rapidly. Agricultural runoff
combines with oil spills to open enormous oxygen-absorbing dead zones as coral reefs and other
habitat decline. Human noise sends dolphins and whales off course; some strand themselves
and rot on the shore. False islands of discarded plastic gather offshore like complexes: centers of
psychic trauma spinning out of control.
It's difficult to see how any of this destruction will stop until we realize, in the heart as well as in the
head, that we are the sea . The earliest forms of life on Earth sparked in saline deeps. Declining plankton still feed plants
and animals even while replenishing the atmosphere. The sea gives us minerals and medicines, moist clouds and mild climates. We
can breathe because of it.
Beyond all this, the sea rises and drops, pulses and crests as a living planetary unconscious. What we
do to the sea we do to ourselves, individually, nationally, and irrevocably .

For we are not separate from our home world, nor can the refusal to acknowledge our
interdependence with the rest of nature lift us magically above it. Everything flourishes or
expires together. Global warming is an overheating of the human mind, a fiery internal combustion
not only in our carburetors but in our bypassed hearts. Plastic islands mirror our commodified
isolation; vanishing biodiversity echoes what Vandana Shiva calls a "monoculture of the mind." The
zombie-like desolation of dying reefs signals a depletion of the human spirit hanging in anxious
limbo somewhere between life and death.
Quite a few ocean
restoration and advocacy groups at least implicitly speak to this connection of inner
and oceanic. The Blue Ocean Institute, Oceana, Greenpeace, the Sea Shepherd Society, the Blue Frontier Campaign, the Ocean
Conservancy, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, and other such organizations always need the support of
citizens willing to spend some money and time to heal the sea. One need not be an activist to join. 350.org
has made big strides in persuading companies, schools, and even governments around the world to stop subsidizing fossil fuels that
render Earth uninhabitable before our eyes. National governments will not act effectively until responsible
citizens demand it.

To demand it requires a psychological transformation in our relationship to the natural world.
"The way we think of Nature affects the way we treat her," explains Janine Benyus in the film The Nature of
Things. "When we see nothing but resources, everything is at our disposal. But when we begin to see
organisms and ecosystems as mentors, we become students, and our relationship changes: from
hubris to humility."
One might start with two simple questions: How do I feel my attachment to the sea? How does
this connection show up in my life?
For some of us it shows up in acts of appreciation, as when we admire the sun rising and setting over
the watery horizon. Our culture tends to either depreciate esthetics or reduce them to a theory of
art, but esthetics of the heart connect us directly and powerfully to what we see and sense and
feel.
When our relations with Earth and sky and sea remain unconscious, however, they show up instead as
emotional discomforts and even symptoms we often fail to understand. "My" depression , "my"
anxiety, "my" bewilderment and inner deadness: what on Earth is the matter with me? Perhaps the matter is
outside as well as inside. "I believe," writes ecopsychologist Sarah Conn, "that each of us now experiences in
some way -- physically, psychologically, economically, or politically -- the pain oxf the Earth ."
Perhaps the matter is actually connection, resonance, empathy for the troubled depths.
Some years back I received a jolting reminder of this connection from a dream so troubling I doubt I
will ever forget it. The dream was not an ordinary nightmare. The sense of responsibility it gave me has been
difficult to shoulder, so I don't try to alone. As trauma never seen before reaches around and into
the world, the species featured in the dream is perishing in record numbers. My impression is that more and
more people suffer dreams like this as the life of the world calls out to us to change course.
Here was the dream:
"I am swimming in the ocean. Before me a manatee looms into view. To my horror I see that its
skin is falling off. The entire body deteriorates before my eyes.
As I watch, the manatee turns toward me and directs a thought at me. One word,
telepathically conveyed in the way dreams sometimes do: 'Hurry.'"
1NCNaturalism K (War Impact)

Violence is a social phenomenon passed through inter-generational memorylack
of connection to nature causes that violence to manifest
Thoman, 9 M.A., Department of English at University of Wyoming, reviewed by Peter
Parolin, Department Head/Chair, Department of English of University of Wyoming, Don Roth,
Dean, The Graduate School at University of Wyoming (Dixie S, Deconstructing the Myth of the
American West: Mcmurtry, Violence, Ecopsychology and National Identity, May 2009,
ProQuest)//SJF
My analysis here rests on two key premises. The first is that human action and displays of violence arise from a
social desire to verify identity and culture and the assumption that such violence is not in itself a
natural human desire, but a culturally produced one. The second premise is that humankind has
an unhealthy, unconscious desire for violence that stems from a lack of interconnections with
nature. Leopold and Roszaks calls for human connection to nature, and Wests explanation of a lack thereof, have led me to
believe that a deeper unconscious human shadow desire for a more natural, nature-oriented
mankind has led modern literature to unhealthily include barbaric and savage violence .
Unfortunately, a more natural state of mankind is not war and torture; instead, in a natural state,
mankind should exemplify, according to Amorok, a peaceful, nature-based tribal culture of the preNeolithic period. Realistically, this is an unlikely move. Ironically, Americans have reduced what is left of the real wilderness
to a charity case that is in national parks and preservesrather like keeping a once independent parent confined in a rest home.
Never-the-less, the psychic wilderness lives on in imaginative writing , particularly the Western novel (Heyne,
7). Amoroks essay suggests that a
tangible solution to facing and overcoming the problem of a cultural

shadow of a repressed need for nature is through understanding torture and violence
narratives, accepting and reconciling them in their socio-historical contexts, and moving to
communal psychological health by reasserting a firm connection with nature.
These historical traumas (of violence) and their psychic legacies are passed on
intergenerationally through families, institutions, societies, cultures, and nations. Healing such
intergenerational wounds ultimately requires truth and reconciliation, and the restoration and
reparation of soul and land. This has not been done in most places on Earth that have been repeatedly ravaged by human
violenceWe must acknowledge our violent histories, grieve our transgressions, make reparations, and begin the healing process for
all. (Amorok, 31) Amorok suggests that the best approach to McMurtrys torture and violence is to study it,
deconstruct it, recognize it as the shadow, and look past it. Ecopsychological Renewal and Assertion
of Common Identity Following Amoroks example would require a deep ecologist stance toward human interconnection with
nature. Greg Garrard points out that deep ecology encourages notions of self-realization that depend on a process of selfidentification with all life, especially nature. The shift from a human-centered to a nature-centered system
of values is the core of the radicalism attributed to deep ecology, bringing it into opposition with
almost the entirety of Western philosophy and religion (21). This nature-centered approach
seems to offer a solution to the shadow of violence by changing the way Americans approach
identity. Psychology has long ignored nature in its theories of the human mind. A handful of contemporary
psychologists, however, are exploring the linkages between environmental conditions and mental health ,
some regarding the modern estrangement from nature as the basis of our social and psychological ills (Glotfelty
xxi). The psychological ills referred to include desires for violence that falsely appear to unite and
connect mankind. Amorok urges a new approach to social identity and community be found through
better relations and connections to nature.
To be consciously immersed in our ecological and cosmological identity and relationships imparts a
feeling of profound intimacy. The experience of interconnectedness contains paradox, for we
sense not just the profound beauty of life but also the pandemic of human violence and the
existential anxiety that it causes (Amorok, 29).
Many of McMurtrys characters that display acts of violence and torture have no connections to the land; they are all renegades, not
belonging to any specific place, unconnected to nature, and lost in a disturbing penchant for torture. This further supports that acts
of violence stem from an unnatural unconnection with nature. A healthy society must have a
connection with nature and use that connection to support notions of community and identity.
True historical narratives of an American connection to nature must ensue in order for the
disturbing shadows of violence to decrease. I have provided examples of McMurtrys representations of violence
and torture and, although they have historical validity, explained that such stories and myths of the American frontier are a likely
response to the Jungian notion of the unconscious shadow. These unconsciously desirable, though uncivilized,
acts seem to fulfill a psychological need to understand human place (through continued acts that connect
mankind) and identity. However, I use West and Amoroks ideas to show that a deeper shadow and desire for
human connection to nature could rectify the glorification of violence in Western narratives and
establish a congruent community and healthy human identity. Thus, a fostering of ecopsychology
and deep ecology narratives could be the solution to an increasingly uncivil America.
Andrew Samuals further suggests that the task of depth psychologists who seek to engage with the
political are to locate the enormous psychic energy that is presently locked up in collective and
subjective self-disgust, and try to release that energy so that it becomes available for political
renewal (West, 20). This notion of energy is similar to Jungs approach to the unconsciousness guiding
a symbolic life. If society is informed of its shadows and confronts them, the societal psychic
energy and interest could be replaced with more progressive and peaceful approaches to life.
Amorok reaffirms that not perceiving the sacred presence of nature and not experiencing oneself as interconnected
with life is arguably the greatest threat facing the Earth today (29). If literary critique and analysis like this
became mainstream, perhaps literature would become more psychologically productive and less violently oriented.
1NCNaturalism K (Psycho Alt)

A radical re-framing of ecological crises is necessarythese negative reactions to
the technological-economic realm of society are manifestations of our detachment
from wildernessinstead of retreating behind immediate action, we must break
free from domination of the conscious
Soule, 10 MA and PhD candidate at Meridian University, has been devoted to developing the
field of ecopsychology for 25 years, teaches Nonviolent Communication in San Quentin Prison
and is an adjunct faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies (Rene,
Ecopsychology and Peace, The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace, 2/18/10,
http://www.ecopsychologist.com/publications-writings/ecopsychology-and-peace-extendedversion)//SJF
Nor are despair, anger, confusion, and disappointment. Ecopsychologists are faced with the awkward and
difficult task of being healers who advocate experiencing these and other challenging emotions
because authentic emotional responsiveness is a sign of health! However, inviting emotional
responses to what is happening in our world is not an invitation to wallow in emotional swamps .
Ecopsychologists are keenly aware of this danger because they may themselves have been stuck in slippery depths of despair longer
than necessary. (Which is why they became ecopsychologists!)
There are two main ways to avoid emotional quagmires. First of all, being awake, sensitive, and accountable must be balanced with
capacities to transmute negative feelings into their positive expressions or capacities. Fear transmutes into courage,
shame into belonging, despair into compassion, anger into fierceness, and so forth . Perhaps even
evil can be transmuted into eros, agape, and filial love. This kind of work cannot be undertaken lightly on a
single weekend retreat. Transmuting negative affects requires significant and sustained psychological
work, ideally in community and with skilled assistance.
Secondly, denying or suppressing uncomfortable feelings deadens effective responsiveness and
cripples our capacity for joy, ecstasy, and creativity. Psychic numbing aborts deeper exploration
of the drives that underlie and inspire our feelings, namely our values, possibilities, and needs.
We must let ourselves be affected! All feelings, however uncomfortable, are connected to deep yearnings and needs. Despair or
anger may connect us to needs for accountability, renewed purpose, and community . Follow the
feelings. Explore and touch the yearnings that stimulate emotional wretchedness. This is the work of
ecopsychologists who refuse to pathologize negative emotions. Staying in touch with needs and
aspirationseven if they are not yet realizedis often uncomfortable but can, over time, inspire life-changing
behavior and novel approaches to age-old problems. Indeed, what else will?
Cultivating a Shift in Thrills
Have you ever used a chain saw? The roar, the power, the vivid surprise of cutting through a massive solid tree like butter, hearing
the deafening CRASH as it falls and leaping out of the way, just in time, the rush of conquest thrilling in your veins. TIMBERRRRR!
Have you ever planted a tree? Have you sweated and blistered your hands digging a hole in the ground? Finally, the rocky hole is
deep enough. Breathing heavily, kneeling in the damp earth, head lowered, cold and dirty fingers fumble carefully with the saplings
delicate roots. You fill the hole, one shovel at a time, and gently tamp the soil down. This tough and tender work demands care and
concentration. Rising to your feet, stretching your spine and creaky knees, you know this tree will reach full glory long after you are
dead and melted into the same dark soil encrusting your fingernails.
Sustaining peace and restoring our battered environment require a shift from the thrill of
conquest to the enduring, unreasonably committed, and patient thrill of mothering, fathering,
grandparenting, and great-great-great grandparenting. Being nourished steadily by an enduring connectedness
to life rather than by the personal satisfaction of immediate conquest demonstrates a
psychological shift in what gives us pleasure and excitement.
Humans will always need fun outlets for conquest and aggression, but, even more, we need to
cultivate the slow and mature joy of planting and watering trees rather than felling them. We
need to change our definitions of happiness.
Crisis as a Rite of Passage
Through the eyes of the soul, catastrophe
is an adventure. Soul seeks out and perhaps inadvertently creates crisis.

One way to reframe crises is to see them as trials on a long evolutionary journey . Perhaps humanity
is undergoing an initiatory rite of passage rather reaching a dead-end. Indeed, old ways of surviving that
have brought our species tremendous success and wealth are now killing us. Environmental activists habitually wag their fingers and
rub noses into the collective soiled carpet, Bad. Very bad. See what we have done? It may be more effective to shift
away from the bad dog approach of activism and reframe crisis as invitation or opportunity.
Emphatic enticement rather than haranguing might be a more effective way of eliciting changes
in behavior. Look! Meeting requirements for peace and sustainability will make us happier!
We are being invited, in no uncertain terms, to shed old skins and grow. Not all initiations are undertaken
willingly. Often we are dragged kicking and hollering to the threshold of a new life. Yet it is through the ordeals of
initiation that the soul is tempered and made strong, flexible, and able to serve life in creative
ways. Maturity and wisdom are not inherited, but wrought and wrung from life by each individual in their own way.
Reframing our situation from crisis to initiation changes the role of peace and environmental activists from gadfly to guide. With this
shift, our work becomes therapeutic and transformative. We are calling for actions that require inner clarity and
emotional wholeness which, when embodied, become a leap in evolution for humanity. This kind of
activism takes patience, compassion, and a capacity to inspire the imagination. Remember that reacting to the smell of smoke or the
cry of a child is very different than responding to global warming. Abstract dangers and inconvenient truths do
not explicitly signify a red-blinking DANGER! DANGER! Concrete dangers cause us to leap
into action without thought. But connecting the steady pressing of our foot upon the gas pedal to
drowning polar bears in the Artic is a huge stretch in imagination. Connecting melting icecaps to broken
levies in New Orleans is another stretch. Both link human actions to the fate of others and disparate disasters
to common causes.
Here we arrive at the key fertile juncture of peace and environmentalismthe human imagination. Imagination can be
harnessed to the engines of war and remain shackled to the structured rape of nature. Or it can
shake free. It can stretch and leap! Imagination is the key and the doorway to a different future than the one we are headed
toward. It is the territory of soul whence come songs, stories, art, and creative action. Always the human imagination has been the
unquenchable mother of invention and revolution. Now, ready or not, it has become the potential grandmother of
evolution. We will either re-imagine a future where we live in harmony with each other and with
nature, and find ways to get there, or we wont. Indeed, the same inborn capacity to imagine what is not
physically palpable in the moment, that tortures our species with the fear of death, and allows us
to live in denial of reality, can also inspire us to envision the impossible and make dreams come
true. This is our choice.
That being said, the imagination, the mysterious core of the human soul, is part of nature and therefore not
always in our conscious control. We heed our imagination, we dont direct it. But we can inspire our
imagination, give it space, and entice it to participate in the journey towards peace and
ecological balance. When a freed imagination is engaged, anything is possible. And it's fun.
2NCNaturalism K (Psycho Key)

Individual transformation is a prerequisite to addressing outward environmental
problems
Ready or not, the soul has become a force of nature. Its whims, fantasies, and passions shape life on
Earth as inexorably as storms, fires, and ocean currents . Global warming may be attributed to
rising CO2 in our atmosphere, but really it is caused by a human love for speed, power, and a fantasysaturated, sometimes mindless pursuit of happiness. Global warming is psychosomatic illness on a
planetary scale! The health of the human soul and the vitality of Earths living systems are now
inextricably intertwined.
Ecopsychology is an ancient branch of psychology reborn and re-invented to respond to this modern healing crisis. This
approach rests upon a fundamental assumption of mutually assured destruction or mutually assured
evolution. Humans have always depended on nature to survive, and now nature depends on us.
Situated upon the seamless, and often violent, frontline between humans and nature, ecopsychology connects personal
psychological healing with ecological remediation and balance. What can this re-emerging field offer to a
conversation about peace?
Humanitys march into modernity has been, in essence, a war on nature. As we face possible
extinction, the obvious question arises: Just who, and what, is nature? Are we not nature? Who is the
enemy? Are we not them? As the world shrinks and our technological savvy increases, wars upon
nature and each other reach simultaneous and climatic dead-ends. As usual, it is peril that invites
humans to revise old survival strategies (like war) and adapt to new conditions.
Peace and environmental activists stand at the same cliff and face similar leaps in imagination. We also face eerily similar questions
and are arriving at parallel answers. Because maintaining dynamic peace with each other and with nature are new frontiers for
humans, this work is necessarily soulful, collaborative, and courageously imaginative. Divine passion for (and with) each other and a
wild love of adventure, not profit or power will, in the end, inspire the changes we need to make. The unexplored, tender,
unruly, and therefore well-defended, terrain of soul is the fertile, and potentially synergistic,
overlapping territory shared by peace and ecology.
Shared Fundamentals: Belonging, Home, and Community
Only a culture that divorces mind and matter, soul and soil, humans and hummus needs
semantic glue to connect ecology and psychology. Radical divisions exist in our opinions and
fantasies, not in reality. Ecopsychology seeks to re-establish emotional and physical ties with the
natural world because, at its foundation, our mental and physical health rests upon this belonging. In
fact, the root word of ecology, oikos, means "home." We eat, breathe, and are made of this earth. We are, each of us, the
very stuff of the cosmos. A psychological break in our sense of organic belonging delays and distorts the
natural development of wisdom, shatters inner peace, and leaves us vulnerable to mindless
consumerism, poor self-esteem, workaholism, and many other social maladies . Urban living,
where money comes out of machines, apples magically appear in bins, and clean water comes from a pipe, exacerbates this
ruptured belonging. In the standard IQ test there is a story about planting a tree, finding worms,
and going fishing with a tin of wrigglers. Urban children often fail to piece this story together,
because many of them have never planted a tree or dug up a worm, let alone gone on a fun fishing expedition. They have no idea that
their lives depend upon healthy worms. This loss in ecological intelligence is, in the long run, fatal.
Peace on Earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment. So spoke the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2004 when
explaining to a surprised world why, for the first time, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an environmentalist, Wangari Maathia.
There was no need for this kind of explanation when, three years later, the prize was awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC for their many
years of work with climate change. A mere three years later, the connection between peace and ecology was
obvious. A healthy environment is a foundation for peace, and a healthy environment depends
on healthy people who cultivate and celebrate a sense of belonging to the land and each other.
Unfortunately, a healthy relationship with nature does guarantee peace. Hitler was a vegetarian. George Bush loves his ranch in
Texas. Martin Luther King most likely never went on a wilderness trip. Genocides occur in stunningly beautiful places. Pre-modern
hunters and gatherers had vicious fights. Countless pristine meadows grow over heaped bodies of warriors. What makes grass grow
green? bark Marine Sergeants to new American military recruits. Blood! Blood! Blood! they shout in response.
Harmony with nature and harmony with each other are not mutual guarantees, but a degraded environment clearly
instigates social disharmony, and even total disintegration. We witness this in current food riots
around the world, the tragic failed state of Haiti, and the collapse of the Mayan, Anasazi, and
Easter Island civilizations. A healthy relationship with the environment will always remain the
foundation for lasting peace and the flowering of culture.
Building and Becoming Bridges
Social and ecological degradation share a key common cause. A lack of genuine empathy
underlies all violence in relationships, be they personal, political, or ecological. Wanton violence
against each other or the environment indicates a flawed relationship with the other. Missing
are the bridges that connect each other to a shared reality and destiny. How do we build, or
more accurately, how do we become these bridges?
Tapping the wellspring of traditional shamanism, ecopsychology tends the fertile edges where the ordered
conscious world meets what is wild, uncontrollable, and mysterious . Modern ecopsychologists may not use
rattles, feathers, and smoke (some do), but they still mediate the relationship between humans and nature in ways that are healing,
personal, and transformative. Imagine an entomologist delicately holding a tarantula in her palm before an audience of gawking
children. Slowly, with a mischievous grin, she places the hairy creature upon the head of a young volunteer who holds perfectly still
while his classmates squeal with laughter, delight, and horror. This naturalist does not consider herself a traditional shaman or
modern ecopsychologist, yet she fits the mold because she cultivates emotional connection with the utterly other. Peacemakers
must also bridge worlds and mend broken connections, even when the other is perceived as being worse that a hairy spider!
Those dedicated to building bridges between species or human enemies must have an unquenchable dedication to what is possible,
because they tend treacherous and unstable territories between what we are and what we can be. They themselves must have made
the journey from limitation to possibility. They must, in their unique ways, become bridges.
This process of embodying connection and interrelatedness is often hard won. Usually ones own
little world must come crashing down before one can make a connection to a larger, more
inclusive reality. Sometimes a brush with death, emotional breakdown, or irretrievable loss can
become doorways to grace. Tasting the unbearable sweetness of life and experiencing its fragility can awaken humans to
new levels of expansive maturity and grounded concern. Al Gore was inspired to write Earth in Balance: Ecology and the Human
Spirit when sitting in fear, grief, and despair by the bedside of his fatally wounded son struggling to breathe. Only tempered souls
and tempered steel can become the stuff of bridges. Enduring and dynamic peace demands that we each , in our
own way, do
the hard work and undergo the suffering necessary to become bridges between self
and other.
2NCNaturalism K (Solves Race)

Addressing ecological identity is a necessary precondition to addressing the social
anxiety that manifests in racial violence
Building and becoming bridges entails a shift in identity. An aim of ecopsychology is to develop an ecologicalself that is not rigidly bounded by human identity but expands to include air, water, and our larger
Earth family of creatures and plants. This soulful and difficult-to-describe expansion may seem mystical, but it is the
natural bedrock of mental health in ecopsychology. Over time, an inclusive ecological identity
fosters a vibrant capacity to think and feel ecologically , to connect the dots, and to affirm
interrelatedness by daily behavior that is respectful of all life. A comparable expansion of identity
that is inclusive of all humanity is also necessary to build bridges between peoples in conflict. Inclusive
identity softens and dispels instilled prejudices that contaminate, distort, and destroy social
relations.
Expanding ones identity must be balanced by consistent movement towards intimacy with ones
unique individuality. Identity expansion without attentiveness to the individual self can be psychologically damaging. Selfesteem still matters. An outwardly expanded sense of self demands a counterbalancing journey inward to discover ones personal
calling and deepest, and very personal, affections. Each of us has something unique and vital to contribute to life. Individuality
is part of the social and ecological diversity that is vital to the health of all natural systems . Lost
personal and cultural eccentricity represents a loss of diversity as harmful and tragic as any extinction.
Embracing a larger identity while valuing personal uniqueness is also essential to sustaining
peace because ecologically expanded and personally grounded individuals are not easily
hijacked by or harnessed to the whims of those who seek power only for themselves . They use their
noses and read between the lines. They trust their instincts rather than the dictates of others. And they are full of energy. Awakened
and quirky individuals make lousy pawns.
Perhaps most important is that ecologically expansive and internally sovereign people have the capacity
to be both strong and vulnerable. They can be trusted with the vulnerability of others . Years ago, I
read an essay suggesting that Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the other leaders participating in Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT II) come to the negotiation table stark naked. Toes curling into plush carpet, bellies tickled by the tablecloths tassels,
chests breathing rhythmically, bared for all to see. Imagine that negotiators grandchildren were allowed to run in during breaks and
jump into the welcoming laps of their grandparents. How would negotiations proceed then? Negotiators need to be reminded that
they, like all of us, are great grandparents of the unborn.
Connecting Racism, Nationalism, and Anthropocentricism
After the Holocaust of WWII, Germans were asked, Didnt you see the smokestacks or smell the
smoke? Participating in, or passively allowing, mass extermination of fellow human beings seemed, to outsiders, unthinkable,
wicked, and crazy. But dont we find ourselves in a similar situation? Arent we willing participants in mass
extinction of other species? Dont we see the smokestacks and smell the smoke? We may answer
as many Germans did. Hey, lay off. Were just doing our jobs, like everyone else. Like them, we suffer from
culturally inculcated bigotry, in our case a virulent human-centered strand of racism called
anthropocentricism that favors human satisfaction above all else. This human-centered narcissism is
blinding and permeates every action we take. Ultimately, the belief that we have the right to destroy
the lives of other beings because of our innate superiority is the main impetus of modern
ecological degradation. This belief, coupled with a sense of separation from nature, forms the
invisible and deadly ideology of modern civilization.
Like racism, anthropocentricism is socially sanctioned and indiscernibly imparted to our
children. It needs to be recognized and then cared for psychologically, ideally in a therapeutic community.
This work is very important because policing and policy-ing people and corporations are not sufficient in
and of themselves. Until we heal the deep-seated disease of anthropocentricism, bridges

between humans and nature will be flimsy and false, and their integrity will be flaunted. Without
rooted and authentic care for other life forms, rules will be broken, spills will continue to happen, and, oops,
wink-wink, fines will be paid in dollars from bloated profits. De-objectifying animals, forests,
mountains, and oceans is the ecological equivalent to humanizing the other. Together, they
form the bedrock for lasting social, political, and ecological harmony.
Facing Challenging Emotions
Robert J. Lifton called the
threat of the discontinuity of life the pivotal psychological reality of our

time. In the face of global threats, most people frantically maintain life-as-usual. Wrenching emotions
like fear, despair, shame, and rage, natural responses the dangers we collectively face, are
assiduously avoided or suppressed. Psychic numbing is perhaps the greatest danger to life on
Earth, greater even than the threat of nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, because it
deadens our capacity to creatively respond to danger. If we cannot feel, we wont pull our hands
out of the fire!
Many peace and environmental activists believe that information is the cure for ignorance. If people just knew what was happening,
they would change. Massive amounts of information constantly flow before us these days, but it rarely
cures ignorance. Without capacities to work with our fear, shame, despair and rage, endlessly
dreary facts and figures become bludgeons. We cower, cover our heads, or run away because our emotional
responses are overwhelming.
Guilt and shame are especially challenging because they elicit an instinctive response to hide,
run, or blame others. But healthy organic shame, if we can bear its discomfort, may signal to us a deep
yearning to make things right and repair broken relationships. Shame is a call to belonging. If we dont face
shame, we wont feel accountable. Recently, Exxon Mobile executives were smoothly explaining in a U.S. Senate hearing why, when
reaping grotesquely massive profits, they donated only a pittance to green energy research and continued to gouge consumers at the
pump. A congressman, throwing up his hands, interrupted, This may be a rhetorical question, but wheres the shame? Shame, an
emotion unique in social creatures like us, is a natural response to broken and abused relationships. Shame is essential to social
harmony and belonging, yet shame is never suffered lightly.
2NCNaturalism K (Imperialism Impact)

Ecopsychological examination can disrupt the myth of American frontier that
drives imperialist violence
ProQuest)//SJF
The myth of the American frontier developed from exaggerated or fictionalized performances
and literature about the West, and violence became a celebrated and traditional element of the
metanarrative of the West. Expectations for violence in the Western novel continue as the metanarrative of the West enables a
violent national mythology and identity. Western literature from Louis LAmour, Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry carry on
American origin myths of violence as they pit evil Indians against civilization-seeking whites. This myth of a demonized and
othered Indian distinctly separates a national imagined community by race. Such selective and biased myths of the American West
are unhealthy. An interrogation of such metanarratives of the West allows healthier modes of understanding Americas origin myths
and counterbalances celebrated violence.
Chapter one begins with an explanation that the Western genre of literature reproduces the traditional myth of the American
frontier in the form of American origin stories that function as a representation of national values and cultural ideologies.
American readers are drawn to such stories because they collectively represent the historical past while reaffirming the current
ideology and cultural practices. Fredrick Jackson Turners 1893 thesis expresses a lament for a disappeared frontier that has
continued in recent Western literature. Yet, many stories and representations of the American frontier
ignore multi-perspectives and focus only on the white expansionists interests in settling the
West. The cultural attitude supporting manifest destiny contributed to this biased metanarrative .
Some historical examinations like Browns presentation of unheard American Indian perspectives and negative accounts of Eastern
expansion challenges and deconstructs culturally accepted stories promoting manifest destiny and white civilization. However, the
popular Western genre, championed by authors like Louis LAmour, continues to celebrate the white perspective of the American
West. Larry McMurtrys interest in providing authentic frontier stories allows antimythic and diverse perspectives in his early works,
but his Westerns, specifically the Lonesome Dove saga, concentrate horrific violence and torture plots. Such presentations of
violence reconfirm the traditional metanarrative of the West.

Jungs theory of
socially unconscious desires for violence are applied with ecopsychological theories of the
violence narratives from McMurtry and McCarthy to show the unhealthy nature of violence in
the metanarrative of the American frontier. An examination of McMurtrys and McCarthys early
works show that white violence is justified for promoting civilization while violence from
Indians is juxtaposed as evil, undesired, and antagonistic. Such violence narratives have been considered an explanation
of American regeneration through violence; yet, this chapter asserts that ecopsychological theories show such
fictionalized violence as degeneration and a disruption of natural harmony in the world.
A close look at the violent myth of the west, specifically representations of Indian violence and torture scenes,
seem to be a response to a social construction and desire for violence. Such psychological cravings
for violence are explained as unhealthy and traumatic by ecopsychology theories because a
national mythology rooted in violence will celebrate and encourage more violence. The social
creation (and re-creation) of myths represented in Western literature asserts a dangerous
national identity because they perpetuate violence. The metanarrative of the West should be
examined and interrogated and not accepted as historical reality.
Chapter two more closely examines frontier violence presentations in McMurtrys and McCarthys novels.
Chapter three contradicts Slotkins presentation of American regeneration through violence and exposes violence narratives as
psychologically unhealthy sources that nurture socially accepted violence. An imagined national identity connected
by violence seems to celebrate and condone more violence. Benedict Andersons theory of imagined
communities shows how Western fiction can foster imagined bonds between otherwise unconnected individuals, created a national
imagined community. Other contributors to the field of nation theory explain that cultural artifacts like literature enable national
identity because they chronicle a national origin myth. Yet, much of the violence recounted in Western fiction is exaggerated and not
historical reality. This chapter explains that an American national identity rooted in violence is
ecopsychologically unsound because it is a distorted perception of reality. The American nation

should interrogate and examine its imagined national identity in order to not perpetuate a
skewed and fictionalized understanding of its community origin and connection. This chapter further
shows McMurtrys recent contribution to deconstructing the national myth of violence. His recent novels, The Berrybender
Narratives and Telegraph Days, do not support the traditional violence narratives of the Western genre. Instead, non-violent Indian
characters are developed and more focus is given to exposing the average untold perspectives of frontier life in the novels plots.
These works have contributed to a healthy presentation of the mythic American frontier that
challenges the traditional metanarrative of the West.
2NCNaturalism K (War Impact)

Desire for connectedness to nature is the precondition for violence based off of
social anxiety
ProQuest)//SJF
Rinda Wests book Out of the Shadow: Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters with the Land addresses how representations of
violence are explained by Jungs theory of shadow and unconscious as a repressed need . West
takes Jungs theory that violence is a response to a psychologically repressed act, and a desire, a
step further by explaining the shadow behind the shadow of violence.
Today, what is natural about humans often occupies shadow, from body odor to mortality. This
alienation from nature and human nature- has a number of consequences psychologically .
Several ecopsychologists, including Chellis Glendinning, Paul Shepard, and Ralph Metzer, argue that separation from
nature contributes to neurosis, addiction, and violence in contemporary culture. Many people
live in fear, whether realistic fear of gun violence or a fear that has been stirred up by the media. In the face of
hopelessness about the possibility of change, social fragmentation, and a persistent ideology of
individualisms, civic life crumbles. (West, 21)
Wests assumptions here, and explanation of violence, speak interestingly to the creation of cultural identity and need for
interconnectedness. Social order and civilized life are dependent on notions of hope . If McMurtrys stories of
torture and violence serve to polarize savagery and civility (and further encourage them), the power of his story is in the verification
of the current American justice system and civility. Perhaps such stories are the societal means to self-verify and find connections.
While the power of story has been present throughout human history as myths and oral traditions provided a base education and
cultural identity, Aldo Leopolds A Sand County Almanac explains that a human relationship with the land must exist. An ethic to
supplement and guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism.
We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise
have faith in (251). Leopolds work assumes that Western culture is alienated from nature, the knowledge
of self and habitat, and this lack of connection inhibits the development of good human
behavior; society cannot function on self-verification alone. This assumption asserts that good human
identity requires intimate knowledge of nature, and it points toward a very common argument
made in the realm of modern environmentalism: the human psyche can only be healthy with an
interconnected relationship with nature. Both McMurtys and McCarthys novels feature displaced characters that
maintain no traditional origin-ties to a specific piece of land. The wandering nature of the characters, both antagonists and
protagonists, can be enlightened by Leopolds examination. Wests work in relation to Leopolds theory shows that the previous
approach and function of the torture/violence narrative is an unfruitful cycle of meaningless

identity through self-verification. There must be a stronger human connection with nature.
Perhaps there is something more than just the physical connection/relationship mankind can have
with his environment. Theodore Roszak, who coined the term ecopsychology, suggests that people are effectively
motivated to a nature-conscious perspective with discovering personal connections to nature,
even if that connection is not physical. This psychological awareness for interconnectedness
with nature is explained as natural and productive. So, Leopold and Roszak point out a
fundamental human physical/non-physical desire for connection to the land and nature . Yet, many
Western citizens are living in cities and suburbs removed from the land and nature. Could this lack of nature stir the
human urge to find the shadow of a repressed connection to nature? And, has this search resulted in
other shadows, specifically those of violence, to surface in modern literature, specifically in McMurtrys work?
Rinda West explains that the dominant ideas driving global capitalism are divorced from
intimacy
with the land and the consequence is that the identity experienced by most people under
capitalism allows them access to only a small portion of their own natural possibilities (20).
Since modern America cannot experience a truly natural state, it tries to make connections to
history to assert human identity and connection. Unfortunately, a very common thread of recent human
history, and an
unhealthily link to common identity, is violence . McMurtrys torture narratives, in

a very undesirable aspect of mankind: a ruthless violence. While the American
Western novel allows the reader an ostensible first-hand experience of the historical reality of frontier violence, there is a focus
on fearful and disturbing acts with no explanation of mans connection with nature. The
perpetrators of Western violence are often knowledgeable of wild areas but have no connection to one place
or home in nature. This wandering and unbelonging allows no identity or connection, so acts of
violence become the consistency and identity of the characters. The reader is then led to
interpret such violence as the identity of the West and of their historical past.
particular, seem to highlight
2NCNaturalism K (Turns Race)

Violent reaction to racism is based off of an unconscious fear of the land
Anthony and Soule, 98 *Director of the Urban Habitat Program and President of Earth
Island Institute in San Francisco, one of the leading voices in the environmental justice
movement, **MA and PhD candidate at Meridian University, has been devoted to developing
the field of ecopsychology for 25 years, teaches Nonviolent Communication in San Quentin
Prison and is an adjunct faculty member at California Institute of Integral Studies (Carl, Rene,
A multicultural approach to ecopsychology, Humanistic Psychology and Ecopsychology, The
Humanistic Psychologist, Vol. 26, Is. 1-3, 1998, t&f)//SJF
AT A RECENT celebration of Black history month organized by a group of environmentalists anxious to get people of color more
interested in the natural world, a young African American man told the following story. Many years ago as
teenagers living in Stockton, California, he
and his brother decided that, to make a little extra money, they would
hire themselves out as farm workers for the day. They got up at 4:30 in the morning, dressed in time to be down at
the local intersection where the truck comes by for day workers. They hopped on the truck, which made its way to the fields of the
Central Valley.
The journey took more than an hour. When they arrived, with the sun rising higher in the sky, they were
put to work in the fields picking onions. The ground had been loosened by a tractor, and the smell of the onions,
mixed with the odor of the thick rich soil, was pleasant. But it was a back breaking task to spend hours bent
over, pulling up and loading the onions into sacks, to be picked up by the tractor which followed
them. It was hot. They worked hard, taking an occasional break throughout the long day, with money borrowed
from the owner of the farm to buy soft drinks and food. At sun down, when they got paid, they realized they had
spent as much on food and drink as they had made, and somehow, in the confusion, they had
missed the truck going back to Stockton. They didn't have enough money to take the bus back.
So they walked.
It took them from eight thirty at night, until two in the morning to get back , and they laughed all the
way. Finally, at two in the morning , hot, sweaty and tired, they arrived at home, and made a vow to each
other: they would never, ever set foot on a farm again.
This story can be seen as a metaphor for the historical experience of African Americans whose cultural
experience of the land is quite different than many people of European heritage. African Americans worked the land in
the South for many generations, first as slaves, then as sharecroppers without the opportunity to own the land, and without
pay. Given the public invisibility and harshness of these rural experiences , it is not surprising that African
Americans may have a different feeling about the land than privileged people of European
heritage. The depth of humiliation, the feeling of outrage has totally colored the young men's perception of
that experience of the land, leading to a feeling of detachment and avoidance of emotional engagement
with rural life. We offer this as one striking example of the a psychological perspective that needs to
be included in an enduring conservation ethic.
LOST IN THE URBAN WILDERNESS
Ecopsychology is not only about our relationship to nature in wild places , for our response to
urban realities is not divorced from our ancient fear of wild territories. In his remarkably candid book of stories
Race In America, Studs Terkel recounts an episode of a young European American woman , a politically
liberal college professor from a suburban community, who found herself driving through a desolate inner city
neighborhood as the sun was going down. As her car approached a deserted intersection, she saw three young,
African American men running toward her, frantically waving their hands in the air.
In a moment of panic she found the buttons on the panel beside her. She electronically rolled up the
windows, locked all four doors of the car, and stepped on the gas so forcefully you could hear the
tires screech. She drove four blocks, faster than it was safe before she realized she was going the wrong way on a one way street.
Although this young woman had in her life and work done everything she could to promote social
justice, when confronted in an unfamiliar environment with the threat of survival, she faced a
moment of truth. The men approaching the car were, apparently, signaling that she was going the
wrong way. But in fright she had misread what they were trying to tell her. For her, the inner city was a
wilderness. Down deep, she was afraid of black people, and her fear had caused her to recklessly
endanger her life.
One could argue that this little anecdote about a frightened middle class woman at sundown in an inner city neighborhood has
nothing to do with society's relationship to the natural world. But consider first that the episode is taking place as night fall
approaches. How much of her fear comes from the lethal combination of being caught in darkness
in an unfamiliar world? We are taught that it is childish to be afraid of the dark. In darkness, however, we can no
longer rely on our eyesight, and from a physiological point of view we must rely on other,
untrained, and unreliable senses for information.
Consider that the episode described above takes place in an abandoned and desolate part of the city, with burned out buildings,
vacant, garbage-filled lots now inhabited by only a third of the population for which it was designed, devoid of signs of life, paved
over and forgotten. How much of her emotional reaction is an unconscious fear of retribution and guilt for being implicated in the
prodigious waste of abandoned sections of the city? There is also the painful reminder that these are displaced people. They do not
own their land, nor are they flourishing in this desolate urban habitat. In many ways, the young men remind us of the terrible fact
that cities the world over are filled with refugees. Glitter, glitz and steel- enforced concrete structures cannot refute the fact that
urban populations by definition are peoples who cannot feed themselves.
WHAT CITIES TEACH
The lessons of both social justice and ecopsychology are simple and the same. They involve living in
connection, feeling the connection, honoring and then acting from that place of being connected . In many ways
it is cities that clearly teach us about interdependence. Every person one sees is in some way part of ones
existence. What keeps one alive in the city are the people who drive the trucks, who work in offices, wheeling and dealing and
making connections to the life-giving countryside whence come food, water, building materials. So the lessons of
interdependence are everywhere, providing we do not hide behind the glass and steel structures feeling separate and
independent. We are all in this together, redwoods, mountain lions, the little kid down the street,
the Mexican immigrant who picked radishes this morning.
Both social justice advocates and ecopsychologists look directly at how issues of racism and
responsibility to the more-than-human-world effect each of us on a very personal level. As the world
grows smaller and human population increases, escaping these issues will be increasing unavoidable.
Denial is a problem facing both advocates of social justice and ecopsychologists. Clear-cuts hide behind treelined highways. Invisibility is one of the main symptoms of denial. Environmental and social justice
issues are often simply "not on the agenda." Ecopsychologists recognize the limited effectiveness of pounding people with
horrific facts and statistics about poverty in America did not stop the welfare bill from passing. Certainly we all need to "own our
history" and acknowledge that much of our wealth rests upon exploitation of people and resources, but
direct blame is not an effective way to motivate change. Both social justice advocates and
environmentalists need to find ways of presenting facts that invite participation rather fearbased apathy. Both need to help people find the strength and courage it takes to face the truth, and look each other in the eye.
This shared challenge is itself common ground.
DIVERSITY AND MONOCULTURE
Ecology can be seen as a way of life in the sense that its range of relationships includes everyone. Monoculture
is not only
dull, but deadly to natural systems, including human society. Complexity rests upon diversity .
Maintaining a stance of inclusivity is risky, but in an exciting way. Complexity and diversity will
constantly challenge cherished assumptions. But learning is inevitable if one is open to the risk of making mistakes.
In fact, making mistakes is advisable. Fear is par for the course, and therefore so are confidence and courage. One surprising benefit
of diversity is that of feeling more firmly rooted one's sense of self: a personal identity flexible enough
to listen to, understand, and honor the experiences and values of another. This core integrity comes from
holding an ongoing intention to "stand corrected" without being subsumed by the perspectives of others. Everybody's story is vital to
the integrity of the whole, including one's own.
Ecologists and social justice advocates both promote respect for diversity. That respect depends upon a
mature capacity to embrace apparent contradictions. This internal
stance of inclusivity is the key to

ecopsychology, where a healthy multicultural, multibiotic, multiregional and multifaceted
psyche merges and blends gracefully with Earth's ecology.
2NCNaturalism K (Framework)
Ecopsychology must be used as a tool to reclaim academia from the
epistemological violence of casino capitalism
Kanner, 14 Ph.D in psychotherapy, post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, staff
psychologist at Children's Hospital at Stanford, associate faculty at the Wright Institute in
Berkeley, leader in the field of ecopsychology, in 1997, Utne Reader chose him as one of the
nation's top ten activist psychotherapists for his work in ecopsychology (Allen D,
Ecopsychology's Home: The Interplay of Structure and Person, Ecopsychology, Vol. 6, No. 2,
June 2014, pp. 69-80, Liebert Open Access)//SJF
What is the role of ecopsychology in academia (Fisher, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Kahn, 2013)? Henry Giroux (2013), an English and
Cultural Studies professor at McMasters University, reminds us in Public Intellectuals Against the Neoliberal University that the
university is nothing if it is not a public trust and social good; that is a critical institution infused
with the promise of cultivating intellectual insight, the imagination, inquisitiveness, risk-taking,
social responsibility and the struggle for justice. At best, universities should be at the heart of intense public
discourse, passionate learning and vocal citizen involvement in the issues of the times. (Scott, 2012)
Giroux goes on to describe the recent takeover of higher education by casino capitalism, such
that in the last few decades, we have seen market mentalities attempt to strip education of its public
values, critical content and civic responsibilities as part of its broader goal of creating new
subjects wedded to consumerism, risk-free relationships and the disappearance of the social
state in the name of individual, expanded choice. Tied largely to instrumental ideologies and measurable
paradigms, many institutions of higher education are now committed almost exclusively to
economic goals, such as preparing students for the workforceall done as part of an appeal to
rationality, one that eschews matters of inequality, power and the ethical grammars of suffering.
It is not just psychology or ecology but all of higher education that is under siege by a variety of
emboldened corporate forces (see also White & Hauck, 2000). For this reason, to be effective, ecopsychologists who are
drawn to the research world can no longer follow the simple path of publication, tenure, and a relatively cozy life in the ivory
tower. If their work seriously threatens the marketplace mentality, they will meet resistance not
only as a function of conservative trends within their respective fields but because funding; the selection of
presidents, deans, and other top administrators; publication (corporations can prevent publication of results not to
their liking when they are the funders); and the emergence of a model of education that treats knowledge
and students as products all create an academic culture that overtly and covertly suppresses its
detractors. The recent trend toward hiring more and more poorly paid adjunct faculty, who collectively have no job security let
alone job benefits, is but a step toward ridding academia of tenure. Corporate employers abhor employees they cannot readily fire.
Does this mean ecopsychologists should steer clear of higher education? I would argue no, with a major caveat: Go into or
remain in higher education only if you are consciously prepared to do battle with these
corporate forces. As does nearly every other institution in our society, academia needs people who are
committed to extracting capitalism from the social fabric. Thus, it is not lightly that I suggest that academic
ecopsychologists prepare themselves for a tough fight that will require ingenuity, generosity, sacrifice, and yes, bravery. If our
overarching message insists on large-scale structural change, it will be fiercely and relentlessly
attacked by mainstream academia. These attacks might include threats of physical violence to our
selves and families, as has happened to Tyrone Hayes, U.C. Berkeley professor of integrative biology, when he found
problematic side effects with atrazine, a product of agribusiness giant Syngenta (Hayes, 2014; also see Aviv, 2014).
In the clinical world, private practitioners struggle with the forces of commercialization when insurance companies determine our
pay, number of sessions allowed, and types of diagnoses covered (Kanner & Soule, 2004). There is a great deal of
pressure to advertise and develop the areas of expertise that make us most marketable, thus
framing our work primarily as a product and our clients as consumers.
Academic and clinical ecopsychologists also need to face the time issue. I do not believe that we have the luxury
anymore to wait months or years for our work to become public. More immediate outlets that employ plain language, such as
magazines, speeches at rallies, radio interviews, and blogs, need to be routinely used, even if these are academically less prestigious
forums than journal articles and books. Through theses outlets we need to speak with more passion and urgency
than is academically correct, as climatologists such as Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin are doing about climate
change (see above).
Ecopsychologists who do research must also be prepared to find ways to circumvent the mainstream
media when it ignores, distorts, or simply lies about their findings, as the media routinely does
about research on climate change, extinction, water scarcity, and a host of other environmental
issues (cf. Merton, 2013). We need to be clever and brave in this regard, as well.
In general, I believe we need academic ecopsychologists who are working within the system to alter it
dramatically, as opposed to adapting ecopsychology to the system. To my mind, creating structural
change at the university level is part and parcel of the overarching ecopsychological agenda,
which seeks major changes in most areas of modern life. When our academic colleagues take on this daunting
task, I fully support them.
2NCNaturalism K (State Link)

Psychological examination requires abandonment of political structures
Fisher, 96 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Institute for Geophysics and
Planetary Physics University of California at Santa Cruz (Andy, Toward a more radical
ecopsychology: therapy for a dsyfunctional society, Alternatives Journal: Environmental
thought, policy, and action, Vol. 22, No. 3, July 1996, pp. 20-26, ProQuest)//SJF
The potential contribution of ecopsychological theory is two - fold. The first is to offer models of human
psychology in which the earth is not a resource - filled background to the human enterprise, but rather the
living matrix out of which we are born and in relation to which our self - understanding and well
- being lie. Human ecologist Paul Shepard, for example, has proposed an important model of normal psychological
development in which children spend their pre - adolescent years bonding with the earth as a crucial
step in the process of individuation and in coming to a sense of being at home in the cosmos .(f.8)
Other's efforts in this area include extending existing psychological perspectives , such as Jungian, psychoanalytic,
Gestalt and transpersonal theories, to include nonhuman nature; exploring psychologies of indigenous
peoples and of early pagan cultures; studying the "effect" of wilderness experience; and using narratives
about the evolution of consciousness and the unfolding of the cosmos to speculate about the
relationships between humans, the natural world and the cosmos. (f.9)
The second potential contribution - continuous with the first - is to illuminate the deep psychological
conditions (including their socio - historical contexts) that tend to contribute to, and result from, the ecological
crisis. Of particular interest here is how to bring more psychological know - how to ecological
activists, who as a group "often work from poor and short - sighted ideas about human
motivation."(f.10) Guilt, shame and scare tactics, for example, may do more to engender resistance
and hopelessness in the public than to embolden them to act. In another major area of theoretical development,
some ecopsychologists are arguing that our runaway consumerism, addictions, denial, psychic
numbness, emptiness, love of artificial realities, and so forth all indicate that we live in a deeply
wounded society that has trouble facing up to the reality of our contemporary crisis, and that is
in need of radical healing.(f.11)
While many ecopsychological theorists have already made insightful contributions to ecological and psychological debates, I am
concerned with some of the ways in which the field is developing. My first concern is methodological. If ecopsychology is going to
adopt an interpretive, conversational and speculative approach, as seems appropriate, then it must at a minimum present
theories in which we can recognize ourselves. Consider, for example, historian Theodore Roszak's use of the
Gaia hypothesis, Anthropic principle, and other highly abstract scientific findings in weaving together some of his ecopsychological
speculations.(f.12) His approach is characteristic of many "new age" and "paradigm shift" thinkers
who often make "unjustified leaps from contested scientific claims to metaphysical
assertions."(f.13) Such flights into high abstraction are less helpful than those efforts that can make a more immediate appeal to
our concrete experience. These include David Abram's phenomenological description of the intimate conversation that is always
already underway between our living bodies and the earth, and Joanna Macy's discussion of our "pain for the world."(f.14)
Secondly, ecopsychology needs to broaden its theoretical base to include other radical perspectives, both psychological and
ecological. Most noticeably, ecopsychology is presently limited by its failure to consider adequately what
deep/social ecologist George Bradford calls the "social question." The general reluctance in ecopsychology to
bring radical social analysis into its theorizing seems to have been carried over from mainstream psychology. Psychologist Philip
Cushman charges that psychology has traditionally profited from treating decontextualized, hollowed
out individuals, while not challenging the social arrangements that cause personal distress in the
first place.(f.15) As suggested above, in upholding the ideological status quo, psychology has in many
ways actually retarded social change.
Some ecopsychologists, mindful of such considerations, do argue for non - individualistic psychological approaches and community
building, and general criticisms of modern society are found throughout ecopsychological writings. What ecopsychology
has yet to do, however, is adopt a critical rationality, wherein issues of race, class and gender are
foregrounded and placed in historical context. In this respect, ecopsychology generally mirrors the reluctance of
many deep ecology supporters to adequately consider the legitimate claims of social ecologists and the more demanding political
claims of ecofeminists.(f.16) Social ecology's contention that social conflict and ecological crisis are
intimately linked and ecofeminism's critique of the middle class and masculinist biases (among
others) in deep ecology must be given serious attention by ecopsychology if it is not to repeat some of
the mistakes of deep ecology. This is no small matter, for ecopsychologists are unlikely to see any real
societal shift toward a more ecological consciousness unless they consider more fully how socio economic and political forces presently mould consciousness otherwise, namely toward the
demands of a capitalist, patriarchal and racist social order.
By neglecting social analysis, ecopsychology has also avoided reflecting upon its own politics. Carl Anthony is one critic who has
found ecopsychology wanting in this respect:
There is a blind spot in ecopsychology because the field is limited by its Eurocentric perspective, in the
same way that the environmental movement as a whole has been blind to environmental racism .
There are a lot of people who would like to hear the voice of the Earth who are not currently being reached by the movement for deep
ecology, which, I believe, can be seen as the basis for ecopsychology.(f.17)
An incorporation of more critical social theory, then, would add valuable breadth and depth to ecopsychology. A good starting point
would be to turn to the work of critical psychologists/psychiatrists,(f.18) particularly to that of radical psychoanalyst Joel Kovel.
Kovel comes to radical ecological politics as a well - versed social critic with sympathies for both deep and social ecology. His
writings include a discussion of how the domination of nature is tied to "the major forms of social
domination, of class, of race and of gender," each of which is "mediated through the domination of
nature - as - body."(f.19)
My third point closely relates to the last one, but needs to be stated separately: ecopsychological theory risks
becoming a form of psychological reductionism. The ecological crisis is far too complex a social
and cultural phenomenon to be reduced solely to its psychological "roots," yet this is what some
ecopsychological theorists seem to do. Roszak, for example, whose earlier writings have elsewhere been criticized for such
reductionism,(f.20) argues that "open access to the ecological unconscious is the path to sanity ."(f.21)
Perhaps most dangerously, such a viewpoint can be used to support a naive politics in which social
reconstruction is seen as primarily following from personal transformation, rather than
necessarily occurring in concert with it.
Finally, some of the politically conservative thinking in ecopsychology undermines its own radical
implications. Roszak, a central figure in ecopsychology, has suggested, for example, that it "might generate a
new, legally actionable, environmentally based criterion of mental health that could take on
prodigious legal and policy - making implications."(f.22) Psychologist Sarah Conn has similarly argued that the
American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) be revised to include such diagnoses as "materialistic
disorder," to describe the need to consume.(f.23) The danger here is that the DSM is a highly contested
document which has been criticized for both its metaphysical dubiousness and its use as a tool
for oppressing and mystifying people by labeling them with psychodiagnoses , thereby serving the
dominant power interests of society. Thus, while challenging psychology's lack of consideration for
the earth, Roszak's and Conn's proposals may wind up further legitimizing the authority of
an oppressive mental health establishment.
2NCNaturalism K (Radicality Alt)

Only a radical re-focusing on ecopsychological explanations of violence can
account for connections between the technological-economic system and violence
against the environment
OF THE MANY ETHICAL DILEMMAS I faced as an environmental engineer, one stands out in particular. A sand and gravel
company that had consulted my firm wanted to expand its quarrying into an area that was home to a regionally endangered species
of butterfly. The conflict between butterflies and gravel disturbed me profoundly, especially when I was told (jokingly) to step on any
of those butterflies should I happen to see one. At that time in my life, I was becoming increasingly aware of a
feeling I had long held but rarely allowed into full consciousness: that I live in a world where
something has gone terribly wrong, where a pervasive madness rules our actions . Ecophilosopher
John Rodman shares this view:
I strongly suspect that the same
basic principles are manifested in quite diverse forms - e.g. in

damming a wild river and repressing an animal instinct (whether human or nonhuman), in clear
- cutting a forest and bombing a city, in Dachau and a university research laboratory, in censoring an idea,
liquidating a religious or racial group, and exterminating a species of flora of fauna .(f.1)
No longer an engineer, I am now an ecopsychologist: I think about butterflies and why we might want to step on them ... or not.
Ecopsychology has recently emerged as a new player in the project of reconciling humanity with
nature. "Nature" is meant here in two senses: the human nature studied by psychologists (among
others) and the more - than - human nature that concerns ecological scientists , thinkers and activists.
Ecopsychology brings these two natures together to study how they are interrelated: how the
"inner" or psychological dimensions of the ecological crisis are linked to the more visible "outer"
manifestations. Ecopsychologists thus attempt to both break out of the purely human bubble within which we presently locate
psychology and bring psychological insight into the ecology movement. Central to ecopsychology is the idea that the
diminishment of the human self and the natural world are reciprocal processes , as presumably are the
processes for their liberation.
Given the "ecologizing" of other fields such as feminism and economics, ecopsychology was perhaps inevitable. The first major
collection of ecopsychological writings was released last year as Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind (see page 27
for my review), promising a creative new approach to our contemporary problems. What makes ecopsychology unique
is the detailed attention it gives to the inner experience normally overlooked in

a society more concerned with economic indicators and technological innovations. It views the
among ecological perspectives
ecological crisis in existential or spiritual terms, not merely technocratic or managerial ones. While there is much talk of "healing the
planet," an ecopsychologist might ask why there is so little talk about the psychological dynamics
behind our wounding of the planet in the first place. Why, in short, is "the screaming link between
pervasive personal dysfunction and the ecological crisis"(f.2) so little recognized, especially by
psychologists? Ecopsychology, then, sees psychological distress as a key component of the glue that
holds our crisis in place and looks to what a more sane state of affairs might be.
While to assert, as ecopsychologists do, that the human soul is intimately bound up with the natural world is in itself a kind of
radical act, ecopsychology nonetheless needs to be pursued as a more self - consciously radical discipline. " Radical" suggests
challenging the underlying systems that produce and maintain personal suffering, social
oppression and mistreatment of the earth. A truly radical ecopsychology would thus draw more
fully on existing radical approaches within psychology and the ecology movement to expose the
deeply pathological nature of our social arrangements and relations to the more - than - human,
and offer support for radical social change. Specifically, ecopsychology lacks radical social criticism,
is inadequately engaged with significant critical currents within psychology, and has a tendency
in some quarters toward a naive, conservative politics. Though not applicable to all ecopsychologists, these
criticisms do apply in general.
THE INHERENT RADICALNESS OF ECOPSYCHOLOGY
Ecopsychology has positioned itself as an alternative to, or a revisioning and expanding of, mainstream psychology.(f.3) In 1960,
psychoanalyst Harold F. Searles - a proto - ecopsychologist - stated that in the writings of most major developmental psychologists:
T]he nonhuman environment is ... considered as irrelevant to human personality development, ... as though the human race were
alone in the universe, pursuing individual and collective destinies in a homogeneous matrix of nothingness.(f.4)
From the point of view of ecopsychology, psychology's ignoring of the "nonhuman environment" is a
staggering oversight, one which persists to this day. David V. Kidner suggests that this is because:
T]he ideological preconceptions that underpin [psychology] are similar to those of the
technological - economic system that is largely responsible for degradation of the environment.
Psychology, by normalizing the behavioral, life - style and personality configurations associated
with environmental destruction, and lacking a historical perspective on changes in
consciousness and technology, is unable to contribute effectively to the ecological debate .(f.5)
Following Kidner, then, ecopsychologists must necessarily take a radical stance, beginning , as some have,
with a critical examination of the ideological and metaphysical biases within psychology that
presently limit its relevance, and even make it hostile, to ecological concern. They must likewise
add an ecological voice to those that already criticize mainstream psychology for its general promotion
of adjustment and conformity to a mad (ecocidal) social order, and its repressing and forgetting of a growing
"social unreason."(f.6)
Ecopsychology also distinguishes itself from the existing discipline of environmental psychology. While some environmental
psychologists do study human - nature interactions and the psychological conditions underlying the ecological crisis, they generally
do so from within the research tradition criticized by Kidner. To put it plainly, environmental psychology does not go
far enough in addressing the kind of systemic, anti - ecological prejudices within psychology that
ecopsychologists seek to redress. Environmental psychology is mostly interested in managing
social and natural environments for human health and in modifying human behaviour toward
the goals of mainstream environmentalism.(f.7) Ecopsychology, by contrast, is more interested in
exploring the psychological consequences of repressing the ecological dimension of our
existence and in advancing an ecocentric psychology. Despite that ecopsychology embodies the more radical
view, the interests of these two psychologies clearly overlap.
2NCNaturalism K (Solves Reform)

Ecopsychology can interweave the institutional structure that controls their
impacts with internal psychological transformation
Thus, when I address specific psychological issues, such as raising my daughter in a TV-free household (Kanner,
2008b), the piracy of privacy by advertisers (Kanner, 2009d), the harmful impact of marketing to children (Kanner, 2005, 2006a,
2006b, 2008b, 2008c; Kanner & Kasser, 2000), and grief in response to extinction (Kanner, 2010b, 2011c; Kanner &
Gomes, 20032004), I
describe the particular problem under discussion as a symptom or predictable

consequence of capitalism. These days it is inadequate to simply blow the whistle on the bad
behavior of a particular corporation or industry, of which there are thousands of examples, without
indicating that corporations are designed to behave this way.
On the other hand, when I directly address large-scale issues, I attempt to analyze them from a psychological perspective. For
example, I suggest that we have become emotionally incapable of approaching modern technology
rationally (Kanner, 1998b, 2009a, 2013), a development that has undesirable environmental and cultural
consequences. This Pollyannaish perspective comes from adhering to the ideal of technological
progress, which falsely asserts that technology is neutral and it is only how we use it that
determines its impact. Instead, in a similar fashion to ecopsychologists acknowledging the intrinsic effect of the land on our
psyches, I propose we become skilled at identifying the inherent influence of our technology on
ourselves, an approach I call technological wisdom (see also Fisher, 2013a, 2013b; Kahn, 2011).
In other work, my colleagues and I discuss how the free market economy is based on at least three highly
questionable psychological assumptions, namely, that people are fundamentally selfish,
competitive, and materialistic (Kanner, 2009c; Kanner & Soule, 2004; Kasser, 2002; Kasser & Kanner, 2004; Kasser et
al., 2007a, 2007b). Thus, by rewarding greed, selfishness, and ruthless competition, capitalism is
structured so as to fixate society at a low level of human development.
In general, most institutions and systems are partially based on assumptions about what makes us
tick internallyour motivations, desires, fears, and so on. This is not to reduce the sociological,
political, and economic to the personal but rather to identify the psychological dimensions that
are embedded in these incredibly complex phenomena. Ecopsychology can elucidate the often
implicit psychological assumptions that underlie large-scale systems and can underscore the
positive or negative implications of these assumptions for our relationship to nature both on a
personal and collective level. To reiterate, I believe we can accomplish this most effectively at this point in history by
turning our attention to alternative structures and systems that people are developing and resurrecting from times past.
AT: Ecopsychology False2NC

