LYNBROOK 05-06

DIEHL

KILLING THE K
1/19

KILLING THE K INDEX

KILLING THE K INDEX .......................................................................................................................................................................1
CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD ............................................................................................................................................................2
STATE GOOD MURRAY ...................................................................................................................................................................4
WORKING WITHIN THE STATE GOOD ZIZEK .........................................................................................................................5
STATE GOOD - COUNTER REVOLUTIONS ....................................................................................................................................8
STATE GOOD SEDGWICK ...............................................................................................................................................................9
REALISM INEVITABLE (THAT MEANS THE K HAS NO SOLVENCY) ..................................................................................10
CAPITALISM KEY TO VALUE OF LIFE ........................................................................................................................................11
ABANDONING CAPITALISM LEADS TO TRANSITION WARS................................................................................................12
ABANDONING CAPITALISM LEADS TO COMMUNISM ...........................................................................................................14
CAPITALISM KEY TO TECHNOLOGY ..........................................................................................................................................15
CAPITALISM KEY TO RESOURCES...............................................................................................................................................17
CAPITALISM KEY TO PREVENT NUCLEAR WAR.....................................................................................................................18
CAPITALISM KEY TO PREVENT TERRORISM...........................................................................................................................19

NOTE: MOST PEOPLE WHO RUN KRITIKS WILL HAVE A FRAMEWORK WITH LIKE
OPPRESSION/MORAL WORTH AS, UTILIZING THESE CARDS MEANS YOU PROBABLY NEED
TO MAKE SOME UTILITARIAN/CONSEQUENTIALISM ARGUMENTS (THE CARDS ARE
PROVIDED TO DO SO)
-PATRICK

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
2/19

CONSEQUENTIALISM GOOD
1. DISREGARDING THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTIONS IS IMMORAL

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
3/19

2. I CONTROL THE ONLY INTERNAL LINK INTO ETHICS, STABILITY IS A PRE-REQUISITE

TO ANY APPLICATION OF MORALITY OR ETHICS

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
4/19

STATE GOOD MURRAY

THE STATE DOESNT LIKE IT WHEN YOU RUN AWAY, IT WILL CRUSH YOU

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
5/19

WORKING WITHIN THE STATE GOOD ZIZEK

1. OUR DEMAND SERVES AS A METAPHOR AROUND WHICH LARGER SOCIAL STRUGGLES
CAN CONDENSETHE DEMAND FOR AUTO-MOBILITY SERVES AS A METAPHOR FOR
SOCIAL MOBILITY AND A BROADER CRITIQUE OF DOMINATION IN THE SYSTEM AS A
WHOLE
ZIZEK, SENIOR RESEARCHER AT THE INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL STUDIES (LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA), 1999 [SLAVOJ, THE TICKLISH SUBJECT,
P. 204, 206-209]

Let us recall the standard example of a popular protest (mass demonstration, strike, boycott) directed at a specific point, that is,
focusing on a particular demand (Abolish that new tax! Justice for the imprisoned! Stop exploiting that natural resource!)
the situation becomes politicized when this particular demand starts to function as a metaphoric
condensation of the global opposition against Them, those in power, so that the protest is no longer
actually just about the demand, but about the universal dimension that resonates in that particular
demand (for this reason, protesters often feel somehow deceived when those in power against whom their protest was addressed simply accept their demand as if,
in this way, the have somehow frustrated them, depriving them of the true aim of their protest in the very guise of accepting their demand). What postpolitics tends to prevent is precisely this metaphoric universalization of particular demands: post-politics
mobilizes the vast apparatus of experts social workers, and so on, to reduce the overall demand (complaint)
of a particular group to just this demand, with its particular content no wonder this suffocating closure gives birth to
irrational outbursts as the only way to give expression to the dimension beyond particularity. []

