Strange Bataille K

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Sacrificial Refudiation K
Sacrificial Refudiation
The Pups of War
Cerberus
Acephale
No head is better than one.

Acephale...................................................................................... 1
K Summary..................................................................................5
Strategy Sheet....................................................................................6
Navigarenecesseest,viverenonnecesse.mottoofHanseaticLeague
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Strategy Sheet....................................................................................7
Shells Pups of War and Cerberus.................................................8
The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff).............................................9

The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff)...........................................10
ShellCerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)......................................11
Cerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)...............................................12
Cerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)...............................................13
Cerberus /Yelping Pups 1NC Shell Alt/MPX......................................14
Cerberus /Yelping Pups 1NC Shell Alt/MPX........................................15
Cerberus /Yelping Pup 1NC Shell Alt/MPX..........................................16
Cerberus /Yelping Pup 1NC Shell Alt/MPX..........................................17
Essential Dual Purpose Blocks.....................................................18

2NC OV Pups of War........................................................................18
2NC OV Cerberus.............................................................................18
Perm 2nc (Both).................................................................................19
Perm 2nc (Both).................................................................................20
Perm 2nc (Both).................................................................................21
Perm 2nc (Both).................................................................................22
Perm 2nc (Both).................................................................................23
A2 Aff challenges militarism (Both).....................................................24
A2 Aff challenges militarism (Both).....................................................25
A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks).........................................26
A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)......................................27
A2 Rational Discourse key to politics...................................................27
A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)......................................28
A2 Rational Discourse key to politics...................................................28
A2 Public Sphere/Demands on State Good (Both Ks)............................31
A2 Public Sphere/Demands on State Good (Both Ks)............................32
Impact Calculus versus Extinction (Both Kritiks)..................................33
Pups of War Essential Blocks.......................................................37

Pups
Pups
Pups
Pups
Pups
Pups
Pups
of
of
of
of
of
of
of
War Link v Link Turn Debate.................................................37

War Alternative 2NC...............................................................40
War A2 Coalitional Politics/Strategic Essentialism Good.........43
Cerberus Essential Blocks............................................................44

Cerberus Link versus Case Debate 2nc.............................................44
Cerberus Alternative 2NC...................................................................47
Cerberus Alternative 2NC...................................................................48
Cerberus Realism 2nc......................................................................49
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CerberusA2 Extinction Predictions Good.............................................54
Cerberus A2 Extinction Predictions Good..........................................55
Links.......................................................................................... 56
(Human) Rights Links.........................................................................56
(Human) Rights Links.........................................................................57
International Stability Link.................................................................58
Biodiversity Link................................................................................59
Economy Link....................................................................................60
Hegemony/Rogue State Link...............................................................61
Ethics Link.........................................................................................62
Ethics Link.........................................................................................63
Violence is Bad Link........................................................................64
Violence is Bad Link........................................................................65
System > Genocide Link..................................................................66
Opposition to Torture Link..................................................................67
Opposition to Torture Link..................................................................68
Opposition to War on Terror Link.........................................................69
Opposition to War on Terror Link.........................................................70
TNWs Link.........................................................................................71
TNWs Link.........................................................................................72
Link TNWs.......................................................................................73
Terrorism...........................................................................................74
Link Respect/Empathy for Other.......................................................75
Link Schmitt....................................................................................76
Link Theory (e.g., Critical Theory)....................................................77
Link Theory (e.g., Critical Theory)...................................................78
Agamben Link....................................................................................79
Psychoanalysis Link...........................................................................80
Link Anti-Capitalism........................................................................81
Alternative Solves....................................................................86
Alternative Solves Extincton............................................................86
Alternative Solves Extincton............................................................87
Alternatives Solves Ethics................................................................88
Alternatives Solves Ontology...........................................................91
Alternative Solves Resistance..........................................................95
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A2 A2......................................................................................... 98
A2 Bataille misunderstands x (e.g., excess)...................................98

A2 Kritik contradicts itself because productive/achieves good...........99
A2 Util Good....................................................................................100
A2 Util Good....................................................................................101
A2 Util Good....................................................................................102
A2 Cede Political to the Right/Militarism.........................................103
A2 Sacrifice is violent....................................................................106
A2 Sacrifice is violent....................................................................107
A2 Alt > Fascism............................................................................108
A2 Alt > Fascism............................................................................109
A2 Alt > Nihilism...........................................................................110
A2 K Romanticizes Natural/Past......................................................111
A2 Alt is patriarchal.......................................................................112
Aff Answers..............................................................................113
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................113
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................114
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................115
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................116
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................117
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................118
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................119
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................120
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................121
A2 Bataille.......................................................................................122
Capitalism Counter-Kritik..................................................................123
Realism inevitable.........................................................................124
Realism inevitable.........................................................................125
Realism Accurate...........................................................................126
Realism threat construction good...................................................127
Realism security key to heg...........................................................128
Realism Scenario Planning Good.....................................................129
Util Good Survival First..................................................................130
Util Good.........................................................................................131
Util Good.........................................................................................132
Util Good.........................................................................................133
Util Good.........................................................................................134
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K Summary
Thanks to all who labored exuberantly: Michael Barclay, Alex Dzeda, Aaaron Feinhandler, Josiah
Garnick, Stephen Harb, Owen Jones, Thomas Kruse, Ryan Malone, David Neustat, Pilz Pillsbury. And of
course to my helpers Flynn and Jake.
This file contains two kritiks that have the same alt/MPX and many of the same blocks. You need to go
through the beginning of the file carefully to figure out which blocks go with which kritik. But if not
otherwise marked, the block is assumed to be for both.
The Pups of War
This kritik is designed against kritik-y affs, like Kritikal Turkey TNWs or Bagram.
We kritik strategies that pressure the state, attempt to intervene in the democratic public sphere, deploy
rational discourse, appeal to ethical goods/norms, avoid violence/death, and value knowledge as
production.
Instead, we prefer ecastic communication in the form of theatrical sacrifice. The alternative is Sacrifice
the 1AC. Severe its head, flay its corpse, and wear its skin.
Sacrifice enacts useless expenditure, wasting goods rather than accumulating them. It thus exemplifies
human freedom, which Bataille calls sovereignty. We cut off their head as a rejection of rational
knowledge and authority. We wear their skin to break down the boundaries separating us from others.
Sacrifice thus severs the bounds of authority, expends the accumulating forces driving us to war, and
shatter wholistic ontologies.
Cerberus
This kritk is designed against poliy affs, particularly ones that claim advantages based off the
international system like heg or US/Japan relations.
State sovereignty is necessarily criminal, and even its supposed stability manifests monstrus violence as
insane excess. There is no balancing or stabilizing this sytem, and the discourses that promise security
pave the way for new wars in the name of peace.
The alternative is the same at TPW. We claim to expend the excess supposedly stabilizing the system,
wasting the forces accumulating to nuclear war. On the role of the ballot question we emphasize our own
sovereignty in this debate.
-Kirk
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Strategy Sheet
What follows is Daves notes on our gripe discussion about the various affs. Some of them are cryptic, but
if you know the aff and neg they should mostly make sense. Thanks Dave!
1. Turkey TNWs
a. Neg
i. Taboo
1. Taboo demonizes the sacred
2. Taboo promotes violence and use
ii. Root cause of nuclear weapons is surplus production
1. Removing the weapons is for the accumulation of diplomacy and deterrence
2. This leads back to nukes
b. Aff
i. Neg dismiss public discourse, which is key to solvency
ii. Wittner 2AC card
1. Public debate frees us from the soveriengty of the state
iii. Wittner 9
1. Advocating change good
2. Anti-nuclear movements work
iv. Chasudoski
1. Public sphere good
v. Massumi- pre-emption is accumulation- we attack them to save us- leads to state
violence
1. Impact is Goh
2. K needs to think about internal contradictions
a. Ballot
i. Is the sacrifice for the utility of the ballot?
b. Alt solvency
i. Does the K deploy rational discouse? Does its alternative achieve a good?
c. To answer Ballot
i. Reframe meaning of the ballot
1. The ballot is to create the theatre of debate into a sacred thing
2. It needs a winner and a loser
3. The loser is the sacrifice
ii. Sacrifice is a radical challenge to utility, more so then the perm and the plan
1. This opens up ground for the permutation, because youre saying some utility
is ok
iii. Voting for the text of the alternative
1. Thats not utilitarian
2. Even if the alt ends up solving for goods, its accidental
3. The plan is calculated
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Strategy Sheet
3. Bagram torture aff
a. Neg
i. Exceptionalism K in case neg relates to second link card in this K
ii. Fetishism- reinforce sacred attraction of torture
iii. Life isnt precarious (butler) its exuberant
1. Precariousness is the universal condition, and is not a result of state violence,
but should be embraced as exuberant
b. Aff
i. Torture is accumulation, we sacrifice it
ii. Butler- expose dark chambers and win war
iii. King 9- Demands empirically work- Gitmo
1. Neg: Gitmos not closed
iv. Ethics of the affirmative- must reject torture- vulnerability
4. Just War theory Burke aff
a. Neg
i. Always questioning war bottles up the military- when it unleashes it will be big and
devastating
ii. Remove an inefficiency (occupation breaking military), allowing more accumulation
of militarism
iii. Kritik the quest for knowledge of why we go to war
1. This rational reflection is futile
2. Violence is a moment of decision, an event, reflection does nothing when its
actually time to decide
3. Read the critical theory link
a. Producing systems of rationality
iv. Criticize rejection of violence
v. Criticize rejection of the war on terror
vi. Criticize totalizing ethics
1. Homogenous system always explaining when war is ok and not
b. Aff
i. Just war theory masks the violence of the state
ii. Aff rejects utilitarian survival
iii. No link- dont see the state as rational
c. When debating an affirmative like this say that they have a lot of good ideas, but they wrap it
up in state legitimacy and rational goals. This normativity fuels the state.
d. They repeat the logic of just war theory with a new system of legitimacy in the international
system
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Shells Pups of War and Cerberus
Labor on, Hercules!

The living organism receives more energy than is necessary for maintaining life; the
excess energy (wealth) can be used for the growth of a system (e.g., an organism); if the
system can no longer grow, or if the excess cannot be completely absorbed in its growth, it
must necessairly be lost without profit; it must be spent, willingly or not, gloriously or
catastrophically for living matter in general, energy is always in excess; the question is
always posed in terms of extravagance. The choice is limited to how the wealth is to be
squandered. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share v. 1
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The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff)

We offer this debate to ecastic communication, sacrificing certainty to social exuberance.
The 1AC models the political productivity of the state. More peace. More safety. More
reason. More work. More talk. Less communication.
The status quo is tragedy. The 1AC is farce.
Act 1: The Annointing.
The pups of war are yelping, and the 1AC adds their bark of protest to the chorus.
Demands of restrint from the war machine mean nothing, for militarism thrives on the
1ACs fascinated indignation.
JohnHutnyk2003[GoldsmithCollegeatUniversityofLondon;CritiqueofAnthropologyv.23]
Bataillewasclearlyamilitantagainstthewar,thereisnodoubtinghisengagementinthisregard:...we
canexpressthehopeofavoidingawarthatalreadythreatens.Butinordertodosowemustdivert
thesurplusproduction,eitherintorationalextensionofadifcultindustrialgrowth,orinto
unproductiveworksthatwilldissipateanenergythatcannotbeaccumulatedinanycase.(Bataille,1949/1988:25)And
evenafterthewarhemaintainedatheoreticalinterestinwaystoescaperestrictions.InthesecondvolumeofTheAccursedShare,Bataillespeculatesonalcohol,warandholidaysasthe
choicesforexpenditure.Heisnotsonaiveastothinkthatalargerparticipationineroticgameswouldhelpavoidwar(nicethought),buthedoesrethinkthewaysofavoidingwar:wewillnot
beabletodecreasetheriskofwarbeforewehavereduced,orbeguntoreduce,thegeneraldisparityinstandardsofliving(Bataille,1991:188).ThisbanalityiswhatBatailleseesastheonly
chanceforanalternativetowar,anditispossibleeveninthemidstoftheColdWar.Thetroublewas,facedwithwaritself,Batailleretreatedtothelibrary.Bataillescontemptforand
fascinationwithfascistcommunitymustNancysaysbebehindhiswithdrawal(Nancy,1991:17).UnlikeMarxintheBrumaire,Bataillesanalysisllshimwithuneaseandinevitable
failureinthefaceofaparadoxatwhichhisthinkingcametoahalt(Nancy,1991:23).ItisthisinterruptionthatleftBataillesusceptibletothepostmodernistrevisionwhichdrainedany
senseofapoliticalprogrammetheghtagainstfascismfromhiswork.9Hewasconnedtothelibrary,resigned,introspective,andintheendleftpassingbooksontootherswithawhis
Spirallingintotheconagrationofthe
sun,whichgivesenergywithout(obvious)return,helaterwrote:Theplanetcongestedbydeathand
wealthascreampiercesthecloudsWealthanddeathclosein.Noonehearsthisscreamofamiserablewaiting.Andthen:Knowingthat
thereisnoresponse.(Bataille,2001:221)And,nally,fromtheNotebookforPureHappinesswrittentowardstheendofhislife:Theonlyescapeis
failure.(Bataille,2001:223)Everythingthatweknowistrue,butonconditionofdisappearinginus(we
knowbetterinceasingtoknow).(Bataille,2001:247)PartIVHaveInotledmyreadersastray?(Bataille,1991:430)Bataillecannotbelefttorotinthelibrary.
peredrecommendation(thereviewCritiquewasthelastpublishingventurehestarted,anditcontinuestoday).
HowusefulanexperimentwoulditbetotrytoapplyBataillesnotionofexpendituretopoliticstoday?KlausPeterKppingasksquestionsaboutmodernity
whichariseexplicitlyfromhisreadingofBatailleasatheoristoftransgression,addressingpoliticalexamplessuchasBosnia,Serbia,CroatiaandIndonesia
(Kpping,2002:243).Amoreextravagantgeneral
economyframeworkforsuchquestionsmighttakeupthe
massiveaccumulationthatistheexcessofanarmstradepromotingregionalconictsasintegralto
salesguresontheoneside,withtheperformativefutilityof
massedanticapitalismralliesandMay
DaymarchesthatfallonthenearestSundaysoasnottodisruptthecityontheother.Expenditureandsquanderingtoday,in
Bataillessense,mightbeseeninboththeplannedobsolescenceofcars,computersandnearlyallmerchandise,aswellasinthewasteproductionandfastfoodserviceindustrycultsand
fashionistastylewars,tamogochiandBeckhamhaircutsthatcurrentlysweeptheplanet.Nodoubtitwouldbetoomechanicaltorestwithsuchapplications,tooutilitarian,buttherelevanceis
clear.TheusevalueofGeorgesBatailleissomewhateccentricandthedeploymentofpreSecondWorldWarcircumstancesasacomparativeregisterfortodayisofcoursemerelyspeculative.
Noreturntothe1930s(colourizelmsnow).Yet,takingaccountofalonglistofcircumstantialdifferencesnoHitler,noMoscow,noTrotskyiteopposition,etc.isalsounnecessarysinceit
isonlyintheinterestsofthinkingthroughthecurrentconjuncturesoastounderstandit,andchangeit,thatanyreturnshouldeverbecontemplated.TheimportanceofFrenchanthropology
Maussaswellaspsychoanalysisandphenomenology,cannotbeunderestimatedandallarecrucialinBataillescomprehensionoftheriseoffascism.Canthesemattershelpustomake
senseofpoliticaldebatesinthemidstofanewworldwartoday?ThattheintellectualcurrentswhichshapedBataillesanalysiswerepostMarxistdidnot,then,replacetheimportanceofMarx.
thecomprehensionofBushsplanetaryterrormachinestillrequiressuchananalysis,butonethat
canalsobeinformedbythereadingofBataillesthoughtasshapedbytheintellectualcurrentsmentionedabove.Inaperiodofcapitalistslump,crisisofcredit,
overextendedmarket,defaulteddebtandthreateningcollapse,thestrategyofwarloomslarge.Evenbeforetheeventsof11September2001inNewYork,Bushwas
clearlyonthewarpathwithmissiledefencesystems,withdrawalfromvariousinternationaltreatiesandcovenants,andmassiveappropriationsformilitaryand
Today
surveillancesystems.TheimperialelementisclearandsustainedtheaggressionagainstthePalestinians,
theadventureinAfghanistanandthewaronIraq(todefendpapaBushslegacy)obviouslyhavetheir
rootsintheimperialistmercantiletraditionplunderandwarinpursuitofresources,primarilyoil,
secondarilyarmamentssales.Ifthisispotlatch,itisofthedestructivekindthatBataillefeared.Thepossibilityofageo
politicalsolutionotherthanwarshouldbeevaluated.Butitisamatterofrecordthat,undertheBushfamilyregime,theUSEuropealliancehasnotbeeninterested
inpursuinganyprogrammeofreductionofdisparity,afewsuspensionsofThirdWorlddebtandUNsummitsnotwithstanding.WhenBataillesearches
foranalternativetowarinsomevasteconomiccompetitionthroughwhichcostlysacrices,
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comparabletowar,wouldyetgivethecompetitorwith
initiativetheadvantageBataille,1949/1988:172),heholdsout
hopeforakindofgiftwithoutreturn.ThatheshowedsomeenthusiasmfortheMarshallPlanaftertheSecondWorldWarasapossiblemodelforthismightneedtobeascribedtothe
exhaustedconditionofpostwarFrance,buthesoonrevisedhisassessment.TheMarshallPlanwasnotasdisinterestedasBatailleimplied;itfacilitatedcirculationandrecoupmentofsurplus
valueasprot.TheColdWarandnuclearproliferationturnedouttobethepreferredexamplesofrecklesswasteinactualityasrecognizedinvolumetwoofTheAccursedShare(Bataille,
1991:188).
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The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff)

Today,redistributionisnotconsideredanoption,thethreatofAsiancapitalismaftertheslaughterofmillionscanbeignored,andthe
waronIslam(knownvariouslyastheGulfWar,Zionism,andtheWaronTerror)appearsasthe
primarystrategy(combinedwithawaronSouthAmerica,mistakenlynamedasawarondrugs,andawaronimmigrationdisguisedasasecurityconcern).Thesecondary
(
strategyisanewlyhollowedoutversionofliberalwelfare.In1933Bataillehadwrittenofthebourgeoistendencytodeclareequalityandmakeittheirwatchword,allthetimeshowingthey
donotsharethelotoftheworkers(Bataille,1997:177).Inthe21stcentury,PrimeMinisterBlairofEnglandhasmadesomegesturestowardsasimilarpseudoalternative.AtaLabourParty
congressinthemillenniumyearhespokeoftheneedtoaddresspovertyandfamineinAfrica,andnodoubtstillcongratulateshimselfonhispursuitofthishappyagenda;asIwritealarge
entourageofdelegatesanddiplomatsareyingtoJohannesburgforanotherconferencejunkettheEarthSummit.ThepartyaccompanyingBlairandDeputyPrescottincludesmultinational
miningcorporationRioTintoExecutiveDirectorSirRichardWilson(TheGuardian,12August2002).RioTintoishardlywellknownforitsdesiretoredistributetheglobalshareofsurplus
Iftherearenogifts,onlycompetitionsofexpenditure,whatthenoftheeffortof
Batailletoopposefascism?Itisnotaltruistic,andyetitisthemostnecessaryandurgentaspectofhisworkthatisgiventoustoreadfortoday.Isfascism
expenditureforthewelfareofall.
acharitytypetrick?Adeceitofdoubledealingwhichofferstheillusionofmorewhilegivingless?Somethinglikethispsychosocialstructureoffascismappearstobeenactedinthepotlatch
appeasementsofthepropagandaspinsterssurroundingBlair.TheNewLabourandThirdWaypublicofferingisostentatiouslytobeaboutmorehealthcare,morepolice,moreschools,butBlair
spinsandrulesoveradeceptionthatdemandsallegiancetoaprivatizationprogrammethatcaresonlyaboutreducingthecosts(xedcapitalcosts)ofprovidinghealthy,orderly,trained
employeesforindustry,ofshorttermprotandarmssalestoIsrael,ofracistscaremongeringandscapegoatingofasylumseekers,refugeesandmigrants,ofopportunistshorttermgainhead
inthesandbusinessasusual.Similarly,thegesturesofmultimillionaireslikeGeorgeSorosandBillGatesinestablishingcharityfoundationstoeasetheirguiltisnotjustamatterof
philanthropy,itisanecessarygambitofcontainment(andthesetwoinparticularbringingtheircyberevangelismtothemarketsofEasternEurope,SouthandSouthEastAsia).
The
liberalrhetoricofcharityandthemilitantdrumsofwararethetwostrategiesofthesamerampant
restrictiveeconomy.Carrotandstick.TeamAandteamBofcapitalisthegemonythecritiqueofthegiftisclear,agiftisnot
agiftbutadebtoftimeandthisisnotreallygenerosityorhospitality.Thesamecanbesaidperhapsofwaritisnotwarbutprot,justasthegiftreassuresthegiveroftheirsuperiorstatus,
thewaronterrorunleashesaterrorofitsown;wardoesnotproducevictoriesbutratherdefeatforall.Batailleshowsusaworldinruins.September11hasbeenmadeintothekindofevent
thattransformsanunpopular(evenunelected)gureintoaleaderunderwhomthenationcoheresinanewunitymuchasBataillesawNuremburgachievefortheNationalSocialists.Of
courseIamnotsuggestingBushisaNazihehasntgotthedresssensebut
peoplewerebetrayedbythetrickofademoc
racythatofferspseudo
participationonceeveryfouryears,andthistimeinawaythathasconsequencesleadinginexorablytoamassiveght.Thekowtowingtobigbusinesswitharhetoricofsocialsecurityhasbeen
heardbeforeitwascalledtheNewDeal(orwelfarestate)andwasadeceptionalmostfromthestart.Wheretherewasperhapssomecontractualobligationofaidintheearlierforms,today
thetrickofthebuyoffbriberyofserviceprovisioniscontingentandcalculatedaccordingonlytocorporatestrategicgain.Whilewelurchtowardsendlesswar,governmentsreassureuswith
watchwordsofsecuritythatreallymeandeathanddespairto
thoseonthewrongside
the
ofthewire.Thelargestprison
populationever(underdemocracyoranyotherformofgovernment),massconnementforminoroffences(threestrikes),colourovercodeddeathrow(MumiaAbuJamaletc.),arrestand
TheincarceratedsoulsintheconcentrationcampsofSangatte,10
Woomera,11Kamunting12orGuantanamo
13arewiredinandofferedupassacricialgiftstotheruleofnew
judicialadministrativefascism.AnewtoothysmilingChristiancultofdeathandtechnology,spuncarefullyviapressconferencesandTVsitcomstelevisionhas
detentionwithouttrialorcharge,celebratoryexecutionism,etc.
givenupanypretenceofjournalisminfavourofinfotainment.DoestheUSadministrationdreamofanewpostwarerawhere,onceagainlikeMarshall,theycouldcomewithaplanto
rebuilduponruins?Thiswouldindicatetheexhaustionofthecurrentmodeofproduction,which,withinformationpromisedrenewalbutquicklystalled.Whateverthecase,theenclosureof
theUSandEuropebehindfortresswallsdoesnotexperiencenowshowsensureprophylacticprotection,andruinmaybevisiteduponall.ItwasBataillewhosaidthatperhapsonlythe
methodsoftheUSSRwould...beequaltoaruinedimmensity(Bataille,1949/1988:1678).Politecritiquesandprotesthavenopurchaseorderly
ralliesagainsttheaggressioninAfghanistan,againstasylumandimmigrationlaw,againstthedestructionofPalestine,etc.,
getnoairtime(instead,politicalsoapoperalikeTheWestWing,asthecurrentequivalentinideologicaltermstotheColdWarsBomberCommand).Every
leaderthataccedestotheWaronTerrorprogrammeanditsexcesses(civiliandeaths,curtailmentofcivilliberty,globalbombing)isanappeaser.Thisislikethe
ditheringofChamberlain,onlythistimetheoppositionactivistsareghtinginapostnationalarenaandStalinsslumberwillnotbebroken,theRedArmycannot
runinterference,thereisnoChurchillrumblinginthewings,thefascistempirewill
prevailwithoutmilitantmobilization
acrosstheboard.Thisistheappeasersgiftbetrayalintotheranksassignedtousbygeneralsand
industrialmagnates(Bataille,1985:164).Theunravellingofthetricksofsocialwelfare,ofasylum
andaidprogrammes,ofinteresteven(thenarrowingofnewsbroadcaststodomesticaffairs)or
respect,ofthedemonizationofothers,oftolerance,thehypocrisyofprejudiceallthisprepares
us
forawarmanufacturedelsewhere.Afterthebreakdownofthegiftstricks,fascismisthestrategy,the
obversesideofcapitalscoin.Inthiscontext,thegeopoliticsthatenables,ordemands,appeasement
oftheimperiouscorporate/USpoweristherestricteddestructionweshouldfear,
andweshould
ghtinastrugglethatgoesbeyondnationaldefence,wageclaimsorsolidarity
.ThedisciplineoftheSovietsandof
Bataillecouldbeourtools.Bataillereadsoninhislibrary.Weareleftspeculatingwithhim,rashlycharginginwithideasthatarelessexcessive,lessexuberant,thatmoderationmight
withhold.Butthereisnomoreimportanttimetoconsidertheeffortsintheartstoghtmilitarismoutofcontrol,and,asBushdragstheworldintopermanentwar,itisworthaskingwhy
BataillessurrealisticoppositiontoHitlerwasinadequate.IsitbecausetherearenomorethinkersintheParty?Isitthatsubversionisuninformedanditsspiritquiet?Chainedtotheshelves,it
isnotenoughtoknowthat
appeasementofthemilitaryindustrialmachineistheobversesideofliberalcharity.
Whyarewestillunabletoacknowledgethisisthepathtowar?Whatwouldbeadequatetomoveawayfromappeasementtocontainmentandmore?Whatkindof
sovereigndestructionwouldBatailleenacttoday?Againsttheimmensehypocrisyoftheworldofaccumulation(Bataille,
1991:424),theanswerisclear:weshouldcondemnthismouldysocietytorevolutionary
destruction(Bataille,1997:175).TheBatailleofLaCritiqueSocialemightargueforaglorious
expenditureasthatwhichconnectspeopletogether
inthesocialandrecognizestheirjointlabourto
producethemselves,andthismustberedeemedfromtherestrictedeconomythatinsistsonexpen
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ditureforthemaintenanceofhierarchy.Ifhewereleavingthelibrarytoday,theBatailleofantiwar
Surrealismmightsayitistimeforawakeup
knockdowncritiqueofthebarkingdogs.The
castratinglionsofappeasementmustbehoundedoutoftown.Backinyourkennels,yelpingpups
ofdoom.Faircall,GeorgesBataille.
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ShellCerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)

We declare ourselves sovereign, and refuse identification with the excess of the USFG. We
offer this debate to ecastic communication, sacrificing certainty to social exuberance.
Act 1: The Annointing
The attempt to restore balance to the internatonal system denies the excessive violence at
the heart of state sovereignty. The aff re-enacts political theater built upon the
extermination of others.
Thomas Blom Hansen
and Finn Stepputat 2007
[ThomasBlomHansenisAdjunctProfessorofAnthropologyatColumbiaUniversity,SeniorResearchScientistatYale
University,VisitingProfessorattheUniversityofEdinburgh,andProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityof
AmsterdamwhereheservedasDeanoftheInternationalSchoolforHumanitiesandSocialSciences.Recently,Hansenwas
offeredapositionasfullprofessoratStanfordUniversitywhereheistoheadanewresearchinstitutefortheanthropological
studyofSouthEastAsia.[1]FinnStepputatisSeniorResearcheratDanishInsituteInternationalStudies,
SovereignBodies:Citizens,Migrants,andStatesinthePostColonialWorld
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7996.html]
The attack on the World Trade Center in September 2001 aimed at what Al-Qaeda saw as the heart of America's global empire. The subsequent reactions in America
and the rest of the world demonstrated that sovereignty and its ultimate expression--the ability and the will to employ overwhelming violence and to decide on life and
death--have been reconfigured in the last decades of the twentieth century. The
"war on terror" and the attacks on Afghanistan and