Vast surveys of ecopsychological studies prove our argumentits deeply
engrained in evolutionary psychology to release anxiety when separated from the
ocean
Conis, 7 Assistant Professor of History at Emory University, Visiting Assistant Professor in
Emorys Anthropology Department, a senior fellow in the Rollins School of Public Health at
Emory, and an award-winning health columnist for the Los Angeles Times (Elena, Psyche and
the sea, Los Angeles Times, 5/28/7, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/28/health/hebeach28)//SJF
WAVES crash, gulls cry, wind whispers and sun warms skin. At the same time, worries seem to fade, the mind clears,
the heart slows and the lungs breathe deep of the clean, salty air. There's something , it seems,
inherently therapeutic about the beach.
Increasingly, evidence backs up that intuition. Research shows that simply being in nature is good
for the mind and body -- and the beach may be particularly healthful. Not only have studies found that
most people are drawn to water, but simply looking at water appears to help alleviate anxiety and calm
agitated nerves.
The appeal may be the sea's color, its sounds, possibly even its evolutionary associations, embedded in the human genome.
Whatever the reason, "it's deep in the human psyche to want to be around water," said Dr. Richard
Jackson, adjunct professor of environmental health sciences and city and regional planning at UC
Berkeley.
The sun also has myriad beneficial effects, as do the beach's other sensory experiences, most all of them universally soothing. And
the visual and auditory quiet gives the mind time to settle, forget those everyday cares.
"If you ask somebody to relax, to imagine someplace that they feel is safe, self-soothing and
healing," said Cathy Malchiodi, a Louisville, Ky., art therapist and spokeswoman for the American Art Therapy Assn., " they
often will [imagine] the beach."
Our affinity with the shore is long-held. The ancients prescribed sunbathing to reverse melancholy, heal wounds, treat
syphilis and lower fevers. The Romans thought soaking up sun strengthened muscles (they advocated it for their
gladiators) and that sea voyages were good for tuberculosis.
Today, few Americans head to the beach to cure their bodily ills. But beaches consistently top the list in surveys of
favorite get-away destinations. And Americans are increasingly (and perhaps unwittingly) bringing the
beach's natural remedies home: bulbs and light machines that simulate natural sunlight ; salt
scrubs, seaweed wraps and bathing mud for the skin; relaxation CDs and machines that play the sounds of
gently breaking waves.
But there's nothing quite like the real thing, a day with the vastness of sky above and the feel of sand below, cool air mixed with
sunlight. The beach, it seems, is perfectly engineered to soothe the human body and soul.
A love of nature
LANDSCAPE designers and environmental psychologists studying the human response to outdoor environments have made a fairly
consistent finding in the last few decades: On average, people prefer landscapes with water to those without.
Since the 1960s, studies have shown that pictures of water elicit positive emotions in viewers -- as
long as the water isn't obviously polluted or roiling with storm. Asked to assess the tranquillity of different landscape pictures,
college students in one study consistently rated those containing large, calm bodies of water
highest.
Looking at water is not just superficially pleasing; it may also be therapeutic . In 1990, Texas A&M University
architecture and landscape architecture professor Roger Ulrich and colleagues studied 166 openheart surgery patients in a Swedish hospital, randomly assigning them to look at a picture of open
water, one of a forest, abstract art or a blank wall. Those who looked at the open water had the
least anxiety after their operations.
Some evolutionary psychologists speculate that humans might be drawn to bodies of water -- in
images and in reality -- because for millions of years, water meant two necessities of survival:
food and drink. Water, of course, is home to fish and other edibles; it also attracts wild game that can be hunted. Moving
water is an indication of water that's safe to drink (stagnant water being a happy home for pathogens).
The human
affinity for water extends to other landscape features too -- as long as they're natural.
have shown that just looking at a natural landscape -- that is, one populated by
vegetation and animal life, not skyscrapers and automobiles -- can improve mood, mitigate stress, boost mental
function and even reduce pain and illness.
Studies conducted by Ulrich and others in the 1980s showed that college students facing a final exam had fewer
stress symptoms after viewing nature scenes, compared with those who viewed city scenes . A study
in Sweden took things a step further, plotting students' brain waves as they viewed the pictures.
Those who looked at nature scenes were, sure enough, more relaxed than those who didn't.
Since the 1980s, scientists
Ulrich went on to show that a nature view from a hospital window sped recovery time and reduced pain complaints in patients
recovering from gall bladder surgery and that prison inmates with bucolic views had fewer headaches, upset stomachs and overall
health complaints than those whose windows overlooked prison walls.
Getting out into the great outdoors is likely even better than just looking at it. Recent studies have shown that spending time outside
lessened fatigue in women recovering from breast cancer and reduced aggressive outbursts in patients with Alzheimer's. More
recently, researchers at the University of Illinois found that playing outdoors reduced ADHD symptoms in children, particularly if
they played in areas that were lush and green.
The beach isn't a particularly verdant landscape, of course, but it just might be the case that watching the waves or sea
grass bending in the breeze can have similarly stress-reducing, mood-enhancing effects.
"Modern life today is just so full of input and so stimulating that getting out in nature ... gives an
opportunity to relax and to refresh and to recover from stress ," said Paula Diane Relf, retired professor of
horticulture at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.
But that's just one theory that explains why simply being out in the elements seems to do a body good, Relf says. It's more likely, she
said, that humans are genetically programmed to have a love of nature, or biophilia, to use the phrase coined by biologist and
longtime Harvard professor E.O. Wilson.
Humans, Wilson wrote in "Biophilia" (his 1984 book on the subject), are innately drawn to nature not just for food and shelter but
also for fodder for the mind and spirit. That pull is encoded in our genes, and only in communing with nature do humans achieve
mental and physical health.
"Because we evolved in natural environments, we have a psychological and physiological
response to them," Relf says. "We need an outdoor, natural environment for our psyche and our
spirit, not just our bodies, to be healthy."
Sounds convincing, but not all researchers are sold. After all, the great outdoors isn't for everyone, and even most tree-huggers can
think of a few things in nature that would speed up their heart rate and send them running inside.
And specific outdoor environments, such as the beach, might not evoke the same psychological associations for all goers.
Dr. Kimford Meador, professor of neurology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, pointed out that people who grew up near or
by the water, or who have often vacationed by the water, may have built up a set of positive experiences that help to make beaches in
particular -- with all of their associated sights, sounds and smell -- such deeply warm, relaxing environments.
But negative associations are just as possible. For those who fought at Normandy in World War II or witnessed the tsunami that
devastated parts of Asia and surrounding countries in 2004, beaches may not be that relaxing, Meador says.
And then there are those just don't like the feel of sand in their bathing suits or the taste of it in their sandwiches, who would rather
be cooled by air conditioning than an ocean breeze.
A day at the beach usually means a day in the sun, and the prevailing wisdom is that any sun is too much sun -- with exposure to UV
rays having been solidly linked to premature aging and skin cancer. But sunshine is also a mood enhancer.
In 1980, Swedish researchers reported that the brain's levels of serotonin -- one of the brain's
mood-elevating neurochemicals -- appeared to be lowest in winter. In 2002, Australian
researchers confirmed the finding by taking blood samples from more than 100 healthy
volunteers. Their results, published in the journal Lancet, showed that the brain's production of
serotonin rose with increasing exposure to sunlight.
Seasons in the sun

THE finding shed some light, so to speak, on seasonal variations in depression and suicide prevalence, both of which increase in
dark winter months. A separate, emerging body of research is also poised to explain why moods improve in sunny seasons. Sunlight
triggers the body to make vitamin D, and studies have shown that people who suffer from the most common type of seasonal
depression, known as seasonal affective disorder (or SAD), often benefit from exposure to UV light or supplemental vitamin D.
In a Australian study, taking vitamin D helped combat SAD symptoms in a small group of patients; another small study, conducted
at a hospital in Maryland, also showed that vitamin D alleviated depression. Canadian researchers provided further evidence in a
2004 study that signs of depression diminished in patients given supplemental vitamin D (though a much larger English study,
published in 2006, found no connection between taking extra vitamin D and improved mood).
The brain contains an enzyme that can produce the biologically active form of vitamin D; brain tissue also has lots of receptors for
the vitamin. Some researchers speculate that vitamin D may be involved in regulating serotonin levels in the brain, but scientific
proof remains elusive.
With high rates of vitamin D deficiency in the U.S. (between 20% and 60% of all teens and adults are deficient, depending on age,
race and gender), some doctors and researchers are calling for more exposure to sunlight.
"You'd have to drink a lot of [fortified] orange juice and a lot of milk," to get the daily recommended dose of 1,000 units of vitamin
D, said Michael Holick, professor of medicine, physiology and biophysics at Boston Medical Center.
Sun, on the other hand, provides a much more efficient way of getting adequate vitamin D. Exposed to the sun for half an hour in a
bathing suit, a light-skinned person's body will make 20 times the daily recommended dose of the vitamin. Ten to 15 minutes of sun
on the face and arms a couple of times a week produces just enough of the vitamin, but any excess can be stored in the body for a
couple of weeks. Sunscreen slows manufacturing substantially: An SPF of 15 reduces the body's ability to make vitamin D by about
99%, Holick says.
Holick, in fact, is one of a small number of medical experts calling for a more lenient attitude toward sun exposure.
"We were born, we evolved, we've been bathed in sunlight all our lives," says Holick, citing evidence that vitamin D supplementation
can significantly reduce the risk of diabetes, multiple sclerosis and likely colorectal, prostate, ovarian, breast and other cancers.
Look, listen and inhale
A day at the beach is a sensory experience unlike a day at the mall, say, or a day at the office. Dr. Karen Koffler,
medical director of the Canyon Ranch spa at Miami Beach, pointed out that the
beach "engages all five senses, but not in

a really gentle way."
To begin with, there's the view. "Visually, you've got this undisturbed vista ," Koffler says. "It's not the middle of
Times Square, where your eyes are just overloaded with information, it's this calm, beautiful, uncompromised view
off into the distance. It's soft on the eyes, and it gives you this sense of expansiveness."
Said vista also has a specific color. When one conjures up images of the beach, they're often dominated by
two hues: blue and beige.
Studies by the Pantone institute, a Carlstadt, N.J.-based color think tank, have shown that blue -- the color
of sky and sea, of course -- is a universal favorite, a hue that people worldwide find peaceful and
tranquil, cooling and reassuring. Studies have also shown that people find muted colors, such as
beiges, soothing and relaxing -- especially when they occur in large quantities, as with sand.
The shoreline's blue and beige sit opposite each other on the color wheel, creating a complementary color scheme
that's harmonious to the eye, says Jill Morton, chief executive of Colorcom , a color consultancy based in
Honolulu and New York. Morton points out that beaches (industrial meltdowns notwithstanding) are devoid of bright
colors such as red, which since our cave-dwelling days has symbolized fire, blood and danger .
an overwhelming way, in
In the neural network of the human brain, the blue and beige of the beach get associated with a host of sensory experiences, from the
smell of the salt air to the sound of the waves to the feel of a gentle ocean breeze. The brain, that is, ties the colors to the
whole experience of being at the beach, in what color psychologists (psychologists who study the human
response to colors) call an "associational response."
"Blue is a favorite because it reminds people of time spent on beaches, on hikes, on the water, in the great outdoors on vacation,"
Morton says. "The experiences associated with the color become imprinted on us."
Some color psychologists take that idea a step further. They say the associational response to
nature colors has been hard-wired into the human brain over the course of evolution, not just
individual lifetimes.
That is, for millions of years, the human brain has associated blue with the reassuring constancy of
the sky and the refreshment of water. Fast-forward to today, and the human response to blue is nearly
instinctual, said Leatrice Eiseman, a color psychologist and executive director of the Pantone color institute.
"Humans are imbued with ancient memory," Eiseman said. "Throughout the ages, our ancestors all felt the same way
because they were conditioned by what they saw in the world around them, and it became instinctive.
We don't say, 'Oh, it's the color of the blue sky therefore it's calming and serene.' We just sort of know it, instinctually."
The brain has an associational response to smells too. People typically head to the beach to relax and unwind .
Ultimately, says Pamela Dalton, a researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia,
our minds link the
smells of the beach with the sensation of getting away from it all.
But context matters. Some beach odors -- the smell of washed-up mollusks, low tide, decomposing seaweed -- aren't all that pleasant
on their own or when whiffed in high concentrations. "But in their place, in their context," Dalton says, "these smells have a lot of
potency, and a lot of beauty."
Just as subtle combinations of scent stimulate the sense of smell, layers of nature sounds stimulate the ears.
Sandpipers, plovers and even seagulls squawk and squeak a combination of harmonic, melodious and inharmonic sounds. The
steady rhythm of waves is actually a not-so-uniform symphony composed of the sounds of

millions of air bubbles of all sizes bursting as water hits the shore.
"We evolved in an environment with sounds such as the sounds of birds, the sound of running water, the sound of wind, and so on,"
said Diana Deutsch, professor of psychology at UC San Diego.
The sounds most people hear on a regular basis, on the other hand, the rumbles of cars, airplanes and construction equipment, the
whirs of vacuum cleaners, dishwashers and washing machines, are unnatural and relatively new, on an evolutionary scale.
"These are all artificial sounds, and there's no reason to assume that we would have evolved to appreciate them or even want to hear
them," Deutsch says. "In fact, there's good reason to expect that we would find them annoying."
Strengthens body, mind
SOME beaches may be crowded and noisy, but most are characterized by muted sounds and an uncomplicated vista stretching to a
distant horizon -- stimuli that are widely regarded as relaxing.
Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
said a deserted beach can be an ideal locale for meditating . "People often prefer to meditate in places with little
distraction," says Davidson, who has studied effects of meditation on the brain. "There's enough internal distraction that we all carry
with us all the time that we don't need to add to that."
Studies of two popular types of meditation, transcendental meditation and mindfulness meditation, have shown
that meditating can improve mood, boost immunity, and may, in the long-run, be good for the
cardiovascular system. In transcendental meditation, a word or phrase is repeated over and over to help focus and quiet the
mind. Mindfulness meditators focus on breathing in order to heighten their awareness of the present.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for
Mindfulness at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School, said the beach can be an exceptionally good place
to practice mindfulness meditation.
"The air on your skin, the warmth of the sun, the coolness of the water ... these are all incredibly rich
sensory experiences that can wake you up to the full actuality of the body's experience, which is what meditation is all about,"
he says.
AT: Institutions Good2NC

Institutional transformation fails only analyzing the personal, psychological
response to ecological interdependence allows for sustainability
Standing up to the powerful economic and political forces that are destroying complex life on our
planet may take everything we haveand humanity may still perish in the process. Facing this challenge will
take courage, a topic that curiously has received little attention in psychology. Save for occasionally wrestling with speaker anxiety
while presenting at conferences, courage is not a typical job requirement for researchers. As clinicians we are asked to examine our
personal failings and weaknesses in order to become better therapists, but as a group we are fairly timid (do not get me started on
the tortuous topic of the APA). Historically, in terms of social issues such as sexism, racism, and other forms
of human-on-human oppression, both researchers and clinicians have taken on these issues only
after activists have laid the groundwork, even though activists are rarely credited in the ensuing psychological
literature. Ecopsychology has followed this pattern , such that environmental activists who do not
write academically respectable books get little acclaim in our field .
At present, each of us has to ponder the personal risks and sacrifices we are willing to make for the
rest of the natural world, an issue that needs constant revisiting as our individual circumstances
alter and our own development unfolds. Our commitment may ebb and flow according to the
fluxing demands of family, job, and health, as well as the mercurial opportunities that present
themselves over the course of a lifetime. These struggles provide a basis for compassion and
understanding when we ask others to have courage.
Of course, I struggle with all the above challenges, frequently feeling guilty that I do not do enough, despairing that it is all for
naught, and feeling ashamed of my own lack of courage. I admire the many individuals whose strength, love, and determination
push them on even as I falter. Sometimes the cutting edge of my political work involves moving further out into the world, while at
other times it is highly private, as when I have to make sure I fully share in the household chores with my wife or work through a
button expertly pushed by my daughter.
Every institution or group with which I have worked has had interpersonal conflicts, the emergence of in
and out groups, power struggles, and bruised egos. Activists and ecopsychologists have proven
to be no exception to this pattern. Sometimes the groups, with more or less success, directly address their interpersonal
conflicts, but often they remain underground. I suspect that such conflicts are inevitable with any group greater
than, say, one person. Thus, one suggestion I have in the personal realm is that we look at our interactions
among ourselves as a way to develop the skills and compassion necessary to assist others.
The old feminist dictum, that the political is personal and personal is political, is worth bearing
in mind as we do our work. Thus, if we bemoan the Global North's exploitation of the Global South's natural resources, a
structural setup with racist roots, then we also need to examine how are we dealing with privilege, and/or being the target of
privilege, in our own lives (Anthony, 1995; Gomes & Kanner, 1995; Johnson-Pynn & Johnson, 2013; Kanner, 2010a; Smith, 2013).
Do our friends mostly come from our own class and race?
Then there is anger and superiority, the linked emotional traps of social and political work . In
regard to anger, in Emotional Intelligence, psychologist Daniel Goleman (2006) provides this wonderful quote from the Dalai Lama:
In the meditative cultivation of patience and forbearance, one may attend to a person who is
engaging in some terribly vile behavior. As you cultivate patience for that person, you do not have
any anger or hostility or aggression toward the person; rather, perhaps, compassion . But there is
clearly an attitude that wants to stop, to repulse, and to annihilate that deplorable behavior. And the powerful wish to stop the
behavior is completely compatible with the lack of anger toward the person. One is patient toward the person but
not
patient toward the terrible activity, and those need be cultivated together so that patience is not
conflated with apathy. (p. 105)
A related issue, the ego, comes into play when we feel superior toward those we oppose or toward the
ignorant publicfeelings that often arise out of a sense of frustration and despairor when we feel
slighted or unappreciated by our fellow activists. On the Left this often results
in splinter groups and a lack of

collaboration across organizations. If we are getting along well among ourselves, we will be far more appealing to those
whom we wish to persuade, or stated less antagonistically, with those whom we invite to join us. Language
antagonistic versus invitationalmatters greatly. It reflects our state of consciousness.
I am zeroing in here on issues that activists face rather than the personal issues that people bring to a psychotherapist. A good deal
has been written about ecotherapy (Buzzell & Chalquist, 2009; Lynch, 2009), and this certainly has great value. As ecotherapists, I
believe we should be absorbed by the challenge of how best to move individuals and groups toward new, sustainable structures even
as they work on themselves. Ecotherapy includes but does not stop at healing the individual.
One danger of ecotherapy, particularly if it becomes subsumed under the mainstream approach, is that we simply
use nature as a way to heal individual problems and hope that these experiences slowly
generalize among people into a greater love and respect for the rest of life . This is the weak
model of social activism implicit in much of current psychotherapy and in many religious approaches (i.e., if enough people
become enlightened the social order will follow suit). As my Native American colleagues and friends have often pointed out to me,
their practices include reciprocity with nature as an integral part of the healing process. Healthy
interdependence, not independence, is the goal.
AT: Permutation Do Both2NC

The permutation devolves into political conservatism that papers over rifts in the
political unconscious
Because ecopsychology aims to provide a detailed analysis of the psychospiritual dimensions of the ecological crisis and of the
human - nature relationship, it holds the promise of offering original, perhaps critical, practices for
personal, social and ecological renewal. Whatever else may be necessary to reverse the ecocidal
behaviour of our society, such a reversal is unlikely to occur unless we find ways to address the deep fear,
anger, grief, despair, hopelessness, denial and so forth which presently block our finding
creative responses to our present dilemma. The practical tasks for ecopsychology, then, are to offer (eco)
psychological support for social movement, facilitating what Joanna Macy has called "the 'inner
work' of social change," and to develop practices that affirm our deep interconnection with the
rest of nature.
Practical developments in ecopsychology fall into two main overlapping categories that parallel the two major categories of
theoretical development. The first deals with the human encounter with nonhuman nature, and includes wilderness practices, vision
quests, shamanism, ecological restoration work, bioregional practice, experiential deep ecology, and finally "eco - counselling," in
which participants allow themselves to "reconnect with nature."(f.24) The second area is more socially and urban centred. The main
developments here are in psychotherapy and "despair and empowerment" work.
Some (eco - ) psychotherapists are now legitimizing and working with the distress their clients -- activist and otherwise - experience
about the ecological crisis, and are endeavouring to become more socially active themselves. Some therapists are also using "natural"
settings with their clients. In despair and empowerment workshops, participants are encouraged, with the
support of a group setting, to
face the dreadful facts about the state of the world on an emotional and
existential level. As Macy argues, such unblocking of our "pain for the world" energizes us, clears our
heads, allows us to feel our connections with one another and the earth, and empowers us to act.
As a radical move, ecopsychology needs to stress those approaches that involve collective, grassroots
healing, empowerment, and nature "remembrance" over those that adopt a more traditional
psychotherapy mode, with nature possibly incorporated into the therapy . Psychotherapy - oriented
ecopsychology risks continuing a conservative, conformist tradition that retreats from political engagement, and in which those who
can afford it and are inclined toward therapy will benefit, while those who are less able or inclined will not. Focusing on
individual "improvement," moreover, tends to play into the hegemonic view that social inequalities
result more from individual deficiencies of character than from institutionalized inequities .(f.25)
Feminist therapy - in which the therapist's role includes both empowering her clients and being an activist herself - offers an initial
model for doing psychotherapy in a way that aims at social change, and some ecopsychologists have indeed adopted a similar
approach. Beyond such reforms to psychotherapy, however, the enormity of our contemporary crisis
calls for bold and creative ways to invite as many people as possible to do the personal emotional
work that will help them find the energy, courage, humour, motivation, compassion, and clarity
to find constructive responses to the crisis of modern times . There are clearly no easy strategies, but two
practices, in addition to the ones discussed above, could be fruitfully adopted or promoted by ecopsychology, especially since they
are inexpensive, accessible and inclusive.
The first is peer - counselling, a form of self - help work in which non - professional peers form a community and learn to act as
counsellors for one another. Peer - counselling is already used by a number of activists for its relevance to social change.(f.26)
It can
it be an inexpensive vehicle not only for personal healing/empowerment and community building, but also for
conscientization. This term, popularized by educator Paulo Freire, refers to "the process whereby people
attain an insightful awareness of the socio - economic, political and cultural circumstances that
affect their lives, as well as their potential capacity to transform their social reality." (f.27) Peer counselling with an explicit social change and ecological agenda could potentially support despair and
empowerment work on a wide scale as well as the challenging of hegemonic definitions of the
human - nature relationship.
A second area of great potential already advocated by some ecopsychologists is spiritual practice, including various forms of
meditation, contemplation, experiential work and ritual. Although spiritual practitioners are not always interested in direct social
activism, a more "engaged" spirituality is gradually emerging,(f.28) and the links between spiritual practice and the ecology
movement are well established.(f.29) Simply put, these practices can help bring to social action the much needed qualities of love,
compassion and clear vision, while helping attenuate hatred, ignorance and greed. Furthermore, any practice that works to
release us from the sense of being a separate, isolated ego set over against the (natural) world,
helps to free us from death anxiety, which some see as a deep source of the human drive to
control and dominate other humans and nature.(f.30)
A final practical concern is the political conservatism of some ecopsychologists . Psychiatrist
John Mack, for example, states that "psychologists committed to environmental change must ...
work with professional environmentalists, policy makers, population experts, corporate leaders,
economists, and others" toward institutional change .(f.31) Such an approach may have some
merit, but by itself it simply carries on a mainstream tradition of trying to change things from
the "top," while insufficiently considering more socially radical approaches. As a radical project,
ecopsychology must address not only our ecological unconscious, but also our political
unconscious. This would mean, among other things, looking for the false consciousness that may be at
work in ecopsychology's own politics, such as those advocated by Mack.
There are, of course, many kinds of radical practices, from the most intimate and persona, to the
most public and broad based. There are likewise many kinds of activities that are potentially
consistent with an "ecopsychological worldview." Ecopsychology should not, then, lay out some
master political agenda for changing society to a more ecological path, for nobody really knows
how this might happen, especially given our sad starting point. What is more important is that it
should encourage and support us to lead radical lives, aware of the forces that shape our
consciousness, and with our hearts open to the suffering of other beings, human and otherwise,
whose freedom we work toward in our own particular ways.
CONCLUSION
In the several decades since the modern environmental movement was born, the
much - heralded subversive

potential of ecology has been little realized. Perhaps radical ecologists are learning that both a more
(ecologically) mature and a more socially (self - ) critical approach is needed . And perhaps the
unique perspective of ecopsychology can play an important role in finding this broader, more
comprehensive approach. My criticisms here have been directed toward this end. As it is now, ecopsychology will certainly
benefit some people, and will no doubt produce many books and workshops, but I suspect that without a commitment to a
broad radical agenda, it will fall short of its own potential . My hope, by contrast, is that the good work begun by
many ecopsychologists will lay the ground for ecopsychology to become an even richer and more radical discipline than it already is.
2ACRace Focus Key

Racial awareness and inclusive scholarship is a necessary precondition to
inclusion in the ecopsychological field
Smith, 13 Program Manager at Alameda County Public Health, Founder Ecotherapist at
EcoSoul:Nature Based Therapies/Presenter (J Phoenix, Ecopsychology: Toward a New Story of
Cultural and Racial Diversity, Ecopsychology, Vol. 5, No. 4, December 2014, Liebert Open
Access)//SJF
The story of our industrial age has been one of conquest, domination, and exploitation . But as with most
narratives, there is more than one story. Alongside the narrative of conquest and exploitation, there are also stories of
resilience, resistance, restoration, and reparation . Environmental justice leader Carl Anthony (1995) writes that
the current ecological narratives do not include the stories of people of color, stating, We have to learn
the stories (p. 272).
One story that planted the seed for the current environmental justice movement is that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who
advocated for Memphis sanitation workers. Doctor Kings work to improve the lives of African Americans who managed the citys
waste was the last work he ever did. Nearly 20 years after Dr. Kings efforts, the first major environmental justice publication was
released (United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 1987). His efforts planted the seed for our current work in
ecopsychology and ecotherapy.
Doctor King may never have heard of the term environmental justice or ecopsychology, yet his actions in Memphis
highlight the connection between the health of the planet and the need for compassion and
justice for people of color and workers at the bottom of the economic hierarchy . I imagine that Dr.
King, as a man of great wisdom and social consciousness, understood that treating those who handle our waste as
throwaway people also demonstrates a disregard for the health of the Earth.
Inclusion of culturally and racially diverse perspectives will update and strengthen the field of
ecopsychology. It has been over 20 years since Theodore Roszak published the first book on ecopsychology (1992). Despite the
publication of several more books in recent years (Buzzell & Chalquist, 2009; Kahn & Hasbach, 2012), the voices and
perspectives of people of color have been consistently underrepresented in the literature. If the
field of ecopsychology is to remain relevant and maintain a commitment to social justice, we
must begin to acknowledge our own blind spots.
The environmental movement has been criticized for a lack of attention to racial and
socioeconomic issues of the poor and people of color. The field of ecopsychology would also benefit
from critical reflection in this area. Fisher states that ecopsychology is about addressing the social
sources of violence done to human and more-than-human nature, identifying the historical,
cultural, political, and economic roots of our ecopsychological crisis (2013, p. 167).
Organizations and individuals have been addressing these issues for many years without labeling
themselves as ecopsychologists. Among these are author and activist Jarid Manos, founder of the Great Plains
Restoration Councilan organization that helps young people heal themselves through healing the Earth (Great Plains
Restoration Council, n.d.). Rodney Stotts, one of the few African American falconers, works with raptors and youth to provide a
space for recovery and healing for both the birds and youth in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area (R. Stotts, personal
communication, July 12, 2012). Kemba Shakur of Oakland, California, noticed the lack of trees in her
neighborhood and founded Urban Releaf to improve the quality of life for urban communities
by planting trees and providing jobs and mentorship for youth (Urban Releaf, n.d.). Finally, Movement
Generation Justice and Ecology Project provides resources, analysis, action, and healing retreats for diverse communities in the San
Francisco Bay Area (Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, n.d.).
None of the above identifies as an ecopsychologist or ecotherapist, yet they are functioning as ecotherapists in their communities
according to Fishers (2013) definition. The field of ecopsychology is at a crossroads and must become more
inclusive to reflect our racially and culturally diverse planet. There are many ways to accomplish this, and I
offer four strategies below:
(1) Create alliances with ecological justice, climate justice, restorative justice, food justice, and
public health organizations that are at the forefront of analysis and action of the connection between poverty,
racism, militarism, the prison industrial complex, and the ecology of the planet.
(2) Address
individual and institutional blind spots and biases by learning about the diverse
environmental history and the stories of people of color, and include these as required reading in ecopsychology
curricula.
(3) Create
ecopsychological communities of practice that include individuals from diverse fields,

honoring the interdisciplinary and interconnected wisdom of these communities.
(4) Create mentorship opportunities for students of color, and develop scholarships to encourage
their participation in ecopsychology programs.
These strategies will allow us to craft new stories for a progressive renewal of ecopsychology.
If the story of the industrial age has been one of domination, then the stories of today must be of inclusion . At a recent
event I attended, Alice Walker spoke to the despair, anger, and frustration of activists . She stated that if it
took at least 500 years to create this mess we are in, we must have a 500-year plan to get out of it.
***Development K***
Cut by Nick Charles
LinkDesire
The desire for development is founded in the wish for a utopian future. It allows
localized knowledge to be subordinated in favor of large scale resource grabs.
De Vries, 7
[Pieter De Vries, Department of Rural Development Sociology, Wageningen University, 2007,
Don't Compromise Your Desire for Development! A Lacanian/Deleuzian Rethinking of the
Anti-Politics Machine, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 [2007], pp. 25-43, NC]
Thus my point is that development has a virtual or fantastic side, as manifested in particular
ways of desiring that are part of the collective unconscious. Thus the above-mentioned
perspectives do not acknowledge the fact that development generates the kinds of desires that it
necessitates to perpetuate itself, that it is a self-propelling apparatus that produces its own
motivational drives, that the development industry is parasitic on the beliefs and dreams of the
subjects it creates. In other words, development lies at the same plane of immanence as
the subjects it produces.7 As argued, the idea of development relies on the production of
desires, which it cannot fulfil. In other words following a Lacanian perspectivethere is a certain
'excess' in the concept of development that is central to its functioning. Development thus points
to a utopian element that is always already out of place. Since it is constitutively impossible, it
functions as its own critique. The question to be answered therefore is why people in the Third
World persist in desiring development in spite of all its failures. My answer to this question is
that the desire for development fills the gap between the promises and their
meagre actual realisations, thus giving body to a desiring machine that also operates in
between the generation and banalisation of hope.
In order to illustrate this dialectic of the generation and banalisation of desire, we can take the
examples of participation in development and the Millennium Development Goals. The former
concept has a long pedigree [eg notions of popular participation in the 1960s and 1970s], but in
the 1980s it was re-deployed by authors such as Robert Chambers, as a way of bringing
development closer to the people after disenchantment with comprehensive forms of planning.8
Topics concerning local knowledge, empowerment and ownership were central in this
'rediscovery' of participation. Development projects were deemed to be 'owned' by the
beneficiaries rather than imposed from outside, their knowledge about natural resources and
their own livelihoods had to be taken advantage of for purposes of design and implementation
and, rather than strengthening bureaucracies, interventions were to empower local people's
organisational capacities. Today, however, participatory development is being heavily criticised
for having spurred a veritable industry of participatory methodologies aimed at achieving a
visible kind of outcome capable of convincing donors that their money will be spent in
accordance with the capacities and needs of the beneficiaries in what have become shameful
rituals of legitimation.9 Such rituals of legitimation are not only very time-costly but also
generate expectations and demands that are branded as unrealistic or even politically
subversive. In other words, the promise of participatory development and empowerment has
been banalised into simplistic technologies for the management of change. Yet imagine what
would happen if participation by the target group were really taken seriously and were no longer
constrained by the conditions set by the development agency. What if the poor could really have
control over the donor resources and decide on its use? We could imagine that not
compromising on the desire of participation would lead to a different kind of development
project, one that would change the very meanings of development in unexpected ways, creating
new notions and practices of empowerment, local knowledge and ownership. However, we can
also surmise that such a 'naive' approach would not be acceptable to the donors and the 'new
professionals', for it would lead to the corruption of their notions of development as

encapsulated in capacity-building guidelines and principles of financial transparency. The other
example is that of the Millennium Development Goals, which purport to resolve the basic
material needs of Third World populations through massive investment in social infrastructure
and services following a sectoral approach [ie water, health, education, etc]. Such a call for a
concerted global effort to achieve a rather minimalist set of aims can be anything but disputable.
However, the very fact that such a call has to be made after five decades of development
proclamations is scandalous.
LinkFailed States/Cites
The desire for development is rooted in the representation of third world
countries as failed cites in need of intervention. It is part of a larger system of
desire for risk and resource management.
De Vries, 7
Governing the South
Conventional views in the media and in policy documents see development intervention as
oriented towards purportedly postcolonial societies whose nation-states have followed different
trajectories from Western industrialised countries and which suffer from endemic wars and
humanitarian disasters. Societies, in short, that are the 'other' of modernity. Mark Duffield
deftly shows how present representations of the Third World as spaces of excess and abjection
interrelate with a new political economy in the South and that, rather than examples of failure,
they should be seen as creative responses to neoliberal structural adjustment
policies .10 His line of reasoning is as follows. According to much contemporary thinking,
Third World societies with 'failed states' have fallen into a perverse cycle of poverty, war and
social regression, thus becoming marginal or borderland regions that reflect the failure of
modernity in much of the South. But, says Duffield, such representations of failure and
images of regression provide the justification and legitimacy for new kinds of
intervention , a new will to govern the unstable areas of the global margins. Likewise,
mainstream thinking about 'failed states' makes a neat distinction between metropolitan areas
and the borderlands, the latter exhibiting traits such as barbarity, excess and irrationality in
contrast to the civility, restraint and rationality of the former. These representations, Duffield
emphasises, are imaginary, or ideological in the sense that they operate as legitimisations of this
new will to govern. For, 'the borderlands are ... imagined spaces of breakdown, excess and want
that exist in and through a reforming urge to govern, that is to reorder the relationship between
people and things, including ourselves to achieve desired outcomes'. I Mark Duffield has
developed an interesting line of thinking in which he conjoins a Foucauldian perspective on the
development machine with a realist account of 'reflexive modernisation' in the South. He shows
explicitly how the reinvention and radicalisation of development goes together with all sorts of
images of the Third World as a phantasmic obscene space, representing everything that the
West is not. Development thus is reimagined as a form of global risk management aimed at
finding the solution to the ungovernability of the South. This is a good example of how the
desires for development of Third World people are banalised through the construction of
fantastic images of the 'other'.
Development within this reformed policy discourse has been able to transform itself and
overcome criticisms directed to its 'lack' of success, leading to a radicalisation of the concept. It
should be clear, however, that this new form of governance directed to the reconstruction of
entire societies in the South is in essence an extremely authoritarian kind of project, as
manifested in large-scale interventions to build 'social capital' and create civil societies. Here we
see the actualisation of the promise of development in the guise of neocolonial programmes of
civilisation and containment of 'barbaric' Southern populations.
Development thus becomes part of a wider apparatus of rule aimed at managing
risks and governing distant and unruly populations. The development apparatus has
become part of an illiberal system of global governance and securitisation intended to stop the
spread of irrationality of the South. In the process it constitutes networks of complicity between
international aid agencies, warlords, NGOs, military interests, drug and weapon mafias, etc. Yet,
while the discourse of development continuously changes and its field of governmentality has
expanded, Third World peoples' desire for development persists. Thus the gulf between the
promise of development and its actualisation has never in history been so large. In the
remainder of this article I aim to turn the tables against such spectacular views of the Third
World as objects of governmentality and focus on the role that the dreams and expectations of
development play in keeping alive the promise of development. This, I argue, necessitates that
we conceptualise the development apparatus as a desiring machine and not only as an apparatus
of governmentality.
LinkSubjectivity
Development projects stem from the lack of post-development structures, the
subject who desires further development is defined by what they are not they are a
subject of lack.
De Vries, 7
A Lacanian approach to the 'lack' of development
My argument is that we have to scrutinise the disjuncture between the desire for development
and its banalisation inpractice. In order to do this Lacanian psychoanalytical theory is very
useful.1 In Lacanian terms it could be stated that the desire for development fills in a
certain lack in its actualisation ; it always points towards something else, for 'desire is
always the desire of the "Other"' [for our purposes the development machine].1 Desire then is
the faculty to produce dreams and utopias that are both evoked and betrayed by actual
development projects. In Lacanian terms desire is triggered by 'small objects of the other' [in
Lacanese, petits objets a] which operate as 'sublime' objects of desire [sublime, in the
psychoanalytic sense that they sublimate, or give body to the faculty of desire]. Examples of
these small objects are the works or obritas Andean people refer to when talking about the
promises of development: the bridge, the road, the irrigation canal, the school building, etc.
The argument, then, is that development as a desiring machine operates through the generation,
spurring and triggering of desires, and by subsequently doing away with them. It is this double
movement of the generation and banalisation of hope that constitutes the dialectics of desire.14
The critical point to be made is that the mundane world of actual development intervention
cannot subsist without its virtual supplement: the fantastic images and promises that are evoked
by a diversity of small objects that operate as causes of desire. It is important to point out that
this line of analysis entails a particular conceptualisation of power and the subject. Here power
functions through the simultaneous generation and banalisation of the desire for development
rather than through Foucauldian processes of governmentality and the disciplining of subjects'5.
Contrary to Foucault, this Lacanian approach does not dispense with the notion of the subject as
a contingent outcome of powerknowledge processes. The subject in Lacanian theory is the name
for a void, or lack, that gives body to the actual social order, and which stands for society's
contradictions. The subject therefore has no place in the positive [actual] order of society, yet
paradoxically it is essential for its functioning. It bears witness to, and masks, the impossible
and antagonistic nature of society. The subject of development is therefore an answer to the
recurrent question 'what is it not to be developed?' and the hallmark of subjectivity is precisely
this 'void' of 'non-being'. In other words, the fantasies of development give rise to a
subject that identifies herself in terms of that which she is not. Accordingly, this 'lack
in the subject' transmutes itself into a 'subject of lack'. The subject of development is a decentred subject , in the precise sense that she is subject to endless desires that
originate outside her [ie those fantastic small objects promised by the development
machine]. And it is this radical decentredness as a 'subject of a lack' that produces a desiring
subject who keeps searching for what is in development more than itself; in other words for the
'promise of development'.
In the next section I explore these ideas further by paying special attention to the work of
Ferguson and Escobar, as I agree with their views, but at the same time expand my theoretical
approach in a very different direction. The development machine and its instrumental effects
James Ferguson has paradoxically played a major role in the debunking and the recuperation of
the idea of development, first through his introduction of Foucauldian notions of discourse and
discipline to the analysis of the development apparatus, then by criticising post-development
thinkers for downplaying the significance of the promises of modernity for the subjects of
development. 16
ImpactBiopower
Development rhetoric is the precondition for governance. It requires a poor
unintelligent other to be constructed and then controlled and improved.
De Vries, 7
Ferguson arrives at this view of the development apparatus through a deft use of poststructuralist ideas deriving from Foucault and Deleuze. From Foucault he takes the notion of
governmentality as power that operates through the manufacturing and deployment of
technologies of control so as to convert development into an object of power-knowledge. From
Deleuze he takes the idea of the desiring machine. 19 However, he does not elaborate much on
this notion and therefore his analysis remains largely a Foucauldian one. Escobar brilliantly
applied Foucault's ideas to development when arguing that development has been rendered
possible through the 'invention of poverty'.20 Escobar shows how the representation of the
'other' as poor, indigent and thus in need of aid is part of the constitution of a network of power
relations that both reproduces images of otherness as pathology and of the 'other' as a subject to
be reconstructed through the knowledge of development. Accordingly, disciplinary power is
harnessed by techniques of classification and categorisation [eg the use of indicators and
economic modelling techniques], or bio-power, which provide the rationalities of government
[or governmentality] through which the conditions that impede development can be identified
and analysed. In other words, governmentality is about the problematisation of the social as a
realm that lends itself to the application of new technologies of government aiming to instil the
idea of development as both the problem and solution of the predicament of postcolonial
subjects.
In this view 'problematisation' through the production of rationalities of government
[governmentality] is the process by which both regimes of legitimisation are constructed and the
social becomes the object of the gaze of the development apparatus. At the same time the aims
and objectives of development operate as pretexts for the workings of governmentality. In this
way the social is constructed as a space for intervention through which development subjects are
fashioned as the targets of the technologies of development. The political programme of poststructuralists like Escobar, therefore, is that of fracturing that gaze so as to render possible the
dissemination of knowledges outside the unified, powerful view of the 'development' industry.
ImpactSustainability
Development is inevitable absent an analysis of desire. The Affs development
strategy will inevitably fail and another development project will pop up.
De Vries, 7
Continuing failure of rural development projects brought Ferguson to a discursivegovernmental analysis of development at the beginning of the 1990s. In his now classical study
on the anti-politics machine, Ferguson sets out to analyse the workings of what he coins the
development apparatusthe set of institutions, agencies and ideologies that structure
development thinking and practice as a machine-like kind of entity that reproduces itself by
virtue of the unintended, unplanned, yet systematic side-effects it brings about. He takes as a
case study one large rural development project in Lesotho funded by the World Bank and the
Canadian International Development Agency [CIDA] that sadly but quite unsurprisingly ends up
in the dustbin of failed projects in Africa. The reality of project failure, Ferguson argues, does
not lead to a critical re-evaluation of the principles and conceptualisations that underpin the
identification, planning and implementation of rural development activities. On the contrary, in
a perverse way the same cures are prescribed for the same diagnosis and new, more ambitious
projects, with more sophisticated planning techniques are initiated.17 As Ferguson puts it,
'again and again development projects ... are launched, and again and again they fail; but no
matter how many times this happens there always seems to be someone ready to try again with
yet another project'.18
ImpactTurns Case
Aff Take Out- the desire for development can only be sustained through the failure
of development strategies. There are larger systems in power which guarantee
failure.
De Vries, 7
Ferguson's argument is that development interventions hardly bring about any social
and economic transformation in the lives of people in the Third World. In most
cases production structures are not transformed, technologies are not transferred and, after the
whirlwind of development propaganda and the massive presence of experts and bureaucrats,
local people in the end just continue to live their lives as if nothing important has happened. It is
his argument that development interventions are anything but inconsequential or innocent,
since there is a clear pattern in the outcomes of these interventions: there are unintended
consequences that occur in a systematic way, behind the backs of the actors involved. In other
words, there is a hidden intentionality in programmes and projects that cannot be
explained by, or reduced to, the intentions, desires or calculations of the actors
involved. In putting this argument forward Ferguson is not denying that good intentions exist
or that interests play no role in development projects and programmes, but these should not be
taken as the explanatory variables in trying to understand how institutions reproduce
themselves. Another consequence which Ferguson analyses is the way in which development
interventions transform the essentially political nature of development into a sanitised object of
[expert] knowledge complemented by an arsenal of toolkits as in the case of 'participatory
appraisals'. The apparatus of development thus produces a reified world of [discursive] practices
dissociated from the actual struggles and aspirations of the subjects involved, yet exhibiting an
intelligibility of its own. It is Ferguson's crucial insight that this coexistence between these two
different realms the actual life-ways, dreams and aspirations of local populations and the virtual
realm of development rhetoric, routines and procedures is something to be analysed on its own
terms, not something to be reduced to some external logic of capital, or to the
institutionalisation of some liberal desire to construct a humane world. It is not that the
development apparatus has no impacts or effects on the 'real world' of the subjects of
development [ie on people's life-ways]. On the contrary, as Ferguson shows, the effects are
highly disappointing, if sometimes not outright disastrous. The point, however, is that these
effects 'don't matter' for the functioning of the development industry. Rather than deterring the
expansion of the apparatus, failure operates as the motor for its reproduction. At the same time
failure produces instrumental effects, such as depoliticisation and bureaucratic penetration, that
are crucial to the preservation of certain forms of governmentality and domination. It is this
coincidence of instrumental effects and the reinvention of 'new technologies' of intervention that
makes the development apparatus so effective as an instrument of domination.
Float the PIK

Development strategies are not a monolithic evil, rather the promise of
development must be fulfilled to those who need it.
De Vries, 7
It must be a strange experience for students of development, well versed in the latest discussions
about 'post'- or 'alternative' development, to be confronted with the thoughts of Andean villagers
in the Peruvian highlands. There, when engaging people in discussions about the meanings and
costs of development, the position of Andean villagers is quite clear: what is needed is big and
small infrastructure, highways and feeder roads, irrigation systems, dams, schools, town-halls,
etc-or, in local parlance, 'las obritas [the small works] they [the state and NGOs] should bring to
us'. In fact, when asking the villagers how they would define development, their answer is
surprisingly straightforward: 'an extensionist who comes to our field and tells us the kind of
fertilisers we should apply in order to increase our yields'. We should not discard these ideas as
the naive thoughts of people unaware of the risks development interventions entail. Neither
should we see them as a lack of knowledge of the possible dangers and environmental hazards of
infrastructural works and agricultural innovations. These people are quite conscious of the
momentous consequences, and dangers, of development projects and programmes for their
everyday lives. What they mean to say, however, is that they hold politicians and the state
accountable for their unfulfilled promises: for the roads that were never built, the schools that
never arrived, the jobs that never opened up; in other words, for the material and
economic progress that was promised but only arrives in their dreams . Obviously,
development entails not only material [infra]structures but also a moral relationship with
distant authorities. As one of them put it, "we have learnt to desire such obras, and we do hold
them accountable for not providing them".
In this article I look for ways to engage with development and its promises at a time when
critiquing the development industry seems to have become an industry in itself. I go along with
the critics of development concerning the disappointing and often even disastrous effects of
many development interventions. I also coincide with the view that the solution is not to be
found in terms of 'better knowledge' or forms of 'enlightened' managerialism. However, I stand
back from present-day tendencies to embrace the idea of the 'end of development', 'postdevelopment', or 'alternatives for development'.
The article addresses this unfailing belief in development, given the notorious inability of
governmental and non-governmental institutions to keep their promises. I also discuss what it
means to position ourselves in relation to this promise of development in a world characterised
by ever more inequality, poverty and exclusion. Many people who are in utter dismay about the
results of decades of development intervention have opted for no[t] [longer] playing the fake
game of the development industry. They have decided not to let themselves be co-opted by the
fantasies continuously created. Some have chosen the path of 'alternatives for development'.
Although I sympathise with these positions, I argue that we should relate to Third World
people's dreams and desires and not withdraw from the promise of development .
In other words, people's desires for development must be taken seriously and development's
promises should not be abandoned. However, as I will show, taking the promise of
development seriously is a radical position, which carries major ethical

implications .
The aim of this article is twofold. First, an analysis is presented of the relationship between the
virtual world of dreams and expectations about development and the crude reality of actual
development-or rather of its absence. In order to understand this paradox I argue that it is
necessary to analyse the ways in which development operates as a desiring
machine around a virtual 'gap'. To elaborate this position, I propose a Lacanian/ Deleuzian
elaboration of Ferguson's notion of the development apparatus as a desiring machine, thus
distancing myself from Foucauldian approaches focusing on governmentality. Second, from
this theoretical perspective I expose the political and ethical implications of the rejection of the
notion of development and argue that the abandonment of the notion signifies the betrayal of its
promise. In other words, that the object of development is not its actualisation but that
of sustaining the capacity to desire a different kind of society that is not yet
defined. But before exposing this Lacanian/ Deleuzian analysis, I start with a discussion of the
major theoretical approaches to development and their view of this relationship between the
desire for development and its depressing reality.
AltUnnecessary
In spite of its shortfalls there are no alternatives to development- only good and
bad development strategies.
De Vries, 7
Development intervention and theories about its failure
In the literature we find manifold explanations for the shortcomings of development and the
disjuncture between goals and expectations, and real outcomes. Those who follow a
modernisation perspective take a benevolent position towards the project of development,
arguing that, for all its shortcomings and disappointing results, academics and practitioners
should keep united in their search for better strategies of intervention. In this view there is
simply no alternative for alleviating the fate of the poor. The very existence of a body of
international agencies working on the promotion of new forms of expertise is viewed as a heroic
[if quixotic] modernist endeavour, or as the expression of the culture of modernity as manifested
in the belief in planning and its symbolic paraphernalia.1 In this view it is important to
acknowledge that there is no alternative to development, that development in spite of its failures
is the only game in town. Here we see a predilection for the identification of constantly new
approaches, as manifested in the popularity of notions such as social capital, civil society
development, participation, good governance, etc. This is the position of institutions such as the
World Bank, which are ready to engage in thoroughgoing forms of self-criticism and to reinvent
themselves by embracing new approaches and methodologies so as to salvage the idea of
development. Radical political economists, on the other hand, see donor-funded development
projects as vehicles for the penetration of capitalist relations of production through the
imposition of structures that enhance market dependence via commoditisation processes.2 They
argue that the rationales put forward by liberal academics for development interventions-in the
sense of programmes aiming at the opening up of local economies to larger markets-are nothing
but ideological justifications for the process whereby non-capitalist modes of production are
subordinated to global economic forces, thus making their autonomous reproduction unfeasible.
Commoditisation leads to the destruction of traditional livelihoods, and their subsumption to
the logic of capital for the sake of global forms of capitalist accumulation. Planned development
without thoroughgoing forms of socioeconomic transformation cannot but operate as a
handmaiden to facilitate such processes of capitalist penetration. According to this view,
development interventions are not good or bad in themselves but must be analysed in
terms of their role in wider processes of social change, the question being what kinds of interests
they stand for. Are they those of transnational corporations, national capitalists, an emerging
rural bourgeoisie, or those of popular social classes, such as the peasantry, urban working
classes, the landless, etc? Development in this way is an arena of political negotiation between
different social classes, leading to different types of political economy.
AT: Indict of Ferguson and Escobar

Indicts of Ferguson and Escobar are false
De Vries, 7
Of course, post-structuralist critiques of development would argue that individuals and
communities can imagine themselves in other ways and devise strategies for combating or
undermining the hegemony of development. Such strategies are usually presented or formulated
in terms of alternative modernities. But one could argue that this is just another way of
disavowing the very fact that the subject constituted by development is a split entity, a void
concealed through the ongoing promises of modernity. In other words, Foucauldian poststructuralist theory fails to interrogate the very lack in development itself, its inability to engage
with the dreams and fantasies it triggers.
Before elaborating on my Lacanian approach to the 'desiring machine', let us reflect on how
Ferguson's and Escobar's arguments have been misread . For instance, Gardner and
Lewis criticise Ferguson and Escobar for the over-determined character of the Foucauldian
concepts of governmentality and discourse which, in their view, leads to a tautological way of
thinking. In their view the development world is much more diverse than assumed by these
authors. As they put it, development 'involves multiple and ever changing realities and
narratives' and 'to construct it as bounded and internally homogeneous is theoretically
contradictory'.21 But, in my view, this is a travesty of Ferguson's and Escobar's
arguments, as their notion of a development apparatus does not deny the fact of
multiplicity or heterogeneity. The issue rather is why this multiplicity of desires,
expectations, technological packages, planning instruments and methodologies leads to the
pervasiveness of failure as a social fact, and how failure is again used as an entry point for new
rounds of development thinking and practice. Similarly Mosse criticises Foucauldian
perspectives on development for 'not doing justice to the complexity of policy-making and its
relationship to project practice or to the creativity and skill involved in negotiating
development'.22 And in criticising Ferguson's and Escobar's supposed teleological functionalism
and their unwillingness to take into account the predicaments of policy makers, Mosse contends
that, rather than analysing how events and practices are generated, it is more urgent to gain an
understanding of how control over the interpretation of events is exercised, for 'authoritative
interpretations have to be made and sustained socially'. Is this not a way of denying the fact that
development interventions reinforce old and produce new kinds of political contradictions, that
indeed this disavowal of political antagonism may be the defining feature of development
discourse?23 As Chantal Mouffe argues, an 'anti-political vision which refuses to acknowledge
the antagonistic dimension constitutive of "the political"... reveals a complete lack of
understanding of what is at stake in democratic politics and of the dynamics of constitution of
political identities and, as we will see, it contributes to exacerbating the antagonistic potential
existing in society'.24
***Individualism K (Security)***
Cut by Saul Forman
1NCIndividualism K (Security Link)

Modern society encourages the circulation of fear as a social relation as an attempt
to centralize securityindividuals turn to government, policy action to stop the
swellingthis trades off with an individualized push for collective security
Archives Husserl, researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (Marc,
Human Security and State Security, an Ambivalent Relationship, Verso: (In)Security of Life.
From Biopolitics to Security Politics, Issue 25, 2006, http://idea.ro/revista/?
q=en/node/41&articol=431)//SJF
When society is scared by all sorts of things, in certain ways that require further analysis, and when the expression
of these
fears and the way they circulate interchange and replace any kind of social relation thus
menacing all types of social relationships the major risk emerges for the need of security these
fears translate to be exploited and manipulated at will by the organ isms, authorities or
personalities that should actually impose the law (a head of security forces, a chief police officer, a minister of internal
affairs). Down this road the police can question court decisions, can disable defenses, criticize judges (for
their so-called clemency) or can censure journalists (for their exaggerated curiosity) the security imperative
becoming the chief key to the settlement of the worst.
Nevertheless, today, we find it impossible to live without a security-based thinking, because all sorts of
forms of insecurity, wars, terrorism, epidemics, natural and sanitary calamities, famine , extreme
poverty or unemployment seem to be more frequent and generally spread than any time before. We need such an
outlook in order to realize what tens of millions of people lack all around the world and what so many others consider to be a more
or less imminent threat. Furthermore we need it, because none of the fears triggered by these related
insecurities can pass as insignificant. Nevertheless what is the designation of this enigmatic us? Here, three entities are
concerned. 1) Human beings, no doubt about that, irrespective of their origins, culture, nationality, religion or
whatever else human beings that at the idea that insecurity could extend anytime over other areas, in any
part of the world, should rise above the particularity of their individual fears and should find the way
towards a new perception of the world as a common one. Actually, the impulse of indignation or transindividual and transnational compassion at times of human or natural calamities (earthquakes, floods, but also wars, famine,
epidemics, state violence etc.) reminds us each time, even if not to the marrow, that whatever we are going to name human
insecurity in the future is the most unevenly shared thing in the world (between North and South, rich and poor etc.), but also the
easiest to grasp on a universal level. No matter who we are, where do we come from and what kind of experiences have we
gathered, we
should know and know it by a strange kind of knowledge that mixes memory, technological
all the modern techniques information technologies the significance of this
insecurity. One of the questions each person should consider is whether this culture of fear that has engulfed democratic
means and
societies contributes at the awakening of this conscience or not this conscience that could be its moral and spiritual rise, as
Vclav Havel would put is, or if it implies a new responsibility or even a new cosmopolitism or if, on the contrary, it is but an
instrument of withdrawal and of an exclusion of the wider world. 2) This us, to which the conscience of insecurity refers, comprises
the states as well. They are expected to ensure security in all the areas of our existence where it should be threatened. They bear the
task of transforming and extending the concept of security, so that it is not identified with their security. Therefore, as these pages
will show, it all depends, on one hand, on the diversity of the forms this expansion might adopt, and on the limits established by the
states themselves, while on the other hand it is related to the way it articulates or not the development of a
certain culture of fear its calculation, exploitation or even manipulation . 3) Finally, this us
covers, on the one part, that of international organizations, and on the other part, that of nongovernmental organizations, all of which should consider the recreation or safeguarding of the
minimal conditions of human security an essential principle of their activity (and they are obviously
engaged in this endeavor that brings so many obstacles about), in all parts of the world where these conditions are under
threat, provided that they have not been already destroyed.
1NCIndividualism K (HR Impact)

The state feeds on that monopolization and sacrifices human rights to respond to
nationalized violence
Each threat, considerable as it is, justifies its own claim for appropriate attention . Nevertheless the
diversity of these insecurity factors requires an integrated conception and it leads to a global way
of understanding, on behalf of the entire populace, of this series of privations 12 . . . . For instance any
privilege to peace at the cost of security is out of the question. On the contrary, none of these essential aspects
can be overlooked.13
Nevertheless if this integration emerges as a requirement, how are we to interpret the fact that the content of the vital core of all
human lives is determined in a relative and random way? Does this imply that integration has got a variable geometry that, in
order not to disturb or deny certain economic, political, strategic, geopolitical or other interests or speculations, here and there this
or that element of the said content will be omitted and that these omissions will be effected with regard to emphasizing certain
injuries to human dignity or acceptations of poverty and famine, and that for the same reasons nobody will ever mention certain
arrests, abusive incarcerations or capital executions? Who, and depending on what kind of quality will claim the right to form an
exception the right to limit the extension of the concept of human security?
The probem all these questions imply is the difficulty, if not the impossibility of returning to the state
and its governmental institutions for maintaining or safeguarding this integration . The most
important element of the report Human Security Now is its unrest with respect to the inability of institutions to infallibly enter this
complex game. The rapporteurs are quite aware of the number of political options behind avoiding or
screening it, nevertheless they also know how any type of fear can be disregarded , or how various procedures and control systems can be elaborated to generate insecurity, under the pretext of
managing certain fears of the citizens. This is why one of the axes of their conception is first of all the conjugation of the
preoccupation with human security (preoccupation that, in this case, should leave any type of political prejudice, restriction and
limitation behind) that is, of this preoccupation with human rights. The rapporteurs argue that their synergy is the
condition under which the protection of human security will not become syno nymous with
insecurity and it will not turn, despite its own will, against the liberties it pretends to protect.
Compliance with human rights is the basic condition for the protection of human security. . . . Thus human rights and
human security are in a relation of synergy. Human security helps in tracing rights threatened in
certain situations. Human rights help us answer the question on how should human security be protected. The concept
of rights and obligations completes the ethical and political importance and recognition of the
concept of human security.14
Nevertheless we know the difficulties this synergy in the conditional most certainly faces. The chief among them is the
impatience in searching for instant solutions, for immediate answers, while the most
comfortable artifice in this case seems to be the designation of an enemy. Only both the impatience in
finding solutions and the need for finding answers originate in our most frequent and best cultivated
fears. Thus the question arises: can the imperative for synergy between the requirement for security and human rights be met
under their pressure moreover as this imperative is not at all a spontaneous one? Can this pressure somehow manage not to
produce the opposite effect, namely to invest the state with absolute power to protect against threats it identifies and selects
according to its own will? Still, all these conditions, imperatives and requirements can easily remain humble hopes as long as this
pressure is maintained and as long as it triggers all sorts of recoveries and manipulations, demagogic discourses and images
(because by now all these have risen above the level of simple discourses)?
We are not entirely convinced that the members of the Commission for Human Security wished to keep this paradox in mind.
Because there is no mentioning in the report neither of any kind of political, media or joint instrumentalization of fear nor of its
techniques despite the fact that the entire train of thought seems to be guided by the concept of fear. And still, they are quite aware
of and even affirm it that the forms of insecurity threatening people today in various ways and on an
almost immeasurable scale, all over the world, could never be overcome without what they
denote as the habilitation of citizens. As a matter of fact, this is the condition for the distance and
difference between a regime that distinguishes between human security and state security and
one that treats them as similar or even confounds them. In an undemocratic regime, individuals have no say in
the matters of their personal security, and this includes all areas: internal security, jobs, health, environment or external affairs.
They endure the options and directives of the state. They have no right to initiatives, neither in what pertains to them and their
relatives, nor in what pertains to anybody else. Nevertheless what happens to this right in the case of democratic regimes? What
happens in cases when in the name of this security new systems of defense can be installed, when new laws leading to an increase of
insecurity are passed as the creation of more and more files, archives and personal dossiers15, for means becoming increasingly
difficult to control.
There is an actual risk of seeing again the way in which even when it is formulated by the citizens, with all the
appearances of spontaneity the
requirement for security can turn against security, thus the indexation of
these measures, systems and laws to a security policy or to the organization of insecurity is
indecidable. A first answer to this risk could simply rest in the selection, from among all existing
discourses and from among all actions effected in the name of security, of those that are in
conformity with human rights and of those who actually violate these human rights. This were nothing else
but a reinforcement of the principle according to which the conformity to human rights is the essential condition for accepting
anything said and done, under any circumstances, for the protection or restoration of human security. In other words,
compliance to these rights, that by definition imposes certain limits to the action taken in the
name of state security, does not imply that these limits can be modified or disregarded in the
name of various forms of insecurity. And still, we know this answer will not suffice, because the synergy it recommends
is fragile by default. Irrespective of the real, imaginary or fantastic situation it faces, any regime is extremely tempted to decree the
state of exception. Nevertheless nothing leads to greater fragility than the fears at the bases of the need for security and of press,
radio and television campaigns, that orchestrate or influence it nothing is a greater threat to this synergy than
the explosive play between the language of fear, that of the imperative need for protection and
that of security answers taking the shape of a verbal and legislative overlicitation .16 Inside this
game, violence finds its most appropriate terrain ever.
1NCIndividualism K (Human Alt)