It is clear that the protesting crowds in the DDR, Poland and the Czech Republic 'wanted something else, a utopian
object of impossible Fullness designated by a multiplicity of names ('solidarity', 'human. rights', etc.), not
what they actually got. There are two possible reactions to this gap between expectations and reality; the
best way to capture them is by reference to the well-known opposition between fool and knave. The fool is
a simpleton, a court jester who is allowed to tell the truth precisely because the 'performative power' (the
sociopolitical efficacy) of his [OR HER] speech is suspended; the knave is the cynic who openly states the truth, a
crook who tries to sell the open admission of his crookedness as honesty, a scoundrel who admits the need for
illegitimate repression in order to maintain social stability. Following the fall of Socialism, the knave is a
neoconservative advocate of the free market, who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as
counterproductive sentimentalism; while the fool is a multiculturalist 'radical' social critic who, by means
of his ludic procedures destined to 'subvert' the existing order, actually serves as its supplement. With regard to
Eastern Europe, a knave dismisses the 'third way' project of Neues Forum in the ex-DDR as hopelessly outdated utopianism, and exhorts us to accept cruel market
reality; while a fool insists that the copse of Socialism has actually opened up a Third Way, a possibility left unexploited by the Western recolonization of the East.
This cruel reversal of the sublime into the ridiculous was, of course, grounded in the fact that there was a double misunderstanding at work in the public (self)perception of social protest movements (from. Solidarity to Neues Forum) in the last years of Eastern European Socialism. On the one hand, there were the attempts of
the ruling nomenklatura to reinscribe these events in their police/political framework, by distinguishing between 'honest critics' with whom one could discuss matters in
a calm, rational, depoliticized atmosphere, and a bunch of extremist provocateurs who served foreign interests.36. The battle was thus not only for higher wages and
better conditions, but also and above all for the workers to be acknowledged as legitimate partners in negotiating with representatives of the regime the moment
the powers that be were forced to accept this, the battle was in a way already won.37 When these movements exploded in a broad mass phenomenon, their demands for
freedom and democracy (and solidarity and) were also misperceived by Western commentators who saw in them confirmation that the people of the East also want
what the people in the West already have: they automatically translated these demands into the Western liberal-democratic notion of freedom (multiparty

Emblematic to the point of caricature here was the figure of Dan

Rather, the American news reporter, on Tiananmen Square in 1989, standing in front of a copy of the
Statue of Liberty and claiming that this statue says everything about what the protesting students were
demanding (in short, if you scratch the yellow skin of a Chinese, you find an American). What this statue
actually stood for was a utopian longing that had nothing to do with the real USA (incidentally, it was the
same with the original immigrants to America, for whom the view of the statue stood for a utopian
longing that was soon crushed). The perception of the American media thus offered another example of
the reinscription of the explosion of what, as we have seen, Etienne Balibar calls galibert (the
unconditional demand for freedom-equality which explodes any positive order) within the confines of a
given order.
representational political game cum global market economy).

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
6/19

Are we, then, condemned to the debilitating alternative of choosing between a knave and a fool, or is
there a tertium datur? Perhaps the contours of this tertium datur can be discerned via reference to the fundamental European legacy. When one says
'European legacy', every self-respecting leftist intellectual has the same reaction as Joseph Goebbels had to culture as such: he reaches for his gun and starts to fire
accusations of proto-Fascist Eurocentrist cultural imperialism.... Is it possible, however, to imagine a leftist appropriation of the European political tradition? Yes, if we
follow Rancire and identify as the core of this tradition the unique gesture of democratic political subjectivization: it was this politicization proper which re-emerged
violently in the disintegration of Eastern European Socialism. From my own political past, I remember how, after four journalists were arrested
and brought to trial by the Yugoslav Army in Slovenia in 1988, I participated in the 'Committee for the
protection of the human rights of the four accused'. Officially, the goal of the Committee was simply to
guarantee fair treatment for the four accused; however, the Committee turned into the major
oppositional political force, practically the Slovene version of the Czech Civic Forum or East German Neues Forum, the body which co-ordinated
democratic opposition, a de facto representative of civil society.
The Committee's programme consisted of four items; the first three directly concerned the accused, while the 'devil in the detail', of course, was the fourth item, which
said that the Committee wanted to clarify the entire background of the arrest of the four accused, and thus contribute to creating circumstances in which such arrests
would no longer be possible a coded way of saying that we wanted the abolition of the existing Socialist regime. Our demand 'Justice for the four
accused!' started to function as the metaphoric condensation of the demand for the global overthrow of
the Socialist regime. For that reason, in almost daily negotiations with the Committee, Communist Party officials were always
accusing us of a 'hidden agenda', claiming that the liberation of the four accused was not our true goal that we were 'exploiting and manipulating
the arrest and trial for other, darker political goals'. In short, the Communists. wanted to play the 'rational' depoliticized
game: they wanted to deprive the slogan 'Justice for the four accused!' of its explosive general
connotation, and reduce it to its literal meaning, which concerned just a minor legal matter; they cynically
claimed that it was we, the Committee, who were behaving 'non-democratically' and manipulating the fate of the accused, using global pressure and blackmailing
strategies instead of focusing on the particular problem of their plight.