Iraq demonstrated that underneath the complex structures of power in modern, liberal societies,
territorial sovereignty, and the foundational violence that gave birth to it, still remains the hard kernel
of modern states--an intrinsically violent "truth" of the modern nation-state that remains its raison d'tre in periods of crisis. Jus ad bellum, the possibility
of waging war against those one declares as enemies remains a central dimension of how a state performs its "stateness." At the same time, these reactions also
vindicated Hardt and Negri's assertion that "imperial sovereignty" of the twenty-first century differs from earlier forms of imperial power (Hardt and Negri 2000, 161204). As opposed to earlier eras, today's empire of global network-power has no outside.
The enemies, or "deviants," within this space of

moral-political-economic domination are all "within," and are often former allies of the U.S.
government. In the simplified view of the Bush administration, these constitute an "axis of evil" that
must be punished and disciplined in preemptive military strikes to secure internal peace in the United
States and among its allies. The sovereign prerogative is to declare who is an internal enemy, and the
"war on terror" is a war on internal enemies--within nation-states now policed under new stringent
security acts, and within the global empire where legality and rights have been suspended for those
declared "illegal combatants" and incarcerated in Afghan prisons, Guantanamo Bay, and other "spaces
of exception." The global transformations of politics, economy, and culture have been explored in various ways by theorists of globalization and
international relations.1 Their obvious merits notwithstanding, these works still maintain an unbroken link between state power, sovereignty, and territory. Sovereignty
resides in the state, or in institutions empowered by states, to exercise sovereign power in supra national institutions and within the nation-state defined by its territory
and the control of its populations. The emphasis in this body of literature remains on sovereignty as a formal, de jure property whose efficacy to a large extent is
derived from being externally recognized by other states as both sovereign and legitimate. This taking effective sovereignty for granted is questioned by Stephen
Krasner (1999) in his influential work, "Sovereignty: Organized Hypocracy." Krasner shows how international sovereignty and the principles of nonintervention are
being breached in numerous ways by imposition as well as agreement, but in his account, sovereignty remains inherently linked to territory and the state power of
states. It seems that sovereignty cannot be imagined independently of the state. This volume questions the obviousness of the state-territory-sovereignty link. In tune
with a line of constructivist scholarship in International Relations theory (e.g., Kratochwill 1986; Ruggie 1993; Biersteker and Weber 1996) we conceptualize the
territorial state and sovereignty as social constructions. Furthermore, we suggest to shift the ground for our understanding of sovereignty from issues of territory and
external recognition by states, toward issues of internal constitution of sovereign power within states through the exercise of violence over bodies and populations. In
the Philosophy of Right, Hegel remarks that during "the feudal monarchy of earlier times, the state certainly had external sovereignty, but internally, neither the
monarch nor the state was sovereign" (Hegel [1821] 1991, 315). This "internal sovereignty" of the modern state was only possible under "lawful and constitutional
conditions," in a unitary "Rechtsstaat" whose "ideality" would show itself as "ends and modes of operation determined by, and dependent on, the end of the whole"
(316, emphasis as in original). Hegel makes it clear that this modern "ideality" of sovereignty can only be realized insofar as local and familial solidarities of "civil
society" are sublated to expressions of patriotism through the state, particularly in situations of crisis (316). Even in this, the most systematic thinker of the modern
state, sovereignty is not the bedrock of state power but a precarious effect--and an objective--of state formation. Building on insights from a previous volume that
sought to "denaturalize" the postcolonial state (Hansen and Stepputat 2001), and motivated by global events, we propose in this volume to take a fresh and
ethnographically informed look at the meanings and forms of sovereignty in the same postcolonial zones of the world. Our aims are threefold. First, we suggest that
sovereign power and the violence (or the threat thereof) that always mark it, should be studied as practices dispersed throughout, and across, societies. The
unequivocal linking of sovereign power to the state is a
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The discipline of
International Relations has for decades assumed states to be both normal, that is, with de facto
legitimate control of their populations and territory, and identical, that is, with similar interests,
strategies, and expected patterns of action. To become a normal sovereign state with normal citizens continues to be a powerful ideal, releasing considerable
historically contingent and peculiar outcome of the evolution of the modern state system in Europe since the West-phalian peace in 1648.
creative energy, and even more repressive force, precisely because its realization presupposed the disciplining and subordination of other forms of authority. We
suggest that sovereignty
of the state is an aspiration that seeks to create itself in the face of internally
fragmented, unevenly distributed and unpredictable configurations of political authority that exercise
more or less legitimate violence in a territory. Sovereign power, whether exercised by a state, in the
name of the nation, or by a local despotic power or community court, is always a tentative and unstable
project whose efficacy and legitimacy depend on repeated performances of violence and a "will to
rule." These performances can be spectacular and public, secret and menacing, and also can appear as
scientific/technical rationalities of management and punishment of bodies. Although the meanings and forms of such performances of sovereignty always are
historically specific, they are, however, always constructing
their public authority through a capacity for visiting
violence on human bodies.

continued
The "secret" of sovereignty seems, in other words, still to be defined in the tension between the will to arbitrary violence and the existence of bodies that can be killed
but also can resist sovereign power, if nothing else by the mere fact of the simple life force they contain. If
sovereign power originates in

excessive and exceptional violence that wants nothing or sees nothing beyond its own benefit or
pleasure, its object, but also its ultimate resistance, is found in the simple life of bodies that desires
nothing beyond itself and the simple moments of pleasure of everyday life. This fundamental
embeddedness of sovereignty in the body was at the center of Georges Bataille's exploration of the
concept and its meaning in the modern world. To Bataille, sovereignty is not merely an archaic form of
power and subordination but articulated more fundamentally in attitudes, or acts, beyond the realm of
utility and calculation. "Life beyond utility is the domain of sovereignty" (Bataille 1991, 198). 8 Sovereign
enjoyment is excessive and beyond the needs of those enjoying. A sovereign command does not
calculate minutely what it wants, but inadvertently reproduces obedience qua its very gesture of
disregard of danger and death (225-30). Sovereignty resides in every human being and shows itself in the desire to enjoy and
revel in brief moments of careless freedom, in sexual ecstasy, in moments of simple nonanticipatory existence,
when an individual experiences "the miraculous sensation of having the world at his disposal" (199).
This was the original condition of man in "his non-alienated condition [. . .] but what is within him has a destructive violence, for
example the violence of death" (214). A part of Bataille's essay anticipates Foucault's work by arguing that modern bourgeois
society, and communism with even more determination, have striven to eradicate the wastefulness, irrationality
and arbitrariness at the heart of sovereignty: both as a mode of power, as a mode of subordination
driven by the subject's projection of their own desire onto the spectacle of wasteful luxury of the court
and the king, and as a space for arbitrary and spontaneous experiences of freedom and suspension of duties. The
essence of Bataille's proposition is that because the exercise of sovereignty is linked to death, excessive expenditure (depenser) and bodily pleasure can neither be
contained by any discipline, nor be fully "democratized" into an equal dignity of all men. Because sovereignty revolves around death, the ultimate form of expenditure
beyond utility, it constitutes in Mbembe's words an "anti-economy" (Mbembe 2003, 15). To Bataille,
sovereignty has no positive existence

but is a miracle intrinsic to human existence and can only be determined through what he calls a
"negative theology" that captures the "miraculous moments" (241) in which sovereignty is
experienced: in the awe of the leader or the king, in the disregard of death, of timidity, of prohibitions. Because sovereignty flows from the assertion of a basic life force that
foregrounds the body and the senses rather than the intellect, it is ultimately connected with the will to take life, and to give up one's life but not in a calculated and rational fashion. Sovereignty
is the opposite of "faintheartedness" and Bataille writes: "Killing is not the only way to regain sovereign life, but sovereignty is always linked to a denial of the sentiments that death controls"
(221). In Bataille's view, the divine is the ultimate sovereign phenomenon, organized around an unknowable but indivisible void, a "deep unity of NOTHING" (234), that only can be known
through its effects, the enchantment it generates, the imagination it fires and the objects it sacralizes. 9 To Bataille, the mystery of sovereignty has an irrevocably archaic quality, an "animality that
we perceive in sovereignty" whose reappearance as various forms of irrational excess upsets and disturbs the ideals of equality and reciprocity forged in modern bourgeois societies (and those
under communism). Echoing Mauss's notion of gift-giving as an inherently unequal form of reciprocity because the giver always retains more than he/she gives, Bataille argues that "the universal
aspiration of the sovereignty of the gift giver" (347), that is, the desire to impress, assert and dominate through excessive expenditure inevitably presents a problem for the bourgeois sense of
"proportionality" (348). Bataille tried to understand sovereignty as a common denominator for what we may call the "gift of power"--the mystery of the will to power of certain individuals, the
charisma that violence, selfishness, and ruthlessness generate--and he identified its origins in elementary life force that expresses itself in extraordinary actions and moments. For all its subtle
insights, it is not surprising that Bataille's work has been accused of rearticulating themes in the philosophical "vitalism"--from Nietzsche's ideas of the willpower of a future superior being,
Bergson's biological ideas of the elan vital as an irrepressible life force, to Heidegger's much deeper ontological reflections, and even Merleau Ponty's writings on emotional and embodied
intensities. But, unlike these writers, Bataille shifted the emphasis from searching for the sources of the will to understanding will as an effect that is deducted from violence and other sovereign
acts. However, on the whole, vitalist thinking had a troubled and ambiguous relationship with rightwing politics and critiques of modernity throughout the twentieth century. 10 The crux of this
problem lies in Bataille's somewhat impoverished analysis of modern bourgeois society as governed by lifeless, disciplinary and commercial logics, and his view of sovereignty, the sacred, and
the elementary forces of life as residues of an archaic age. The positing of sovereignty as a mark of something originary, of a will that is self-born and unaccountable and yet vitalizes the dull
procedures of modernity, was even more pronounced in Carl Schmitt's earlier and controversial work on "political theology" from 1920. Written in the context of the
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upheavals following World War I, Schmitt's work on "the political" as an agonistic relation between friends and foes (Schmitt [1932] 1976) was deeply skeptical of parliamentary democracy and
of rationalist or idealist notions of justice that in his view basically relied on only superficially secularised Christian ideas of mercy and salvation. Instead, Schmitt proposed the Hobbesian
"decisionist" argument that law does not reflect the norms of a society but rather the will, the fortitude and authority of those who decide what is law. "For a legal order to make sense, a normal
situation must exist, and he is sovereign who definitely decides whether this normal situation actually exists" (Schmitt 1985, 13). The key concept for Schmitt was here the notion of the
"exception" (Ausnahme), which encapsulates what Bataille calls the "sovereign moment" in that it is a conceptual and normative void from where the law can be given but also where the vitality
of the decision shows itself: "In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition" (15). In Schmitt's view, sovereignty does not
have the form of law; it lies behind, and makes possible the authority of the law. The specificity of the legal form lies not in content or style but in a certain excess, a surplus content that precisely
is the trace of a decision: "That constitutive, specific element of a decision is, from the perspective of the content of the underlying norm, new and alien. Looked at normatively, the decision
emanates from nothingness" (33). Although Schmitt's decisionism on the surface may appear as hard-nosed realism, it is crucially dependent on a vitalist conception of modernity and democracy
modern society remains

dependent on the passion and intensity derived from archaic and premodern phenomena such as
religion, war, the magicality of the decision, and the sovereign power of the leader. Although sovereignty and state
as weak, formalistic, and dull social forms. In the view of Schmitt and his many contemporaries who were sympathetic to Nazism,
power is implicitly equated throughout Schmitt's work, his idea of the decision has a wider application and resonates in many ways with Bataille's idea of sovereignty
as the sensual and embodied antithesis of the normative and customary. Both agree that sovereignty and its traces are ubiquitous and important in modern societies,
always appearing under the sign of something excessive, or exceptional. Yet, for all the power attributed to the sovereign decision or moment, sovereignty
is
beyond definition, it is a "nothingness," a force or will that only can be known in the moment of its
appearance. In the recent work of Giorgio Agamben, one finds a highly creative attempt to combine the insights of Schmitt, Bataille, Kantorowicz, and
others, and yet, through a Foucauldian optic, to get beyond the unmistakably metaphysical and vitalist tenor of their expositions. Agamben rejects Foucault's notion of
sovereignty as an archaic form of power superseded by modern biopolitics and suggests that ,
"the production of a biopolitical body is the

original activity of sovereign power. In this sense biopolitics is at least as old as the sovereign exception" (Agamben 1998, 6). Instead of
beginning with Hobbes, the absolutist state and the origins of sovereign power in Christian theology, Agamben argues that "bare life," or simple biological life, "has
the peculiar privilege of being that whose exclusion founds the city of men" in the Western political tradition (7). In antiquity, the city and community proper consisted
of free men and citizens--whereas women, slaves, outcasts, and other forms of life, that is, the majority of human beings, were excluded from the political community,
and yet remained internal and crucial to society and economy. This
"inclusive exclusion" is captured in the Roman concept of