The system of state security is bankruptthey control certain modes of revealing
that prevent objective evaluation of threatsthe affective stigmatization of the
public can only be reversed by generating a collective individual conscience that
transcends the culture of fear and generates valuable democratic participation
The implication here is that the
reason behind the concept of human security is to consider the complexity

of the fears that penetrate any society democratic societies, but those of other types as well, even if some of them
seem to have been relieved of such phenomena (but for how long?). Nevertheless, this complex character becomes
evident above all through the fact that no matter how real or fictitious there threats might be, how objective or
imaginary the motives behind the fear might be, the culture they imply triggers, in all respects, a
problem that refers first of all to the abilities, capacities and means individuals employ, in
person, in order to confront that fear as a community. This culture gives birth to a certain opposition
to, if not even a resistance in the face of all forms of simplifying or reduction that go along with it and all the
more as these tendencies materialize in the characterization or caricaturing, in the exclusion or persecution of certain
categories of individuals, identified on basis of their social status, profession, religion, skin color,
ethnic origin or various other forms of affiliation. These should be the unavoidable
consequences of the requirements of human security. In this respect, they also imply the necessity for
inventing an idiomatical and multiplied singularity, a singularity that will always appear to be the
only way to resist incorporation, indoctrination, to resist the rise of collective anger and hate, things
that after all are permanent results of any conjunction between the culture of fear and the culture of enemies. Human security
should never be the concern of only the state, because, in certain cases, nothing can protect its safeguarding or restoration from all
sorts of manipulation, pressure and conflicting interests, while the number of these appears to be always so great that they end up
simply melting (for this is the law of such complicities) into the concept of state security.
However, in the same time, these instruments themselves (the capacities, abilities, means we have earlier mentioned)
are suffocated or compromised by the culture of fear, understood as a political or media

interference with (our) perception of a certain kind of threat. Consequently, their multiplication
should, on one hand, encourage individual to adopt idiomatic ways of expression and action (to make them
reject any position of being trapped by words, prefabricated formulae or instant solutions.) On the other hand, the actual effect
is exactly the opposite. This obviously happens in the case of certain regimes that nobody would choose to consider
democratic regimes that consolidate their domination upon a double exercise of threat: the one they inflict directly upon their
citizens and the other, which they exploit (as fear of an outward or inside enemy) in order to justify the oppression they effect. Only
the same thing happens in the case of democratic regimes, too. We have come to a stage where it is impossible to
marginalize or ignore under the pretext that they represent no danger at all certain voices
that are heard in each democracy (the once we have mentioned above), whose audience emerges as a result
of the culture of fear and that of enemies, cultures they cannot but develop . If the phenomenon we have
earlier termed the settlement of the unacceptable acquires a meaning in democratic societies, this cannot be separated by this
dominant conjunction. It is the instance that makes us accept the thing we thought we would never accept, and it is the instance that
turns certain words, images and acts we believed we would never take in into perfectly normal, customary parts of our lives. For
instance, the phenomenon is manifest in the way in which, in our democracies, we treat immigration
exclusively as a problem and our express fear of it seems to us to be utterly justified and nothing
out of the ordinary. Generally, this consists in a division of the population , in the identification (if not in the
tracing, already from childhood10, as it was recently proposed) and stigmatization of one or another social category as
a population bearing risks and of which we appear to be legitimately afraid. This settlement shows in the
mapping of appearances, and in the resurrection of the most reductive characterizations and identifications. The essence here is the
way in which the force behind the images and words of this settlement manages to impose
certain ways of thinking and reacting to the most insignificant event (the tiniest happening) that later
become parts of the convention, rise beyond any discussion and turn into norms owing to a
programmatic, political and media support they enjoy.
All this difficulties share the element of the complementarity of human security and state security. As the latter remains undefined,
it is the ideal place, in the essence of the answer to the need and requirement for security, for insecurity to settle. The authors of the
report are perfectly conscious of this fragility and the way they deal with it is remarkable. Actually the greatest problem about this
complementarity is its exhaustive character. As soon as it implies a comprehension of the vital core of all
human lives, it also requires a choice, a selective appreciation of the contents of this core. The
state can choose (at it has always done) to keep or discard certain elements of insecurity as interfering
with this content. It can reduce the significance of some to a minimum and, simultaneously,
consider others to be of excessive importance.11 In other words, the state always divides and classifies
the complement. Our task then is to discover the exact criteria according to which and the pressure under which this
classification is done. Who participates in the decision that gives a certain form of insecurity priority in the face of others? Moreover,
it is not merely budget or various means at disposal that determine where this priority goes. The decision much rather depends on
the compatibility of the means employed to react to a threat (outward or inward) or to another one implying global security. How
can we hinder the means employed from displacing insecurity from a certain area t another? The commission rapporteurs answer
this question by relying on the argument of integration.
2NCIndividualism K (Framework)
Debate is a space not for evaluating desirability of policy outcomes, but for
effective democratic deliberationthe central question of this participation is one
of affectas long as debate remains centered around reaction, the education and
skills we get become stigmatized in the collapse of democratic discussiononly
examination of the attitudes and fantasies that come from these policies can
generate a space away from idiomatic reactions to fear
Consequently the
matter of individual security is a matter of language and it depends a lot on the

way each of the parties involved describes, expresses, analyzes or interprets the types of
insecurities it faces. And it is a matter of lanuage because one needs words to express the intolerable, the
unacceptable or the unjustifiable and to lower that which Michel Foucault termed the threshold of tolerance
in everyone, democratic societies included. However, any injustice (political violence, poverty, famine, no
access to health care) imposes this lowering. The extremely disparate and lengthy path leading from various
forms of insecurity to the requirement for security needs to be verbalized . Nevertheless words are
needed also understand the inherent threat of getting involved with simplistic analyses, sentences
without trials and hasty condemnations, with the caricature-like designation of responsible parties, guilty persons or enemies, or
else of all sorts of calls to violence. Words are needed lest individuals will blindly turn to the
protection offered by the state being preoccupied, partially and exclusively each time, with getting an
answer right away, irrespective of the forms of insecurity this answer might generate.
Accordingly, nothing is stronger to claim an idiomatic invention of singularity that the multiple fears
we are exposed to. But nothing endangers it more than its exploitation and instrumentalization;
nothing compromises it more dangerously than the feeling of helplessness and paralysis even of
despair to the level of which it lowers us. If the concept of habilitation the rapporteurs of the Commission for
Human Security recommend in answer to this unrest has got a significance, if it need designate a form of complementary liberty,
than it should beyond any doubt involve the culture of the means proper to this act of invention : namely,
a culture other than that of fear. Consequently, the whole point is for us to find the culture comprising
the education in, information on and participation of citizens at the political debate, elements
that should unquestionably be organic means of this culture:
The ability to act for ourselves requires a certain level of education and information, so that each of
us can closely examine the social structure and can act in a collective manner . In this respect the
organization of a public space is needed, one that tolerates opposition, and local leaders should take
actions and support debates there. This habilitation requires an adequate environment (freedom of the
press, freedom of information, conscience and religion, free association, democratic elections and the achievement of policies that
exclude no citizens). It also requires permanent attention given to development processes and the
organization of instant help programs. Consequently the chief aspect for each action effected in the
name of human security is not that of What can we do? but that of what can we do for the
activity in question to be based on the efforts and capacities of those who are in its direct range.17
Elaborated in these terms, habilitation is the only thing that can separate the security (or safety) of the state
from human security. Supposing it benefits from the adequate means, habilitation enables individuals to
oppose any attempt at simplifying and manipulating their feelings. Where the culture of fear makes
expression and action homogeneous, it also diversifies discourses and attitudes and it invests
identity with a variability that fear always ends by threatening . Yet, above all, this concept takes us
forward in the pursuit of what we have previously termed the settlement of the unacceptable. It reveals
the two layers that it consists of. Actually, the settlement never exclusively (not even directly nor immediately) appears in the form of
regulations, decrees, texts of law or any other kinds of limitation. It always sets in by the smooth or brutal
confiscation of habilitation means. And it also sets in on a certain level of education, information
and public debate through giving them up, making compromises and reducing them, while all
these, far from always being results of state action, can also be achieved by programming
industries. In reality, it addresses not only completely disinterested individuals who seem to be immune
to anything , but also an audience whose affectivity often reduces it to this primary affec tion, fear.
This settlement is, in consequence, one of images and discourses above all, while the effect is a replacement of
idiomatic invention, that which would permit the statement, expression, and verbalization or weighing, each time in a singular way,
of the need for security a settlement of images and discourses imposed, repeated and copied to the
extent when any sharing is impossible. And this first settlement that avoids no political regime and which,
consequently, occurs in democracies as well it is the fertile ground on which all sorts of extreme attitudes
and fantasies can grow, the ground that nurses inducements, challenges and the most various types of
violence. Those effected by the state included. When this happens (and democracies are not guarded against it), a second layer
settles as well liberties are progressively fragmented, one or another category gets stigmatized and
suspected, the number of identity files and archives increases alarmingly, and the same happens to
the number of frontier or inland controls. There are the mechanisms and tendencies owing to
which democracies become fragile to exhaustion. And we finally recall a few essential questions that displace,
again, the problem at stake. Is there any relation between the character of these regimes and fear? If the passion for equality is
indeed part of their being, is it related, one way or another, by this feeling the dimension of which should then be seen as quasioriginal? Is this fragility a secondary and derived one, or should we say it is part of the very essence of democracy an essence
dramatically unveiled in extreme situations?
2NCIndividualism K (Lawfare Link)

Legal protection only serves to monopolize violenceits a self-reinforcing
machine that converts individual fear to state control for the purposes of
institutionalizing that fear
This text, with an excellent interpretation by Jacques Derrida4, comprises a great number of ideas for our consideration, starting
with the method of him who in twenty years time was going to commit suicide under the constraint of terror. And, as we well
remember, this method consists in the questioning of the pertinence of an argument according to which legal violence (a form of
insecurity inflicted by repressive state mechanisms upon citizens) has no other reason of being but to replace natural goals
pursued by natural individuals (themselves a source for violence, after all) with a system of legal finalities. After this stage,
that, as Benjamin believes, comprises the entire ideology of positive law, the violence of repressive
state mechanisms (namely organs of state security) is legitimated by the way in which they protect
the pursuit of legal goals by the anarchic (and consequently potentially violent) aspect of natural goals.
The varying insecurity these mechanisms have always implied is the price paid for a greater
security. While the fear they provoke is by far lesser than the one that would possess the populace if they found themselves
without the protection of these mechanisms in case of their absence or dilution. The author of the Critique of Violence attacks the
dogmatic statement of this set of justifications (at the bases of any social or juridical order) and does so by formulating the
following hypothesis that shakes the very foundations of any rationale of violence:
In order to attack (the dogmatic affirmation), we will have to consider the surprising possibility for the explanation to the
interest of the law in monopolizing violence, through forbidding the individual to employ it, to
turn out to be other than the wish to protect legality, namely to be the intention to protect the law as it is. That
is the possibility for violence if not controlled by the endlessly reinstalled law to threaten the
law not by its goals but by its mere existence outside it.5
In consequence, violence protects the law in two different ways. First of all it participates in its foundation.
After each change of regime, each conquest, war, revolution etc., violence partially or totally installs a new law. Then
it supports and safeguards its preservation. Consequently the question to consider whenever an organ of security
employs violence in the name of the security of everyone, concerns the nature of the relationship between this violence and the law
be it founding or conservative. This is the true question at stake, because only thus can we understand how a principle
and policy of protection
can turn against itself and engage individuals in an extreme insecurity.

This, actually, happens each time when their supposed need for security (the need to be defended against
various real or imaginary threats) is translated into sets of rules, limitations, obligations or controls, that
are nothing but technical artifices meant to confirm the power of institutions over their
existence. This becomes evident each time the orchestration and evolution of a certain culture of fear (that, one way
or another, always finds its agents) leads to its justification. Consequently the following question haunts or should haunt
each democracy: how can we guarantee that the security measures intended to fight against certain supposed fears of the citizens do
not bear an insecurity greater that the one they pretend to guard off? How can we withhold this orchestration and evolution from
creating a domain that would welcome what we will here term the settlement of the unacceptable in other words the acceptation
of something we thought we could never accept. Anyway, as Benjamin notes, one thing is certain: the greatest risks emerge when the
authorities entrusted with the preservation of the law (forces of security, organs of safety etc., and those in lead of these entities)
arrogate the right of founding. The bitter conclusion the author draws on the role of these forces during the times of the Republic of
Weimar is without any doubt this:
Police errors are due to the lack of delimitation between the violence instituting and the violence preserving the law. While the
former is required to act as such and always reach its goal, the latter must refrain from claiming new goals. The violence of police
officers originates in neither of these two conditions. This violence institutes the law, because the typical function of
any violence of this type is not to promulgate the law but to issue all sorts of decrees that claim
to be legitimate; but in meantime they also secure conformity to the law by serving the goals
mentioned above.6
2NCIndividualism K (Human Alt)

Only prior-analysis of collective security allows us to rupture institutional
overreliance and prevents the manifestation of inter-personal violence
To recognize these three entities (human beings, states and international organizations) as active factors of
security (of the responsibility it implies, of its protection and of the recreation of its conditions), is actually an act of
freeing our understanding from under any possible reliance on state security. Yet this does not
imply that the complex matters of instrumentalization, manipulation and political speculation,
originating in various forms of the fear of insecurity, have been solved. Because the true problem here
implying both the culture and the politics of fear is how to articulate this security, conceived in such a wide scene, and
state security. A text of basic importance, the report of the Commission on Human Security, bearing the title
Human Security Now, bears witness to this idea, and the texts should indeed be carefully re-read, for at least three reasons. 1) First
of all it quite clearly declares its ambition to address each of the three entities mentioned above: human beings, states, nongovernmental organizations and international organizations; and it urges an extension and displacement of the concept of security
behind the idea of human security. In doing this, the text tries to convince each party involved that neither state security, within
borders that appear to be guarded and impervious, nor the safeguarding of existing institution exhausts the meaning of the notion
and its imperatives. It admits, that in certain domains, individuals retrieve a need for security that cannot be reduced to the one the
state could pretend to satisfy by protecting itself (the act Benjamin termed as preserving the law). It thus tries to
demonstrate how the concept of human security necessarily appears (or it should appear, because things
in this area unfortunately exist in the conditional) as a necessity, everywhere (meaning without any kind of restriction or
limitation) in all places where that of state security turns out to be hegemonic. This is why the
rapporteurs of the commission chaired by Sadako Ogata and Amartya Sen are in a position to stress, as a solution to the matter of
articulation, the fact that we need to pass from the one to the other on one hand, and that the two are complementary, on the other.
2) Secondly, the commission recommends a definition of human security indirectly related to an
object: the vital core of all human lives7, about which it admits that, being constituted of a series of elementary
rights and freedoms, it varies depending on individuals and societies. Wishing to take this variability into account, the commission
refrains from forwarding a list of the diverse elements that could constitute human security.8 This raises a question to be dealt
with later: where does this variability come from? How are we to decide, appreciate or evaluate whatever constitutes the vital core
of all human lives? What is the role of states in taking this decision, in making this appreciation or evaluation? Did we not, a little
earlier, recuse this open gate towards restrictions of a political, religious, cultural or of any other nature? And if the need for security
does indeed vary depending on the variations of fear, how do the latter actually vary? Which are the factors and agents of this
variation? On the other hand, the factor that stresses the importance of all these questions is the extremely indeterminate and
random character of the complementarity of state security and human security, whenever the state claims the right (and yet doesnt
it always happen like that?) to interfere in the process of determining the vital core of all human lives in other words, the
processes of differentiating and classifying various needs for security and various types of fear generated by insecurity. When we
state that the vital core of all human lives varies from one society to another (determined by cultural and political differences), do
we not actually subordinate the definition of human security to the culture of fear, a notion that gives so much room to attempts to
organize and manipulate? 3) The third reason for examining the report Human Security Now relates to the manner in which the
rapporteurs intend to enlarge the circle of those responsible for security even presenting this
extension as a component of human dignity. As we have already mentioned, human security depends not only on
various states, but on each human being in part. Under these circumstances it is quite difficult to determine how much responsibility
does the state transfer to the individual and how does it interpret this concession. Frankly, the process cannot signify an
abandonment of individuals in the arms of various fears that engulf them on the contrary, it should
create conditions for an analysis and action through which these fears can be overcome . Irrespective
of the area it emerges from, insecurity lends way to all sorts of interpretations, and it gives birth to numberless rumors and popular
vendettas. In fact, the problem with this entire culture of fear is that no matter when and where it
becomes manifest, it never completely dissociates from the culture of the enemy. 9 If we closely
examine the way in which a feeling of insecurity appears, amplifies and explodes, it soon becomes evident that it almost always
feeds on the conjunction of these cultures, and this is certainly not only a matter of state
responsibility. The world is crammed with organizations, parties, groups and movements (with the obligatory
set of preachers, imprecators and justicers), concerned with nothing else but with relating one threat or
another to a clearly defined and promptly stigmatized enemy. There are nevertheless (and how should we put
it) also certain voices (a phenomenon we should not forget, overlook or victimize on the altar of a certain interest or of a certain
economic, social or political speculation), voices that speak up against such conjunctions. The needs and requirements
of
human security nevertheless can disregard neither the one, nor the other. They cannot permit
insecurity to be devoured by certain interpretations fed on hate and violence. Once faced with the risks
of a growing sense of insecurity (in the name of security) and here we could mention the theory of the clash of civilizations or the
diabolization of certain affiliations, for instance the responsibility of the state rests not only in avoiding, on the level of its
constitutive entities, any such interpretation, but also in providing the possibility for the individual to protest against what we are
going to term here a deleterious evaluation of threats. But in order to accomplish this, the state should listen to voices
tackling a different discourse while the legitimate conscience of insecurity should never quite
become a culture of the enemy.
AT: Institutions Good2NC

Institutions prioritize national threats over personal securitythat multiplies
threats and causes intra-national violence
Concerning security, we will always have to start by pointing it out: all along the history of
democratic regimes, and along that of undemocratic ones all the more, security turned out to be first of all the
monopole and chief objective of repressive state apparatuses. It consequently identifies with the
concept of safety as in some languages the very denomination of such mechanisms shows, while they are conceived
to inspire fear and sometimes to install the reign of terror. This is how in Ceauescus Romania the political
police was known as the Securitate1, and the initials KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti)
denominate the Committee for State Security. Despite the fact that these mechanisms (the Securitate2, the
KGB) are extremely gifted in provoking a feeling of extreme insecurity among the population they
constantly keep under various threats, their denomination shifts and simultaneously legitimates the
meaning of this insecurity. Nevertheless as the state seems to be under threat and surrounded by
dangerous enemies, the insecurity generated by security organizations passes as a necessity. The
term itself, bezopasnosti is relevant for this shift in meaning, as it signifies the absence (bez) of danger (opasnosti). In consequence
the KGB is the mechanism appointed to defend the state against dangers of all possible kinds. It goes without saying: the state
means the people as well. Because these mechanisms always pretend to be defending not state institutions but people, above all. The
objects of investigations, arrests, tortures, sentences and executions are never identified as enemies only as the state, but, at least to
the same extent, as enemies of the people. This is the ambivalence of security under undemocratic regimes. One threat is
mistaken for another. The organs of security those who inflict terror , in other words turn the
supposed dangers threatening the state, its institutions, the regime etc., and all kinds of
imaginary plottings into a universal threat of double significance, over everyones security. First
of all (and this is their ideology, but also that of any security-based discourse), th ey consider anything that endangers
the security or safeguarding of institutions, the organization, conservation and seizure of power to threaten the
people as a whole. Second, they react to this hypothetical danger with a system of surveillance, control,
interdictions and threats that endanger the life and liberty of all citizens. This is how, in the
name of the need for security the subject and object of which can be greatly manipulated
these mechanisms organize, rationalize and systematize insecurity and they multiply the procedures
for filing and controlling identities, activities and ideas: this is the perverse law of their
ambivalence.
***Generic***
Misa Stekl and Advait Ramanan
Explanation of the Death Drive

McGowan, 13
Todd McGowan, Associate Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of
Vermont; Enjoying What We Dont Have: A Psychoanalytic Politics, University of Nebraska,
2013, pg. 13-14 // MS
The death drive is neither (contra Marcuse) aggressiveness nor an impulse to return to an inorganic
state (as Freuds metaphor in Beyond the Pleasure Principle might imply) but an impetus to return to an originary
traumatic and constitutive loss. The death drive emerges with subjectivity itself as the subject
enters into the social order and becomes a social and speaking being by sacrificing a part of
itself. This sacrifice is an act of creation that produces an object that exists only insofar as it is
lost. This loss of what the subject doesnt have institutes the death drive, which produces
enjoyment through the repetition of the initial loss. Subjects engage in acts of self-sacrifice and
self-sabotage because the loss enacted reproduces the subjects lost object and enables the
subject to enjoy this object. Once it is obtained, the object ceases to be the object. As a
result, the subject must continually repeat the sacrificial acts that produce the
object, despite the damage that such acts do to the subjects self-interest. From the perspective of the
death drive, we turn to violence not in order to gain power but in order to produce loss,
which is our only source of enjoyment. Without the lost object, life becomes bereft of any
satisfaction, the repetition of sacrifice, however, creates a life worth living, a life in which one
can enjoy oneself through the lost object. The repetition involved with the death drive is not
simply repetition of any particular experience. The repetition compulsion leads the subject to
repeat specifically the experiences that have traumatized it and disturbed its stable functioning .
The better things are going for the subject, the more likely that the death drive will derail the subjects activity. According to
the theory implied by the death drive, any movement toward the good any progress will tend
to produce a reaction that will undermine it. This occurs both on the level of the individual and on the level of
society In psychoanalytic treatment, it takes the form of a negative therapeutic reaction, an effort to
sustain ones disorder in the face of the imminence of the cure. We can also think of individuals
who continue to choose romantic relationships that fail according to a precise pattern .
Politically, it means that progress triggers the very forms of oppression that it hopes to combat
and thereby incessantly undermines itself. There is a backlash written into every
progressive program from the outset. The death drive creates an essentially masochistic
structure within the psyche. It provides the organizing principle for the subject and orients the
subject relative to its enjoyment, and this enjoyment remains always linked to trauma . This
structure renders difficult all attempts to prompt subjects to act in their own selfinterest or for their own good. The death drive leads subjects to act contrary to their own
interests, to sabotage the projects that would lead to their good. Common sense tells us that sadism is easier
to understand than masochism, that the sadists lust for power over the object makes sense in a way that the masochists selfdestruction does not. But for psychoanalysis, masochism functions as the paradigmatic form of subjectivity. Considering the
structure of the death drive, masochism becomes easily explained, and sadism becomes a mystery. Masochism provides
subject the enjoyment of loss, while sadism seems to give this enjoyment to the other .
the
Topic-Specific
1NCRed Ocean K
The West has transformed the ocean into the sole object of capitalist desirefrom
early images of monsters, to the late age of explorationthe new normal is the
ocean as a resource, evoking images of containerships and biotechnologythese
descriptions shape the way we interpret life writ large in the modern imaginary
Helmreich, 7 Elting E. Morison Professor and Program Head of Anthropology at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University (Stefan,
Blue-green Capital, Biotechnological Circulation and an Oceanic Imaginary: A Critique of
Biopolitical Economy, BioSocieties, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2007, pp. 287-302,
ProQuest)//SJF
The 'globe' imagined in 'globalization' is a closed system, a finite sphere crisscrossed by flows of
people, goods and media. Such an encircling topology coalesced from circuits of mercantilism,
capitalism and colonialism. With the Cold War and the rise of environmentalism, the globe acquired a scientific
icon in the image of Earth from space, a blue-green orb of mostly oceans. At the millennium's turn, the
Pacific, once the westward limit of the American frontier, morphed into a futuristic force field
holding together the Pacific Rim, host to new currents of transoceanic market and
telecommunication processes. For believers in the end of history, West spiraled around to meet East, fulfilling a market
manifest destiny.
The ocean has been a key stage for this tale since, as Philip Steinberg argues in The social construction of the ocean , the
West
has developed an 'idealization of the deep sea as a great void of distance, suitable for
annihilation by an ever-expanding tendency toward capital mobility' (2001: 163). 'The ocean', writes
Chris Connery, 'has long functioned as capital's myth element' (1995: 289), a zone of unencumbered
capital circulation, most evident, perhaps, in oceanic vectors of conquest and commerce, from the
triangular trade to the transnational traffic of container ships . But the ocean has been more than a
channel for trade; it has also been a resource. Nowadays, it is being inspected for a new kind of wealth that might travel
into global markets: marine biodiversity transmogrified into biotechnology.
In this article, I consider biotechnology and globalization in the space of the sea, examining a project at the University of Hawaii to
create a center for marine biotechnology dedicated to using marine microbes as raw materials for bioproducts and pharmaceuticals.
Hawaii's Marine Bioproducts Research Engineering Center, chartered in 1998 to broker cooperation between US academic and
industrial science, meant to deliver compounds that could yield what Catherine Waldby names biovalue , 'generated wherever the
generative and transformative productivity of living entities can be instrumentalized along lines which make them useful for human
projects' (2000: 33). Because this partnership intended to produce profit , such value was to be biocapital , defined by Sarah
Franklin and Margaret Lock as a kind of wealth that depends on a 'form of extraction that involves isolating and mobilizing the
primary reproductive agency of specific body parts, particularly cells' (2003: 8; see also Heller, 2001) and that also banks on
promises about the commercial products such mobilizations might deliver in the future (2003: 14-15; on this second point, see also
Fortun, 2002 and Sunder Rajan, 2006). 1 Biocapital would emerge when laboratory instruments could be calibrated with market
and legal instruments. The present article, based on ethnographic work I conducted at and around the University of Hawaii in 2002
and 2003, recounts the rise and fall of academic and industry scientists' hopes that biocapital generated from sea creatures could
circulate into world markets.
In describing how marine biotechnology in Hawaii was imagined as biocapital, I argue that theorizations of biocapital remain
incomplete unless they account for how biotech practitioners (and we, as social analysts) imagine the mechanisms and meaning of
biology . A belief in the irrepressible generativity of biological life forms themselves is often called upon to warrant the promissory
character of biotechnology, as though biotech has inherited the potentiality associated with genes. Biotic substance is considered to
be the source of mutations and recombinations that create 'newness', a belief described by Marilyn Strathern (1992) as a particularly
Euro-American notion of biology as a platform for 'reproducing the future'. Such cultural-semiotic specificity or 'local biology'
(Franklin and Lock, 2003: 21) suggests that we should attend, as well, to how particular biological substances--molecular, cellular,
embryonic or, in this article, marine microbial--are made to matter in biocapitalisms and their anticipated globalizations.
In Hawaii, marine biotechnology calls upon the cultural force of images of the islands as a tropical
oceanic paradise full of natural promise for health and rejuvenation, a view held by many
mainland Americans, a pool from which biotechnologists in the islands are mainly drawn. Here,
marine biotechnology depends on a view of the sea as 'life' writ large. A vision of the ocean as
endlessly generative mimes and anchors a conception of biology as always overflowing with
(re)productivity. Taking seriously the symbolic charge of marine biotechnology in Hawaii leads me to describe a form of
capitalism I term blue-green capitalism , where blue stands for (a particularly American vision of) the
freedom of the open ocean and for speculative sky-high promise, and green for belief in
ecological sustainability as well as biological fecundity (particularly, as we will see, of populations of
photosynthetic bacteria). Attention to such sentiments, and their contradictions, leads me to a description of why legal instruments
of biotech are fracturing in Hawaii, as some Native Hawaiians challenge the right of biologists to turn Hawaiian marine life into an
alienable resource. It also allows me to situate the global dreams of American marine biotech alongside other national projects, with
different visions of biology, sea and globe.
Marine biodiversity, biotechnology and blue-ocean sentiments
A late twentieth-century blueprint for marine biotechnology was offered in Turning to the sea: America's ocean
future (1999), a
report published by the US Department of Commerce. This document had biotic material
from the sea as an object of commerce, transmutable into value, money, capital. Marine biotechnology
would be a salve for health and environment:
... the tools of marine biotechnology have been applied to solve problems in the areas of public health and human disease, seafood
safety and supply, new materials and processes, and marine ecosystem restoration and remediation. Many classes of marine
organisms demonstrate a wide variety of compounds with unique structural features that suggest medicinal, agricultural, and
industrial applications. (US Department of Commerce, 1999: 22)
The University of Hawaii's Marine Bioproducts Engineering Center (MarBEC), set up by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a
hybrid of industry and academe, aimed to 'provide the intellectual foundation for industry to collaborate with faculty and students
on ... producing the knowledge base for steady advances in technology and their speedy transition to the marketplace'. 2 Students
might work as interns in biotech companies, which might put money into MarBEC in exchange for rights to bioproducts, where
'products' referred to items created using organic processes as well as to commercial goods.3 Other schools entered similar
partnerships. The University of Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology was founded on the notion that:
Marine biotechnology is one of the greatest frontiers of scientific exploration and commercial endeavors for the next century.
Compared with the terrestrial environment, the oceans of the world remain largely unexplored and represent a major portion of the
Earth's genetic resources. Using the tools of biotechnology, this vast and diverse potential-source of new foods, pharmaceuticals,
minerals, and energy could be applied to help meet the needs of the world's expanding populations and economies. 4
On the Pacific edge of this frontier, Hawaii's MarBEC promised distinctive local biota, particularly the archipelago's blue-green
algae, or cyanobacteria, which host pigments useful for colorants in cosmetics and foods. Marine organisms also offered 'the promise
for discovery of new antibacterial, anticancer and antifungal agents' (MarBEC, 2003: 3).
In 2002, the university hosted the Fourth Asia-Pacific Marine Biotechnology conference. Previous conferences had been held in
Japan in 1995, Thailand in 1997 and the Philippines in 1999. This one, convened at the university's East-West Center, pitched
Hawaii as an ideal location for marine biotech. In an opening address, mayor of Honolulu Jeremy Harris said he believed Hawaii's
'true destiny is as a center for high-tech, knowledge-based industry'. In 2001, Hawaii's legislature offered investment incentives and
tax credits to high-tech companies. Harris invoked the standard image of Hawaii as 'a bridge between East and West', emphasizing
that the state's time zone would allow online investors to trade in US and Asian markets simultaneously. Next on Harris's list of
archipelagic assets was Hawaii's migration history: 'We also have in Hawaii a very diverse human gene pool, good for developing
new pharmaceuticals.' Global science and finance converge in a genetically imagined multiculturalism, with state citizens a ready
reserve for bioeconomic experimentation. The mayor's pronouncement reframed as fortifying genetic fuel for biotech the late
nineteenth-century history that saw Chinese, Japanese and Filipino labor imported to the islands for sugar plantation work. 5
But the primary biotic substrate imagined for biotech capital accumulation, at least in the formal proceedings of the conference, was
'biodiversity', described by Eric Mathur, from the San Diego-based biotech firm Diversa, as 'the basic building block for
biotechnology'. Because the ocean constitutes the majority of Earth's biosphere, marine biotechnologists imagine marine
biodiversity to be immense--and largely undiscovered. Marine biologist William Fenical, from Scripps Oceanographic Institute,
articulated this view in an interview in Discover . A full-page photo showing Fenical holding a sea fan against his aloha shirt has him
declaring, 'The ocean's right there, It's diverse as hell, and it's waiting for us' (Mestel, 1999: 75).
This enthusiasm for diversity is a key sentiment animating biotech capitalism. Since its coinage,
biodiversity has become infectiously polyvalent. Cori Hayden lists meanings it has accreted: 'an
ecological workhorse, essential raw material for evolution, a sustainable economic resource, the
source of aesthetic and ecological value, of option and existence value, a global heritage, genetic
capital, the key to the survival of life itself' (2003: 52). For marine biotechnologists in America, marine biodiversity
represents a frontier form of biodiversity: healing waters writ large, full of new genes awaiting amplification, delivering what marine
microbiologist Rita Colwell (director of NSF 1998-2004) early on called 'entirely new "harvests" from the sea'
(1984: 3). Insofar
as humans make use of this new nature by capitalizing it, the prevailing
sentiment goes, they must do so 'sustainably' by protecting 'diversity', understood as a positive
value. No wonder a biotech company named itself Diversa.
That symbolic importance changes what we fear about the ocean, the sublime, to
an always fleeing conception of resources for western control, the economic
sublime that drastically alters the way modernity relates between different
forms of life and manifests in capitalist control

ProQuest)//SJF
Understood as biodiversity -become-biocapital , the feature cyanobacteria might have most in common with golden eggs is their
status as a fetish , an entity thought to have its own life force apart from relations in which it becomes active. Like gold, biodiversity
is imagined to be 'both symbol and reality of value' (Taussig, 2004: 23). In this sense, biodiversity is imagined as a
representation of nature as well as the sedimented nature of nature itself . More, since biodiversity
is understood already to be 'life', its materialization as a fetish is doubly mystified.
What is required to comprehend biocapitalism, then, are stories of how biology--as discipline, as corporeal
substance, as process--is mobilized to make money, and of how biology becomes currency, coin
and capital. The bio in biocapital is imprinted with the ends of capital: an upwardly spiraling
symbiosis of production and reproduction. To speak in terms Giorgio Agamben (1998) borrows from Aristotle, zo
('the simple fact of living') has been infused with the bios ('the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group') of
capitalism.13 In order to discern the specificity of this relation between life forms and forms of
life,
and in order to determine what is particular to marine biotech capitalism, I suggest we think of
capital as manifesting in hues--in the instance at hand, as blue-green capital .
In Modernity at sea (2002), Cesare Casarino compares the circulation of the white whale in MobyDick to the circulation of money. Both circulations are motivating, mediating forces in relations of
unequal exchange--between Ahab and his contracted but captive crew, and between buyers and sellers. But both species
of circulation also direct attention away from the social relations they enforce; we follow the
whale, we follow the money, instead of the animating dealings of people and institutions. This
analogy in view, Casarino asks, 'what is the color of money?' and immediately answers 'White, of course' (2002: 91). 14 In MobyDick , the whiteness of the whale signals both an absence and excess of color. Casarino suggests that money, analogously, in its
function as a universal equivalent, masquerades as an invisible translator of value while also everywhere appearing as the full
representation of value as such. This double action defines money as a medium of circulation: it permits
the transfer of value from one site to another while also embodying value itself, particularly
when it stops for a moment and manifests, for example, as a coin or a sum in the bank. Such starts
and stops are motivated by already existing dynamics of selling and buying that cause money to
'flow'--a transformation that hides the unequal social relations that make money 'circulate' (or
'accumulate') at all. Capitalism acquires the appearance of neutral exchange through bleaching the movement of money itself of any
pre-existing history of social inequality. Just so, the imagined circuits of MarBEC capital were supposed to run on neat transfers of
extracts and contracts, at once legally transparent and proprietary.
Blue-green capital adds color to this model, accounting for the work of blue-sky speculation and
the labor of getting such critters as blue-green algae to produce and reproduce meaningful
substance. Blue-ocean fantasies of life-giving waters are married to the economic fecundity of
biodiversity, and, in those articulations that see biotechnology 'preserving' nature by sampling
only small bits of it, are wed to its ecological, 'green' value as well (creating the B' of marine biotech). Bluegreen capital also keys us into the symbolic importance of the ocean for marine biotechnology.
Blue-ocean strategies in marine biotechnology, in which the immensity of the sea stands for
unlimited resources, promise what Connery calls an 'economic sublime' (1995: 288).
Slime, sentiment and submerged histories
Wrapped up in the sublimity of blue-green capital, and mixed with the yet-to-be-prospected
gold of collections of cyanobacteria, is another substance: slime . Slime is a sign of that which
slips away from containment, which must be managed to make anything like biocapital
circulate. Without stable boundaries--and without ends in the instrumental sense--slime exceeds and disturbs representation.
While it is true, as Landecker (2005)) suggests, that, 'biotechnology changes what it is to be biological'--so that if capital
accumulation demands that biotic stuff be rendered 'reproductive', then this is what biology becomes in that relation--there are also
reasons to think that slimy flow may swerve away from full appropriation. Playing with slime, we can ask, following Bill Maurer,
what biotech tales would sound like if we were to write:
... [a] story about an open, porous, seeping, and dripping body of global capitalism ...? This would be a different story from the
familiar one about the clean lines and fast networks of neoliberal efficiency. Less like a fiber optic network; more like a lava lamp.
(2000: 672)
This is the other side of blue-green capital. Blue-sky dreams reflected in a blue ocean show
biotech speculation to be a hall of mirrors (with ricocheting reflections producing escalating investment!). And
green refers not so much to exploitable reproductivity as to muck that always threatens to undo
capital, substances constantly in need of shoring up and disciplining.
1NCRed Ocean K (Social Competition Impact)

Focus on the biology that controls the red ocean ethos characterizes the ocean as
a Darwinian sphere for natural competition, which legitimizes nationalized social
competition
ProQuest)//SJF
Takahashi's dream is a perfect example of what Harvard Business Review authors W.Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne in 2004
called a 'blue ocean strategy', a set of tactics for tapping into and creating 'uncontested market
space'. Kim and Mauborgne imagine this blue business ethos through the figure of the uninhabited ocean
and contrast it to a 'red ocean strategy', which sees competitors battling bloodily, tooth and
tentacle, for limited space. 8 'Blue oceans' are, of course, a riff on 'blue skies', zones of research or
investment with no immediate applications, which may or may not come down to earth in the
future.9 Blue skies are notional spaces for such blue-ocean dreams as Takahashi's plantations without
politics--aquafarms populated by generative phytoplanktonic biomass--his invitation to Europe to restage its
colonial past in a solar-powered sea of sociological emptiness.
A dip into the red ocean
Within the blue-ocean ethos, however, is nested a red-ocean imaginary. When I returned to Hawaii for
extended fieldwork in 2003, I was keen to discover why researchers thought marine biodiversity might be a promising resource.
MarBEC literature proclaimed: 'the surface waters of the North Pacific Ocean are now recognized as a "treasure chest" of microbial
diversity and a sea of potential for new discoveries' (2003: 50). Why would that be?
I spoke with Mark Goldman, Director of Drug Discovery at Hawaii Biotech, Inc. I had learned at the biotech meeting that MarBEC
hoped to partner with this 30-person firm, which had had earlier successes with vaccines for Dengue and West Nile viruses. In 2003,
Hawaii Biotech received a Department of Defense grant to develop compounds against anthrax, sifting through microbes for leads
against bioterrorism. A portion of the grant enabled Hawaii Biotech to collaborate with MarBEC to identify molecules in the
University's cyanobacteria collections. I asked Goldman why sea samples might be particularly interesting. He said:
It's all about survival. The organism's role is survival--and secondarily to that to procreate. And organisms have
developed unique ways to defend themselves. They can say: back off, you don't want to eat me. It's these chemical
processes that promote survival. Most of the planet is seawater, which is an untapped resource. In a milliliter of water, there are
thousands of microorganisms struggling to survive. Maybe I can get lucky and one of these organisms synthesizes something that
gets at the disease I'm studying.
When I spoke with the curator of the university's collection of cyanobacteria, she told me much the same thing. Gesturing toward the
collection of over 2,000 strains, she said: 'There is a huge drug-producing potential here.' Anti-microbial, anti-fungal, antiinflammatory and anti-cancer compounds have higher biomass in cyanobacteria, she told me, particularly in tropical marine
habitats, because:
... they live in high density and high biomass and produce defensive chemicals so as not to be invaded by the guy next door. Humans
have not evolved to recognize these large unusual compounds. They can be very new to the human body--so, we haven't evolved
natural defenses.
These explanations offer a portrait of the ocean as a neo-Darwinian soup, a 'red ocean'. This vision
resonates with the 'unsentimental' view Falkowski advocated, now located not just in the
market, but, more, in nature itself--and constitutive of biodiversity as such. At the same time, however,
this view of natural selection as a screen for possible profits also expresses a sentiment about the
nature of the ocean: the red ocean morphs into a resource for frontier science, generative
through competition of forces that can be harnessed, blue-ocean style, in the service of health
and life.
2NCRed Ocean K (Conservation Link)

Calls for sustainable exploitation of the ocean are motivated by mobilization of
Western capital
ProQuest)//SJF
Considering the university's treasury of cyanobacteria, it becomes obvious that a lot of work--growing algae,
bioactivity screening, changing compounds into units transferable between labs--is required to
convert wet wealth into a viable product. With the market purposes of MarBEC in mind, we could call the
blue-green algae collection a bank of biocapital --where capital , following Marx, is that accumulated
material or labor-power employed to produce surplus-values like profit or interest.
In Capital , Marx describes the circulation of money as capital--in which 'More money is finally withdrawn from circulation than was
thrown into it at the beginning' (1976 [1867]: 251)--using the formula M-C-M', where M stands for money, C for commodity and ' for
the surplus value gained in a profitable exchange of a commodity for money, and M' for the total capital produced by that exchange.
For the biotech imagination, we can write an analogous formula to describe the making of biology into capital: B-C-B', where B
stands for biomaterial, C for its fashioning into a commodity through laboratory and legal instruments, and B' for the biotech
product (or, perhaps, biocapital) produced at the end of this process, with ' the value added through the instrumentalization of the
initial biomaterial. But I want to suggest here that the sentiment of many biotech boosters has them taking B ' already to be latent in
B--to believe, that is, that biological process itself already constitutes a form of surplus value production . This logic naturalizes
biotech.
It is not only the labor of people like the cyanobacteria curator that confers value on the collection, then, but also a conception of
cyanobacteria themselves as little laborers--Falkowski's 'workhorses of the ocean'. Diversa's Mathur, at the Asia-Pacific conference,
described marine microbes as 'the blue-collar workers of the environment', laboring units that might be taken apart to be put back
together again for new tasks. Microbial biodiversity is configured as accumulated labor power, the products of which can be
harnessed to create productive futures. This belief is based on a metaphor: that organisms are laborers (an
equivalence declared even by Marx, who saw the 'natural consumption' of eating entailing 'production' of the body [1978 (1857-58):
228]). On this view, biocapital can be derived from oceanic pasturage if the reproduction of the
reproductive capacity of marine microorganisms--to make carotenoids, for example--can be

channeled into profit-making commodities and accumulation strategies (contrast biocapital
with necrocapital : dead matter, like fossil fuel, put to unregenerative, zombie-like work).
But we must be careful not to imagine microbial reproduction as a transparently 'natural'
process, as though microbes' coming-into-being straightforwardly designates them as what
Marx would have called 'means of production already produced' (quoted in Franklin, 2007: 106), as
though their productivity is the essence of their species being .10 To do so is to see them as
natural factories or assembly lines, when they only become so in certain relations (for more
ecologically minded microbiologists, for example, microbes are 'environmental stewards' rather than 'blue-collar workers'). We can
add, then, to Franklin and Lock's argument that, 'biocapital is not just dependent on reproduction, it is
constituted by it' (2003: 10), that the reverse is also the case: that the appearance of the bio in
biocapital as reproductive is constituted by the capitalist enterprise that turns it into something
that generates exchange-value in the first place.11 As Hannah Landecker (2005) argues, contemporary biological
science has become expert at stopping, starting, suspending and accelerating cellular processes, wedging these dynamics into
processes that look like a molecular version of industrial agribusiness. Biotech geese cannot lay golden eggs without daily tending.
2NCRed Ocean K (Frontier Link)

The ocean represents the object of Western desire for controlits the final
frontier for infinite economic production
ProQuest)//SJF
Biological oceanographer Paul Falkowski from Rutgers University, in his conference lecture, was impatient with such views.
Marine biotechnology, he said, 'is fundamentally idea-limited. We don't think in terms of an array of products
and this is because most of us are in academia.' More, marine
because they've learned
biologists 'always want to work with their favorite organisms,

to sentimentalize nature, especially the sea'. We have to look closel y, he said, at
microbes, 'the workhorses of the ocean'. Academia and industry must work together; practitioners must recognize that-Falkowski underscored the point by shouting it--'Markets are not sentimental!'
Falkowski poured cold water on the usual PR for marine biotechnology, which emphasizes the unique bounty of
the sea while also trading on a romantic, conservationist sentiment . But much as Falkowski might wish
otherwise, marine biotech is difficult to disentangle from such sentiment. The Maryland center is founded on
such views; their mission statement argues that the 'tools of biotechnology allow researchers to clone ... genes, reproduce them, and
produce desired substances in the laboratory, leaving the organisms where they belong--in the environment'. 6
Anthropologist Sylvia Yanagisako has argued that capitalist enterprise fundamentally involves sentiment .
Economic action, 'including capital accumulation, firm expansion, and diversification' , she writes, is
'constituted by both deliberate, rational calculation and by sentiments and desires' (2002: 21; see also
Paxson, 2006). After Falkowski's talk, scientists persisted in speaking about biotech in ways infused with sentiment. 7
One remarkable instance came in a presentation about floating blue-green algae plantships.
In this talk, an elder statesman of marine biology in Hawaii, Patrick Takahashi, wed the promise of blue-green algae to a wide-open,
unexploited ocean ecology. He offered a preview of a proposal he would later deliver to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission of UNESCO:
The next frontier is the open ocean. Largely not owned by any nation, nutrient-rich fluids at 4 degrees Celsius are
available 1000 meters below the 20 degree latitude band surface. Just
in this natural solar collector region, if only

one part in ten thousand of the insolation can be converted to useful energy, the needs of society
would be satisfied.... Picture, then, a grazing plantship ... supporting a marine biomass plantation with next generation ocean
ranches.... Then consider several hundred, no, thousands of these productive platforms. Current international law
dictates that each, under certain circumstances, can legally become a nation. Imagine the United Nations in the 22 nd century....
European seafaring nations might again consider colonization, this time in the open ocean, where there are no obvious downsides,
such as the sociological problems that came with the era after Columbus. One cannot guess what Greenpeace might do, but there
are no native populations, not even whales, as permanent residents in the middle of the ocean .
(2003)
Takahashi's vision reaches into the
extraterritorial sea to realize its apotheosis: an ocean brought within

colonial range through humanity's planktonic emissaries, a chlorophyllic remix of the 'Blue
Revolution', the promotion of fish farms in the Third World as scaled-up food resources (named, forgetfully, it would
seem, after the much criticized Green Revolution of the 1970s [see Stonich and Bailey, 2000]). Takahashi himself, a man of
Japanese descent born and raised on Hawaii, fashioned himself as a culture broker with Japanese attendees of the meeting, an upto-date Pacific Rim subject.
2NCRed Ocean K (Nationalism Link)

This view of the ocean is inherently nationalizedproven by lack of Us
participation in the Law of the Seathat is used to indulge Western anxiety over
lack of control
ProQuest)//SJF
Employing the rhetoric of 'environmental marine genomics', an enterprise aimed at
characterizing ocean ecologies in terms of gene sequences they host --without regard for how this DNA is
packaged up into discrete organisms--Venter claimed, when he set out, to be engaged in the 'Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea' (Venter
et al ., 2004). WIRED made explicit the goal of Venter's 'Ocean Microbial Genome Survey': 'to sequence the genome of Mother
Earth' (Shreeve, 2004: 108).21 In this rhetoric, the sequence becomes the territory.
Venter spoke at other moments of 'categorizing the earth's gene pool'--a description that poses a scientific abstraction as something
he might literally scoop up (of course, in these days of gene databasing, gene pools are not so much abstract as they are virtual --a
cyberspatialized aggregation of nonlinear data that can be materially manipulated in various ways. A vision of the ocean as a space of
flow comes to be mirrored in the hypertexty database). To see the sea as having a genome or embodying a gene
pool configures the ocean as a unitary territory, even, in fact, as 'a "non-territory" ', ' "empty" of
social relations' (Steinberg, 2001: 34, 38)--just the sort of American 'blue-ocean' view described above,
and a view that got Venter into trouble for trolling without license for microbes in the national
waters of Ecuador. Venter made his American-frontier view explicit when he pronounced at an MIT
conference I attended, 'I thought I was just out sailing free in the ocean and somebody's claimed it all' (Venter 2004). Venter's
ocean genome--both primordially biological and technologically up to date--is rhetorically mapped
through circumnavigation, through a watery invocation of the global. Past and future come together. 'Ocean
as source', writes Chris Connery, 'and ocean as destiny figure in the ocean's mythological temporality;
it is both life-giving mother and final frontier.... The globe's finite circularity made the expansion
into the final frontier also a return to putative origins' (1995: 289, 299). Eugene Thacker's notion of 'the global
genome' (2005) finds an oddly literalized instantiation here, as genome and globe become one in the space of the sea.
There are other ways to conceptualize the oceans aside from naturalizing the sea as a 'global' topology.22 Even within
a
'global' imaginary, as John Law (2003) suggests, the global should be thought of as 'something that is
broken, poorly formed, and comes in patches'. What Wen-Hua Kuo (2005) calls 'bioglobalization' (to describe
transnational harmonization of pharmaceutical regulation) is uneven, diversely imagined, nonlinear (see Featherstone, 2006).
To bring together my discussion of marine biotechnology, the oceans and globalizations, consider the projects of non-
American participants at the Asia-Pacific biotechnology conference .23 The small delegation from the
People's Republic of China concerned itself with seaweed aquaculture. Questions around nutrition and disease prevention in
aquacultural ponds (of mostly shrimp) dominated the remarks of scientists from Thailand and the Philippines. Indian
biotechnologists look to microbes in mangrove ecologies for tools for decoloring paper and textile factory effluents, while others
address oil spills and other contaminants on the Indian coastline. While many such projects have discernibly
'national' frames and aims, they also certainly networked to 'global assemblages' (Collier and Ong,
2005). To offer one example, researchers at India's National Institute of Oceanography hold 40 US patents on marine
biotechnologies, some of which are for pharmaceutical applications (e.g. a bioproduct from a green mussel aimed at diabetes
treatment) that reach directly into Kuo's 'bioglobalization' (and that provide further evidence for [Sunder Rajan's 2006] account of
Indian genomics as seeking to become a 'global player'). What is not present in such projects , however, is an
imagination of that globalization as grounded in the very 'nature' of the oceans as such, as
following from a B' naturalized in the figure of a blue-green ocean, a frontier for capital
accumulation.
That construal of B', it seems to me, is the signature of American visions of marine biotechnology. So it would be a mistake
to see American 'global' projects as themselves outside national narratives; open access and free
trade across the blue ocean may masquerade as globalizing forces, but these days also have a
potent address in US expansionist projects, particularly in the Pacific (Connery, 1995; and see de Sousa
Santos, 2006). The fact that the United States is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the
Sea (UNCLOS), which legally founds national Exclusive Economic Zones around the world (which the United States claims for
itself based on historical precedent, not on adherence to UNCLOS), allows
the US to continue to elide the

difference between its 'national' and 'global' ocean presence. Biotechnological circulation is
naturalized through an oceanic imaginary, a vision in which the color of money is blue-green.
2NCRed Ocean K (Immersion Link)

Their description of the ocean as a place for western desire for control is used to
immerse the visualizer in the sexual imaginary of the colonizer
Hayward, 12 researcher at the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Sweden
(Eva, Sensational Jellyfish: Aquarium Affects and the Matter of Immersion, differences, Vol.
25, No. 5, pp.161-196, 2012, Duke University Press Journals Online)//SJF
Until the eighteenth century, the ocean had been taboo, a place of great fear (Brunner 9). In the
imaginary hierarchy of air, land, and sea, land is our home, while air and ocean are otherworldly realms
with vastly different connotations. Air is the domain of morality and aspiration, closer to heaven, while the waters are
low and deep. John Milton teaches us that the dark illimitable ocean is a terrifying domain without
bound [. . .] where length, breadth and height, and time and place are lost (51). A cursed world, the ocean
was full of monsters lurking in shadowy fathoms ready to wreak mayhem. Early aquariums, Bernd Brunner reminds us, were also
fraught zones of engagement, sites of an uncanny confrontation with organisms that seemed to blend the boundaries between life
and death, plant and animal, heaven and helltruly denizens of the deep.
Brunner writes, The unknown provoked feelings of both curiosity and apprehension . While visitors
were searching for a new experience, they were also afraid of what they might discover. They fought it, not willing to
believe or understand what appeared before their eyes (8). Rebecca Stott adds, For the naturalist, the marine or freshwater
aquarium provided a constantly changing, glass-fronted theatre of bizarre and exotic bodies, moving, metamorphosing, interacting
and breeding in sensational ways(307). The ocean and its surface carried daily importance to many
Europeans through fishing, navigation, and trade, but by way of aquariums, ocean spaces were
also suffused with mysticism, only to be amplified by an ocean in the home.
Following Mikhail Bahktins discussions of the carnivalesque, Stott points out how marine zoological accounts of the nineteenth
century stressed metamorphosis and a preoccupation with mouths and genitals: [T]he search for homology could produce
repetitions of form and body parts, particularly sexual body parts, which were deeply troubling (313).
Stott reminds us that Darwins own explorations of the barnacle illustrate an anxiety about sexual indeterminacy, instanced in
complemental male barnacles, which are interstitial sexes between males and females. Darwins own tropes describe these liminal
beings as monstrously minute, potent and parasitic, characterized by missing body parts (Stott 315).
The transitional sexes of marine invertebrates, such as the barnacle, illustrated a horror of
compounded forms, organisms, and sexes woven together in disconcerting ways. Stott notes
how anthropomorphic writing begins to shift from superimposition of bodily parts to a merging
or stitching together of body parts of different species of animal to create monstrous hybrids
(317). And in the 1880s, troubled by the sexual and bodily ambiguity of invertebrates, E. Ray Lancaster published work decrying
their degeneracy and announcing that marine organisms forewarned the potential dethronement of man (Stott 321).
With the aquarium, the unnerving sexual variation of marine life moved from ocean depths which was a
gothic scene for Victorians into
the inner sanctum of social order and bodily regulation, the

aristocratic home. Efforts to know, classify, and conquer the oceanic, and otherwise capture
nature for visual pleasure, resulted in a counterconquest of the home by monsters and sexual
deviants. Brunner writes, While visitors [of aquariums] were searching for a new experience, they were also afraid of what they
might discover. They fought it, not willing to believe or understand what appeared before their eyes (8). A boundary project,
the aquarium never fulfilled the promise of containment or supremacy of the visualizing eye
over the fluidity of seawater; at best it remained a leaky apparatus that fueled the sexual
anxieties of Europeans.
Link
LinkArt
Artistic resistance to the system only reinforces its power
Emmelhainz, 13
Irmgard Emmelhainz, Ph.D. from U of Toronto and independent writer, translator and
researcher based in Guatemala City where she teaches cinematic analysis; Art and the Cultural
Turn: Farewell to Committed, Autonomous Art?, 2013, http://dev.e-flux.com/journal/art-andthe-cultural-turn-farewell-to-committed-autonomous-art // MS
Neoliberal policies tend to erode ways of life. For this reason, contemporary social movements
havent been triggered by problems of wealth distribution or antagonism between the working
and wealthy classes (as was the case in the previous century) but rather by concerns regarding the grammar
of forms of life: quality of life, equality, individual self-realization, democracy (participation and
transparency when it comes to both the media and the government), human rights, the environment, antiglobalization, security, and so forth.17 With this in mind, Brian Holmes observed that social movements necessarily
incorporate a matrix of four convergent elements: art, scientific research and critical theory, media, and politics (self-organization).
This implies that social movements are built within societys cultural sphere. On one hand,
creativity and culture lie at the heart of the struggles that social movements engage in, because their primary means are information
and communication technology, which are instrumental when it comes to challenging existing power structures and creating
alternative means of dialogue. On the other, we have to consider that politics has become a question of
epistemology, a means of expression and a technique for making certain topics intelligible
topics which gain relevance the more visible they are in the media and sociopolitical fields, enabling them to mobilize emotions such
as fear, insecurity, indignation, and anger. Political work involves not only the creation of new forms of life,
but also the modification of what is visible in the Infosphere in order to shape political forms of
consciousness (adding, deconstructing, denouncing, diverting signs, codifying and decodifying). However, while
being counter-hegemonic, these interventions favor the power structure. How? On
one hand, if we consider Jodi Deans a crucial distinction between politics practiced in the Infosphere and
politics exercised institutionally. This distinction brings to light the abysmal disconnect between
committed criticism and national strategy, between politics as a means of circulating content
and politics as official policy. It could even be argued that politics as a means of circulating
content benefits the power structure under the logic of repressive tolerance (freedom of
expression is a sign of a healthy democracy): messages are contributions to the circulation of content, not actions
seeking answers, and the exchange value of messages overtakes their use value.18 On the other hand, in terms similar to those used
by Brian Holmes, Chris Kraus suggests that the consequence of fusing art with daily life is that art is the final frontier for vindicating
the desire to live differently.19 Nevertheless, conceiving of social movements and politicized art as
vehicles for changing forms of life is problematic because it implies the

subsumption of social and economic criticism into art criticism in proposing
solutions for short-term improvements. It runs the risk of reducing politicized art to a
simple beautification program in gentrified neighborhoods, museological factories, and
corporate parks. Changing forms of life is not about creating a reality antagonistic to
the prevailing one, because it perpetuates the blockage of what could be. To modify
forms ways of life instead of building a distinct realitynegating the established way of life, its institutions, its material and
intellectual culture, its liberal morality, its forms of work and entertainment is self-repression. Constructing a reality that
differs from the current one, requires opening an enabling channel for society to intervene directly in political matters, the ability to
veto the governments neoliberal plans, and to offer alternatives to the current social orders of exploitation and political and
economic exclusion.20 The problem is that the bourgeois state of law and its institutionswhich are the pillars supporting
prevailing neoliberal economics and ideologyare the sacred cows which remain untouchable. What must be taken into
account is that some recent social movements have been fighting to maintain their ways of life
their privilegesrather than to change them.21 4. For a Committed, Autonomous Art Besides artistic production
that is at the center of social movements (along with communication, critical theory, and self-organization, as we have seen), there is
autonomous artthat is, art that is not created specifically to serve social movements or causes. More than other forms or
expressions (with the possible exception of film and theater), art that is produced for museums or biennials occupies a privileged
space of politicization, while simultaneously being intimately linked to neoliberal processes. By this I mean that today art plays
the twin roles of compensating and reducing the effects of neoliberalism, while at the same time
actively participating in the new forms of predatory economics and geopolitical power
distribution, thus contributing to the transition to the New World Order. 22 How so? By being at
the center of population displacement processes in impoverished urban areas in order to
renovate them and generate capital (in other words, gentrification), and by abetting speculation
and urban marketing, branding, and cultural engineering. Cultural engineering embodies corporate and
government interference in the design and form of living spaces, because it means developing projects with the goal of constructing
realities in which culture acts as a fundamental element of innovation, dynamism, and individual and social welfare. For example,
culture has been used to revive economically depressed areas, develop educational strategies, and design social spaces. By being
present in every corner of the world as an instrument of intervention and improvementand to

promote liberal valuescontemporary art also helps normalize neoliberal policies. A recent
example of this is the extension of dOCUMENTA (13) to Kabul. In this case, culture came before
the fighting ceased, before the NGOs and other foreign companies arrived to rebuild and install
civil infrastructure, fiber optics, security and surveillance devices, among other things. This sort
of thing is possible because cultural expressions are easily integrated into the global
panorama of states of emergency, militarized zones, and permanent war, which have
become the norm in the early twenty-first century. When it comes to contemporary art, we must
also consider that the bourgeois order that sustains the economyalong with the internal
conditions of producing, exhibiting, and consuming artare strictly taboo: untouchable by even
the artists considered most radical.23 This is because contemporary art is a playground for corrupt opportunism,
speculation, and manipulation, a place where Darwinian competitiveness has created a work force that will never achieve
solidarity.24 In this context, the profile of the artist as an antisocial radical has softened, giving
way
to a new, affirmative image of an enterprising artist in and of himself, able to solve problems in a
nonlinear, creative manner.25 As such, the contemporary artist embodies the figure of the
precarious, entrepreneurial worker, the manager of his own human capital, freelancing from
project to project. We must also take into account that society disproportionally rewards A-List artists,
curators, and other cultural producers in a way not unlike it rewards managers or CEOs of
massive corporations, conferring on them direct membership in the new oligarchy. To conclude,
could politicized art, as Hito Steyerl argues, as art that focuses not on what it shows but on what art does and how it does it.26 To
paraphrase Jean-Luc Godard, its not a question of making political art or film; its about making art or film politically. With regard
to the politics of the field of art, however, what prevails is the diluted and domesticated version of 1970s institutional critiquesfor
example, Jonathan Hernndezs rejected piece, or the phrase coined by the Tercerounquinto art collective: No artist can resist a
$50,000 cannon blast, which was supposedly carved into a wall at the Museo Amparo. Another example is Adriana Laras 2006
work Artfilm I: Ever PresentYet Ignored, which shows several young people meandering through an art gallery while hearing a
voiceover reflecting on the conditions of producing contemporary art (it is a consumers market, it is not politically effective, artists
today are mainly interested in their own emotions). These two works arose through the ironic self-reflexivity of
the conditions of producing art, reiterating the predominance of an enlightened false