This is politics proper: the moment in which a particular demand is not simply part of the negotiation of
interests but aims at something more, and starts to function as the metaphoric condensation of the global
restructuring of the entire social space. There is a clear contrast between this subjectivization and today's proliferation of postmodern 'identity
politics' whose goal is the exact opposite, that is, precisely the assertion of one's particular identity, of ones proper place within the social structure. The postmodern
identity politics of particular (ethnic, sexual, etc.) lifestyles perfectly fits the depoliticized notion of society, in which every particular group is 'accounted for', has its
specific status (of victim) acknowledged through affirmative action or other measures destined to guarantee social justice. The fact that this kind of justice meted out to
victimized minorities requires an intricate police apparatus (for identifying the group in question, for punishing offenders against its rights how legally to define
sexual harassment or racial injury?, and so on for providing the preferential treatment which should compensate for the wrong this group has suffered) is deeply
significant: what is usually praised as 'postmodern politics' (the pursuit of particular issues whose resolution must be negotiated within the 'rational' global order
allocating its particular component its proper place) is thus effectively the end of politics proper.

2. SUBVERSIVE STRATEGIES FAILITS BETTER TO READ THE LETTER OF THE LAW

AGAINST ITSELF AND WORK WITHIN THE SYSTEM
ZIZEK, INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LJUBLJANA, 1998 [SLAVOJ, WHY DOES THE LAW NEED AN OBSCENE
SUPPLEMENT? LAW AND THE POSTMODERN MIND, P. ELECTRONIC]

When, in the late eighteenth century, universal human rights were proclaimed, this universality, of course,
concealed the fact that they privilege white, men of property; however, this limitation was not openly
admitted, it was coded in apparently tautological supplementary qualifications like "all humans have rights, insofar as they truly are. rational and
free," " which then implicitly excludes the mentally ill, "savages," criminals, children, women.'. . So, if, in this situation,
a poor black woman disregards this unwritten-implicit, qualification and demands human rights, also for
herself, she just takes the letter of the discourse of rights "more literally than it was meant" (and thereby
redefines its universality, inscribing it into a different hegemonic chain). "Fantasy" designates precisely
this unwritten framework that tells us how are we to understand the letter of Law. The lesson of this is thatsometimes, at least-the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of Law on behalf of the
underlying fantasies, but to stick to this letter against the fantasy that sustains it. Is-at a certain level, at least-this not the
outcome of the long conversation between Josepf K. and the priest that follows the priest's narrative on the Door of the Law in The Trial?-the uncanny effect of this
conversation does not reside in the fact that the reader is at a loss insofar as he lacks the unwritten interpretive code or frame of reference that would enable him to
discern the hidden Meaning, but, on the contrary, in that the priest's interpretation of the parable on the Door of the Law disregards all standard frames of unwritten
rules and reads the text in an "absolutely literal" way. One could also approach this deadlock via. Lacan's notion of the specifically symbolic mode of deception:

ideology "cheats precisely by letting us know that its propositions (say, on universal human rights)' are
This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
7/19