homo sacer, the sacred man who is expelled and banished from the community and who may be killed by members
of the community--but not sacrificed as he is not worthy of this gesture of honor before the divine. This figure, the outlaw, the Friedlos, or the convict, was historically
the symbol of the outside upon whose body and life the boundaries of the political community could be built. The expulsion of someone who used to have rights as a
citizen, or simply to categorize some individuals in a society as a form of life that is beyond the reach of dignity and full humanity and thus not even a subject of a
benevolent power, is the most elementary operation of sovereign power--be it as a government in a nation-state, a local authority, a community, a warlord, or a local
militia. At the same time, Agamben shows the figure of the sovereign to be ambiguous--a figure whose status and corporeality appears as fragile and ambivalent but
also exempted from the rules of ordinary life as that of his double, the homo sacer, the figure symbolizing simple, mute and bare life (Agamben 1998, 49-103). This
logic of sovereign
violence that founds the political community by excluding various forms of "bare life"
has not disappeared with the emergence of modern biopolitical forms of governance. On the contrary. The
essential operation of totalitarian power was to reduce the population to pliable bodies that could be
improved, shaped, and regimented, but also exterminated if deemed unnecessary or dangerous.
CONTINUED.
Modern states seek not only to produce citizens who are responsible and amenable to rational selfgovernance. They also seek to make these citizens bearers of the sovereignty of the nation and the
state and thus, in a sense, produce their own ideal cause: the eighteenth-century idea, that the sovereignty of the state is the sum of, and expression of, the aggregate of each individual
citizen. Thus, beneath the governance through reason and norms, lies the imperative of obedience to the
rules, and further yet, the performance of violence and the armed protection of the community--Home Guards, civil patrols, the armed forces, and so
on. The assertion in Western states after September 11 of the "hard kernel" of sovereignty is, among many other things, manifested in substantial expansions of these forms of domestic defense
forces, or the huge Homeland Security program in the United States, many of which are based on voluntary commitments from citizens. These institutions--the armed heart of the sovereign
The
production of sovereignty through the nation and the state are, in other words, often exclusive projects
that inadvertently presuppose and produce large numbers of poor, marginalized, or ethnic others as outsiders,
nations--are both the instrument of national integration (as in the United States and Israel) and simultaneously closed to anyone considered culturally or religiously "alien."
people who are not yet ready to become citizens or included in the true political-cultural community. The state finds itself in constant competition with other centers of
sovereignty that dispense violence as well as justice with impunity--criminal gangs, political movements or quasi-autonomous police forces that each try to assert their
claims to sovereignty. In such situations,
the state is not the natural and self-evident center and origin of sovereignty,
but one among several sovereign bodies that tries to assert itself upon the bodies of asylum seekers,
"terrorists," or mere criminals.
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Act2.TheCutting.
Sacrifice the 1AC. Severe its head, flay its corpse, and wear its skin.
Sacrificial theater offers a moment of transfiguration. Risk this intimate encounter with
death to give your life meaning beyond mere existence and duration.
LiranRazinsky2009
[TheHebrewUniversityofJerusalem,SubStance#119,Vol.38,no.2,2009]
Thusweseethatthestakesarehigh.Whatisatstakeistheattemptofthesubjecttograspitselfintotality.Thisattemptnecessitatesbringingdeathintotheaccount,
butdeathitselfhampersthisveryattempt.Oneneverdiesinthefirstperson.ReturningtoBataille,whydoeshebelievesacrificetobeasolutiontoHegels
fundamentalparadox?Forhim,itanswerstherequirementsofthehuman,forManmeetsdeathfacetofaceinthesacrifice,hesojournswithit,andyet,atthesame
time,hepreserveshislife.Insacrifice,saysBataille,mandestroystheanimalwithinhimandestablisheshishumantruthasabeinguntodeath(heuses
Heideggersterm).Sacrificeprovidesaclearmanifestationofmansfundamentalnegativity,intheformofdeath(Bataille,Hegel33536;286).The
sacrificerbothdestroysandsurvives.Moreover,inthesacrifice,deathisapproachedvoluntarilyby
Man.Inthiswaytheparadoxisovercome,andyetremainsopen.Wecanapproachdeathandyet
remainalive,but,onemightask,isitreallydeaththatweencountered,ordidwemerelyfabricatea
simulacrum?Batailleinsistselsewhere,however,thatsacrificeisnotasimulacrum,notamere
subterfuge.Inthesacrificialritual,arealimpressionofhorroriscastuponthespectators.Sacrifice
burnslikeasun,spreadingradiationoureyescanhardlybear,andcallsforthenegationof
individualsassuch(TheFestival313;215).Wedidnotfooldeath;weareburnedinits
fire.
BataillesideaofthesacrificealsoaddressesFreudsparadox.Itmightbeimpossibletoimagineourowndeathdirectly,butitispossibleto
imagineitwiththeaidofsomemediator,tomeetdeaththroughanothersdeath.Yetonsomelevelthisothersdeathmustbeourownaswell
forittobeeffective,andindeedthisisthecase,saysBataille.Hestressestheelementofidentification:Inthesacrifice,thesacrificeridentifies
himselfwiththeanimalthatisstruckdowndead.Andsohediesinseeinghimselfdie(Hegel336;287).Thereisnosacrifice,
writesDenisHollier,unless
theoneperformingitidentifies,intheend,withthevictim(166).Thus
itisthroughidentification,throughothernessthatispartlysameness,thatasolutionisachieved.Ifitwereus,wewoulddieinthe
act.Ifitwereacompleteother,itwouldnot,inanyway,beourdeath.AlsonoteworthyisBataillesstressontheinvolvementofsight:andsohediesinseeinghimselfdie(Hegel336;
287),whichbringshimclosetoFreudsviewofthenatureoftheproblem,forFreudinsistsonthevisual,recastingtheproblemasoneofspectatorship,imagining,perceiving.Batailles
,
meetingdeathisaneed,notuncalledfor.Wemustmeetdeath,andwemust
remainasspectators.
Thusitisthroughidentificationandthroughvisualparticipationinthedyingthatasolutionisachieved,
accompaniedbythecriticalrevaluationofvalues,whichrendersthemeetingwithdeath
crucialfor
humanness.Notethatbothpossibilitiesofmeetingdeathinthesacrificialritualwehavejust
explored,andintheatreorart,towhichwenowturnaresocial.
descriptionrecapitulatesthatofFreud,butrendersitpositive.Yes,weremainasaspectator,butitisessentialthatwedoso.Withoutit,wecannotbesaidtohavemetdeath.Significantly
Continued
ThusFreudstext,althoughitinsistsontheirrepresentabilityofdeath,actuallyoffers,unintentionallyperhaps,apossiblewayoutoftheparadoxthroughturningto
theother.Deathperhapscannotbelookedat
directly,butitcanbegraspedsideways,indirectly,
vicariouslythrough
amirror,tousePerseussancienttrickagainstMedusa.Theintroductionofthe
other,bothsimilartoanddifferentfromoneself,intotheequationofdeathhelpsbreakoutofthe
Cartesiancirclewithbothitsincontestabletruthanditssolipsismandaffirmationofoneself.Thesafety
thattheaterprovides,ofessentiallyknowingthatwewill
remainalive,emergesasakindof
requirementforourabilitytoreallyidentifywiththeother.Inthat,itparadoxicallyenablesustoreally
getatasteofdeath.Batailleradicalizesthatpossibility.AlthoughFreuddeemstheestrangementofdeathfrompsychiclifeaproblem,aswehaveseen
andshallsee,theaterisnotasolutionforhim.WithBataillehowever,theateremergesasamuchmorecompellingalternative.Again,itisamatterofadelicate
nuance,butanuancethatmakesallthedifference.Theideacommontobothauthorsthatwecanmeetdeaththroughtheotherandyetremainaliveisambiguous.
Onecanlaystressonthatencounteroronthefactofremainingalive.11FreudSubStance#119,Vol.38,no.2,200975LookingDeathintheEyes:Freudand
Batailletendstooptforthesecondpossibility,buthistextcanalsobereadassupportingthefirst.ThebenefitinbringingFreudandBatailletogetheristhatit
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invitesustothatsecondreading.AnEncounterwithDeathDeathinFreudisoftenthedeathoftheother.Boththefearofdeathandthedeathwishareoftenfocused
ontheotherastheirobject.But
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almostalwaysitisasthoughthroughthediscussionoftheotherFreudweretryingtokeepdeathatbay.ButalongwithBataille,wecantakethisothermore
seriously.Imaginingourowndeathmightbeimpossible,yetwecanstillgetaglimpseofdeathwhenitisanotherthatdies.Inonepassageinhistext,thedeathof
theotherseemsmoreexplicitlyacrucialpointforFreudaswellonepassagewheredeathdoesnotseemsodistant.Freudcommentsontheattitudeofprimeval
Mantodeath,asdescribedabovenamelythathewishesitinothersbutignoresitinhimself.Buttherewasforhimonecaseinwhichthetwooppositeattitudes
towardsdeathcollided,hecontinues.Itoccurredwhenprimevalmansawsomeonewhobelongedtohimdiehiswife,hischild,hisfriend[].Then,inhispain,
hewasforcedtolearnthatonecandie,too,oneself,andhiswholebeingrevoltedagainsttheadmission.(Thoughts293)Freudgoesontoexplainthattheloved
onewasatoncepartofhimself,andastrangerwhosedeathpleasedprimevalman.Itisfromthispoint,Freudcontinues,thatphilosophy,psychologyandreligion
sprang.12Ihavedescribedelsewhere(Razinsky,AStruggle)howFreudsreluctancetoadmittheimportanceofdeathquicklyunderminesthisjunctureofthe
existentialencounterwithdeathbyfocusingontheemotionalambivalenceofprimevalmanratherthanondeathitself.However,thedescriptionisthereandisvery
telling.Primevalmanwitnesseddeath,andhiswholebeingrevoltedagainsttheadmission.Mancouldnolongerkeepdeathatadistance,forhehadtasteditin
hispainaboutthedead(Freud,Thoughts294).Onceagain,itisthroughthedeathoftheotherthatmancomestograspdeath.Onceagain,wehavethatspecial
admixtureoftheotherbeingbothanotherandoneselfthatfacilitatestheencounterwithdeath.Somethingofmyselfmustbeintheotherinorderformetoseehis
deathasrelevanttomyself.Yethisorherotherness,whichmeansmyreassuranceofmysurvival,isnolesscrucial,forifitwerenotpresent,therewouldbeno
acknowledgementofdeath,onesowndeathalwaysbeing,saysFreud,onesblindspot.13LiranRazinskySubStance#119,Vol.38,no.2,200976I
mentionedbeforeHeideggersgrapplingwithaproblemsimilartoBataillesparadox.ItispartofHeideggersclaim,whichheshareswithFreud,thatonesdeathis
unimaginable.InafamoussectionHeideggermentionsthepossibilityofcomingtograspdeaththroughthedeathoftheotherbutdismissesit,essentiallysincethe
otherinthatcasewouldretainitsotherness:theothersdeathisnecessarilytheothersandnotmine(47:22124).Thuswereturntotheproblemwestartedwith
thatofthenecessarysubjectobjectdualityintheprocessoftherepresentationofdeath.Watchingthedeadobjectwillnomoresatisfymethanimaginingmyselfas
anobject,fortheradicaldifferenceofbothfrommeasasubjectwillremainintact.ButthepossibilitythatseemstoemergefromthediscussionofFreudandBataille
isthatinbetweenpositionofthepersonbothcloseanddistant,bothselfandother,whichrenderstrueapprehensionofdeathpossible,throughrealidentification.14
AsBataillesays,regardingtheIrishWakecustomwheretherelativesdrinkanddancebeforethebodyofthedeceased:Itisthedeathofanother,butinsuch
instances,thedeathoftheotherisalwaystheimageofonesowndeath(Hegel341;291).Bataillespeaksofthedissolutionofthesubjectobjectboundariesin
sacrifice,ofthefusionofbeingsinthesemomentsofintensity(TheFestival30711;21013;LaLittrature215;70).Possibly,thatiswhathappenstoprimeval
manwhenthelovedonediesandwhyhiswholebeingisaffected.Hehimselfisnolongersureofhisidentity.Before,itwasclearthereistheother,theobject,
whomonewantsdead,andthereisoneself,asubject.Theshowandthespectators.Possiblywhatmanrealizedbeforethecadaverofhislovedonewasthathe
himselfisalsoanobject,takingpartintheworldofobjects,andnotonlyasubject.Whenheunderstoodthis,itseemstome,heunderstooddeath.Forinasensea
subjectsubjectivelyneverdies.Psychologicallynothinglimitshim,15whileanobjectimplieslimitedexistence:limitedbyotherobjectsthatinteractwithit,
limitedinspace,limitedinbeingthethoughtcontentofsomeoneelse.Moreover,primevalmanunderstoodthatheisthesameforothersubjectsasothersubjectsare
forhimthatis,theycanwishhimdeador,whichisprettymuchthesame,beindifferenttohisexistence.Theencountermadeprimevalmanstepoutofthe
psychologicalpositionofacenter,transparenttoitself,andunderstandthatheisnotonlyaspiritbutalsoathing,anobject,notonlyaspectator;thisiswhatreally
shakeshim.16TheHighestStakeintheGameofLivingThusfarwehavemainlydiscussedourfirsttwoquestions:thelimitationinimaginingdeathandthe
possiblesolutionthroughaformSubStance#119,Vol.38,no.2,200977LookingDeathintheEyes:FreudandBatailleofpraxis,ineitherachanneled,ritualized
oraspontaneousencounterwiththedeathofanother,overcomingtheparadoxoftheimpossibilityofrepresentationbyinvolvingoneselfthroughdeep
identification.Weshallnowturntoourthirdquestion,ofthevalueofintegratingdeathintoourthoughts.WehaveseenthatBataillesperspectivecontinuously
bringsuptheissueofthevalueofapproachingdeath.Thequestionsofwhetherwecangraspdeathand,ifwecan,how,arenotmerelyabstractorneutralones.The
encounterwithdeath,thatwenowseeispossible,seemsmoreandmoretoemergeaspossessingapositivevalue,indeedasfundamental.Whatweshallnow
examineisFreudsattempttoaddressthatpositiveaspectdirectly,anattemptthatbetrays,however,adeepambivalence.Asmentioned,Freudstextisvery
confused,duetotruehesitationbetweenworldviews(seeRazinsky,AStruggle).OnemanifestationofthisconfusionisFreudspositionregardingthiscultural
conventionalattitude:ontheonehandhecondemnsit,yetontheotherhandheacceptsitasnaturalandinevitable.Forhim,itresultstosomeextentfromdeaths
exclusionfromunconsciousthought(Thoughts289,29697).Deathcannotberepresentedandisthereforedestinedtoremainforeigntoourlife.17Butthen
Freudsuddenlyrecognizesanoppositenecessity:nottorejectdeathbuttoinsertitintolife.Nottodistanceourselvesfromit,buttofamiliarizeourselveswithit:
Butthisattitude[theculturalconventionalone]ofourstowardsdeathhasapowerfuleffectonourlives.
Lifeisimpoverished,itlosesin
interest,whenthehigheststakeinthegameofliving,lifeitself,may
notberisked.Itbecomesasshallowandemptyas,letussay,anAmericanflirtation,inwhichitis
understoodfromthefirstthatnothingistohappen,ascontrastedwithaContinentalloveaffairinwhich
bothpartnersmustconstantlybearitsseriousconsequencesinmind.Ouremotionalties,theunbearable
intensityofourgrief,makeusdisinclinedtocourtdangerforourselvesandforthosewhobelongtous.
Wedarenotcontemplateagreatmanyundertakingswhicharedangerousbutinfact
indispensable,suchasattemptsatartificialflight,expeditionstodistantcountriesorexperimentswith
explosivesubstances.Weareparalyzedbythethoughtofwhoistotakethesonsplacewithhis
mother,thehusbandswithhiswife,thefatherswithhischildren,ifadisastershouldoccur.Thusthe
tendencytoexcludedeathfromourcalculationsinlifebringsinitstrainmany
otherrenunciations
andexclusions.YetthemottooftheHanseaticLeagueran:Navigarenecesseest,viverenonnecesse.
(Itisnecessarytosailtheseas,itisnotnecessarytolive.)(Thoughts29091)ReadersunfamiliarwithFreudspaperare
probablyshakingtheirheadsindisbelief.IsitFreudwhouttersthesewords?Indeed,theoddityofthiscitationcannotbeoverestimated.Itseemsnottobelongto
FreudsLiranRazinskySubStance#119,Vol.38,no.2,200978thought.Onecanhardlyfindanyotherplaceswherehespeaksofsuchanintensificationof
lifeandfascinationwithdeath,andpraisesuncompromisingrisktakingandtheneglectofrealisticconsiderations.Inadditiontobeingunusual,thepassageitselfis
somewhatunclear.18Theexamplesnotexperimentingwithexplosivesubstancesseemirrelevantandunconvincing.Themeaningseemstoslide.Itisnotquite
cleariftheproblemisthatwedonotbringdeathintoourcalculations,asthebeginningseemstoimply,orthat,rather,weactuallybringitintoourcalculationstoo
much,asissuggestedattheendButwhatIwishtostresshereisthatthepassageactuallyopposeswhatFreudsaysintheprecedingpassages,wherehedescribesthe
culturalconventionalattitudeandspeaksofourinabilitytomakedeathpartofourthoughts.Inboththecurrentpassageandlaterpassagesheadvocatesincluding
deathinlife,butinsists,elsewhereinthetext,thatembracingdeathisimpossible.Inaway,heistellingusthatwecannotacceptthesituationwheredeathis
constantlyevaded.HereagainBataillecanbeusefulinrenderingFreudspositionmoreintelligible.HeseemstoarticulatebetterthanFreudthedelicatebalance,
concerningtheplaceofdeathinpsychiclife,betweentheneedtowalkontheedge,andtheflightintonormalcyandsafety.AsIassertedabove,whereinFreudthere
arecontradictoryelements,inBataillethereisadialectic.Bataille,aswehaveseen,presentsthefollowingpicture:Itmightbethat,guidedbyourinstincts,wetend
toavoiddeath.Butwealsoseemtohaveaneedtointerspersethisflightwithoccasionalpeepsintothedomainofdeath.Whenweinvestallofoureffortin
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surviving,somethingofthetruenatureoflifeevadesus.Itisonlywhenthefinitehumanbeinggoesbeyondthelimitationsnecessaryforhispreservation,thathe
assertsthenatureofhisbeing(LaLittrature214;68).TheapproachesofbothBatailleandFreudaredescriptiveaswellasnormative.Batailledescribesa
tendencytodistanceourselvesfromdeathandatendencytoget
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closetoit.ButhealsodescribesMansneedtoapproachdeathfromanormativepointofview,inordertoestablishhishumanity:alifethatisonlyfleeingdeathhas
lessvalue.Freudcarefullydescribesourtendencytoevadedeathand,intheparagraphunderdiscussion,callsforthecontraryapproach.Thisisstressedattheendof
thearticle,whereheencouragesustogivedeaththeplaceinrealityandinourthoughtswhichisitsdue(Thoughts299).Paradoxically,itmightbewhatwill
makelifemoretolerableforusonceagain(299).ButsinceFreudalsoinsistsnotonlyonatendencywithinustoevadedeath,butalsoontheimpossibilityof
doingotherwise,andonhowdeathsimplycannotbethecontentofourthought,hissayingsinfavorofbringingdeathcloseareconfusingandconfused.Freuddoes
notgiveusareasonfortheneedtoapproachdeath.Hesaysthatlifelosesininterest,butsurelythiscannotbetheresultofabstainingfromcarryingoutexperiments
withexplosivesubstances.Inaddition,hisideasontheshallownessofalifewithoutdeathdonotseemtoevolvefromanythinginhisapproach.Itisalongthelines
offeredbyBataillesworldviewthatIwishtointerpretthemhere.Sacrifice,Bataillesays,bringstogetherlifeinitsfullness
andtheannihilationoflife.Wearenotmerespectatorsinthesacrificialritual.Ourparticipationis
muchmoreinvolved.Sacrificialritualcreatesatemporary,exceptionallyheightenedstateofliving.The
sacredhorror,hecallstheemotionexperiencedinsacrifice:therichestandmostagonizing
experience.Itopensitself,likeatheatercurtain,ontoarealmbeyondthisworldandeverylimited
meaningistransfiguredinit(Hegel338;288).Bataillelaysstressonvitality.Deathisnot
humanizingonlyonthephilosophicallevel,asitisforHegelorKojve.Bataillegivesitanemotional
twist.Thepresenceofdeath,whichheinterpretsinamoreearthlymanner,isstimulating,vivifying,
intense.Deathandotherrelatedelements(violence)bringlifeclosertoastatewhereindividuality
melts,themediationoftheintellectbetweenusandtheworldlessens,andlife
isfeltatitsfullest.
Bataillecallsthisstate,oraspectoftheworld,immanenceorintimacy:immanencebetweenmanand
theworld,betweenthesubjectandtheobject(TheFestival307311;210213).Momentsofintensity
aremomentsofexcessandoffusionofbeings(LaLittrature215;70).Theyareademandoflifeitself,eventhoughtheysometimes
seemtocontradictit.Deathisproblematicforus,butitopensupforussomethinginlife.ThislineofthoughtseemstoaccordverywellwiththepassageinFreuds
textwithwhichwearedealinghere,andtoextendit.Lifewithoutdeathislifelackinginintensity,animpoverished,shallowandemptylife.Moreover,the
repressionofdeathisgeneralizedandextended:thetendencytoexcludedeathfromourcalculationsinlifebringsinitstrainmanyotherrenunciationsand
exclusions.Freudsimplydoesnotseemtohavetheconceptualtoolstodiscusstheseideas.Theintuitionisevenstrongerinthepassagethatfollows,whereFreud
discusseswar(notethatthepaperiswrittenin1915):Whenwarbreaksout,hesays,thiscowardly,conservative,riskrejectingattitudeisbrokenatonce.War
eliminatesthisconventionalattitudetodeath.DeathcouldnolongerbeLiranRazinskySubStance#119,Vol.38,no.2,200980denied.Weareforcedto
believeinit.Peoplereallydie....Lifehas,indeed,becomeinterestingagain;ithasrecovereditsfullcontent(Thoughts291).Thuswhatisneededismorethan
themereaccountingofconsequences,takingdeathintoconsiderationasafuturepossibility.Whatisneededisexposuretodeath,asanguineousimprintingofdeath
directlyonourminds,throughtheaccumulationofdeathsofothers.Lifecanonlybecomevivid,fresh,andinterestingwhendeathiswitnesseddirectly.Both
authorsspeakofavalorizationofdeath,andinboththereisacertainsnobberyaroundit.Whilethemassesfollowthenaturalhumantendencytoavoiddeath,like
theAmericancoupleorthosewhoarebusywiththethoughtofwhoistotakeourplace,theindividualistsdonotgowiththeherd,andbyallowingthemselvesto
approachdeath,achieveafullersenseoflife,neithershallownorempty.19Yetagain,Freudsclaimshoverintheair,lackinganytheoreticalbackground.Bataille
suppliesuswithsuchbackground.Hecontests,aswehaveseen,thesolefocusonsurvival.Survival,hetellsus,hasaprice.
Itlimits
ourlife.Asiftherewereaninherenttensionbetweenpreservinglifeandlivingit.Freudposesthesametensionhere.Eitherwearetotallyabsorbedbythewish
tosurvive,tokeeplifeintact,andthereforelimitourexistencetothebareminimum,orelsewearewillingtoriskittosomeextentinordertomakeitmore
interesting,morevitalandvaluable.
Ourusualworld,accordingtoBataille,ischaracterizedbythedurationofthings,bythefuturefunction,ratherthanbythe
present.Thingsareconstitutedasseparateobjectsinviewoffuturetime.Thisisonereasonforthethreatofdeath:itruinsvaluewhere
valueisonlyassuredthroughduration.Italsoexposestheintimateorderoflifethatiscontinuouslyhiddenfromusintheorderofthings
whereliferunsitsnormalcourse.Manisafraidofdeathassoonasheentersthesystemofprojectsthatistheorderofthings(TheFestival312;214).
Sacrificeistheoppositeofproductionandaccumulation.Deathisnotsomucha
negationoflife,as
itisanaffirmationoftheintimateorderoflife,whichisopposedtothenormalorderofthingsandis
thereforerejected.Thepowerofdeathsignifiesthatthisrealworldcanonlyhaveaneutralimageoflife[].Deathrevealslifeinits
plenitude(309;212).BataillesneutralimageoflifeistheequivalentofFreudsshallowandemptylife.WhatFreuddenouncesisalife
trappedwithinthecowardlyeconomicalsystemofconsiderations.Itispreciselythe
economyofvalueandfutureoriented
calculationsthatstandin
oppositiontotheinsertionofdeathintolife.Whoistotakethesonsplacewithhismother,
thehusbandswithhiswife,thefatherswithhischildren.Ofcoursethereisanemotionalsidetothestory,butitisthisinsistenceonreplacementthatleavesuson
thesideofsurvivalandstopsussometimesfromlivingthepresent.Theneedforduration,inthewordsofBataille,conceals
lifefromus(TheFestival309;212).Forbothauthors,whendeathisleftout,lifeasitisisfalse
andsuperficial.AnotherLookatSpeculationBothauthors,then,maintainthatifelementsassociated
withdeathinvadeourlifeanyway,wemightaswellsuccumbandgivethemanorderedplaceinour
thoughts.Thenecessitytomeetdeathisnotduetothefactthatwedonothaveachoice.Rather,
familiarizationwithdeathisnecessaryiflifeistohaveitsfullvalue,andispartofwhatmakesus
human.Butthetensionbetweenthetendenciestofleedeathortoembraceitisnoteasilyresolved,andtheevasivetendencyalways
triestoassertitself.Asseenabove,Bataillemaintainsthatinsacrifice,weareexposedthroughdeathtootherdimensionsoflife.Butthe
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exposure,headds,islimited,fornextcomesanotherphase,performedposthoc,aftertheevent:theensuinghorrorandtheintensityaretoohigh
tomaintain,andmustbecountered.Bataillespeaksofthejustificationsofthesacrificegivenbycultures,whichinscribeitinthegeneralorder
ofthings.
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Act 3 The Feast
Sacrificing the goods of the 1AC enacts liberation, challenging the utilitarian logic that
culminates in extinction.
JesseGoldhammer2005[Lecturer/Instructor,InstituteofGovernmentStudies,U.C.Berkeley,TheHeadless
Republic:SacrificialViolenceinModernFrenchThoughtp.1014]
Inchapter4,1examinehowtherenegadesurrealistGeorgesBatailleusedthesacrificialideasdevelopedbyhispredecessorstochallengethebasicpremiseoftheFrenchdiscourseonsacrificial violence.AlthoughBataille
agreeswithMaistre,Sor,el,andtheFrenchrevolutionariesthatsacrificialviolencecanbeadaptedtomodernpoliticalsettings,Batailledisputesthehistoricalassociationofsacrificewithpolitical
foundationandauthority.Maistre,Sorel,andtheFrenchrevolutionariessoughttoplacesacrificeintheserviceofmoralrevolutionsinordertogroundnewformsofpoliticsandlegitimatepower.
humanliberationrequiresnotbetterpolitics,achievedthroughviolentpoliticalfoundation,but
ratherthesacrificialdismantlingoftheconstitutiveelementsofmodernpoliticalactivity.Takingaimatliberalism
andutilitarianisminparticular,Bataillepursuesanideaofrevolutionarysacrificethatliberateshumanbeings
fromallformsofservility,includingmoralityauthority,identity,communitythewholemodernpoliticalenterprise.Bataillearguesthatrevolutionaryliberationrequiresthe
retrievalofsacrificialactivitiesthatsubvert
rational,useful,andproductivemodesofthoughtandaction
anythingthat
transformshumanbeingsintothings.Ratherthanproducingsomethingthatthesacrificercanuse,suchas
powerrenderedsacred,Batailliansacrificegeneratesanecstaticexperienceofselfloss.InBataille'sviesacrifice
mustfreehumanityfrompolitics,notsupport,establish,orreestablishit.Batafflethusenvisionsthatunproductivesacrificialactivitieswillgivebirthtoa
ForBataille,however,
metapoiticalcommunityparadoxicallydefinedbyitspermanentlackoffoundation.InthiswayBatailleusestheworksofMaistreandSoreltorepudiatethebasicassumptionsoftheFrench
discourseonsacrificialviolence.Batalile'sradicalreformulatingofpoliticalsacrificerevealswhatisatstakeinusingsacrificialviolencetofoundpolitics.Duringthet93os,Batailleincreasingly
distancedsacrificialpracticesfromtherealmofpoliticsbecausehewasfearfulthatfoundingviolencewouldgeneratefascismratherthanfreedom.OntheeveofWorldWarII,Batailleextended
thislogicasfarasitwouldgo,imaginingthatsacrificialviolencewouldachieveecstaticliberationifitwerepracticedinthebedroomoronandthroughthetext.AlthoughBatailleneverevinces
anyreticenceaboutviolenceorcrueltyIarguethatheultimatelyrealizedthatsacrificepracticedineitheraFrenchrevolutionary,Maistrian,orSorelianfashionledtotyranny.Batallle's
contributiontotheFrenchdiscourseonsacrificialviolenceisthusironical.Ononehand,hepushestheideaofsacrificialviolencetoitslogicalconclusionbyarguingthatthesacrificeofanother
beingforthesakeofpoliticalchangecannotgenerateanythingusefulorproductive.Ontheotherhand,thelegendarysacrificialcrimetoborrowagainfromMachiavellipermanentlyaltersthe
sacrificersaswellasthebasisuponwhichtheycanformacommunitywithothers.Thus,Bataillerecognizedthatseekingpoliticalchangethroughsacrificepermanentlydestabilizesthebasic
elementsofmodernWesternpolitics.AlthoughBataillelaysbaretheriskofusingsacrificialviolencetofoundpolitics,healsosuccumbstothesametemptationashispredecessorswho
condemnedtheuseofsacrificebyothers,butwishedtoharnessitforthemselves.BataillecriticizestheFrenchrevolutionaries,Maistre,andSorelforplacingsacrificeintheserviceof
authoritarianstructuresofpower.Liketheothermembersofthediscourseonsacrificialviolence,however,Batailleneverabandonstheideathatsacrificialviolenceisasacred,spectacularform
ofbloodshedthatplaysavitalroleintheformationofhumancommunality.DuringtheColdWar,Batailleuncharacteristicallydevelopedthispositionintoaquasiscientific,generaltheoryof
sacrificiallossthat
willsavethemodernworldfromthedangersofpoliticalsclerosisandthepossibilityofnuclearannihilation.In
politicaleconomyRepresentingasystematiccritiqueofutilitarianism,thispostwartheoreticalworkillustratesBataille'sefforttofindcontemporaryexamplesof
settingsacrificetowork,Bataillecontradictshisprewarclaimsabouttheabsoluteuselessnessofsacrifice.Atthesametime,healsodemonstratesthesublimeappealtheattractionanddangerof
adaptingancientideasaboutviolenceandlosstomodernpoliticalconditions.ItwaspreciselythisparticularqualityofsacrificialviolencethatoriginallyattractedtheFrench
revolutionaries,.leadingthemtoinauguratethediscourseonsacrificialviolence.Definingsacrificeisdifficultbecauseoftheambiguityinherentinviolence.Violenceisgenerallydefinedin
termsofphysicalinjuryorharmtosubjectsandobjects.Violencedirectedagainsthumansinvolvesinjurytoorconstraintofthebodyandmind.Againstobjects,violenceentailsdamageor
destruction.Metaphoricviolence,thebroadestaspectofthedefinition,includesinnumerablesymbolic,culturallyspecificnotionsofharm.Themodernmeaningofviolenceislimitedand,
unfortunately,confusedbythefactthatitisdistinguishedfrom"force,"whichtodayisoftenusedtomeanlegitimateviolence.Becausetherearevarious,irreconcilableconceptsofright,thereis
alsoirresolvabledebateaboutthedifferencebetweenforceandviolence.Intheancientworld,however,theconceptofviolenceretainedtheambiguityeschewedbythemodernworld,Vi
"force,"istherootoftheLatinvi/coda,"violence,"collapsingthedistinctionbetweenlegitimateandillegitimatebloodshed.I/jolentusdenotes"actingwith(unreasonable)forcetowardsothers,
violent,savage,aggressive."'Inthiscase,"unreasonable"describesnottheillicitnessorillegalityofaviolentact,butratheritsdisproportionate,extraordinary;ordistinctivequality:This
definitionofplo/cowsisnegativeandthusdepartsfromthemoreambiguousmeaningofvLs,whichretainsapositivequality.Inadditiontosignifyingtheuseofphysicalstrengthtocompelor
constrainvigorouslyaswellastheunlawfuluseofforce,pbsalsoimpliesbindingforceorauthority.'J/lsthusencompassestheessentialuncertaintyofviolence,thefactthatitcanbe"good"or
"bad,"dependingonthecontext.Asubcategoryofviolence,sacrificeisetymologicallyanactthatrendersholyorsacred.Ifrenderingsacredentailsaprocessofsettingapartfromthequotidian
orprofane,thensacrificialviolenceisaparadoxicalpractice:itisaformofviolencecapableofbreakingandformingdistinctionsorerasinganddrawingboundaries.Thisdefinitionis
counterintuitivebecausethemodernviewofviolenceexclusivelyassociatesitwiththebreakingdownofsocialdistinctions,chaos,mayhem,disruption,anarchy,lossofcontrol,andthelike.In
contrast,sacrificialviolenceinvolvesadoublemovement;ittransgresseslimitsinordertoinscribeorreinscribethem.'Whatismore,thisisnotnecessarilyaconservativeoperation.The
purposeofsacrificeisnotlimitedtotherestorationofaparticularorder,limit,boundary,orstatusquo.Thefunction
ofsacrificeiscontingentuponhowit"makessacred."Somesacredthingsarepure,elevated,divine,majestic,andabsolute;othersareimpure,debased,demonic,abject,andinassimilable.When
violentiadenotesthecapacitytotransgress,pollute,orprofanethingsthatarepureorsacred,itcapturesonlythenegativeaspectoftheviolentdoublemovementofsacrifice.Viewedfromthe
,sacrificeholdsthepotentialtogenerateapositivesacredness,whichmimicsthe
legitimacyofpoliticalpower.Inthisrespect,sacrificedescribesavarietyofpracticesthattransformthenegativityofviolenceintosomethingsocioculturally
standpointofforceorlegitimateviolence
acceptable.Likeanyothersocialphenomenon,violencehasnormalandexceptionalmanifestations.Sociallyacceptableviolencedoesnotcallattentiontoitselfortoitsauthor;itiswoveninto
thefabricofeverydaylife.Exceptional,spectacular;ortransgressiveviolencecreatesatearinthatfabricand,insodoing,setsitsauthorsandtheirvictimsapartfromtheirfellowhuman
beings.Thisseparationbydintofviolenceistheessenceofthesacrificialmechanismandthereasonwhysuchbloodshedisconsideredsacred.Aprocessofcollectivedestruction,sacrificial
violenceisoftenritualizedorculturallyprefigured.Althoughthisbookisconcernedwiththemeaningsofhumansacrificeinamodernpoliticalcontext,sacrificehas,moreoftenthannot,
involvedanimal,vegetable,andinanimateobjects.Ritualsacrificialpracticesandtheirmeaningsaretypicallyinheritedfromthepastandareusuallyinvokedonlyinparticularcircumstances.As
theverytermimplies,ritualsacrificeisanticipated,orchestrated,andsociallyacceptable;likeMassorpotlatch,itisasymbolicformofviolencethatconformstoaregularizedsetof
expectations.Theparticipantsintheritualknowwhatkindofviolencewilltakeplace;theyknowhowthatviolencewillbeconducted,andbywhom;mostimportant,theyknowwhitcategoryof
victim(pridnerofwar,woman,racialorreligiousminority,etc.)willbeselected.Althoughtheactualfunctionofritualsacrificemayremainamysterytothosewhopracticeit,itstotalmeaningis
predetermined.Thus,ritualsacrificecanbecomparedtoagameofchance:therulesmaynotbewrittendown,buttheyarefixed.Theserulesgoverntheselectionofthevictim,eventhoughthe
specificvictimandtheactualoutcomeremainunknown.Finajly,likegamesofchance,sacrificialritescanhavevariousoutcomes,areflectionoftheir"success"or"failure?'Sacrificeisnot
alwaysrituallyprescribed.Twofactorsseparatespontaneoussacrificialviolencefromitsritualcousin:theabsenceofagreementaboutsacrificiallegitimacyandprocedure.Withoutritual
prescriptionknowingwhom,when,andhowtokillcommunitiesthatspontaneouslysacrificeinevitablyfindthemselvesdeeplydividedaboutthereasonsforandmethodsofkilling.Indeed,in
suchcases,sacrificemaysimplyheightencommunalconflict.Whifrritualsacrificeexpressestherigidityandhierarchyofthesocialorderthatitserves,spontaneoussacrificehasnospecific
allegiancetoanysetofculturalsymbolsorsocialdistinctions.Spontaneoussacrificialviolenceispotentiallyrevolutionarywhenitsymbolicallymanifests'ociocuIruralmeaningsandsymbols
sacrificecan,throughviolence,opena
spaceofcontestationthatservestochallengestatusquoviewsandpractices.Itisatelltalesignthata
thatcompetewithdominant,traditionalones.Disconnectedfromanorchestratedandauthorizedsetofpractices,spontaneous
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communityincrisisispregnantwithanewpoliticalorder.
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Essential Dual Purpose Blocks

2NC OV Pups of War
The Aff is all bark and no no bite, chasing militarism like a dog running after a car. They
have prouced a terrible yelping, but even if they caught the state it is doubtful they would
no what to do. The 1ACs activism mirrors the productivity the state, and its indignation
at militarism reinforces its awful fascination.
Reject the role of the ballot as aligning yourself with the proper political discourse, and
instead vote negative to theatrically dismember the aff. Offer this debate to useless
sacrifice rather than political productvity, giving up the false security provided by the
liberal discoruses of appeasement. Homo sacer is not here to be saved in this debate, but
voting negative allows a moment of the sacred communication that is the prerequisite to the
value of both life and debate.
2NC OV Cerberus
The affirmative promises peace and security through reigning in the destabilizing excesses
of American power. But the state is violent excess, and the guarantee of stability is just
another form of permanent war. The affirmative role-plays the state, simulating its
sovereignty and even promises you survival as the cost of joining in their servility.
But you are sovereign in this debate, and you should use your ballot to theatrically
dismember the aff. This sacrifice releases us from utilitarian logic of good accumulation
,and cutting off the head of the 1AC fractures the lines of authority binding us in terror to
the state. Vote negative as an act of sovereign exuberance, embraced the sacred
communication that is the prerequisite to the value of both life and debate.
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Perm 2nc (Both)

Cross apply the link debate, which proves why their servility to the state means they cant
solve our alt.
Our alternative severes the head of the 1AC, which makes the perm severance. The
alternatves sacrificing of the goods of the 1AC is mutually exclusive with embracing the
aff. This is a voting issue because it skews the sacrificial game debate by making all
criticism of the aff impossible.
The aff cant severe discourse, that is crucial to kritik ground.
The aff claims to guarante survival, which means the perm is still trapped in utility.
Extend Goldhammer and Razinski.
Even if the perm is legitimate, it becomes just another rational discourse of the good.
Sacrifice requires an intimate encounter with death, and the perm renounces the dangerous
passions of existence which are necessary for the alt to solve.
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Perm 2nc (Both)

The perm links to all of their offense and doesnt solve our alt.
Sacrifice combined with the program of the 1AC is the worst of both worlds, producing a
politics of mass murder and annihilaton.
JesseGoldhammer2005
[Lecturer/Instructor,InstituteofGovernmentStudies,U.C.Berkeley,TheHeadlessRepublic:SacrificialViolence
inModernFrenchThoughtp.189191]
ItistruethatTheAccursedSharerevisitseroticismandsovereignty,topicsthatledBatailleawayfrompoliticsinthe193os.Afterthewar,however,Batailletreated
theseconceptspolitically.Forinstance,intheepilogueofTheHistoryofEroticism,Bataillespeculatesthat humanbeingswillbedriventoa
"catastrophicwar"unlesstheyfindoutlets,suchaseroticism,fortheirexcessenergy.Similarly,in
"Sovereignty"Bataillearguesthat"sovereigntyisnolongeraliveexceptintheperspectivesof
communism.""InthecaseofbotheroticismandsovereigntyBatailleisexpresslylookingforinstancesof
unproductiveexpenditureorsacrifice,whichmaysavehumanbeingsfromtheirdangerously
compulsive,modernneedtoengageineconomicaccumulationwithoutloss.'WhatsetsTheAccursedShareapart
fromBataille'sprewarworkisalsowhatimplicatesBatailleinhisowncritiqueoftheFrenchdiscourseonsacrificialviolence.Likehispredecessors,Bataille
ultimatelyputssacrificetowork,atheoreticallyproblematicendeavorthatfindsitsstrangestoutletinhisconsiderationoftheMarshallPlan.Attheconclusionof
WorldWarII,Bataillewasfearfulthat:competitionandexcessiveeconomicproductionintheUnitedStates
andtheSovietUnionwouldprecipitateadevastatingthirdworldwar.ThisColdWarpessimismwasalleviatedonlyby
theappearanceoftheMarshallPlan,whichBatailleinterpretedasaformofunproductiveexpenditure.Herehede.scribestheMarshallPlanintermsofthegeneral
economy:"Mankindwillmovepeacefullytowardageneralresolutionofitsproblemsonly([thisthreatcausestheU.S.toassignalargeshareofthe
excessdeliberatelyandwithoutreturntoraisingtheglobalstandardofliving,economicactivitythusgivingthesurplusenergyproducedanoutle,totherthanwar."
94ByassociatingtheMarshallPlanwithunproductiveexpenditure,BataillefallsintothesametheoreticaltrapasSorel,Maistre,andtheFrenchrevolutionaries.
Bataille'sargumentforeconomicsacrificemaybelessperniciousthantheFrenchrevolutionaries'convictionthathumansacrificewouldhelpthemtofounda
republic,buttheynonethelessshareanexpectationthatsacrificewillproducespecific,ideal,andpeacefulpoliticaloutcomes.Thebeliefthatsacrificewillgeneratean
idealpoliticsofanysortdirectlycontradictsBataille'sfascismessay,wherehearguesthatanyattempttousesacrificeforthesakeof
traditional(elevated)sovereigntyrisksaviolent,authoritarianpolitics.Thatessayillustrates,above
all,thatonecannotusefascisttechniquestoachieveantifascistendswithoutcomplicityinfascism's
imperiousness.Similarly,theMarshallPlanmayhaveprovidedhumanitywithanoutletforsurplusenergy,butitalso"wasted"wealthproductively,served
utilitarianmindedliberals,andelevatedAmericaninternationalinterests,noneofwhichwasevenremotelyakintotheapoliticalintentionalcommunitiesoriginally
desiredbyBataille.Hispostwarworknotwithstanding,Bataillefundamentallyrejectsthebasicpremiseofthediscourseonsacrificialviolencethatsacrificefounds
newpoliticalregimes.Bytheendofthe1930s,Batailledeclarespoliticsanimpossibletask,renderingirrelevanttheissueoffoundation.If awholly
unproductivesacrificeweretocreateanything,itwouldbemetapoliticalcommunitieswithout
conventionalnotionsofauthorityandidentity.AsBataillepushestheconceptofsacrificetoitslimit,shiftingitslocusfromthestreetto
thebedroomandtext,herevealsthedifficultyexperiencedbyMaistre,Sorel,andtheFrenchrevolutionariesinassigningapoliticalroletosacrifice.Theyput
sacrificialviolencetoworkintheestablishmentofpoliticallysignificantfictionssuchascitizenship,authority,morality,andrepresentation.Ineachcase,therewasan
expectationthatthesacrificialcrimewouldlaythegroundworkforaneweraofjustice.FollowingtheMarquisdeSade,Bataillecomestoappreciatethepolitical
absurdityoffoundingsacrifice:"Analreadyoldandcorruptnation,courageouslyshakingofftheyokeofitsmonarchicalgovernmentinordertoadoptarepublican
one,canonlymaintainitse4'thonghmanycrimes,foritisalreadyacrime,andfitwantstomovefromcrimetovirtue,inotherwordsfromaviolentstatetoa
peacefulone,itwouldfallintoaninertia,ofwhichitscertainruinwouldsoonbetheresult,"95Sadeobservesthattheregicidalcrime,whichinauguratedtheFrench
RepublicaswellastheFrenchdiscourseonsacrificialviolence,isasacrificedestinedtorepeatitselfbecauseitstripsawaythepossibilityofdistinguishingrightfrom
wrong.Inotherwords,violentpoliticalfoundationunderminesitsownpossibility.Sade'sadmonishmentappliestotheTerror,whentheFrenchrevolutionaries
tragicallyrepeatedtheregicidethousandsoftimes.ItanticipatesMaistre,whoimaginesaworldinwhichtheunendingsacrificeoftheinnocentredeemsthesinsof
theguilty.ItforeseestheworkofSorel,whosemythofthegeneralstrikedependsupontheworkingclass'smartyredrepetitionofJesus'crucifixion.And,finally,it
highlightstheabsurdityofBataille'spostwarsearchforunproductiveexpenditureinquotidianpolitics.Ineachofthesecases,sacrificeworkstoproducevirtueand
redemption.Sade'sargumentisstraightforward:violentsacrificeneverfoundspoliticswithoutalsogivingrisetoanendlessrepetitionoftheoriginalcrime.Bataille
ultimatelydevelopsthisinsightintoanotionofviolentwaste,whichhehopeswilldemolishthemodernfictionsthatleave
humanbeingspowerlessandservile.Bataille'ssacrificialcommunitydoesnotrepair,restore,or
regenerate.Itisincapableofestablishing,founding,andinaugurating.It"begins"withtheviolationof
thelimitsthatmakepoliticspossible,and,tragically,itmustexistinapermanentstateofviolation.
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The perms net benefit makes their sacrifice ridiculous. Sacred ecastasy requires us to
gamble everything, identifying with waste beyond recuperation.
Jason Winfree, Assoc Prof Philosophy at California State University, 2009
[The Obssessions of George Bataille: Community and Communication ed. Mitchell/Winfree p. 42-44]
With respect to the lover, we desire like a gambler wagers. "Like the winnings of a gambler;' writes Bataille, "sexual, possession
prolongs desire-or extinguishes it" (OC 6: 106/ON 86).The sheer momentum of the movement requires that its strength be squandered. Desire is unsatisfied not
because it fails, but because it exceeds the search for satisfaction, because it is also raw expenditure. For this reason, desire is misunderstood if it is represented as the
infinite tragic movement toward an inaccessible object, as though desire not only is prohibited by its very structure from attaining its aim, but as though its structure is
fundamentally teleological. The obsession with this logic is always mournful (psychoanalysis) or moral (transcendental philosophy) and in both cases remains
theological insofar as the concern is governed by or measured against an imaginary sense of propriety or ownership or end. The desire that binds lovers is not so much
directed toward an unattainable sumnut, however, as it is itself the summit, the point "where life is impossibly at the limit."' Desire and summit can no more be
separated than lightning and its flash. In this respect Bataille is unequivocal: " The
summit isn't what we 'ought to reach,' " (OC 6:

57/ON 39; tni)). Rather, "It's what is. Never what should be" (OC 6: 111/ON 91). If desire is unsatisfied, that is because it
exceeds the conservative search for satisfaction, because it is not teleological, because we are driven beyond the need of satisfaction without being driven to anything,
because our unfinished character is in this very way excessive, [p. 42] not impoverished. If love is unsatisfied it is because it has perished, leaving us wasted and
ruined. The lovers' love is sacred. It does not belong to the profane order of work and its accumulated labor, the profane and banal order of capital. For Bataille, the
The sacrifices
brought about by the love of lovers require expenditure without recuperation; we give up our careers
as dancers, we speak on the phone for hours on end, we waste the day in bed, and we give ourselves over
entirely to that waste and identify ourselves with it. These sacrifices have nothing to do with the
sacrifice of theology. As Bataille puts it, "in divine love, the limit is given in perfection," and this limit
necessarily excludes play and its risk. Certainly, one risks nothing by loving God, whose infinite
perfection is expressed through an infinite and undiscriminating love, just as one risks nothing by
loving the flag. And that is as good as to say that in neither case does one really love, even if there remains operative a libidinal bind that
does not fail to risk those others who refuse the religious-nationalistic sublimation of carnal desire, of the lovers touch or its absence . God
and nation stand before us as the ugly symptoms of efficiency that guarantee that desire not only
leaves the lover intact but also yields a profit. By contrast, carnal love and the love of lovers concerns
the excess of suffering, and Bataille insists that "without this excess we could not play" (OC 6 86/ON
71).That is, it is by way of the excesses of suffering carnal desire that we are ourselves put into play,
thrown like dice. And finitude is unbounded just in the sense that dice in their inevitable free fall carry
an unpredictable combination that proves exhilarating or devastating, and in any case leads to ruin, even as it leads to the affirmation of what we
sacred designates an object that is beyond all others in value, but the sacred character of our carnal love has nothing to do with divine love.
are in love. The oscillation expressed above in terms of the acceleration leading to summit or decline, the ecstasy of insufficiency, is not only a thematically explicit
object in Bataille's writings, privileged and important because of the manner in which it bears upon and articulates the ontological task. Rather, Batailles work itself is
characterized by the very movement it describes, constantly fluctuating between decline and glory in its expression. This is not to say Bataille's writing is motivated by
the task of adequation between form and content, Sache and expression, but to insist that the ontological task is born from and gives expression to fundamental
conditions of human life, conditions that enter into that expression and call it forth. Insufficiency is not, therefore, a category or concept to which the world must
measure up, by which it would be rendered intelligible, but is rather the condition out of which Bataille writes. The work is ontological, then, not only because of its
explicitly thematic ontological concerns, but because it exhibits in its very structure, expression, and aim, the ontological conditions it also diagnoses, the [p. 43]
reciprocity of chance and insufficiency, isolation and contact. Thus, the same insufficiency thematized in the Sonirne athologique at once tears that work apart,
rendering it dsoeuure-inoperative, unworking, fragmentary-and in this way it accounts for the alternately depressed and ecstatic articulations of naked existence
exposed to chance, the violent and sometimes incoherent shifts of focus, mood, and intention. The work itself is an open wound communicating with those who read
and those who are read, the elective community of Bataille's readership. Perhaps no part of the Somme exhibits the elective communities involved in this work and its
unworking (dsoeuureinent as clearly as does On Nietzsche, which denies its readers any systematic or historical or critical exposition of Nietzsche, which is not even
about Nietzsche at all, contrary to the most basic initial assumptions elicited by the title, but which offers instead articulations that have more to do with coffee shops,
toothaches, and pretty girls than the academically overburdened and overdetermined will to power. Throughout the violent and radically unstable terrain of the works
comprising the Sonune, Nietzsche is present neither as thematic object nor authoritative voice, but as part of an elective community, as participant in the bond of
attraction and inclination to the community of chance and risk that requires of Bataille that he write. In Inner Experience, Bataffle announces, thereby placing the
production of his own work squarely within the ontological claims it makes: "It is from a feeling of
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community binding me to Nietzsche that the desire to communicate arises in me, not from an isolated originality" (OC 5: 39/IF 26-27). And similarly from Guilty:
"My life with Nietzsche as a companion is a community. My book is this community" (OC 6: 33/ON 9). Not a dialogical community of interpretation (Auslegung),
but an affective community bound by chance, attracted to one another and the luck that configures that attraction-"Chance, it turned out, corresponded to Nietzsche's
intentions more accurately than power could" (OC 6: 17/ON xxv). Bataille's books and those that read them are bound like lovers or suspended like a crowd before a
dead-heat horse race entering the chute, one momentum configuring another and holding it together while luck falls. "Thus we are nothing, neither you nor I, beside
burning words which could pass from me to you, imprinted on a page: for I would only have lived in order to write them, and, f it is true that they are addressed to
you, you will bye from having had the strength to hear them" (OC 5: 111/IE 94; em). Not a community of like minds struggling to give shape to a Sache, but beings
bound by the passion of chance, suffering their luck as their lot. When Nietzsche proclaims in On the Genealogy qf Morals, "atheism and a second innocence go
together,""' he at once condemns the theological interpretation of the world as guilty. Nothing devalues our insufficiency like the attempt to lie meaning into the world,
denying chance, personalizing [p. 44] luck, thus writing it off. But a
being subject to chance is acphalic, a headless being, a

being not ordered theologically, and that is to say, not ordered at all, but shot through with desire and
cast into the world as one particle among others. To the same extent that Acphale is not and cannot become a program, atheism is not a
belief or a position. It concerns rather, as Nietzsche puts it, "the meaning of the earth,"" that is, the sense of life without transcendence, the immanence of falling luck,
the exposure to love and death, ecstatic and finite existence. Bataille's community with Nietzsche is the community of those attracted by that luck, bound to one
another by the passion of chance, the lucky suffering that need not make of itself a meaning, the risk and play of ecstatic insufficiency that is effortless in its beauty
and cruelty and momentum. The community with Nietzsche, the ecstasy of acphalic atheism, is the affirmation of desire and its risk, the incomprehensibility of the
chance that constitutes our being: "Only when our response to desire remains incomprehensible is that response true .... ....We are to the degree that we
risk
ourselves. If the risk ceases, if I withdraw some aspect to keep it from changing, the resulting
regularity will be misleading: I'll pass from the tragic to the ridiculous" (OC 6: 87/ON 72; em).
Nothing is more ridiculous, therefore, than theology and its guilt, nothing more absurd than the faade
of our most serious understanding, which serves the social order and de facto community as its
justification. Atheism is a matter of play, a matter of chance, a name for the way we are played by our
luck. The community with Nietzsche, the community of lovers, the tragic community, elective
community-never a matter of fact, but only value, the force of attraction that makes us crazy and
feverish and delivers us over to one another in tears, laughter, and orgasm. Elective community is the
point of acphalic contact.
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Perm instrumentalizes sacrifice for the good of the plans future, ruining the sovereign
ecastasy of sacrifice.
David Allison, Prof Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook, 2009
The breach in the psychophysical integrity of another and of oneself is not a means for a higher
good, which would be communication. Corntnunication through these breaches in our and the other's
psychophysical integrity turns in a vertigo, a solar explosion, independent of the consequences.
Communication excludes concern for our interests, excludes concern for the time to come.
Communication is not the good that we ensure or acquire through an action, which therefore requires
us to coordinate, discipline, focus and narrow down, and subordinate our forces. It is itself not a future
with which we are concerned: "the debauchee has a chance to reach the summit only if he has no
intention to do so. The ultimate moment of the senses requires real innocence and the absence of moral
pretensions and consequently even of the consciousness of evil" (OC 6: 57/ON 38; tm). Communication
is not an enduring state; exhaustion comes quickly. It is not a good which requires conservation and
preservation.
When our strength begins to fail, when we feel ourselves declining, we become preoccupied with
acquiring and accumulating goods of all sorts, with enriching ourselves in view of the difficulties to
come. We act.
Communication is disconnected from the concern for the future, but the relation between the summit
and decline can be reversed in an effort to establish a relationship of utility between them. When
sovereignty declines, communication is viewed and recuperated from the point of view of servile
existence, of utility. Sacrifice and orgy will be viewed as actions achieving some good. They were
seen to be expenditures useful for achieving victory in war. The victorious survivors knew the benefits of
victory, acquired the women, booty, and territory. Sacrifice, which involves sacrifice of oneself with the
victim, will be interpreted as a means to achieve personal salvation in another life. Sacrificing oneself was
also seen as a means to achieve equality and justice for the community on earth. Throughout history,
reasons were developed for one to head for the summit, releasing and risking all one's forces. Indeed,
these reasons produced history.
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Freedom requires the sacrifice of knowledge, even that which supposedly challenges
American domination. The 1AC labors to produce global knowledge, enacting servility to
the roguery of state violence.
Malik 2006
[Suhail,teachesintheDepartmentofVisualArts,GoldsmithsCollege
TheoryCultureSocietyv.2323]
.Itfollowsthatsovereigntyisrogueindemocracyanddemocracyisthereforeguaranteedandharnessedbyapowerthatisitselfrogue.Ifthereistobeglobal
democracy,theremustbeglobalsovereigntyandsoaglobalvoyoucracy,aroguestatethatisbeyondthetermsofthatdemocracy.Thesovereignstate
thatorderslegitimacy,whichisthedefactoconditionoforder,isnecessarilyvoyou,rogue,counter
ordering;anidentityofopposingcategorieswhosecondensationcanherebemarked(beyondthetermsDerridasetsup)bythetermssovoyoureignorsoverogue,a
powerthatestablishesonlyaquasiorder.Today,Derridacontinues,suchstatesareonlytheUSAandwhatever(alwayssubsidiary)alliesitpicksupinthecourse
ofundertakingsuchactionsinimplementingitssovereignty.ButtheUSAisexceptionalinthisquasiorderinthatitistheprimaryroguestatetheonlytrulyrogue
state(asChomskyalsosaysfordifferentreasons)becauseofitsoutstandinginternationalsovereignpowers.USinternationaldomination
inthenameofacommon,globaldemocracyisthatofaglobalsovereignty(thoughthisisnottosay
worldsovereignty);itis,
asisoftendeclared,aglobalabuseofpowernecessarilyso.Thisglobalsovereignty
oftheUSAissometimesexercisedthroughtheUNbutmustalsotakeplaceintermsofotheroutstandingmanifestationsofpowerifitistobesupersovereign,
includingthatofitsmilitary(quaforce),itseconomics(quaconsumption),itsculturalproduction(quaentertainment)anditspolitics(quademocracy).Such
sovoyoureignorsoveroguepower(s)arenotoccasionedacrossoroutsideofdemocraticorganizationorpolitiesatwhateverlevel:ithappensthroughandin
democracy,insistentlyso.Soverogueryistheconditionfortheproductionofglobalknowledge anditisthatbywhich
knowledgeinitsglobalityhastobecomprehended.Buthowissovereigntytobeunderstoodinitsidentitywithcountersovereignty?Wehaveseenthat,forDerrida,
Bataillescounterconceptofsovereigntyspeakstothecounterorderofvoyoucracy.Weshallnowtakeupthisaccountinordertomoreexactlydeterminethe
sovereigntyofAmericanglobaldominance.Doingsowillreturnusdirectlytothequestionofknowledgeintheactualconditionsofglobalization.Batailles
interestinsovereigntyisinageneralaspectthatisopposedtotheservileandthesubordinate(1993:197);itisgeneralbecauseitcanbelongtoanyone.Such
generalitymeansthatthedeterminationofsovereigntycannotberestrictedtoitstraditionalidentificationwiththepowerofeithertheStateorlawasithasbeenfrom
PlatotoHobbes,Schmittand,inamorecomplicatedmanner,Agamben.Itcanbethesovereigntyofthevoyou,forexample.Batailledrawsupaninitialdistinction
betweenthegeneralaspectofsovereigntyandwhatthetermmeansasregardsalegallyconstitutedandrecognizedstateorindividual(thatisthereforesubordinateto
law).However,asDerridaproposes,initssovoyoureigntyorsoveroguery,itistodaytheUSAalonethatsidestepsthisdistinction:yes,theUSAisofcoursea
sovereignstateinthelegallyconstitutedsenseandsoissubjecttointernationallaw;yetitisinapositiontocountermandtheobeisancetoanysuchlaworconsensus
ofageneralwill,sinceitalonehasthepowertodominateandauthorizenonlegalactionsinoutrightandblatantdefianceofinternationalconventionand
expectations.InthisitexemplifiesatasupernationallevelthegeneralaspectofsovereigntybeyondlawofwhichBataillespeaks.Theproblemoftheconstitutionof
globalknowledgecannowbetakenupsince,forBataille,sovereigntyopposesandfallsoutsideofservility,workanduse,andknowledgeisconstitutedina
temporalbindingthroughjusttheseactions.SovereigntyisexternaltoknowledgeforBataillebecause,takingthestabilizedmodalityofknowledgeproductionknown
asscienceasexample,todoscienceistodisregardthepresenttimewithaviewtosubsequentresults(1993:2012).Relativelyuncontroversialasthis
characterizationmaybe,severalsignificantconsequencesfollowfromit:first,thattheknowledgeconstitutedinandbyscience,thatisthepresentactivityofscience,
isdirectedbyafuturaldetermination,afutureorganizedintermsofuse;second,knowledgeunfoldsintime;third,anyknowledgethatresultsfromsuchanactivity
isitselfsubjecttothesamecondition,thatis,theknowledgethatresultsfromscienceisitselforganizedintermsoffutureresultswhichistosay,fourth,that
throughtheprospectofitsuseknowledgeisconstitutedbytheworkofitsfuturedeterminations.HenceBataillespartconclusion:toknowisalwaysto
strive,towork;itisalwaysaservileoperation,indefinitelyresumed,indefinitelyrepeated(1993:
202).Knowledgeasitisconstitutedbyscience(asanexemplar)isorganizedwithaviewtouse
whetherthatuseispractical(technics)ortheoretical(science)isasecondaryconcern.Knowledge,then,
isnotsovereignatleast,insofarasitisunderstoodintermsofscienceor,moregenerally,afutural
mobiliz
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ation.Puttheotherway,asBatailleaffirmsagainandagain,sovereigntycannotbeknown.Accepting
thischaracterizationofsovereignty,thecodeterminationofAmericandominationandglobalknowledge
isnotthenjustahistoricalandpoliticalconcernbutalsoatheoreticalandconceptualone.More
specifically,asmuchasthefateandproblemsofAmericandomi
nation(howeveritischaracterized)
istiedtothefateandproblemsofanyattempttoconstructatheoreticalorpracticalcaseforaglobal
knowledge,sothequestionofAmericansovereigndominationofinternationalandglobalpoliticsin
howevercomplicatedasenseisalsoaquestionastotheconditionsandpossibilityofglobalknowledge.
WithBataille,sovereigntyisanexperiencethatcannotbecomprehendedinscience,noteven
politicalscience,andcertainlynotwithregardtolawinitsprimarilyfuturaldeterminationofthe
present.Itcannotberegulatedorexperiencedwithviewtoanyknownfuture.Rather,sovereignty
wouldhavetooccurinamomentwhichremainsoutside,shortoforbeyond,allknowledge(Bataille,
1993:201).Suchamomentcannotbeknownbutisexperienced;asBatailleputsit,consciousnessof
themomentisnottrulysuch,isnotsovereign,exceptinunknowing.Onlybycancelling,oratleast
neutralizing,everyoperationofknowledgewithinourselvesareweinthemoment,withoutfleeingit
(1993:203).Itisthemomentthatissovereigninhowitseizesthemindandabjuresfromitsownfutural
determination,refutinganyconversionintoworkoruse.Theinterruptionorblockingofthisfutural
aspectofexperienceisnotavoluntaristicactionoraprogrammableinterventionbutisforBataillepossiblein
thegripofstrongemotionsthatshutoff,interruptoroverridetheflowofthought.Thisisthecaseifweweep,ifwesob,ifwelaughtillwegasp(1993:203).Itis
nottheepiphenomenaofstrongemotionssuchastheburstoflaughterortearsthatstopsthought;rather,theblockingofthoughtandknowledgeareoccasioned
bytheobjectofthelaughter,ortheobjectofthetears,thatis,bythemomentswhichoccasionthatlaughterandthosetears,asifweweretryingtoarrestthe
momentandfreezeitintheconstantlyrenewedgaspsofourlaughteroroursobs(Bataille,1993:203).Itistheabsolutemomentousnessand
momentarynessofstrongemotions,anexperiencethatisalwaysparticular,thatthereforeapprehend
whatisinvolvedinsovereignty,evenasthelatterdefiesknowledgeorotherattemptstodetermineitthat
canbefuturallyorganized.Thismomentaryexperiencewithoutknowledgeisrisk.
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A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)