consciousness and propagating the ideology of cynical reason: they know very well what they
are doing, but still, they are doing it.27 It becomes clear that the state of contemporary art is quite
different from what gave rise to institutional critique in the 1970s, which was focused on
examining the subjection of art to ideological interests.28 Unlike forty years ago, institutions today are
more opaque, more exclusive, and they share objectives intrinsically linked to corporate,
neoliberal agendas (to the point that those agendas have become invisible) . Cultural institutions are the
administrative organs of the dominant order, and cultural producers actively contribute to the transmission of free market ideology
across all aspects of our lives.29
LinkBallot
The affirmatives demand for the ballot functions as a desire for recognition by an
external social authority this produces a dependences on authority which
precludes enjoyment and turns the case
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 87-90 // MS
When subjects enter into society, the social order confronts them with a demand. This demand
for the sacrifice of enjoyment offers them social recognition in return. Recognition grounds the
subjects identities and allows them to experience themselves as valuable. The socially
recognized subject has a worth that derives solely from recognition itself. Popular kids may believe that
their sense of worth is tied to an activityplaying football, obtaining good grades, being a cheerleaderbut in fact it
depends on the recognition that an anonymous social authority accords those who engage in
these activities. Though we might imagine the football player fully enjoying himself and his
popular status, the recognition that comes with this status renders enjoyment impossible insofar
as popularity adheres to the social authoritys demand rather than its unarticulated desire. 17 The
demand that confronts the subject entering the social order is directly articulated at the level of
the signifier. Social authority says to the subject, "Act in this way, and you will receive approval
(or recognition). But the demand conceals an unconscious desire that is not articulated on the level
of the signifier. What the authority really wants from the subject is not equivalent to what it
explicitly demands in signifiers. This desire of social authority of the Other engenders the
subjects own desire: the subjects desire is a desire to figure out what the Other wants from it
to solve the enigma of the Others desire and locate itself within that desire. The subject becomes
a desiring subject by paying attention not to what the social authority says (the demand) but to
what remains unsaid between the lines (the desire). The path of desire offers the subject the
possibility of breaking from its dependence on social authority through the realization that its
secret, the enigma of the Others desire, does not exist that the authority doesnt know what it
wants. Such a realization is not easy to achieve, but adopting the attitude of desire at least makes it possible. For the
subject who clings to the social authoritys demand, dependence on this authority
becomes irremediable and unrealizable. This is the limitation of pseudo-Hegelian
political projects oriented around garnering recognition. They necessarily remain within the
confines of the order that they challenge , and even success will never provide the
satisfaction that the project promises . Full recognition would bring with it not the sense of
finally penetrating into the secret enclave of the social authority but instead the disappointment
of seeing that this secret does not exist. The widespread acceptance of gay marriage in the U nited
States, for instance, would not provide a heretofore missing satisfaction, because the social
authority that would provide the recognition is not a substantial entity fully consistent with
itself. Even though institutional authority can grant a marriage certificate to gay couples and the
majority of the population can recognize the validity of the marriage, there is no agency that can authorize such a
marriage that is itself authorized. Social authority, in other words, is always
unauthorized or groundless, and this is the ultimate reason why the pursuit of
recognition leads to frustration. Those who seek social recognition structure their lives
around the social authoritys demand, and recognition is the reward that one receives for doing
ones social duty. For instance, in order to gain popularity, one must adhere to the social rules that lead to popularity. This
involves wearing the proper clothes, hanging out with the right people, playing the approved sports, and talking in the correct
fashion. Too much deviation from the standard dissolves ones popularity. Even those who disdain popularity most often align
themselves with some other source of recognition and thereby invest themselves in another form of it. The outsider who completely
rejects the trappings of the popular crowd but slavishly obeys the demands of fellow outsiders remains within the orbit of social
recognition. This devotion to social recognition is more apparent, though not more true, among the young; the adult universe
employs strictures with a similar severity.18 Following the path of desiregoing beyond the explicit demand of the social authority
has a cost in terms of social status. Those who restrict themselves to the authoritys demand do not necessarily evince more
obedience to actual laws than others do. In fact, the social authoritys demand often conflicts with laws because it demands love, not
just obedience. Criminals who flaunt the law for the sake of accumulating vast amounts of money are among those most invested in
this demand. There is no inherent radicality in criminal behavior, and most criminals tend to be politically conservative.19 The
object of the demand is the subjects complete sacrifice for the sake of the social authority, not simply adherence to a set of laws. By
imposing a demand that requires subjects to violate the law, the authority creates a bond of guilt
among those who follow this demand. For instance, contemporary capitalist society demands
the unrestricted accumulation of capital, even if this requires bypassing ethical or legal
considerations at some point. Those who adhere to this demand to such an extent that they
break the law or act against their own conscience find themselves all the more subjected to the
social authority than if the demand didnt include the dimension of transgression. The guilt that the
demand engenders in them seals their allegiance. This is the logic of the hazing ritual, which always necessitates a violation of the
law or common morality. The demand aims to redirect subjects away from their own enjoyment and toward social productivity. This
turn is unimaginable without guilt, which is the fundament.il social emotion. Subjects who sacrifice enjoyment for the
sake of recognition do so with the expectation that this sacrifice will pay off on the other side,
that the rewards of recognition will surpass the enjoyment that they have given up. This wager
seems to have all the empirical evidence on its side: every day, images of the most recognized
subjects enjoying themselves bombard us. We see them driving in the nicest cars, eating in the
finest restaurants, wearing the most fashionable clothes, and having sex with the most attractive
people, among other things. On the other side, we rarely see the enjoyment of those who remain indifferent to the appeal
of recognition. By definition, they enjoy in the shadows. What is more, the apparent misery of those who do not receive recognition
is readily visible among the social outcasts we silently pass every day. To all appearances, the sacrifice of enjoyment for the sake of
recognition is a bargain, as long as one ends up among the most recognized. The problem with this judgment stems
from its emphasis on visibility; it mistakes the display of enjoyment for the real thing. Someone
who was authentically enjoying would not need to parade this enjoyment. The authentically
enjoying subject does not perform its enjoyment for the Other but remains indifferent to the
Other. As Joan Copjec notes, Jouissance flourishes only there where it is not validated by the
Other.20 Enjoyment consumes the subject and directs all of the subjects attention away from the Others judgment, which is why
one cannot perform it and why being a social outcast doesnt bother the enjoying subject. One immerses oneself
completely in enjoyment, and the enjoyment suffices for the subject. In contrast, recognition,
though it offers its own form of satisfaction, ultimately leaves the subject eager for something
else. No matter what level of recognition subjects receive, they always find it insufficient and seek more. Unlike enjoyment,
recognition is an infinite struggle. But no one can make a direct choice of enjoyment instead of recognition.
The initial loss of enjoyment, the initial sacrifice, is inevitable. As I have insisted in earlier chapters, this
enjoyment only exists insofar as it is lost: there is no way for the subject to avoid altogether the loss of enjoyment for the sake of
recognition. But what the subject might avoid is the perpetuation of this abandonment of enjoyment
through the embrace of recognition. One cant initially reject recognition, but one can
subsequently revisit the original acceptance of the social demand and refuse it by becoming
indifferent to recognitions appeal.
LinkClimate Change
Their focus on climate is securitizing
Lertzman 10 [2010, Renee Lerzman from Portland State University, Psychoanalysis, culture,
society and our biotic relations: Introducing an ongoing theme on environment and
sustainability, http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pcs/journal/v15/n2/full/pcs201010a.html]
In 1992, the Freud Museum in London hosted an event called Ecological Madness. On this
occasion, several eminent psychoanalytic thinkers gathered in dialogue with environmental
activists, primarily from the Green Party. As evidenced by the proceedings published in
the British Journal of Psychotherapy, there was plenty to talk about (Ward, 1993). It seems that
the psychoanalytic and environmental sectors, while both concerned with reparation, may go
about defining it quite differently for example, reparation can refer more broadly to repairing
a degraded site or ecological trespass or to a mode for mobilizing concern in the face of our own
destructive and aggressive capacities.
Further, the issue of guilt, a hot topic in both environmental advocacy and psychoanalysis, can
be seen as either a barrier for engagement (leading to denial and other defenses), as a necessary
spur for action, or as a normal mode of development as we face our own capacities. As Ivan
Ward, the convener, delicately noted, an analytic attitude has a great deal to offer those
working in the environmental sector, specifically in the emphasis on relations between what
is conscious and unconscious and such an attitude does not preclude a politics of agency or
action. While this may seem obvious at first glance, Ward was inviting a radical rethinking of
how environmental engagement, activism, and reparation are conceptualized; rather than
focusing first onchanging people in the service of environmental reparation, an analytic
perspective endeavors to understand and interrogate what may mobilize certain
practices and behaviors in the service of change.
Despite this prescient event, the topic of the environment and ecological sustainability never
quite made it on the radar of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and discourse. With the
notable exceptions of Searles (1960,1972), Segal (1995), Hillman and Ventura (1993), Mishan
(1996) and a few others, psychoanalytic thought has been surprisingly silent on the topic of
environmental degradation, the destruction of natural resources and the ways in which humans
persistently override the ecological, biotic boundaries of our planet. Now, almost 20 years later,
psychoanalytic thinkers are starting finally to pay attention to environmental topics.
Perhaps we have Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to thank for that; regardless of the reasons, it
is a topic we can no longer afford to ignore. Signs of this shift are evidenced by several new
initiatives and projects: the Centre for Psycho-Social Studies at the University of West of
England's two recent conferences, Facing Climate Change in 2009 and INSIDE OUT:
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on our Environmental Crisis in 2010; a web seminar on
psychoanalysis and the environment convened in the Spring 2010 by the International
Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; and several new and exciting
research projects emerging at the interface of psychoanalytic research, environmental concerns
and broader socio-political contexts (eg, Randall, 2005, 2009;Bodnar, 2008; Lertzman,
2008, 2010; Hoggett, 2009; Weintrobe, 2009).
As psychoanalytic researchers, we have an abundance of theoretical, clinical and conceptual
resources to help us address the increasingly urgent ecological threats we are collectively facing.
Generally, there is a concern for unconscious processes, most notably strategies engaged to
manage anxieties and distressing experiences. Kleinian and Bionian perspectives might focus on
movement or vacillations between the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position
(eg, Segal, 1973), and speak directly to the capacity for splitting, both internal splitting and
compartmentalizing including splitting off awareness of our dependence on earth systems
(Mishan, 1996). This capacity for dissociation is related to issues of vulnerability and anxiety,
evoked in dependency contexts and exemplified by our relationship with nature and the
ecological systems we need to survive (Searles, 1960). How this relationship is negotiated can be
seen in fantasies of omnipotence, patterns of consumption as spurious satisfactions (Mishan,
1996, p. 62) or substitutes (Randall, 2005), and compulsive forms of activism (iek, 1992).
More recently, the links between greed, consumption and climate change are being addressed
(eg, Weintrobe, 2009), as well as issues of grief and loss in the face of the implications of
environmental destruction (eg,Randall, 2009). Relational psychoanalytic work is well situated
for thinking through issues of humannonhumanrelationality and, more broadly, how our
relations with our ecological contexts may be more constructive and reality based. The
application of psychoanalytic work to these relations, however, is far from straightforward; as
others have noted, the portability of clinical work to the biotic sphere requires careful thought,
consideration and creativity (Randall, 2005).
An analytic perspective or attitude not only is complementary to ongoing debates in
environmental psychology and research, but also is a crucial part of the dialogue on how we can
sustain our biotic communities. This issue of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society inaugurates a
commitment of the journal to these topics. We are pleased to introduce in this issue Peliwe
Mnguni's article Anxiety and Defense in Sustainability as a new addition to this dynamic
growing body of research. Perspectives such as Mnguni's take account of the role and nature of
unconscious processes and dynamics, the concept of anxiety and defense mechanisms as part of
organizational culture, and the role of past experiences in the present moment, with an
emphasis on collective or social expressions and forms of unconscious desires, fears and
anxieties.
LinkEcological Catastrophe
Their visions of the natural apocalypse are nothing more than a lesson in the
sublime-always incomplete and structured by jouissancewe constantly desire
external destruction to invoke the destruction intrinsic within our desire
Zupani, 2K [2000, Alenka, researcher at the Institute of Phiolosphy in the Slovene Academy
of Sciences at Ljublijana, Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan, Muse]
At this point another question demands an answer. The sublime is often said to lie at the edge of
the ridiculous. Quite frequently we encounter formulations like It is sublime or ridiculous,
depending on how we look at it+~ As we have already seen with the episode from the film The
Meaning of Life, it is enough to he a disinterested observer of someone overwhelmed by the
feeling of the sublime for this very feeling to he transformed immediately into a farce. How,
then, do we account for this convergence of opposites? Simply enough: what is sublime from the
point of view of the superego is ridiculous from the point of view of the ego. The feeling of the
sublime, however, consists not only in its indication of the proximity of a Thing (that is
threatening to the subject); it is at the same time a way to avoid actually encountering it. That is
to say, it is the very inflation of the superego that plays the crucial role in the strategy of
avoiding the Thing [das Ding], the death drive in its pure state, even though this inflation itself
can lead straight to death. (Kant, as we saw, claims that the subject in this state is ready to give
up property, health and even life.) In his own way, Kant also comes to the point where moral
agency emerges in the element of the sublime. He does so while he is dealing with the problem
of universality. The discussion in question concerns the fact that even though the sublime and
the beautiful as aesthetic categories can never attain the universality of law, there is nevertheless
a kind of universality that can be attributed to them, a universality other than the universality of
law. It is upon this paradoxical universality that the notion of Urteilskraft (the power of
judgement) is based. When we are judging an aesthetic phenomenon, we do not, according to
Kant, postulate everyones agreement rather, we require agreement from everyone.30 It is the
judgement itself (for instance, this image is beautiful) that constitutes its own universality.
Better yet, in our judgement we constitute the 'universe within which this judgement is
universally valid. Yet by thus requiring agreement from everyone, we are forced to rely on
something else, and this something else is, in the case of the sublime, precisely moral agency:
[A judgement about the sublime] has its foundation in human nature: in something that, along
with common sense, we may require and demand of everyone, namely, the predisposition to the
feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e. to moral feeling.3 In this passage we can already detect the
superegoic face of the moral law in the predisposition ... to moral feeling. As we shall see, this
face of the moral law gradually attains a great deal more importance. At this point, we may
wonder: what exactly is the relation between what the subject sees in front of her (a hurricane,
for instance) and what she then discovers in herself (a still greater force)? What is it that makes
the first evoke the second? Our thesis is that in the Kantian perspective, a confrontation with
something that is terrifying in itself (to take Kants own example: hurricanes with all the
devastation they leave behind) strikes the subject as a kind of bodying forth of the cruel,
unbridled and menacing superego the real or reverse side of the moral law (in us), of the
superego as the place of jouissance. The destructive power of natural phenomena is already
familiar to the subject, so the devastating force above me easily evokes a devastating force
within me. The feeling of the sublime develops through this metonymy. It is clear that the
devastating force within me cannot really refer to the moral law in the strict sense, but it
corresponds very well to the agency of the superego, that is, to the law equipped with the gaze
and voice which can make even the boldest sinner tremble. We are now in a position to spell
out the major difference between the beautiful and the sublime. Kant defines the beautiful in
terms of purposiveness without purpose. Beauty always has the form of purposiveness, yet it
never actually has a purpose
a concept to which it corresponds. This is why craft objects
can never be judged truly beautiful their function or usefulness gets in the way. Things of
beauty, On the other hand, have no purpose outside themselves, yet they are structured as if
they had one. Beauty is possible only if it is fortuitous, if it serves no antecedently given purpose.
This is why, for Kant, the examples par excellence of the heautiful are natural formations. What
makes a natural formation (a crystal form, for example) beautiful, however, is the fact that it
gives us the impression of a knowledge on the part of Nature. We get the feeling that Nature
knows what it is doing, that there is some significance or sense in what it is doing, even though
we are well aware that this is not the case. The simplest definition of beauty is thus that it is a
sense-ful fonn which draws its fascination from the fact that we know this form is entirely
coincidental, contingent, or unintentional. The sublime, on the other hand, is explicitly a
senseless form; it is more of an incarnation of chaos (the eruption of a volcano, a turbulent
ocean, a stormy night. . .). It appears as pure excess, as the eruption of an inexplicable
jouissance, as pure waste. In other words, if the beautiful is characterized as the place where
Nature knows, the sublime is the place where Nature enjoys. It is precisely this jouissance of the
Other, a jonissance that does not serve any (real or apparent) purpose, that is so fascinating
about the sublime.
LinkEnviro Solutions
Attempting to symbolically describe the source of antagonism as an empirical
barrier reduces it to a concrete problem to be overcome, functioning as a fantasyscreen that maintains capital
Zizek 2000 [Slavoj, Rather Prolific Author, Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, please!
Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, New York City:
Verso, 2000, 100-1//uwyo-ajl]
My conclusion would thus be to emphasize that the impossibility at work in Laclau's notion of
antagonism is double: not only does 'radical antagonism' mean that it is impossible adequately
to represent/articutate the fullness of Society -~ on an even more radical level, it is also
impossible adequately to represent/articulate this very antagonism/negativity that prevents
Society from achieving its full ontological realization. This means that ideological fantasy is not
simply the fantasy of the impossible fullness of Society: not only is Society impossible, this
impossibility itself is distortedly represented-positivized within an ideological field - that is the
role of ideological fantasy (say, of the Jewish plot).25 When this very impossibility is
represented in a positive element, inherent impossibility is changed into an external obstacle.
Ìdeology' is also the name for the guarantee that the negativity which prevents Society from
achieving its fullness does actually exist, that it has a positive existence in the guise of a big
Other who pulls the strings of social life, like the Jews in the anti-Semitic notion of the Jewish
plot'. In short, the basic operation of ideology is not only the dehistoricizing gesture of
transforming an empirical obstacle into the eternal condition (women, Blacks. . . are by nature
subordinated, etc.), but also the opposite gesture of transposing the a priori
closure/impossibility of a field into an empirical obstacle. Laclau is well aware of this paradox
when he denounces as ideological the very notion that after the successful revolution, a nonantagonistic self-transparent society will come about. However, this justified rejection of the
fullness of post-revolutionary Society does not justify the conclusion that we have to renounce
any project of a global social transformation, and limit ourselves to partial problems to be
solved: the jump from a critique of the `metaphysics of presence' to anti-utopian `reformist'
gradualist politics is an illegitimate short circuit.
LinkExposition Politics
The aff is the politics of Michael Moore and Al Gore: portray the truth effectively
and show the bad people are bad so people will change. This is a repeated, failed
strategy of leftist politics: it re-invests power in expert discourse which empowers
conservativism as opponents enjoy their investment in cruelty. Only changing our
relationship to enjoyment solves.
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 185-190 // MS
The rule of knowledge places emancipatory politics in a difficult position. It cannot abandon the
project of the Enlightenment without ceasing to be emancipatory, and at the same time it must
find a way to incorporate enjoyment into its program. If emancipatory politics places itself on
the side of knowledge, it abdicates its former position as a challenge to authority and becomes
associated with the restriction of enjoyment rather than the unleashing of it. And as the
representative of expert authority, emancipatory politics appears as the thief of enjoyment. The
knowledge it forces on us produces a feeling of lost enjoyment. Michael Moore provides a nearperfect illustration of the dilemma that contemporary emancipatory politics confronts , both in his
successes and in his failures. When Moore succeeds as an activist filmmaker , he mobilizes the
enjoyment of the spectator and works to align this enjoyment with increased freedom and
equality. This is apparent in Moores first two documentary features, Roger and Me (1989) and The Big One
(1997). Both films allow the spectator to enjoy the opposition to big capital . In the former, Moore pursues
General Motors CEO Roger Smith in order to secure an interview with him to discuss plant closings in Flint, Michigan. Moores
dogged pursuit of Smith shows Smith and General Motors not just as destroyers of workers lives but also as the enemies of
enjoyment, which spectators experience through the filmmaking project itself. The Big One goes even further in this direction. At
every turn, enjoyment inheres in the critique of capitalism. The film offers criticism of downsizing companies through the guise of a
contest, in which Moore presents the worst offenders a large-sized symbolic check (like the kind given to actual contest winners)
celebrating them as Downsizer of the Year. Moore himself challenges Nike CEO Phil Knight to a footrace with opening an
American Nike plant as the stake. The film depicts union organizing taking place clandestinely at night, which places union activity
on the level of international espionage. Enjoyment inheres in the various critiques and efforts to undermine big capital, and big
capital itself responds in the film with defenses rooted in knowledge.31 Moores own presence in the films functions
as an avatar of the enjoyment that derives from challenging the injustice of contemporary
capitalism. His disheveled hair, his old baseball cap, his excess weight all these aspects of his physical appearance attest to his
personal commitment to enjoyment rather than propriety. He looks more like a bowling partner than an expert authority, and this
look helps to link the cause of emancipation with enjoyment in his films. The link reaches its initial zenith in Bowlingfor Columbine
(2002). The genius of Bowling for Columbine is that it attributes American gun violence not, as one might expect going into the film,
to the widespread availability of firearms in the United States but to the American retreat from the neighbor. Though the beginning
of the film chronicles how easily one can obtain a gun in America we see a bank giving guns away for opening an account, for
instance Moore concludes by contrasting the United States with Canada, where guns also proliferate but gun violence does not.
The difference, the film suggests, is that Americans are animated by the specter of a threatening other in a way that Canadians are
not. Moore visits a Toronto neighborhood and finds unlocked doors and a general lack of fear about the other. It is the absence of
this attitude in the United States and the omnipresence of the idea that the other represents a threat to be guarded against that
begets gun violence. The films ultimate prescription is not fewer guns but fewer locks on doors. The lock on the door is the
synecdoche for the barrier to the others enjoyment. By focusing on the locked door as the root of the problem of American gun
violence, Moore associates this violence with the nations retreat from its own enjoyment, which necessarily appears in the guise of
the enjoying other. Guarding against the others enjoyment is simultaneously guarding against ones
own, and it is this attitude, Bowling for Columbine concludes, that produces massacres like the one
perpetuated at Columbine High School. Like Roger and Me and The Big One, Bowlingfor Columbine manages to
wrestle the terrain of enjoyment away from conservatism. But Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) marks a turn in the other
direction. Here, Moore aligns himself with expert knowledge against the obscenity of enjoyment.
The explicit aim of Fahrenheit 9/11 is breaking the identification that exists between the
American people and George W. Bush. Moore sets about doing this by exposing the presidents
weaknesses and questioning his legitimacy. The problem with Fahrenheit 9/11 is that its very
structure precludes the political conversions that the film hopes to engender. On the one hand,
the film gratifies leftist viewers by placing them in the position of authority. They can align
themselves with Moores voiceover as it chronicles Bushs moments of awkwardness and
indifference, and they can feel justified in their position as the film chronicles his privilege and
corruption. But on the other hand, Fahrenheit offers other viewers the possibility of
identifying with Bush himself even at the moments when the film expends the
most vitriol in denouncing him. Throughout the first forty minutes of the film, we hear
Moores voice but rarely see him within the image. Perhaps Moore made this choice in order to allow the film to
appear less subjective or partisan, believing that this would convince more viewers of its theses. But the result is the opposite: as a
disembodied voice, Moore becomes a figure of authority. We see Bush enjoying himself, and we
hear Moore condemning that enjoyment. We dont see Moores physical presence, which tends
to align him with enjoyment rather than knowledge.32 After recounting Bushs tainted victory in the 2000
election and its aftermath, Moore focuses on the Bush presidency prior to September 11, 2001. Specifically, he shows Bush
vacationing and playing on his ranch rather than working at the White House. As a voiceover tells us that he spent 42 percent of his
days before September 11 on vacation, we see a series of images of Bush fishing, boating, and hanging out
at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. According to Moores film, at least part of the blame for the
terrorist attacks resides with Bush himself for spending too much time enjoying and not enough
time attending to his job (and reading security briefings). This critique comes to a climax at the
moment when Bush hears about the September 11 attacks. We see him in an elementary school
reading to children as he hears the news from his chief of staff, and Moore emphasizes Bushs
lack of a demonstrable reaction. Moores voiceover accompanies the shot of Bush in the classroom, and it articulates the
indictment of him: Not knowing what to do, with no one telling him what to do, and no Secret Service rushing in to take him to
safety, Mr. Bush just sat there and continued to read My Pet Goat with the children. As Moore says this, we see Bush open up the
book and begin to read. Moore places the time at the bottom of the screen: it says 9:07 a.m., and after a dissolve it says 9:09 a.m.,
then 9:11 a.m. after a dissolve to a shot of Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Finally, after a dissolve back to Bush showing the time to
be 9:12 a.m., the camera zooms out, and the voiceover says, As Bush sat in that Florida classroom, was he wondering if maybe he
should have shown up to work more often? Should he have had at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of
terrorism with the head of counterterrorism? In this way, the film links Bushs failure to prevent the attacks
and his failure to act decisively (or at all) when they occur to his lack of sufficient work. The
authority of the voice hopes to break any identification with Bush as it reprimands him for
enjoying too much. The contrast between knowledge and enjoyment becomes clearest when
Moore interviews Congressperson Jim McDermott of Washington . We hear Moores voice and see
McDermott as he answers questions about the Bush administrations use of fear as a political weapon. Moore uses clips from this
interview to frame a seemingly incongruous scene where Bush talks with reporters on the golf course. Bush speaks into the camera
and says, We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. After a
pause of two or three seconds, Bush adds, Now watch this drive. The film cuts to a shot of him driving a golf ball and then returns
to the interview with McDermott. Moore shows us Bushs quick transition from combating terrorism to
showing of this golf game in order to reveal his lack of effort in the former. The scandal of this
scene derives from where Bushs attention lies: golf seems much more important to him than
terrorism. It helps to undermine the authority that Bush has from the mere fact of his political office the authority of the
master. But as he undermines Bushs authority, Moore aligns himself with the authority of
McDermott not just a member of Congress but also a professional psychiatrist, as a subtitle
informs us. Though the film blames Bush for the folly of the Iraq War and to a lesser extent for
the September 11 attacks, it does not portray him as a responsible authority. His guilt stems
from his obscene enjoyment. Highlighting Bushs obscene enjoyment fails as a political
strategy because the people who identify with Bush do so precisely because of this
enjoyment, not in spite of it. If Bush doesnt read reports, skips meetings, vacations too
much, or stumbles when talking to reporters, such failures provide possibilities for
identification. Popular identification with a leader occurs on two distinct levels. On the one
hand, we identify with the strength of the leader and see ourselves expressed in that strength.
This identification affirms our ego and provides pleasure. On the other hand, we identify with
the weaknesses of the leader. This identification is the key to our ability to enjoy the leader. The
more Fahrenheit takes the side of knowledge against Bushs obscene enjoyment, the more it cements the identification between
supporters and him through a shared enjoyment.33 Another film released around the same time as Fahrenheit, Morgan
Spurlocks Super Size Me (2004), commits precisely the same error. The film depicts the damage
that eating every meal at McDonalds for thirty days does to Spurlocks health and serves as an
indictment against the fast food industry as a whole. Spurlocks doctor makes clear the precise nature of the
health problems that ensue and identifies their cause in the fast food diet. Super Size Me gives us knowledge through
expert testimony, but it never addresses the question of enjoyment. Instead, it continually
renders this enjoyment visible within the image as we see Spurlock eating to excess . The film
pronounces itself against fast food while at the same time revealing on the level of the image the intense enjoyment that this product
delivers. Unlike in Fahrenheit, we see directly the enjoyment that knowledge facilitates. What both Super Size Me and
Fahrenheit have in common is their attempt to side with knowledge against enjoyment. Many
figures on the side of emancipatory politics see the documentary as a valuable tool because it
provides knowledge that traditional media outlets do not. It helps people to break from the
ideological manipulation that dominates them . But as Hilary Neroni points out, the
documentary forms obsession with the facts causes it to miss the role of enjoyment. Discussing
documentaries that address the horrors that took place at the Abu Ghraib prison , she
notes: Pursuing the facts, then, leaves these documentaries to miss the most disturbing fact of
the Abu Ghraib photos: the smiles on the faces of the torturers. And it is the enjoyment evident
on their faces that gives us the most important clue to what underlies the ideology of torture: a
certain kernel of nonsense is revealed that is at the heart of this ideology. 34 The focus of
documentary form on revealing facts rather than facilitating enjoyment hinders its
effectiveness as a political tool. It seems inherently to take the side of knowledge and
thereby enable opponents to enjoy through disregarding what it teaches. This is the case even
when a documentary presents an overwhelming need for dramatic action . No political
event on the American Left in the year 2006 received as much attention and acclaim as Davis Guggenheims documentary film
featuring Al Gore entitled An Inconvenient Truth. The success of the film catapulted Gore into the public eye and generated
calls from all corners that he again run for president. Many saw it as a turning point in the fight against climate change. The film,
which consists primarily of footage of Gore giving a slideshow on global warming, invests itself
entirely in the authority of the expert. Speaking from a position of knowledge, Gore warns
against excessive enjoyment overuse of electricity, driving environmentally unfriendly
vehicles, consuming without educating oneself, and so on. The entire film is an act of
consciousness-raising and enjoyment-restricting. By seizing on Gores film as a rallying
point, the forces of emancipation again cede the terrain of enjoyment to
conservatism, just as they did with the embrace of Fahrenheit . Conservatisms
most celebrated intervention into the global warming debate, in contrast, attempts
to mobilize enjoyment against expert knowledge . Michael Crichtons novel State of Fear (2004) depicts
the travails of global warming debunker John Kenner as he fights against environmental terrorist organizations desperate to create
environmental disasters in order to prove their theses about climate change.35 Crichton shows that these groups occupy the position
of authority and power today. For instance, Kenner claims at one point: Environmental groups in the U.S. generate half a billion
dollars a year. What they do with it is unsupervised.36 Kenners struggle against the environmentalists
consists in showing that theyre wrong, but, even more importantly, he enjoys himself in a series
of secret adventures. He plays the part of James Bond in the fight against environmental
terrorism, and his thwarting of the environmentalists nefarious plans is at once an ideological
victory and an emotional one. Of course, one cannot compare a documentary film with a popular novel. But this is
precisely the point. While the emancipatory politics invests itself in the expert testimony given in a
documentary, conservatism discovers a form that foregrounds enjoyment. The documentary as a
form is designed to raise consciousness and to educate. But for a documentary to be successful in
really changing spectators, it must not simply provide them with additional knowledge. It must
alter their way of organizing their enjoyment, which is what occurs in Moores early
documentaries and in Sicko (2007), the follow-up to Fahrenheit 9/11. If a documentary
contents itself with providing knowledge, it will have the effect of contributing to
the very problem that it attempts to eradicate. It must, in the manner of a film like Alex Gibneys
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), identify expertise as the target of its attack rather than
aligning itself with the authority of the expert. But in the last instance, investment in documentary as a mode of
political activity and consciousness-raising, even in documentaries like Enron that try to combat expertise, represents a strategy
guaranteed to fail because the form itself almost implicitly takes the side of the expert.37 The commitment to the
documentary form by the forces of emancipation testifies to their continued faith

in the power of knowledge and their continued willingness to cede the terrain of
enjoyment to conservatism .
Expenditure is not transgressive limitless consumption is useless theory
Paul Mann, 1999, The Exquisite Corpse of Georges Bataille in Masocriticism, p. 67-9
I would like at one and the same time to affirm this model and to dismiss it as the most desperate alibi of all. For
sacrificial consumption can never become an explicit critical motive.13 At the moment it presents itself
as a proper element of some critical method, it degenerates into another useful trope, another bit of intellectual currency, another
paper-thin abyss, another proxy transgression; and the force of transgression moves elsewhere, beneath a blinder spot in the critical
eye.14 Questions of motive or understanding, the fact that one might be self-critical or at least aware of recuperation,
are immaterial: what is at stake here is not self-consciousness but economics, material relations of
appropriation and exclusion, assimilation and positive loss. Whatever transgression occurs in writing on
Bataille does so only through the stupid recuperation and hence evacuation of the whole rhetoric and dream of transgression, only
insofar as the false profundity of philosophy or theory evacuates the false profundities it apes. To justify this as the
sublime loss of loss is merely to indulge a paradoxical figure. Excess is not a project but a byproduct of any discourse; the interest of Bataillean discourse lies chiefly in the compulsive and symptomatic way it plays
with its feces. The spectacle of critics making fools of themselves does not reveal the sovereign truth
of death: it is only masocritical humiliation, a pathological attempt to disavow the specter of
death. As for the present essay, it makes no claims to any redeeming sacrifice. Far from presenting you with a truer Bataille, far
from speaking in his voice more clearly than his other readers, this essay pleads guilty to the indictment against every appropriation.
Until philosophy and theory squeal like a pig before Batailles work, as he claims to have done before Dalis canvases, there will be no
knowledge of Bataille. In the end, one might have to take and even stricter view: there is no discourse
of transgression, either on or by Bataille. None at all. It would be necessary to write a Postscript to

Transgression were it not for the fact that Foucault already wrote it in his Preface, were it not for the fact that Bataille himself
wrote it the moment before he first picked up his pen. It makes no difference whether one betrays Bataille,
because one lip syncs Batailles rhetoric or drones on in the most tedious exposition . All of these
satellite texts are not heliotropic in relation to the solar anus of Batailles writing, of the executioners he hoped (really?) would meet
him in the Bois de Boulogne, or depensives in spite of themselves. It would be sentimental to assign them such privileges. They
merely fail to fail. They are symptoms of a discourse in which everyone is happily transgressing everyone else and nothing
ever happens, traces of a certain narcissistic pathos that never achieves the magnificent loss
Batailles text conveniently claims to desire, and under whose cover it can continue to account for itself, hoarding its
precious debits in a masocriticism that is anything but sovereign and gloriously indifferent. What is given to us, what is
ruinously and profitably exchanged, is a lie. Heterology gives the lie to meaning and discourse gives the lie to
transgression, in a potlatch that reveals both in their most essential and constitutive relation. Nothing is gained by this
communication except profit-taking from lies. We must indict Bataille as the alibi that allows all
of this writing to go on and on, pretending it is nothing it is not, and then turn away from
Bataille as from a sun long since gone nova, in order to witness the slow freezing to death of
every satellite text. The sacrificial consumption of Bataille has played itself out; the rotten
carcass has been consumed: no more alibis. What is at stake is no longer ecstatic sexuality or violent
upheavals or bloody sacrifices under the unblinking eye of the sun; nor was it ever, from the very
beginning of Batailles career. These are merely figures in the melodramatic theater of what is
after all a soft expenditure (Hollier 1989, xv), a much more modest death, a death much closer to home. It
has never been more than a question of the death of the theory and of theory itself as death . Of
theory-death. A double fatality.
LinkRevolution
Their resistance calcifies into statism
Newman 4 (Saul, U of Western Australia, Interrogating the Master: Lacan and Radical Politics,
Psychoanalys and Culture 2004, 9, p. 298-314)//LA ***We dont defend gendered language.
Psychoanalytic theory has a less sanguine and utopian view of human nature and the
possibilities of social harmony. Freud saw the human instinct as naturally aggressive and destructive rather than
cooperative, and he was somewhat skeptical about the utopian claims of revolutionary politics .1 This
skepticism was also shared by Lacan, and was most notoriously demonstrated in his address to
university students in the May 1968 uprising in Paris: Revolutionary aspirations have only one
possibility: always to end up in the discourse of the master. Experience has proven this. What
you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master. You will have one! (Lacan in Stavrakakis, 1999, p 12). As
unambiguous as this statement may seem, there are two implications that can be drawn from it in relation to the importance of
psychoanalytic theory for radical politics. The first implication is a simple outright dismissal of any form of radical political activity
give up your hysterical revolutionary aspirations, as they will ultimately end in new forms of
domination. This would seem to align Lacan with a conservative a-political stance, and put paid to the suggestion that there is
anything in Lacanian theory that is of interest to radical politics.2 However, it is possible to draw another implication here one
that, paradoxically, aligns Lacan with the anarchist position. One may suggest that this statement may be taken as a
warning to radical politics about the dangers of reaffirming the structures of power and
authority as a consequence of a revolution. Was this not precisely the same warning that the anarchists gave to
Marxists regarding the question of the State and political institutions? In this sense, then, both the anarchist and Lacanian
positions point to the place of power that is, the dangers of power and authority being
reproduced in ones very attempt to overcome them. Both perspectives address, in other words,
the position of the revolutionary vis-a` -vis the place of domination he contests the
revolutionary must confront the hidden, disavowed authoritarian implications of his own
endeavor. In other words, the revolutionary is asked, is the authority you contest not already
immanent in your position as revolutionary, and will your revolution not lead to a perpetuation
of this authority? So the question to be addressed here is: how can radical politics be reconfigured in such a way that it can
avoid the reaffirmation of power and authority? This was the anarchist question to some degree it is also the Lacanian question.
Master and slave: the dialectics of authority Part of this reconfiguring of radical politics via Lacanian theory
would, however, involve a critique of the conceptual structures of anarchism itself. Since anarchism, like
Marxism, is a discourse of revolution, it must be submitted to a Lacanian critique of the revolutionary position and its
immanent authoritarianism. In other words, does anarchism itself reaffirm the authority it
transgresses?; in seeking to overcome the position of the master, will it install a new master in
its place? That is to say, is anarchism also caught up in the authoritarian discourse of the master
the very discourse it ostensibly seeks to abolish? It would seem that from a Lacanian
perspective, there is a structural link between the position of the revolutionist and the position
of the master one implying the other. It is precisely this hidden connection between revolutionary
desire and the domination it contests, between transgression and authority, that is the central problem of
revolutionary politics. In exploring this connection between revolutionary transgression and authority, we must turn to
Lacans reformulation of Hegels master/slave dialectic. Indeed, in the paradoxical relationship between master and slave, there is
reflected the central problem in anarchism the ambiguous and hidden connection between revolutionary desire and authority. In
Hegels dialectic, desire, which is really the desire of the self, is only realized through the desire of the other. In
other words, what is desired is the recognition by the other of ones own desire. This self-recognition
therefore involves the negation of the others self-recognition as there can be only room for one thus instigating a
relationship of domination between the one who recognizes and desires the other (the slave) and
the one who is recognized and desired (the master). However, because self-recognition is based on recognition by
the other, the identity of the master the one who is recognized is dependent on the identity of the slave the one who recognizes.
This introduces into the relationship a paradoxical ambiguity and potential reversal of positions. We can see this precariousness in
all relationships of political and social domination the authority of the lord is always dependent on the
recognition of this authority
LinkTerrorism
The affs counter-terrorism fails to recognize the impossibility of complete security
the structure of the Lack means that we have come to enjoy the War on Terror
and continuously seek to derive more pleasure from the pursuit of the terrorists
who stole our enjoyment of American identity this makes the war a violent, selffulfilling prophecy
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 160-163 // MS
Nowhere is the retreat from enjoyment to pleasure more evident than in the American response
to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The attacks immediately reinvigorated the social bond for a
majority of Americans. The loss that they occasioned brought subjects back to the shared
sacrifice that defines their membership in American society. Even as they were horrified by the
image of the towers burning and then falling, most Americans, in the strict psychoanalytic sense
of the term, enjoyed the attacks insofar as the attacks allowed them to experience once again
their social bond with great intensity. This is a bond that one suffers, just as one suffers from a terrorist attack. Even
though it followed from an attack, this bond was not one formed through the male logic of friend/enemy, which is why the headline
in Le Monde on September 12,2001, could proclaim, Nous sommes tous Amricains.27 The bond formed around the September 11
attacks was not initially a bond of exclusivity with a clear outside and inside. Any subject willing to accede to the
experience of loss could become apart of American society at that moment. The not-all of the
social bond occurs through the experience of loss, but the recognition of this type of bond is unbearable. One
enjoys it without deriving any pleasure from it. It is, in fact, painful. Not only is it painful, but it
also entails complete humiliation. The society experiences the shame of being a victim and
enduring trauma the shame of enjoyment itself. In order to disguise this shameful enjoyment,
the United States quickly turned to an assertion of power that would carry with it the
promise of a restored wholeness the recovery of an imaginary perfect security .
The attack on Afghanistan brought pleasure to most members of American society. This
pleasure had the function of rendering the enjoyment that emerged through traumatic loss
bearable, but it could not fulfill its inherent promise. Enjoyment satisfies, and pleasure always
disappoints. The disappointing nature of the attack on Afghanistan paved the way to the
subsequent attack on Iraq in a further attempt to find an actual pleasure equal to what we
anticipated. In terms of American society, these foreign wars serve as alibis for the enjoyment of the
traumatic attacks themselves. Because we seek respite from the loss that binds us, we flee from
the social bond despite our purported desire for it. The authentic social bond exists only in the shared experience
of loss that is, only according to the female logic of not-having. But the attack on Iraq also illustrates the
inescapability of the enjoyment attached to loss. The Iraq War clearly follows from the male logic of having
and aims at producing the pleasure resulting from possession: the U nited States would conquer a
recalcitrant dictator and obtain a firm ally in a globally significant region. This is both the stated
justification for the war and the explanation offered by critics who see it as an exercise in American imperialism. For both the
perpetuators of the war and its critics, the war concerns having, despite the different inflections they give this idea. But the result
of the war is the failure of having and the renewed experience of loss. The pursuit of the pleasure
involved in having returns American society to the traumatic loss involved in the September 11
attacks. Of course, no one fights wars with the express intention of losing them, but every war brings with it sacrifice
and loss, which is ultimately the substance of the social bond and the source of our ability to
enjoy that bond. The pursuit of the pleasure of having leads to the loss that inevitably
accompanies this pursuit. Imperial powers do not attempt to stretch their military and economic reach to the point that it
breaks because of an inescapable will to power or a biological urge for infinite expansion. The conquering drive of
empires has its roots in the search for what no amount of imperial possession can provide the
enjoyment of the experience of loss. Empires conquer increasing quantities of territory in order
to discover a territory that they cant conquer. In this same way, the Afghanistan War disappointed
the American leadership because it didnt provide even the possibility for loss. Donald Rumsfelds
lament that the country didnt have any targets to bomb points in this direction. Iraq, in contrast, promised a possible
defeat, and if it hadnt, Syria or Iran would surely have come within the sights of the Bush
administration. Whatever the proffered justification or hidden motivation, powerful societies
ultimately go to war in order to reenact a constitutive loss and facilitate the enjoyment that this
loss entails.28 This is the case not just with war but with any positive project that a
social order takes up. Building a monument like the Eiffel Tower provided French society
with a possession that allows for collective identification. But the work involved with the
building involved a great sacrifice in time and in money. When we think of the Eiffel Tower, we rarely think of
the sacrifice required for its construction; instead, we think of the sense of identity that it offers. It provides a positive point of
identification for France itself as a nation, and French subjects can find pleasure through this identification. Nonetheless, the
enjoyment of the Eiffel Tower, in contrast to the pleasure that it offers, stems from the sacrifice
required to construct it. Every finished societal product such as victory in Iraq, the beauty of
the Eiffel Tower, smooth roads on which to drive promises pleasure, but this pleasure
primarily supplies an alibi for the enjoyment that the sacrifices on the way to the product
produce. These sacrifices allow us to experience the social bond by repeating the act of
sacrifice through which each subject became a member of the social order. It is not so
much that the pursuit of pleasure backfires (though it does) but that it is never done simply for its own
sake. We embark on social projects not in spite of what they will cost us but because of what they
will cost us.29 The dialectic of pleasure and enjoyment also plays itself out in the relationship that subjects in society have to
their leader. According to Freud, all group members install the leader in the position of an ego ideal, and this ego ideal held in
common furthers the bond among members of society. But the identification with the leader has two sides to it: on the one hand,
subjects identify with the leaders symbolic position as a non castrated ideal existing beyond the world of lack; but on the other hand,
subjects identify with the leaders weaknesses, which exist in spite of the powerful image.30 Both modes of identification work
together in order to give subjects a sense of being a member of society, but they work in radically different ways. The identification
with the leaders power provides the subject with a sense of symbolic identity and recognition, whereas the identification with the
leaders weaknesses allows the subject to enjoy being a part of the community. The identification with the leaders strength provides
the pleasure that obscures the enjoyment deriving from the identification with the leaders weaknesses. The weaknesses indicate that
the leader is a subject of loss, that she/he enjoys rather than being entirely devoted to ruling as a neutral embodiment of the people.
The weaknesses are evidence of the leaders enjoyment, points at which a private enjoyment stains the public image. By identifying
with these points, subjects in a community affirm the association of enjoyment with loss rather than with presence. But at the same
time, the leaders weaknesses cannot completely eclipse the evidence for the leaders strength. The strength allows subjects who
identify with the leader in her/his weakness to disavow this would-be traumatic identification and to associate themselves
consciously with strength rather than weakness. The trajectory of Bill Clintons popularity during his presidency illustrates precisely
how identification with the leader unfolds. When accusations of sexual impropriety with Monica Lewinsky first appeared, Clintons
public approval rating reached its highest levels. Most thought that Clinton was probably guilty of some private wrongdoing, but
they also felt that his sexual peccadilloes should remain private. Though they infuriated his Republican accusers, his sexual
weaknesses had the effect of enhancing his overall popularity. This trend continued until it became undeniably clear that Clinton
really was guilty, when it became impossible to disavow his weakness. At this point, identifying with Clinton became inescapably
apparent as identifying with Clinton in his weakness, which rendered it more difficult to sustain. The American populace could enjoy
Clintons weakness and form a social bond through this weakness only as long as it remained partially obscured. The fundamental
barrier to the establishment of an authentic social bond is the resistance to avowing the traumatic nature of that bond. We use
the pleasure that accompanies the bombing of Afghanistan to disguise the shared enjoyment we
experience through the traumatic experience of loss. But this pleasure inevitably disappoints us
and triggers the belief that someone has stolen the complete pleasure that we expected to
experience. This is why there can properly be no end to the War on Terror , no end to
the list of countries that the United States plans to invade to attain complete security, no end to
the number of terrorist leaders executed.31 Complete security, like complete pleasure, is
mythical . It attempts to bypass the one experience that cannot be bypassed the foundational
experience of loss and it is this experience that holds the key to an authentic social bond.
LinkThreat Con
Their paranoiac impact framing results in the projection of threats onto the Other
in an effort to suture the Lack the affs politics are a self-fulfilling prophecy that
mobilizes the population toward fascism
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 44-49 // MS
While nostalgia locates the ultimate enjoyment in the subjects own past, paranoia locates it in
the other. Paranoia thus offers the subject not just the image of the ultimate enjoyment (like
nostalgia) but also an explanation for its absence. Nostalgia and paranoia usually operate side by side in order to
provide the subject a way of figuring its missing enjoyment. On its own, nostalgia as a mode of subjectivity seems to have limited
political consequences. Groups may use nostalgia as a political weapon, but its political weight is diffused to some extent because it
involves the subject's relation to itself rather than to an other. The same cannot be said for paranoia, which is why finding a way
to counter paranoia represents an urgent political task. Paranoia is political in its very structure.
It views the other as a threat and produces hostility toward the other. The paranoid subject
usually adopts one of two possible attitudes toward the other. According to the first, paranoia
serves to explain the loss of the privileged object . If I take up a paranoid attitude toward the
other, I see her/ his enjoyment coming at the expense of mine. The other enjoys the lost object that is
rightfully mine. The other, having stolen my enjoyment, bears responsibility for my existence as a
subject of loss. This type of paranoia removes the burden of loss from the subject and
places it onto the other , and in addition it functions, like nostalgia, to convince the subject that
having the object is a possibility . According to the second attitude, however, paranoia represents an attempt to
convince ourselves that we have not lost the privileged object. We are paranoid not that the other has
stolen the privileged object but that it plans to do so. The imagined threat that the other
poses reassures us that we have the ultimate enjoyment and that this is what the other targets.
By imagining a threat, we fantasize the privileged object back into existence despite its status as
constitutively lost. At first glance, it is difficult to see how paranoia might function as an attractive attitude for subjects to take
up. The paranoid subject must endure a constant menace that has no tangible or definitive presence. Everyone that this
subject meets is a potential enemy in disguise threatening to steal or already
having stolen the subject's privileged object. In terms of the subject's own identity, paranoia does
not provide security or stability. In fact, it uproots all sense of security that the subject has
concerning its identity. But its appeal does not lie in how it transforms subjectivity; its appeal stems from its
ability to close the gap in the social field of meaning , its ability to be a guarantor that authorizes our social
interaction. Paranoia develops in response to the inherent inconsistency of social authority. There
are authorities but no Authority, and a decisive Authority would be necessary to provide subjects
a sense of foundation, a sense that there is solid ground underneath their feet . Social proclamations
and regulations place the subject in an impossible position: one simply cannot believe and obey
every edict emanating from social authorities without being torn apart in the effort. These
contradictions occur on all levels of social pronouncements. One hears, for instance, about the dangers of eating too much fat, and
then one hears about the cancer-preventing power of chocolate. Parents tell their children not to fight and at the
same time tell them to stand up for themselves. George W. Bush claimed that the Iraq War was
waged to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction and later claimed that its purpose was to
liberate the country from a cruel dictator. Such inconsistencies are not merely contingent developments within our
particular society but necessarily follow from the ultimate groundlessness of the social order itself. There is no final
authority that calls all the shots in society and guarantees the consistency of the social order . It is
instead a structure in charge, and this structure functions through its very misfiring. The inconsistency of social
authority- the gap in the social field of meaning - provides it with an openness to difference. If
social authority was a closed circuit that operated without a hitch, it would have no way of incorporating the subject into its fold.
The subject invests itself in social authority precisely because this authority gives the subject
contradictory demands. Faced with these incongruous imperatives, the subject cannot readily decipher
what the social authority wants from it. Beneath the inconsistency, the desire of the authority remains a mystery .
The subject begins to desire in response to this unknown desire of the social Other: the
inconsistency of the social authority has the effect of attracting the subject and constituting the
desire of the subject as the desire of the Other. A thoroughly consistent social authority, while logically unthinkable,
would not draw the desire of the subject in this way. It might force individuals into obedience, but it would not create the investment
in the social order that the inconsistent social authority creates. Confronting the inconsistency of social authority
is not an easy task for the subject. Many try to sustain a belief in its consistency through an imaginary
construction that represses contradictory ideas. The problem with this solution is that these
ideas become more powerful through their repression, and the result is some form of neurosis.
Another possibility is the paranoid reaction. Rather than trying to wrestle with the problem of
the gap in authority, the paranoid subject eliminates it by positing an other existing in this gap,
an other behind the scenes pulling the strings. As Slavoj Zizek explains it, "Paranoia is at its most
elementary a belief into an 'Other of the Other; into an Other who, hidden behind the Other of
the explicit social texture, programs what appears to us as the unforeseen effects of social life
and thus guarantees its consistency: beneath the chaos of market, the degradation of morals,
and so on, there is the purposeful strategy of the Jewish plot. " The comfort that paranoia
provides for the subject derives solely from this guarantee. For the paranoid subject, the surface
inconsistency of social authority hides an underlying consistency authorized by a real authority
whom most subjects never notice. Paranoia simultaneously allows the subject to sense its own superiority in
recognizing the conspiracy and to avoid confronting the horror of an inconsistent social authority. As with nostalgia, paranoia is
primarily aligned with a right-wing political agenda. Its suspicion of the other nourishes a nationalistic
politics and energizes the call for a return to traditional social arrangements. Just as much of
the investment in the Cold War struggle derived from paranoia, it fuels the contemporary
war on terror . The exemplary right-wing political formation, Fascism, has its basis in
paranoia , seeing the Jew or some equivalent as secretly controlling the social order to the
detriment of all law-abiding citizens. The idea of an other operating behind the scenes
serves to justify restrictions on civil liberties, racism, police violence, and so on. A
paranoid populace is a populace ready to embrace a Fascist regime . Despite the inherent
link between paranoia and conservatism, leftists employ paranoia to a vast extent, far more than they do nostalgia. Paranoid theories
about the secret brokers of power who decide the fate of the capitalist world are widespread on the Left. It is common sense among
leftists that big oil companies have suppressed the development of alternative energies, that the CIA assassinated Kennedy, and that
major drug companies control the Food and Drug Administration, just to name a few of the more well known conspiracy theories.
The truth or falsity of these theories has nothing to do with their function for the subject who
accepts them. The paranoid subject is often correct in its various speculations, but paranoia
nonetheless provides a way for the subject to avoid confronting the inconsistency of social
authority. For the paranoid subject, conspiracy theories don't simply explain a single event; they solve
the problem of the social order as such. According to this thought process, all loss stems from
the conspiracy, which has derailed the social order and upset its balance. The paranoid subject cannot
accept the necessity of loss, and the conspiracy theory works to render loss empirical rather than ontological. This is evident in
Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), a film in which Stone posits a vast conspiracy that resulted in the death of Kennedy. Of course, Stone is
probably correct that this conspiracy existed, but the film goes astray primarily through its apotheosis of Kennedy, an apotheosis
that reveals what's at stake in all paranoia. According to the film, had he remained in power, Kennedy would have prevented the
horror of the Vietnam War and thus spared the United States the psychic wound that this war created. With Kennedy, one can
imagine an American social order existing without strife and loss. The conspiracy theory allows Stone this image, which testifies to
the avoidability of loss." But Stone is not the only leftist to turn to paranoia. Many do so in order to confront forces that they
otherwise couldn't identify. Among those who suffer from political oppression, paranoia and conspiracy theory serve as vehicles for
thinking through systems of control and even mobilizing action against those systems. As Peter Knight points out, "Conspiracy
thinking has played an important role in constituting various forms of African American political and cultural activism."38 When it
directly produces activism, the political valence of paranoia seems to tilt more clearly to the left than it does in the case of Stone's
film. In Marxist Fredric Jameson focuses on a related aspect of paranoia as he analyzes the paranoid film in The Geopolitical
Aesthetic. In this work, Jameson aligns conspiracy theory with what he calls cognitive mapping- the attempt to think the global
capitalist system in its totality. The diffuseness of global capitalism prevents the kind of cognitive mapping that was possible in
earlier epochs. Today,
in order to think the totality at all, subjects must resort to the idea of a
conspiracy. As Jameson points out in his analysis of All the Presidents Men, "The map of conspiracy itself .. . suggests the
possibility of cognitive mapping as a whole and stands as its substitute and yet its allegory all at once."40 Jameson's statement
reflects his ambivalence about conspiracy theory and paranoia - even though it allegorizes cognitive mapping, it also substitutes for
it - but he nonetheless sees its usefulness as a strategy for the Left, especially when facing the global capitalist leviathan. The
problem is that even when it works to mobilize subjects to fight against an oppressive system,
paranoia has the effect of depriving subjects of their agency . By eliminating the gap in
social authority and filling in this gap with a real authority who effectively runs the show,
paranoia deprives subjects of the space in which they exist as subjects . The subject occupies the position of
the gap in social authority; it emerges through and because of internal inconsistency in the social field of meaning. The extent to
which paranoia allows the subject to experience social authority as a consistent field is the extent to which it works against the
subject itself. Even if it manages tangible political victories, emancipatory politics that relies on
paranoia undermines itself by increasing the power of authority in the thinking of subjects and
decreasing their freedom. What's more, it doesn't actually work. Like nostalgia, paranoia can
never constitute a successful strategy for the subject dealing with its fundamental condition. It
will never provide the enjoyment that it promises the subject. Uncovering and eliminating the
hidden real authority will bring not the ultimate enjoyment but horrible disappointment. This is
why the paranoid mindset cannot admit to itself that the hidden other has been vanquished. The enjoyment that paranoia
does provide requires the continuing existence of the threat , even though it imagines an
enjoyment that would come with the threat's disappearance. Paranoia runs aground due to its
failure to admit the connection between enjoyment and loss. It allows the subject to imagine
that loss is the contingent result of a secret malevolent force that we might conquer. By
implicitly positing the avoidability of loss, paranoia leaves subjects unable to locate and
recognize the nature of their own enjoyment.
LinkUtopianism
Their drive for utopia culminates in the violent scapegoating of any obstacles to
the realization of their utopian vision
Stavrakakis, 99
Yannis Stavrakakis, Visiting Professor, Department of Government @ University of Essex;
Lacan and the Political, pg. 99-100 // MS
Our age is clearly an age of social fragmentation, political disenchantment and open cynicism characterised by the
decline of the political mutations of modern universalisma universalism that, by replacing God
with Reason, reoccupied the ground of a pre-modern aspiration to fully represent and master
the essence and the totality of the real. On the political level this universalist fantasy took the
form of a series of utopian constructions of a reconciled future society. The fragmentation of our present
social terrain and cultural milieu entails the collapse of such grandiose fantasies.1 Today, talk about utopia is usually characterised
by a certain ambiguity. For some, of course, utopian constructions are still seen as positive results of
human creativity in the sociopolitical sphere: utopia is the expression of a desire for a better way of being
(Levitas, 1990:8). Other, more suspicious views, such as the one expressed in Marie Berneris book Journey through
Utopia, warntaking into account experiences like the Second World War of the dangers entailed in trusting the
idea of a perfect, ordered and regimented world. For some, instead of being how can we realise our utopias?, the
crucial question has become how can we prevent their final realisation?.... [How can] we return to a non-utopian society, less perfect
and more free (Berdiaev in Berneri, 1971:309).2 It is particularly the political experience of these last decades that led to the
dislocation of utopian sensibilities and brought to the fore a novel appreciation of human finitude, together with a growing suspicion
of all grandiose political projects and the meta-narratives traditionally associated with them (Whitebook, 1995:75). All these
developments, that is to say the crisis of the utopian imaginary, seem however to leave politics without its prime motivating force:
the politics of today is a politics of aporia. In our current political terrain, hope seems to be
replaced by pessimism or even resignation. This is a result of the crisis in the dominant modality of our political
imagination (meaning utopianism in its various forms) and of our inability to resolve this crisis in a productive way.3 In this chapter,
I will try to show that Lacanian theory provides new angles through which we can reflect on our
historical experience of utopia and reorient our political imagination beyond its suffocating
strait-jacket. Lets start our exploration with the most elementary of questions: what is the meaning of the current
crisis of utopia? And is this crisis a development to be regretted or cherished? In order to answer these questions it is crucial to
enumerate the conditions of possibility and the basic characteristics of utopian thinking. First of all it seems that the need for
utopian meaning arises in periods of increased uncertainty, social instability and conflict, when
the element of the political subverts the fantasmatic stability of our political reality . Utopias are
generated by the surfacing of grave antagonisms and dislocations in the social field. As Tillich has put it all utopias strive to
negate the negative...in human existence; it is the negative in that existence which makes the idea of utopia necessary
(Tillich in Levitas, 1990:103). Utopia then is one of the possible responses to the ever-present negativity, to the real antagonism
which is constitutive of human experience. Furthermore, from the time of Mores Utopia (1516) it is conceived as an answer to the
negativity inherent in concrete political antagonism. What is, however, the exact nature of this response? Utopias are images
of future human communities in which these antagonisms and the dislocations fuelling them
(the element of the political) will be forever resolved, leading to a reconciled and harmonious
worldit is not a coincidence that, among others, Fourier names his utopian community Harmony and that the name of the
Owenite utopian community in the New World was New Harmony. As Marin has put it, utopia sets in view an
imaginary resolution to social contradiction; it is a simulacrum of synthesis which dissimulates
social antagonism by projecting it onto a screen representing a harmonious and immobile equilibrium (Marin, 1984:61). This
final resolution is the essence of the utopian promise. What I will try to do in this chapter is, first of all, to demonstrate the
deeply problematic nature of utopian politics. Simply put, my argument will be that every utopian
fantasy construction needs a scapegoat in order to constitute itself the Nazi
utopian fantasy and the production of the Jew is a good example, especially as pointed out in
ieks analysis.4 Every utopian fantasy produces its reverse and calls for its elimination. Put
another way, the beatific side of fantasy is coupled in utopian constructions with a horrific side, a
paranoid need for a stigmatised scapegoat. The naivetyand also the dangerof utopian structures is
revealed when the realisation of this fantasy is attempted. It is then that we are brought close to
the frightening kernel of the real: stigmatisation is followed by extermination . This is not an
accident. It is inscribed in the structure of utopian constructions; it seems to be the way all
fantasy constructions work. If in almost all utopian visions, violence and antagonism are eliminated, if utopia is
based on the expulsion and repression of violence (this is its beatific side) this is only because it
owes its own creation to violence; it is sustained and fed by violence (this is its horrific side).
This repressed moment of violence resurfaces, as Marin points out, in the difference inscribed in the name utopia
itself (Marin, 1984:110). What we shall argue is that it also resurfaces in the production of the figure of an enemy. To use a phrase
enunciated by the utopianist Fourier, what is driven out through the door comes back through the window (is not this a precursor
of Lacans dictum that what is foreclosed in the symbolic reappears in the real?VII:131).5 The work of Norman Cohn and other
historians permits the articulation of a genealogy of this manichean, equivalential way of understanding the world, from the great
witch-hunt up to modern anti-Semitism, and Lacanian theory can provide valuable insights into any attempt to understand the logic
behind this utopian operationhere the approach to fantasy developed in Chapter 2 will further demonstrate its potential in
analysing our political experience. In fact, from the time of his unpublished seminar on The Formations of the Unconscious, Lacan
identified the utopian dream of a perfectly functioning society as a highly problematic area (seminar of 18 June 1958).
The good society is a structurally unattainable ideal

McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 5-6 // MS
The great challenge that psychoanalysis poses for emancipatory politics and for politics as
such is its absolute rejection of the good or the good society. In the opening of the Politics, Aristotle
describes the good as the basic aim of political activity, and this aim has remained constant in
the intervening 2,500 years.7Aristotle never attempts to prove this constitutive remark in his treatise but simply takes it as
an unassailable postulate of political thinking. For subsequent political thinkers, the question does not concern Aristotles claim
about the good but in what the good consists. There is unanimity about the political pursuit of the good not
just among political theorists but among almost everyone who thinks about politics at all . From
the perspective of psychoanalysis, however, there is no good al all. The good society is
unattainable not just as a result of the competing desires of the individuals within the society.
The theory that aligns social conflict with the coexistence of competing individual desires fails to go far enough in envisioning the
antagonistic nature of the social order. No matter how divergent individual desires are, one could always imagine reconciling them
with each other through some sort of compromise. A thinker such as John Rawls can imagine a just society despite positing a society
divided by innumerable competing desires on the level of the individual. Justice here would consist in the idea of fairness using
ones imagination to envision society through what Rawls labels a veil of ignorance that allows one l<> make decisions about
justice without taking into account ones indiviilii.il interests or desires or social position. Ihis would facilitate a good society in
which any inequality would be socially justified, and it would thus reconcile competing individual desires with mi Ii oilin'. But
the barrier to the good society runs deeper than this. It derives from the very idea of the good,
which Freud sees as fundamentally at odds with itself . The good itself, not our failures to achieve it, is the
problem. This is the fundamental political insight that psychoanalysis brings to the table. It is at once the challenge that
it poses to emancipatory politics and the basis for its implicit project for emancipation. As we
get closer to the ideal of a good society, we simultaneously approach the emptiness
concealed within the ideal. The notion of the good does not emerge simply from moral
reasoning and speculation about the proper arrangement of society. We develop this notion only
through the experience of its prohibition. That is to say, the prohibition of the good doesnt form
an obstacle to a preexisting ideal but constitutes the ideal as such. The good has no existence
outside of the barriers that we erect around realizing it. As Jacques Lacan points out in one of his most
important political statements, The step taken by Freud at the level of the pleasure principle is to show us that there is no
Sovereign Good that the Sovereign Good, which is das Ding, which is the mother, is also the object of incest, is a forbidden
good, and that there is no other good. Such is the foundation of the moral law as turned on its head by Freud.9 The
foundational link between the good and prohibition renders its pursuit completely
contradictory. Every step toward the good occasions a corresponding step away from it. The
closer we come, the more we undermine the social stability that we hoped to achieve. This
occurs not just among the many utopian socialist projects that have failed but across all types of
social structures. For psychoanalysis, the good is not just an unrealizable ideal but a deception
incapable of orienting a coherent and sustainable politics . This critique threatens to
undermine the very idea of a political project because political theorists write in
order to help bring about change, which means moving society in the direction of
the good (even if they admit that the ideal itself is not realizable). Conservative theorists seem immune to
this critique, but they envision a return to the good or the creation of a social stability that they associate implicitly with the good.10
Political theorists of all stripes write to change the world and assist its progression (or its return
to a better state), whereas psychoanalysis interprets the world and uncovers the repetition at
work where it seems to be progressing.
LinkWarming Discourse
The politics of nature are a prime site for post-political co-optionthe politicizing
discourse misses the point that the environmental issue is a function of neoliberal
capitalism
Swyngedouw 6 [Dept of Geography, School of Environment and Development, Manchester
University, Eirk, Impossible Sustainability and the Post-Political Condition, Forthcoming in:
David Gibbs and Rob Krueger (Eds.) Sustainable Development,
http://www.liv.ac.uk/geography/seminars/Sustainabilitypaper.doc]
It is these side-effects identified by Ulrich Beck (such as, for example, the accumulation of CO2)
that are becoming the key arenas around which political configuration and action crystallise,
and of course, (global) environmental problems are the classic example of such effects,
unwittingly produced by modernization itself, but now requiring second reflexive
modernization to deal with. The old left/right collective politics that were allegedly generated
from within the social relations that constituted modernity are no longer, if they ever were, valid
or performative. This, of course, also means that the traditional theatres of politics (state,
parliament, parties, etc) are not any longer the exclusive terrain of the political: the political
constellation of industrial society is becoming unpolitical, while what was unpolitical in
industrialism is becoming politicals (Beck, 1994: 18). It is exactly the side-effects (the risks) of
modernising globalisation that need management, that require politicization. A new form of
politics (what Rancire, iek, and Mouffe exactly define as post-politics) thus arises, what Beck
calls sub-politics: Sub-politics is distinguished from politics in that (a) agents outside the
political or corporatist system are allowed also to appear on the stage of social design (this group
includes professional and occupational groups, the technical intelligentsia in companies,
research institutions and management, skilled workers, citizens initiatives, the public sphere
and so on), and (b) not only social and collective agents but individuals as well compete with the
latter and each other for the emerging power to shape politics (Beck, 1994: 22). Chantal Mouffe
(2005: 40-41) summarizes Becks prophetic vision of a new democracy as follows: In a risk
society, which has become aware of the possibility of an ecological crisis, a series of issues which
were previously considered of a private character, such as those concerning the lifestyle and diet,
have left the realm of the intimate and the private and have become politicized. The relation of
the individual to nature is typical of this transformation since it is now inescapably
interconnected with a multiplicity of global forces from which it is impossible to escape.
Moreover, technological progress and scientific development in the field of medicine and genetic
engineering are now forcing people to make decisions in the field of body politics hitherto
unimaginable. . What is needed is the creation of forums where a consensus could be built
between the experts, the politicians, the industrialists and citizens on ways of establishing
possible forms of co-operation among them. This would require the transformation of expert
systems into democratic public spheres. This post-political constitution, which we have
elsewhere defined as new forms of autocratic governance-beyond-the-state (Swyngedouw
2005), reconfigures the act of governing to a stakeholder based arrangement of governance in
which the traditional state forms (national, regional, or local government) partakes together
with experts, NGOs, and other responsible partners (see Crouch, 2004). Not only is the
political arena evacuated from radical dissent, critique, and fundamental conflict, but the
parameters of democratic governing itself are being shifted, announcing new forms of
governmentality, in which traditional disciplinary society is transfigured into a society of control
through disembedded networks (like the Kyoto Protocol; the Dublin Statement, the Rio
Summit, etc.). These new global forms of governance are expressive of the post-political
configuration (Mouffe, 2005: 103): Governance entails an explicit reference to mechanisms or

organized and coordinated activities appropriate to the solution of some specific problems.
Unlike government, governance refers to policies rather than politics because it is not a
binding decision-making structure. Its recipients are not the people as collective political
subject, but the population that can be affected by global issues such as the environment,
migration, or the use of natural resources (Urbinati, 2003: 80). Anthony Giddens (1991; 1994;
1998) has also been a key intellectual interlocutor of this post-political consensus. He argues
that globalised modernity has brought in its wake all manner of uncertainties as a result of
humans proliferating interventions in nature and in social life, resulting in an explosive growth
of all sorts of environmental and life-related issues. The ensuing life politics is about the
challenges that face collective humanity (Giddens, 1994: 10). What is required now, in a context
of greater uncertainty but also with enhanced individual autonomy to make choices, is to
generate active trust achieved through a dialogic democracy. Such dialogic mode is exactly
the consensual politics Jacques defines as post-democratic (Rancire, 1995; 2005b). As Chantal
Mouffe (2005: 45) maintains, [a]ctive trust implies a reflexive engagement of lay people with
expert systems instead of their reliance on expert authority. Bruno Latour, in his politics of
nature, of course equally calls for such new truly democratic cosmo-political constitution
through which both human and non-human actants enter in a new public sphere, where matters
of fact are turned into matters of concern, articulated and brought together through
heterogeneous and flat networks of related and relationally constituted human/non-human
assemblages (Latour, 2004; 2005). Nothing is fixed, sure, or given, everything continuously in
doubt, negotiated, brought into the political field. Political space is not a contingent space where
that what has no name is brought into the discussion, is give a name, and is counted, but rather
things and people are hailed to become part of the consensual dialogue, of the dialogic
community. The question remains of course of who does what sort of hailing. Thinking about
true and false, doubt and certainty, right or wrong, friend or foe, would no longer be possible,
the advent of a truly cosmopolitan order in a truly cosmopolitical (Stengers, 2003) constitution
looms around the corner as the genuine possibility in the new modernity.In the domain of the
environment, climate change, biodiversity preservation, sustainable socio-technical
environmental entanglements and the like exemplify the emergence of this new post-political
configuration: they are an unexpected and unplanned by-product of modernization, they affect
the way we do things, and, in turn, a new politics emerges to deal with them. This liberal
cosmpolitical inclusive politics suggested by Beck and his fellow-travellers as a radical answer
to unbridled and unchecked neo-liberal capitalist globalisation, of course, is predicated upon
three assumptions: The social and ecological problems caused by modernity/capitalism are
external side-effects; they are not an inherent and integral part of the de-territorialised and reterritorialised relations of global neo-liberal capitalism. That is why we speak of the excluded or
the poor, and not about social power relations that produce wealth and poverty, or
empowerment and disempowerment. A strictly populist politics emerges here; one that elevates
the interest of the people, nature, or the environment to the level of the universal rather than
aspiring to universalise the claims of particular natures, environments, or social groups or
classes. These side-effects are posited as global, universal, and threatening: they are a total
threat, of apocalyptic nightmarish proportions. The enemy or the target of concern is thereby of
course continuously externalised. The enemy is always vague, ambiguous, and ultimately
vacant, empty and unnamed (CO2, gene pools, desertification, etc). They can be managed
through a consensual dialogical politics. Demands become depoliticised or rather radical politics
is not about demands but about things.
Race
1NC
The affirmatives celebration of racial identity establishes racism as political but
race as neutral. This distinction annihilates difference in the name of racial
sameness
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, professor at Boston College; Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian
Analysis of Race, pg. 6-9 // MS
I am suggesting two things: first, the order of racial difference attempts to compensate for sexs failure in language; second, we must
not therefore analogize race and sex on the sexual model of linguistic excess or contradiction. The signifier Whiteness tries
promises a totality, an overcoming of difference itself. For

the subject of race, Whiteness represents complete mastery, self-sufficiency, and the jouissance
of Oneness. This is why the order of racial difference must be distinguished from, but read in relation to, sexual difference. If sex
to fill the constitutive lack of the sexed subject. It
is characterized by a missing signifier, race, on the contrary, is not and cannot be organized around such an absence a missing
signifier that escapes or confounds language and inter-subjectivity. Race has an all-too-present master signifier
Whiteness which offers the illegal enjoyment of absolute wholeness. Race, therefore, does not
bear on the paradigm of failure or success of inter-subjectivity on the model of the sexual
relation. The rationale of racial difference and its organization can be understood as a
Hobbesian one. It is a social contract among potential adversaries secured to perpetuate singular
claims to power and dominance, even as it seeks to contain the consequences of such singular
interests. The shared insecurity of claiming absolute humanness, which is what race as a system manages, induces the social and
legal validation of race as a discourse of neutral differences. In other words, race identity can have only one function
it establishes differential relations among the races in order to constitute the logic of
domination. Groups must be differentiated and related in order to make possible the claim to
power and domination. Race identity is about the sense of ones exclusiveness, exceptionality
and uniqueness. Put very simply, it is an identity that, if it is working at all, can only be about pride,
being better, being the best. Race is inextricably caught up in a Hobbesian discourse of social
contract, where personal (or particular) interest masquerades as public good. Sexual difference, on the
other hand, cannot be founded upon such a logic. The values attached to male and female are historically contingent as feminists
have long suggested, but power cannot be the ultimate cause of sexual difference. Racial difference, on the other hand, has
no other reason to be but power, and yet it is not power in the sense of material and discursive
agency that can be reduced to historical mappings. If such were the case, as many have assumed, then a
historicist genealogy of the discursive construction of race would be in order: Foucault not Lacan, discourse analysis not
psychoanalysis. But race organizes difference and elicits investment in its subjects because it promises
access to being itself. It offers the prestige of being better and superior; it is the promise of being
more human, more full, less lacking. The possibility of this enjoyment is at the core of race.
But enjoyment or jouissance is, we may recall, pure unpleasure . The possibility of
enjoyment held out by Whiteness is also horrific as it implies the annihilation of
difference. The subject of race therefore typically resists race as mere social construction,
even as it holds on to a notion of visible, phenotypopal difference. Visible difference in race has a
contradictory function. If it protects against a lethal sameness, it also facilitates the possibility of
that sameness through the fantasy of wholeness. Insofar as Whiteness dissimulates the object of
desire,10 any encounter with the historicity, the purely symbolic origin of the signifier, inevitably
produces anxiety . It is necessary for race to seem more than its historical and cultural origin in order to aim at being.
Race must therefore disavow or deny knowledge of its own historicity, or risk surrendering to
the discourse of exceptionality, the possibility of wholeness and supremacy. Thus race secures
itself through visibility. Psychoanalytically, we can perceive the object cause of racial anxiety as
racial visibility, the so-called pre-discursive marks on the body (hair, skin, bone), which serve as
the desiderata of race. In other words, the bodily mark, which (like sex) seems to be more than
symbolic, serves as a powerful prophylactic against the anxiety of race as a discursive

construction. We seem to need such a refuge in order to preserve the investment we
make in the signifier of Whiteness. Thus race should not be reduced to racial
visibility , which is the mistake made by some well-meaning and not-so-well meaning advocates of a color blind society.
Racial visibility should be understood as that which secures the much deeper investment we
have made in the racial categorization of human beings. It is a lock-and-key relation, and throwing away the key
of visibility because it happens to open and close is not going to make the lock inoperable. By interrogating visibility we
can ask what the lock is preserving, and why. The capacity of visibility to secure an investment in
identity also distinguishes race from other systems of difference such as caste, class, ethnicity,
etc. These latter forms of group identity, insofar as they cannot be essentialized through bodily
marks, can be easily historicized and textualized. Nothing prevents their deconstruction,
whereas in the case of race, visibility maintains a bulwark against the historicity and
historicization of race. (In fact, Brennan suggests that the egos era is characterized by a resistance to history.) It is this
function of visibility that renders cases of racial passing fraught and anxious. My contention that the category of race is inherently a
discourse of supremacy may seem inattentive to the advances that our legal systems and liberal social ideologies have made precisely
in relation to racism and racist practices. Modern civil society refuses to permit its subjects the
enjoyment of supremacist rhetoric, the rhetoric of exceptionality, by distinguishing between race

and racism. It draws this distinction between a supposed ontology (the study of physical or
cultural differences) and an epistemology (discriminatory logic) in the name of preserving a
semblance of inter-subjectivity. Race, it suggests, is a neutral description of human
difference; racism, it suggests, is the misappropriation of such difference . The
liberal consensus is that we must do away with such ideological misappropriation, but that we must celebrate
difference. It is understood as a baby and the bath water syndrome, in which the dirty
water of racism must be eliminated, to reveal the cleansed and beloved fact of
racial identity. This rather myopic perspective refuses to address the peculiar resiliency of
race, the subjective investment in racial difference, and the hyper-valorization of appearance.
It dismisses these issues or trivializes them because race seems a historical inevitability. The
logic is that people have been constituted for material and other reasons as black and white
and that this has had powerful historical consequences for peoples thus constituted. Whether race
exists or not, whether race and racism are artificial distinctions or not, racialization is a hard historical fact and a
concrete instance of social reality. We have no choice, according to this reasoning, but to inhabit
our assigned racial positions. Not to do so is a form of idealism, and a groundless belief that
power can be wished away. In making this ostensibly pragmatic move, such social theorists
effectively reify race. Lukcs, who elaborated Marxs notion of reification in relation to the commodity form in
History and Class Consciousness, is worth recalling here: Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing,
and thus acquires a phantom objectivity, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of
its fundamental nature: the relation between people. (1923:89) To arrest analysis of race at the point where one
discerns and marks its historical effects is to reproduce those very relations of power
that one intends to oppose. It is to render race so objective that it is impossible to conceive
human difference or inter-subjectivity anew. Modern civil society engages in such reification
because ultimately its desire is to keep the dialectic between races alive. It must thus prohibit
what it terms racism in order to prevent the annihilation not so much of the inferior races
but of the system of race itself. This is how the system of desiring Whiteness perpetuates itself,
even in the discourses that are most pragmatically aimed against racism . The
resilience and endurability of race as a structure can thus be attributed to its denials and
disavowals. On the one hand, it is never in the place that one expects it to be: it disavows its own
historicity in order to hold out the promise of being to the subject the something more than
symbolic a sense of wholeness, of exceptionality. On the other hand, as a social law, it must
disavow this object in order to keep the system viable and to perpetuate the dialectic: the race
for Whiteness. Exploring the structure of race requires a toleration of paradox, an appreciation
of the fact that it is an inherently contradictory discourse, and a willingness to see beyond relations of power in
order to mine the depth of subjective investment in it.
The alternative is to destabilize the order of racial signification rethinking racial

identity opens up new political possibilities that solve the aff
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
In presenting my hypothesis to various interlocutors in formal and informal settings, I
have been asked how my theory

of race as a symbolic system sustained by a regime of visibility translates into social policy. How
does it affect our thinking about affirmative action, about anti-discrimination legislations, about those particularly powerful modes
of political mobilization that have aggregated around identity? It is sophisticated and easy to be dismissive of
identity politics because it seems naive and essentialist. But the immeasurable weightiness of, say, the black
power movement or the womens rights movement in pushing back the forces of exploitation and resuscitating devalued cultures
through the redefinition of identity must give us pause. Identity politics works. However, the argument of this book is that it
also ultimately
serves to reinforce the very system that is the source of the symptoms that such
politics confines itself to addressing. It is race itself that must be dismantled as a regime
of looking. We cannot aim at this goal by merely formulating new social policies. In fact, my
theory is anti-policy for two reasons: first, any attempt to address race systematically through
policy, and by that I mean state policy, will inevitably end up reifying race. Second, the only
effective intervention can be cultural, at the grassroots level. Such intervention can and should work, sometimes in
tandem and at others in tension with state policy, but the project of dismantling the regime of race cannot be given over to the state.
Gramsci speaks of the necessity of transforming the cultural into the political; where race is concerned, it is imperative that we turn
what is now political, an issue of group interests, into the cultural, an issue of social practice. We must develop a new adversarial
aesthetics that will throw racial signification into disarray. Given that race discourse was produced in a
thoroughly visual culture, it is necessary that the visual itself be used against the scopic regime
of race. I have laid the basis for such an aesthetics in Chapters 4 and 5, where the relation of the bodily mark to the signifier is
thrown into perplexity. In Suture, we as spectators are asked to give up our investment in Whiteness,
the signifier that promises access to absolute humanness . The film puts pressure on
the purely symbolic origins of race by unraveling the relation between racial gestalt and ones
identity. Clay is Vincent if he takes up his place in the signifying chain. Similitude is established not on the basis of the bodys
gestalt, but the part object ears, eyes, etc. In Toni Morrisons Recitatif, it is racial reference that is called into question. As with
Suture, the relation between visibility and the signifier is refused, but for another purpose. By emptying the racial signifier of its
properties, so that white and black have no connotations, Morrison renders meaningless the relations among the signifier, the body,
and identity. For Morrison, it is such emptiness that makes love approachable. I am proposing an adversarial
aesthetics that will destabilize racial looking so that racial identity will always be uncertain and
unstable. The point of such a practice would be to confront the symbolic constitution of race and
of racial looking as the investment we make in difference for sameness. The confrontation has to entail
more than an exploration of the fantasy, which process I detailed in Chapter 2 on The secret sharer. There we took measure of the
fantasy of wholeness as the obliteration of difference that Whiteness holds out to the subject of race. A simple rejection of this
fantasy of self inflation on a political or ethical basis, such as the repugnance we see exhibited by Orwell, in Chapter 3, cannot be
adequate. In Orwells case, his liberal rejection of mastery can only lead to the reproduction of the system of race. For it is not
enough to be aware of the affect of anxiety that race invariably generates. One must traverse the
fundamental fantasy of singular humanity upon which racial identity is founded. It is a question
of resituating oneself in relation to the raced signifier. Such a practice would not aim so much at a crossidentification, such as ticking the wrong box on a questionnaire, or passing for another race. It would confound racial
signification by stressing the continuity, the point of doubt among the so-called races, to the
extent that each and every one of us must mistrust the knowledge of our racial belonging. The
idea would be to void racial knowledge by releasing the racial signifier from its historical
mooring in a signified. Such practices can only be, and must be representational, as what they
necessitate is a radical intervention into language and signification . This entails the
reinvention of culture as organized by differences based on other kinds of reasonings
than race. Every medium of representation can and must be harnessed for such a practice. In
addition to those I have cited earlier such as film, painting and literature, we must consider the possibilities presented by that other
mode of representation, namely representation by proxy. The possibility of unsettling political representation , for
instance, or
procedures of verification based on race such as the passport, the visa and the drivers license may
renew and refresh questions of identitywhat is worth preserving, what is not. The idea is not
to erase identity , even if such a preposterous act were possible. Rather, we must rethink
identity in tension with our usual habits of visual categorization of individuals. Ideally, the practice
that I am advocating will deploy the visual against the visual. Such redefinition is thinkable only
as a collective and normalizing project; it should be aimed at infiltrating normative bourgeois
self-definition. The practice of discoloration will be more effective if it is not restricted to
particular intellectual groups or artists. Gramsci suggests that a philosophical movement, even as it elaborates a form
of thought superior to common sense and coherent on a scientific plane. never forgets to remain in contact with the simple and
indeed finds in this contact the source of the problems it sets out to study and to resolve. (Gramsci 1971:330) In other words, we
cannot voluntarily abandon the quotidian logic of race. To do so would be a form of vanguardism that will only reinforce the system
as the necessary point of differentiation. Rather, it is to the common sense of race that we must appeal. Otherwise, we will fail to
address social contradiction in its specificity. Thus producing a sub-culture of discolorationists or encouraging subjects voluntarily
to refuse racial identity (as advocated for white people by the journal Race Traitor) possibly will not be effective. An anti-race
praxis must aim at a fundamental transformation of social and political logic. It cannot be a mere
phenomenon of individuals which, as Gramsci reminds us, only marks the high points of the progress made by common sense
(1971:331). As a praxis, psychoanalysis is the most appropriate discourse for the examination of why
we or certain groups may resist such an adversarial aesthetics. Working through our fantasies
will involve the risk of desubjectification that many of us dread. Such dread, such an encounter with our own
limit, is the only means of articulating the possibility of an ethics beyond the specious enjoyment promised by Whiteness.
2NC O/V
The 1ACs understanding of whiteness as master signifier defines all racial
difference only in relation to the White body the structure of the Lack ensures
this reproduces white supremacy and turns the case
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
The striking phrase "the
visible absence of color" refers to Whiteness as the simultaneous presence

and absence of a certain substance. It is precisely the indefiniteness, the ambivalence, the mute
meaningfulness, the colorless, all-color of Whiteness that fascinates and mesmerizes the subject
as the promise of being itself. For Melville, it is the absent cause of perceptible hues of nature which are but "the subtle
deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without" ( 186). This cause is the "great principle of light" which
"for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and
roses, with its own blank tingepondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us as a lepe1" ( 186). Whiteness here is the
great and immanent absence that sustains the system of chromatism; it actually enables one to
see, even as it presents a threat to ordinary vision. As the cause of color, of visibility itself, Whiteness as
light is beyond mere perception; he who looks upon it would, in Melville's terms, end as "the wretched infidel [who]
gazes himself blind" (l86). Melville's notion of Whiteness as the formless and dangerous essence of
visibility is wholly compatible with the view of Whiteness as the master signifier of race that I
have been delineating so far. In the last chapter, my emphasis was on the capacity of Whiteness to engender the structure
of racial difference. Here, I will focus on the lethal and illegal fantasy of sameness and mastery that
Whiteness offers as the real yet concealed motivation for the maintenance of race. The master
signifier makes difference possible, but it is also excluded from the play of signification that it
supports. In Lacan's terms, we could propose that the dual character of Whiteness, as support and panic-inducing kernel, exists
in a relation of "extimacy" (Lacan's term for the paradox of the excluded interior) to the symbolic system it engenders. This
signifier, in its awesome and terrifying aspect, discloses itself as something inassimilable to the
very system that it causes and upholds. In our terms, Whiteness engenders the scale of human
difference as racial embodiment, but this ostensibly " neutral" system of differences is organized
around the exclusion of Whiteness, particularly the terror that it presents as pure and blinding
light, which would annihilate and erase difference. I argue that this " terror" should be understood
as the raison d'etre for race itself- the will to preeminence, to mastery, to being- which must
necessarily be prohibited by social and juridical law. This ineffable and excluded power of
Whiteness, as that which makes perception possible but is itself the blinding possibility beyond
the visible, should be explored as the " lure" that fuels and perpetuates racial visibility while
holding out a promise of something beyond the empirical mark. I suggested in the previous chapter that the
visible bodily marks of race serve to guarantee Whiteness as something more than its discursive
construction. Whiteness, I argue, attempts to signify being, but this audacious attempt is
impossible because of the simple fact that Whiteness is only a cultural invention. This
impossibility, based on the historicity of Whiteness, generates anxiety. But anxiety in race identity
is endemic insofar as Whiteness tries to fill a space which must remain empty, or unsignified.
This is where so-called ordinary visible difference, telling people apart on basis of bodily detail, comes to sustain the regime of race.
If we can find a non-discursive basis (the marks on the body) for our faith in race, then the
function of Whiteness, as the unconscious promise of wholeness, is preserved. Our investment in
phenotype actually serves a dual function. On the one hand, it allows the co-existence of race as social
construction, which serves to defend against the jouissance of Whiteness. On the other, it preserves
that fantasy of wholeness by valorizing phenotype as something pre-discursive. In this chapter, I
explore the lethal fantasy at the core of race, which is the possibility of transcending or reaching beyond the visible
phenotype. It is the possibility of being itself, where difference and lack are wholly extinguished. As
the master signifier of race, Whiteness maintains the structure of (visible) difference- the chain
of metonymic substitutions which locates the subject as desiring (thus eternally lacking)
Whiteness. The fantasy of encountering Whiteness would be, for the subject of race, to recover
the missing substance of one's being. It would be to coincide, not with a transcendental ideal, some rarefied
model of bodily perfection, but with the "gaze," that void in the Other, a piece of the Real, that could
annihilate difference. The Lacanian view about our general sense of visual reality or conscious perception is that it is itself
subtended by our drive to search, recognize and recover the object of desire. In other words, what we take to be the
evidence of our eyes, the fruit of our active looking, is largely caused by an unrecognized and
underlying need to encounter that which Lacan terms "the gaze." The gaze is "that which always
escapes the grasp of that form of vision that is satisfied with imagining itself as consciousness"
(XI: 74). It is beyond reality and visual perception which, as Freud established, are founded on
language and thought. The gaze is of the order of the Real, because it directly addresses lack- the
lack in the Other and the lack in the subject. Encountering it would be lethal, insofar as it is contingent on the
subject's constitutive lack or castration (XI: 73), the subject as manque a etre (or subject as a want-to-be.) To encounter the
gaze would be to relinquish one's subject status, to give up meaning for being. The gaze
promotes the fantasy of wholeness, but at the price of one's distinctive subject status. The gaze
thus causes desire, it is the consummate version of the objet petit a, and more importantly it is the object of the scopic drive.
Translated or extended to the sphere of race, it is Whiteness as being itself that functions as the
lure-the gaze that causes desire and is at the center of the drive's trajectory. Put more starkly, it is our
drive for supremacy, for the jouissance of absolute humanness, that sustains our active looking .
Setting aside the historical fact that such a goal is impossible because race has no purchase on the body's
jouissance, or in anything beyond its own cultural origins, we must nevertheless take up the persistence of the fantasy of
Whiteness.
Their analysis makes racial visibility seem inevitable only a psychoanalytic

critique solves
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
Subjective memory works like an automaton, marking and manipulating the subject even as it
produces him or her in one's particularity. In relation to race, this model is again useful in
catalyzing a major shift from essentialist, or even historicist notions of "racial memory," as hoary
contents coded genetically, spiritually, discursively, culturally, in particular groups characterizing identity, to memory of race as
contentless signifiers, a chain of difference reproduced mechanically by the functioning of language. How does such an
understanding of the "memory" of race affect analysis? First, it must be acknowledged that the account I have given of "the subject of
race" using Lacan's model of the symbolic is too deterministic. It is also incomplete. The subject is not simply the figure
that emerges when all the dots are connected; the subject is also constituted or determined by
the not fully inscribed page- the gaps in the chain that connect the pieces. This is a fundamental
proposition in Lacan, and it is not the question of a shift in emphasis referred to earlier. What the unconscious also
registers is the lack or the desire of the subject that can never be fully expressed in language.
"The unconscious is, in the subject, a schism of the symbolic system, a limitation, an alienation
induced by the symbolic system" (I: 196). This discovery of fundamental disjunction in the subject, that he/she merely
marks a place between signifiers in a chain of signifiers, is the aim of analysis. The subject goes well beyond what is experienced
"subjectively" by the individual, exactly as far as the truth he is able to attain .... Yes, this truth of his history is not all contained in
his script, and yet the place marked there by the painful shock he feels from knowing only his own lines, and not simply there, but
also in pages whose disorder gives him little comfort. (E: 55) In the deployment of Lacan's theory of the subject
of the symbolic to "the subject of race," it is necessary to inquire what the subject of race desires.
Also, what kind of access does race, as a chain of signifiers that determines the symbolic subject,
have to "being," or that which is excluded by the chain? I will be suggesting that racial visibility is to be
located precisely at this point of interrogation: it is the level at which race, or more properly its
master signifier "Whiteness" aspires to being. The above questions suggest that the model of the subject
as determined by a chain of signifiers is necessarily incomplete insofar as it cannot account for
sexual difference or more properly for the body. More questions emerge: If the unconscious is structured like a
language, then how is the body constituted? If sexual difference is merely a question of the signifier, how do we account for the
body's drives, or for sexuality that is often at odds with the logic of sexual difference? In relation to "race," to stop with
the account of the symbolic function of Whiteness would be too premature, for it does not
address the issue of visibility, or the relation of the signifier to the visible body, which is, after
all, the inaugural point of this inquiry. In order to take up in earnest the question of the body and of its constitution as
raced, it is necessary to clarify the relation between the ego as body image and racial visibility. First, one must repudiate
the notion that race is merely a process of specular identification, where a pre-discursive and
pre-raced entity assumes a racial identity on the basis of certain familial others whose image it
identifies with in a mirror relation. Such a notion is based on a simplified account of Lacan 's
concept of the imaginary and the mirror stage. I undertake the following discussion of the imaginary for two
reasons: to suggest that insofar as the symbolic underwrites the imaginary, race must be understood as a symbolic
phenomenon. It is a logic of difference inaugurated by a signifier, Whiteness, that is grounded in
the unconscious structured like a language. This signifier subjects us all equally to its law
regardless of our identities as "black," "white," etc. Racial visibility is a remainder of this
symbolic system. Second, the process of becoming racially visible is not coterminous with the organization of the ego or the
acquisition of the body image. In other words, the visibility of the body does not necessarily have to be a
racial visibility. It is important that one disarticulate the two processes; otherwise racial visibility will seem to be an ontological
necessity that is a universal verity of subjective existence as such.
2NC Link
Whiteness predetermines racial difference the affs normative approach only
retrenches master signifiers
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
Analysis of Race, pg. 44-45// MS
race aims for the
body in its otherness15 by disavowing its own historicity. For what the racial symbolic promises the
subject is precisely access to being. Whiteness offers a totality, a fullness that masquerades as being.
Thus for the raced subject, to encounter the historicity of Whiteness is particularly
anxiety-producing. In other words, the cause of the raced subject is its own disavowed historicity. I refer not so much to
How does race articulate itself with sex? How does it produce extra-symbolic effects? I would suggest that
the fact that race is historicizable (that it has at its origin some historical, cultural or social cause) but rather to the phenomenon of
its historicity (which is the delimitation of race as a regulative norm at the expense of its natural universality) that radically exposes
the subject to its own linguistic limit. To encounter one's subjectivity as an effect of language , and not as an
enigma,
is anxiety-producing not because one is reduced to a construct (what would that really mean
because it implies the foreclosure of desire and the possibility of being. It is to
discover that the law of racial difference is not attached to the Real. What the raced subject
encounters, in a given moment of anxiety, is the law as purely symbolical. This is to confront the
utter groundlessness of the law of racial difference, to discover that the question of one's being is
not resolved by Whiteness, but that Whiteness is merely a signifier that masquerades as being
and thereby blocks access to lack. To pose the question of being in relation to race is to face that
there is not one. It is here that we must situate social and juridical laws against discrimination as
well. Like the prohibition against miscegenation, our legal prohibitions, couched in the language
of respect for difference, ultimately serve to protect the paradox of Whiteness. The paradox is that
Whiteness attempts to signify the unsignifiable, i.e. humanness, in order to preserve our
subjective investment in race. The Other of race, in short, is not lacking; there is no "hole" where being could be
experientially?) but
promising jouissance. All of race is expressed and captured by language.
The aff is the ultimate manifestation of Whiteness as Master Signifierthe impact

is colonialism and violence on the colonially raced other
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
It is to Hannah Arendt ( 1973) that we owe the remarkable insight that the
practice of imperialism entailed the

development of two "devices"- race and bureaucracy. Arendt's great achievement is her
delineation of the convergence of these two discourses, which she suggests were independently
discovered, but begin to dovetail with the progress of domination. Arendt characterizes the
discourse of race as "the emergency explanation of human beings whom no European or civilized man
could understand, and whose humanity so frightened and humiliated the immigrants that they no
longer cared to belong to the same human species" (Arendt 1973: 185). Bureaucracy, on the other
hand, she suggests, was founded on "legend," the "quixotic" (21 0) notion of the white man's burden to slay
the dragon of primitive superstition, which deteriorated rapidly into boyhood ideas of adventure as selfless service to the cause of
Empire (209- 1 0). Arendt's analysis of bureaucracy is particularly illuminating for an
understanding of the relationship of colonial discourse to the order of Whiteness (or race). Citing
the influential colonial administrator Lord Cromer as a model of the colonial bureaucrat who articulated a " theory" of
bureaucracy, Arendt argues that his gradual persuasion to the method of a "hybrid form of government" entailed the
governance of subject territories through what he termed "personal influence," without accountability to a legal or
political policy or treaty. Cromer's perspective, which was to prove definitive for colonial rule in general,
recommended that the bureaucrat, who worked anonymously behind the scenes, be freed from
any form of accountability to public institutions such as Parliament, the law courts or the press (21 4 ). Such a
form of bureaucracy, Arendt suggests, through her reading of Cromer's letters and speeches, was the outcome of his
realization of the essential contradiction of colonial rule, the impossibility of cultivating
democracy, and in his own words, of governing "a people by a people-the people of India by the people of England" (cited in
Arendt 1973:214). Thus the transformation of the administrator as (the great English) apostle of the rule of law to
one who "no longer believed in the universal validity of law, but was convinced of his own innate
capacity to rule and dominate" (221 ), meant that the surreptitious exertion of violence, termed
"administrative massacres" (216) in lieu of the "civilizing mission," was now a "realistic"
alternative for containing the natives. But such a subversive efflorescence at the very heart of the great project of
freeing the natives from the shackles of their "cruel superstitions" brought bureaucracy in opposition to the foundations of colonial
law. It is at this moment, of the loss of faith in the so-called English ideals of parliamentary democracy
and rational government, that Arendt marks the convergence of the device of bureaucracy with
the practices of race. This does not mean that she proposes adherence to English ideals as a norm from which colonial
discourse has deviated. If anything, Arendt's thesis is that every discourse of progress always carries within it its
own negation in the form of a "subterranean" current . In her preface to the first edition of The Origins of
Totalitarianism, she writes that her book assumes that progress and Doom are two sides of the same medal; that both are articles of
superstition, not of faith ... The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to
interpreting history by commonplaces . . .. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped
the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from
the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of
a better future, are in vain. (Arendt 1973: vii-ix) Arendt's analysis of the confluence of colonial
bureaucracy and race enables us to discover the contradictions built into colonial discourse . It is
these contrad ictions that Homi Bhabha ( 1994) elaborates as structural ambivalence- an ambivalence that splits
the discourse between official claims to the rule of law as a rationalization of colonial power and
its practical underside- that is the impossibility of "justice" in an inherently unstable and
disoriented political situation. While Bhabha pinpoints this ambivalence under various terms- mimicry, sly civility and
hybridity- what is significant is the fact that the contradiction within the order of race- as the institution of
difference and the desire for sameness- is best discerned in the field of colonialism. As a
concrete utilization of the logic of "race," colonial discourse, as the agency of a naming and an
ordering of difference, inevitably produces, or more properly is founded upon, a residue, namely
what Arendt terms bureaucracy, the material practice entailed by the "desire" of Whiteness for
absolute mastery. But bureaucracy must not be understood as a simple and correctable error of
colonial discourse; rather, it must be understood as the "symptom" of the inherently
contradictory claims of the rhetoric of colonialism (the impossibility of the rule of law)
engendered as it is by an impossible desire. Slavoj Zizek's formulation of the symptom is useful here; he suggests
that it is in a given discourse "the point of exception functioning as its internal negation" ( 1989:23). And basically, for the symptom
to function as the necessary contradiction, the subject must have no knowledge of its logic. The unconscious aspect of
Whiteness guarantees just such a non-knowledge, while its illegal desire, articulated in the
symptom of lawless bureaucracy in the scene of colonialism, supported by the latent equation of
Whiteness with humanness, remains repressed and unacknowledged only to return in an
uncanny encounter. My literary example in the last chapter, Conrad's "The secret sharer" ( 1966), illustrated the fantasy of
Whiteness fulfilling its promise and delivering a lethal enjoyment that logically and existentially would be impossible. Such an
assertion then raises the question of that impossibility, how is it encountered, and with what consequences? What does it
mean for Whiteness as wholly symbolic or bound by language (in the sense that race is "successful" and is not
missing a signifier) to fulfill or attempt to fulfill its promise as the master signifier? What is the
consequence of its failing to do so because of its "success"? How does historicity expose the
"success" of race? How does the anxiety that ensues at such exposure manifest itself? How can we
map or discover such a successful failure? Since we are dealing here with the unconscious function of the
signifier in the constitution of the subject of race, it is incumbent on us to turn to the formations
of the unconscious, i.e., dreams, parapraxes, slips of the tongue, jokes, etc. Jokes, and humor in general, are a particularly
useful site for probing the working of the signifier, as they are less particularized than dreams and the lapses of speech, and since
they can only be told in a public context, inter-subjectivity is an indispensable element to them. Jokes need at least three people, and
exploring this triangular relation in the context of colonialism may lead us to discern the anxious function of Whiteness. In the
following I use George Orwell's anecdotes of his experience as a policeman in Burma and as a visitor in Morocco as texts of the
failure of Whiteness. Orwell's pieces are particularly useful because in their attempt to be confessional, to speak the truth about
difference and prejudice under the guise of a liberal faith in race, they display an anxiety that divulges all .
The affirmatives attempt to link a socially comprehensible ideal of IDENTITY onto

the fundamental unknowability that is the individual SUBJECT merely serves to
reinforce the regime of racial signification that is the root cause of their impacts
by placing themselves into the symbolic order of racial signification, theyve
undermined their own potential for resistance
Bryant, 14
Levi R. Bryant, professor @ Collin College; Three Models of the Subject, 1/16/2014,
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/three-models-of-the-subject/#more-7537 //
MS
In these discussions, its clear that the
category of subject has shifted register. Subject is no longer thought

primarily as an epistemological category, as a knower, but as a political category. The negative thought of
the subject, the subject that must be deconstructed, is here a site of illusion where we mistake ourselves for sovereign agents
possessed of an essence (as man or woman or African-American or straight or gay, etc) that fails to recognize how, even in the
exercise of its alleged agency, it is in fact enslaved; an effect of power, a subjected being, that is both trapped in a prison of social
forces it does not recognize and that actually contributes to the reinforcement of the iron threads of this spider web of power through
enacting these impersonal scripts. Subject must here be deconstructed so as to reveal the real mechanisms of power so that
genuine emancipation rather than illusory emancipation might be possible. Alternatively, following Heidegger, subject is a figure
of mastery and domination that subjugates being and persons, enframing them so as to transform them into beings of standingreserve available for further control and mastery. Subject here must be deconstructed to put an end to this nihilistic and destructive
will to power premised on mastery. In the contemporary wave of thought, subject is once again a political rather than
epistemological category, but is
now conceived in positive terms. Exemplified by the work of thinkers such as Zizek,
is now no longer an illusion and an effect, but is rather a
site of truth, signifying the possibility of emancipation, functioning as the seat of agency, and
marking the condition for the possibility of rupture with oppressive systems. In the
Enlightenment frame, subject is the site of the problem of knowledge. In the post-structuralist frame,
Badiou, Johnston, perhaps Ranciere, and a number of others, subject
subject is the site of the problem of the site of subjugation arising as a result of something akin to ideological misrecognition. In the
contemporary phase, subject is the site of the problem of emancipation. If our identities are formed
through anonymous social forces that exceed any individual agency whether in the form of power as conceived by
Foucault, ideology as conceived by Althusser, the cultural structures of language or economy or something else besides, then how as
any emancipation possible? If the very stuff that we are is formed by these social forces, how
does our agency do anything but reproduce these very structures of subjugation?
I italicize identities above advisedly, for the desuturing of the equivalence between subject and identity is the key move of
contemporary political thought regarding the subject. Subject will no longer denote an identity, a substance, but rather
denotes that which breaks with any identity and which is therefore a capacity to break with
technologies of subjectivization. Setting aside the Enlightenment conception of subject as seat of the problem of
knowledge, we thus get two distinct concepts of subject: 1) The Post-Structuralist Concept of Subject: Subject is an identity, a series
of different identities, produced by social forces that mistakes itself for being a seat of agency and believes that it has an essence as
man, woman, white, black, straight, gay, etc.; when, in fact, this agency is an effect of an impersonal social agency of subjugation.
Subject therefore must be deconstructed if we are to get at the real sources of subjugation and not merely reproduce these forces. But
who does this if we are but an effect of these social forces. Ergo 2) The Contemporary Concept of Subject: Subject names, like the
number zero, that which is non-identical to itself a sort of void, emptiness, or negativity for which no predicates (of identity)
ever fully lodge, for which every predicate of identity is a sort of dishonesty or lie. We could call this subject the Lacano-SartreanHegelian concept of subject (I realize many will object to including Sartre in this series, but as my good friend Noah Horwitz once
observed to me, theres a way in which the Zizekian subject is a sort of crypto-Sartrean or existential subject). This is the subject for
whom the epithet I am what I am not and I am not what I am holds. I am not the predicates with which I identify e.g., if I say I
am depressed theres already a sort of bad faith or dishonesty in this self-description yet I am also these very predicates. I am the
perpetual inability to be what I take myself to be and to not be this. Subject then names something that is in excess of all predication,
something off of which all predicates slide, and therefore something for which there is never any substantiality. In short, subject is
the intrinsic failure of all identity as discussed by the post-structuralists. And for this reason, subject is a sort of void or
nothingness, that nonetheless can be marked or that has a sort of quasi-being. Subject would
thus also be a name for the ineluctable failure of every technology of subjectivization precisely
because predicates of subjugation necessarily fail (as Miller tries to demonstrate in his own way in Suture). In
response to the post-structuralist question of who deconstructs the subject of identity (subjectî),
the contemporary phase of thought seems to say no-thing and no-one. Yet this nothing and
noone is nonetheless marked, is nonetheless an excess, that marks the ruin of any identity,
interpellation, subjectivization, or predication opening a space of resistance and and
contestation where emancipation might be possible. Subject as void (subject^v) becomes the site of freedom,
resistance, agency. It marks the space of an agency that is not overdetermined by the field of social
structure, social forces, or power, precisely because it is that which necessarily evades all of
these forces and technologies; precisely because it is that which is in excess of all
subjectivization.
This debate is about methodologies for resistancetheyve made a choice to invest
power in signifiers like black and white and this choice was a mistake they
should be responsible for
Newman, 1
Saul Newman, University of Western Australia, From Bakunin to Lacan: AntiAuthoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, p. 3-4 // MS
However, the problem of essentialism is broader than the problem of nationalism. Essentialist
ideas seem to govern

our political and social reality. Individuals are pinned down within an identity that is seen as
true or natural. Essentialist identities limit the individual, constructing his or her reality around
certain norms, and closing off the possibilities of change and becoming. There is, moreover, a
whole series of institutional practices which dominate the individual in a multitude of ways, and
which are brought into play by essentialist logics. One has only to look at the way in which social
and family welfare agencies and correctional institutions operate to see this. The identity of the
delinquent, welfare dependent, or unfit parent is carefully constructed as the essence of the
individual, and the individual is regulated, according to this essential identity, by a whole series
of rational and moral norms. The changes that have taken place on a global scale seem only to have denied the individual
the possibility of real change. Not only does essentialist thinking limit the individual to certain
prescribed norms of morality and behavior, it also excludes identities and modes of behavior
which do not conform to these norms. They are categorized as unnatural or perverse, as
somehow other and they are persecuted according to the norms they transgress. The logic of
essentialism produces an oppositional thinking, from which binary hierarchies are constructed:
normal/abnormal, sane/insane, hetero/homosexual, etc. This domination does not only refer to individuals
who fall outside the category of the norm [homosexuals, drug addicts, delinquents, the insane, etc]; it is also suffered by those for
whom certain fragments of their identityfor identity is never a complete thingwould be condemned as abnormal. We all
suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, under this tyranny of normality, this discourse of domination
which insists that we all have an essential identity and that that is what we are. We must not think,
though, that this domination is entirely forced upon us. While this is no doubt true to a certain extentthink of prisons, mental
institutions, the army, hospitals, the workplace an essentialist identity is also something that we
often willingly submit to. This mode of power cannot operate without our consent,
without our desire to be dominated. So not only will this discussion examine the domination involved in
essentialist discourses and identitiesthe way they support institutions such as the state and the prison for exampleit will also
we participate in our own domination. The problem of

essentialism is the political problem of our time. To say that the personal is the political,
clichd and hackneyed though it is, is merely to say that the way we have been constituted as subjects,
based on essentialist premises, is a political issue. There is really nothing radical in this. But it is still
a question that must be addressed. Essentialism, along with the universal, totalizing politics it entails, is the modern place of
power. Or at least, it is something around which the logic of the place of power is constituted. It will be
one of the purposes of this discussion to show how essentialist ideas, even in revolutionary philosophies
like anarchism, often reproduce the very domination they claim to oppose. Modern
power functions through essentialist identities, and so essentialist ideas are something
to be avoided if genuine forms of resistance are to be constructed and if genuine change is to be
look at the ways in which
permitted. The changes of recent times, dramatic as they were, were still tied to these
essentialist ways of thinking, particularly with regard to national identity, and to forms of
political sovereignty like the state. They did not at all challenge or disrupt these categories, often only further
embedding them in political discourse and social reality.
--- Link to Black / White Discourse

Identifying individuals as Black or White is not neutral its part of a system
of racial biologism based on the Master Signifier Whiteness
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
Racial identity, too, I would like to suggest- i.e., words like black and white, when used as nouns- works
like names.10 That is, they are rigid designatorsthey are signifiers that have no signified. They
establish a reference, but deliver no connotations or meaning whatsoever. We can, of course,
reasonably argue that race does not exist insofar as the identity of a person as "black" or "white"
is contingent upon a cluster of concepts that are themselves too protean to be able to uphold
anything like a necessary truth. We can cite historical evidence to show that groups that were
once considered white are no longer classified as such for this or that reason, etc. But as my discussion
in Chapter l specified, arguments leveled at race theory are highly ineffectual and possess insufficient
explanatory power. Thus rather than lapse into the historicist argument, it may be more productive to view
racial color designators as operating not unlike proper names. The proper name is neither
wholly one's own (i.e., we are all named by others) nor is it meaningful. One inhabits the name as the
reference of oneself, and as Kripke asserts, it bears no relation to a set of properties that establish either its
meaning or its reference: Nixon is Nixon, or as he says, quoting Bishop Butler, "everything is what it is and not
another thing" (Kripke 1982:94). Is this not true for "black" and "white"? If someone is designated as one
or the other, there is a necessary truth to that designation, but does it mean? What would be the cluster
of concepts that could establish such an identity? Even in identity statements such as "blacks are people of
African descent" or "whites are people of European descent," though the predicates supposedly
define and give the meaning of black and white, establishing the necessity of these concepts in
every counter-factual situation will not be possible if only because national designations, and the
notion of descent, are historically volatile and
. 11 As Kripke says, it is not how the speaker thinks he got the
reference, but the actual chain of communication, which is relevant .... Obviously the name is passed on from link to link. But of
course not every sort of causal chain reaching from me to a certain man will do for me to make a reference. There may be a causal
chain from our use of the term "Santa Claus" to a certain historical saint, but still the children, when they use this, by this time
probably do not refer to that saint. ... It seems to me wrong to think we give ourselves some properties which somehow qualitatively
uniquely pick out an object and determine our reference in that manner. (Kripke 1982:93-4) If we substitute "black" or "white," etc.
for Santa Claus in the above quotation, we discern two things immediately: first, the paradigm of "black" as reaching
back to "Africa," as Santa Claus could to a medieval saint, is the source of an insurmountable confusion in
critical race theory. The idea that "black" means "people of African descent" leads into the
thicket of debates about biological descent, which will inevitably run into the false contradiction
between culture and biology. Second, we can now see that the notion of racial passing is nothing but an intervention into
the passing of the name from link to link. Changing one's identity from black to white, or viceversa, means
that one passes from one chain of communication to another. For instance, when the "Ex-Colored Man" in
James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man decides to pass from black to white, he does so by passing from one
chain to another: "I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would
change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would" (Johnson 1995:90, emphasis added). In his last
lecture, Kripke himself suggests the possibility of "black" and "white" as rigid designators by advocating the view that terms for
natural kinds are much closer to proper names than is ordinarily supposed ... Perhaps some "general" names ("foolish," "fat,"
"yellow") express properties. In a significant sense, such general names as "cow" and "tiger" do not, unless being a cow counts
trivially as a property. Certainly "cow" and "tiger" are not short for the conjunction of properties a dictionary would take to define
them. (Kripke 1982: 127- 8) It should be noted that Kripke's use of "yellow" in the above quotation is a reference to color and not to a
human race, which could not, according to the above logic, express properties. In this context, we can understand the
utterance "black is beautiful" not as an attempt at substituting a negative cluster of concepts

with a positive one in order to reclaim the properties attached to "black" identity; rather, it is
intelligible as an attempt to preserve the rigid designation of "black," by displacing
its so-called properties onto black as a color, to mark its function as a general
name, than as a property of group identity. We must ask what consequence race names
as rigid designators have for the psychoanalytic examination of race identity . I suggest that insofar
as race identity, unlike sexual identity, has no bearing on the real, such rigid designation is better
understood not as an indication of the "failure" of the symbolic (a symptom that escapes meaning or the
possibility of interpretation), which would be the Lacanian translation of rigid designation, but of its
agency. Black and white and other racial signifiers do not fail to signify properties (as "the" woman
does in her position as objet a or the symptom); they perform the only function they can: they designate
rigidly this or that individual ("everything is what it is and not another thing"). Does this mean that race names as rigid
designators cannot be translated into Lacanian terms, that they have no psychoanalytic valence? That race names are rigid
designators is, first of all, a counterintuitive claim. If we consider how and why racial signifiers are used
in
everyday speech, we encounter not only the ideological production of specific racial content
(usually referred to as stereotypes), but the fraught status of the racial referent as such . One points
with a wordblack man, white woman- but this pointing cannot be "innocent" in the sense that it "merely" establishes reference as
in: "no other than Nixon might have been Nixon" (Kripke 1982:48). The pointing in this case involves the whole
regime of racial visibility which, as I have been delineating it, is founded on a certain anxiety. This
relation between racial naming as meaning, or the description of properties, and racial naming as reference, or pure designation, is
not one of misreading the logical functioning of names; rather, I suggest that racial naming as referring to properties
(or the stereotype) acts
as an envelope, a cover for the anxiety of racial reference which literally

means nothing. (This is the very definition of the stereotype as a form of discourse that attempts to produce meaning where
none is possible.) There is something anxiety-producing about the fullness of the signifier/referent relation that bypasses the
signified, or the concept, that would properly produce meaning and thus desire.
2NC A Prior
The aff starts with Whiteness as Master signifier the K comes first because it
examines their starting point
Seshadri-Crooks, 2k
What is the status of
the master signifier of race in the constitution of the bodily ego? If we agree that the body image is
constituted with the help of the signifier, then are all body images necessarily raced? Is Whiteness a founding
signifier for the subject as such, and of his/her ego? Is the racial signifier necessary for the constitution
of the bodily ego? It is important that we not mistake the moment of the constitution of the bodily ego as the necessary
The above view of the ego and the body image raises the question of the relation of the ego ideal to race.
moment when the body becomes racially visible. To do so would not be a sufficient departure from the erroneous belief that race is
purely a question of misrecognition or identification with a mirror image. We would merely have added the factor of
the racial signifier to the account of the mirror stage. There is no doubt that one can be
constituted as a subject with a "unified" bodily ego without necessarily identifying with a racial
signifier, or seeing oneself as racially marked. (The large point here is that race is not like sex. Not all are
subject to the racial signifier. ) We only have to consider the numerous accounts from literature and autobiography
that enact the scene of becoming racially visible to oneself. Besides Fanon, who speaks of discovering that he is
"black" during his first visit to France, there is Stuart Hall, who in "Minimal selves" says that for
many Jamaicans like himself, "Black is an identity which had to be learned and could only be
learned in a certain moment" ( 1996b: 116). This process of introjecting the signifier is repeated by other characters such
as Janie in Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, James Weldon Johnson's protagonist in Autobiography of an ExColored Man, and by Oulaudah Equiano in his autobiographical narrative. There are doubtless numerous other examples that one
could cite. The fact that the secondariness of race seems to apply only to so-called "people of color," and that there are rare,
or virtually no instances of a socalled "white" person discovering his or her race may lead to
several specious speculations such as: "black" people identify with "whites" as the latter are more
powerful and define the norm. Such misidentification on the part of "blacks" leads to trauma
when they discover the reality of their blackness (Fanon's thesis). Other problematic views might be that "white"
people impose an identity upon those they have colonized in order to justify their dominance, or "whites" have no race or race
consciousness; "whites" are not racially embodied, and this is an index of their transparency and power, etc. While some of these
propositions might make some ideological sense, all of these conclusions nevertheless presume the pre-existence of "black" and
"white" as if these were natural and neutrally descriptive terms. I would suggest that the difference among black,
brown, red, yellow and white rests on the position of each signifier in the signifying chain in
its relation to the master signifier, which engenders racial looking through a particular process
of anxiety. Perhaps the more effective ideological stance may be not to raise race consciousness
among so-called "whites," as scholars in Whiteness studies suggest, but to trouble the relation of the subject
to the master signifier. One must throw into doubt the security and belief in one's
identity, not promote more fulsome claims to such identity .
A2: We Recapture Specific Trope

Absent a fundamental change in enjoyment and the symbolic logic of identity
categories, no meaningful change can come abouttheir reappropriation only
serves as a fetish that conceals the lack at the heart of the Other, and that reinstills
their desire for the maintanence of the existing racial order. You should prefer our
evidence because it makes an on-balance assessment
Dashtipour, Business, Middessex, 2009 (P. Annual Review of Critical Psychology, 7, pp. 320337 http://www.discourseunit.com/arcp/7.htm)
From the above, we can assume that there might be a disavowal occurring: we know that
stereotypes are not true, but we still believe, or feel them as if they are true. There is a
contradiction between what I know and what I believe. It is as if the subject both believes and
does not believe in something. For Freud (1957) the refusal of accepting a certain reality or
knowledge includes disavowal of this knowledge which is instead replaced with a fetish object.
He claims that the little boy, when seeing that the woman is lacking a penis, refuses to accept
what he sees, for if a woman had been castrated, then his own possession of a penis was in
danger (p. 153). The little boy keeps two contradictory beliefs at the same time: he saw that the
mother did not have a penis, he knows that there is a lack of penis, but he refuses to
acknowledge it. This refusal needs the help of an object to be effective, an object which is a
substitute for the mothers penis and can thus ensure he is protected against a loss of something
precious which makes him what he is. This object becomes the fetish. Hence, the fetish proves
that something is not so. In the case of the little boy, it proves that what he saw, that the mother
does not have a penis, is not true. The fetish helps to forget a threatening knowledge or reality.
The denial of a reality leaves a lack/gap and there is a need to fill that lack with a fetish object.
This object becomes so important to the subject because it conceals the gap, and it helps us
forget about it. But it also signifies the gap. Thus, paradoxically this object represents both the
disavowal of reality and its acknowledgement. It represents both anxiety and pleasure. It is the
ambivalence of anxiety and pleasure which requires the fetish object to be repetitively evoked, it
needs to provide a certain kind of fixity. The more I repeat it, the more I establish to myself that
something is not the case, because I have the fetish object to prove it. If the fetish is in evidence,
continually resorted to, then the sort of identity that would otherwise be threatened can be
maintained, as in the case of the little boys threatened masculinity; that which is special about
him, and ensures his own narcissistic jouissance, can be protected, assured. In the text of
Gringo, the exaggerated image of the suburb as dangerous, violent, or as the same as the
African-American hoods, the ideas of difference which come up again and again might indeed
be a resistance strategy to make the stereotypes absurd. However, they can also be read as a
repeated and fetishised representation. But if the fetish is a proof that something is not so, what
is it that is threatening and is being disavowed or denied? It might be the idea of sameness,
homogeneity, or lack of difference which is threatening, because it means that I am just like
anybody else, that I am not special. After all, being seen in the gaze of the Other as different to
everyone else provides me a sense of distinctiveness, a kind of affirmation of specialness; the
feeling of difference provides jouissance. No difference might itself be a threatening idea; it is a
threat to the jouissance which comes with difference. The fetish object is the
representation/stereotype of the ghetto suburb. This is the object/monument which keeps
difference alive and denies complete non-difference.
Here it helps to refer back to an earlier analytical observation: that there is no room for the
immigrant to be positively visible except by taking up a place within the ambit of the home
cultures ego-ideals, as governed by the Other. One would expect then that some representations
would play into these ego-ideals, but also that there would be some attempt to resist them, to
deny this homogenization, and assert an identity able to evince a degree of difference. In other
words, this example of a fetishistic resort to ensure a threatened identity should be seen as
dynamically related to the foregoing ego-ideal-harmonizing identities. It provides a crucial way
of ensuring a different mode of identity against the threatening homogenization of the Swedish
Other; it keeps a threatened identity alive and secure, and enables its own particular type of
jouissance in the bargain. Hence, this depiction of the suburb, rather than being seen as a
resistance to stereotypes or an attempt to ridicule them - can rather be viewed as resistance to
the ego-ideals of the big Other; a resistance to be what the Other wants me to be. All this
contradicts Reichers (1994) claim that people in a subordinated group will work against inequalities rather than creating or defending them, because reproducing stigmatized images
hardly works against in-equalities. Psychoanalysis can help us understand why those with
stigmatized identities might indeed contribute towards their own inequality. Conclusion The
social creativity strategy suggested by SIT is a useful tool to use when analysing the process
involved when groups aim to change identities. It shows that in such situations the group aims
to re-evaluate the content of a negative social category. However, I have argued above that the
theory leaves some questions inadequately answered. Firstly, the fact that the process of reevaluation is carried out in relation to the wider culture needs to be emphasised. Ideologies,
cultural standards and ideals about a positive identity is what puts limits to how identities are
re-evaluated. Secondly, the question of why some group characteristics or representations hold
more than others is disregarded. Finally, SIT neglects the fact that sometimes a stigmatized
identity is desired, rather than contested. From the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis, reevaluating a social category involves imaginary identifications with certain representations in
which group members appear complete and non-lacking. These images come from the outside,
from the Other, the particular ideological standards which limit the choices made when groups
re-evaluate the content of their identities. These ideologies deny lack and promise fullness and
jouissance. It is the promise of jouissance which sustains some group images more than others,
it is jouissance which attaches group members to certain social identities. And it is also this
libidinal component which puts limits to flexibility and change and which fetishises certain
stereotypes, rather than doing away with them.
Reappropriating doesnt solveit shores up the symbolic coordinates of
whiteness, and precludes a confrontation with the anxiety that characterizes the
lack in race discourses
Seshadri. English, Umass, 2000 (Kalpana, Desiring Whiteness)
Racial identity, too, I would like to suggesti.e., words like black and white, when used as nouns
works like names.10 That is, they are rigid designatorsthey are signifiers that have no
signified. They establish a reference, but deliver no connotations or meaning whatsoever. We
can, of course, reasonably argue that race does not exist insofar as the identity of a person as
black or white is contingent upon a cluster of concepts that are themselves too protean to be
able to uphold anything like a necessary truth. We can cite historical evidence to show that
groups that were once considered white are no longer classified as such for this or that reason,
etc. But as my discussion in Chapter 1 specified, arguments leveled at race theory are highly
ineffectual and possess insufficient explanatory power. Thus rather than lapse into the
historicist argument, it may be more productive to view racial color designators as operating not
unlike proper names. The proper name is neither wholly ones own (i.e., we are all named by
others) nor is it meaningful. One inhabits the name as the reference of oneself, and as Kripke
asserts, it bears no relation to a set of properties that establish either its meaning or its
reference: Nixon is Nixon, or as he says, quoting Bishop Butler, everything is what it is and not
another thing (Kripke 1982:94). Is this not true for black and white? If someone is
designated as one or the other, there is a necessary truth to that designation, but does it mean?
What would be the cluster of concepts that could establish such an identity? Even in identity
statements such as blacks are people of African descent or whites are people of European
descent, though the predicates supposedly define and give the meaning of black and white,
establishing the necessity of these concepts in every counter-factual situation will not be
possible if only because national designations, and the notion of descent, are historically volatile
and scientifically invalid respectively. No set of qualitative descriptions can establish black or
white identity across all possible worlds, but we cannot therefore say that black and white do not
exist, which is the error that a number of critical race theorists fall into.11 As Kripke says, it is
not how the speaker thinks he got the reference, but the actual chain of communication which is
relevant. Obviously the name is passed on from link to link. But of course not every sort of
causal chain reaching from me to a certain man will do for me to make a reference. There may
be a causal chain from our use of the term Santa Claus to a certain historical saint, but still the
children, when they use this, by this time probably do not refer to that saint. It seems to me
wrong to think we give ourselves some properties which somehow qualitatively uniquely pick
out an object and determine our reference in that manner. (Kripke 1982:934) If we substitute
black or white, etc. for Santa Claus in the above quotation, we discern two things
immediately: first, the paradigm of black as reaching back to Africa, as Santa Claus could to
a medieval saint, is the source of an insurmountable confusion in critical race theory. The idea
that black means people of African descent leads into the thicket of debates about biological
descent, which will inevitably run into the false contradiction between culture and biology.
Second, we can now see that the notion of racial passing is nothing but an intervention into the
passing of the name from link to link. Changing ones identity from black to white, or viceversa,
means that one passes from one chain of communication to another. For instance, when the
Ex-Colored Man in James Weldon Johnsons Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man decides to
pass from black to white, he does so by passing from one chain to another: I finally made up my
mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would
change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would (Johnson
1995:90, emphasis added). In his last lecture, Kripke himself suggests the possibility of black
and white as rigid designators by advocating the view that terms for natural kinds are much
closer to proper names than is ordinarily supposedPerhaps some general names (foolish,
fat, yellow) express properties. In a significant sense, such general names as cow and
tiger do not, unless being a cow counts trivially as a property. Certainly cow and tiger are
not short for the conjunction of properties a dictionary would take to define them. (Kripke
1982:1278) It should be noted that Kripkes use of yellow in the above quotation is a
reference to color and not to a human race, which could not, according to the above logic,
express properties. In this context, we can understand the utterance black is beautiful not as
an attempt at substituting a negative cluster of concepts with a positive one in order to reclaim
the properties attached to black identity; rather, it is intelligible as an attempt to preserve the
rigid designation of black, by displacing its so-called properties onto black as a color, to mark
its function as a general name, than as a property of group identity. We must ask what
consequence race names as rigid designators have for the psychoanalytic examination of race
identity. I suggest that insofar as race identity, unlike sexual identity, has no bearing on the real,
such rigid designation is better understood not as an indication of the failure of the symbolic
(a symptom that escapes meaning or the possibility of interpretation), which would be the
Lacanian translation of rigid designation, but of its agency. Black and white and other racial
signifiers do not fail to signify properties (as the woman does in her position as objet a or the
symptom); they perform the only function they can: they designate rigidly this or that individual
(everything is what it is and not another thing). Does this mean that race names as rigid
designators cannot be translated into Lacanian terms, that they have no psychoanalytic valence?
That race names are rigid designators is, first of all, a counterintuitive claim. If we consider how
and why racial signifiers are used in everyday speech, we encounter not only the ideological
production of specific racial content (usually referred to as stereotypes), but the fraught status of
the racial referent as such. One points with a wordblack man, white womanbut this pointing
cannot be innocent in the sense that it merely establishes reference as in: no other than
Nixon might have been Nixon (Kripke 1982:48). The pointing in this case involves the whole
regime of racial visibility which, as I have been delineating it, is founded on a certain anxiety.
This relation between racial naming as meaning, or the description of properties, and racial
naming as reference, or pure designation, is not one of misreading the logical functioning of
names; rather, I suggest that racial naming as referring to properties (or the stereotype) acts as
an envelope, a cover for the anxiety of racial reference which literally means nothing
A2: Race is in the Real

Race is a lack around which discourses proliferatetreating racism as an aspect of
the Real rather than the Symbolic naturalizes racism
LOREN AND METELMANN 2011 (Scott Loren, University of Teacher Education, St Gallen; Jrg
Metelmann, University of St Gallen, Playing the Race Card with Lacan, Journal of Visual Culture 10.3)
Race as the Lacanian real does not signify anything. It might be thought of as the pre-symbolic
material of bodily fluids, flesh and bone, of genetic coding, but certainly not as history, genealogy, culture,
etc. Strictly speaking, this is race as a non-ontology, or rather as ontos (of being) without logos (speech, discourse,
representation). Against the tendency of putting race in scare quotes because of a lack of consensus on what the term signifies, it is
this first order of race in its mute material capacity that we might leave in scare quotes precisely because of its connection to the
real. If we are to maintain theoretical rigor regarding the Lacanian register of the real, we should
claim that there is no race. Race is a lack around which various discourses are constructed. As
such, racism must continue to be thought of as one possible attempt at articulating this lack.
There is nothing mute nor material about racism. It has no ontos without logos, but rather
comes into being through expression, as speech, as discourse, as representation, as action. This
is one reason it cannot be placed at the locus of the Lacanian real. If we want to indulge a certain
theoretical flexibility and conceive of the Lacanian real not as mute material, but as a combination of Hegelian
second nature linked with the Lacanian reals capacity to engender trauma (if we are not mistaken, it is thus
that Mitchell wants us to understand racism as real), we not only risk taking recourse to a form of essentialism;
we risk making racism immovable. This is a second reason for not linking racism with the Lacanian real.
Their argument conflates the Real with realityby definition we have no access to
the Real and cannot debate about it. Attempts to mediate the Real are still within
the symbolic register of trope and enjoyment which means out critique is prior
LUNDBERG 2012 (Christian Lundberg, prof of Communication Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, Lacan in
Public)
The Real is rhetorics limit. There are a number of different possible interpretations of the Real,
although all of them circle around two central concepts: there is a world external to discourse,
and the subjects understanding of this world is never unmediated and, as a result, never
achieves direct adequation with it. An adequate thought, writes Lacan, avoids adequation. 13 Although there is a world
of things, relations and effects that is mindindependent (res cogitans does not meet the Real, says Lacan), our access to the
Real is mediated by discourses and representations that capture or present the Real for a
subject.14 Thus, Lacan introduces a distinction between reality, which is the way that one frames
or imagines the world as a set of representations and concepts, and the Real, which names the
mindindependent realm that reality attempts but fails to adequately frame. The distinction between
the Real and reality rests on the idea that our understandings of reality are never quite adequate to, or more precisely, never achieve
adequation with the Real. To say that the Real exists independently of our vari ous representational framings of it is not to say that
the Real does not influence the subject. One never acts outside of the influence of the Real, because the world external to discourse
substantially governs our activities.15 Subjects inhabit a world of bodies, forces, and objects that constitute the warp and woof of
everyday life. Reality, on the other hand, is fully within the purview of the subject. As soon as one attempts to fig ure,
speak, or represent the Real, one misses the Real by reducing it to reality .16 Because
conceptions of reality are mediated by an economy of trope and enjoyment a theme that I take up in
earnest in chapter 5the interface between reality and the Real is always a missed encounter.17
A2: Mitchell (Racism = Real)

Locating racism in the traumatic encounter of the Real makes racist and
colonialist violence inevitable and feeds a narrative of melodrama and
recrimination
LOREN AND METELMANN 2011 (Scott Loren, University of Teacher Education, St Gallen; Jrg
Metelmann, University of St Gallen, Playing the Race Card with Lacan, Journal of Visual Culture 10.3)
Beyond the noted benefits of placing racism in the order of the imaginary, this kind of structure resolves an additional complication
that arises if we place racism in the real. One of the points raised during Mitchells talk was that if racism were to act as a
kind of ontological basis for race, then
race would necessarily always be linked to a pejorative nature.