not to be read a la lettre, but against the background of a set of unwritten rules. Sometimes, at least, the most
effective anti-ideological subversion of the official discourse of human rights consists in reading it in an
excessively "literal" way, disregarding the set of underlying unwritten rules. The need for unwritten rules thus bears
witness to, confirms, this vulnerability: the system is compelled to allow for possibilities of choices that must never actually take place since they would disintegrate the
system, and the function of the unwritten rules is precisely to prevent the actualization of these choices formally allowed by the system. One can see how unwritten
rules are correlative to, the obverse of, the empty symbolic gesture and/or the forced choice: unwritten rules prevent the subject from effectively accepting what is
offered in the empty gesture, from taking the choice literally and choosing the impossible, that the choice of which destroys the system. In the Soviet Union of the
1930s and 1940s, to take the most extreme example, it was not only prohibited to criticize Stalin, it was perhaps even more prohibited to enounce publicly this
prohibition, i.e., too state that one is prohibited to criticize Stalin-the system needed to maintain the appearance that one is allowed to criticize Stalin, i.e., that the
absence of this criticism (and the fact that there is no opposition party or movement, that the Party got 99.99% of the votes at elections) simply demonstrates that Stalin
is effectively the best and (almost) always right. In Hegelese, this appearance qua appearance was essential.

dialectical tension between the vulnerability and invulnerability of the System also enables us to
denounce the ultimate racist and/or sexist trick, that of "two birds in the bush instead of a bird in hand":
when women demand' simple equality, quasi-"feminists" often pretend to offer them "much more" (the role
of the warm and wise "conscience of society," elevated above the vulgar everyday competition and struggle for domination ...)-the only proper answer to
this offer, of course, is "No, thanks! Better is the enemy of the Good! We do not want more, just
equality!" Here, at least, the last lines in Now Voyager ("Why reach for the moon, when we can have the stars?") are wrong. It is homologous with
the native American who wants to become integrated into the predominant "white" society, and a
politically correct progressive liberal endeavors to convince him that, he is thereby renouncing his very unique
prerogative, the authentic native culture and tradition-no thanks, simple equality is enough, I also wouldn't mind my
part of consumerist alienation! ... A modest demand of the excluded group for the full participation at the
society's universal rights is much more threatening for the system than the apparently much more
"radical" rejection of the predominant "social values" and the assertion of the superiority of one's own
culture. For a true feminist, Otto Weininger's assertion that, although women are "ontologically false," lacking the proper ethical stature, they should be
This

acknowledged the same rights as men in public life, is infinitely more acceptable than the false elevation of women that makes them "too good" for the banality of
men's rights.

3. ABANDONING THE STATE LEADS TO MASSIVE SELF-DESTRUCTION, INSTEAD WE NEED

TO CHANGE THE IDEOLOGICAL COORDINATES OF THE STATE TO ACTUALLY SOLVE
THEIR CRITIQUE
ZIZEK, SENIOR RESEARCHER AT THE INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LJUBJANA, 2004 [SLAVOJ, ORGANS
WITHOUT BODIES: DELUZE AND CONSEQUENCES, P.72-4]
However, even if there is a grain of truth in the reproach of Deleuze's "dualism," and in the remark that the opposition(s) between nomadic and
State, molecular and molar, and so forth is not simply the opposition between the Good (nomadic...) and the Evil (state...),
Deleuze is as far as possible from asserting any kind of complementarity between the two poles (in the sense that, while the molar State alone is oppressive, suffocating
the flow of desire, the opposite extreme, as the total abolition of the State, would mean "regression" into the psychotic, self-destructive rage of the-pure, pre-Oedipal

what we ostensibly need is the right balance between the two. This is how, among others, Julia Kristeva
warns of the
destructive consequences of seeing in the State only a negative barrier to be abolished: to avoid direct
self-destruction, the total revolutionary abolition of the (existing) State always reverts into a new Order,
even more oppressive than the previous one. In this sense, Kristeva praises revolt-the liberation of the "wild" pre-Oedipal creative forces, the
flow of desire). So,

reads and appropriates Deleuze: while praising his liberation of the creativity of desire from the constraints of State Power, she nonetheless

liberation that is not primarily political but more intimate, psychic, religious, artistic... -and condemns revolution as the installation of a new Order, the coagulation of
the creative energies of the revolt." From a truly Hegelian, Deleuzian, and/or Lacanian approach (a strange series of equivalences indeed), this line of argumentation
should be rejected in toto:

true radicality does not consist in going to the extreme and destroying the system (i.e., in

disturbing too much the balance that sustains it) but consists in changing the very coordinates that define this balance. Say,
once we accept the social-democratic idea of the modern capitalist market economy cum welfare state, it is easy to claim that one should avoid both extremes (i.e., the

the true
revolution would consist in transforming the very overall balance of the social edifice, in enforcing a new
structural principle of social life that would render the very field of the opposition between market and
state obsolete. Or, let us take the platitude about the right balance between the permissive indulgence of spontaneity and the rigors of discipline. Revolution is

total freedom of the market, on one hand, and excessive state intervention, on the other hand) and find the right balance between the two. However,

not the assertion of spontaneity and rejection of every discipline but the radical redefinition of what counts as true spontaneity or discipline.