Sacrifice mimics the political function of the state without relinquishing our sovereignty to
its tendrils of control
This debate is theater, and the theatrical sacririce of the alt is preferable to simulating the
good of the 1AC. Vote neg to claim debate as a space of ecastic communication.
IfCerberus
Roleplayingassumesthesovereignviolenceofthestate.
ExtendtheHansenandStepputat2007:
Thedebatemethodofthe1ACtrainsustobecomeministates,actorswhoseultimatesovereignty
mustgobacktothefountainheadoftheUSFG.Thistrainsustointernalizethegoodsofpeaceand
justicethatenableendlesswarsofextermination.
They turn debate into a ritual of mastery disconnected from the realities of politics violence
StephenChan2000
[ProfessorIRDeanEthicsatNotinghamTrentUniversity,MillenniumVol.29,No.3,pp.565589]
TherearealsomoreLuciferlikedangers,however.Whenyouunderstandthatamanbelieveshecanchangethe
worldasaresultofmeditationandspecific
rituals,andwhenyoutrytofindoutwhyheissocertainthat,after
performingthatritual,hereallywillbecomemasteroftheworldoratleastofhisvillagewell,thereagainis
thetemptationofabsoluteliberty;inotherwords,thesuppressionofthehumancondition.Manisalimited,conditionedbeing.Butthefreedomofagod,oramythic
ancestor,oraspiritnolongertrammelledbyamortalbody!Thosearetemptations.25
Continued
theparadigmnowofthepersonofIR?HeorshegoestotheInternatio
nalStudiesAssociationconferencesandperformshisorherknowledgetootherperformers.Heorshereads
(translationsandsummariesof)thetextsofthemoment,andseeks
areflexivitywithinthosetexts;locatesa
criticalpracticewithintheconferencehallandclassroom;believesthatdiscourse,andhisorherparticipation
indiscourse,constructstheworld.Thisisaprofessionalismpureandproper,anditishermeticallysealedfro
mtheworld,ratherthaninhermeneuticdialoguewithit.Itisaconceittojustifycomfort.AndIguessitisacertain
comingofage:havingfinallyspokenandwrittenaconstructivismthatsaysitisourpurposetospeakandwrite,
thattheworldthatsuffersismerelythevictimofdiscourse,andthattherefore,thepurposeofthepersonofIRis
toengagewithdiscourseratherthanengagewithsuffering.Itisingeniousanddisingenuous,andcausesregret
thatBuddhismhasnosenseofactualpurgatory.Wehavecometoresemblethosehighermenandsublimemen
whosoughttodistractZarathustrafromhiseternaljoy,andcausedhimtogiveintowhatEliadecalledthetemp
tationoftheeternalreturn.WithinIR,ofcourse,wehavethetemptationsofeternalreturn:everanew
paradigm,newdebate,ormerelynewfashion,anything,topreventusfromconfrontingthefactthat,since
IRsinvention,suffering,andIRsinaccessibilitytoit,havebeenconstant.
.First,however,therearesomequestionstoaskaboutIR.Forwhatis
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A2 Rational Discourse key to politics
Debate as rational discourse dissolves the sacred, destroying the interpretive context that
makes communication possible.
VictorLi2005
[teachesintheEnglishDepartmentattheUniversityofToronto.
parallax,2005,vol.11,no.3,7286]
Thoughaidedbythelifeworldsintuitivelyknownandunquestionedbackgroundconvictions,
communicativeparticipantsnonethelessstillhavetoworktoachievemutualunderstandingor
agreementwhentheyarefacedwithanactionsituationorinterpretiveproblemthatemergesinthe
everydayworld.Theycanreachagreementonlythroughaconsciousyesornopositiontheytakeon
threedifferentiatedvalidity
claimsthatareraisedrespectivelyintheobjective,socialandsubjective
domainsoftheirworld:theclaimsaretotruth,rightnessorjusticeandexpressivetruthfulnessorsincerity.19Uptothis
point,thelifeworldhasbeendescribedasastabilizingandconservativefactorintheprocessofreachingunderstanding.Habermasinfactseesthelifeworldasthe
conservativecounterweighttotheriskofdisagreementthatariseswitheveryactualprocessofreachingunderstanding;forcommunicativeactorscanachievean
understandingonlybywayoftakingyes/nopositionsoncriticizablevalidityclaims.20However,asHabermaspointsout,italicizinghisstatementforemphasis,
Therelationbetweentheseweightschangeswiththedecentrationofworldviews.21Thedecentrationofworldviewsbecomespossiblethroughthegrowing
reflexivityachievedinontogeneticlearningprocessesthatactaspacemakersforthesocioculturaldevelopmentofmodernity.Thusaswebecomemoreandmore
reflexivelymodern,ourworldviewalsobecomesincreasinglydecentred.Correspondingly,themoreourworldviewisdecentred,theharderitistoachieve
consensualunderstandingsincewecannolongerrelyonapreinterpreted,critiqueprooflifeworld,buthavetoturninsteadtorationalproceduresforreaching
understanding.Habermascharacterizesthistransitionastherationalizationofthelifeworldandseesitasaswitchfromnormativelyascribedagreementto
communicativelyachievedunderstanding.22Therationalizationofthelifeworldthusappearstofollowadevelopmentaltrajectorymuchlikethatofthesocio
culturalevolutionfrompremodernmythictomoderndecentredworldviews.Habermasputsitthisway:Adirectionaldynamicsisbuiltintothecommunicatively
structuredlifeworldintheformofthepolaritybetweenastateofpreestablishedpreunderstandingandaconsensustobeachieved:inthecourseoftime,the
reproductiveachievementsswitchfromonepoletotheother.23Thisdirectionaldynamicsasshownintherationalizationofthelifeworldresemblesthelarger
scalerationalizationofsocietywhichHabermas,followingthinkerslikeDurkheimandWeber,describesasthetransitionfromprimitivetribalgroupswiththeirpre
reflective,collectivelyshared,homogeneouslifeworldtothereflexive,differentiated,andcommunicativelyachievedlifeworldofmodernpolitics.24Recognizing
thesimilaritybetweenpremodernsocietiesandthelifeworldinitsoriginal,concrete,prerationalizedstate,Habermaswrites:Thelifeworldconceptofsociety
findsitsstrongestempiricalfootinginarchaicsocieties[][whichintheiridealstateare]almosthomogeneous,andnearlyultrastable.25Justasthenearly
ultrastable,normativeauthorityofthesacredandthemythicinpremodernsocietiesislinguistified,
thatis,dissolvedbyreflexivecommunicativeactionorientedtounderstanding,sotootherationalizationofthelife
worldinvolvesaprocessinwhichthepreestablishedagreementsandprelinguisticallyguaranteednormsoftheeverydayconcretelifeworldareopenedupto
reflexiveformsofdiscourseorargumentationwiththeiryes/nostanceonvalidityclaimsraisedinthecourseofcommunicativeinteractions.Bythe
rationalizationofthelifeworld,SeylaBenhabibnotes,ismeantnothingotherthantheincreasein
argumentativepracticeswithintheeverydayworld.26Modernsocietiesthusundergoaprocessof
rationalizationthatHabermasalsocallsthelinguistificationofthesacred.Themodernrationalized
lifeworldisno
longerbeholdentotheauthorityofthesacred,butdependssolelyonrationally
motivatedformsofunderstandingthatleadtoaconsensusbasedontheauthorityof
thebetter
argument.27Intheidealizedorfullyrationalizedlifeworld,wehaveaconstantrevisionoffluidizedtraditions,i.e.traditionswhichhavebecomereflexive;
[]astateinwhichlegitimateordersdependondiscursiveproceduresforpositingandjustifyingnorms.28Itshouldbenoted,however,thatthecriticalreflexivity,
theconstantscepticalrevisionofallpreestablishedtraditionsandnormswefindintherationalizationprocesslandsthelifeworldinanaporeticsituation.Onthe
onehand,thelifeworldistheeverpresent,intuitivelyunderstoodbackgroundwithinwhichall
communicativeactionandformsofunderstandingoccur;italsoprovidesastoreofpreinterpreted
knowledgewhichenablesculturalunderstanding,formsgroupsolidarityandshapesthe
competencesofsocializedindividuals.29Ontheotherhand,thelifeworldsrationalizationgainsitthe
criticalreflexivityandautonomythatthreatentodevalue,ifnotdestroy,theverycontextinwhichit
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standsandtheresourcesonwhichitdraws.Tohiscredit,Habermasrecognizesthisproblem,though,as
weshallsee,hisattemptsatresolvingitresultinwhatStephenCrookhas
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A2 Rational Discourse key to politics
describedasanexampleofhishavingthehonestytomakehisownproblemworse.30The
rationalizationofthelifeworldthusinvolvesaratherdestructivehermeneuticsofsuspicionthatcallsinto
questioncustomaryformsoflife.AsHabermasputsit:[T]hetransitiontoargumentationhassomethingunnaturalaboutit:itmarksabreakwiththeingenuous
straightforwardnesswithwhichpeoplehaveraisedtheclaimstovalidityonwhoseintersubjectiverecognitionthecommunicativepracticeofeverydaylifedepends.
Thisunnaturalnessislikeanechoofthedevelopmentalcatastrophethathistoricallyoncedevaluedtheworldoftraditionsandtherebyprovokedeffortstorebuildit
atahigherlevel.31Wordslikeunnaturalandcatastropheattesttotheradicalchangevisitedonallpastclaimsandtraditionsbymodernrationalizationprocesses.
J.M.Bernsteinarguesthatthedistrustshowntoallconventionsestablishedbytraditionshouldcausealarm
sinceitappearstosuggestthatuptothemomentof
modernitytheformsofrecognitionthat
traditionalpracticespermittedwereillusorythroughandthrough.32Suchasweepingskepticism
is,however,centraltoHabermassviewofrationalizationastheprogresstowardsapostconventional
modernity:Nonormativevalidityclaimraisedinthelifeworldisimmuneto
challenge;everything
countsasahypothesisuntilithasregaineditsvaliditythroughthe
authorityofgoodreasons.33
LossandCompensationIfnothinginthelifeworldisimmunetochallengeandeverythinginitcounts
asahypothesis,andifthelifeworldsbackgroundknowledgeissubmittedtoanongoingtestacrossits
entirebreadth,34thenadifficultquestionarisesforHabermas:canthelifeworldstillbeaninescapable
horizonorcontextofunderstandingandthesourceofculturalknowledgeandnormativevalues,if,atthe
sametime,itisconstantlychallengedortestedacrossitsentirebreadth?EventhoughHabermasmight
respondthatthelifeworldsrationalizationthroughmoralargumentation(ordiscourseethics)canbe
seenasacorrectionandtranscendenceofitsconventionallimits,doesntthe
unmercifulgazeof
rationalizationthreaten,atleastintheory,todissolvethevery
groundofthelifeworldfromwhich
thecorrectivegazeemanates?Andwouldntsucharationaldissolutionofnormativelyascribed
agreementforariskladen,counterfactualcommunicativelyachievedunderstandingplaceuswithin
theimpossiblespaceofanunlivablescepticismandundischargeablerationalism?35Inherperceptive
studyofHabermasswork,MaeveCookeworries,forexample,thatthelifeworlds
fabriccouldbe
wornawaythroughconstantcriticalexaminationandrejectionofitstraditions,practices,andfixed
patternsofpersonalitydevelopment.36
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Politics is war, and we refuse to make peace with the state. Heeding the Sirens Song of the
USFG ensures a politics of extermination.
NickMansfield,ProfCulturalStudiesatMacquarieUniversity, 2008
[TheorizingWar:FromHobbestoBadioup.120125]
InClausewitz,waremergeseasilywhensocietyopensitshand.Peaceisnotashamedofwarandusesit.
Policyextendsitselfintowar,drawingthewholeofthesocietywithit.Theargumentisevenstrongerthanthis,because
policydoesnotrepresentthecynicalmanipulationofthesocial,seducingortrickingitintowar.Theimpulseofthesocialiscontrolledbypolicy,withoutwhichthe
drivetoviolenceforitsownsake,aviolenceofannihilationoftheother,wouldbeevenstronger,evenwilder.Wehaveheretwoverydifferentversionsofthesocial
anditsrelationshipwithwar.Yetbothrevealhowthealternationofwarandthesocial(warasthesocial'sother,warastheexecutionofcollectivesocialintention)
leadstoacollapseoftheforeignnessbetweenthetwo.Thisforeignnessisassumed,thenelaboratelydisproved,eveniffromoppositedirections.InHobbes,society
movesawayfromwar,butalwaysdragsitwithit,asitscompellingandunshakeableunderside. Waraccompanieseveryflexingofthe
social,everymoment,andthreatenstooverwhelmwhatisdeterminedtosuppressorconcealit.In
Clausewitz,societystoops,throughpolicy,tothewarthatwouldseemtocontradictit,butthatisinfactthefullestactivationofitsenergies.InMichelFoucault's
accountofthesocialwar,weseesomethingsimilar,whenFoucaultcheekily,cleverly,reversesClausewitz'sstatement.Attheoutsetoftheseriesoflecturesthat
compriseSocietyMustbeDefended,heannounceshishypothesis:"[ploweriswar,"hewrites,"thecontinuationofwarbyothermeans"(Foucault,2003,p.15).What
thisclaimimpliesisthattherelationsofpowerinasocietydonotquellordisablewar,butcontinueit,becausetheywerefoundedinarealwarthatreallyhappened
andthatcanbespecified.Italsomeansthattheestablishmentofsupposedlypeacefulsocialrelationsbytheinstitutionofformalputativelylegitimatepowerisnot
intendedtoendorprecludetheinequalityinrelationsestablishedintheviolentstruggleforpower.Indeed,thepurposeoftheestablishmentofformalpoweraspeace
istoreinvigoratewarthroughoutthesocial,"ininstitutions,economicinequalities,language,andeventhebodiesofindividuals"[p.121](Foucault,2003,p.16).
Whatthismeans,accordingtoFoucault,isthatwithinallsocialpracticeswariscontinuingindisplaced,disguisedorrerepresented
form,undiminishediftranslatedintoawhollyotherlanguageofarticulation." Wearealwayswritingthehistoryofthe
samewar,evenwhenwearewritingthehistoryofpeaceanditsinstitutions"(p.16).Foucaultsetstwowaysofanalysingpoweragainstoneanother,Ontheone
hand,wehaveatheoryofpowerintermsofitslegitimacy.Sovereigntyclaimsalegalauthorityunderwrittenbyacivil
contractuallogic,inwhichthenatural"primal"(Foucault,2003,p.16)rightoftheindividualissurrendered.Whenthislegalauthorityexceedsitself,the
resultistyrannyoroppression.Ontheotherhandisanothertheoryofpoweraltogether,oneinwhichtheexcessofpowerisnotanabuse,butmerelytheinevitable
extensionofthelogicofdominancethatdefinessocialrelations,becauseitisitsancestry.Theformerisamodeloforderandhierarchy,wherealegallyconstituted
governingpowerhasitslimitsstrictlydefined.Itmayoversteptheselimitsandbrutalise,butthis violenceisalwaysseenasatransgression
ofitsproperpower,perhapsonethatcanbeexplainedintermsofthepsychologyorincompetenceofthe
historicalplayersperiodicallyentrustedwiththatpower.Beneaththeexcess,however,thelegitimacyof
thecontractendures,embarrassedbyviolenceandostensiblyseparatefromit.Violenceinthecontract
systemisamistake.Inthealternativemodel,socialpowermerelytranslatesthedivisionsand
antagonismsofwarintoanotherform.Socialinstitutionsmerelycontinuethewaralreadywell
underwayperhapssolongunderway,itisrarelyrecognisedaswar,eventakenforgranted.Inwhat
Foucaultcallsherethe"warrepression"schema(Foucault,2003,p.17),whatisatstakeisnot
legitimacybutmerely"dominanceandsubmission"(p.17).Anaccountofsocietyseenfromthepointofviewofrelationsof
domination,ratherthanfromtheevaluationoflegitimacy,willrevealawhollyothersociallogic.Foucanitoutlinessystematicallythedifferencebetweenthetwo.
FoucaultclaimsthatEuropeanpoliticalthoughtsincetheMiddleAgeshasbeenpreoccupiedwiththeissueofthelegitimacyofroyalpower,atthebehestofthat
power.HequotesapprovinglyPetrarch'scomplaint"IstherenothingmoretohistorythanthepraiseofRome?"(Foucault,2003,p.74),Thesovereignprogressof
sovereigntyastheostensibleclarificationandconsolidationofthegoodleadsdiscoursetotwinemphases:thelegalelaborationoftherightofthesovereignandthe
concomitantexplanationofthedutiesofthesubject.Inthisdiscourse,thedutytojustifylegitimacyleadstotheassumedobligationtocleansepower[p.122]ofwhat
mightseemtocompromiseit:itsrelianceonviolentdomination.Dominationismadetodisappearandisnotseenasintrinsicallypartofthesovereignpowerthat
accompaniesit.Foucaultproduceshereaninversionoftherelationshipbetweensovereigntyanddomination.Insteadofadoptingthemoreconventionallinethat
dominanceisamereinstrumentofasovereignpowerthatpretendstobelegitimatebutissimplytherationalisationofthecentralisationofpowerinthehandsofthe
few,Foucaultlocatessovereigntywithinalargerunfoldingofdominance.Hisrecentwork,hesays,hasbeengivenovertostressthefactofdominationinallits
brutalityanditssecrecy,andthentoshownotonlythatrightisaninstrumentofthatdomination...butalsohow,towhatextent,andinwhatformright...servesasa
vehicleforandimplementsrelationsthatarenotrelationsofsovereignty,butrelationsofdomination.(Foucault,2003,p.27)Itisnotthatdominancemerelyserves
anestablishedregimebyarguingitslegitimacyanddisguisingitsviolencebyformulationsofsovereignorder.Thedoctrineofrightismerelyoneaspectofalarger
techniqueofdominance,andissubsequent,subordinateandjuniortoit.Itisthiselaborateandwidespreadmechanicsofdominationthatneedstoberevealed.
Subordinationisnotthedutyofthosesubjecttolegitimatepower,butthefateofthedominated,nottheacceptanceofanauthoritynecessarytosaveusfrom
ourselves,butthecontinuationofabrutalviolenceinwhichmanymustforeverbekeptincheck.Themodeofanalysismostappropriatetothissituationmustbe
unconventional.First,itmustlookatpowernotintermsofhowitsmostpettymanifestationscanbejustifiedfromthelogicoflegitimacyattheputativecentre.It
mustlookatpowerinitsmostlocalandperipheralmanifestations,atitsextremities(Foucault,2003,p.27).Secondly,itmustnotseewhatisgoingonatthese
extremitiesasexplainedorreducibletowhatis
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intendedbysovereignty.Tocontinuetoreducewhathappensattheperipherytowhatisintendedatthecentreendsbyobscuringthedetailedandparticularformsof
theoperationofpowerproducedasthemarinerbywhichwelive:"ratherthanaskingourselveswhatthesovereignlookslikefromonhigh,weshouldbetryingto
discoverhowmultiplebodies,forces,energies,matters,desires,thoughtsandsoonaregradually,progressively,actuallyandmateriallyconstitutedassubjects,oras
thesubject"(p.28).ItisherethatFoucaultstressesthedifferencebetweenwhatheistryingtodoandtheHobbesianschema,wherebytheparticularitiesofthe
operationof[p.123]powerinspecificlocalcontextsaremadesenseofbytheconstructionofasinglemagnificentifmonstrousbody,wherethelocalisation,
plurality,incommensurabilityandfragmentationofsocialrelationsaredenied,andwhereeverythingisseenassubordinatetoasinglelogicofnecessarylegitimacy,a
legitimacytowhichalllocalgrievancesanddesiresaretobesubject.Aswehaveseen,thislegitimacyispartlyjustifiedbyitsclaimtobetheonlywayinwhichour
desirescaninfactbesatisfied.Ifwewerelefttoourdesires,ourdesireswouldnotbefulfilled.Onlybydenyingourdesirecanwehaveit.If,asinFoucault'sview,
theLeviathanisthe"centralsoul"(p.29)whichobscuresthedetailedoperationofpowerinitsperipheraleffects,thenitscomplexlogicofdesirecanbeexplainedin
anotherway:thedesireoftheindividualsubjectisalwaysandforeverwrong,anillegitimatedesiretobemeasuredagainstthedesirelegitimatedbytheimagined
socialcentre.TheLeviathanthusproducesanapparently"natural"desirewhosefunctionistobecontradictedbythecorrectdesiresovereigntymakesacceptable.
FollowingthelogicofFoucault'sargument,therefore,sovereignty'simaginedcentralisationisreallyjustitselfsomethingthatoperatestopressurewhathappensatthe
peripheralandlocal.Thecentreisjustanimagedeployedattheperiphery.Thechoiceoftermslike"centre"and"periphery"thereforeismerelyawayofdisputinga
politicalfictiononitsownterms,notareversalofpriorities.Foucaultisnotarguingthatwemustsuppressthecentreandpayattentiontotheunderprivileged
periphery:thereisonlyaperiphery,wherethecentrefunctionsmerelyasanimageofanabsentandunreachableideal,onewhoseonlyfunctionistoinfluencewhat
happenslocally.Thisisbecausepoweroperatesinendlesslymobileandfluidnetworks,whereindividuallocalitiesareconstantlyreinventingtheirrelationshipwith
oneanother,notasregionsofahierarchicalsystemthatmakessensefromthetopdown.Thelocalbothoperatesandreceivestheseflowsofpower.Insum,then,
FoucaultseespoliticalanalysisthatconcentratesontheissueoflegitimacyimaginedbyHobbesastheLeviathanasoverlookingthemorecompellingandpragmatic
issueofthetechniquesoftheoperationofdominancewithinwhichwelive.Sovereigntyisaseductiveissue,a"trap"(Foucault,
2003,p.34).Eachsideofthesocialstrugglehasusedsovereigntyforitsownpurposes,ignoringthenew
modalityofpowerthathasrisenalongsidesovereignty,producingitsownprolixdiscourses,notofthe
legitimacyofsovereignright,butofthestandardsofnormalisingtruth.ThisnewstyleofpowerthatFoucaultcalls
"disciplinarypower"(p.36)is"absolutelyincompatible"(p.35)withsovereignty.Yet,itisbetweenthesetwostylesofpowerthatsincethenineteenthcentury,
modernpoliticallifehasunfolded[p.124]inatortuousnegotiationbetweenovertandtacticaldiscoursesofrightandhallconcealedbutinsistentroutinesof
discipline.Thetwocannotbereducedtooneanotherandareradicallydisjunctivebutthey"necessarilygotogether"(p.37).Thesaturationofthesocialbodybypetty
relationsofdominationrevealsapoliticalorganisationwhosetendencyisnottowardstheclarificationandrefinementofright,buttowardsanendlessstruggle.This
struggle,Foucaultargues,liesbehindthestructuresoflaw.Law,hesays,was"notbornofnaturebutbutofrealbattles,victories,massacresandconquests"(p.50).
Thesewarsarenotabstractorhypothetical.Theycanbepreciselyidentified.Hewrites,Lawisnotpacification,forbeneaththelaw,warcontinuestorageinallthe
mechanismsofpower,eveninthemostregular.Waristhemotorbehindinstitutionsandorder.Inthesmallestofitscogs,peaceiswagingasecretwar...wehaveto
interpretthewarthatisgoingonbeneathpeace;peaceitselfisacodedwar.Wearethereforeatwarwithoneanother;abattlefrontrunsthroughthewholeofsociety,
continuouslyandpermanently,anditIsthisbattlefrontthatputsusallononesideortheother.Thereisnosuchthingasaneutralsubject.Weareallinevitably
someone'sadversary.(Foucault,pp.501)Thisperpetualstruggle,whichwillbedecidednotbyanadjudicationofright,butbysomeone'svictoryandsomeoneelse's
defeat,isimmanenttoallsocialrelations.Thediscourseofsovereignty,whichhasdonesomuchtodistractusfromthisunfoldingstruggle,ismerelyatacticinthis
battle,producingseductiveandmystifyingdiscoursesoflawandright.Beneaththecondescensionofuniversalisingright,strugglegoesonwithoutletup,thereal
struggle,thesocialwar,thepersistenceofawar,explainedawayorsupposedlyovercomebyright.Foucault'sownwritingthenseesitselfasbothcommemorating
andactivatinganalternativeconcealedtraditionofhistoricopoliticalwriting,thefirstlegitimateone,heclaims,sincemedievaltimes(Foucault,2003,p.52).This
legitimacyderivesfromthediscourse'sawarenessthatitisitselftakingsidesandisaweaponinastruggle.Thediscourseofsovereigntydenies
itsimplicationin,evensubordinationto,thisstruggle,settingupthechimeraoflegitimacyasworse
thanaruse.Thediscourseofstrugglehasitsownlogicofright,butnotofauniversaltranscendentalright,orparticularandpartisanrights,onceowned,then
lost,nowtoberecovered.Thisdiscourseisunashamedly"perpectival"(p.52).[p.125]Whenitgivesacompleteaccountofthesocialstruggle,arguingitsowntruth,
presentingitsownmapofothers'positionsandmotives,itdoessotendentiously,usingthetruthasaweaponinitsowncampaigns,resistingtheclaimtouniversal,
eternalandimpersonaltruthfulness.Truthasatactic,then,notasanidentity.The"pacifieduniversality"(p.53)of juridico
politicaldiscourse
ascendantsinceAncientGreeceischallenged,underthreat.Thisdiscoursedoesnotdescendfromthe
abstractandtotalisingdomainofthesuperhumanmetaphysical.Itrisesfromthebelowofsociety(p.
54),fromthechaos,confusionanddimperceptionsthatareallavailablewithinthebitterand
desperategroundsofthestruggleitself.Thepartisanshipisonthegroundofthefight.Itisdeflectedintodim
disproportions,refractedbyparticularangularities.Itisinandofthestruggle,itisthestruggleitself.ItispraisedandactivatedbyFoucault,eveninitsdarkand
poisonoushatred,andinitscruelanddesperateluxury,hehalfidentifieshisownharddiscoursewithit.Weseeherethecoolhistorianjuristphilosopherrevealing
whatliesbehindhisowntropesofviolenceandwar,ofdeployments,tactics,ofoccupationandregimen.Thesoundofpoliticsmayseemtobe
vociferousdebate,butthatismerelymisheardgunfire.ItisthatdoublesoundwithwhichFoucaultwantstocomparehisown
writing.Thiswritingofhistoryasstrugglemustremainbitter.Itcannotbeallowedtomakesense.Theriskofdialecticalthinkingasanalternativemodelofsocial
struggleisthatitendsbysubordinatingitselftoalogicoforder,resolutionandidentification,theredemptionofthecrueltyofstruggleinthepietyofsensible
progress(Foucault,2003,p.58).
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The quest for political productivity empowers the public-private divide that is
exterminating dissent. Only the kritiks social revolt solves.
Harney and Martin 2007
[Stefano, Chair in Strategy Culture and Society at University of London & Randy theory & event 10:2 ]
Whateverthecornucopiaofferedbyfinance,somethingpreventsaccesstotheimmanentluxuryofthe
social,something'destineslife'sexuberancetorevolt,'torebelagainstnewformsof'military
exploitation,religiousmystification,andcapitalistmisappropriation,'toseekoutamoreluxuriate
modeofexcess,amodeofdiscretionanddifferencelivedbyall.(Bataille1993:77)Ameanand
indifferentmodeofexcessburnsoffallthisselfactivity,ifnotallthisrevolt,andleavesbehindan
effect,astateeffect.Batailleasksusinhisstudiestoseekouttheeffectsoftheaccursedshare,thestateeffectsthatcometotracethestateform.We
meanbythestateformsomethingmorethanthestateasitisusedasacategorybypoliticalscientists.WemeansomethingBatailleprovokesustoconsider.We
meanthatwhichbecomesvisibleinthestruggleoverexcessasaneconomyofexcess,thatwhichstandsinforthemodeofexcessitself.Sotoaskwhatstateform
correspondstothismeanandindifferentmodeofexcessistotakethesestateeffectsasclues,effectsproducedbyapubliccapacityitselfforgedinthestruggletoday
toproducecapital'sdivisionofriskandatriskpopulations.Toproduceboththeembracingofriskandthesortingofatriskpopulationsthatanimateboth
financializationandthewaronterroracertainkindofstruggle,acertainkindofprivatizationmustbeatwork.Andthisworkofprivatizationcanbereadinthework
Thecontemporarystateformoperatestocriminaleffect.Itscrimeisnotsimplyviolationoflawitischargedto
enshrine,ortolegitimateprivatepropertyaspublictheft.Atitsmostcomprehensiveandconstitutive ,criminalityissuesfromthestateform
positioningagainstsocietyassuchanantisocialoppositiontotheexpansivesocialitythatis
irrecuperabletonarrowprotocolsofaccumulation.Thiseffecthintsatwhatisnewaboutthe
contemporarymodeofexcess.Fromthestatewehearscarcelyawordaboutthesocial.Rather,it
positionsitselfonthemeridianthatdelimitspublicandprivate.Theeffectofpublicityinthestateformtodayisa
lefttothestateform.
contradictoryone,onethathatesthepublic,fearsthesocial,courtsthecriminal,andcannothelpitself.Letususethetermspublicityandprivatizationheretomean
somethingterminologicallyspecific,andhistoricallyspecifictocapitalism.Privatizationhereassumesthatthesocialitycalledforthbycapitalmustbereducedand
convertedintoprivatepropertyifitistobearecognizableformforcapitalofwhatJeanPaulSartrecalledthepracticoinert.Privatizationisalsothestrugglethat
producespublicity,whatJacquesRancierecallsthe'distributionofthepublicandtheprivate'(Ranciere2006,55)andthereforewhatcancountascommon.
Privatizationherecomesfirst,notaftersomevulnerablepublicsector.Publicityisthesubsequentstateeconomydedicatedto
privatizingexcesssociality.Bynamingitselfaspublic,publicitycontinuestheworkofprivatization
thatbroughtpublicityintobeing,andensuresthatcollectiveactiontakenupinthenameofpublicity
notonlyfetishesthepublic(Bratsis2005),butleavestherealstruggleofprivatizationasitis
understoodhere,untouched.
Understandingthestateformhistoricallyastheevidenceofeconomybroughttobearonexcessleavesroomfor
whatgoesunmarkedbyconventionalnotionsofpublicandprivate,evenwhenthosenotionsareemployedinaMarxistframeworkasfoundingterms,andinstead
allowsusseetheexcessofsocialityasfoundingbothpublicandprivate.OrasJacquesDerridaputsit:'Atitsheightofhyperbole,theabsoluteopening,the
uneconomicexpenditure,isalwaysreembracedbyaneconomyandisovercomebyeconomy.'(Derrida1980:75)Theeconomyofpublicand
private(hereanatriskeffectandariskeffect),signsofthemodeofexcess,emergefromthestruggle
againstexcessivesociality,andundercapitalism,thisprivatizationaimsmostvitallyatthemeansofproduction. Thepublicityproducedinthe
periodwhenthetendencytoindustrialcapitalismpredominatedseemscapacioustoday.Thestruggleoverpropertyandmachinery,scientificpatentsandnatural
resources,producedapublicitythatopenedontothecommonalityofsocialreproduction.Thewelfarestateandwarsagainstfascism,civilrightsandanticolonialism,
alloperatedinthespaceproducedbywhatwasrelinquishedinthestruggleinfields,factories,andoffices.Ofcoursepublicityproducesitsownunruliness,muchas
thestruggleofprivatizationitself.Exactlybecausepublicitymustbereproducedbyalabourbothinternalandexternaltoit,publicitysometimesdoesnotknowits
ownlimits.Incivilrights,inthepopularfront,andmostseriouslyinanticolonialism,thespaceofpublicitywasabusedasGayatriSpivakwouldsay,andtherewas
anattempttomovepasttheconfrontationwiththeprivatetothestruggleofprivatizationitself.(Spivak2006)Therewasafeelforexcess,andaprophecyofanew
mode.Butallthewhilefinanceandsciencewaspreparinganinterdependency,ageneralintellect,thatwouldshatterthispublicitybyalteringthemeansof
productionandwithitthestakesofthestruggleforprivatization.
ThisnewinterdependencyanditsprivatizationisoddlyforeshadowedbyBatailleinhischapter
ontheSovietUnionwhereanewmodeofexcesstakesshapeinthedriveforproductivityandthebuildingupofthemeansofproduction .'Intheend,all
ofone'swakinghoursarededicatedtothefeverofwork,'hewrites.(Bataille1993:160)Here
publicitytakestheformofthemeansofproductionitself,producedbyaprivatizationofallotheraspects
oflife.Onlyproductivitybecomesamatterofcommonality.Allelse,distinguishedassocial
reproduction,isvulnerabletotheviolenceofprivacy.Ofcoursethisnottheprivacyoftheconventional
private,butofaprivatizationdrivetodestroyexcesssocialityandproduceastateeconomy,aproper
publicityoftotalwork.
Onefeelsthatthisfeverishworkiswithustoday,butwithouteventhevaguehopeofthepublicityoftheSovietUnion.
Whatisbeingprivatizedtopermitsuchafevertotakehold,andwhatkindofpublicitystokesthisfire,andasever,isthreatenedbytheflames?Theriskandatrisk
populationsthatreachpublicityasprivateandpublicmattersandareitsobjectsofattentionsuggestanewtendencyinprivatization.Thistendencyturnsonsocial
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reproductionbutagainnotdirectlythroughwhatisconventionallyunderstoodbyprivatization,butatitsroots,atitsmomentofproductioninthestruggleoveranew
meansofproduction.
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Itisonlyasymptombecausetodaythe
struggleoverprivatizationoccursattheleveloflifeitself,andespeciallyatthelevelofthecognitive
andaffectivecapacitiesofthebody.TheGeneralIntellectthatMarxidentifiedwithscience,andundoubtedlywithmachinery,isrecastby
Conventionalprivatizationisonlyasymptomofthisstruggleattheroot,andoneofanalreadyadvanceddisease.
autonomistthinkersasamassintellectualityresidinginbrainsandbodiesoflabour.Ahistoryofproductionacrossthesebodiestakesonallthedifferenceofthese
bodiesandbecomeslegibleonlyinthiscontext.Thebiopoliticsidentifiedincontemporaryscholarshipisoftenunderstoodasthesiteofpoliticsbutmightalsobe
markedastheresidueofpolitics,aswhatislefttopublicityafteranewmeansofproductionisprivatized,takingoffthetablethepoliticsofprivatizationandleaving
onlythepoliticsofpublicandprivateasitiscurrentlyconstituted,asbiopolitics.SotodayitmightbenecessaryasPatriciaCloughrecentlyputitinarticulatingthe
technosciencethatunderliesasubindividualontology,tomove'beyondbiopolitics.' iii
Forinstance,intheworkofLaurenBerlantthereisananticipationofthis
privatizationofthereproductiverealm.ShenotesthewaythatintheReaganerawhatwastheprivatespherecomesforwardintothepublicsphere,butasamatterof
immorality.(Berlant1997)Thiswasanearlysymptomoftheconsequencesofprivatizingsocialreproductivecapacities,puttingthemtowork,andleavingonlythe
antireproductivemomenttothepublic,amomentthatbeginsinimmoralityandwillendinjustafewyearsinwholesalecriminality.Whensocialreproductionitself,
whensocialityitself,becomesthetargetofprivatization,whennotmachinerybutbrainsandsoulsaretoberenderedintodead
labour,intoprivateproperty,biopoliticsmaybeonewordforwhatislefttopublicity.Buteventhistermmightbetoogenerous,toosociable.Becausewhen
thesocialitselfisprivatized,onlytheantisocial,onlythecriminalremainsforpublicity.Astateeconomyemergesthatisnotjustconcernedwiththeantisocial,but
takestheantisocialasitsmodusoperandi,takesindifferencetoqualitiesofsocietyasitspublicface.Inshort,thecouplerisk/atriskinthepublicsphereofacriminal
stateform.Itmustbequicklyaddedthatthiscriminalstateformisnotcriminalintheliberalsenseofdeviatingfromasocietalnorm,norcriminalinthetraditional
Marxistsenseofsupportingthetheftofwealththroughlabourtime.Itisastateagainstsociety.Thewaronterrormixesrisk
embracingpopulationslikesoldiersandatriskpopulationslikeArabciviliansandseeksoutacriminal
path,andanantisocialoutcome.Butwhocanblameitforbeinginatruesense,andnotinthesenseusedbyeconomists,path
dependent?
Allvisiblesocialityisfastbeingcriminalized,markedashavingbeenunsuccessfullyprivatized.Suchsocialitybecomesathreat
toproductivity,tothebasisofthestateform,toitscriminalityandthusthecriminalityofthestatestandsagainstsocialityateveryturn.
Productivityisthemetricbywhichprivatizationappearsasselfrationalizing.Butatthesametime,thisstancemarkscriminalityasthelastsite
oftheunprivatizedsocial.Thefeverofworkisinterrupted,riskissuspended,atthemomentthecriminal
becomesitsopposite,notantisocialitybutsociality.Andofcoursethismomentcomesallthetimeas
capital'sdreamoflivingonlyondeadsoulsisinterruptedbythewakinghungerforsocialgenius,for
massintellectuality,forlivinglabour.Suddenlythesiegemustbelifted,prisonersreleased,raids
calledoff,riskydealsbailedout,atriskpopulationsmadeintorelativesurplusones. Thequestionofwhois
attributedwiththecapacitytoselfmanageandwhoisdeemedunmanageablebringsustogovernance.Theubiquitoustermofcomparisonmakingformalequalityofthingsmoreuniversalthan
ever,governancecanbeappliedtohospitals,universities,countries,andcorporations.Butmoreimportantlyincanbeappliedtopopulations.Populationsthatembracerisk,thatmanifestthe
privatizationoftheGeneralIntellect,embracegovernanceasthegovernmentalityofindifference.Governanceoverseesthehedgingofinterestagainstinterest.Butmorethanthatgovernance
testsforapopulation'sabilitytoproduceinterests,toriskthoseinterestsinthenameofspeculativeaccumulation.Governanceishereaformofbioprospectingintheveinsofmassintellectuality
forcollectivecognitivecapacitiesthatcanbeappliedtoaccumulationstrategies.Andgovernanceisthemouthofthecriminalstateform,callingouttothesocial,inordertoprivatizeor
criminalizeit.Thosewhocallbackandidentifytheirinterestsaretheluckyones,thesenewlyidentifiedinterestsandtheirbearersaremadeproductive,madetotakerisks,andledintothefever
ofwork.Thosewhodonotanswer,orcannotbeheard,aresaidtobethosewithoutinterests,theatrisk,thecriminal.
Withinterestsrisingoutofpopulationsandreturningtoprivatehands
forexampleincorporatemulticulturalismorfairtradeorgreenconsumption,thestateisleftonlywiththoseatrisk,thosefearedtobewithoutinterest.Andofcoursethefiguretodaywhois
mostwithoutinterestisacertaincriminalcharacter,theterrorist.AndasAngelaY.Davisnotes'racismplayedacriticalroleintheideologicalproductionofthecommunist,thecriminal,andthe
terrorist.'(Davis2005:1212)Therovingracismoftheatriskcategoryisthebusinessthatislefttothestate,butthisisalsothebusinessthatisleftofthestate.Andthisiswhygovernancemust
alsofail,whyitmustremaincontradictoryinthecorporation,thenation,theNGO.Ifitweretoworkitwouldsuggestatotalityofstructuredindifference,touseanolderphrase,thatwouldbe
deadlytotheantisocialcharacterofthecontemporarystateform.Ifgovernanceweretodomorethanmerelystripminethegeneralintellectandleaveitscarred,itwouldbecomesociable,and
wouldquicklybecometheenemyofthestate.Thisistheconditionofthewaronterror,aflailinglimbofthecriminalstatewhichconstantlyflingsitselftowardtheverycriminality,thevery
conditionofbeingwithoutinterest,thatitseesintheobjectofitsviolence.Itworksagainstproperenvironmentsofrisk,againsttheextractionofnewinterests,andinsteadpilesupatrisk
populationsandsmashesconstitutionsandremakestheminaDr.JekylandMr.Hydeactthatbeliesitscriminalinheritanceinthefaceoftheprivatizationofallthatishealthyforthe
reproductionofsociety.
Thestateattacksitselfheretoo.ClearlythisispartofawretchedhistorythatMarxidentifiesasBonapartisminhisaccountofthecrisisofclassrepresentationinthe
18thBrumaire.WithinacenturythenotoriousburningoftheReichstagwillsignalthemassmobilizationofthestateagainstitselfthatbringsusfascism.Nowthestateisengagedinmass
shedding,warisdemobilizingevenasitsprofiteeringispartoftheexecutive'scurriculumvitae(includingthenotableintimacieswithEnronandHalliburton).Theselfdestructivenessoftoday's
politicsisbroughtonbytheincessantrelinquishingofexcesssociality,includingthatinitiatedbythestate,toprivatization.Andwhatcannotbereturnedtotheprivatemustbecriminalizedand
thisiswhyintheendGeorgeW.Bushmustcriminalizehimself.Nomatterhowmuchheseeksoutlaws,intheendheisdriventomovebeyondthem,toturnagainsthimselfasaninstanceof
society.Hiswars,hiscamps,hisdismissalsofthosechargedwithupholdingthelaw,belietheimpatiencebehindtheirownpleasforpermanence.Unabletoupholdthelegalityofhispolicy,he
incriminateshimselfandusesthissentencetostaythecourseofexecution.Bushdelegatesdecisiontomaintainauthorityoverthosewhowouldjudge.
Butitisworse,becauseasmuchasthe
stateisatriskinthispublicity,poisontoitselfnomatterhowmanywarsitlaunchesorjailsitbuilds,ithasnoteventhepossibilityofcriminality.Itiscriminal,butitwillneverrevolt.Itcanbe
antisocial,butitcannotabideanyunprivatizedsocialityinitsmidst,nowelfarestate,nowaronpoverty.Andyetthismodeofexcessispremisedonunprivatizedsociality,whichistosaynot
onthecriminal,theantisocial,butoncriminality,thepossibilitythatapopulationisnotantisocial,notconsumedbythefeverofwork,notsmotheredinrisk.Thiscriminalityisitselfthe
possibilityofastructureoffeelingbeneaththisfever,withinthisembrace,ofaluxuriantexcessprivatizedtomakethisworkandspeculationpossible,butalwaysescapingit.Thefateofthoseat
thestate
todaythatislefttodie.
Thereisnodifferencebetweenitstypicaloperationanditsnormalizing
exception.Onlysuchindifferencehasbeenlefttoit.NicosPoulantzaswroteinhislateworkthat'thestateitselfbathesinthestrugglesthatconstantly
risk,thoseimmersedincriminality,thefugitivesocialprivate,istolive,butthefateofthecontemporarystateform,thecriminalstate,theantisocialpublic,istodie.
Itis
submergeit.'(Poulantzas1980:151)Whenthosestruggleshaveattheirhearttheexcessproducedbythesocialcapacitiescarriedinthebrainsandsoulsofliving
labour,privatizationleavesnothingtotheimagination.Tolookforsomesuspensionoflawwhentheabilitytolegislateisitselfgivenovertocapitalintheformof
governance,istomisstheresidualcharacterofthecontemporarystateform.AndyetPoulantzasalsonotedmorethanonce'theclassenemywasalwayspresent
withinthestate.'(Poulantzas1980:151)Thatthecontemporarystateformistheeffectoflivinglabourcomingintocontactwiththeantisocialedificeofitsdeeds,the
ruinsofeverysocialproject,suggeststhatcriminalityremainspresentinthecriminalstate.Thiscriminalityattheheartofthestate
economydestinesrevoltfromthedepthsofthemodeofexcess.
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Impact Calculus versus Extinction (Both Kritiks)