That is, with racism as the real and race as the derivative term, not only would racism take on an
immovable and essentialist quality: race would also always be an extension of this pejorative
essentialism. The structure presents us with a variation on the Amfortas question: Race, what are you suffering from? Race
would be interminable suffering as a derivative of racism. Here, we can see how the notion of
racism as immovable, traumatic real is not only problematic in a strictly Lacanian or social
constructivist sense, but troublesome from within race theory; particularly in the context of Linda Williams
linking of melodrama and race. Racism as an immovable pejorative that serves as the foundation for concepts of race within
representation feeds into the archetypal Manichaean structure central to melodrama: the eternal
battle between good and evil. Mitchells re-articulation of the Lacanian triad might be seen as a theoretical version of the
American melodramatic racial fix that Williams put forth in her seminal book, Playing the Race Card (2001). She argues that since
the mid-nineteenth century, melodrama has been, for better or worse, the primary way in which mainstream American culture has
dealt with the moral dilemma of having first enslaved and then withheld equal rights to generations of African Americans (2001:
44). It is through forms of racial victimization within the melodramatic mode the beaten/tortured black male body and the
threatened/raped white female body that the white supremacist American culture first turned its deepest guilt into a testament of
virtue (Williams, 2001: 44). After Harriet Beecher Stowes articulation of sympathy for black suffering (Tom, Eliza), Dixon and
Griffith trumped Stowes race card by inverting its racial polarities to show white women threatened by emancipated black men
(Williams, 2001: 5). There is not just one race card to be played, but different versions of racial victimization and vilification played
out over time. Taking recourse to Lauren Berlants theory that individual citizens are not identified through a
universalist rhetoric, but through their capacity for suffering and trauma (Williams, 2001: 43), Williams
mobilizes the logic of pain as the core of personhood by applying it to the melodramas of racially beset victims. It is this
essential link between wound/trauma (in Greek it is literally the same), race and the paradoxical location
of strength in weakness that we want to stress in our response to Mitchell: What does it mean
against this background to position racism within the traumatic real? Does it not imply that we
simply have to accept the wounds that white hands inflict on black bodies, that imperialist
cultures inflict on colonized cultures? If racism is an essentialist truth, an immovable matter of
fact, then the tortures will go on forever. The problem with Mitchells proposition is the following: What
starts as an effort to prevent cultural studies from the overly hasty and perhaps naive move to hail the
end of race threatens to default into a melodramatic reaffirmation of binaries on the basis of the
classic victim paradigm. As, for example, the case of Rodney King and the trial of O.J. Simpson have shown, there is an
ongoing melodramatic Manichaean split of race into Tom and anti-Tom lenses. This could be fully consistent with Mitchells claim
that race is itself the medium if he were not to give in to the melodramatic temptation to completely section off racism from its
societal negotiations. As Williams ends her book by advocating intellectual rigor in the analysis of melodrama whenever it appears,
we would like to point to the possible dangers of Mitchells re-articulation of race and racism:
calling into question the over-hasty proclamations of a post-racial era should not lead us to a
new fixing of racial realities that we have to accept with all of their hatred and pain. This, we
know, was not Mitchells intention. Seeing race, not racism, as the matter that on the one hand
has to be socially negotiated and, on the other, acts as a lens for social negotiation, is crucial for
understanding the durable, and in Lacanian terms imaginary, nature of racism . Because the imaginary
is inherent in the seeable, the scrutiny of imaginary projections where they meet social ontologies might be understood as one of the
important political functions of visual culture studies.
A2: Recapture Trope (Imaginary/Symbolic)

Both the attempt to change the meaning of an individual trope and to define our
identities in this debate function as rhetorical moves within the Imaginary register
Public)
The Imaginary figures the modes of relation that underwrite the act of addressing another: to
address another, a subject must assign the other some determinate content, and must envision,
if only implicitly, the tenor of the subjects relationship to its addressee. But the Imaginary also
houses the specific contentsimages, ideas and conceptsthat fill in symbolic forms . The formal
structure of the sign is not enough to found the empirical life of discourse: signs also require that specific contents and concepts
populate the formal structure. The Aristotelian and Kantian traditions of imagination are both at play in Lacans conception of
imagination as the specific imagecontent of the sign. For Aristotle, if the psyche never moves without an image, the implication is
that the formal properties of thinking are never sufficient to give an account of actualized thought. Thinking requires a set of specific
images that move the psyche to do all the different things that it does. Kant, in Critique of Pure Reason, distinguishes between
synthetic qualities that make up the imagination: a reproductive and a productive imagi nation.24 The reproductive imagination
is essentially mimetic, presenting images to the intuition largely with the task of mediating images and concepts. The productive
imagination produces origi nal images (ones not derived from experience) and is the site of creative invention. Strategically
muddling this distinction, Lacans conception of imagination, which is closely allied with Freuds idea of fantasy, frames the
reproductive and productive imaginations as part and parcel of the same basic movement. Images position a subject
relative to its world and constitute its modes of understanding, but because the image is bound
to the mediating functions of the Symbolic, it never quite achieves full adequation with the
world external to it. The image is constitutively disconnected from the thing that it attempts to
capture, but at the same time it is a mode of world making for the subject that employs it . Because
the image is disconnected from the Real, images cannot be simply mimetic nor only reproductive, but perform both
functions simultaneously.
This means our critique is prior to the affbefore you can analyze the content of
specific tropes we should account for their conditions of possibility in the larger
economy of enjoyment and tropethis means that the Symbolic register of our
critique should be prior to the Imaginary register of their aff
Public)
Lacans impulse to wring the neck of rheto ric signifies a desire to shock rheto ric into thinking
discourse differently, awakening rheto ric from its imaginary slumber to return it to a fuller,
more analytically rigorous conception of rhe tori cal effect. Such an analytic would attend to the
whole economy of trope and enjoyment that underwrites rhetorics effects by fig ur ing trope as
the name for the labor of signification in the context of failed unicity . There are two significant implications
to this claim. First, it is necessary to assign a proper analytic place for and importance to traditional
staples of rhe torical criticism (exchanged meanings, context, and propriety) by locating them in
the Imaginary register, and by extension as effects of a larger context for the context of specific
discoursesin the work of the Symbolic in both producing subjects, regulating their conditions
for exchange, and fig ur ing their modes of relation to other subjects. Second, naming the
Symbolic (and its material manifestation in the Lacanian unconscious) as the context for the context of rhe tori
cal action shifts rhe tori cal theorys understanding of the rhe tori cal relation from a nearexclusive focus on what is proximate to the situation to the whole economy of trope and
enjoyment that exceeds, underwrites, and is the condition of possibility for specific discourses.
What would this mean for practices of rhe tori cal criticism? Put simply, it means
that as an analytic category,

trope is logi cally prior to all the operations that stem from the Imaginary register of rhetoric.
Revisiting his famous essay with Gerald Mohrmann, Lincoln at Cooper Union: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Text, Michael Leff
argues that a traditional neoclassical, text- centric understanding of rhe tori cal criticism does not presume that a text can only
have one meaning.46 Leff argues that, to the contrary, critical argument opens the possibility of approaching the text not as a fixed
artifact but as the object of rhe tori cal controversy whose meaning and significance change as we come to read it from different
angles. . . . Recognition of the contingency of interpretive work does not prevent us from taking a position; it only makes us more
aware that interpretations of texts are like other beliefs and commitments; they depend upon our his tori cal situation, on our
position in some particular time and place, and are justified through argument to some particular audience.47 Critics have long
noted that the actual empirical conditions of a specific address remain largely guesswork. A critics vision of the actual conditions of
a speech is the result of a his tori cal reconstruction that has a dubious relationship with the origi nal situation of a speech. Leff s
tacit concession to the impossibility of recovering the moment of reception and the situational constraints that mediate the reception
of a speech should shift the conventional understanding of neoclassical criticism. Instead of simply recovering the meaning of a
speech in its origi nal context, readings of a texts relationship to its origi nal audience are necessarily filtered through the his tori cal
location of the critic and justified by argument to some particular audience. The audience that Leff is referring to is not the origi
nal audience of the speech. Rather, the particular audience in this case is an audience of fellow contemporary critics, to whom a
critic presents a reading of the situational constraints of a text as a matter of almost conjectural reconstruction. Thus, even
neoclassical rhe tori cal criticism is not a reading of the work of a text in relation to its origi nal audience. Rather, neoclassical
criticism posits an origi nal audience of the speech for the sake of reading the rhe tori cal effectivity of a text in the presence of a
contemporary audience of critics, but this origi nal audience never quite escapes its status as a kind of prosopopoeia: one reads a text
largely by imagining and personifying an audience that receives it, and the measure of this reading is the way that it reveals the
function of the text for its imagined origi nal audience.
AFF Answers
No link and impact turn the aff does not rely upon a universal understanding of
race we allow for black individualism and resistance however we also
recognize that the black body has been objectively demonized by the status quo
only the aff confronts that the alts attempt to wish away anti-blackness fails
DSRB et al, 13
Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley, Assistant Professor of Public Address and Advocacy Director of
Debate, William Pitt Debating Union, Department of Communication University of Pittsburgh;
AND Amber Kelsie, M.A., Doctoral Student, Department of Communication University of
Pittsburgh; AND Nicholas Brady, Doctoral Student, Department of Culture & Theory, University
of California, Irvine; AND Ignacio Evans, B.A. History, Towson University; We Be Fresh As
Hell Wit Da Feds Watchin: A Bad Black Debate Family Responds, 10/6/2013,
http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/we-be-fresh-as-hell-wit-da-fedswatchin-a-bad-black-debate-family-responds // MS
The Philcox translation offers a fairly different wording; significantly what is removed from the Philcox translation entirely is the
line: Some critics will take it on themselves to remind us that this proposition has a converse. I say this is false.[24] After this
section of the passage, Markmanns translation goes on to explain that the metaphysics of the Black (customs and
agencies) were wiped out by civilization. [25] In the Philcox translation, these same agental capacities and conditions
are abolished.[26] Here is a moment in which a studied comparison between the two translationsand the Markmann translation
in particularcan be enlightening. Though the wordings are different (and one more strongly worded than the other), the
relationship of whiteness to blackness offered in each is not mutually exclusive, but mutually revealing. Bankey interprets
this passage as indicating that a discussion of blackness as such reproduces racism by ignoring
lived experience of individual blacks. We think that is the opposite of what is expressed in either
version of the text. Rather, the texts explain that individual/subjective/agental experience of a
given black person is exactly what cannot be accounted for because that being is overdetermined
by blackness (at symbolic, material, and metaphysical levels). Bankey misreads Philcoxs translation to
suggest that we can get at the lived experience of the black, in a way that would be intelligible under the current (white) framing
(gaze). But the rest of the passage, not to mention the entire chapter and book as a whole, explain at length that lived
experience is exactly what is unintelligible and distinct from subjective/white individual

capacities for experience. In light of this reading, Bankeys implication that black people (in
debate/in the world) stop interrogating whiteness and white bodies is especially nonsensical. It
assumes that racism is simply petty prejudice that can be bi-directionally imposed. Fanon in this
passage makes it clear that this proposition has no converse. There are criticisms that one could make of
Wilderson, and many have. We here do not care to defend Wildersons use of psychoanalysis for example. But the
suggestion that he makes his burden a proof of universal black experience has failed to see the
forest for the trees. Black experience is universalized as black (Look! A Negro!). Individual
experience is constituted in this conundrum. This conditionof blacknessis something
we must work through, rather than wish away .
Impact
ImpactDeath Drive
Their life-affirmation culminates in fundamentalist violence only the death drive
makes life worth living
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 224-227 // MS
On the level of common sense, this opposition is not symmetrical. What
thinking person would not want to side

with those who love life rather than death. 3 Everyone can readily understand how one might
love life, but the love of death is a counterintuitive phenomenon. It seems as if it must be code language for
some other desire, which is how Western leftists often view it. Interpreting terrorist attacks as an ultimately life-affirming response
to imperialism and impoverishment, they implicitly reject the possibility of being in love with death. But this type of interpretation
can't explain why so many suicide bombers are middle-class, educated subjects and not the most downtrodden victims of imperialist
power.4 We must imagine that for subjects such as these there is an appeal in death itself. Those who emphasize
the importance of death at the expense of life do so because death is the source of value. 5 The
fact that life has an end, that we do not have an infinite amount of time to experience every
possibility, means that we must value some things above others. Death creates hierarchies of
value, and these hierarchies are not only vehicles for oppression but the pathways through
which what we do matters at all. Without the value that death provides, neither love
nor ice cream nor friendship nor anything that we enjoy would have any special
worth whatsoever . Having an infinite amount of time, we would have no incentive to opt for
these experiences rather than other ones. We would be left unable to enjoy what seems to make
life most worth living. Even though enjoyment itself is an experience of the infinite, an
experience of transcending the limits that regulate everyday activity, it nonetheless depends on
the limits of finitude. When one enjoys, one accesses the infinite as a finite subject, and it is this
contrast that renders enjoyment enjoyable. Without the limits of finitude, our experience of the
infinite would become as tedious as our everyday lives (and in fact would become our everyday experience).
Finitude provides the punctuation through which the infinite emerges as such. The struggle to assert the importance of death- the
act of being in love with death, as bin Laden claims that the Muslim youths are - is a mode of avowing one's
allegiance to the infinite enjoyment that death doesn't extinguish but instead spawns. This is exactly
why Martin Heidegger attacks what he sees as our modem inauthentic relationship to death. In Being and Time Heidegger sees our
individual death as an absolute limit that has the effect of creating value for us. As he puts it, "With death, Dasein stands before itself
in its own most potentiality-for-being. This is a possibility in which the issue is nothing less than Dasein's Beinginthe-world.""
Without the anticipation of our own death, we flit through the world and fail to take up fully an
attitude of care, the attitude most appropriate for our mode of being , according to Heidegger. Nothing
really matters to those who have not recognized the approach of their own death. By depriving
us of an authentic relationship to death, an ideology that proclaims life as the only
value creates a valueless world where nothing matters to us. But of course the
partisans of life are not actually eliminating death itself. They simply privilege life over death and see the world
in terms of life rather than death, which would seem to leave the value-creating power of death intact. But this is not what happens.
By privileging life and seeing death only in terms of life, we change the way we experience the
world. Without the mediation that death provides, the system of pure life becomes a system
utterly bereft of value. We can see this in the two great systems of modernity- science and capitalism. Both modern science
and capitalism are systems structured around pure life. Neither recognizes any ontological limit but instead continually embarks on
a project of constant change and expansion. The scientific quest for knowledge about the world moves forward without regard for
humanitarian or ethical concerns, which is why ethicists incessantly try to reconcile scientific discoveries with morality after the fact.
After scientists develop the ability to clone, for instance, we realize what cloning portends for our sense of identity and attempt to
police the practice. After Oppenheimer helps to develop the atomic bomb, he addresses the world with pronouncements of its evil.
But this rearguard action has nothing to do with science as such. Oppenheimer the humanist is not Oppenheimer the scientist.10
The same dynamic is visible with capitalism. As an economic system, it promotes constant evolution and change just as life itself
does. Nothing can remain the same within the capitalist world because the production of value depends on the creation of the new
commodity, and even the old commodities must be constantly given new forms or renewed in some way.11 Capitalism produces
crises not because it can't produce enough- crises of scarcity dominate the history of the noncapitalist world, not the capitalist one but because it produces too much. The crisis of capitalism is always a crisis of overproduction. The capitalist economy suffocates
from too much life, from excess, not from scarcity or death. Both science and capitalism move forward without any acknowledged
limit, which is why they are synonymous with modernity." Modernity emerges with the bracketing of death's
finitude and the belief that there is no barrier to human possibility." The problem with the
exclusive focus on life at the expense of death is that it never finds enough life and
thus remains perpetually dissatisfied. The limit of this project is, paradoxically, its own
infinitude. It evokes what Hegel calls the bad infinite - an infinite that is wrongly conceived as having no relation at all to the
finite. We succumb to the bad infinite when we pursue an unattainable object and fail to see that
the only possible satisfaction rests in the pursuit itself. The bad infinite - the infinite of
modernity- depends on a fundamental misrecognition. We continue on this path only as long as
we believe that we might attain the final piece of the puzzle, and yet this piece is constitutively
denied us by the structure of the system itself. We seek the commodity that would finally bring us complete
satisfaction, but dissatisfaction is built into the commodity structure , just as obsolescence is built
into the very fabric of our cars and computers. Like capitalism, scientific inquiry cannot find a final answer: beneath atomic theory
we find string theory, and beneath string theory we find something else. In both cases, the system prevents us from recognizing
where our satisfaction lies; it diverts our focus away from our activity and onto the goal that we pursue. In this way, modernity
produces the dissatisfaction that keeps it going. But it also produces another form of dissatisfaction that wants
to arrest its forward movement. The further the project of modernity moves in the direction of
life, the more forcefully the specter of fundamentalism will make its presence felt. The
exclusive focus on life has the effect of producing eruptions of death. As the lifeaffirming logic of science and capitalism structures all societies to an increasing extent, the
space for the creation of value disappears. Modernity attempts to construct a symbolic space
where there is no place for death and the limit that death represents. As opposed to the closed world of
traditional society, modernity opens up an infinite universe.14 But this infinite universe is established through
the repression of finitude. Explosions of fundamentalist violence represent the return of what
modernity's symbolic structure cannot accommodate. As Lacan puts it in his seminar on psychosis, "Whatever is
refused in the symbolic order, in the sense of Verwerfung, reappears in the real." 15 Fundamentalist violence is
blowback not simply in response to imperialist aggression, as the leftist common sense would
have it. This violence marks the return of what modernity necessarily forecloses .
Alt
Alt vs. Emancipatory Politics

The alternative is to embrace the death drive thats a prerequisite to
understanding desire which is key to any emancipatory political project
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 19-22 // MS
If we accept the contradictory conclusion that some idea of progress inheres in every system of
thought and that the psychoanalytic concept of the death drive shows the impossibility of
progress, this leaves psychoanalytic thought and especially a psychoanalytic political project on
difficult ground. It might explain the seemingly absolute pessimism of the later Freud, Freud after 1920, who appears to have
abandoned his belief in the efficaciousness of the psychoanalytic cure. One of his final essays, Analysis Terminable and
Interminable, written in 1937 (just two years before his death), lays bare Freuds doubts concerning our ability to break from the
power of repetition. Here, Freud conceives of subjects refusal to abandon castration anxiety and penis envy as emblematic of the
intractability of repetition. He notes: At no other point in ones analytic work does one suffer more from an oppressive feeling that
all ones repeated efforts have been in vain, and from a suspicion that one has been preaching to the winds, than when one is trying
to persuade a woman to abandon her wish for a penis on the ground of its being unrealizable or when one is seeking to convince a
man that a passive attitude to men does not always signify castration and that it is indispensable in many relationships in life.31
That is, the repetition that centers around traumatic loss acts as a barrier that we cannot progress
beyond. In light of this barrier, the formulation of a psychoanalytically informed political project
demands that we dissociate politics from progress as it is usually conceived . We cannot escape
progress, and yet the traditional conception of progress always runs aground. This paradox must
become the foundation of any authentic psychoanalytic politics. It demands that rather than
trying to progress toward overcoming the barrier that separates us from the good society, we
begin to view identification with the barrier as the paradoxical aim of progress . The barrier to
the good society the social symptom is at once the obstacle over which we continually
stumble and the source of our enjoyment.32 The typical politics of the good aims at a future not
inhibited by a limit that constrains the present. This future can take the form of a truly
representative democracy, a socialist utopia, a society with a fair distribution of power and
wealth, or even a fascist order that would expel those who embody the limit . But the good
remains out of reach despite the various efforts to reach it . The limit separating us
from the good society is the very thing that constitutes the good society as such . Overcoming the
limit shatters the idea of the good in the act of achieving it. In place of this pursuit, a
psychoanalytic politics insists on identification with the limit rather than attempting to move
beyond or eliminate it. If there is a conception of progress in this type of politics, it is progress toward the
obstacle that bars us from the good rather than toward the good itself . Identification with the
limit involves an embrace of the repetition of the drive because it is the obstacle or limit that is
the point to which the drive returns. No one can be the perfect subject of the drive because the
drive is what undermines all perfection. But it is nonetheless possible to change ones experience
within it. The fundamental wager of psychoanalysis a wager that renders the idea of a psychoanalytic political project thinkable
is that repetition undergoes a radical transformation when one adopts a different attitude
toward it. We may be condemned to repeat, but we arent condemned to repeat the same
position relative to our repetition. By embracing repetition through identification with the
obstacle to progress rather than trying to achieve the good by overcoming this obstacle, the subject
or the social order changes its very nature. Instead of being the burden that one seeks to escape,
repetition becomes the essence of ones being and the mode through which one attains
satisfaction. Conceiving politics in terms of the embrace of repetition rather than the
construction of a good society takes the movement that derails traditional political projects and
reverses its valence. This idea of politics lacks the hopefulness that Marxism , for instance, can
provide for overcoming antagonism and loss. With it, we lose not just a utopian ideal but the
idea of an alternative future altogether the idea of a future no longer beset by intransigent limits and this idea
undoubtedly mobilizes much political energy.33 What we gain, however, is a political form that
addresses the way that subjects structure their enjoyment . It is by abandoning the
terrain of the good and adopting the death drive as its guiding principle that emancipatory
politics can pose a genuine alternative to the dominance of global capitalism rather than
incidentally creating new avenues for its expansion and development. The death drive is the
revolutionary contribution that psychoanalysis makes to political thought. But since it is a concept
relatively foreign to political thought, I will turn to various examples from history, literature, and film in order to concretize what
Freud means by the death drive and illustrate just what a politics of the death drive might look like. The chapters that follow trace
the implications of the death drive for thinking about the subject as a political entity and for conceiving the political structure of
society. Part 1 focuses on the individual subject, beginning with an explanation of how the death drive shapes this subjectivity. The
various chapters in part 1 trace the implications of the death drive for understanding how the subject enjoys, how the drive relates to
social class, how the drive impacts the subject as an ethical being, and how the subject becomes politicized. The discussion of the
impact of the death drive on the individual subject serves as a foundation for articulating its impact on society, which part 2 of the
book addresses, beginning with the impact of the death drive on the constitution of society. Part 2 then examines how the conception
of the death drive helps in navigating a path through todays major political problems: the inefficacity of consciousness raising, the
seductive power of fantasy, the growing danger of biological reductionism and fundamentalism, the lure of religious belief, and the
failure of attempts to lift repression. The two parts of the book do not attempt to sketch a political goal to be attained for the subject
or for society but instead to recognize the structures that already exist and silently inform both. The wager of what follows is that
the revelation of the death drive and its reach into the subject and the social order
can be the foundation for reconceiving freedom. The recognition of the death drive as
foundational for subjectivity is what occurs with the psychoanalytic cure . Through this cure, the
subject abandons the belief in the possibility of finding a solution to the problem of subjectivity.
The loss for which one seeks restitution becomes a constitutive loss and becomes visible as
the key to ones enjoyment rather than a barrier to it. A political project derived from
psychoanalytic thought would work to broaden this cure by bringing it outside the clinic and
enacting on society itself. The point is not, of course, that everyone would undergo psychoanalysis but that
psychoanalytic theory would function as a political theory. Politically, the importance of psychoanalysis is
theoretical rather than practical. Politically, it doesnt matter whether people undergo psychoanalytic
therapy or not. This theory would inaugurate political change by insisting not on the possibility of healing and thereby
attaining the ultimate pleasure but on the indissoluble link between our enjoyment and loss. We become free to enjoy
only when we have recognized the intractable nature of loss. Though psychoanalytic thought
insists on our freedom to enjoy, it understands freedom in a counterintuitive way. It is through
the death drive that the subject attains its freedom. The loss that founds this drive frees the
subject from its dependence on its social environment, and the repetition of the initial loss
sustains this freedom. By embracing the inescapability of traumatic loss, one embraces ones
freedom, and any political project genuinely concerned with freedom must orient itself around
loss. Rather than looking to the possibility of overcoming loss, our political projects must work
to remain faithful to it and enhance our contact with it. Only in this way does politics have the
opportunity to carve out a space for the freedom to enjoy rather than restricting it under the
banner of the good.
--- 2NC Alt vs. Marxism Affs

Our politics of the death drive is a comparatively better foundation for
emancipatory politics than Marxism they are unable to explain enjoyment
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 1-2 // MS
Psychoanalysis begins with individual subjects and their suffering. By allowing subjects to speak freely in the analytic session and by
offering an interpretative intervention in this speech, psychoanalysis aims to reduce the impairment that their psychic disorder
creates in their lives. In contrast to Marxism, which also attempts to ameliorate human suffering, psycho analysis has no explicit
political program designed to lessen the misery that Freud and his descendants find in their patients. There is no revolt of the
patients that would correspond to the revolt of the proletariat. When Freud makes political pronouncements, they tend to be
negative ones, expressing his skepticism about plans for social betterment. But it is my contention that a viable
political project does inhere within psychoanalytic theory and that this project provides an
avenue for emancipatory politics alter the end of Marxism in the twentieth century . There are points
at which thin psychoanalytic politics remains proximate to Marxism, but it represents a genuine alternative that has the virtue of
explaining the latters failures. The task of this book will be to lay out the contours of this political project, one that has never been
fully developed despite numerous attempts at bringing psychoanalytic thinking to bear on politics. Unlike most previous
formulations of a psychoanalytic politics, what follows will take as its point of departure not the
early Freud of the sexual drive but the later Freud of the death drive (and its development in the thought of
Jacques Lacan and his followers). I will conspicuously ignore all psychoanalytic thinking that deviates from Freud and from his
specific rendering of the death drive. This means that psychoanalytic luminaries such as Alfred Adler, CarlJung, Melanie Klein,
Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion, and even Freuds own daughter Anna Freud will have no role to play in this account of the
psychoanalytic political project. The death drive has historically acted as a stumbling block for
psychoanalytic politics because it involves our self-sabotage. It leads us to work unconsciously

against social betterment. This is why, after its discovery in 1920, Freud becomes so much more pessimistic as a thinker.
But just as the death drive leads to self-sabotage, it also acts as the source of our enjoyment, and
by shifting the terrain of emancipatory politics to that of enjoyment, psychoanalysis offers what
Marxisms political program could not. The politics of psychoanalysis after Marxism is an
emancipatory project based on the self-sacrificing enjoyment located in the death drive .
Marxism is able to theorize sacrifice as necessary for future pleasure, but it is unable to conceive
sacrifice as an end in itself, as a source of enjoyment .1 This represents its fundamental
limitation .
Alt vs. Policy Affs (+ Utopia Affs)

Our alternative is to embrace the death drive refounding society on the embrace
of traumatic loss destroys social violence and eliminates threat construction policy
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 283-286 // MS
There is no path leading from the death drive to utopia. The death drive undermines every
attempt to construct a utopia; it is the enemy of the good society . It is thus not surprising that political
thought from Plato onward has largely ignored this psychic force of repetition and negation. But this does not mean that
psychoanalytic thought concerning the death drive has only a negative value for political
theorizing. It is possible to conceive of a positive politics of the death drive. The previous chapters have
attempted to lay out the political implications of the death drive, and, on this basis, we can sketch what a society founded on a
recognition of the death drive might look like. Such a recognition would not involve a radical
transformation of society: in one sense, it would leave everything as it is. In contemporary social
arrangements, the death drive subverts progress with repetition and leads to the widespread
sacrifice of self-interest for the enjoyment of the sacrifice itself. This structure is impervious to
change and to all attempts at amelioration. But in another sense, the recognition of the death
drive would change everything. Recognizing the centrality of the death drive would not eliminate
the proclivity to sacrifice for the sake of enjoyment, but it would change our relationship to this
sacrifice. Rather than being done for the sake of an ultimate enjoyment to be achieved in the
future, it would be done for its own sake. The fundamental problem with the effort to
escape the death drive and pursue the good is that it leaves us unable to locate
where our enjoyment lies. By positing a future where we will attain the ultimate enjoyment
(either through the purchase of the perfect commodity or through a transcendent romantic union or through the attainment of some
heavenly paradise), we replace the partial enjoyment of the death drive with the image of a complete
enjoyment to come. There is no question of fully enjoying our submission to the death drive. We will always remain alienated
from our mode of enjoying. As Adrian Johnston rightly points out, Transgressively overcoming the impediments of the drives
doesnt enable one to simply enjoy enjoyment. 1 But we can transform our relationship to the impediments
that block the full realization of our drive. We can see the impediments as the internal product
of the death drive rather than as an external limit. The enjoyment that the death drive provides,
in contrast to the form of enjoyment proffered by capitalism, religion, and utopian politics, is at
once infinite and limited. This oxymoronic form of enjoyment operates in the way that the concept does in Hegels Logic.
The concept attains its infinitude not through endless progress toward a point that always remains beyond and out of reach but
through including the beyond as a beyond within itself. As Hegel puts it, The universality of the concept is the achieved beyond,
whereas that bad infinity remains afflicted with a beyond which is unattainable but remains a mere progression to infinity.2 That is
to say, the concept transforms an external limit into an internal one and thereby becomes both infinite and limited. The infinitude of
the concept is nothing but the concepts own self-limitation. The enjoyment that the death drive produces also
achieves its infinitude through self-limitation. It revolves around a lost object that exists only
insofar as it is lost, and it relates to this object as the vehicle for the infinite unfurling of its
movement. The lost object operates as the self-limitation of the death drive through which the
drive produces an infinite enjoyment. Rather than acting as a mark of the drives finitude, the
limitation that the lost object introduces provides access to infinity. A society founded on a
recognition of the death drive would be one that viewed its limitations as the
source of its infinite enjoyment rather than an obstacle to that enjoyment. To take
the clearest and most traumatic example in recent history, the recognition of the death drive in 1930s
Germany would have conceived the figure of the Jew not as the barrier to the ultimate
enjoyment that must therefore be eliminated but as the internal limit through which German
society attained its enjoyment. As numerous heorists have said, the appeal of Nazism lay in its ability to
mobilize the enjoyment of the average German through pointing out a threat to that enjoyment.
The average German under Nazism could enjoy the figure of the Jew as it appeared in the form
of an obstacle, but it is possible to recognize the obstacle not as an external limit but as an
internal one. In this way, the figure of the Jew would become merely a figure for the average
German rather than a position embodied by actual Jews. Closer to home, one would
recognize the terrorist as a figure representing the internal limit of global
capitalist society. Far from serving as an obstacle to the ultimate enjoyment in that society, the terrorist provides
a barrier where none otherwise exists and thereby serves as the vehicle through which capitalist
society attains its enjoyment. The absence of explicit limitations within contemporary global
capitalism necessitates such a figure: if terrorists did not exist, global capitalist society would
have to invent them. But recognizing the terrorist as the internal limit of global capitalist society
would mean the end of terrorism. This recognition would transform the global landscape and
deprive would-be terrorists of the libidinal space within which to act. Though some people may
continue to blow up buildings, they would cease to be terrorists in the way that we now
understand the term. A self-limiting society would still have real battles to fight. There would remain a need for this society
to defend itself against external threats and against the cruelty of the natural universe. Perhaps it would require nuclear weapons in
space to defend against comets or meteors that would threaten to wipe out human life on the planet. But it would cease
positing the ultimate enjoyment in vanquishing an external threat or surpassing a natural limit.
The external limit would no longer stand in for a repressed internal one. Such a society would instead enjoy its own internal
limitations and merely address external limits as they came up. Psychoanalytic theory never preaches, and it
cannot help us to construct a better society. But it can help us to subtract the illusion of the good
from our own society. By depriving us of this illusion, it has the ability to transform our thinking
about politics. With the assistance of psychoanalytic thought, we might reconceive politics in a direction completely opposed to
that articulated by Aristotle, to which I alluded in the introduction. In the Politics, Aristotle asserts: Every state is a community of
some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone always acts in order to obtain that which they
think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which
embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.3 Though later political thinkers have
obviously departed from Aristotle concerning the question of the content of the good society, few have thought of politics in terms
opposed to the good. This is what psychoanalytic thought introduces. If we act on the basis of enjoyment rather
than the good, this does not mean that we can simply construct a society that privileges
enjoyment in an overt way. An open society with no restrictions on sexual activity, drug use, food consumption, or play in
general would not be a more enjoyable one than our own. That is the sure path to impoverishing our ability to enjoy, as the
aftermath of the 1960s has made painfully clear. One must arrive at enjoyment indirectly. A society centered
around the death drive would not be a better society, nor would it entail less suffering. Rather
than continually sacrificing for the sake of the good, we would sacrifice the good for the sake of
enjoyment. A society centered around the death drive would allow us to recognize that we enjoy
the lost object only insofar as it remains lost.
AT:
Freud = Hompohobic/Sexist/Etc.
No link we dont have to defend everything Freud ever said his particular
proclivities can be separated from his overarching theories
McGowan, 13
2013, pg. 4 // MS
The problem with this appropriation is the point at which it arrests the descriptive process of psychoanalytic interpretation.
Psychoanalysis does not merely describe the structure of one culture or socioeconomic formation (such as patriarchy or capitalism);
it instead insists on a fundamental validity across cultural and socioeconomic boundaries. It also insists on this validity across
different historical epochs. It is, in short, a universal theory concerning the relationship between the individual subject and society.6
Of course, Freud discovered psychoanalysis in a particular historical situation that shaped how
he presented his insights and even the ideas he could formulate. But one can separate the
particular elements (like the Oedipus complex or the labeling of homosexuality as a perversion)
from the universal ones (like the antagonistic nature of society or the fact of castration as the
requirement for entrance into society). The challenge for the psychoanalytic theorist is
discovering the universality in Freuds discoveries, but it is this universality that presents an obstacle for any
political project. If the antagonism between the subject and the social order is irreducible, then the stumbling block is not just
capitalism or patriarchy but human society itself.
Lack Real
the structuring thesis claim of this part of debate is that desire lacks as a result of
the structure of language on the speaking organism the aff is an attempt at
providing a palliative to the ills of the social order which results only in
calcification which turns the case
Edkins 3
Jenny, U of Wales Aberystwyth; Trauma and the Memory of Politics, pg. 11-14 // MS
In the psychoanalytic account the subject is formed around a lack , and in the face of trauma. We
become who we are by finding our place within the social order and family structures into which
we are born. That social order is produced in symbolic terms, through language. Language does
not just name things that are already there in the world. Language divides up the world in
particular ways to produce for every social grouping what it calls 'reality'. Each language - each symbolic
or social order has its own way of doing this. Crucially, none of these are complete; none of them can find a
place for everything. This is a logical limitation, not a question of a symbolic or social order
being insufficiently developed. Completeness or closure is impossible. There is always,
inevitably, something that is missed out, something that cannot be symbolised, and this is one
part of what psychoanalytic theory calls 'the real'. In its birth into the symbolic or social order,
into language, the subject is formed around, and through a veiling of, that which cannot be
symbolized the traumatic real. The real is traumatic, and has to be hidden or forgotten, because
it is a threat to the imaginary completeness of the subject. The 'subject' only exists in as far as
the person finds their place within the social or symbolic order. But no place that the person
occupies as a mother, friend, consumer, activistcan fully express what that person is. There is
always something more. Again, this is not a question of people not fitting into the roles available for them and a call for
more person-friendly societies. Nor does it concern multiple or fragmented identities in a postmodern world. It is a matter of
a structural impossibility. If someone is, say, a political activist, there is always the immediate
question of whether they are sufficiently involved to count as an activist: don't activists have to
be more committed, to take part in more than just demonstrations, shouldn't they stand for
office? On the other hand, are they perhaps more than an activist does that description do justice to what they are, to their role in
the party? There is always an excess, a surplus, in one direction or the other. However, we choose on the whole to
ignore this - to forget this impossibility, and to act as if completeness and closure were possible.
We hide the traumatic real, and stick with the fantasy of what we call social reality. As I have argued
elsewhere, the political is that which enjoins us not to forget the traumatic real but rather to
acknowledge the constituted and provisional nature of what we call social reality. Politics refers to the
sphere of activity and institutions that is called 'politics' as opposed to 'economics' or 'society'. Politics is part of what we call
social reality. It exists within the agendas and frameworks that are already accepted within the
social order. The political, in its 'properly traumatic dimension', on the other hand, concerns the
real. It refers to events in which politics of the first sort and its institutions are brought into
being. This can be the day-to-day production and reproduction of the social and symbolic order.
This continual process has to take place; the social order is not natural, it doesn't exist unless it is produced continually. The
political also takes place at moments when major upheavals occur that replace a preceding social
and legal system and set up a new order in its place. At such points, the symbolism and ideology that concealed
the fragile and contingent nature of authority collapse altogether and there is a brief interregnum before the new order imposes a
different form of concealment. The way that time figures in the psychoanalytic account is interesting. A certain non-linearity is
evident: time no longer moves unproblematically from past through present to future. In a sense, subjects only retrospectively
become what they already are - they only ever will have been. And the social order too shares this retroactive constitution. The
subject and the social order in which the subject finds a place are both in a continual process of
becoming. Neither exists as a fixed entity in the present moment , as the common-sense view in western
culture might lead us to expect. Both are always in the process of formation . This is because the two are so
intimately related. The person is formed, not through a process of interaction with the social order
(since that would mean thinking of the social as already there), but by imagining or supposing
that the social order exists. This supposing by the individual is what brings the social into being.
We have to imagine that others will respond to us before we speak, but it is only our speaking, of course, that enables them to
respond. But supposing that the social exists does not only produce the social order, it also, simultaneously, brings the individual
into existence too. When our speaking elicits a response, we recognise ourselves as subjects in that
response. This recognition is belated when viewed through the lens of a linear temporality: it is not at the moment we
decide to speak that we see who we are, but only a moment later, when we get a response. The
response tells us not who we are now, since we are no longer that - we have already changed. It
tells us who we were, at the moment when we spoke. This is the sense in which we never are, we
only ever will hazy been. Like the distant stars, whose past we know from the light that has taken millions of years to reach
us but whose present we can only guess at, we can only know what we were, not what we are. And even that is also a guess, of course.
In a similar way, when we listen to a sentence being spoken, we can predict what is being said, but we cannot be sure we were right
until the sentence is completed and over. Some forms of speech - rhetoric and jokes for example - play on that unpredictability. The
uncertainty and unpredictability that this involves can be unsettling. In the rational west, we tend to seek certainty
and security above all. We don't like not knowing. So we pretend that we do. Or that if we don't
we could, given sufficient scientific research effort and enough money. We forget the
uncertainties involved and adopt a view that what we call social reality - which Slavoj Zizek calls social
fantasy -- is basically knowable. We adopt an ontology a view of being and the nature of things - that depends on a
progressive linear notion of time. Things can 'be' in our modern western sense only in the context of this
temporality. They 'are' because they have a history in time, but they are at the same time separate from that history. But
central to this solution to doubt is forgetting, as we have seen. The fantasy is only convincing if, once it has
been put in place, we can forget that it is a fantasy. What we are forgetting some would say deliberately - is the real, that which
cannot be symbolised, and that which is produced as an excess or surplus by any attempt at symbolisation. We do not
remember the trauma that lies at the root of subjectivity, the lack or gap that remains, even
within what we call social reality. This position leads to a depoliticisation . We forget that a
complete, non-antagonistic society is impossible. We strive for completion and closure, often at
any price. There are a number of ways in which this is done, according to Zizek.'' The first is communitarian attempts to
produce a close homogeneous society arche-politics. Political struggle disappears because everyone agrees on everything. 'The
second, most common in the liberal west, Zizek calls para-politics. Here the political is replaced by politics.
Standardised competition takes place between accepted political parties according to pre-set rules, the prize being a turn at executive
control of the state bureaucracy. Politics has become policing or managerial control . In the third
meta-politics, political conflict is seen as a shadow theatre, with the important events taking place in another scene, that of economic
processes. Politics should be cancelled when economic processes have worked themselves out (as scientific materialism predicts)
and matters can be decided by rational debate and the collective will. Finally, we have ultra-politics, where political
struggle becomes warfare, and the military are called in. There is no common ground for debate
and politics is militarised. If we are to resist such attempts to 'gentrify' or depoliticise the political
we have to recall the constituted, provisional and historically contingent nature of every social
order, of every ontology. This position, which Zizek calls 'traversing the fantasy', 'tarrying with the negative' or fidelity to
the ontological crack in the universe, is uncomfortable." It involves an acceptance of the lack of trauma at the
centre of the subject and the non-existence of any complete, closed social order .
The inherent imperfection of language forms a Lack in the subject
Viego, 7
Antonio Viego, Professor at Duke University; Dead Subjects: Toward a Politics of Loss in
Latino Studies, pg. 15-16 // MS
As I briefly explained earlier, every
human organism must at some point choose language in order to

express his or her needs. Bruce Fink succinctly argues that the child allows "him or herself to be represented by words.""2 In Seminar 1,
Lacan illustrates this point when he teaches, All human beings share in the universe of symbols. They are
included in it and submit to it, much more than they constitute it. They are much more its
supports than its agents."" Since language is a system of signifiers in which each signifier means
something only by virtue of its difference from another signifier, every demand we make in
language will always have a distorting effect with respect to the need we try to express in its
medium. There are, ultimately, no positive terms in language. When the human organism inscribes itself in
language it becomes a subject of language, and as a result of this inscription every determination
of the subject will be by necessity indeterminate. Lacan understands the inscription of the
subject in language as constituting a loss, a loss of a hypothesized fullness prior to the impact of
language that he will refer to as belonging to the order of the Real. This notion of fullness prior
to language is also conceptually linked to Lacan's theory of jouissance. The privative effects of language as
structure on the speaking organism, therefore, have to do with this primordial loss. Once we become subjects of the signifier
we can never simply make good on this loss; it is irreconcilable. And what of the generative effects of language as
structure on the speaking human organism? These have to do with how language generates human desire . Dean describes
how "the agent of the cut that produces both subject and object is, of course, language. According to Lacan, symbolic networks
dissect the human body, producing leftovers that cause desire. The ill fit between language and
the body introduces wrinkles and gaps that generate desire. We might say that the unconscious and desire exist only
as a consequence of this disharmony between the structures of language and those of the body:" The understanding of the subject as an effect of the
signifier and the idea of this primordial loss that attends each human subjects inscription in language continue not to figure in theories of ethnicracialized subjectivity and experience within critical race and ethnicity studies knowledge projects like Latino and Chicano studies, for example.
Why, we might ask, should we even be concerned with these failures of engagement? What, if
anything, do we stand to lose or gain by taking or not taking these issues into consideration? The
result for our scholarship is an undertheorized explanation of loss and trauma at the psychic,
political, juridical, and economic levels, as well as an overly simplistic and commonsensical
conceptualization of human subjectivity in which we bracket the effects of language on the
speaking organism in order to win back some empty promise of fullness and completeness . In this
latter compensatory, falsely reparative critical move, we, against our best intentions, provide precisely the image of
ethnic-racialized subjectivity as whole, complete, and transparent, an image upon which racist
discourse thrives and against which we imagine we are doing battle.
Psych = Fascist
Foucaults critique of governmentality is incoherent without an infusion of
psychoanalytic theory
Sangren, 04
P. Steven Sangren, Chinese and Taiwanese socio-cultural anthropologist and Professor of
anthropology at Cornell University who studies psychoanalysis and religion; Psychoanalysis
and Its Resistances in Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: Lessons for Anthropology,
Ethos, Vo. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pg. 110-122
Since the publication of Obeyesekere's argument it has become increasingly clear that kindred issues transcend the disciplinary
boundaries of anthropology. In the humanities and cognate social sciences, there is a wide-ranging, almost
ubiquitous obsession revolving around the nature of the human "subject" and how , in the context of
various and relentless attacks upon "humanism," to restore a sense of individual and collective efficacy,
power, or control-often glossed as "agency"-to social and historical process . From the vantage of
psychoanalysis, intellectual trends ranging from Marxism, to structuralism, and post-structuralism seem to share at
least a penchant to diminish the role of individuals, "agents," or "subjects" in their variously
materially or symbolically conceived systems. People or "subjects," we learn, are to be
understood as ephemeral effects, neurotic delusions, or mere reproducers of the needs or the
logic of "discourses," "modes of production," or even of language (langue) in the abstract. 3
Despite its promises to restore individual agency in a more dialectical understanding of social
process, even "practice theory"-most prominently exemplified in the massive theoretical writings of Pierre Bourdieufounders in its penchant to dissolve "agency" into "habitus"- itself an effect or product of
"objective structures" (Bourdieu 1990). In the midst of this transdisciplinary ferment, no figure looms larger
than that of Michel Foucault , and in the midst of Foucault's substantial oeuvre, no work looms larger than does The
History of Sexuality, Volume 1. Arguably, it is The History of Sexuality that constitutes the clearest delineation of Foucault's longdeveloping interest in connections among discourses, power, and "the subject." My intention here, however, is not to assess either
Foucault's contributions more generally or The History of Sexuality, in particular, with reference to Foucault's contributions to the
theoretical, historical, or philosophical issues per se. Instead, I propose a reading of The History of Sexuality as
revealing tensions precisely in Foucault's own aims -tensions that, in turn, can be turned
toward illuminating anthropology's object of disciplinary identity-that is to say, "culture"-my
own object of critique.4 Although Foucault is famously and effectively a critic of psychoanalysis,
my aim, paradoxically, is to recruit a reading of his indictment of psychoanalysis toward
building an argument for incorporating insights drawn from psychoanalysis into anthropology's
understanding of culture. The History of Sexuality One can distinguish two intriguing ideas regarding the nature or
constitution of "the subject" in Foucault's History of Sexuality. Most famously and explicitly, Foucault argues that
modernity is characterized by an odd conviction, bordering on obsession, to the effect that there
exists a "truth" to our (especially) sexual being that must be uncovered beneath the defensive
layers of social and psychological repression.5 Against this modernist discourse, this scientia sexualis,
Foucault insists that it is the discourse itself-most of all its "repressive hypothesis"-that
produces rather than reveals the truth of the subject. As an anthropologist, I read this argument as bearing
important affinities to our discipline's longstanding concern surrounding what is sometimes glossed as "the cultural construction of
the person." Intertwined with this argument, however, one can discern another, less explicit, notion of personhood-a notion that
congeals most explicitly around Foucault's discussions of ars erotica as an archaic procedure for "producing the truth of sex"-an
alternative to modernity's scientia sexualis. "In the erotic art," Foucault writes, truth is drawn from pleasure itself, understood as a
practice and accumulated as experience; pleasure is not considered in relation to an absolute law of the permitted and the forbidden,
nor by reference to a criterion of utility, but first and foremost in relation to itself; it is experienced as pleasure, evaluated in terms of
its intensity, its specific quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul. [Foucault 1970:57] In contrast, our
civilization possesses no ars erotica. In return, it is undoubtedly the only civilization to practice a scientia sexualis; or rather, the only
civilization to have developed over the centuries procedures for telling the truth of sex which are geared to a form of knowledgepower strictly opposed to the art of initiations and the masterful secret: I have in mind the confession. What I have in mind
here, however, is conveyed less in Foucault's specific arguments than by the general tenor of his language-a
diffuse but pervasive anger directed against the consequences of the repressive hypothesis
conceived as a discourse. One senses (at least I do) that Foucault intends his writings to be critical
interventions in the interest of individual freedom and that the oddly productive effects of the
"repressive hypothesis" (which Foucault indicts for entrapping us by promising a phony sort of
"emancipation") are themselves perverse and ought to inspire resistance. The possibility of a tension
between these two ideas comes from the fact that, on the one hand, "the subject" is viewed
as an effect or product of a discourse while, on the other, Foucault imagines an
alternative regime in which "pure pleasure" might be implemented for its own
sake. Of course, I am not the first to note this tension in Foucault's writing-critics range famously from Jacques
Derrida and Jiirgen Habermas to Judith Butler (Butler 1997; Derrida 1978; Habermas 1987). One might, as I have done in the
past, point it out as a logical contradiction that diminishes Foucault's legacy as a theorist of "the
subject" (Sangren 1995).6 Instead, I shall argue that Foucault's notions regarding , let us term it,
"discursive productivity" constitute an important insight into modern forms of subjectivity. But
by the same token, the resistances to this productivity evident in the tonality of his writings can
be viewed as symptomatic of some of the limits associated with conceiving "the subject" solely in
these terms. In brief, I believe that one can defend both Foucault's insights regarding discursive
productivity, on the one hand, and what I take to be his manifest rage against the repressive
hypothesis, on the other. But to do so one must also recognize the limitations of some of
Foucault's more explicit theoretical claims. To this end I employ understandings of the constitution of "the
subject" inspired, broadly speaking, by psychoanalysis. The History of Sexuality's antipathy to
psychoanalysis, which Foucault viewed as carrying into the present the procedures of inquisitorial confession, lends a
telling irony to this argument. Yet it is possible to understand crucial insights drawn from
psychoanalytic theory as providing a rationale for a dialectical or complex
understanding of "the subject" as both a product or effect of discursive
procedures, on the one hand, and as a producer (or "agent") of its own discourse
or intentions, on the other. Indeed, read in this way, it is possible even to discern affinities
between Foucault's own discourse and that of psychoanalysis. PSYCHOANALYSIS I should be a
bit more specific as to what I mean by "psychoanalysis," granting that perhaps my references may be somewhat idiosyncratic. First
and foremost, I understand psychoanalysis to revolve around the ontology of desire, its central
insight being that desire emerges as an effect or product of an infant's engagement with a
socially constituted world.7 The "infant" here can be construed as something along the lines of pure biological or embodied
potentiality; the "socially constituted world" encompasses all that we take to be culturally or discursively constituted along with the
material or phenomenal realities complexly integrated with such constructions. Following Levi-Strauss, via Freud and Lacan, I
believe that desire, like the incest tabu, marks the border between nature and culture both in evolutionary
terms, and in the emergence and on-going phenomenology of the subject or individual (Freud 1950;
Lacan 1977, 1983; Levi- Strauss 1969; Rubin 1975). That is to say, unlike an "instinct" (such as breathing) that
might be assumed to bypass culturally constituted consciousness altogether, desire is always
mediated through individual experience that includes cultural realities. But in another sense, to
locate desire at a border is misleading; one can no more abstract that which is solely an effect of
discourse or culture from our being than one can identify that which is solely a manifestation of
our biological natures.8 The conundrum I have in mind here is similar to that Butler addresses in The Psychic Life of Power
with reference to desire, resistance, and power (Butler 1997). I take one of Butler's central points to be that there is in the nature of
our subjectivity and desire a kind of double-bind complexity-and that this complexity is of a form unassimmilable to any simple
assertion of dialectical synthesis transcending natural or essential and discursive or cultural constituents. "Desire" seems designed
both logically and existentially to resist precisely the circumstances or realities-phenomenal and social-that produce it. From such
a general and abstract (or "lowest common denominator") understanding of
psychoanalysis, of course, one can trace

crucial divergences. Lacan, for example, is widely understood to have effected a "deessentializing" of Freud's vision of libido
from a problematic grounding in "instincts" by focusing on the lack or "split" occasioned by the "mirror stage" (briefly, the notion
that we form an image of our self only insofar as it is reflected back to us from the point of view of others) and the subject's entry into
language (Mitchell 1983; Rose 1983). It is probably this move away from biology toward language that most
recommends Lacan to anthropologists; we anthropologists are, after all, deeply invested in the
notion that culture can make a difference-that even desire and gender, are cultural
constructions. But this move is not also without some costs to anthropology, two of which come to mind: First, Lacan's
employments of language derive from general properties of symbolization that characterize language in general, rather any than
language in particular. In other words, the Lacanian vision is unclear as to how cultural differences might impinge on the production
of persons. For anthropologists interested in what is commonly glossed as "the cultural construction of the person," of course, this is
a serious concern.9 Whatever might be said about Freud's residual essentialism, his focus on the triad of infant, mother, father as
material actors-a kind of proto- typical "social"-leaves open the possibility of imagining different kinds of "social"-although Freud is
often and fairly criticized for not having done so. (I have in mind, for example, Malinowski's famous attempt to define a "matrilineal
complex" [1927]).10 For Lacan, in contrast, mothers and (especially) fathers are treated more abstractly as what amount to stand-ins
or embodiments of qualities like "the other," Law, and language-qualities, by implication, that manifest in all cultures. The problem
for anthropology consequent upon Lacan's deessentializing or making abstract the figures of the mother and father, whatever the
attractions with respect to disarticulating desire from biology, is that the same abstract operations would seem to characterize all
possible cultures. Second, as many have noted regarding structuralism and (to bring the discussion back to Foucault) notions of
"discursive productivity," understanding the subject primarily as an effect of language raises difficulties surrounding what is often
glossed as "agency." Is it a delusion to suppose that people possess coherence over time as individuals possessed of authentic
intentions and motives? In its initial appearance in this article I bracket "the subject" with quotation marks. My intention in doing so
is to index the ambiguity surrounding the term. There is, of course, a vast discussion in literary studies,
philosophy, and allied academic disciplines surrounding "the subject," its various social,
linguistic, and ideological determinations, and its epistemological status with respect to
personhood, individuality, or agency. It seems reasonable to suppose that this proliferation of
attention is symptomatic of wider social and cultural forces, perhaps registering (as some have argued)
an epistemic shift toward postmodernity.11 In less historical, but more philosophical, terms this proliferating
interest also might be viewed as a symptom of the same sort of tension that we have been
discussing in Foucault-a tension between an apprehension that even our intentions and deepest
desires are products of external social or linguistic realities, on the one hand, and a conviction or
need to believe that we are authentic authors of our own activities-that is to say, "agents"-on the
other. Discursive Productivity Allow me to employ Foucault's own eloquence to epitomize what I am
glossing as "discursive productivity." Foucault writes of confession, for example, that the obligation to confess is now
relayed through so many different points, is so deeply ingrained in us, that we no longer perceive it as the effect of a power that
constrains us; on the contrary, it seems to us that truth, lodged in our most secret nature, "demands" only to surface; that if it fails to
do so, this is because a constraint holds it in place, the violence of a power weighs it down, and it can finally be articulated only at the
price of a kind of liberation. Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but
shares an original affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a "political history of truth" would have to overturn
by showing that truth is not by nature free-nor error servile-but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power.
The confession is an example of this. [Foucault 1978:60] The "truth of the subject" is thus not an autonomous or essential quality to
be discovered but is, rather, an effect or product of power's imperative to apply its discursive tactics in uncovering it. Note, however,
that the same passage calls for a "politics" that would require "overthrowing" power's ability to produce "truth"-which is to say, to
produce "the subject." Such a call implies, it seems to me, another sort of truth of the subject-one that must come from somewhere
other than "power's" ability to produce it.12 But can we imagine a "truth of the subject" that would not, in
some sense, be produced by "power," "discourse," or "culture"? Anthropology's stake in this question hinges,
of course, on the conviction that culture plays an important role in constituting personhood, and as I noted earlier, Foucault's
elaborations on the productive force of discourse align with an anthropological commitment to notions of cultural construction.
Consequently, insofar as anthropology takes culture in all of its variant and particular manifestations to define human life, the
answer to my rhetorically posed question would have to be a resounding "No!" That is to say, it is inconceivable to anthropology that
a human subject could be other than a product of culture. But having made such an assertion, how then does one make sense of
Foucault's endorsement, here and more broadly, of resistance to what might be construed as, in effect, the power of culture? The
Resistant Subject of Pleasure Obviously, I have organized my discussion here to produce an opening for
psychoanalysis: If psychoanalysis understands desire to be an emergent effect of