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
8/19

STATE GOOD - COUNTER REVOLUTIONS

1. AVOIDING STRATEGIC USE OF THE STATE WILL GENERATE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONS
THAT ARE GENOCIDAL AND NUCLEAR
Martin Shaw, 2001
[Professor of International Studies and Politics at the University of Sussex, The Unfinished Global Revolution, Review of International Studies V. 27]

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL

KILLING THE K
9/19

STATE GOOD SEDGWICK

ABANDONING THE STATE WILL NEVER CREATE TRUE SOCIAL PROGRESS, THE ONLY
HOPE FOR SUCCESS IS BY WRAPPING THE THEORETICAL GOALS OF THE KRITIK INTO
STATE REFORM

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
10/19

KILLING THE K

REALISM INEVITABLE(THAT MEANS THE K HAS NO SOLVENCY)

REALISM IS HERE TO STAY

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
11/19

KILLING THE K

CAPITALISM KEY TO VALUE OF LIFE

1. CAPITALISM IS KEY TO VALUE OF LIFE, AND ACTUALIZING CHOICES. ALL OTHER
SYSTEMS ARE SLAVERY

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
12/19

KILLING THE K

ABANDONING CAPITALISM LEADS TO TRANSITION WARS

1. ABANDONING CAPITALISM LEADS TO TRANSITION WARS

2. TRANSITION AWAY FROM CAPITALISM LEADS TO NUCLEAR WAR

3. TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM GENERATES RESISTANCE FROM THE ELITES CAUSING

WAR

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
13/19

KILLING THE K

5. TRANSITION FROM CAPITALISM INTENSIFIES CLASS CONFLICT INTO WAR

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
14/19

KILLING THE K

ABANDONING CAPITALISM LEADS TO COMMUNISM

1. ESCAPING CAPITALISM LEADS TO COMMUNISM

2. COMMUNISM LEADS TO GENOCIDE AND MURDER OF MILLIONS

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
15/19

KILLING THE K

CAPITALISM KEY TO TECHNOLOGY

1. CAPITALISM IS KEY TO TECHNOLOGICAL GROWTH WHICH IS KEY TO PREVENTING
DISEASE

2. THE IMPLICATION OF NOT STOPPING DISEASE IS EXTINCTION

3. CAPITALISM IS KEY TO SPACE EXPLORATION

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
16/19

KILLING THE K

4. SPACE EXPLORATION KEY TO SURVIVAL

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
17/19

KILLING THE K

CAPITALISM KEY TO RESOURCES

1. CAPITALISM IS KEY TO INNOVATION WHICH IS NECESSARY TO SOLVE RESOURCE
SHORTAGES

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
18/19

KILLING THE K

CAPITALISM KEY TO PREVENT NUCLEAR WAR

1. DECREASE IN THE US ECONOMY LEADS TO GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR
Charles Bearden 2000
[6/24/04, http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm]

desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will
have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea {[7]}
History bears out that

launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China whose long-

mutual treaties involved in such

scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly.
range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the

Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries

and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary.
The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation
has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as
possible.
As the studies showed,

rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed,

The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know

it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.

are already on site within the United States itself {[8]}.

2. CAPITALISM IS KEY TO SOLVE PROLIFERATION, DISEASE, FAMINE AND THE

ENVIRONMENT

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules

LYNBROOK 05-06
DIEHL
19/19

KILLING THE K

CAPITALISM KEY TO PREVENT TERRORISM

1. CAPITALISM IS KEY TO SOLVE POVERTY WHICH IN TURN SOLVES TERRORISM

2. AND TERRORISM LEADS TO GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR

This is not Nam, this is bowling, there are rules