We control probability, for the aff ensures the survival of a political order that guarantee
extinction.
Extend Goldhammer.
The politics of survival ensures catastrophic expenditure. The risks our society faces come
from over-accumulation. We have too much wealth, too much poverty, too much
militarism, and too much utility. Trying to maximize the good of life just adds further fuel
to this bonfire of accumulation, guaranteeing an explosive release of nuclear annihilaiton.
Only the alternative has a chance of breaking this murderous cycle of accumulation.
Were impact turning time-frame.
Extend Razinski.
Extending survival for the sake of survival turning existence duration, like a bad movie
that will never end. But you are sovereign, and you should shoud walk out of the theater
rather than sit still out of pure inertia. Face the blinding radiance of sacrifice, and quake in
awe of the moments of exuberance that define the true value of existence.
This means we control magnitude, for renoucning sacrifice for the the sake of survival
empties life of joy. It is better to risk extinction than live in a world dominated by fear of
future consequences. Thats Razinski and Goldhammer.
Turn-Their extinction impact calculus purges life of the exuberance that makes it worth
living. Consequentialisms over-accumulation ensures nuclear extinction as the final
sacrifice .
AlanStoekl,ProfessorofComparativeLitatPennStateUniversity,2006
[ReadingBatailleNowed.Winnubstp.258261]
Bataille'stheory,atfirst,atleast,wouldseemtopositjustsuchaharmony,albeitonethatinvolvesthe
violenceofsacrificeratherthanthecontentmentofthelotuseater.Maninhisprimitivestatewasin
harmony,notwiththesupposedpeaceofEden,butwiththeviolenceoftheuniverse,withthesolar
forceofblindingenergy:Thenavemanwasnotastrangerintheuniverse.Evenwiththedreaditconfrontedhimwith,hesawitsspectacleasa
festivaltowhichhehadbeeninvited.Heperceiveditsglory,andbelievedhimselftoheresponsibleforhisowngloryaswell.(Bataifle1976a,192)WhileLeBlanc's
theoryofsacrificeisfunctionalheisconcernedmainlywithhowpeopleusesacrifice,inconjunctionwithwarfare,tomaximizetheirown,ortheirgroup's,
successBaraille'stheoryisreligiousinthatheisconcernedwiththewaysinwhichpeoplecommunewithalarger,unlimited,transcendentreality.Butinordertodo
so,theymustenjoyanunlimitedcarryingcapacity.Andyet,ifwethinkabitmoredeeplyaboutthesetwoapproachestohumanexpenditure(bothLeBlancand
Batailleare,ultimately,theoristsofhumanviolence),westarttoseenotablepointsincommon.Despiteappearingtobeatheoristofhumanandecologicalscarcity,
LeBlancneverthelesspresupposesonebasicfact:thereisalwaysatendencyfortheretobetoomanyhumansinagivenpopulation.Certainlypopulationsgrowat
differentratesfordifferentreasons,buttheyalwaysseemtooutstriptheirenvironments:thereis,inessence,alwaysanexcessofhumansthathastobeburnedoff.
Conversely,Batailleisathinkeroflimitstogrowth,preciselybecausehealwayspresupposesalimitiftherewerenolimit,afterall,therecouldbenoexcessof
anything(yetthelimitwouldbemeaninglessiftherewerenotalwaysalreadyanexcess,fortheexcessopensthepossibilityofthelimit).Asweknow,forBataille
coothereisneverasteadystate:energy(wealth)canhereinvested,whichresultsingrowth;whengrowthisnolongerpossible,whenthelimitstogrowthhavebeen
reached,theexcessmustbedestroyed.Ifitisnot,itwillonlyreturntocauseustodestroyourselves:war.Forifwearen'tstrongenoughto
destroy,onourown,excessiveenergy,itcannotbeused;and,likeahealthyanimalthatcannotbe
trained,itwill[p.260]comebacktodestroyus,andwewillbetheoneswhopaythecostsoftheinevitableexplosion.(Bataille1976a,
31;1988,24)Infact,BataillesoundsalotlikeLeBlancwhenhenotes,inTheAccursedShare,thatthepeoplesofthe"barbarianplateaus"ofcentralAsia,miredin
povertyandtechnologicallyinferior,couldnolongermoveoutwardandconquerotheradjacent,richerareas.Theywere,ineffect,trapped;theironlysolutionwasthe
onethatLeBlancnotesinsimilarcases:radicalinfertility.This,ineffect,wasthesolutionoftheTibetans,whosupportedanenormouspopulationofinfertileand
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unproductivemonks(1976a,106;1988,108).Batailledoes,then,implicitlyfacethequestionofcarryingcapacity.Perhapstheultimateexampleof
thisisnuclearwar.The
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moderneconomy,accordingtoBataille,doesnotrecognizethepossibilityofexcessandthereforelimits;
theProtestant,andthenMarxist,idealistoreinvestallexcesshackintotheproductiveprocess,always
augmentingoutputinthisway."Utility,"inthismodel,endsupbeingperfectlyimpractical:onlyso
muchoutput,finally,canbereabsorbedintotheevermoreefficientproductiveprocess.Asinthecase
withTibet,ultimatelytheexcesswillhavetobeburnedoff.Thiscanhappeneitherpeacefully,through
variousposrcapitalistastheMarshallPlan,whichwillshiftgrowthtootherpartsoftheworld,or
violentlyandapocalyptically,throughtheultimateinwar:nuclearholocaust.Onecanseethat,ultimately,theworld
itselfwillbeenbecomevastchaos,fullydeveloped,withnoplacefortheexcesstogo.Thebadalternativenuclearholocaustwillresultintheultimatereductionin
carryingcapacity:aburnedout,depopulatedearth.Humanityis,atthesametime,throughindustry,whichusesenergyforthedevelopmentoftheforcesof
production,bothamultipleopeningofthepossibilitiesofgrowth,andtheinfinitefacultyforburnoffinpurewasteI/acl/irein,finedeconsumationenpureperte].
(Bataille1976a,170;1988,181)Modernwarisfirstofallarenunciation:oneproducesandamasseswealthinordertoovercomeafoe.Warisanadjunctto
economicexpansion;itisapracticaluseofexcessiveforces.Andthisperhapsistheultimatedangerofthepresentday(1949)buildupofnucleararms:armament,
seeminglyapracticalwayofdefendingone'sowncountryorspreadingone'sownvalues,ofgrowing,inotherwords,ultimatelyleadstotheriskofa"pure
destruction"ofexcessandevenofcarryingcapacity.Inthecaseofwarfare,destructivenessismasked,madeunrecognizable,bytheappearanceofanultimateutility:
inthiscasethespreadoftheAmericaneconomy,andtheAmericanwayoflife,aroundtheglobe.Paradoxically,thereisakindofself[p.261]consciousness
concerningexcess,djbense,inthe"nave"societywhichrecognizeswasteforwhatitis(intheformofunproductive"glory")andathorough
ignoranceinthemodernone,whichwouldalwaysattempttoputwastetowork,evenatthecostof
apocalypse.Bataile,then,likeLefllanc,canbecharacterizedasathinkerofsocietywhosituateshis
theoryinthecontextofecologicallimits.FromBataille'sperspective,however,thereisalwaystoo
muchratherthantoolittle,giventheexistenceofecological("natural")andsocial("cultural")limits.
The"end"ofhumankind,itsultimategoal,isthusthedestructionofthissurplus.WhileLeBlancstresseswar
andsacrificeasmeansofobtainingormaintainingwhatisessentialtohuman(personal,social)survival,Batailleemphasizesthemaintenanceoflimits,andsurvival,
asmerepreconditionsforengaginginthegloriousdestructionofexcess.Byseeingwarfareasamere(group)survivalmechanism,LeBlancmakesthesamemistake
asthatmadebythesupportersofanuclearbuildup;he,likethey,seeswarfareaspractical,servingapurpose.If,however,ourmostfundamentalgestureisthe
burningoffofasurplus,theproductionofthatsurplusmustbeseenassubsidiary.Oncewerecognizethateverythingcannotbesavedandreinvested,theultimate
end(andmostcrucialproblem)ofourexistencebecomesthedisposalofasurplus.Allotheractivity"leads"tosomethingelse,isameanstosomeotherend;theonly
endthatleadsnowhereistheactofdestructionbywhichwemayormaynotassureour(personal)survival(thereisnothingtoguaranteethatradical
destructionconsumationdoesnotturnonitsauthor).Weworkinordertospend,inotherwords.Survivaland
reproductionalonearenottheultimateendsofhumanexistence.WecouldcharacterizeBataille,for
thisreason,asathinkerofecologywhoneverthelessemphasizestheprimacyofanecstaticsocialact
(destruction).Bycharacterizingsurvivalasameans,notanend(themostfundamentalideain"general
economy,expenditureforBataillebecomesalimitlessinsubordinateactarealend(thatwhichdoesnot
leadoutsideitself).IfollowBatailleinthisprimacyofthedeliriumofexpenditureoverthesimple
exigencyofPersonalorevensocialsurvival(whichwecanassociatewithLeBlanc).Thisdoesnot
preclude,however,akindofethicalaftereffectofBataille'sexpenditure:survivalforthisreasoncanbe
readasthefundamentallyunintentionalconsequenceofexpenditure,ratherthanitspurpose.Seeing
anuclearbuildupasthewrongkindofwastebecauseitisseenasameans,notanendcanlead,in
Bataille'sview,toarethinkingoftheroleofexpenditureinthemodernworld,andhence,perhaps,tothe
world's(butnotmodernity's)preservation.
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We control probability because war is motivated by irrationality. We must severe the head
of the king to avert the ecastic extinction made inevitable by consequentialist reason.
WendyC.Hamblet2005
[Canadianphilosopherwithaspecializationinethicsandviolence.Sheteaches
EthicsandMorality,andPoliticalandSocialPhilosophyatAdelphiUniversity
PeaceReview17:3945]mono-cephalic means one-headed
But,atthisevolutionaryapex,aproblemarisesinparadise.Asthemonocephalicstateincreasingly
closesitselfoff,itstiessocialexistence,smotherscreativeenergies,chokesthepassionfromits
citizendevotees,suffocatestheirspiritualurges,andreducesallsacricestomundaneutility.When
theperfecteternalityofthestructureiscompleteandthenationdulydeied,alllaborshavebecomeco
optedinutterservitude.Bataillenamesthisculminatingstageofdevelopment,thepeaceful,stableend
soughtbyallstates,initsmostexcessiveextrapolationfascism.Ultimately,however,lifeandtime
mustbreakfreeandmoveforwardintofutures.Thismostsolidstateholdsrmforashortwhileonly;
thentherebeginsacondensationofforces.Liferisesupandexplodesthesuffocatingstasis,
disintegratingthesolid,erectwhole.Existenceandlibertyowforthinrage,blood,tears,andpassion.
ThedeathofGodiscomplete.ForBataille,theseendlesscyclesdescribethemovementofhistory:the
erectionofunitarygodsofknowledgeandpowerthatultimatelyossifyintototalities,andthenexplode
inhysterical,ragingcatastrophes,releasingtheexplosivelibertyoflifefrommundaneservitude.Theacephalicchaoswilleventually
recompose,slowlyheavingupanuglydivineheadonceagain.LifeturnsbackonitschaoticfreedomanddevelopswhatBataillecallsanaversiontotheinitial
decomposition.Thechaoticstructuremovesfromtheekstasisblissofwantonpleasuresandpainstowardthestasisofthedeityonceagain.Time,states,andhuman
individuals,forBataille,movebetweenthetwocontradictoryforms:stasisandekstasis.Timedemandsbothformsintheworldtheeternalreturnofanimperative
object,andtheexplosive,creative,destructiverageofthelibertyoflife.Bataillesanalysisofstateevolutionoffersresolutiontothemysteryofthefrequencyof
warsinthemoderncivilizedera:Itsuggeststhatwarcomposesapotlatchamanicecstasyofuselessselfexpenditurethatpermitsabreakoutfrommundane
servitude.Wemaynotreadilyrecognize,inourstates,theextremeformsthatBatailledescribesfasciststasisorchaoticecstasy.Webelievethat,althoughchaos
isunquestionablyundesirable,fascismispromotedonlybymadmenMussolini,Hitler,andStalin.Wemaybeconvincedthatfascisturgesfadewithglobal
democracywhereallpeoplewill,eventually,knowtheorderandsecurityoftherstworld.ModernWesternstates,wemayobject,composeagoldenmean
betweenBataillestwoeconomies,aspiringneithertofascismnortoamanicprimitivism,buttothereasonablemetronofgoldenrules.Buttherootsof
theWesternworldarewellplantedinthefascistdrive
forhyperorderandchangelesseternality.
HesiodandthePreSocratics,asmuchasJewishandChristianmyth,citeacommonarcheoftheuniverse
inthegoodworksofagodthatrendersorder(cosmos)outofchaos(kaos).Fortheancients,onehead
(cephalus)isfarsuperiortomany;simplicityisbeauty,whereasthemanycomposehoipoloi,an
embarrassmentofriches.Thefoundationallogicthatpositsmonocephalicorderasontologicallyand
morallysuperiortoacephalicmultivocityremainsanunquestionedassumptionembeddedinthe
Westernlifeworld.Asinglewellorderededice,stretchinghighintotheskyerect,rigid,unyielding
ispreferable,intheWesternmind,tothebroadestplayingeldstuddedwithincongruousheroics.
Bataillesmeditationsonthedarkundersideofreasonsprojectsandtriumphs,onsuchprohibited
subjectsasmonstroustortures,illicitsexualexcesses,andthecolorfulanusesofapes,provideatheater
ofcrueltyanddeaththatisdesignedtochallengethepolitethresholdofcivilizedculture,toshockand
interruptthephilosophicaltraditionitinvades,andtosubvertthepretensesofrenedsophistication
thoughtdenitiveofcivilizedsociety.Batailleshowsthatpeoplearetornbyconictingdrives,by
loftyideals,andbythedarkconcealedforcestheysuppressanddeny.LorenzstatesthatBatailles
treatmentofthedark,concealedurgesinhumannatureofferresolutiontotheparadoxofthe
simultaneousloftygoalsofmodernstatesandthefrequencyofbrutalaggressionsbythoseverystates
namingthemselvesthemostcivilized.Perhapsthepopularityandfrequencyofwareveninthecivilized
modernerarepresentsthe
releaseofsuppressedsubterraneandriveswithinindustrialized,rationalist,
rigidlyhierarchicallyorderedpopulationsenslavedtoreasonandutility.The
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violencethatoodstheglobeinmodernity,thatclaimstobeservingreasonableprojectsofglobalfreedomanddemocracy,mayrepresentnewformsexpressingold
desires,theprojectsofmonocephalicstatehoodaspiringtodeication.Bataillerecognizeschthonicforcesasinstrumentalinthemodernworld:Theeconomic
historyofmoderntimesisdominatedbytheepicbutdisappointingeffortofercementoplundertherichesoftheEarth[andturnitsreandmetalintoweapons]
....[M]an[lives]anexistenceatthemercyofthemerchandiseheproduces,thelargestpartofwhichisdevotedtodeath.Theercemenofmodernitygods,
kings,andtheirmodernsequels(presidents,popes,corporaterulers)extendtheircontroltotheendsoftheplanet.FiercemendisemboweltheEarthandturnon
theirownkindtheproductsofmoltenmetaltornfromherbowelstoensurethepermanenceoftheirnations.War,statesBataille,representsthedesperateobstinacy
ofmanopposingtheexuberantpoweroftimeandndingsecurityinanimmobileandalmostsomnolenterection.Bataillebelievesthatprimitiveurgesarestillat
workintheprojectsofmodernity.Humanbeings,asmuchassuperstructuresofpower,mustsatisfytheirdarkurgesforthegoodoftheircommunities.Theymust
releasetheirdeathdrivesiftheyaretogathertogetherinheartfeltcommunities.Humanbeingscravemystical,passionate,frenziedescapefromtherigorousprojects
oftheirorderedsystems.IfBatailleiscorrect,peoplemustultimatelybreakfreefromthemundaneenterprisesoftheireverydaylives.Theirinnerdemons
willbeckonthemfromtheirorderedworldsto
revelinorgiasticfestival.SurelyBataillesclaim
thatlifeseroticdriveswilloutandfulllthemselvesindeathlydestructivenessandwantonjoyshould
troubleusgreatly,giventhelevelingeffectsofmodernindustrialsociety,itswilltomediocrity,utility,
andconformity.ButisBataillecorrectinhisattributionofameasurelessandrendingcharacterto
modernwar?IsmodernwarfaretheaimlesscatastrophethatBatailleclaimsittobe?Ifso,thenmodern
warscanbeexplained,accordingtoBataille,asecstaticreleasefromthe
fascistorientationof
modernorderedstatesandfrompeoplesimprisonmentwithinthemerchandisetheyproduce.Modern
war,withitsShockandAwe
technotheatrics,shouldprovideawondrousreleasefrommundane
servitude.Warcouldbesaidtosatisfycollectivefantasiesofmanicomnipotenceandthedriveforself
sacriceforsacredvalues.Perhapsthewarsof
modernityoccurwithsuchrabidfrequencybecause
peoplemustsatisfytheirsuppressedlustforasexualizedreleasefromthecoldrealityofstate
projects,theutilitarianreasonsofstate.ThisresonateswithClausewitzsclaimthatpeoplesmartial
enthusiasmmustndreleaseinpoliticallyrestrainedwarsorfulllitselfinthemaximumexertionof
selfexpenditure,thatis,selfannihilation.ForClausewitz,modernityrepresentsthatunfetteredstage
whenwarhasescapedallpoliticalboundsandreasonablerestraint.Althoughostensiblyaworlddriven
bytheloftygoals,modernityforClausewitzcomposesaneraofabsolutewar.Thedemocraticrevolutionmay
haveembracedothergoalscitizenwelfareandthegrandeuroftheirrulersbutdemocracy,forClausewitz,composesmerelyoneofanumberofcrucialforces(thescienticrevolutionthat
providesthetechnology,theindustrialrevolutionthatprovidesmassproductionofweaponry,andtheimperialismthatdrawstheentireglobeintothewarsystem)thathavebeensuccessfully
harnessedtothepowerprojectsofthemightiestnations.ThegoodsofthemodernWest,includingthegoodofdemocracy,existtoextendWesternhegemonygloballyinthemarketplaceof
militarypower.ButBatailleclaimsthatwarisuselessexpenditureareleaseoftheprimalurgesofacommunitytowardexcessiveoverow.Hestates:Militaryexistenceisbasedonabrutal
negationofanyprofoundmeaningofdeathand,ifitusescadavers,itisonlytomakethelivingmarchinastraighterline.But,ifwaristobepositedasanecstaticrelease,itmustcompose
orgiasticoverow,anentirelyuselessandpointlessexpenditureofthenationsnestgoods.Excessiveexpenditureisdefeatedthemomenttheviolentexplosionofforcesservesmundane
projectsofservitudeandutility.Whenwarservesthepurposesofthestate,itlosesitsmanicandecstaticcharacterandceasestofulllthepeoplesdeepestneedsforreleasefromservitudeand
instrumentality.ButBatailleismistaken;theapparentuselessnessofmodernwarfareisadeception,anillusion.Warisoneoftheoldesttraditionsofourspecies.Ithasbecomeatimeworn
vehiclepreciselybecauseitservesagreatmanyfunctionsinstates.Clausewitznamestheinstitutionofwaraformofcommunicationbetweennations.FrancoFornaristates:Warisamulti
functionalinstitution....Itisextremelydifculttondasubstitutethatwouldperformallofitsfunctions.Oneofthemostcrucialfunctionsthatwarprovidesinserviceofthestateisthe
crystallizationofitsmonopolyonviolence.Warisacrucialaspectofthecentralizing,evolutionaryprocessthatculminates,ultimately,infasciststability.Theestablishmentofamassiveand
robustmilitaryisTHEMANICECSTASYOFWAR43utterlynecessarytothedeicationofthestructureandtheraisingofasturdycephalus,because,alongwiththecreationofstrong
policingandmilitaryforces,warservestoalienatetheprivateviolenceofthecitizensandplacetheircollectiveaggressiveenergiesintothehandsofthecephalus.Warservesthecollective
illusionofeternality.Warservesothercrucialfunctionsinthestate:itconrmsthevalues,virtues,andmeaningsofonesownculturalgroup.Sacredsymbolsags,nationalanthems,talesof
pastheroes,fallenancestorsareputtoworkinluringthebestofthenationitsstrongandcourageousyouthstotheextremepatriotismrequiredtomaintainorderinfascistregimes.The
seductionofthenationsbesttoitswarsincludestheirprovisionofaninternationalstagetodisplaythecollectiveprowessofthenation,apointofprideforallcitizens,eventhemost
oppressedofthesociety,anditallowsfortheindividualdisplayofthesoldiersmanlycharacterthevalor,theselessness,theloyalty.Thewarsofmodernsuperstatescontinueinthe
traditionofimperialistprojectsofold.Positedasservingthemostselessvaluestheadvancementoffreedom,democracy,andthespreadofcivilizationtodayswarsclearlybringtoo
massiveabootytobenamedselessexpenditures.Infact,forthepastftyyears,warshaveincreasinglybecomeshamelesslootingsofhelplesspeoplestheprojectsofeconomistsand
accountantsandbigbusinessmenpuriedbypoliticalpropagandaandbackedbyanarsenalofmoderntechnoweaponry.Warservestheneedsofthecephalus;itservesthepersonalnarcis
sismoftheleaders,andthecollectivenarcissismofthecombatantsandcivilians.Aboveall,modernwarsserveeconomicgoals;theirbootyisprodigious.Theymaycostthesacredloveobject
(thenation)massivecapital,humanandmonetary,butthegenerals,thepoliticalleaders,andtheircorporatecroniesprothandsomelyfromthehostilities.Waralsoservesthefantasythatthe
sacredloveobjectisthesaviorandbenefactoroftheglobe;warservestheparanoidcollectivedelusionthatthecephalusisinfallibleandindestructible,unlimitedasthegodinitsstrengthand
initsmoralsubstance.Killingtheenemies,propagandizedasevil,thecollectiveillusionisfedthatevilisoverthrown:thusthesanctityoftheloveobjectispreserved.Sacredvaluesare
recomposed;thecephalusstandstaller,moreerect,morermthaneverinthewakeofagoodwar.Butforallthebenetsservedbytheinstitutionofwar,modernwarsaredeeplytragic;they
dowastemillionsofinnocentlives;theytearapartsocietiesanddisbursehomelessfamiliesacrosstheglobe.Oneinnineoftheearthssevenbillionnowlivesamiserable,wandering,hopeless
existenceonparchedlandswhereeventheearthmotherisbarren.WENDYC.HAMBLET44Ultimatelythegreatesttragedyofmodernwarliesinitsstarkutilitytothefewattheextreme
expenditureofitsmany.Theutilityofwardefeatsthepurposesofwarbyfrustratingthedeepestneedsofthesocietythepeoplesneedtobuildheartfeltcommunities,aneedthatcanonlybe
servedbyexpressingthecollectiveaggressiveenergiesofthesocietybeyondutility.Bataillestatesthat:Since[war]isessentiallyconstitutedbyarmedforce,itcangivetothosewhosubmitto
itsforceofattractionnothingthatsatisesthegreathumanhungers,becauseitsubordinateseverythingtoaparticularutility...itmustforceitshalfseducedloverstoentertheinhumanand
totallyalienatedworldofbarracks,militaryprisons,andmilitaryadministrations.Infact,itmaywellbethenonreleaseofecstaticurgesthatexplainsastatesreturn,yearafteryearand
decadeafterdecade,tothatoldinstitution.Itmaybethatthedeepestparadoxofmodernwaristhat,initsusefulnesstothecephalusandinitsservicetothefascistdrivesofthestate,warproves
utterlyuselessindispensingitsmostfundamentalfunction;itceasestodischargethemostviciousandcruelneedsofthepeople,theirdeepestprimitivemotivations,whosecollectiverelease
makespossibletheformationofaheartfeltcommunity.Bataillecountsthisfailureasthemosttragicofthemultipletragediesofmodernwar.Thesacredvaluesofcommunitylife,freedom,
festival,andthejoyofcommunalfraternityarerenderedmeaningfulonlyinjuxtapositiontotheiropposites.Bataillestates:Theemotionalelementthatgivesanobsessivevalueto
communallifeisdeath.But,ultimately,insistsBataille,thesacricewillbecelebratedbeyondthereasonablepurposesofthecephalus.IfBatailleiscorrect,thenwecanbecertainthat
,for
thosestateswhosewarsareutterlyutilitarian,selfannihilationisimminent.
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Pups of War Essential Blocks