precisely the confrontation between "nature" and "culture," desire and
personhood possess a complexity that cannot be understood as a pure effect or
product of either. Bearing this thought in mind, allow me to digress momentarily by quoting Pierre Bourdieu and JeanClaude Passeron who describe the culture of French academia in the 1960s in the following terms: The sometimes assiduous and
methodical will to achieve full studenthood does not presuppose unanimous recognition of an image of the ideal student, since the
image of what one seeks to actualize may amount to no more than the imperative urge to actualize an image. To want to be, and to
want to choose one's identity, is, first of all, to refuse to be what one has not chosen to be. The first necessity that is
refused or transfigured is that of being rooted in a social milieu. Students generally evade the
simple naming of their parents' occupation, whatever it may be. Their embarrassed silence, half-truths, or declared dissociation are
all ways of distancing themselves from the unacceptable idea that such an unchosen determination could determine the choices of
someone entirely occupied in choosing what he is to be. The aspiration to create and choose oneself does not
impose a determinate behavior, but only a symbolic use of behavior intended to signify that this
behavior has been chosen. [Bourdieu and Passeron 1979:38]13 Bourdieu and Passeron link this characterization to an
ideology of privilege in the academic culture of 1960s France, and one might plausibly argue that Foucault's implicit resistances
manifest sentiments similar to those that Bourdieu and Passeron attribute to bourgeois Parisian students. (Note, for example,
Foucault's interest in construing the life of the individual as a work of art.) Yet I believe that the desire to which Bourdieu and
Passeron draw our attention here transcends the particularities of French elitist ideology. In Chinese myth, ritual, and gender, for
example, I believe one can discern a recurrent figuring of desire oriented toward similar fantasies of radical, self-fashioning
autonomy (Sangren 2000, n.d.). Psychoanalysis has had much to say about such fantasies, but (I am convinced) does not foreground
them sufficiently. Without delving into this topic here, I venture that such fantasies
may organize our sexuality more

than our sexuality (in some solely biologically construed sense of the term) drives or produces
such fantasies. Be that as it may, all of this suggests to me that Foucault's appeals to a subjectivity
purified of power's disciplining interpellations (although they appear romantic, as Derrida argues
[1998:103], and non sequitur to the general tenor of discursive productivity) are essential to an implicit integrity
embodied in The History of Sexuality, even though they remain external to its more explicit
theorizing impulses. The implicit integrity to which I refer might be said to model that of desire
itself. That is to say, just as Foucault seems torn between the realization that subjectivity is an effect
of power (or discourse, or culture), on the one hand, and anger at this very realization, on the other; so,
too, one might say that desire is an emergent product of our realization of our dependencies on
the (especially social) world that has produced us, on the one hand, and our resistances to the
implications of this same realization for our self-fashioning autonomy, on the other .14
Concretely speaking, this realization manifests (among other loci) in the ambivalent feelings
toward parents to which psychoanalysis draws our attention.
Psychoanalysis is not fascist it is a powerful critique of the police state
Puget, 5
Janine Puget, a psychoanalyst and full member of the Psychoanalytic Association of Buenos
Aires and of the Argentine Group Psychotherapy Association; THE STATE OF THREAT AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS: From the Uncanny that Structures to the Uncanny that Alienates,
5/28/2005, http://human-nature.com/free-associations/puget.html // MS
[gender modified]
Violence perpetrated by the state is the paradigm of social violence , since those who are supposed to protect
and enforce the law wield deadly and murderous power. The state also has subtler means of violently imposing its lethal power;
these depend on economic policies and international interests. In our case the state used all these methods. We can speak of
social violence related to state terrorism, since one aim of the dictatorship was to disband any
thinking group of people who might oppose the regime. This is why political leaders were the first to be
attacked, then potential leaders, and then anyone at all. Furthermore, the dictatorship actively worked to prevent
any political response by implementing an economic policy designed to cause the
impoverishment of the greater part of the population. It is well known that people who are starving do not have
the capacity to conceive of or organize an opposition movement. It will therefore be necessary to identify certain
universal variables in each situation. The paradoxical task that we have undertaken in the present work is to transmit
something whose transmission is difficult and sometimes impossible. We shall try to find the beginnings of a solution to this
paradox. For various reasons, psychoanalytic theory does not readily acknowledge the influence of the social context on the mental
apparatus and the therapeutic situation, or seek to uncover its mental representation. Several psychoanalysts in Argentina
have applied themselves to developing theoretical concepts concerning the psychological effects
of the political repression during the dictatorship and are still doing so (Kordon and Edelman, 1983, 1986;
and many others). They did not have to wait forty years as was the case with the Nazi phenomenon. We may
perhaps have learned from that experience and we owe something to it. THEORETICAL DIFFICULTIES
Our Theoretical Past Certain paths taken by psychoanalytic theory seem to suggest that it is possible to work with a therapeutic
framework which does not take account of the social context, or else that, as psychoanalysts, we do not have the means to approach
such a subject. Is it possible to go on holding such a position without leading our patients into repression or even denial?
Psychoanalysis was born under the aegis of a bourgeois ideology dominated by the hypothesis
that psychic reality was constructed between the mother, father and child. It was based on a theory of the
drives, beside which the social context seemed secondary. Can we really believe that external social reality, the
non-ego, has no representation in psychic reality? To answer this question we shall have to observe how the social
body and its signs manifest themselves. Social reality will have a status which will enable us to recognize it. In his reply to Romain
Rolland, on the subject of the oceanic feeling described by him as 'a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external
world as a whole', Freud says that he is tempted to say that this feeling is more of an intellectual vision, accompanied of course by an
emotional charge, but which is also present in other cognitive acts: The idea of men's peoples receiving an
intimation of their connection with the world around them through an immediate feeling which
is from the outset directed to that purpose sounds so strange and fits in so badly with the fabric
of our psychology that one is justified in attempting to discover a psycho-analytic - that is, a
genetic - explanation of such a feeling (Freud, 1929, p. 65). A little later, Freud recognizes that 'our
present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive - indeed, an
all-embracing - feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the
world about it' (p. 68). In this text Freud outlines the possibility of establishing a primary relation
between the ego and the external world linked to a primitive psychic representation. This conceptual
procedure leads him to identify this relation of indissoluble communion and to describe it in certain pathological cases and in the
state of being in love. With Berenstein (1984), we have attributed the quest for an oceanic feeling and fusion as it is recreated in the
state of being in love to the primitive relation with a single and exclusive object. In his 'social' writings, Freud very subtly
identified the characteristics of social phenomena, the behaviour of the masses and their
relations with the leader. However he quickly relates this set of problems to the Oedipus complex,
castration and parricide. The problem of the mental representation of the social is a hard one. Our first step is then
to separate those theories supporting the view that the social context is irrelevant to the
psychoanalyst from those that support the opposite position. In the first case, we must make a subdivision
between moments of great social upheaval and the situation that we are describing here, the Argentinian dictatorship; for the
exclusion of the social context results not only from a scientific position, but also from the need to take refuge in a disinfected cell.
This is how the historico-genetic world monopolizes the mental life of patients and analysts and quite clearly contributes to a
mechanism which becomes a defensive bastion.
Realism
Realism overplays the role of self-interest politics is structured not around
narcissism, but around enjoyment
McGowan, 4
Vermont; The End of Dissatisfaction? Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment,
2004, pg. 4-6 // MS
[Gender modified]
Psychoanalysis, however, calls into question the idea that we primarily act on behalf of our own
interest. It allows us to see another power operating beneath the apparent
predominance of self-interest. Of course, the commonsensical understanding of psychoanalysis is exactly the
opposite of this, contending that psychoanalysis reduces everything to self-interest. This is often the basis for the most scathing
criticisms leveled at Freud himself and at psychoanalysis as a whole. For instance, John Farrell claims that under the spell of
psychoanalysis every appearance of good must be exposed as unconscious hypocrisy, every commitment to public interests and to
social institutions must be recognized for what it isa disguise for narcissistic gratification or a painful instinctual concession.10
Farrell, like so many critics of psychoanalysis, sees Freud as a prophet of human selfishness. But this attack on psychoanalysis
perhaps the most popular of all attackscompletely misunderstands what is at stake in psychoanalytic interpretation. Rather
than uncovering narcissistic self-interest behind a benevolent act, Freud uncovers the
abandonment of self-interest that is at stake behind a seemingly self-interested act. In Seminar V,
Lacan points out that Freud discovers the self-destructiveness of desire, that what we find at the foundation of the analytic
exploration of desire is masochism.11 Anyone can point out why human subjects act self-interestedly and
many thinkers before Freud (Hobbes, Machiavelli, etc.) did so but
it is the province of psychoanalysis to explain

why they are able to act against their self-interest, to transcend their narcissism. Because of this
ability to act against our interest, Freud claims that the normal man human is not only far more
immoral than he believes they believe but also far more moral than he knows they believe.12 It is on this
point that Freud directly questions Marx: for Marx, there is only self-interest; for Freud, there is something
more, and this something more is enjoymentthe jouissance factor. 13 Ironically, it was Freuds
belief that human subjects were prone to act against their self-interest that led him to doubt the
possibility of a socialist utopia. If we always acted in our self-interest, Marx would be right, and
the contradictions of capitalist society would lead to a socialist utopia. However, our abilityand
our tendencyto act against our self-interest makes such a utopia inconceivable for Freud. As
Joan Copjec notes, The psychoanalytic subject, in short, being subject to a principle beyond pleasure, is not driven to seek his own
good.14 When Freud formulated the concept of the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he did so
in order to account for the fact that we often act in complete disregard of our self-interest and
instead act out of a compulsion that we do not understand. The concept of the death drive
means that we will sacrifice anything and everything (even life itself) for our particular Thing
which is to say, for our enjoyment. Oftentimes this Thing is a national Thing, the bond that
constitutes national identity. Marxism has consistently underestimated the importance of the enjoyment of the national
Thing, but, as Slavoj Zizek points out, at no time as dramatically as at the beginning of the First World War. The working class
of Europe, well informed by the Communist International, seemed to know that the war would
not advance their interests, that it was an imperialist struggle. And yet, when the moment of decision
came, the working class in Europe supported the war almost unanimously, much to the surprise of
Lenin. Why? What did Lenin fail to take into account? He failed to consider enjoyment
specifically the degree to which the working class shared in nationalistic jouissance. What drove
them was not their self-interestthe war didnt speak to interestbut their relationship to
enjoyment. This is one indication why it is through its consideration of enjoyment that a psychoanalytic understanding of
history can supplement the Marxian version.15 Marxism allows us to understand the role of economic and social contradictions in
driving the movement of history, but it often provides an inadequate explanation of the actual politics of historical transformation
why change does or does not occur at a given time. It is on this question that psychoanalysis proves indispensable.
Psychoanalysis allows us to rethink sociopolitical history around the question of enjoyment .16
This involves understanding the nature of the transition from a society of prohibition to a
society of enjoyment. Recognizing what is at work in the society of enjoyment does not imply that the proper response is the
nostalgic one, the one so often proffered by conservative cultural critics. These conservative critics call for a return to family
values, to a world in which prohibition kept us safe from outbreaks of enjoyment. This desire for a return to the past, however, is
rarely genuine. Which is to say, such proclamations dont really want the return to the past that they claim to want. Instead, they
want the best of both worldsthe benefits of modernity (computers, cars, televisions) without their effects (isolation, enjoyment,
narcissism)and fail to grasp the interdependence of the benefits and the effects. More importantly, however, what such a position
fails to realize is that enjoyment is implicit not in the content of, say, the internet (that is, in the pornography, etc., that appears
there), but in the very form that we experience it: hooked on to a computer, in isolation from the rest of the world. It is not what one
experiences in the modern world, but that one is experiencing it in the modern way which is decisive, which produces the negative
effects of modernity that the nostalgic position hopes to avoid. This is why once we have the benefits of modernity, we also have
the painful drawbacks; one cannot have one without the other. Which means that the family values response, unless it is combined
with a radical renunciation of all aspects of modern society, is not an authentic alternative. In fact, its promise of the spoils of
modernity without its requisite disruption of tradition and traditional authority simply repeats the promise of fascism, which insists
that we can have all the advantages of modern industry and technology without sacrificing our connection to blood and soil. Even
when it avoids this fascist contradiction and does actually involve a complete rejection of modernity, such a solution is still not
viable. Any return to the past, to traditional values, will necessarily be mediated by the present.
Psychoanalysis = Falsifiable
Psychoanalysis is both falsifiable and accurate
GRANT AND HARARI 2005 (Don and Edwin, psychiatrists, Psychoanalysis, science and the
seductive theory of Karl Popper, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 39)
Attacks on psychoanalysis and the long-term therapies derived from it, have enjoyed a long history and much publicity [1-4]. Yet, the
justification for such attacks has been challenged on many grounds, including their methodology [5] and the empirically
demonstrable validity of core psychoanalytic concepts [6,7]. Also, bur- geoning neuroscience research, some of which
is summarized below, indicates
likely neurological correlates for many key clinically derived

psychoanalytic concepts such as self-coherence [8], repression [9] and projective identification
[10].
Furthermore, the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and its derivative therapies has been supported by
empirical research [11,12], particularly for patients with DSM axis II pathology. Despite this evidence, the attacks on
psychoanalysis continue unabated, not only from some psychiatrists [13,14] but also from the highest levels of politics and health
bureaucrats [15], although what exactly is being attacked is often unclear.
Drives Real
Falsifiable evidence from the hard sciences confirms the psychoanalytic theory of
the driveeven if our theory isnt perfect its the best alternative
GUTERL 2002 (Fred, What Freud Got Right, Newsweek, Nov 11,
http://www.neuropsa.org.uk/what-freud-got-right)
But a funny thing happened to Freud on the way to becoming a trivia question: as researchers looked
deeper into the physical structure of the brain, they began to find support for some of his theories.
Now a small but influential group of researchers are using his insights as a guide to future research;
they even have a journal, Neuropsychoanalysis, founded three years ago. Freuds insights on the
nature of consciousness are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience
views, wrote Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine .
Note that Damasio did not refer to psychoanalysis or the Oedipus complex. Instead the work is going on
at the fundamental level where emotions are born and primitive passions lurk in the shadows of
dreams.
HOW THE MIND WORKS
Beyond the basic animal instincts to seek food and avoid pain, Freud identified two sources of
psychic energy, which he called drives: aggression and libido (the latter encompasses sexuality but also
had a more expansive meaning, involving the desire for stimulation and achievement). The key to his
theory is that these were unconscious drives, shaping our behavior without the mediation of our waking
minds; they surface, heavily disguised, only in our dreams. The work of the past half-century in
psychology and neuroscience has been to downplay the role of unconscious universal drives, focusing
instead on rational processes in conscious life. Meanwhile, dreams were downgraded to a kind of mental
static, random scraps of memory flickering through the sleeping brain. But researchers have found
evidence that Freuds drives really do exist, and they have their roots in the limbic system, a
primitive part of the brain that operates mostly below the horizon of consciousness . Now more
commonly referred to as emotions, the modern suite of drives comprises five: rage, panic, separation
distress, lust and a variation on libido sometimes called seeking. Freud presaged this finding in 1915,
when he wrote that drives originate from within the organism in response to demands placed
on the mind in consequence of its connection with the body. Drives, in other words, are
primitive brain circuits that control how we respond to our environment foraging when were
hungry, running when were scared and lusting for a mate.
The seeking drive is proving a particularly fruitful subject for researchers. Although like the others it
originates in the limbic system, it also involves parts of the forebrain, the seat of higher mental functions.
In the 1980s, Jaak Panksepp, a neurobiologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, became
interested in a place near the cortex known as the ventraltegmental area, which in humans lies just
above the hairline. When Panksepp stimulated the corresponding region in a mouse, the animal
would sniff the air and walk around, as though it were looking for something. Was it hunger? No.
The mouse would walk right by a plate of food, or for that matter any other object Panksepp could think
of. This brain tissue seemed to cause a general desire for something new. What I was seeing, he says,
was the urge to do stuff. Panksepp called this seeking.
To neuropsychologist Mark Solms of University College in London, that sounds very much like
libido. Freud needed some sort of general, appetitive desire to seek pleasure in the world of
objects, says Solms. Panksepp discovered as a neuroscientist what Freud discovered
psychologically. Solms studied the same region of the brain for his work on dreams. Since the 1970s,
neurologists have known that dreaming takes place during a particular form of sleep known as REM
rapid eye movementwhich is associated with a primitive part of the brain known as the pons.
Accordingly, they regarded dreaming as a low-level phenomenon of no great psychological interest. When
Solms looked into it, though, it turned out that the key structure involved in dreaming was actually the
ventral tegmental, the same structure that Panksepp had identified as the seat of the seeking emotion.
Dreams, it seemed, originate with the libidowhich is just what Freud had believed.
Freuds psychological map may have been flawed in many ways, but it also happens to be the
most coherent and, from the standpoint of individual experience, meaningful theory of the mind
there is. Freud should be placed in the same category as Darwin, who lived before the discovery
of genes, says Panksepp. Freud gave us a vision of a mental apparatus. We need to talk about
it, develop it, test it. Perhaps its not a matter of proving Freud wrong or right, but of finishing the job.
Big Other Real

Neurological experiments validate Lacans Big Other
BRYANT 2009 (Levi, former Lacanian psychoanalyst, now Prof of Philosophy at Collins College,
Neurology Discovers the Lacanian Big Other, March 10,
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/neurology-discovers-the-lacanian-big-other/)
Today NPR reported on fMRI research that indicates that when people think of issues pertaining to
religion regions of the brain involved in interpersonal relations light up.

The human brain, it appears, responds to God as if he were just another person, according to a team at the
National Institutes of Health.
A study of 40 people some religious, some nonreligious found that phrases such as I believe God is
with me throughout the day and watches over me lit up the same areas of the brain we use to decipher
the emotions and intentions of other people.
The researchers speculate that the development of this sort of cognition was crucial to the
development of civilization:
Without religion, Bulbulia says, large scale cooperation, which now spans the world, would be
impossible. He adds that humans differ from other species in their ability to cooperate in very large
groups.
Religion can help foster cooperation because it ensures that people share the same set of rules about
behavior, and think theyll be punished if they dont follow them, Bulbulia says. Religion also unites
people, especially in times of great uncertainty.
This theory, I think, would indicate that its rather inaccurate to suggest that the brain processes thoughts
of God exactly as it processes thoughts of other persons. Rather, if the evolution of religious thought
played a large role in the ability of humans to engage in large scale cooperation, then this is
because the thought of God would be something like the Person = x similar Kants famous object =
x, functioning as a general structure allowing for the possibility of empathy towards all people
irregardless of their differences. Just as Kants object = x isnt any particular object but a formal
structure that allows objects to be thinkable, so too would the person = x be a formal structure enabling all
interpersonal relations (cf. Deleuzes Tournier and a World Without Others for a good gloss on this
Other-structure). Where individual encounters with particular people tend to be governed by the
same/different schema, allowing for empathy towards those whom we code as like us, the
formal schema of the Person = x would allow these individual differences to be surmounted
to a greater or lesser degree, anyway allowing for the different to be seen as a part of the same. In this
way, differences between different tribes, cultures, languages, customs, etc., could be surmounted to allow
for cooperative activity. Of course, at this meta or transcendental level of personhood the person = x
the same/different schema would still be operative but in a way in which sameness was no longer defined
by local and immediate social relations between individuals. In other words, what this neuro-research
seems to have uncovered is something like belief in the existence of the Lacanian big Other,
where the subject believes, through the screen of fantasy, that the Other is structured in a
particular way and that it desires specific things (the transformation of desire into demand via
fantasy that fills out the lack in the Other).
General A2: Falsifiability (Psychoanalysis)

Their falsifiability argument is wrongseven reasons
GRANT AND HARARI 2005 (Don and Edwin, psychiatrists, Psychoanalysis, science and the
seductive theory of Karl Popper, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 39)
Popper's falsifiability
criterion of science is seductive in its simplicity, but its simplicity is achieved

by its failure to address not only the clinical issues but also the many philosophical issues, which
have been raised in the extensive scholarly published work critical of Popper's account. Curiously, this
published work is ignored by those who invoke Popper to criticize psychoanalysis. The main criticisms may
be summarized as:
Historians of science [23,24] using the case-study method of theory change in science, including psychoanalysis
shown the inadequacy of Pop- pers criterion as a description of how scientists actually work and how theories change in the practice of science . In these accounts, inductive reasoning and the
[23], have
verification of hypotheses play a crucial role.
2
Some medical scientists describe Poppers criterion as counterproductive in the real
world [25]. For example, in formulating epidemiological hypotheses concerning the spread of HIV-AIDS, which have
public health and clinical implications, a Popperian approach which insists on strict falsification of hypotheses is less useful and less frequently used in actual practice than one which uses induction
to generalize from observations in a professionally disci- plined way.
3
Popper neglected the crucial role played by concepts and models in scientific theorizing
[24,26]. Concepts and models (including ideational, mathematical and material models) are not epiphenomena produced as an
incidental by-product of scientific thinking, but actively shape the way scientists think about their field and the questions they ask.
Watson and Cricks use of a material model to discover the double helix structure of DNA is a well-
known example.
4
The probability calculus posed difficulties for Popper as did Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle which challenged a strict falsificationist view of science and led to some personal friction
between Pop- per and Heisenberg [16, pp.257-259).
5
Popper insisted that there is but one scientific method, equally applicable to the natural
sciences (mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, geology) social sciences (anthropology, linguistics, sociology,
ethnol- ogy, history) and all other endeavours which claim to be scientific [27,28].
6
Popper misrepresented historicism in general and Marxist theory in particular [29,30]. The term *historicism was used by historians long before Popper to refer to the historian's attempt to empathize with people about whom they
were writing so as to understand them and their social conditions as they understood themselves and which gave rise to certain
actions and events, that is, a contextualist, empathic method of historical scholarship. Popper used the term historicism in
an idiosyncratic way to
mean a belief in deterministic or teleological laws governing historical change

claimed that some of Marx's predictions, such as
the increasing pauperization of the working class under capitalism which would create the conditions for
revolution, were clearly falsified by the time he (Popper) was writing, almost a century after Marx. In response, some
scholars have argued that two World Wars and the rise of the Welfare State served to distract
the working class in developed society from its lack of economic and political power, while the pauperization that Marx
predicted has occurred in the so-called underdeveloped countries. Other commentators believe that the
pauperization of the working class has in fact occurred, relative to the advance of other socioeconomic groups.
Still others hold that the Welfare State was a direct response to Marx's theory, raising the
question of how human will operates in the social sciences in ways that make them radically
different from the natural sciences. So social sciences may still claim to be scientific but Poppers
falsification criterion is irrelevant/inappropriate to social science.
7 Contrary to Poppers claim against psychoanalysis, the use of a theory to save itself from
apparently fal- sifying instances does not, prima facie, render it unscientific. Most scientific
theories include so-called auxiliary statements, including those which guide the use of instruments and methods of
observation that may be relevant to the apparent falsification of the theory in question [31). Thus, the fact that an aeroplane crashes on take-off is not a valid refutation of the Newtonian mechanics which were
which he attributed to Plato, Marx and Hegel. Thus, Popper
applied to the design of the aeroplane. On the contrary, auxiliary hypotheses to do with wind
resistance, surface friction and metal fatigue are invoked to explain the accident, explanations
which are themselves derived from Newtonian mechanics.
Falsifiability Inapplicable/Bad
Falsifiability is a bad standard and doesnt apply to psychoanalysisthis also turns
their framework impact because its an excuse to avoid argumentative clash
CASTELLANO 2012 (Daniel, The Insufficiency of Empiricism,
http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/philtheo/empiricism2.htm)
The successful use of controlled experiments in science to corroborate or falsify hypotheses has led many
to consider this testing process as the defining characteristic of scientific inquiry. Sir Karl Popper
articulated this criterion when trying to find a way to distinguish apparent pseudosciences such as
Freudianism and Marxism from genuine science. Popper asserted that a truly scientific theory must
be falsifiable, that is to say, it can be subjected to a controlled experiment that could conceivably
contradict it. Conversely, any theory that does not admit the possibility of empirical falsification is
regarded as pseudoscience.
The falsifiability standard has attained widespread acceptance among scientists, though philosophers of
science have pointed out several problems with such a definition of scientific method.
First, the falsifiability standard was chosen by Popper deliberately to exclude theories he
intuitively judged unscientific, so it possibly contains more cultural bias than an objective theory of
knowledge should. Second, it is not clear that this standard includes or excludes the theories that
Popper intended. Some Marxists and Freudians are quite amenable to refutation by experiment,
while some mathematical theories of physics deal with particle interactions that are
fundamentally unobservable. Moreover, Poppers definition might be interpreted to exclude
mathematics and many of the social sciences, particularly those studying the unrepeatable past.
Falsifiability might be a good standard for empirical natural science, but not science in the broader,
classical sense of the term.
So-called pseudosciences such as Freudianism, Marxism, and astrology do not meet the falsifiability
standard, to the extent that their defenders resort to special pleading to explain away failed predictions,
rather than admit a failure of their theory. This seems to make the scientific or pseudoscientific status
of a theory depend more on the behavior of its adherents than on any intrinsic characteristic of
the theory as such.
Tautological knowledge, which may be deduced by philosophers and mathematicians, would
seem to be inherently unfalsifiable. This exclusion reminds us that a theory of empirical science
can never serve as a general theory of knowledge, as there are other possible paths to knowledge.
Thus pseudosciences that do not meet the falsifiability standard are not thereby discredited in
the least. All that is proven is that they are not empirical sciences of nature, but neither are
mathematics and philosophy, and that is not to their discredit.
The falsifiability standard counterintuitively suggests that the credibility of a scientific theory is derived
from the possibility of it being wrong. It is more accurate to assert that a scientific theory gains credibility
from its verifiability, by successfully passing tests where it might have been proven wrong. What is
paramount is that a theory is consistent with observation, and this has been the hallmark of
physical science for the last three centuries, without explicit reference to a falsifiability standard.
As long as a theory is confirmed by controlled experiment, the hypothetical possibility of a
negative result is of secondary importance.
Equally counterintuitive is the implication that a theory lacking falsifiability loses credibility. Intuitively, if
a proposition is absolutely not falsifiable, it is certainly true, though it may be merely a tautology.
Regarding pseudosciences as non-falsifiable gives them too much credit, when in fact their
excuses for failed predictions can be refuted by evidence and argument. All too often the
falsifiability standard is used as an excuse to refuse to engage a theory, maintaining that its
exponents will not accept any refutation.
Falsifiability Internal Link Turn

Falsifiability is a bad standardit incorporates unexamined materialism which
undermines the basis of the theory and also turns their framework arguments by
undercutting metaphysical debate and argumentative clash. Theres no offense
because metaphysical belief is inevitable but falsifiability drives us to hold them
without debate
Since falsifiability really means being empirically falsifiable, and the empirical is restricted to
physical observation, Poppers theory furtively incorporates philosophical materialism into his
theory of science, which is then misused as a general theory of knowledge. With one stroke, any
sort of metaphysical, religious, or spiritual speculation is dismissed as not meriting credibility.
Rather than be forced to honestly engage metaphysical arguments with counterarguments, we
are excused from debating them altogether, as if they were beyond reason. Clearly, this position
is unwarranted, and it arises from the error of equating non-empiricism with irrationality.
The scientific method is an excellent way to arrive at near-certain knowledge in areas that are susceptible
to both physical observation and controlled experiment. Many ordinary types of knowledge are not
susceptible to controlled experiment, as is the case with the study of history or any other aspect of
the past, which can never be replicated. Such sciences must use different rules of evidence , and
the basis of certitude in their results is of a different quality than that of the natural sciences. Other types
of knowledge are not susceptible to physical observation, such as our conscious experiences (as
opposed to their neural correlates), or abstract reasoning about mathematical or metaphysical
entities. This non-physical knowledge is not inferior to that of the empirical sciences, but on the
contrary is considered the most certain knowledge of all, as we directly comprehend the truth of
a tautology and directly experience our own consciousness. The knowledge of empirical
sciences, on the other hand, is mediated indirectly through the exercise of our consciousness
and abstract reasoning. From this, the foolishness of philosophical materialism is evident: we
only know matter through the mind, so it is absurd to doubt the existence of the mind or soul
without doubting the existence of matter. Similarly, physics is only intelligible against a background
of logical, metaphysical, and mathematical assumptions.
The natural sciences are still epistemologically subordinate to philosophy , in fact if not in culture.
Our cultural rejection of abstract philosophy in favor of hard science has not eliminated the
need for philosophy, but has simply removed it from conscious discourse, reducing it to a set of
unconsciously held and poorly understood assumptions. Popper himself recognized this in his study
of quantum mechanics, which he called the great quantum muddle, in reference to how physicists
incoherently invoked contradictory philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. Even the most
radically anti-philosophical man has a philosophy, but if he consciously rejects the study of
philosophy, he is doomed to hold his philosophy unconsciously and incoherently.
Empiricism Bad
Lacans approach is rationalist rather than empiricalits still scientific and
contrasts with other kinds of psychoanalysis
EVANS 2009 (Dylan, Science and Truth: an introduction I, The Symptom 10,
http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?p=59 I added Jung in brackets to correct a typo by the author)
Lacan bases this account of the history of science on the writings of Koyr, whose account of
Newtonian physics seems to have been a great influence on Lacan. In addition to Koyr, Lacan is indebted
to the philosophical work of Bachelard and Canguilhem, which clearly place him in the rationalist
rather than the empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science. In other words, for Lacan, what
marks a discourse as scientific is a high degree of mathematical formalization . This is what lies
behind Lacans attempts to formalize psychoanalytic theory in terms of various mathematical formulae.
These formulae also encapsulate a further characteristic of scientific discourse (perhaps the most
fundamental one in Lacans view), which is that it should be transmissible (Lacan, 1973: 60).
Lacans allegiance to the rationalist tradition helps to explain the often biting criticisms which
he levels at much modern scientific research. These criticisms are almost always aimed at forms
of science based on empiricist assumptions (whicb Lacan regards ultimately as a false form of
science), and not at science itself. When he criticises modern science for ignoring the symbolic
dimension of human existence and thus encouraging modern man to forget his subjectivity (Lacan,
1953: 70), he clearly has sueh empiricist vehicles as communication science and behaviourist psychology
in mind. Thus Lacan is not criticizing Science itself, but only a particular form which he regards as
a deviation from true science.Thus it would certainly be wrong to describe Lacan as a luddite, fiercely
opposing the advance of any and all scientific enquiry. Far from it; he insists that the subject of
psychoanalysis can only be the subject of science, for in the era of science it is impossible to
recapture any humanistic subject. Indeed, Lacan stresses that this is what separates Freud from
[Jung]lung. Whereas lung wanted to restore a subject gifted with depths, a subject with some direct,
archetypal access to knowledge (which can be seen as a form of intuitionism), Freud insisted that an
exclusively rational route to knowledge is now such a common presupposition that it cannot be
ignored. In stating that psychoanalysis operates only on the subject of science, Lacan is arguing
that psychoanalysis is not based on any appeal to an ineffable experience or flash of intuition,
but on a process of reasoned dialogue, even when reason confronts its limit in madness.
Lacanian psychoanalysis is scientificits rationalist, not empiricistbut they first
have to win that empiricism is better than rationalism or their mode of science is
just paranoia
EVANS 2009 (Dylan, Science and Truth: an introduction I, The Symptom 10, paragraph ends with a
comma for some reason, http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?p=59)
This brings us back to our initial problem. What status are we to attribute to psychoanalytic theory? Is it a
truly scientific discourse? Lacans confident claims in 1964 about psychoanalysis proceeding
from the same status as science seem to imply that it has already attained scientific status.
However, in Science and truth, only a year later, there are signs that Lacan is becoming more
cautious. Thus he now distinguishes psychoanalysis from science on the grounds that each has a different
mode of relationship to truth as cause. His growing uncertainty is reflected by apparently contradictory
statements in the same paper; he both states that psychoanalysis is not a science but a practice
(pratique) with a scientific vocation (Lacan, 1965: 863), and also speaks of the psychoanalytic science
(Lacan, 1965: 876). By 1977 he has moved even further away from the confident claims of 1964,
and now explicitly denies that psychoanalysis is a science;

Psychoanalysis is not a science. It has no scientific status it merely waits and hopes for it.
Psychoanalysis is a delusiona delusion which is expected to produce a science It is a scientific
delusion, but this doesnt mean that analytic practice will ever produce a science. (Lacan, 1976-7: Ornicar?
14: 4 [seminar of 11.01.77])
However, this statement is perhaps less categorical than it seems at first sight. For in
psychoanalytic theory, ever since Freuds remark on the similarity between delusions and philosophical
systems, there has been an awareness of the logical rigour of psychotic phenomena (Freud, 191213: 73). Indeed, in his later work, Lacan goes on to describe psychosis as an essay in rigor, and halfjokingly (but only half) muses that if he had been a little more psycholic he might have produced a more
rigorous theorisation of psychoanalysis than he did. However, in the paper on science and truth, it is
not psychoanalysis that Lacan compares to a delusion. but science itself; he describes science as
a fully realised paranoia (Lacan. 1965: 874). This is because scientific constructions resemble
the architecture of a delusion in their rigour and explanatory power, and because both science
and paranoia are based on the operation of foreclosure.
Thus the statement in 1977 that psychoanalysis is not a science but a delusion invokes an
opposition that is simply not present, even undermined, in the 1965 paper on science and truth.
In terms of the 1965 paper, the statement that psychoanalysis is a delusion can only be read as
confirming its scientific status. This radical position places, Lacan at an even further distance from the
empiricist tradition than do his appeals to rationalist philosophers. And this is what makes Lacan
particularly impervious tothe kind of criticisms levelled at psychoanalysis today by AngloAmerican philosophers of science. Inspired by Eysencks famous tirade against psychoanalysis in the
1970s (Eysenck & Wilson, 1973), a new generation of philosophers have argued in recent years that
psychoanalytic theory is not scientific because it is not falsifiable (eg. Grunbaum, 1984; Macmillan,
1991; Esterson, 1993). Such criticisms are based entirely on the empiricist account of science
which Lacan rejects,
AT: Psychoanalysis Sexist

Psychoanalysis is not inherently antifeministour account of the unconscious is
useful for feminist criticism
ZAKIN 2011 (Zakin, Emily, Prof of Philosophy, Miami University, "Psychoanalytic Feminism", The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, May 16, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminismpsychoanalysis/#Con)
Psychoanalysis presents a critical and diagnostic project, not necessarily a normative or

liberatory one. In developing a theory of the drives and the non-rational forces that move and impel us,
the idea that we are opaque rather than transparent to ourselves, incapable of complete self-knowledge or
self-mastery, psychoanalytic theory also challenges the rationalist, humanist ego and proposes
that our ethical characters and political communities are not perfectable, exposing the
precariousness of both psychic and political identity. The unconscious cannot be assumed to be
inherently either a transgressive or a conservative force, but an unreliable one, promoting revolt
or rebellion sometimes, intransigence and rigid border preservation at other times. Although they
are in often uneasy alliance, the psychoanalytic account of the unconscious provides feminist
theory with resources for both political and ontological inquiry. Ontologically, psychoanalysis
offers a distinctively psychical understanding of sexual difference, how we come to inhabit our
bodies and our identities, and misinhabit them, an analysis reducible to neither social nor
biological categories. Politically, psychoanalysis offers a depiction of the forces that impel us to
organize, disorganize, and reorganize the bonds that hold us together. By offering insight into
the formation of subjectivity and the animating fantasies of social life, psychoanalysis thus also
facilitates feminist analysis of the obdurate elements of patriarchal social relations, including the
symbolic bonds and internal forces that undergird identity and attach sexed subjects to relations of
dominance and subordination. Psychoanalytic feminist attention to the core constituents of
civilization, to the nuclei of sexual difference and communal affiliation, helps explain the
perpetuation of masculine power and enables feminist theorists to articulate possible
correctives, challenges, routes of amelioration, or ethical interruptions that go to the roots of
political life and to its beyond and do not simply operate on the given social terrain.
Alt: Internal Consistency

Internal consistency is a better standard for evidenceeven the requirement of
material proof would exclude most scientific knowledge
All scientific theory worthy of the name, not just that which uses thought experiments, explains the
observable in terms of the unobservable. Our intelligible, mathematical principles are believed to be the
real underlying basis of the regularity of what we observe, even though we almost never see them
operating in ideal conditions. Observed reality is messy: there is always friction or air drag or other
complicating factors, as well as measurement error, leading us to results that at best

approximate the mathematical ideals of our theories. Yet we consider the terms of our
mathematical theories to have real explanatory force, and do not regard them as mere
descriptions of observations. These theories have their own internal deductive logic which, when
followed, can lead to predictions of things not yet observed. This has been repeatedly the case in
physics for the last century, as theory, for the most part, has been ahead of observation.
Sometimes the theory is so firmly established that scientists speak of certain entities (e.g., black
holes) as definitely existing even before they have been unequivocally observed.
***Aff Answers***
2ACAlt Fails
Alt Fails at social change
Robinson 5 [Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham,
2005, The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event, Volume 8, Issue
1, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse]
There is more than an accidental relationship between the mythical operation of the concept of "constitutive lack" and Lacanians'
conservative and pragmatist politics.Myth is a way of reducing thought to the present : the isolated signs which are
included in the mythical gesture are thereby attached to extra-historical abstractions. On
an analytical level, Lacanian

theory can be very "radical", unscrupulously exposing the underlying relations and assumptions
concealed beneath officially-sanctioned discourse. This radicalism, however, never translates
into political conclusions: as shown above, a radical rejection of anti-"crime" rhetoric turns into an
endorsement of punishment, and a radical critique of neo-liberalism turns into a pragmatist
endorsement of structural adjustment. It is as if there is a magical barrier between theory and
politics which insulates the latter from the former. One should recall a remark once made by Wilhelm Reich: 'You
plead for happiness in life, but security means more to you'133. Lacanians have a "radical" theory oriented
towards happiness, but politically, their primary concern is security. As long as they are engaged
in politically ineffectual critique, Lacanians will denounce and criticize the social system, but
once it comes to practical problems, the "order not to think" becomes operative .This "magic"
barrier is the alibi function of myth. The short-circuit between specific instances and high-level
abstractions is politically consequential. A present evil can be denounced and overthrown if
located in an analysis with a "middle level", but Lacanian theory tends in practice to add an
"always" which prevents change. At the very most, such change cannot affect the basic matrix
posited by Lacanian theory, because this is assumed to operate above history. In this way,
Lacanian theory operates as an alibi: it offers a little bit of theoretical radicalism to inoculate the
system against the threat posed by a lot of politicized radicalism 134.In Laclau and Mouffe's version, this
takes the classic Barthesian form: "yes, liberal democracy involves violent exclusions, but what is this compared to the desert of the
real outside it?"The Zizekian version is more complex: "yes, there can be a revolution, but after the revolution, one must return to
the pragmatic tasks of the present".A good example is provided in one of Zizek's texts.The author presents an excellent analysis of a
Kafkaesque incident in the former Yugoslavia where the state gives a soldier a direct, compulsory order to take a voluntary oath - in
other words, attempts to compel consent.He then ruins the impact of this example by insisting that there is always such a moment of
"forced choice", and that one should not attempt to escape it lest one end up in psychosis or totalitarianism135. The political
function of Lacanian theory is to preclude critique by encoding the present as myth .There is a
danger of a stultifying conservatism arising from within Lacanian political theory , echoing the
'terrifying conservatism' Deleuze suggests is active in any reduction of history to negativity136.The addition of an "always" to
contemporary evils amounts to a "pessimism of the will", or a "repressive reduction of thought to the present".Stavrakakis, for
instance, claims that attempts to find causes and thereby to solve problems are always fantasmatic137, while Zizek states that an
object which is perceived as blocking something does nothing but materialize the already-operative constitutive lack138.While this
does not strictly entail the necessity of a conservative attitude to the possibility of any specific reform, it creates a danger of
discursive slippage and hostility to "utopianism" which could have conservative consequences.Even if Lacanians believe in
surplus/contingent as well as constitutive lack, there are no standards for distinguishing the two.If one cannot tell which social
blockages result from constitutive lack and which are contingent, how can one know they are not all of the latter type?And even if
constitutive lack exists, Lacanian theory runs a risk of "misdiagnoses" which have a neophobe or
even reactionary effect.To take an imagined example, a Lacanian living in France in 1788 would probably
conclude that democracy is a utopian fantasmatic ideal and would settle for a pragmatic
reinterpretation of the ancien regime.Laclau and Mouffe's hostility to workers' councils and Zizek's insistence on the
need for a state and a Party139 exemplify this neophobe tendency. The pervasive negativity and cynicism of
Lacanian theory offers little basis for constructive activity. Instead of radical transformation,
one is left with a pragmatics of "containment" which involves a conservative deproblematization of the worst aspects of the status quo. The inactivity it counsels would make its
claims a self-fulfilling prophecy by acting as a barrier to transformative activity .To conclude, the
political theory of "constitutive lack" does not hold together as an analytical project and falls
short of its radical claims as a theoretical and political one. It relies on central concepts which
are constructed through the operation of a mythical discoursein the Barthesian sense, with the result
that it is unable to offer sufficient openness to engage with complex issues .If political theory is to make
use of poststructuralist conceptions of contingency, it would do better to look to the examples provided by Deleuze and Guattari,
whose conception of contingency is active and affirmative.In contrast, the idea of "constitutive lack" turns Lacanian
theory into something its most vocal proponent, Zizek, claims to attack: a "plague of fantasies".
This argument takes out the whole critiqueits foundational assumptions are
made up.
Fleming 8 John Fleming, Professor Emeritus of Literature at Princeton University, Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, past president of the Medieval Academy of
America, 2008 (Psychoanalysis Is Pseudoscientific Quackery?, Pravda, October 15th, Available
Online at http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/15-10-2008/106563psychoanalysis_pseudoscientific-0/, Accessed 10-21-2011)
I had rather believe all the tales in the Talmud, than that there is any truth to psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud was a quack,
although a successful one. There is no id, ego, or superego, the concepts being either superfluous
or unverifiable. In reality, there is no Oedipal complex, the tomfoolery used by Freudian quacks to mean a boy wants to have
sex with his mother and despises his father as a rival. Psychoanalysts claim that the complex is so deep-seated that it does not lend
itself to easy study. It is supposedly a part of the unconscious, so that people are not consciously aware when it operates. Yet this is a
two-way street, since in so arguing one can point out that if it is so archaic or mentally repressed, it is also impossible for even the
Freudian cranks to discover. If the complex is part of primitive instinct, how can you even find evidence for it or say it exists in the
first place? Freudian psychobabble caught on no place so well as the United States. I believe the reason has to do with professional
aggrandizement, with the need of psychoanalysts and depth psychology writers to carve out a living for themselves. The original
psychoanalytic quackwho somehow discovered facts about the human mind that no thinker for millennia had any notion ofdid
much the same thing. Freud was a Jew who never would have achieved such fame as an ordinary physician. Unfortunately, some
psychologists who should know better partially incorporate psychoanalysis into their publications and research. They tolerate the
pseudoscience instead of criticizing it as unscientific. Thus, DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the publication of the American
Psychiatric Association) lists a few illnesses that exist nowhere but in the mind of a few sorely deluded psychoanalytic
practitioners. Where is the evidence for these bizarre theories? How can they possibly be accepted when they are not empirical? Why
did noone else for thousands of years perceive these ideas until the great discoverer of the unconscious mind came along
trumpeting some crazy notions about a vagina with teeth? Oedipal quackery states that mother-son incest has to be overcome for a
boy to mature into a psychologically-well-adjusted man. Psychoanalytic writers claim that many social problems have a basis in this
alleged complex. But mother-son is one of the rarest types of incest. The most common types are father-daughter, brother-sister,
and other male-initiated ones such as grandfather-granddaughter. Indeed, mother-son incest would strike most people as
horrifying. What male would want to have sex with his mother? Such a scene would be shocking, yet undaunted the analysts push
their gullible notions into psychiatry, psychology and other areas where people are too stupid to know better. One standard
dictionaryThe Random House College Dictionarydefines Oedipus complex as the unresolved desire of a child for sexual
gratification through the parent of the opposite sex, especially the desire of a son for his mother. This involves, first, identification
with and, later, hatred for the parent of the same sex, who is considered by the child as a rival. You would think that the editors of
the dictionary would realize that most boys love their father and do not, subconsciously, unconsciously or preconsciously, wish to
eliminate his presence. See Electra complex, says the dictionary, defined as the unresolved desire of a daughter for sexual
gratification from her father. Obviously, like blue for boys and pink for girls, you cannot have an Oedipal for the former without
likewise burdening the latter with an imaginary Electra! Another dictionaryThe American Heritage Dictionarydefines Oedipus
complex as libidinal feelings in a child, especially a male child, for the parent of the opposite sex, usually accompanied by hostility
to the parent of the same sex and generally manifesting itself first between ages three and five. Parents beware, check your children
for Oedipal symptoms, the boy for putting his own construction on his mothers lack of a penis, it having been bitten off, and the
girl for troublesome penis envy, though it would only be fair if you could spread further confusion and parental incompetence with
clitoris envy. Psychoanalysis is unscientific. Its theories and assumptions are not based on
observation or experiment. It is an impediment to progress in social science and it is a social

nuisance, and society would be better off without its bizarre armchair fictions .
2ACDerrida Turns
Psychoanalysis is rooted in the logic of calculable subjects, assimilating ethics into
an economy of knowledge that does not allow for alterity. This culminates in the
obliteration of the Other.
Derrida, 2
[Jacques, French philosopher, born in French Algeria. Derrida is best known for developing a
form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. He is one of the major figures associated
with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy, Without Alibi, NC]
Asking your forgiveness in turn for having disappointed you and tried your patience, I hasten to
my conclusion in a dryly programmatic-telegraphic- fashion. And algebraic-that is,
hyperformalized. I do not even know if what I am preparing to expedite in this way defines a
task or a horizon for psychoanalysis, at the end of its States General. It is for me a question,
rather, of what remains to be thought, done, lived, suffered, with or without bliss, but without
alibi, beyond even what could be called a horizon and a task, thus beyond what remains not only
necessary but possible. For what I am going to name at top speed punctures the horizon of a
task, that is, exceeds the anticipation of what must come about as possible. As possible duty.
Beyond any theoretical knowledge, and thus any constative, but also beyond any power, in
particular the power of any performative institution. What I am going to name defies the
economy of the possible and of power, of the "I can," "I may." It is in fact a matter of economy in
all senses of the term, that of the law of the proper [oikonomia] and of familial domesticity, that
of the sovereign state, of the right of property, of the market, capital, modes of appropriation in
general, and, more broadly, of all that Freud calls "psychic economy." Here I am calling on a
beyond of economy, thus of the appropriable and the possible. One may well believe that
economy is already defied by the so-called mythological speculation on the death drive and the
drive for power, thus on cruelty as well as sovereignty. One may well recognize in the death
drive, namely, the beyond of the pleasure and reality principles, an aneconomic appearance.
And what is more aneconomic, you may say, than destruction? And cruelty? In truth, Freud
works constantly to reintegrate this aneconomy, thus to take it into account, to bring reason to
bear on it, in a calculable fashion, in an economy of the possible. And one cannot blame him for
that. He always reduces both knowledge and ethics, even law and politics, to this economy of the
possible. Even if one reckons with the detour through the indirect, and even if the indirect
supposes a hiatus, according to the most visible tendency of Freud's interpretation of Freud, it is
a question of a strategy of the possible and thus of economic conditionality: appropriation, the
possible as power of the "I can," "I may," the mastery of the performative that still dominate
and thus neutralizes [symbolically, in the order of the "symbolic," precisely] the event it
produces, the alterity of the event, the very arriving of the arrivant.
Well, I will affirm that there is, it is indeed necessary that there be reference to
some unconditionality, an unconditional without sovereignty, and thus without
cruelty, which is no doubt a very difficult thing to mink It is necessary for this economic and
symbolic conditionality to constitute itself. The affirmation I am advancing advances itself, in
advance, already, without me, without alibi, as the origmary affirmation from which, and thus
beyond which the death drive and the power, cruelty, and sovereignty drives
determine themselves as "beyond" the principles. The originaty affirmation, which
advances itself in advance, lends rather than gives itself. It is not a principle, a princedom,
a sovereignty. It comes then from a be- vond the beyond, and thus from beyond the
economy of the possible. It is attached to a life, certainly, but to a life other than that of
the economy of the possible, an im-possible life no doubt, a survival, not symbolizable
but the only one that is worthy of being lived, without alibi, once and for all, the only one from
which to depart (notice I say from which to depart) for a possible thinking of life. Of a life that is
still worthy of being lived, once and for all. One cannot justify a pacifism, for example, and the
right to life, in a radical fashion, by setting out from an economy of life, or from . what Freud
alleges, as we saw, under the names ofa biological constitution - ot an idiosyncrasy. This can
only be done on the basis of a sur-vival that owes nothing to the alibi of some mytho-thcological
beyond. This, originary affirmation of beyond the beyond offers itself on the basis of
numerous figures of the impossible. I have studied a few of these elsewhere; hospitality,
gift, forgivenessand above all the unpredictability, the "perhaps," the "what if" of the
event, the coming, and the coming of the other in general, his or her or its arriving. Their
possibility is ways announced as the experience of a non-negative impossible. The hospitable
exposure to the event, to the coming, to the visitation of the unpredictable arrivant cannot,
be made into the horizon of a task not even for psychoanalysis, although it claims
some privilege in the experiencc of the unpredictable coming of the other, at the
arrival of the anrivant. But what may, perhaps, become a task, tomorrow, for psychoanalysis, for
a new psychoanalytic reason, for a new psychoanalytic Enlightenment, is a revolution that, like
all revolutions, will come to terms with the impossible, negotiate with the non-negotiable that
has remained non-negotiable, calculate with the unconditional as such, with the inflexible
unconditionality of the unconditional.
The absolute openness to the Other as incalculability exceeds the structures of
psychoanalytic knowledge
Derrida, 2
However, without even recalling Freuds lack of sympathy for French revolutions, we may say
that nothing, on the other hand, has been more foreign to psychoanalysis, up until now,
mote disturbing for it, than the public space of these States General here, than this
decor, these protocols, the duration and the technical apparatus that, for almost three years,
have been setting the conditions for your meeting. Another, still invisible scene, therefore,
continues to escape you. The signs you've received from this hidden scene remain
indecipherable behind a whole staging [mist en seine] organized in view of deliberations in
common, authorized by decisions and performative declarations of the organizers or even the
participants. Now what happens, comes about, comes to pass, or, as we say in French, ce
qui arrive, the event of the other as arrivant (the one 'who or' which arrives'), is the
impossible that exceeds and puts to rout, sometimes cruelly, that which the economy
of a performative act is supposed to produce in a sovereign manner, when an already
legitimated speech takes advantage of some convention. If things happen [arrivent], if there
are those' of us and those others who arrive, the others especially, the arrivarits, it is always as
the impossible beyond of all the instituting utterances, beyond all convention, beyond mastery,
beyond the "I can," "I may," beyond the economy of appropriation of a "that is in my power," an
"it is possible for me," the "this power belongs to me," the "this possible is conferred on me," all
of which presumptions are always implied by performative acts. If at least others arrive,
from close by or far away, from the family or from the most distant strangeness, they do it, like
everything that happens, like every event worthy of the name, like everything that is coming, in
the form of the impossible, beyond all convention and all scenic control, all pleasure
or reality principle, beyond all drive for power and perhaps all death drive. It is a
hospitality of visitation and not of invitation, when what arrives from the other
exceeds the rules of hospitality and remains unpredictable for the hosts. I do not
know whether, behind their statutory authorities and behind the official signatories of the Call
and the 1 convocation, behind the masters of ceremony, the historical States; General up until
1789 ever had a veritable and sovereign stage director:; What is certain is that no stage director
has ever been able to foresee and program anything whatsoever beyond the first act opening the
proceedings. And even that is doubtful.
Psychoanalysis's relationship to the outside community replicates the logic of
sovereignty, which is the foundation of modern violence. Instead, we must resist
the resistance created by psychoanalysis, as such, and open ourselves to
revolution.
Derrida, 2
That it is not alone, far from if, in not having thought through this Revolution and its
aftermaths, is paltry consolation, especially for those who, like myself, believe that
psychoanalysis, having announced as much at its birth, 'should have something indispensable
and essential not just to say but also to do on this subject. Without alibi. The decisive thing that
there would be to say and to do on this subject should register the shock wave of one or more
psychoanalytic revolutions. Notably on the subject of what is called, therefore, sovereignty and
cruelty. But if the mondialisation (worldwide-ization) of the world that we are told is
underway resists psychoanalysis in multiple ways, not authorizing it to touch that
world's fundamental axioms of ethics, law, and politics, if, inversely, psychoanalysis
resists in multiple ways and in an autoimmune fashion, thus failing to think through
and to change these axioms, is not then this concept of resistance, even where a is as
stratified and complicated as I tried to show, just as problematic as those of sovereignty
and cruelty? Even in its enigmatic multiplicity (I counted 5 + or -1 concepts or places of
"resistance, according to Freud), does not this concept of resistance still imply border
lines front lines or theaters of war whose model is precisely what is becoming
outdated today? If there is still war, and for a long time yet, or in any case war's
cruelty, warlike, torturing, "massively or subtlety cruel "aggression, it is no longer
certain that the figure of war, and especially the difference between individual wars, civil
wars," and national wars, still corresponds to concepts whose rigor is assured. A new
discourse on war is necessary. We await today new "Thoughts for the Times on War t and
Death" (I am citing some titles of Freud; "Zeitgemasses fiber Krieg und Tod," 191J) and a new
"Why War?" ("Warum Krieg?" 1932), or at, least new readings of texts of this sort. Thus it is not
certain that the con-t cept of front, the figure of a front line or of an indivisible trench, of a
beachhead, of a capital front indissodable from that of war, it is not certain that all this can
furnish a model of something like a resistanceeither I internal or external. As much as
the concepts of sovereignty or cruelty, it is perhaps the concept of resistance that awaits
another revolution, its own, after the French Revolution of two hundred years ago and the
political revolutions that followed, likewise after the psychoanalytic revolution and those that
perhaps followed it. For there is always more than one revolution possible in the revolution. And
what one might also call the technical or techno-scientific revolution (whether it touches on
micro-electronics, telc-virtualization, or genetics) is never simply external to the others* For
example, there is a dimension of tele-technical virtuality, of the tele-technical revolution
of the possible that psychoanalysis, in its dominant axis, has failed-still fails no doubt
and this is another resistanceto take rigorously into account, and that, moreover, will
have "played an essential role in the principle of convocation as in the implementation, the
preparation, and the type of exchange of these very States General, in their space, then spacing,
their becoming-time of worldwide space, in their horizontal networking, thus in their potential
though limited dehierarchization over the networks of the World Wide Web. In a word, what is
the revolutionary? And the postrevoiutionary? And what is world war and postwar for
psychoanalysis today? These ate perhaps other forms of the same question.
Psychoanalysis is silent in the face of the call of the Other. We must not ground
politics in psychoanalysis if we are to keep open the possibility for an ethical
responsibility for alterity
Derrida, 2
First of all, this difficult concept of indirection, of a certain irrecritude, of an oblique, angular, or
mediating nonstraightness. This concept, to which I think I must devote much attention without
abusing Freud's text, does not signify only detour, strategic ruse, continuous transaction with an
inflexible force, for example, with the cruelty or sovereign-power drive. Even though Freud does
not say it, certainly not in this way, this concept of the indirect seems to me to take into
account, in the mediation of the detour, a radical discontinuity, a heterogeneity, a leap
into the ethical (thus also into the juridical and political) that no psychoanalytic
knowledge as such could propel or authorize. On the subject of the polarity love/hatred
(which out of politeness toward Einstein he compares to the polarity attraction/repulsion),
Freud says clearly in fact that, like the polarity preservation/cruel destruction, it must not be
hastily submitted to ethical judgments evaluating "good and evil" (209). It is not for the
psychoanalyst as such to evaluate or devaluate, to discredit cruelty or sovereignty
from an ethical point of view. First of all, because he knows that there is no life without the
competition between the forces of two antagonistic drives. Whether one is talking about
the cruelty or the sovereignty drive, psychoanalytic knowledge as such has neither
the means nor the right to condemn it. In this regard, it is and must remain, as knowledge,
within the neutrality of the undecidable. Whence what I call the "etats d'ame," that is, the
hesitation, the confused mental state, or the soul-searching of psychoanalysis. To cross
the line of decision, a leap that expels one outside psychoanalytic knowledge as
such is necessary. In this hiatus, I would say, the chance or risk of responsible
decisions is opened up, beyond all knowledge concerning the possible. Is that to say
that there is "no relation between psychoanalysis and ethics, law, ot politics? No, there is, there
must be an indirect and discontinuous consequence: to be sure, psychoanalysis as such
does not produce or procure any ethics, any law, any politics, but it belongs to
responsibility, in these three domains, to take account of psychoanalytic knowledge. The task,
which is immense and remains entirely to be done, both for psychoanalysts and for whomever,
citizen, citizen of the world, or mega-citizen, concerned with responsibility (in ethics, law,
politics), is to organize this taking account of psychoanalytic reason without reducing the
heterogeneity, the leap into the undecidable, the beyond of the possible, which is the object of
psychoanalytic knowledge and economy, in particular, of its mythological discourse on the
death drive and beyond the principles. It is in this place that is difficult to delimit, the space of
undecidability and thus of decision opened up by the discontinuity of the indirect, that the
transformation to come of ethics, law, and politics should take into account psychoanalytic
knowledge (which does not mean seeking a program there) and that, reciprocally, the analytic
community should take into account history, notably the history of law, whose recent or ongoing
performative mutations have not, with only few exceptions, interested it or called upon its
contribu-tions. Everything here, it seems to me, remains to be done, on both sides.
Even if their critique has validity, the world-wide resistance to psychoanalysis