Pups of War Link v Link Turn Debate
Eveniftheywintheylinkturn,wellstillwinthatsacrificeisstillthebestwaytosolveour
aff.Thatsthealternativeandimpactdebate.
PoliticaldiscourseagainsttheabusesofAmericanmilitarismisappeasement.
ExtendHutnyk,whichmakestwoarguments.
First,thestatethrivesonpoliticaldiscourse,foritreinforcesthevaluesofrationalityand
consentthatenableitsawfulviolence.Theaffprotestiscarefulnottooversepthebounds
ofdemocraticlegitimacy,liketheantiwarprotestorswhogetapermittomakesurethey
dontdisruptthetraffic.
Second,thestateiscriminal,anddemandingrestraintonlyallowsittoplaythepartof
benevolentgiverofpeace.Thedemocraticnormstowhichtheyappealarearuse,keeping
usinlineformorewarsarepreparedinthenameofpeace.
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The affirmative play-acts the rejection of war. Their repugnance sustains state violence.
Thegeneralrevulsionatwarthereforeisnotnecessarilyincompatiblewithageneralisationofwarin
practice.Indeed,myaimhasbeentoshowtheopposite:thatthegeneraldeploymentandthegeneralrejectionofwararepartofasinglecomplex.Itismuchtoo
simple,however,toseethiscomplexaspartofawillingblindnessonthepartofthebulkofhumanity,whereinmoralcomfortandselfregardwouldbeassuredby
rejectionofwareventhoughaffluentlifestylesmaydependonwarfortheircontinuedopportunity.Itistooeasytoseethewarproblemsimplymorally,that we
playatrejectingwarsfromwhichweareactuallyhappytoprofit.Ourrejectionofwar,likeour
purportedcommitmenttodemocracyandhumanrights,isnotmerelyhypocritical.Itmustbeunderstood
aspartofacomplexinwhichwaranditsotheremergetogetherinadoublerelationshipinwhichthey
bothencourageandrefuseoneanother:werejectwarbecauseitruinssocialrelations,shattersbodies
andsavagesourhumanrights.Yet,we[p.164]alsolooktowartopreservethesocial,protectthreatened
livesandenlargerights.Warkillsandsavessimultaneously.Itdestroysthethingsinthenameofwhich
itisimplemented.Toseealossofdifferencebetweenwaranditsotheristooverlookthecomplex
situationsinwhichwaremergesandwhichkeepitalivedespiteourmoralrepugnanceandendless
officiallamentationsforthoseofuswhomithasannihilated.Tosaythatwarisdoubleandthatitisimplicatedconceptuallyinothervaluesthatwe
wanttopreserveisnottosimplysaythatweshouldberesignedtowarenduring.Itisanattempttoprovideanewandusefulwaybywhichwarcanbeunderstood,
andargues,asallanalysisdoes,thatmaterialsituationslikewarcannotbedealtwithiftheyarenotunderstood,andthatnewwaysmustcontinuallybesoughtto
rethinkthem.Theoryisnotanenduringidealtruthtobeappliedtopracticalsituations,buttheinventionofnewconceptualformsthatmayhelpusrepresentand
explainhithertoobscureorenigmaticphenomena.Thinkingofwarintermsofthewar/othercomplexmeansalwaysseeingtheemergenceofwarasthedeploymentof
somethingelsewithit.Thetwomustalwaysappearinrelationshipwithoneanothereveniftheyareconsideredtobeantagonisticormutuallydestructive.Sowarand
whateveritsothermightbeinaparticularcontext,facilitatetheemergenceofoneanother,evenintheirdefianceofoneanother.Itisthisinseparabilityofwarandits
otherthatmakesitpossibletoseewaranditsotherascoordinated.WhatwasNaziwarbutatribute,initsmostorganisedandexultantmurderousness,tolife?What
wasCommunistinsurgencybutthemostregimentedandanonymousembraceofthepossibilitiesoffreedom?Andwhataredemocracy'spost1989warsbutthemost
brutalandoppressiveattempttospreadhumanrights?Thesecomplexsituationscanandshouldnotbedisguisedbyaneternalbutvacuousresorttomorality.The
logicthatattributesthedoublenessofwartohypocrisyisasingularlyunenlighteningexampleoftheascendancyofmoraldiscourseindiscussionsofwar.Ofcourse,
ourattitudetowarmustbemoral:wecouldnotprotectourselvesfromthecultofofficialviolenceifitwerenot,norcouldwebegintoseewarasaproblemand
somethingtobesurpassed,somethingIhaveassumedasrelativelyuncontentiousfromtheoutset.Yet,becausewarispolitically,economically,andaboveall,
conceptuallysituated,itmustberecognisednotasprimarilyamoral,butapoliticalproblem. SincetheVietnamWar,resistancetowar
hasbeenfundamentallybasedonrevulsionatitsviolenceanddestructivenessandthepopularculture
thatnaturaliseit.Thisresistancehasbeenprimarilyrhetoricalandgestural,asitbefitsitsinterestin
theaestheticsofwarandintunewiththe[p.165]generalaestheticisationofpoliticsofthetime.Ithas
restedongeneralhumanistclichsaboutcommunity,fraternityandanidealsocialfuture.Inother
words,ithasreliedonabanalandunsustainableunderstandingofthemutualalienationofthehuman
andwar.Thisconceptionisnotwronginanysimplesense,butitistoouncomplicatedtodealwiththedynamicsofthewar/othercomplex,inwhichthehuman
canbeasmuchajustificationforwarasreasonforscepticismtowardsit,andisindeedprobablyboth.Toengagewithwarproperly,wehavetorealisethatthiskind
ofoppositionisnotenough.Whenwarisinplay,soissomethingelse,war'svariousothers. Humanistsentimentalityoftenattemptsto
presentwhatwehaveidentifiedaswar'sothersasunquestionableornonnegotiable:Howcanwe
possiblycontestthevalueimplicitinlove,orsocialityorhumanrights?Isnotthistheworstkindof
postmodernrelativism,inwhichweallowwhatshouldbeabsolutevaluestobeheldupfordebate?Yet
itisthesevarious"values"thataccompanyandfacilitatetheemergenceofwar,andthatalwayswrongtootus
whenweattempttorejectit.Dowenotwantdictatorstoberemoved,women'srightsrestoredandethniccleansingresisted?Ifweareinfavourofthesegoals,how
canweresistthewarsthataimtoachievethem?Doesnotthismaketherejectionofwarmerelyautomaticandadolescent? Therefusaltodebate
thesevaluesresultsinbothanimpotentandunworldlyrejectionofwar,ontheonehand,anda
mindlessacquiescencetoit,ontheother.Theargumentofthisbookhasbeenthatitisnecessaryto
understandthecomplexityoftheimplicationofsuchvaluesinwar.
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Demanding restraint from the state legitimates endless wars waged in the name of peace.
NickMansfield2006
[AsociateProfessorinCriticalandCulturalStudiesatMacquarieUniversityinSydney
theory&event 9:4]
Discussing what is new about the "new wars," Herfried Munkler argues that in the wars that have developed in the
decolonised world: "military force and organised crime go increasingly together."2He goes on: "The new wars know
no distinction between combatants and non-combatants, nor are they fought for any definite goals or purposes; they
involve no temporal or spatial limits on the use of violence."3In the low intensity, asymmetrical conflicts Munkler
sees as typical of contemporary war, war is without limits, and has no identifiable outside, either in space or time.
The inverse of this argument is Martin Shaw's identification of one of the key attributes of "the new Western
way of war": "The key understanding, therefore, is that warfighting must be carried on simultaneously with 'normal'
economics, politics and social life in the West. It is imperative it doesnot impact negatively on these."4Western
publics only tolerate a war that can be co-ordinated seamlessly with peace. This is not an alienation of war from
social life, but its absolute co-ordination with it. It is not here a question of war being kept hidden behind a
screen of peaceful social advancement from one day to the next. Instead, war under this dispensation becomes
completely compatible with what we conventionally understand as peace. In the end, this is what allows the
complete saturation of society by war: the ability to represent the normal unfolding of social life as relatively
undisturbed.
In their discussion of the paradoxes of global political governance, Dillon and Reid present a
more complex account of the inter-relationship between war and peace. Here liberal governance both provokes
and repudiates war. They write: "It . . . seems obvious that the radical and continuous transformation of societies
that global liberal governance so assiduously seeks must constitute a significant contribution to the very violence
that it equally also deplores."5Here, global political institutions which have charged themselves with the task of
drawing fragile states into the contemporary world of transparent and open (especially financial) administration
which makes them accessible to the flow of international capital, unsettle societies enough that warfare is risked,
while equally bemoaning war as a sign of institutional failure. The pressure put, for example, on the small states of
the Western Pacific by local powers like Australia both aggravates communal tensions by destabilising inherited
power structures, while bemoaning the subsequent unrest as symptomatic of cultures seen as ill-equipped for
contemporary global modernity.
Each of these accounts presents a different insight into the various ways in
which war and peace co-exist in the contemporary. War totally infiltrates peace, yet war is only allowed when it
confirms the apparent inviolability of peace. The governance that insists on the rationalisation and stabilisation of
civic society stokes instability and war. War is consistently incited in peace while being simultaneously alienated
from it. Peace is administered in such a way that war presses to return, always and everywhere. But how are we
to theorise this possibly epoch-making development? How do our philosophies of war and peace allow us to
represent and consider this development and its consequences for the future global polity and for the identity of civil
society, which, since Hobbes at least has always relied on the institution of social peace through the containment of
war as its touchstone? The aim of this paper is to present a strand of thinking in modern and postmodern cultural
theory that essays a formulation of the war/peace complex that history now so clearly proposes to us. It is in the long
acknowledged but under-investigated connection between Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida that one version of
the reformulation of the war/peace complex becomes articulable.
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Pups of War Alternative 2NC

Liberation requires sacrifice, not a better political program.
Extend Goldhammer 05.
The ecastic experience of sacrifice frees us from utilitarian concern for the good, forming a
sovereign existence not subjugated to the needs of survival. This forms of a space of
political contestation that is the prerequisite to a sovereign community that is not just
endless domination.
Sacrifice enacts a theater of liberation.
Extend Razinsky 09.
Cutting off the head of the USFG challenges its political authority, while wearing their
skins breaks down the wall separating us from others. Sacrifices radiation burns like the
radiation of the sun, allowing an intimate encounter with death. The encounter with risk
not subordinated to productivity or survival is the only way to access the exuberance that
gives life meaning.
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Politics is theater, and it usually ends in tragedy.
Only our sacred ecstasy can confront the dark drives pulling us to destruction. The rational
political proposal of the aff brought a knife to a gun-fight.
The character of this psychological structure requires analysis the Left cannot provide, beholden as it is to this side of production. And along with
the emotive force that binds the energies of fascism, the analysis must extend to the "emotions that give
the masses the surge of power that tear them away from the domination of those who only know
how to lead them on to poverty and to the slaughterhouse" (OC 1: 409/VE 166), and more generally
still, to "what holds us firmly together, what links our origins to the emotions that constitute it" (OC 1:
404/VE 163). Such is the only way to remain true to the struggle against capitalism and the various closed
systems its instability provokes-restoration, fascism, nazism, communism. In short, both the political
failures and the structural limitations of the Left require a new understanding, one directed toward
what Bataille calls the "ocean of men in revolt," which alone "can save the world from the nightmare
of impotence and carnage in which it sinks!" (OC 1: 412/yE 168). The ontological direction of research undertaken by the College has
palpable, practical motivations. Walter Benjamin, who attended the College of Sociology regularly, reportedly worried that it, along with the program of Acphale,
lent itself all too readily to fascist and nazi appropriation.' Certainly the "ocean of revolt" that Bataille suggests might "save the world" is a disquieting response to
threats immediately facing human life at the time, threats that clearly drew upon the very emotional bond that so interests the College. And Bataille himself identifies
Mussolini and Hitler as heterogeneous elements initially recalcitrant to homogenous society. Certainly, heterogeneity does not guarantee desirable historical-political
outcomes. But Bataille is also clear that the condensation of power in such figures of authority, "[t]he imperative presence of the leader, amounts to a negation of the
fundamental effervescence that he taps; the revolution, affirmed as a foundation, is, at the same time, fundamentally negated from the moment that internal domination
is militarily exerted on the militia" (OC 1: 362-63/yE 153). The dangers posed by affective emotion and its military constellation, far from requiring a retreat from the
College's position, therefore, calls it forth. Even Benjamin's analysis of the aestheticization of politics---which he evidently began to level against the College-could
not be proffered without this basis of attraction. This is no doubt the sense in which Bataile writes, what the College aims at, and what it oust critique
is "not
merely the ground of an intellectual debate but rather ... precisely the theatre where the political
tragedy is playing" (CS 159/83). [p. 37] The third crisis that marks the emergence of the College is,
therefore, a crisis of the political itself, the fact that the most impending problems, in spite of their
political shape, do not admit political solutions. Their miminence makes of the College an exigency. To
address the unfathomable suffering wrought by the violence of limited political life and the established
social order, it is necessary to develop a new, more comprehensive approach. Sacred sociology thus takes as
its topos the "entire conimunifying movement of society" (CS 140/74), aiming at an understanding of the universal community affirmed in the "Programme (Relative
to Acphale)?' The task, in other words, is "to apply intelligence less to so-called political situations and to the logical deductions that ensue, than to the immediate
comprehension of life" (OC 1: 409-10/yE 166). This explicitly ontological task occupies Bataille for the rest of his life, finding mature theoretical expression in The
Accursed Share and Erotisni. During the period of the College, however, this task is developed in particular through the distinction between elective and traditional
communities, and the interest of the College lay almost exclusively with the former. The College thus determines the ontological direction of its work in terms of an
understanding of the relation of the individual and the social order, whose de facto ties are loosened in proportion to the formation of elective bonds. During the
inaugural session of the College, llataille and Caillois east the scope of elective communities in terms of religious orders and secret societies (and no doubt this is what
bothers Benjamin, as though the College abandons the problems of the day and seeks solutions in secret brotherhoods!). Yet Bataille's development of the notion of
elective community tends almost entirely in the direction of the break with de facto community, on the one hand, and the community of lovers, 4n the other. To the
extent that secret societies exemplify the field of research undertaken by the College, Bataille is more interested in the secret than he is the societies and religious
orders that would provide for that research a more accessible and determinate object. Obsessed by the "secret" at the heart of our contact with one another, Bataille's
interest has little or nothing to do with that which could be held or shared or protected by a secret organization. In relation to the two determinations of community set
forth by the College-traditional and elective-the tragic human being and the lover, respectively, therefore, bear more and more the burden of Bataille's revolution.
The contestation of community becomes less and less programmatic and at the same time, more fateful, its possibility
belonging to the ontology of social life at the very point where action, will, and understanding discover their limits, and where this discovery is devoid of
transcendence and the possibility of recuperative accumulation. Thematically explicit in the title of a lecture Caillois was
unable to deliver-"
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Brotherhoods, Orders, Secret Societies, Churches"-it is therefore [p. 38] remarkable and telling that Bataille's introduction to the event focuses on concerns altogether
three types of
human being, three types of relation to de facto or traditional community, which at the same time
successively correspond to the three crises described above. The first type, the "armed lout, aims at
expelling everything foreign, forcing it to the outside, and he dominates the war, sustains it, as it
were, and in doing so no doubt motivates the formation of the College. Like the "armed lout," the "man
of law and discourse:' the second type, is also motivated by the threat of impotence, but his action is
itself impotent and inevitably serves the inertia of arms. Because he perpetuates that against which
he fights, the "man of law and discourse" is for Bataille a comic figure, like the fool who impotently
wipes the shit from his shoe on his own carpet, ineptly spreading what repulses him, like leftist
revolutionaries carrying the value of production into the revolution, or carrying the revolution into
the state-sponsored halls of negotiation. Bataille writes, "Deep down 1 think there is something
wretched, something obnoxious, about opposing a reality, such as the one threatening human existence
today, with discourses alone, assertions of law, a whole blaring discord and the armies belonging to this
discourse and this discord. I do not believe it is possible to oppose the rule of arms with anything except
some other rule: and, other than the rule of arms, only that of tragedy exists" (CS 271/147). The third
type, tragedy, is thus born from the impotence of human life in the face of blind and indifferent forces
of nature, politics, or history. Both the structure of an event and a comportment in relation to the event,
tragedy opposes the world of work and production and will as the necessary exposure to a recalcitrant
and unworkable chance, what Bataille calls the "sovereignty of existence laid bare. Tragedy exposes
the impotence of action, the fact that action always serves ends other than its own, that even its
accomplishments are impoverished. "The neophyte learns that [even] the will to efficacious action is
one that limits itself to dismal dreams," says Bataille (OC 1: 528/VE 226).
different from those Caillois intended to address. Rather than speak about the character of clandestine organizations, Bataille describes instead
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Pups of War A2 Coalitional Politics/Strategic Essentialism Good

They cant perm because we have delcared war. At best their strategic alliance
instrumentalizes the glories of sacrifice, betraying the flows of rage and hope that makes
politics possible.
"WE ARE FEROCIOUSLY RELIGIOUS and, to the extent that our existence is the condemnation of everything that is recognized today, an inner exigency demands
that we be equally imperious. What we are starting is a war. It is time to abandon the world of the civilized and its light. It is too late to be
reasonable and educated-which has led to a life without appeal. Secretly or not, it is necessary to
become completely different, or to cease being" (OC 1: 443/VE 179). Because it is explicitly mentioned, it is tempting to take the
religiosity of the statement as self-evident. However, nothing is further from the truth. For what alone is unmistakable here is the ferocity of the articulation-fierce not
because it is designated so, but because of its mood, urgency, and pronounced combative character. It is the
force of contestation [p. 33] that is

unmistakable in these lines, and it requires and effects a radical abandonment of that category of
value that defines and justifies both religious and political discourse: education. Bataille's concern here is not for the
sake of a common good, already determined in advance and without question in the direction of upbuilding and formation, the good of the social order and the
fulfillment of individual talent in its service. His concern here is rather a question of life and death. And there is a profound sense that life
has been dulled,

deadened, and muted by the social bonds common to and developed through the communal or social
forces of religion and politics alike, forces of normalization, security, and the accumulation of wealth.
Bataille's call to form a community is at once and unequivocally a call for the destruction of community in any traditional sense, It is a call to do away with the bonds
we most readily and thoughtlessly define as communal. Item 7 of the "Programme" reads: "Fight
for the decomposition and exclusion of

all communities, national, socialist, communist or churchly-other than universal community" (OC 2:
275/BR 121). It is a call for revolution. From the vantage point of apologists for capital or bourgeois democracy (and is there really a
difference?), there could be no distinction between these demands and those of militant revolutionaries, be they conunuuist, socialist, or anarchistic. For Bataille,
to become completely different, or cease being, requires a break from the formative
dimension of revolutionary activity, its participation in congresses and talks, its displacement of
debate from the space of the streets to the hallways of negotiation. The entire force of revolutionary
creativity rests for Bataille in the emotional bond that wells up within the masses as refusal, the
atmosphere of hope and rage that swells like an uncontainable wave. The need to become completely
different requires the abandonment of political process--defined as it necessarily and inevitably is by
those who already have a voice but not political practice. It is a refusal to concede that political thought and action must occur
within the sphere of established discourse, which begins with distrust, "a complete lack of confidence in the spontaneous
reactions of the masses," and which in this way, at just this point, unites militant revolutionaries and
bourgeois intellectuals alike. Thus, Bataille can say at once, "it is necessary to produce and to eat: many things are necessary that are still nothing, and
so it is with political agitation" (OC 1: 403/VE I 62).And at the same time: "When we speak to those who want to hear us, we do
not essentially address their political finesse. The reactions we hope for from them are not
calculations of positions, nor are they new political alliances. What we hope for is of a different nature.' What Bataille hopes
however, the need
for is an affirmation of the bond that does not belong to discourse, production, or accumulation; a confrontation with the impotence perpetuated by traditional social
structures of nationality, religion, party, and the like; a mobilization of hope and rage incomprehensible [p. 34] and irresponsible to everyone who tethers the question
of the political to the axis of security. It is a contestation of the "morally empty and materially miserable life" perpetuated and sustained by institutional structures of
power and their widespread internalization (OC 1: 402/VP 161). Undoubtedly, the "Programme" is destined to fail, if it really is a program at all. [tens 3 highlights
this difficulty, stating, "Assume the function of destruction and decomposition, but as accomplishment and not as the negation of being" (OC 2: 275/BR 121). The
demand not only poses insurmountable structural difficulties of understanding: how destruction could be deprived of its negative work, how it could be taken as an
achievement in any positive sense. It also articulates a real political problem. Contributing
nothing worthy or capable of

appropriation by the established order-that of discourse, the accumulation of wealth, the value of
security, and so on-it beckons its own destruction. For it addresses itself solely to the raw violent drives
society either represses or sublimates. What is more, not only does the "Programme" addresse itself to those drives, but it also gives them expression,
and it deploys them in its very call. Its call to affirm crime is itself criminal.5 Its refusal to calmly suffer for a placid future, its
rejection of all political projects that sacrifice the present for an indefinite and impossible end, its demand to "[c]onsider the
world to come in the sense of reality contained as of now, and not in the sense of a permanent happiness which is not only inaccessible, but hateful"-in each of these
affirmations, this project tears itself apart as project. What looks like a program is in fact a heterological operation, one that deploys
the form of
program to effect a cut with everything every program supposes. Community is not an idea or
concept, an aim or goal, nor is it an extant dimension of social reality. It is a declaration of war.
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Cerberus Essential Blocks

Cerberus Link versus Case Debate 2nc
Even if they withdrawal troops, they do so to stabilize the international system.
Extend across the Hansen and Stepputat 2007
First, international stability is endless war, meaning at best they provide the system that
enables accumulation for new rounds of extermination. Their turns assumes that the state
is rational and restrained, building a faade or reasonable discourse that better enables it
to enact its sovereign violence.
Second, even if they win the turn, they still challenge militarism in the name of survival,
which is a relinquishing of your own inner sovereignty to the state. Thats impacted with
the Razinski and Goldhammer evidencethey destroy the value to life.
Cross apply the impact debate, which proves that the logic of utilitarianism collapses in on
itself, guaranteeing that the outcome of the plan is catastrophic war.
Kritik turns the case. The knowledge behind the 1AC excess thrown off by the
international system, ensuring plan becomes a way to wage new wars in the name of peace.
SuhailMalik2006
[teachesintheDepartmentofVisualArts,GoldsmithsCollegeTheoryCultureSocietyv.2323]
AbstractTakingglobalizationtobeinlargepartaconsequenceofAmericandomination,
wefollowDerridascharacterizationofthisdominationasbeingamodeofsovereigntyofworldscale
institutionsandforce.Suchsovereignty,whichisalsoaroguery,istheprimaryactualconditionfora
globalknowledge.Bataillescharacterizationofroguesovereignty,however,proposesthatknowledgeis
eclipsedundersuchaconditionbyanexperiencethatisirreduciblyanunknowing.Knowledgeisthus
corrodedbyor,atbest,inacriticalrelationtothemanifestationofaglobalexperiencegeneratedby
theactualconditionsofglobalization.Itisrelativelyuncontroversialtoproposethatglobalknowledgeasaproject,asafactis
consequenttotheprocessofglobalizationthathastakenplaceunderthisnamesincethe1980sorthereabouts.Butthisobviousremarkimmediatelyindexesa
questionastowhatknowledgecouldinfactbeifitissubjecttothisprocess.Therearetwoaspectstothisquestion.Thefirst,whichwedonotaddresshere,concerns
theverygreatdifficultiesthattheglobalasanameormodalityofultimateextensionposesforarationaltraditioninwhichknowledgeis(orhas)auniversalor
absolutefoundation.Thesecondiswhatthecurrentactualityofthetermglobal,itshistoricalconstitution,meansforanythingthatcouldbecalledglobal
knowledge.Thiswillbeourprimaryconcern.Itisselfevidentthatthespecificsorcontentofknowledgeareextendedand
transformedbyglobalization,asamaximumworldlimitofanyknowledgebase,distribution,or
contestation.Thequestioniswhetherwhatknowledgeisalsotransformsinthisprocess.Itis
proposedherethatitdoessinceglobalknowledgereliesonthehistoricalconditionsofglobalizationfor
itsrealizationandreconfigurationofknowledge,andtheseconditionsareinturnprimarily(whichis
nottosayexclusively)occasionedandpromulgatedbyAmericasglobaldominance
which,inacomplex
manner,issovereignlyconstituted.Thefollowingparagraphsattempttoschematizeinthemostrudimentaryfashionthisdeterminationofwhatglobalizationqua
Americassovereigndominationmeansforthepossibilityofglobalknowledge.Thebrevityofthiscontributionpermitsonlythesignallingofseveralhypotheses
regardingglobalknowledgeasitisthusoccasioned.Thesehypothesesareconsequenttothecentralissuethatarisesinthecourseofthefollowingpages:whether
infacttherecanbeknowledgeatallintheconditionoftheglobal,oriftheexperienceofthatconditionleadstotheeclipseofknowledge.Acceptingforthesakeof
speedthecommonplacethatpoliticaleconomicglobalizationhasbeenandcontinuestobesecuredandmobilizedenormouslybyandforAmericaninterests,
sometimesunderthenameofneoliberalism,thequestionremainsastowhatAmericasdominanceisinthis
relativelynewinterandtransnationalconfigurationofeconomic,politicalandculturalinterestsin
short,howdoestheUSAgloballydominate?Thereisofcourseanenormousliteratureonthis,someofwhoseproposalscanbesignalled
bytermssuchasEmpire,hegemony,security,and,ofcourse,globalizationitself.However,inordertoaddressthespecificcharacterizationofAmericansovereignty
asprimaryconditionforglobalization,wetakeupthelessfamiliaraccountofUSdominanceasavoyoucracyproposedbyJacquesDerrida.Derridatakesupthe
termonthebasisoftheFrenchtranslationforthephraseroguestateastatvoyouandfromtheFrenchmid19thcenturybourgeoisuseoftheterminorderto
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Kirk, Flynn, et al
denounceanillegalandoutlawpowerthatbringstogether...allthosewhorepresentaprincipleofdisorderaprinciplenotofanarchicchaosbutofstructured
disorder,sotospeak,ofplottingandconspiracy,ofprimordialoffensivenessandoffencesagainstpublicorder(Derrida,2005:66).Thephraseroguestateisalso
usedtodenouncestates
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thatalsorepresentedaprincipleofdisorderorofterrorismintheeyesoftheUSAandothersupposedlylegitimatestates,asDerridacallsthem,whoseown
legitimacyisfoundedinrespect[of]aninternationallawthattheyhavethepowertocontrolforexample,inthemodernandcomplexformationofaheterogeneous
butoftentimescloselyknitandtightlyboundgroupliketheUnitedStates,theUnitedNations,andtheSecurityCouncil,evenNATO(towhichonemightaddfor
goodmeasurealliancesandcoalitionsliketheG8,theIMF,andsoon).(Derrida,2005:68)Thedenunciationofroguestatesisthusstructurallyhomologoustothe
bourgeoisdenunciationofavoyoucracyinordertosecuretheirownlegitimacy(tolegitimate,ifitcanbeputthisway).Whatiscriticalhereisthatthephrase
roguestatescametohaveprominenceexactlyasthetermandstrategicpolicyofglobalizationwasbeingaffirmedandinstigatedby
theClintonadministrationinitsearlyyearsthroughnationalandinternationalinstitutions.Thatis,rogue
statesareanindispensabledesignationforthesecuringoftheclaimtointernationallegitimacyfor
globalization,bywhichisthereforemeantacertainglobalorder(for
whichterrorismisacentral
rhetoricalandfactualoperation,asDerridamentions,2005:66).Ofthemanyramificationsofthis(de)legitimationstrategyonlytwowillbe
takenuphere:firstthecharacterizationofavoyoucracyandsecondwhatpurchaseonlegitimacyisretroactivelygrantedbythetermonthepowersthatmobilizeit.
First,then,itistobenotedthatavoyoucracyisnotanoutrightabandonmentoforderbutis(presentedas)thepowerorforce(akratos)ofanillegitimateandquasi
criminal(voyou)counterorder.VoyoucracysignalsasovereigntyexorbitanttothelegitimatesovereigntyoftheStateandlawinthenationalorinternational
domain.Thedenunciationofroguestatesisthusamatterofonekindofsovereigntyagainstanother,oflegitimateagainstsodesignatedillegitimatesovereignties.
TothisendDerridaremarksinpassingthatifthevoyoucracyrepresentsapower,achallengetothepoweroftheState,acriminalandtransgressive
countersovereignty,wehavehereallthemakingsofacounterconceptofsovereigntysuchaswemightfindinBataille(2005:678).Wewillreturninduecourseto
thisparticularcharacterizationofavoyoucracysinceitwillbringusdirectlytotheproblemofwhetheraglobalknowledgecanbeestablished.Second,
internationalandnationallegitimacyandillegitimacyasitisproclaimedandinstitutionalizedby
dominantpowersreliesonadiscourseandpoliticsofdemocracyandfreedomor,insosaidcontraryroguepolitical
formation,theirdeprivation.ThisisevidentinthechartersandambitionsofinternationalinstitutionssuchastheUN,NATO,theG8,theIMF,theEUandalso,
notably,fortheUSAtoo.Democracyisinthiswayalegitimationofinternationalpower,thedemocracyglobalization
couplingservingtosecureinternationalpoliticalandeconomicdominancebyalreadypowerfulstates
(whichiswhyChinaseconomicmightandlimiteddemocraticpolitypresentsamorevexedproblemforglobalizationunderthisaegisthan,say,IndiaorBrazil).
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The aff stokes the fires of war. At best their so-called peace will seethe with limitless
violence.
NickMansfield2006
theory&event 9:4]
. Dealing with the enemy becomes a mere extension of police work. In return, the domestic street is
notionally militarized. This slippage allows both war and policing to be justified as mere analogies to one
another: how can you contest the war against terror when it is really just a version of the police work
that makes you feel safe in your home? And inversely, how can you possibly doubt the legitimacy of
policing when it is really a version of the war fought against those who despise liberty and threaten
innocence?
It is a truism to say that each war redefines the nature of war itself, due to changes in
arms technology, military organisation or geo-strategic history. The long war of terror is no exception,
but what is most new about it, and what makes it most fit its age, is that it promises the erasure of the
difference between war and peace, and concomitantly between war and civil society: terrorists and criminals swap identity, emerge anywhere at
any time and are imputed to share a hostility to the whole Western way of life. This rhetorical slippage, however, confirms what many theorists of war have been
proposing in different ways for a long time. We will no longer have war and peace in the future, but ever more complex entanglements of one in the other, where
social policy, diplomatic manipulation and military strategy exchange characteristics, contriving
enemies at home, representing political antagonists abroad as criminals, and abolishing not only the
idea of a military frontier, but of warfare itself as simply a matter of literal or possible armed conflict.
In the future, the question will be not "Why did we choose war instead of peace?" but "What
configuration of the peace-war complex embroils us now? " Discussing what is new about the "new wars," Herfried
Munkler argues that in the wars that have developed in the decolonised world: "military force and organised crime go increasingly together."2He goes on: "The new
wars know no distinction between combatants and non-combatants, nor are they fought for any definite goals or purposes; they involve no temporal or spatial limits
on the use of violence."3In the low intensity, asymmetrical conflicts Munkler sees as typical of contemporary war,
war is without limits, and has
no identifiable outside, either in space or time.
The inverse of this argument is Martin Shaw's identification of one of the key attributes of "the
new Western way of war": "The key understanding, therefore, is that warfighting must be carried on simultaneously with 'normal' economics, politics and social life in
the West. It is imperative it doesnot impact negatively on these."4Western publics only tolerate a war that can be co-ordinated seamlessly with peace. This is not an
alienation of war from social life, but its absolute co-ordination with it. It is not here a question of war being kept hidden behind a screen of peaceful social
advancement from one day to the next. Instead, war under this dispensation becomes completely compatible with what we conventionally understand as peace. In the
end, this is what allows the complete saturation of society by war: the ability to represent the normal unfolding of social life as relatively undisturbed.
In their
discussion of the paradoxes of global political governance, Dillon and Reid present a more complex account of the inter-relationship between war and peace. Here
liberal governance both provokes and repudiates war. They write: "It . . . seems obvious that the
radical and continuous transformation of societies that global liberal governance so assiduously seeks
must constitute a significant contribution to the very violence that it equally also deplores."5Here, global
political institutions which have charged themselves with the task of drawing fragile states into the
contemporary world of transparent and open (especially financial) administration which makes them
accessible to the flow of international capital, unsettle societies enough that warfare is risked, while
equally bemoaning war as a sign of institutional failure. The pressure put, for example, on the small states of the Western Pacific by local powers like
Australia both aggravates communal tensions by destabilising inherited power structures, while bemoaning the subsequent unrest as symptomatic of cultures seen as
ill-equipped for contemporary global modernity.
Each of these accounts presents a different insight into the various ways in which war and peace co-exist in the
contemporary. War
totally infiltrates peace, yet war is only allowed when it confirms the apparent
inviolability of peace. The governance that insists on the rationalisation and stabilisation of civic
society stokes instability and war. War is consistently incited in peace while being simultaneously
alienated from it. Peace is administered in such a way that war presses to return, always and
everywhere. But how are we to theorise this possibly epoch-making development?
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Liberation requires sacrifice, not a better political program.
Extend Goldhammer 05.
The ecastic experience of sacrifice frees us from utilitarian concern for the good, forming a
sovereign existence not subjugated to the needs of survival. This forms of a space of
political contestation that is the prerequisite to a sovereign community that is not just
endless domination.
Sacrifice enacts a theater of liberation.
Extend Razinsky 09.
Cutting off the head of the USFG challenges its political authority, while wearing their
skins breaks down the wall separating us from others. Sacrifices radiation burns like the
radiation of the sun, allowing an intimate encounter with death. The encounter with risk
not subordinated to productivity or survival is the only way to access the exuberance that
gives life meaning.
No one knows what is coming.