makes it irrelevant when it comes to questions of ethics and politics
Derrida, 2
I have already expressed some doubts about the homogeneous structure of this multiple concept
of resistance (Wtderstand) in Fteud. I will do so differently today. No doubt the world, the
process of worldwide-ization of the world, as it goes along, with ail its
consequencespolitical, social, economic, juridical, techno-scienitific, and so
forthresists psychoanalysis today. It does so in new ways that you are doubtless in the
process of interrogating. It resists in an unequal fashion that is difficult to analyze. It
opposes psychoanalysis not only with a model of positive science, or even
positivistic, cognitvistic, physicalistic, psycho-pharmacologcal, genetistic science,
but notably also sometimes the academicism of a spiritualist, religious, or flat-out
philosophical hermeneutic or even (because none of these are mutually exclusive)
archaic tnstitutions, concepts, and practices of the ethical, the juridical, and the
political that seem to be still domlnated by a certain logic, that is, by a certain ontotheological metaphysics of sovereignty (autonomy and omnipotence of the subject
individual or statefreedom, egological will, conscious intentionality, or if you will, the ego,
the ego ideal, and the superego, etc). The first gesture of psychoanalysis will have been
to explain this sovereignty, to give an account of its ineluctability while aiming to
deconstruct its genealogy which passes also by way of cruel murder. As for the physical,
neuronal, or generic sciences, Freud was the first not to reject, but to expect a lot from them
provided that one knows how to wait expectantly, precisely, and to articulate without confusing,
without precipitously homogenizing, without crushing the different agencies, structures, and
laws, while respecting the relays, the delays, and, do I dare say, the deferred of difference. In
fact, both in the world and in the analytic communities, these posirivist or spiritualist models,
these metaphysical axioms of ethics, law, and politics, have not even had their
surfaces scratched, much less been "deconstructed'' by the psychoanalytic revolution.
They will resist it for a long time yet; in truth, they are made to resist it. And one may, a
"act, call this a fundamental "resistance." When faced with this resistance, psychoanalysis, no
doubt, in the statutory forms of its community, in the greatest authority of its discourse, in its
most visible institutions, resists Oouilywhaz remains archaic in this woridwide-ization. It
doesn't like what it sees, but it doesn't tackle it, doesn't analyze it. And this resistance is also ; a
self-resistance. There is something wrong, in any case an autoimmune function in
psychoanalysis as everywhere else, a rejection of self, a resistance to self, to its own
principality, its own principle of protection.
Psychoanalysis has not thought through politics, ethics, and sovereignty, and thus
offers no real hope for the future.
Derrida, 02 [Jacques, French philosopher, born in French Algeria, Derrida is best known for
developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction. He is one of the major figures
associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy, Without Alibi, NC]
As I see it, psychoanalysis has not yet undertaken and thus still will succeeded to
thinking, penetrating, and changing the axioms of the ethical, the juridical, and the
political, notably in those seismic places where theoloeical phantasm of sovereignty
quakes and where the must traumatic, let us say in a still confused manner the most cruel
events of our day are being produced. This quaking of the human earth gives rise
to a new scene, which since the Second World War has been structured by
unprecedented juridical performatives (and all the "mythologies" that Freud speaks of, in
particular the psychoanalytic mythology of the drives, are tied to conventional fictions, that is, to
the authorized authority of performative acts), such as the new Declaration of Human
Rightsthe rights not just of manias we say in French, but of woman as wellthe
condemnation of genocide the concept of crime against humanity (imprescriptible in
France), the creation under way of new international penal authorities, not to mention the
growing struggle against the vestiges of forms of punishment called "cruel," which remain the
best emblem of the sovereign power of the state over the life and death of the citizen, namely,
besides war, the death penalty, which is massively enforced in China, in the United States, and
in a number of Arab Muslim countries. It is especially here that the concept of cruelty, this
obscure and enigmatic concept, this site of obscurantism both within and without
psychoanalysis, calls for indispensable analyses, to which we will have to return. These are all
things about which, if I am not mistaken, psychoanalysis as such, in its statutory and
authorized discourse, or even in the quasi f totality of its productions, has so far said next to
nothing, has had next to nothing original to say. In the very place where one expects the
most specific response from psychoanalysisin truth, the only appropriate response. I mean
once again: without alibi. All this, produces a mutation that I venture to call revolutionary, in
particular, a mutation on the subject of the subject and of the citizen subject, that is
the relations among democracy, citizenship, and noncitizenship, in other words, the state and
the beyond of the state. If psychoanalysis does not take this mutation into account, if it
does not engage with it, if it does not transform itself at this rhythm, it will itself as it alreadyis in
large measure, deported, overwhelmed, left on the side of the road, exposed to all the
drifts of the currents, to all appropriations, to all abduction, or else inversely, it
will remain rooted in the conditions of a period that saw its birth, still aphasic in
the Central European cradle of its birth: a certain equivocal aftermath of a French Revolution,
whose event, it seems to me, psychoanalysis has not yet thought through. In particular as
regards that which, in the said French Revolution and its legacy, will have concerned the
obscure concepts of sovereignty and cruelty.
2ACGenocide D
Economic ties and democracy prevent genocide
OKane 97[Modernity, the Holocaust, and politics, Economy and Society, February, ebsco]
Chosen policies cannot be relegated to the position of immediate condition (Nazis in power) in the explanation of the Holocaust.
Modern bureaucracy is not intrinsically capable of genocidal action (Bauman 1989: 106). Centralized
state coercion has no natural move to terror. In the explanation of modern genocides it is chosen
policies which play the greatest part, whether in effecting bureaucratic secrecy, organizing forced labour, implementing
a system of terror, harnessing science and technology or introducing extermination policies, as means and as ends. As Nazi
Germany and Stalins USSR have shown, furthermore, those chosen policies of genocidal
government turned away from and not towards modernity. The choosing of policies, however, is
not independent of circumstances. An analysis of the history of each case plays an important part in explaining where
and how genocidal governments come to power and analysis of political institutions and structures also helps towards an
understanding of the factors which act as obstacles to modern genocide. But it is not just political factors which stand in the way of
another Holocaust in modern society. Modern societies have not only pluralist democratic political
systems but also economic pluralism where workers are free to change jobs and bargain wages
and where independent firms, each with their own independent bureaucracies, exist in competition with
state-controlled enterprises. In modern societies this economic pluralism both promotes and is served by the open
scientific method. By ignoring competition and the capacity for people to move between organizations whether economic, political,
scientific or social, Bauman overlooks crucial but also very ordinary and common attributes of truly modern societies. It is these
very ordinary and common attributes of modernity which stand in the way of modern genocides.
2ACLack Real
The lack doesnt exist
Robinson 5 Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham, 2005
(The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event, Volume 8, Issue 1,
Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse)
The theoretical underpinnings of political Lacanianism typically rely on a "postmodern" disdain for essentialism, grounds and teleology, and articulate
wider belief in contingency (for instance, by emphasizing contemporaneity). Doesn't a belief in contingency necessitate some conception of
"constitutive lack"? The point to emphasize here is that "constitutive
lack" is not an endorsement of contingency: it is

a new conception of an essence, which is used as a positive foundation for claims. It may be
posited as negativity, but it operates within the syntax of theoretical discourse as if it were a
noun referring to a specific object. More precisely, I would maintain that "constitutive lack" is an instance of a
Barthesian myth. It is, after all, the function of myth to do exactly what this concept does: to assert the empty
facticity of a particular ideological schema while rejecting any need to argue for its assumptions.
'Myth does not deny things; on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it
makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it is a clarity which is not
that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact' 37. This is precisely the status of
"constitutive lack": a supposed fact which is supposed to operate above and beyond explanation,
on an ontological level instantly accessible to those with the courage to accept it. Myths operate
to construct euphoric enjoyment for those who use them, but their operation is in conflict with
the social context with which they interact. This is because their operation is connotative: they are
"received" rather than "read"38, and open only to a "readerly" and not a "writerly" interpretation.
A myth is a second-order signification attached to an already-constructed denotative sign, and
the ideological message projected into this sign is constructed outside the context of the
signified. A myth is therefore, in Alfred Korzybski's sense, intensional: its meaning derives from a prior
linguistic schema, not from interaction with the world in its complexity 39. Furthermore, myths have a
repressive social function, carrying in Barthes's words an 'order not to think'40. They are necessarily
projected onto or imposed on actual people and events, under the cover of this order . The "triumph of
literature" in the Dominici trial41 consists precisely in this projection of an externally-constructed mythical schema as a way of avoiding engagement
with something one does not understand. Lacanian
theory, like Barthesian myths, involves a prior idea of a structural

matrix which is not open to change in the light of the instances to which it is applied. Zizek's
writes of a 'pre-ontological dimension which precedes and eludes the construction of reality' 42,
while Laclau suggests there is a formal structure of any chain of equivalences which necessitates the logic of hegemony43. Specific analyses
are referred back to this underlying structure as its necessary expressions, without apparently
being able to alter it; for instance, 'those who triggered the process of democratization in eastern Europe... are not those who today enjoy its
fruits, not because of a simple usurpation... but because of a deeper structural logic'44. In most instances, the mythical operation of the
idea of "constitutive lack" is implicit, revealed only by a rhetoric of denunciation . For instance, Mouffe
accuses liberalism of an 'incapacity... to grasp... the irreducible character of antagonism'45, while Zizek claims that a 'dimension' is 'lost' in Butler's
work because of her failure to conceive of "trouble" as constitutive of "gender"46. This language of "denial" which is invoked to silence critics is a clear
example of Barthes's "order not to think": one
is not to think about the idea of "constitutive lack", one is simply

to "accept" it, under pain of invalidation. If someone else disagrees, s/he can simply be told that
there is something crucial missing from her/his theory. Indeed, critics are as likely to be accused
of being "dangerous" as to be accused of being wrong. One of the functions of myth is to cut out
what Trevor Pateman terms the "middle level" of analytical concepts, establishing a short-circuit between
high-level generalizations and ultra-specific (pseudo-)concrete instances . In Barthes's classic case of an image
of a black soldier saluting the French flag, this individual action is implicitly connected to highly abstract concepts such as nationalism, without the
mediation of the particularities of his situation. (These particularities, if revealed, could undermine the myth. Perhaps he enlisted for financial reasons,
or due to threats of violence). Thus, while
myths provide an analysis of sorts, their basic operation is antianalytical: the analytical schema is fixed in advance, and the relationship between this schema
and the instances it organizes is hierarchically ordered to the exclusive advantage of the former.
This is precisely what happens in Lacanian analyses of specific political and cultural
phenomena. Zizek specifically advocates 'sweeping generalisations' and short-cuts between

specific instances and high-level abstractions, evading the "middle level" . 'The correct dialectical procedure...
can be best described as a direct jump from the singular to the universal, bypassing the mid-level of particularity'. He wants a 'direct jump
from the singular to the universal', without reference to particular contexts 47. He also has a
concept of a 'notion' which has a reality above and beyond any referent, so that, if reality does
not fit it, 'so much the worse for reality'48. The failure to see what is really going on means that
one sees more, not less, because libidinal perception is not impeded by annoying facts 49. Zizek insists
on the necessity of the gesture of externally projecting a conception of an essence onto phenomena50, even affirming its necessity in the same case
(anti-Semitism) in which Reich denounces its absurdity51. This amounts to an endorsement of myths in the Barthesian sense, as well as demonstrating
the "dialectical" genius of the likes of Kelvin McKenzie. Lacanian
analysis consists mainly of an exercise in

projection. As a result, Lacanian "explanations" often look more propagandistic or pedagogical
than explanatory. A particular case is dealt with only in order to, and to the extent that it can,
confirm the already-formulated structural theory. Judith Butler criticizes Zizek's method on the grounds that 'theory
is applied to its examples', as if 'already true, prior to its exemplification'. 'The theory is
articulated on its self-sufficiency, and then shifts register only for the pedagogical purpose of
illustrating an already accomplished truth'. It is therefore 'a theoretical fetish that disavows the
conditions of its own emergence'52. She alleges that Lacanian psychoanalysis 'becomes a theological
project' and also 'a way to avoid the rather messy psychic and social entanglement' involved in
studying specific cases53. Similarly, Dominick LaCapra objects to the idea of constitutive lack because specific 'losses cannot be adequately
addressed when they are enveloped in an overly generalised discourse of absence... Conversely, absence at a "foundational" level cannot simply be
derived from particular historical losses'54. Attacking 'the long story of conflating absence with loss that becomes constitutive instead of historical'55,
he accuses several theorists of eliding the difference between absence and loss, with 'confusing and dubious results', including a 'tendency to avoid
addressing historical problems, including losses, in sufficiently specific terms', and a tendency to 'enshroud, perhaps even to etherealise, them in a
generalised discourse of absence'56. Daniel Bensaid draws out the political consequences of the projection of absolutes into politics. 'The fetishism of
the absolute event involves... a suppression of historical intelligibility, necessary to its depoliticization'. The space from which politics is evacuated
'becomes... a suitable place for abstractions, delusions and hypostases'. Instead of actual social forces, there are 'shadows and spectres'57. The operation
of the logic of projection is predictable. According to Lacanians, there is a basic structure (sometimes called a 'ground' or 'matrix') from which all social
phenomena arise, and this structure, which remains unchanged in all eventualities, is the reference-point from which particular cases are viewed. The
"fit" between theory and evidence is constructed monologically by the reduction of the latter to the former, or by selectivity in inclusion and reading of
examples. At its simplest, the Lacanian myth functions by a short-circuit between a particular instance and statements containing words such as "all",
"always", "never", "necessity" and so on. A contingent example or a generic reference to "experience" is used, misleadingly, to found a claim with
supposed universal validity. For instance, Stavrakakis uses the fact that existing belief-systems are based on exclusions as a basis to claim that all beliefsystems are necessarily based on exclusions58, and claims that particular traumas express an 'ultimate impossibility'59. Similarly, Laclau and Mouffe
use the fact that a particular antagonism can disrupt a particular fixed identity to claim that the social as such is penetrated and constituted by
antagonism as such60. Phenomena are often analysed as outgrowths of something exterior to the situation in question. For instance, Zizek's concept of
the "social symptom" depends on a reduction of the acts of one particular series of people (the "socially excluded", "fundamentalists", Serbian
paramilitaries, etc.) to a psychological function in the psyche of a different group (westerners). The "real" is a supposedly self-identical principle which
is used to reduce any and all qualitative differences between situations to a relation of formal equivalence. This shows how mythical characteristics can
be projected from the outside, although it also raises different problems: the under-conceptualization of the relationship between individual psyches
and collective phenomena in Lacanian theory, and a related tendency for psychological concepts to acquire an ersatz agency similar to that of a Marxian
myth offers the

psychological benefits of empiricism without the epistemological costs. Tautology, for instance,
is 'a minor ethical salvation, the satisfaction of having militated in favour of a truth... without
having to assume the risks which any somewhat positive search for truth inevitably involves' 61. It
dispenses with the need to have ideas, while treating this release as a stern morality. Tautology
is a rationality which simultaneously denies itself, in which 'the accidental failure of language is
magically identified with what one decides is a natural resistance of the object' 62. This passage could
almost have been written with the "Lacanian Real" in mind. The characteristic of the Real is precisely that one can
invoke it without defining it (since it is "beyond symbolization"), and that the accidental failure of language, or
indeed a contingent failure in social praxis, is identified with an ontological resistance to symbolization
projected into Being itself. For instance, Zizek's classification of the Nation as a Thing rests on the claim that 'the only way we can
fetish. "The Real" or "antagonism" occurs in phrases which have it doing or causing something. As Barthes shows,
determine it is by... empty tautology', and that it is a 'semantic void'63. Similarly, he claims that 'the tautological gesture of the Master-Signifier', an
empty performative which retroactively turns presuppositions into conclusions, is necessary, and also that tautology is the only way historical change
Lacanian references to "the

Real" or "antagonism" as the cause of a contingent failure are reminiscent of Robert Teflon's
definition of God: 'an explanation which means "I have no explanation"' 66. An "ethics of the
Real" is a minor ethical salvation which says very little in positive terms, but which can pose in
macho terms as a "hard" acceptance of terrifying realities. It authorizes truth-claims - in Laclau's
language, a 'reality' which is 'before our eyes67', or in Newman's, a 'harsh reality' hidden beneath a protective veil68 - without the
attendant risks. Some Lacanian theorists also show indications of a commitment based on the particular kind of "euphoric" enjoyment Barthes
can occur64. He even declares constitutive lack (in this case, termed the "death drive") to be a tautology65.
associates with myths. Laclau in particular emphasizes his belief in the 'exhilarating' significance of the present69, hinting that he is committed to
euphoric investments generated through the repetition of the same.
2ACNon Falsifiable
Psychological generalizations cant explain politics theyre nonfalsifiable
hindsight thinking
Samuels 93Training Analyst Society of Analytical Psychology and Science Associate
American Academy of Psychoanalysis (Andrew, Free Associations, The mirror and the
hammer: depth psychology and political transformation, Vol. 3D, Psychoanalytic Electronic
Publishing)
The paper is about the depth psychology of political processes, focusing on processes of political change. It is a contribution to the
longstanding ambition of depth psychology to develop a form of political and cultural analysis that will, in Freud's words, 'understand the riddles of the world'. It has to be admitted that there is an equally longstanding reluctance in the non-psychological
community to accept the many and varied ideas and suggestions concerning political matters that have been offered by analysts of
all persuasions. I do not believe this can all be put down to resistance. There is something offensive above
reductive interpretations of complex socio-political problems in exclusively psychological terms.

The tendency to panpsychism on the part of some depth psychologists has led me to wonder if an adequate
methodology and ethos actually exists with which to make an engagement of depth psychology with the
public sphere possible. By 'politics' I mean the arrangements within a culture for the organization and
distribution of power, especially economic power, and the way in which power is deployed to maintain the survival and
enhance the quality of human life. Economic and political power includes control of processes of information and representation as
well as the use of physical force and possession of vital resources such as land, food and water. On a more personal level, political
power reflects the ability to choose freely whether to act and what action to take in a given situation. 'Politics' refers to the
interplay between the personal and public dimensions of power. That is, there is an articulation between
public, economic power and power as expressed on the personal, private level. This articulation is demonstrated in family
organization, gender and race relations, and in religious and artistic assumptions as they affect the life of individuals. (I have also
tried to be consistent in my use of the terms 'culture', 'society' and 'collective'.)' Here is an example of the difficulty with
psychological rcduc-tionism to which I am referring. At a conference 1 attended in London in 1990, a distinguished psychoanalyst
referred to the revolutionary students in Paris in 1968 as 'functioning as a regressive group'. Now, for a large group of students to be
said to regress, there must be, in the speaker's mind, some sort of normative developmental starting point for them to regress to. The
social group is supposed to have a babyhood, as it were. Similarly, the speaker must have had in mind the possibility of a healthier,
progressive group process what a more mature group of revolutionary students would have looked like. But complex social
and political phenomena do not conform to the individualistic, chronological, moralistic,

pathologizing framework that is often imported. The problem stems from treating the entire
culture, or large chunks of it, as if it were an individual or, worse, as if it were a baby . Psychoanalysts
project a version of personality development couched in judgemental terms onto a collective
cultural and political process. If we look in this manner for pathology in the culture, we will surely
find it. As we are looking with a psychological theory in mind, then, lo and behold, the theory will
explain the pathology, but this is a retrospective prophecy (to use a phrase of Freud's), twenty-twenty
hindsight. In this psychoanalytic tautologizing there is really nothing much to get excited about. Too
much psychological writing on the culture, my own included, has suffered from this kind of smug 'correctness' when the 'material'
proves the theoretical point. Of course it does! If we are interested in envy or greed, then we will find envy or greed in capitalistic
organization. If we set out to demonstrate the presence of archetypal patterns, such as projection of the shadow, in geopolitical
relations, then, without a doubt, they will seem to leap out at us. We influence what we analyse and so psychological reflection on
culture and politics needs to be muted- there is not so much 'aha!' as one hoped.
Reject this kritik it is nonsense that cant be subjected to empirical assesment

Robinson 5 Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham,
2005 (The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event, Volume 8, Issue
1, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse)
Lacanian theory, like Barthesian myths, involves a prior idea of a structural matrix which is not open to
change in the light of the instances to which it is applied. Zizek's writes of a 'pre-ontological
dimension which precedes and eludes the construction of reality' 42, while Laclau suggests there is a formal
structure of any chain of equivalences which necessitates the logic of hegemony43. Specific analyses are referred back
to this underlying structure as its necessary expressions, without apparently being able to alter
it; for instance, 'those who triggered the process of democratization in eastern Europe... are not those who today enjoy its fruits, not
because of a simple usurpation... but because of a deeper structural logic'44. In most instances, the mythical operation of
the idea of "constitutive lack" is implicit, revealed only by a rhetoric of denunciation . For instance,
Mouffe accuses liberalism of an 'incapacity... to grasp... the irreducible character of antagonism'45, while Zizek claims that a
'dimension' is 'lost' in Butler's work because of her failure to conceive of "trouble" as constitutive of "gender"46. This language of
"denial" which is invoked to silence critics is a clear example of Barthes's "order not to think": one is not to think about the
idea of "constitutive lack", one is simply to "accept" it, under pain of invalidation. If someone
else disagrees, s/he can simply be told that there is something crucial missing from her/his
theory. Indeed, critics are as likely to be accused of being "dangerous" as to be accused of being
wrong.
Empirical validity is a prerequisite to argumentation
Benson and Stangroom 06 [Ophelia and Jeremy, authors of many philosophy books, Why
truth matters, 63-64]
Science and other forms of empirical enquiry such as history and forensic investigation do have
legitimate authority because the truth-claims they make are based on evidence (and are subject
to change if new evidence is discovered). Other systems of ideas that make truth-claims that are
not based on evidence, that rely instead on revelation, sacred books, dreams, visions, myths,
subjective inner experience, and the like, lack legitimate authority because over many centuries it
has gradually become understood that those are not reliable sources. They can be useful starting-points for
theory-formation, as has often been pointed out. Theories can begin anywhere, even in dreams. But when it comes to
justification, more reliable evidence is required. This is quite a large difference between science
and pseudoscience, genuine enquiry and fake enquiry, but it is one that Ross does not take into account. The
implication seems to be that for the sake of a 'more democratic culture' it is worth deciding that the wrong answer ought to have as
much authority as the right one. And yet of course it is unlikely that Ross really believes that. Surely if he did, he would not have
written this book - he would not be able to claim that a more democratic culture is preferable to a less democratic one, or anything
else that he claims in his work. However playful or quasi-ironic Strange Weather may be, it does lapse into seriousness at times, it
does make claims that Ross clearly wants us to accept - because he thinks they are right as opposed to wrong. The intention of
Strange Weather is to correct mistaken views of science and pseudoscience, to replace them with other, truer views. Ross cannot very
well argue that his views are wrong and therefore we should believe them. He is in fact claiming authority for his own views, he is
attempting to seek the higher part of a truth-hierarchy. The self-refuting problem we always see in epistemic relativism is here in its
most obvious form. And Ross ought to realize that if such claims could succeed they would eliminate all
possibility for making the kinds of claims that the Left needs to make just as much as anyone
else does. Truth-claims, evidence, reason, logic, warrant, are not some fiefdom or gated
community or exclusive club. On the contrary. They are the property of everyone, and the only
way to refute lies and mistakes. The Left has no more reason to want to live by lies and mistakes
than anyone else has.
Rejection of empirical validity causes extinction
Coyne, 06 Author and Writer for the Times (Jerry A., A plea for empiricism, FOLLIES OF
THE WISE, Dissenting essays, 405pp. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 1 59376 101 5)
Supernatural forces and events, essential aspects of most religions, play no role in science, not
because we exclude them deliberately, but because they have never been a useful way to
understand nature. Scientific truths are empirically supported observations agreed on by
different observers. Religious truths, on the other hand, are personal, unverifiable and
contested by those of different faiths. Science is nonsectarian: those who disagree on scientific issues do
not blow each other up. Science encourages doubt; most religions quash it. But religion is not completely
separable from science. Virtually all religions make improbable claims that are in principle empirically
testable, and thus within the domain of science: Mary, in Catholic teaching, was bodily taken to heaven, while
Muhammad rode up on a white horse; and Jesus (born of a virgin) came back from the dead. None of these claims has been
corroborated, and while science would never accept them as true without evidence, religion does. A mind that accepts both science
and religion is thus a mind in conflict. Yet scientists, especially beleaguered American evolutionists, need the support of the many
faithful who respect science. It is not politically or tactically useful to point out the fundamental and unbreachable gaps between
science and theology. Indeed, scientists and philosophers have written many books (equivalents of Leibnizian theodicy) desperately
trying to show how these areas can happily cohabit. In his essay, Darwin goes to Sunday School, Crews reviews several of these
works, pointing out with brio the intellectual contortions and dishonesties involved in harmonizing religion and science. Assessing
work by the evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, the philosopher Michael Ruse, the theologian John Haught and others, Crews
concludes, When coldly examined . . . these productions invariably prove to have adulterated scientific doctrine or to have emptied
religious dogma of its commonly accepted meaning. Rather than suggesting any solution (indeed, there is none save adopting a
form of religion that makes no untenable empirical claims), Crews points out the dangers to the survival of our
planet arising from a rejection of Darwinism. Such rejection promotes apathy towards
overpopulation, pollution, deforestation and other environmental crimes : So long as we regard
ourselves as creatures apart who need only repent of our personal sins to retain heavens blessing, we wont take the full measure of
our species-wise responsibility for these calamities. Crews includes three final essays on deconstruction and
other misguided movements in literary theory. These also show follies of the wise in that they
involve interpretations of texts that are unanchored by evidence. Fortunately, the harm inflicted
by Lacan and his epigones is limited to the good judgement of professors of literature. Follies of the
Wise is one of the most refreshing and edifying collections of essays in recent years. Much like Christopher Hitchens in the UK,
Crews serves a vital function as National Sceptic. He ends on a ringing note: The human race has produced only one
successfully validated epistemology, characterizing all scrupulous inquiry into the real world,
from quarks to poems. It is, simply, empiricism, or the submitting of propositions to the
arbitration of evidence that is acknowledged to be such by all of the contending parties . Ideas
that claim immunity from such review, whether because of mystical faith or privileged clinical
insight or the say-so of eminent authorities, are not to be countenanced until they can pass the
same skeptical ordeal to which all other contenders are subjected. As science in America becomes ever
more harried and debased by politics and religion, we desperately need to heed Crewss plea for empiricism.
Lacanian methodology is non-falsifiable reject it

Robinson 5 [Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham,
2005, The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event, Volume 8, Issue
1, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse]
The theoretical underpinnings of political Lacanianism typically rely on a "postmodern" disdain for essentialism, grounds and
teleology, and articulate wider belief in contingency (for instance, by emphasizing contemporaneity). Doesn't a belief in contingency
necessitate some conception of "constitutive lack"? The point to emphasize here is that "constitutive lack" is not an
endorsement of contingency: it is a new conception of an essence, which is used as a positive

foundation for claims. It may be posited as negativity, but it operates within the syntax of
theoretical discourse as if it were a noun referring to a specific object .More precisely, I would maintain that
"constitutive lack" is an instance of a Barthesian myth. It is , after all, the function of myth to do
exactly what this concept does: to assert the empty facticity of a particular ideological schema while
rejecting any need to argue for its assumptions. 'Myth does not deny things ; on the contrary, its
function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a
natural and eternal justification, it is a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a
statement of fact'37.This is precisely the status of "constitutive lack": a supposed fact which is
supposed to operate above and beyond explanation, on an ontological level instantly accessible
to those with the courage to accept it. Myths operate to construct euphoric enjoyment for those
who use them, but their operation is in conflict with the social context with which they
interact.This is because their operation is connotative: they are "received" rather than "read"38, and
open only to a "readerly" and not a "writerly" interpretation. A myth is a second-order
signification attached to an already-constructed denotative sign, and the ideological message
projected into this sign is constructed outside the context of the signified. A myth is therefore , in
Alfred Korzybski's sense, intensional: its meaning derives from a prior linguistic schema, not from
interaction with the world in its complexity39.Furthermore, myths have a repressive social function,
carrying in Barthes's words an 'order not to think'40.They are necessarily projected onto or imposed
on actual people and events, under the cover of this order.The "triumph of literature" in the Dominici trial41
consists precisely in this projection of an externally-constructed mythical schema as a way of avoiding engagement with something
one does not understand.Lacanian theory, like Barthesian myths, involves a prior idea of a structural matrix
which is not open to change in the light of the instances to which it is applied. Zizek's writes of a
'pre-ontological dimension which precedes and eludes the construction of reality' 42, while Laclau
suggests there is a formal structure of any chain of equivalences which necessitates the logic of hegemony43. Specific
analyses
are referred back to this underlying structure as its necessary expressions, without apparently
being able to alter it; for instance, 'those who triggered the process of democratization in eastern Europe... are not those who
today enjoy its fruits, not because of a simple usurpation... but because of a deeper structural logic'44.In most instances, the
mythical operation of the idea of "constitutive lack" is implicit, revealed only by a rhetoric of
denunciation. For instance, Mouffe accuses liberalism of an 'incapacity... to grasp... the irreducible character of antagonism'45,
while Zizek claims that a 'dimension' is 'lost' in Butler's work because of her failure to conceive of "trouble" as constitutive of
"gender"46.This language of "denial" which is invoked to silence critics is a clear example of Barthes's "order not to think": one
is
not to think about the idea of "constitutive lack", one is simply to "accept" it, under pain of
invalidation. If someone else disagrees, s/he can simply be told that there is something crucial
missing from her/his theory. Indeed, critics are as likely to be accused of being "dangerous" as to
be accused of being wrong.One of the functions of myth is to cut out what Trevor Pateman terms the
"middle level" of analytical concepts, establishing a short-circuit between high-level
generalizations and ultra-specific (pseudo-)concrete instances.In Barthes's classic case of an image of a black
soldier saluting the French flag, this individual action is implicitly connected to highly abstract concepts such as nationalism,
without the mediation of the particularities of his situation.(These particularities, if revealed, could undermine the myth.Perhaps he
enlisted for financial reasons, or due to threats of violence).Thus, while myths provide an analysis of sorts, their
basic operation is anti-analytical: the analytical schema is fixed in advance, and the relationship
between this schema and the instances it organizes is hierarchically ordered to the exclusive
advantage of the former. This is precisely what happens in Lacanian analyses of specific political
and cultural phenomena. Zizek specifically advocates 'sweeping generalisations' and short-cuts
between specific instances and high-level abstractions, evading the "middle level" .'The correct
dialectical procedure... can be best described as a direct jump from the singular to the universal, bypassing the mid-level of
particularity'.He wants a 'direct jump from the singular to the universal', without reference to
particular contexts47.He also has a concept of a 'notion' which has a reality above and beyond
any referent, so that, if reality does not fit it, 'so much the worse for reality' 48.The failure to see
what is really going on means that one sees more, not less, because libidinal perception is not
impeded by annoying facts49.Zizek insists on the necessity of the gesture of externally projecting a conception of an
essence onto phenomena50, even affirming its necessity in the same case (anti-Semitism) in which Reich denounces its
absurdity51.This amounts to an endorsement of myths in the Barthesian sense, as well as demonstrating the "dialectical" genius of
the likes of Kelvin McKenzie.Lacanian analysis consists mainly of an exercise in projection. As a result,
Lacanian "explanations" often look more propagandistic or pedagogical than explanatory. A

particular case is dealt with only in order to, and to the extent that it can, confirm the alreadyformulated structural theory.Judith Butler criticizes Zizek's method on the grounds that 'theory is applied to its
examples', as if 'already true, prior to its exemplification'. 'The theory is articulated on its selfsufficiency, and then shifts register only for the pedagogical purpose of illustrating an already
accomplished truth'. It is therefore 'a theoretical fetish that disavows the conditions of its own
emergence'52.She alleges that Lacanian psychoanalysis 'becomes a theological project' and also 'a way
to avoid the rather messy psychic and social entanglement' involved in studying specific
cases53.Similarly, Dominick LaCapra objects to the idea of constitutive lack because specific 'losses cannot be adequately
addressed when they are enveloped in an overly generalised discourse of absence... Conversely, absence at a "foundational" level
cannot simply be derived from particular historical losses'54.Attacking 'the long story of conflating absence with loss that becomes
constitutive instead of historical'55, he accuses several theorists of eliding the difference between absence and loss, with 'confusing
and dubious results', including a 'tendency to avoid addressing historical problems, including losses, in sufficiently specific terms',
and a tendency to 'enshroud, perhaps even to etherealise, them in a generalised discourse of absence'56.Daniel Bensaid draws out
the political consequences of the projection of absolutes into politics.'The fetishism of the absolute event involves... a suppression of
historical intelligibility, necessary to its depoliticization'.The space from which politics is evacuated 'becomes... a suitable place for
abstractions, delusions and hypostases'.Instead of actual social forces, there are 'shadows and spectres'57.The operation of the logic
of projection is predictable.According to Lacanians, there is a basic structure (sometimes called a 'ground' or 'matrix') from which all
social phenomena arise, and this structure, which remains unchanged in all eventualities, is the reference-point from which
particular cases are viewed.The "fit" between theory and evidence is constructed monologically by the reduction of the latter to the
former, or by selectivity in inclusion and reading of examples.At its simplest, the Lacanian myth functions by a short-circuit between
a particular instance and statements containing words such as "all", "always", "never", "necessity" and so on.A contingent example
or a generic reference to "experience" is used, misleadingly, to found a claim with supposed universal validity.For instance,
Stavrakakis uses the fact that existing belief-systems are based on exclusions as a basis to claim that all belief-systems are
necessarily based on exclusions58, and claims that particular traumas express an 'ultimate impossibility'59.Similarly, Laclau and
Mouffe use the fact that a particular antagonism can disrupt a particular fixed identity to claim that the social as such is penetrated
and constituted by antagonism as such60.Phenomena are often analysed as outgrowths of something exterior to the situation in
question.For instance, Zizek's concept of the "social symptom" depends on a reduction of the acts of one particular series of people
(the "socially excluded", "fundamentalists", Serbian paramilitaries, etc.) to a psychological function in the psyche of a different group
(westerners).The "real" is a supposedly self-identical principle which is used to reduce any and all qualitative differences between
situations to a relation of formal equivalence.This shows how mythical characteristics can be projected from the outside, although it
also raises different problems: the under-conceptualization of the relationship between individual psyches and collective phenomena
in Lacanian theory, and a related tendency for psychological concepts to acquire an ersatz agency similar to that of a Marxian
fetish."The Real" or "antagonism" occurs in phrases which have it doing or causing something.As Barthes shows, myth offers
the psychological benefits of empiricism without the epistemological costs. Tautology, for
instance, is 'a minor ethical salvation, the satisfaction of having militated in favour of a truth...
without having to assume the risks which any somewhat positive search for truth inevitably
involves'61.It dispenses with the need to have ideas, while treating this release as a stern
morality. Tautology is a rationality which simultaneously denies itself, in which 'the accidental
failure of language is magically identified with what one decides is a natural resistance of the
object'62.This passage could almost have been written with the "Lacanian Real" in mind.The characteristic of the
Real is precisely that one can invoke it without defining it (since it is "beyond symbolization"), and that the
accidental failure of language, or indeed a contingent failure in social praxis, is identified with an ontological
resistance to symbolization projected into Being itself .For instance, Zizek's classification of the Nation as a Thing
rests on the claim that 'the only way we can determine it is by... empty tautology', and that it is a 'semantic void'63.Similarly, he
claims that 'the tautological gesture of the Master-Signifier', an empty performative which retroactively turns presuppositions into
conclusions, is necessary, and also that tautology is the only way historical change can occur64.He even declares constitutive lack (in
this case, termed the "death drive") to be a tautology65. Lacanian references to "the Real" or "antagonism" as
the cause of a contingent failure are reminiscent of Robert Teflon's definition of God: 'an
explanation which means "I have no explanation"'66.An "ethics of the Real" is a minor ethical
salvation which says very little in positive terms, but which can pose in macho terms as a "hard"
acceptance of terrifying realities. It authorizes truth-claims - in Laclau's language, a 'reality' which is 'before
our eyes67', or in Newman's, a 'harsh reality' hidden beneath a protective veil68 - without the attendant risks. Some
Lacanian theorists also show indications of a commitment based on the particular kind of "euphoric" enjoyment Barthes associates
with myths. Laclau in particular emphasizes his belief in the 'exhilarating' significance of the present69, hinting that he is committed
to euphoric investments generated through the repetition of the same.
2ACPerm for Marxism Affs

Permutation solves Marxism and psychoanalysis are a match made in heaven
McGowan, their author, in 13
2013, pg. 2 // MS
The efforts to marry psychoanalysis and a political program since Freuds discovery of the
unconscious have come from both sides of the aisle . Marxist thinkers such as Theodor Adorno
and Louis Althusser have turned to psychoanalysis in order to supplement Marxism with a mode
of thought that would address the complexities of subjectivity, while psychoanalytic thinkers
such as Erich Fromm and Wilhelm Reich have turned to Marxism as a way of giving a
sociohistorical importance to their understanding of the suffering that they discovered in
psychoanalytic practice. Today this intersection animates the thought of many of the most
compelling voices in contemporary political thought: Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Ernesto
Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Ranciere, and Slavoj Zizek, to name just a few.
2ACPsychoanalysis = Fascist
Psychoanalysis has enabled modern governmentality its techniques are used
manage populations and develop disciplinary society
Milchman and Rosenberg 02 Milchman teaches in the department of Political Science of
Queens College of the City University of New York. He has published on Marxism, modern
genocide, Max Weber, Heidegger, Foucault, and postmodernism. He has co-edited
Postmodernism and the Holocaust, with Alan Rosenberg (Rodopi, 1998) and Martin Heidegger
and the Holocaust, with Alan Rosenberg (Humanities Press, 1996), Alan is Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York. He has published widely on
psychoanalysis, the Holocaust, and the philosophies of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault.
Among the books that he has co-edited are Foucault and Heidegger: Critical Encounters, with
Alan Milchman (University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming); Contemporary Portrayals of
Auschwitz: Philosophical Challenges, with James Watson and Detlef B. Linke (Humanity
Books); Psychoanalytic Versions of the Human Condition, with Paul Marcus (NYU press, 1998);
Healing Their Wounds: Psychotherapy with Holocaust Survivors and Their Families, with Paul
Marcus (Praeger, 1989); and Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark
Time, with Gerald Myers (Temple University Press, 1988). A Foucauldian Analysis of
Psychoanalysis: A Discipline that Disciplines Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic
Arts, http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/milch&rosen.htm/
For Foucault, the
very genesis of the discipline of psychoanalysis is itself linked to historical changes

in the exercise of power-relations, and in particular to the emergence of governmentality .
According to the later Foucault, modern power-relations cannot be grasped on the basis of political theory's traditional model of
power-law-sovereignty-repression. This juridical model of power, which still dominates political theory, and sees power as
emanating from a sovereign, from the top down, ignores the fact that power today also comes from below. As Leslie Paul Thiele has
argued in his explication of Foucault's contribution to a theory of power: "Power forms an omnipresent web of relations, and the
individuals who support this web are as much the producers and transmitters of power as they are its objects." In place of the
juridical model of power, Foucault argues that modern power-relations are instantiated through what he designates as
"governmentality." For Foucault: The exercise of power consists in guiding the possibility of conduct and
putting in order the possible outcome. Basically power is less a confrontation between two adversaries or the linking of
one to the other than a question of government. This word must be allowed the very broad meaning which it had in the sixteenth
century. `Government' did not refer only to political structures or to the management of states; rather it designated the way in which
the conduct of individuals or groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the
sick. .... To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others. For Foucault, then, the
operations of the modern state are not restricted to interdiction or repression in the political sense, but have
expanded to incorporate the practices of governmentality. Government, in the Foucauldian sense,
depends on the knowledge generated by the human sciences, by the disciplines, in particular
psychoanalysis; indeed, the state claims that it governs on the basis of that knowledge. Here, the
central role of the human sciences in the operation of the developing disciplinary society, and its
techniques for the control and management of its citizens becomes especially clear. Moreover,
governmentality, and the technologies for the control of individuals, are by no means limited to
the state. Indeed, according to Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, modern, liberal societies do not leave the
regulation of conduct solely or even primarily to the operations of the state and its
bureaucracies: "Liberal government identifies a domain outside 'politics,' and seeks to manage it
without destroying its existence and its autonomy." This is accomplished through the activities of
a host of institutions and agents not formally part of the state apparatus, including
psychoanalytic facilities and analysts. As Nikolas Rose has pointed out, psychoanalysis, like "All the sciences
which have the prefix `psy-' or `psycho-' have their roots in this shift in the relationship between social
power and the human body, in which regulatory systems have sought to codify, calculate,
supervise, and maximize the level of functioning of individuals. The `psy sciences' were born
within a project of government of the human soul and the construction of the person as a
manageable subject." As a manifestation of governmentality and its power-relations, psychoanalysis is implicated in the
control of the individual. For Foucault, psychoanalysis is a discipline that "disciplines ," that helps to
create politically and economically socialized, useful, cooperative , and -- as one of
the hallmarks of bio-power -- docile individuals . Indeed, according to John Forrester, for Foucault,
psychoanalysis is "the purest version of the social practices that exercise domination in and
through discourse, whose power lies in words, whose words can never by anything other than
instruments of power." Of course, the aim of the analyst is not control, but the "mental health" of
the individual and the "betterment" of society. Nonetheless, the result of the psychoanalytic
management-oriented conception of the subject is an individual who is susceptible to technomedical control. Moreover, as Nikolas Rose has suggested, the power-knowledge obtained by
psychoanalysis (and indeed all of the psy sciences) and its technologies for the control of the individual: fed
back into social life at a number of levels. Individuals could be classified and distributed to particular social
locations in the light of them -- in schools, jobs, ranks in the army, types of reformatory
institutions, and so forth. Further, in consequence, new means emerged for the codification and
analysis of the consequences of organizing classrooms, barracks, prisons, production lines, the
family, and social life itself....Hence, the psy knowleges could feed back into more general
economic and social programs, throwing up new problems and opportunities for attempts to
maximize the use of the human resources of the nation and to increase its levels of personal
health and well-being. Whatever its impact or health and welfare, this power-knowledge enhanced the
degree of control to which the person was subject, and made it possible to effectively discipline
the individual. Indeed, the existence of our developing disciplinary society is
inconceivable without the psy sciences , and the power-relations which they consolidate.
The discipline and control of the individual to which psychoanalysis made its signal
contribution, was linked to its conception of, and commitment to, normalization. Foucault signalled
the increasing role of normality and normalization in the functioning of the developing disciplinary society in Discipline and Punish:
"The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge,
the `social worker'-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find
himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements." For Foucault, discipline and
normalization were inseparable components of the emergence of the human sciences, and their
technologies. Indeed, he asserted that "a normalizing society is the historical outcome of a technology of
power centered on life." Psychoanalysis did not break with this complex. Indeed, according to Foucault, "Freud was well
aware of all this. He was aware of the superior strength of his position on the matter of normalization." Indeed, psychoanalysis
was thoroughly implicated in the societal process in which the norm increasingly supplanted the
law, in which the West was "becoming a society which is essentially defined by the norm ." For
Foucault: "The norm becomes the criterion for evaluating individuals. As it truly becomes a society of the norm, medicine, par
excellence the science of the normal and the pathological, assumes the status of a royal science." Lest one conclude that Foucault is
not referring to psychoanalysis here, he is quick to point out that " psychoanalysis, not only in the United States, but also in
France, functions
massively as a medical practice: even if it is not always practiced by doctors, it

certainly functions as therapy, as a medical type of intervention . From this point of view, it is very
much a part of this network of medical 'control' which is being established all over." Deviation from
the norm, in the establishment of which psychoanalysis played a signal role, the anomaly, became the object of the technologies and
therapeutic techniques of the psy sciences, psychoanalysis among them. The theological conception of evil had given
way to the psychoanalytic conception of deviance, in the combat against which the analyst was
now enlisted to play a leading role. As Hubert Dreyfus has claimed, "Freudian theory thus reinforces the collective
practices that allow norms based on alleged sciences of human nature to permeate every aspect of our lives." These practices
then become a lynchpin of the developing disciplinary society and its techniques for managing
people.
2ACPsychoanalysis Wrong
There is no justification for psychoanalytic theory
Robinson 5 Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham,
2005 (The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Theory & Event, Volume 8, Issue
1, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project Muse)
Lacanian analysis consists mainly of an exercise in projection. As a result, Lacanian
"explanations" often look more propagandistic or pedagogical than explanatory. A particular
case is dealt with only in order to, and to the extent that it can, confirm the already-formulated
structural theory. Judith Butler criticizes Zizek's method on the grounds that 'theory is applied to its examples',
as if 'already true, prior to its exemplification'. 'The theory is articulated on its self-sufficiency,
and then shifts register only for the pedagogical purpose of illustrating an already accomplished
truth'. It is therefore 'a theoretical fetish that disavows the conditions of its own emergence' 52. She
alleges that Lacanian psychoanalysis 'becomes a theological project' and also 'a way to avoid the
rather messy psychic and social entanglement' involved in studying specific cases 53. Similarly,
Dominick LaCapra objects to the idea of constitutive lack because specific 'losses cannot be adequately addressed when they are
enveloped in an overly generalised discourse of absence... Conversely, absence at a "foundational" level cannot simply be derived
from particular historical losses'54. Attacking 'the long story of conflating absence with loss that becomes constitutive instead of
historical'55, he accuses several theorists of eliding the difference between absence and loss, with 'confusing and dubious results',
including a 'tendency to avoid addressing historical problems, including losses, in sufficiently specific terms', and a tendency to
'enshroud, perhaps even to etherealise, them in a generalised discourse of absence'56. Daniel Bensaid draws out the political
consequences of the projection of absolutes into politics. 'The fetishism of the absolute event involves... a suppression of historical
intelligibility, necessary to its depoliticization'. The space from which politics is evacuated 'becomes... a suitable place for
abstractions, delusions and hypostases'. Instead of actual social forces, there are 'shadows and spectres'57.
Psychoanalysis is laughableits wrong about everything.

Dufresne 4 Todd Dufresne, Professor of Philosophy and Founding Director of The Advanced
Institute for Globalization & Culture, Associated Scholar at The Institute for the History and
Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto, 2004(Psychoanalysis Is
Dead ... So How Does That Make You Feel?, Los Angeles Times, February 18th, Available
Online at http://articles.latimes.com/2004/feb/18/opinion/oe-dufresne18, Accessed 10-212011)
Freud is truly in a class of his own. Arguably no other notable figure in history was so
fantastically wrong about nearly every important thing he had to say. But , luckily for him, academics
have been -- and still are -- infinitely creative in their efforts to whitewash his errors , even as lay
readers grow increasingly dumbfounded by the entire mess.
So what can we see today that we didn't see during the last century? We
now know that Freudcompulsively fudged

the historical record. This tendency is evident in Freud's backsliding statements on his advocacy
of cocaine, his opportunism concerning the case of Anna O., his flip-flops on the seduction
theory, and in almost every instance where he mentions a patient .
Just ask the "Wolf Man," Sergius Pankejeff, whom Freud supposedly cured but who was, in truth, consigned to psychoanalysis for an
additional 60 years. Not surprising, Pankejeff considered Freud's effect on his life a "catastrophe."
We also know that Freud never seriously dealt with the problem of "suggestion," which totally
compromised his clinical findings and, by extension, his theories. Already, by the 1890s, few believed in Freud's
convenient claim that suggestion -- the undue influence of the psychoanalyst over the patient -- was possible only in the biologically
predisposed and was thus of no consequence to his findings. Amazingly, these critical insights were buried under Freud's rhetoric of
denial and by his growing fame. Now we've come full circle. Today we know better than to trust in memories, or in free associations,
that supposedly issue from the "therapeutic alliance" between analyst and patient.
Then there is the theory of the unconscious, which has also seen better days. We all agree that Freud
did not "discover" the unconscious, and are sophisticated enough to see that it has a history that
long predates him: as the devil that possessed Christians; as the mesmerism and hypnosis that
invoked the split, double and multiple personalities of the 18th and 19th centuries; and as the
theme of "doubling" that informed much Victorian literature and, today, still informs the dumbest plot lines
in Hollywood and in psychotherapy.
Now connect
the dots. In each iteration of the unconscious, some anointed medium -- priest,
quack or analyst -- claims special access to the darkest, scariest reaches of our minds. For a
certain price, he or she can cure you of this demon.
Of course, as with exorcism, the psychoanalytic "cure" hinges upon belief in mysterious entities
such as the unconscious. For with belief we are back in the realm of suggestion and, at its best, the placebo effect. True,
that's not nothing. But the cult-like exigencies of psychoanalysis dictate that normal human suggestibility be exploited for the cause
of conversion. As Karl Kraus put it many years ago, psychoanalysis itself became the poison it purports to cure .
Another way to put it is that it is psychoanalysis itself that has infected the Western soul with penis envy, Oedipal conflicts, death
drives and so on. For these ideas are not given to, and cannot be found in, the world. They must be
created. Consequently, the death of psychoanalysis is itself the only cathartic event psychoanalysis
was ever designed to deliver.
In the beginning, psychoanalysis was laughable, and then it was ponderable. Then , unfortunately, it
was tragic -- for patients and for Western culture in general. Now psychoanalysis is just laughable again. This
is a good thing. At last we are in a position to do justice to Freud .
Psychoanalysis is factually inaccuratethe model of the dynamic unconscious it is
modeled on is factually inaccurate
OBrien & Jureidini, 2002 [Gerard & Jon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy
at the University of Adelaide & PhD (Flinders) is a child psychiatrist who has completed a
doctorate in philosophy of mind, Dispensing With the Dynamic Unconscious, Philosophy,
Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2, project muse]
IT IS THE PRIMARY TENET of psychoanalysis that there is a subterranean region of our minds
inhabited by mental entitiessuch as thoughts, feelings, and motivesthat are actively prevented from
entering consciousness because of their painful or otherwise unacceptable content. These mental entities, in
spite of being consciously inaccessible, are assumed to have a profound impact on our conscious
mental life and behavior, and in so doing are thought to be responsible for many of the psychopathologies, both major and
minor, to which we are subject. This conjectured subterranean region of our minds is nowadays known as
the dynamic unconscious, and there is no more important explanatory concept in all of psychoanalytic theory. Yet,
despite its importance to psychoanalytic thought and practice, and despite almost a century of research
effort since its first systematic articulation, the dynamic unconscious is in deep trouble. The
methodologic difficulties associated with theorizing about this putative mental
underworld are legion (Grunbaum 1984), and recent years have seen a growing skepticism about
the very notion of a dynamic unconscious and with it the whole apparatus of psychoanalysis (see, for example, Crews 1996). In
the face of these difficulties, a number of proponents of psychoanalysis have turned to contemporary cognitive science for assistance
(see, for example, Epstein 1994; Erdelyi 1985; Shevrin 1992; and Westen 1998). Their aim has been to show that psychoanalytic
conjectures about the dynamic unconscious receive a great deal of support from the empirical evidence in favor of the cognitive
unconscious. By variously integrating the dynamic unconscious with the cognitive unconscious (Epstein 1994) or extending the
cognitive unconscious to cover psychical entities and processes traditionally associated with the dynamic [End Page 141]
unconscious (Westen 1998), the hope is that the struggling psychoanalytic concept will be buttressed by its healthier counterpart in
cognitive science. It is our contention, however, that this hope is misplaced. Far from supporting the dynamic
unconscious, recent work in the cognitive science suggests that the time has come to
dispense with this concept altogether. We will defend this claim in two ways. First, we will argue that
any attempt to shore up the dynamic unconscious with the cognitive unconscious is bound to
fail, simply because the latter, as it is understood in contemporary cognitive science, is
incompatible with the former as it is traditionally conceived by psychoanalytic theory. Second, we will show
how psychological phenomena traditionally cited as evidence for the operation of a dynamic
unconscious can be accommodated more parsimoniously by other means. But before we do either of
these things, and to set the scene for our subsequent discussion, we will offer a very brief recapitulation of the dynamic unconscious,
especially as it was originally conceived by Sigmund Freud.
No evidence to support claims of a dynamic unconscious

OBrien & Jureidini, 2002 [Gerard & Jon, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy
at the University of Adelaide & PhD (Flinders) is a child psychiatrist who has completed a
doctorate in philosophy of mind, Dispensing With the Dynamic Unconscious, Philosophy,

Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.2, project muse]
Thus far we have argued that the empirical work in cognitive science that leads to the postulation
of the cognitive unconscious fails to support the existence of the dynamic unconscious, at
least as it has traditionally been conceived by psychoanalytic theory. This claim is not novel (see, for example, Marcel 1988,
172), with even theorists sympathetic to psychoanalysis prepared to concede it (e.g., Woody and Phillips
1995, 127). Now, however, we will go a little further. It is only in recent times that proponents of psychoanalytic theory have turned
to empirical work in cognitive science to find support for their conjectures about the nature and operation of the unconscious. In this
final substantive section of the paper, we examine some of the psychological phenomena that over the years have been cited as
evidence for the dynamic unconscious. Our aim is to show that these phenomena can be better and more
parsimoniously explained as either effects of subpersonal unconscious influences or conscious

conflicts in the normal process of construction of verbal reports.
2ACRobinson
Lack based political theory has become hegemonic. It must be disrupted to avoid
political in-action.
Robinson, 5
[Andrew Robinson, Ph.D. in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham, 2005, The
Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, NC]
Amongst a plethora of radical theoretical perspectives, a new paradigm is slowly becoming
hegemonic. Inspired by the work of Jacques Lacan, theorists are increasingly turning to the
concept of constitutive lack to find a way out of the impasses of classical Marxist, speculative
and analytical approaches to political theory. Beneath the debates between rivals such as
Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj iek, there is a unity of purpose about the parameters of political
theory. Across the work of authors such as iek, Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Jean Baudrillard,
Yannis Stavrakakis, David Howarth, Renata Salecl, Jason Glynos, Aletta Norval, Alain Badiou
and Saul Newman, there is a central set of motifs and claims which mark out a distinct tradition
within contemporary political thought. The idea of constitutive lack, constructed as an
ontological claim, operates also in these theories as a normative concept, and it is used to found
normative claims. The title of Alenka Zupanis most famous book - Ethics of the Real summarises the outlook of all these authors. The challenge posed by this influential
perspective is too important to ignore . Its paradigmatic structure - the shared, often
unconscious and unreflexive, assumptions which unite its various proponents in a single way of
thinking and arguing - is becoming the dominant trend in (ostensibly) radical theory. It is
accounting for a growing number of submitted and published articles and is gaining a growing
support among researchers and graduates. It has almost invisibly gained a foothold in
theoretical literature significant enough to raise its influence to a level second only, perhaps, to
the analytical/Rawlsian tradition. This is at least partly due to its radical pretensions. It is,
however, crucial to challenge it , because its political effects are to paralyse radical
theory. It provides a very weak basis for any kind of politics, and certainly no basis
for a radical or transformative agenda. It is, in short, a surrogate radicalism, a theoretical
placebo which does not live up to the promises it makes. This article examines this paradigm
through a critique of its founding concept. In contrast to the claims of authors such as Laclau to
have escaped the essentialism of classical political theory, I shall demonstrate that the idea of
constitutive lack involves the reintroduction of myth and essentialism into political theory. I
shall demonstrate that Lacanian political theory cannot meet its claims to be
radical and anti-essentialist , and its central arguments are analytically flawed. First of
all, however, I shall outline the parameters of this new theoretical paradigm.
Lacanian alternatives are status quo affirming and make antagonisms inevitable.
Action is impossible post-alternative.
Robinson, 5
A new paradigm: the concept of lack in political theory The concept of constitutive lack arises
across a number of theories and under a number of labels (e.g. the Real, the Thing, antagonism
and the political). It emerged initially as an ontological concept in the work of Jacques Lacan,
the focus of much adulation among the authors discussed here. Badiou goes as far as to say that
a philosophy is possible today, only if it is compatible with Lacan (1999, 84). There is already in
Lacan (and Althusser) an imperative to embrace or accept the lack at the root of the social. He
explicitly states that the question of ethics is to be articulated from the point of view of the
location of man in relation to the Real (1988, 11). It is this imperative which provides the
starting-point for the kind of politicized Lacanianism with which this paper is concerned. The
basic claim of Lacanian theory is that identity - whether individual or social - is founded on a
lack. Therefore, social relations are always irreducibly concerned with antagonism, conflict,
strife and exclusion. Chantal Mouffe, for instance, writes of the primary reality of strife in social
life (1993, 113), while Slavoj iek seeks an ethics grounded in reference to the traumatic Real
which resists symbolization (1997a, 213). [L]ack (castration) is original; enjoyment
constitutes itself as stolen (1990, 54). According to Stavrakakis, the Real is inherent in human
experience and doesnt stop not being written (1999, 87). Hence, the primary element of social
life is a negativity which prevents the emergence of any social whole. In Mouffes words,
[s]ociety is the illusion that hides the struggle and antagonism behind the scenes, putting the
harsh reality of antagonism behind a protective veil (1993, 51, 53). For Newman, [w]ar is the
reality, whereas [s]ociety is the illusion that hides the struggle and antagonism behind the
scenes (2001, 51). For Stavrakakis, personal trauma, social crisis and political rupture are
constant characteristics of human experience (2003, 56). Such claims have political
consequences, because they rule out the possibility of achieving substantial improvements
(whether reformist or revolutionary) in any area on which this fundamental negativity bears.
The dimension of antagonism is, after all, ineradicable (Mouffe, 2000, 21). Instead of the
imperative to overcome antagonism which one finds in forms as diverse as Marxian revolution
and deliberative democracy, Lacanian political theory posits as the central political imperative a
demand that one accept the underlying lack and the constitutive character of antagonism.
While the various authors disagree about the means of achieving this, they agree on its
desirability. Lacanian theory thus entails an ethical commitment to create conflict and
antagonism. This ethics mostly expresses itself via a detour into ontology: the ethical imperative
is to accept or grasp the truth of the primacy of lack, and the accusation against opponents is
that they fall into some kind of fallacy (illusion, delusion, blindness, failure to accept, and so on).
At other times, however, one finds a direct ethical advocacy of exclusion and conflict as almost
goods in themselves.
Mouffes political theory makes violence inevitable.
Robinson, 5
To take an example, Chantal Mouffe criticises deconstructive ethics for being unable to come to
terms with the political in its antagonistic dimension; what is missing from a politics of
dialogue with others is a proper reflection on the moment of decision which characterises the
field of politics and which entail[s] an element of force and violence (2000, 129-30). To this
ostensibly incomplete politics, Mouffe adds an imperative about coming to terms with the
nature of the social. One should seek a politics which acknowledges the real nature of [the]
frontiers [of the social] and the forms of exclusion that they entail, instead of trying to disguise
them under the veil of rationality or morality (2000, 105). A failure to accept antagonism is a
dangerous liberal illusion and an aversion to reality (1993, 127, 149). Mouffe therefore
accepts social exclusion as a necessity, and opposes any attempt to resolve (rather
than institutionalize or domesticate) conflict . Friend/enemy frontiers are necessary, and
hostility, which is ontological and ineradicable, can be contained but never eliminated (1993, 34). In practice, this means directly favouring the existence of conflict and antagonism. In other
passages, Mouffe expresses the ethics of antagonism more directly, labelling it as a value in its
own right. Hence, equality and liberty can never be reconciled, but this is precisely what
constitutes for [Mouffe] the value of liberal democracy (1993, 110). She also refers to division as
an ideal and an urgent need (1993, 114, 118). In other words, negativity and conflict are
given a positive value of their own, because they express what is taken to be the
essence of social life: constitutive lack. One finds the same view expressed in works by
other authors who use the Lacanian paradigm. Ernesto Laclau, for instance, claims that a world
in which reform takes place without violence is not a world in which I would like to live (1996,
114). He also calls for a symbolisation of impossibility as such as a positive value (Butler, Laclau
and iek, 2000, 199). Badiou, meanwhile, insists that ethics remain confined by the Real. At
least one real element must exist that the truth cannot force (2001, 85).

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***Horrorism K (Death Drive)***

1NCHorrorism K (Death Drive Core)

estimated total number of deaths among the population comes close

that war belongs to our souls as an archetypal truth of the

This lack of distinction blinds politics to the vulnerable, autonomous human

that characterizes the ontological status of humans is also in fact a constitutive

1NCHorrorism K (Emnity Link)

not just the distinction between regular and irregular violence

does not examine the fi

1NCHorrorism K (Night Alt)

at the peak is, for all these

But this life has no meaning unless it is shared. It

can only be lived in the idiomatic invention of the multiple

everydayness and of its promises.

that there is nothing such as a factual, objective meaning of the world

2NCHorrorism K (Impact/AT: Perm)

fear of death (which shackles life) is the

2NCHorrorism K (Psycho Key)

is easily deciphered. It derives, on the one hand, from the

the disturbance of our attitude toward death

man in us to reappear. 2. It forces

2NCHorrorism K (Civilization Link)

to detach man from his primordial animal condition. We have found

2NCHorrorism K (War Link)

not allow themselves to be dissociated,

But to be imaginable, such

2NCHorrorism K (IR Link)

to approve if not to acclaim the violation of moral principles

the complex question of change in the relation to death.

2NCHorrorism K (Terror Link)

the theory is applied on the plane of events, ambiguities soon emerge.

terrorism tends to slaughter them exclusively. It makes a precise

2NCHorrorism K (War Impact)

AT: Not Psychological2NC

murdering consent [consentement meurtrier]. From the perspective of civilization, in

Explanation of defense mechanisms

Linknew age environmentalism

Alt Solves Affect

Alt Solves Anxiety/Turns Case

Alt Solves Consumption

and an addiction providing an experience to temporarily fill the void. He calls on

Alt Solves Environment

Alt SolvesEcological Self

AT: Psycho cant solve

ImpactRoot Cause of Violence

AT: Psycho is Anthropocentric

AT: Indicts to Dodds

2ACAlt Cant Solve

1NCNaturalism K (Oceans Link)

do to the sea we do to ourselves, individually, nationally, and irrevocably .

Quite a few ocean

citizens demand it.

1NCNaturalism K (War Impact)

tangible solution to facing and overcoming the problem of a cultural

1NCNaturalism K (Psycho Alt)

is an adventure. Soul seeks out and perhaps inadvertently creates crisis.

2NCNaturalism K (Psycho Key)

2NCNaturalism K (Solves Race)

and of themselves. Until we heal the deep-seated disease of anthropocentricism, bridges

threat of the discontinuity of life the pivotal psychological reality of our

2NCNaturalism K (Imperialism Impact)

violence reconfirm the traditional metanarrative of the West.

ecopsychologically unsound because it is a distorted perception of reality. The American nation

Horrorism K (Death Drive)