History throws off ecastic revolutions, sacred moments of transformation that disprove the
cynicism of bitter realism.
EdgarMorin2006
[Morin founded and directed the magazine Arguments (1954-1962). In 1959 his book Autocritique was published. In 1969, Morin
spent a year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. In 1983, he published De la nature de
lURSS, which deepened his analysis of Soviet communism and anticipated the Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev. Morin was
married to Johanne Harrelle, with whom he lived for 15 years. In 2002, Morin participated in the creation of the International
Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium.
RealismandUtopiaDiogenes2006v53p.135144]
AstheideaofadeterministorderoftheworldandofHistoryhascompletely
collapsed, you are obliged to confront uncertainty on all sides; as the limits of the reductive and
compartmentalized mode of thinking are revealed more and more, you have to try to grasp the complex
in the literal sense of the word complexus meaning that which is woven together. Blaise Pascal, in the
17th century, was already expressing what ought to be self-evident: All things, even the most separated from one another, are imperceptibly linked one to the other, all things assist and are assisted,
cause and are caused an idea which already introduces the sense of reciprocity. Pascal goes on: I
consider it impossible to know the parts if I do not know the whole, as it is impossible to know the whole if I do
not know each part individually. Pascal understood that knowledge was a shuttle passing from the whole to the parts and from the parts to the
whole; it was the link element, that is, the capacity to contextualize, to situate an item of knowledge and an item of information within a
context such that they might take on meaning. Why is it becoming more and more difficult for us to make use of our cognitive aptitudes which
always function through contextualization and fitting things into wholes? Because, in effect, we are now living in a global era; the problems are
ever more linked one with another and are more and more vast. But it is especially because we are more and more under the influence of
disjunctive, reductive and linear thought. We have retained not the words of Pascal but those of Descartes, that is, that you have to break down
things into their component parts in order to know them. As soon as you have elements which pose problems within a system, you have to
separate out the problems; you solve the different problems individually and then you have the solution for the whole. You have to separate
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science and philosophy, you have to keep disciplines apart . . . yes, but on condition that they can link together again; whereas, today, there is a
separation and
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compartmentalization that is hermetic. There is a disjunction between the humanist culture that of the humanities, that which makes us reflect
and think and so enriches us and the compartmentalized scientific culture. And it is a fact that this disjunction has spread everywhere, even
into politics. It is this fragmentary mode of thought which dominates, and which encloses the fragments within the world, whereas the other
form of thought will dissect the world longitudinally, in slices related to economics, technology and so on. This techno-scientific
thought which takes no account of creatures, people and cultures is clearly incapable of understanding
the problems of these socio-centric human groupings; in the same way as such socio-centric
groupings are incapable of realizing the problems associated with technicity. All of which today
puts us in a very serious situation. From this point of view, the imperative is to create connections.
Creating connections is what complex thought strives to do. In the sphere of politics and human activity, my diagnosis is that we are witnessing a struggle between
the forces of association and the forces of dislocation. Solidarity or barbarity.
We are going to burst asunder from a want of

solidarity; we will burst asunder from a failure to reform our way of thinking. To what extent is it a
problem of thought? To the extent that the classic alternatives block our thought. Realismandutopia
aretwoantinomiesthataremutuallyexclusiveaccordingtoourreceivedwayofthinking.Ifyouare
realists,youcantbeutopians.Ifyouareutopians,youareexcludedfromrealism.Itisthesamethingfor
unicityandmultiplicity.Theproponentsoftheformercanbuthomogenizeeverythingandunifythe
worldintheabstract.Thosearguingforthelattercertainlyperceivetheworldsdiversity,buttheyseeit
ascompartmentalized.Theproblem
liesintheimpossibilityofescapingtheseselfdestructive
alternatives,intheimpossibilityofthinkingcomplexity.Butthisisthegreatchallengethatfacesus.TowardsananthropoliticsSolidarityorbarbarityisanalternativewhich
derivesitssensenotjustfromthesphereoftheimmediate,theconcrete,thelocal,theexperienced,butalsofromtheEuropeanandglobalspheres.Whereverthisdebateistakingplace,it
obligesustolineuponthesideoftheforcesofassociationandsolidarityinthehopethattheywillprovestrongerthantheopposingforcesofrupture,dislocationandwilfulconcealment.It
impelsustobepartofamovementwhich,ifitisnotbroken,perhapswillnolongerleadustothebestofallpossibleworlds,butmayusherinthehopeofabetterworld.Thoughwemustset
asidethemessianicillusionofaradiantfuture,wecanneverthelessnourishthehopeofsuchabetterworld,evenwhilerecognizingthatthishopemayneverbeentirelyfulfilled.Forme,the
terrestrialhomelandtakesshapeintherealizationthatallofushumanbeingsarederivedfromthesametrunk,bornofthesamematrixtheearththroughourbiologicalevolution.Itisthe
awarenessthatwesharethesameidentityandthat,acrossourculturaldiversities,madeevenmoreapparentsincewehaveenteredtheglobalage,allhumanbeingssharetheonedestinyin
relationtothegreatproblemsoflifeanddeath.Itwasthistypeofawarenessthatelicitedtheconsciousnessofbelongingtoahomeland.OttoBauer,6attheendofthe19thcentury,definedthe
homelandasacommunityofdestiny,butwhichencapsulatedtheideaofacommonidentityacrossaculture,sharingacommon,mythological,origin,tracingbacktoacommonmythic
ancestor.Butinmyterrestrialhomeland,theancestorisnotatallmythical,heisalittlebipedalcreature.Inhimwefindthegrandfatherofall.Thisideaofacommonhumanityandofa
homelandcoextensivewiththeearthisbothveryrealist,sinceitisbasedonananthropologicalidentity,butalsoveryrational,giventhechallengesoflifeanddeathwhichconfrontusall.It
couldevenbecalledreligiousinthesensethatpicksuptheetymologicaloriginofthisterm(Lat.religio=abindingtogether)bybindingallhumankindintoafraternity.Withinournation,
aswithinEuropeandthroughoutthewholeworld,wearehavingtoconfrontimmenseproblems.Socialismbelievedthattheillsthatafflictedhumanityweretheworkofasinglemonster,
capitalism:suppresscapitalismandalltheseillswouldalsobesuppressed.Butwehaveseenthatthatdidnotsuppresswars,nordiditsuppressexploitation.Wehavecometorealizethatthere
isnotjustonemonster,butanumberofthem.Andtheyarenotminimonsters,theyaremoreandmoreenormousinsize:thetechnobureaucraticmonster,themonsteroftheuncontrolled
spreadoftechnoscience...allthesereverberatewithindailylifeandcreatedeepseatedills.Ourwellbeingisbecomingasituationofillbeing.Weshouldnotforgettodiagnosetheweakness
ofpoliticalthoughtoftheLeftwhich,aftertheorganiccollapseofMarxism,founditselfincapableofrethinkingthehistoricalproblemofmankindinsocietyandofenvisagingapositive
politicsofhistory.Whensocialismwasformulatedinthe19thcentury,itgrewoutofanhistoricalperspective.Today,suchanhistoricalperspectiveisonceagainnecessary.Iamafraidthat,in
theabsenceofasingleunifyingconcept,ifasuddenandviolentcrisisoccurred,wewouldhavetosuffercatastrophicconsequences.Ifaverygreatcrisisweretocome,wewouldnotbe
shelteredfromitsterror.Whenthegreatcrisisof1929struck,andGermanywasfrightfullysmittenwithconditionsnotonlymoreseverethanelsewherebutalsoexacerbatedbythecontextof
nationalhumiliationinwhichtheyoccurred,theworldwitnessedtheriseofNazismwithinanenvironmentofcompletelegality.Itmustalsoberecognized,however,thatthesameperiod
sawRooseveltsNewDealprovidinganalternativedemocraticsolution.WhytheNewDealworkedwasperhapsbecausetheUnitedStateswasacountryofimmigrants.Weareurgedtobe
vigilant,withoutopeningthedoortotheimprobable.Evenrecentlywehavehadgreatexpectations.Butofwhat?Thereweretheexpectationsofthegeneralspreadofdemocracy,ofthe
emergencefromaneconomyofconstraintandpoverty.TherewashopethattheUnitedNationscouldperhapsfunctionproperly.Suchhopesarosenotonlyinrelationtothedemiseofthe
USSR,butalsoinAfricaandLatinAmericawheredictatorshipswerefalling.Butthespringtimeofthepeoplesin1848wasfollowedbyaterriblerepression.Thatofthelastcenturyhasseena
terribleregression.Wecannolongercontinuetonourishdisproportionatehopes,likethosecrazyhopesweinFrancehadattheLiberation.Wewerecomingoutfromundertheyokeof
.So,doesthatmeanthatwearealwayslikelytobedisenchanted,
seeingourhopesreducedtodespair?Inaword,no.Ibelievethatwemustlivetothefulltheecstatic
momentsofhistory;theyaretheconsolationofsomanyyearsofmediocrity.Iexperiencedthe
LiberationofParis.May1968wasalittlemomentofhistoricaldelightthatIalsoenjoyed.Iwas
fortunatetobeinLisbonatthetimeoftheCarnationRevolution.AsforthefalloftheBerlinWall,
unfortunatelyIwasonlyabletoexperienceitbyproxy,notbeingpresent,butIwashappytosee
RostropovitchplayinginfrontoftheWall.Lifeisbearableonlyifonecanintroduceintoitnota
utopiabutpoetry,thatis,an
intensity,asenseoffestival,ofjoy,communion,happinessandlove.
Thereisanecstasyofhistorywhichisacollectiveecstasyoflove.FrancescoAlberoni,inFallinginLove7whosewonderfullyuntranslatable
Nazism,butourgreataspirationswererapidlydisappointed
ItaliantitleisInnamoramentoeamoredescribingthatmarvellous,ecstaticmomentwhenlovecomesuponone,wrote:Nascentrevolutionsaremomentsoffalling
inlove.ItsaphraseIlikequoting.Butsuchrevolutionsarenotthefinalstruggle,theyaretheinitialstruggle.Imightevensaythestrugglebeforetheinitial
struggle.Theyarethecurtainraiser,even,totheinitialstruggle.Why?Becausewhatisneededisaformidableeffortofintellectualreconstruction,awholenew
wayofthinking,even;wemustshowourselvesfitandabletoconfrontthechallengeoftheuncertain,andtherearetwowaysbywhichitmaybeconfronted.The
firstisbywayofawager:wehaveaclearideaofwhatwe
want,whatweaspireafter,andsowewageronits
realizationeventhoughwemayfearthatourideaswillbedefeated.Thesecondisthroughapplicationofstrategy:in
otherwords,theability,intermsofinformationreceivedandchancesmet,tomodifyourmannerofadvancing.Resistanceisnotsomethingpurelynegative.Itdoes
notconsistsimplyinopposingoppressiveforces,butitlooksaheadtoliberations.ItisthePolishexample,itstheexampleoftheSovietpeople,itstheexampleof
occupiedFrance.Resistancehasaninherentvirtue.Wearecondemnedtoresist.WhatIcalllivinglifeisnotjustliving
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poetically,itisalsoknowinghowtoresistinlife.Heraclitussaid:
Ifyoudonot
expectthe
unexpected,youwillnotfindit.Wecomebacktotheideaofthepossibleimpossible,whichwemustexploreindepth.
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Their realism is not realistic enough. We acknowledge the inevitability of violence, and they
are the ones being nave about the rationality and restraint of the state. International
relations is war, not the well-organized machine presented by the 1AC.
The collapse of communism proves the futility of realisms predictions. Its false inevitability
admits defeat in advance, blind to the ecastic possibilities of the present.
EdgarMorin2006
[Morin founded and directed the magazine Arguments (1954-1962). In 1959 his book Autocritique was published. In 1960, Morin
travelled extensively in Latin America, visiting Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Mexico.He returned to France where he
published L'Esprit du Temps. That same year, French sociologist Georges Friedmann brought him and Roland Barthes together to
create a Centre for the Study of Mass Communication that, after several name-changes, became the Edgar Morin Centre of
the EHESS, Paris[2]. Beginning in 1965, Morin became involved in a large multidisciplinary project, financed by the Dlgation
Gnrale la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique in Plozvet. In 1968, Morin replaced Henri Lefebvre at the University of
Nanterre. He became involved in the student revolts that began to emerge in France. In May 1968, he wrote a series of articles
for Le Monde that tried to understand what he called "The Student Commune." He followed the student revolt closely and wrote
a second series of articles in Le Monde called "The Revolution without a Face," as well as co-authoring Mai 68: La
brche with Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort[3]. In 1969, Morin spent a year at the Salk Institute for Biological
Studies in La Jolla, California. In 1983, he published De la nature de lURSS, which deepened his analysis of Soviet communism
and anticipated the Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev. Morin was married to Johanne Harrelle, with whom he lived for 15
years. In 2002, Morin participated in the creation of the International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium.
RealismandUtopiaDiogenes2006v53p.135144]
Sowhatcanwedotoavoidbeingdeceivedbysuchpseudorealistswhoseattitudesareinfacttotally
utopian?Howcanwestopourselvesfromsimplysaying:Well,yes,ifsomethingcannotbemadereal
itmustbepurelyutopian...,andnotthusbecomemiredinarealismwhichcannotseebeyonditself?
Theverypresentitselfhasanenigmaticanduncertainface.ThisisdetectableevenintheWest.
Everythingthatseemssolidandfunctionalisyetcapableoffallingapart.Thepresentremains
unknowable.Wearelivinginasortofcycloniclowpressurezone.Wegetthefeelingthatthestormis
abouttoburstatanymoment,butthenno,itdoesnt,itseemstomoveaway.Andthen,waiton,ithasnt
reallymovedawayatall.Wedontreallyknowwhatisgoingtohappen.Thepresentistherealmof
uncertainty.Regardingthepostcommunistperiod,itisinterestingtoseejusthow
surprising,or
unsurprising,thingsturnouttobe.TheRussianhistorianYuriAfanasevs3analysisbringstolightthat
oncethatgiganticapparatusthatwasthe
SovietStatebecamefragmentedintoathousandpieces,
eachofthepieceschanged
intoalittlecapitalistentity.
Continued
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Continued
Realpolitikandthepoliticsoftheideal
ToparaphraseRimbaud:IhavemadethemagicstudyOfhappiness...onemightsay:Ihavemadethe
interminablestudyOfthereal.Tobeabletodiagnosewhattherealconsistsoftoday,othersourcesof
illuminationwouldbenecessary.Butthesubjectisinexhaustible.Thefirstthingistoreject
trivial
realism,whichinsiststhatwemustadapttotheimmediate,totheestablishedorder,tothefait
accompliandadmitthevictoryofthevictorious.Butbeyondsuchtrivialrealism,whatremains?We
needtorecognizethatthereal
isswarmingwithpossibilitiesandwehavenowayofknowingwhat
mayemergefromit,norhowtochooseonesownpurposivedirectionorsituateoneselfinrelation
toit.Withinthesphereofhumanreality,theimaginary,themythologicaland
ofcoursetheaffective
allcohabittogether,somethingthatthecompartmentalization
ofthesocialandhumansciencesdoes
notsufficientlytakeintoaccount.Asforeconomics,itismuchtoorefinedascience.Why?Becauseits
objectisexpressedin
figuresandquantities.Butfromsuchperfection,flesh,blood,passion,
suffering,happinessandculturalexpressionhaveallbeenabstractedaway.Thereinliestheproblem
oftodaysreality,wherepolitics,theartofthepolis,hasbeenmadeentirelysubservienttoeconomics,
theartofthekosorhousehold.Torediscovertruereality,wehavetoberestoredtoastateof
responsibilityassubjects.Itmaybeacommonplacetosayso,butitmustbeconstantlyrepeated:any
knowledgebeitofanobjectoracrowdfilledlecturetheatreisatranslationand
areconstruction.
Ofcourse,onecanbedeceivedbyhallucinations,onecanbeinerror,butthereisnoknowledgewhich
isaphotographicreflectionofwhatisreal.Admittedly,knowledgeintheformofideasandtheoriesisa
translation/reconstructionoftherealinarefinedform,butthisalsocancarrywithitenormousillusion
anderror.Suchillusionsarethestuffofthewholeofhumanhistory.MarxandEngelssaidthatthe
historyofhumanitywasthatoftheerrorsandillusionsthathumanbeingshadmadeaboutthemselves
andaboutwhattheyhadachieved.Butinsosaying,theyalsocommittedthesametypesoferrorsand
hadthesameillusions.Soisitnotworthwhilesayingtooneself:Cantweatleasttrytoreact?Quite
clearly,allknowledgeisinterpretation.Theillusionliesinsaying:IwillcallrealwhatIthinkisreal;
thatistosay:Ilabelasrealismthatwhichderivesfrommypersonalconceptionofthereal.Reality,
evenatitsmostobjective,alwayshasacognitiveandsubjectiveelementtoit.Totrulyknowreality,
whatisrequiredisasubjectcapableofthinkingcriticallywithinhis/herownlimitedpersonalmental
space,andthen,throughthatability,beingcapableofquestioningthetruthswhichpresentasself
evidentwithinthedoctrinalsystemintowhichtheyareincorporated.Itmightbeaddedthatthe
discreditingofallindividuallyautonomousmoralitiesandallautonomousassertionsofresponsibility
isthecommonfeatureofallbelligerentnationalismsandalltotalitariansystems,fromstalinismto
nazism.
Evenifrealismhasvalidity,thatdoesntprovethe1ACisclaimsareright.ItdoesNOT
provethattheaffdoesntreproducetheviolentexcessesleadingtoourdestruction.
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Even if realism possesses truth, it is fragmentary and willfully ignorant about its own
limits. Only a sacred methodology has a chance of understanding the international.
StephenChan2000
[ProfessorIRDeanEthicsatNotinghamTrentUniversity,MillenniumVol.29,No.3,pp.565589]
PreconditionsForWritingaSacralIR
Thedifficultyofwritinganessaysuchasthisisthatitfeelslikethewritingoffragments,onlybecausethe
fragmentsare,withinaparticulardiscipline,unknown.Thatthedisciplineostensiblyconcernsitselfwiththe
internationalmakesthewritingofsuchfragmentstragic,orperhapspathetic.Yet,itisIRthatisaborrowing
discipline.ItcannotclaimitsborrowingofKantandHegelnevermindNietzscheisforinstancemorethan
fragmentary.Thetragedyliesinits
circumscribedchoiceoffragments,andthiscircumscriptionisa
repudiationoftheinternational,andfinallyarepudiationofknowledge.Thecompoundtragedyisthatthe
fragmentaryborrowing,thecircumscription,andtherepudiationareadvertisedasanunendingandrecurring
questfortruth;butthistruthcanonlyever,undersuchconditions,befragmentaryandcircumscribed.Truth
asmonolithevenifitfadesandrecursandtruthseekingasaristocratic,areconceits.Ihavetriedtoillustratein
thisessayboththesubjectivityandselfreflexivesubjectivityofanysearchfortruth,andtooffsettheoriental
storieswithknowledgefromWesterndisciplinesandthinkersoutsideIR.Moretothepoint,Ihavetriedto
illustratethedesirabilityofvarioustruths,andhowthemultiplicityofthemshouldbecontextualisedwithina
questforgood.Notonlythat,butthe
tellingoftruths,andthequestforgood,establishanintersubjectivity
whichisamenabletoahermeneutics,asRicoeursuggested,mostplausiblyestablishedin
artandstories.Thus,
ifthereaderhasanaversiontoTibetandevotionalstatuary,heorshestillhastheinjunctionsofIRsRoland
Bleiker,whichareinjunctionstowardsthefreelycompositional.48Butitisnotenoughmerelytotellstories.Iam
sayingherethat,initsrushtosecularity,IRhasforgottentheneedtotellstories
thataresacralthatare
compositionstowardsthesacredandwhicharereflectivitiesuponlonganddifferenthistoriesofestablishingthe
conditionsofgoodnessand,yes,oftruth/s.Itisthemethodologiesofreflectionthat,Ipropose,existintheworld
sculturesassacraldevices.Nietzschewasrightaboutthedividedcogito,butdidnotinfusehisZarathustra
sufficientlywithit.Zarathustrasexposuretotheworldareexposuresonlytoprovidehimwithtouchstonesthat
reasserthisownrightness.ThereisnoneoftheironyofaSubcomandanteMarcos,andhissenseofcompassionto
allthosewhoareimperfectbeforeitislessthandeveloped.Nietzschescreationis,finally,anassertionintheface
oftheworld,andnotaTibetanBoddhisattvawhochoosesverydeliberatelytoremainwithinit.Hehas,in
Ricoeursterms,nointersubjectivity;inKngsterms,noethicfortheworldwhichdisgustshim;and,inEliades
terms,departsthemoraldepredationsoftheworldbygivingintohisowntemptationofSuperhumanityas
constantrecurrence.Hedoesnotconstantlyrecurintheworld,butisengagedincontinuallyapproachingatruth
thatisbeyond
theworldsdetritus.Thisisnotnihilistic,butonlyinthesensethatitisbeyondthecontextof
nihilism:theworldofstruggleandtheworldoftheinternational.Tobeingood,ratherthanbecomingintruth,
isthedistinctiondrawnherebetweenNietzschesZarathustraandTibetsAvalokitsvara.Thesearechoicesof
stories,yes?Andbotharewrittensacrally,debatingthemethodologiestowardstranscendingthematerialand
secular.Onlyoneofthem,havingthecapacitytocompletetranscendence,drawsbacktolivewithintheinco
mplete:toattainnotsacredness,butaconditionofperpetualsacrality.Thisperpetualstatedrawsfromand
prosecutesthecauseofgood,andthisgoodisnotthesubjectorobjectofdiscourse:itisknownbysimple
intersubjectiveexperience.Finally,inhiscompletedethic,Knggotitright.Thereisnothingcomplicatedabout
this.Goodissimplysomethingdone.Thetrick,beyondIR,issimplythatitcanbedoneinonethousandtruthful
ways.
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Realism is mythology, blind to its reliance on untestable stories to make sense of vast array
of empirical evidence The K solves best for IR methodology and education.
CynthiaWeber2005
[ProfessorIRatLancasterUniversity,InternationalRelationsTheory:ACriticalIntroductionp.xvixvii]
What,forexamplemakesrealism'sstoryaboutsovereignnationstateslockedintoabattlefor
survivaloridealism'sstoryaboutthepossibilitiesofinternationalcooperationsocompelling?Inthis
bookIsuggestthatwhatmakestheseIRstoriesappeartobetruearetheIRmythsuponwhichtheyare
based.IRmythsareapparenttruths,usuallyexpressedasslogans,thatIRtraditionsrelyuponin
ordertoappeartobetrue.The'truth'orthe'falsity'ofanIRmythisbesidethepoint.Examininghow
anIRmythfunctionstomakeanIRtraditionappeartobetrueisthepoint.So,forexample,theIRmyth
'internationalanarchyisthepermissivecauseofwar'istheapparenttruththatrealismandthesedays
neorealismdependupon.Similarly,'thereisaninternationalsociety'istheIRmyththatmakesthestories
toldbyidealismandneoidealismappeartobetrue.NoneofthisshouldcomeasasurprisetoIR
theorists.WeknowthatdifferentIRtraditionsrelyuponverydifferentIRmythsinordertoappeartobe
true.Sohowdowemakesenseofthesecontradictorywaysofseeingtheworldforourstudents?The
usualstrategyistotest'thevalidityoftheIRmythsagainstthe'facts'ofinter
nationalpoliticsto
determinewhichIRmyth(andthereforewhichIRtradition)offersthemostaccuratedescriptionofinternationalpolitics.ProvingthatanIRmyth,tradition,or
theoryiswrongsothatitcanbereplacedbyanotheronewhichis'true'isusuallywhatwemeanbydoing'criticalIRtheory'.Butwhatifwepushouranalysisjusta
bitfurther?WhatifweunpacknotjustIRtraditionsbuttheIRmythsuponwhichtheyarebased?WhatifweaskofIRmyths(aswedoofIRtraditions),whatmakes
thestorytheytellaboutinternationalpoliticsappeartobetrue?Whatmakesinternationalanarchyappeartohethepermissivecauseofwar,orwhydoesthereappear
tobeaninternationalsociety?Ifwepursuethesequestions,thenwenotonlypushouranalysisofIRtraditionsfurther.Wepushwhatitmeanstodo'criticalJR
theory'.Whyisthisthecase?BecausethealternativewayofdoingcriticalJRtheoryproposedinthisbookallowsustoexaminenotonlyhowone'truth'replaces
another'truth'butalsohow'truths'getconstructed.ThisisbeyondthescopeofmosttraditionalcriticalIRtheorywhichconcernsitselfonlywithevaluatingwhich
'truth'appearstobemost'true'.Bydeclaringonetheory'true'andanotherone'false',traditionalcriticalIRtheorycannotthengobackandexaminewhatmakesthe
'true'theoryappeartobetrue.Forexample,realismcritiquesidealismby'proving'thatitsIRmyth,'international
anarchyisthepermissivecauseofwar',is'moretrue'thanidealism'smyth,'thereisaninternational
society'.But,insodoing,realismcannotaskwhatmakesitsIRmythaboutinternationalanarchy
appeartobetrue.And.withoutcriticallyanalysingitsownIRmyth,realismultimatelyproves
nothing.Assertingthe'truth'ofoneIRmythoveranotherinnowayguaranteesthe'truth'ofanIR
myth,nomatterhowmuchempiricalevidenceisamassedtosupportthe'truth'ofthemyth.Thisisthe
casebecausethe'truth'ofanIRmythdependsasmuchuponhowempiricalevidenceisorganized
intoacoherentstoryaboutinternationalpoliticsasitdoesontheevidencealone.Thisisacentralproblemwith
howcriticaltheoryisusuallypractisedinthedisciplineofinternationalrelations.InternationalRelationsTheorytakesthisproblemseriously.Howittakes
itseriouslyisbyshiftingitsanalyticalemphasisawayfromlookingfor'empiricalevidence'tosupportthe'truth'ofanIRmythtowardsaninvestigationofthe
organizationofthe'facts'thatmakeanIRstoryaboutinternationalpoliticsappeartobetrue.DoingcriticalIRtheoryinthiswaymeanswehavetosuspendourusual
preoccupationwithgettingtothe'realtruth'aboutanIRmyth,tradition,ortheoryandaskinstead,whatmakesaparticularstoryaboutinternationalpoliticsappearto
betrue?Or.toputitsomewhatdifferently,howdoesthe'truth'functioninaparticularIRmyth?ItisnotaccidentalthatthisbookasmyanswertohowtoteachIR
theorybettershouldlocusonstoriesandhowtheyaretold .Iftheworldismadeupof'facts'andstoriesthatorganizethose
'facts'.thenthereisnomoreimportantskilltopassontostudentsthantomakethembetterreaders
andwritersofstories,betterinterpretersofnotjustthe'factsbutoftheorganizationofthe'facts'.Withthisinmind,international
RelationsTheorydoesnottrytobeacomprehensivetextbookcrammedwithevery'fact'aboutinternationallifeoreveninternationaltheory.By
focusingonthemajorIRtraditionsofrealism,idealism,historicalmaterialism,constructivism,postmodernism,gender,andglobalization,it
attemptstohelpstudentstoreadandwritetheirworldbetterbyarmingthemwiththeabilitytocriticallyask,howdoesthe'truth'gettold?
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Humans might be violent, but NOT because of the inevitability of realism. States no longer
pursue war as strategy, but instead as senselessly murderous excess.
AdrianaCavarero,ProfPoliticalPhilosophyatUniversitdeglistudidiVerona,2009
[Horrorism:NamingContemporaryViolencetrans.McCuaigp.6065]
.Duringtheearlyyearsofthepresentcentury,theareaofgreatestsufferinghasbeenIraq,wherefrom2003throughthefirsthalfof2006theestimatedtotal
numberofdeathsamongthepopulationcomesclosetosixhundredthousand.'Thislistisobviouslyarbitraryandincomplete.Norisitaquestionofnumbers,evenifafocusonquantitiesisinevitablewhenwearedealingwithmass
butcheryandcarnagearenowdirectedinthebulkofcases,althoughnotexclusivelyatthe
civilianpopulation.Inanepochof"massdeathunprecedentedinhistory,10tocontinuetodiscusswarintermsof
regulatedconflictbetweenstates,inlinewiththeclassicaland"symmetrical"modelofaclashbetweenmeninuniform,is,
inthissense,misleading.Thekindofwarthatmaturedinthetwentiethcenturyandloomsoverthenewmillenniumisnot
onlyasymmetric,aswereandareallcolonialwars,but,likethem,consistspredominantlyofthehomicide,unilateraland
sometimesplanned,ofthedefenseless.Nordoestherhetoricalexpedient,typicalofmilitarylanguage,of'collateraldamage"doanygood:onthefactualplane,itdoesnot
homicide.9Thenumbersservemerelytoemphasizehow
succeedinmaskingtheexistenceof"theblownofflimbs,thepuncturedeardrums,theshrapnelwounds,andthepsychologicalhorrorthatarecausedbyheavybombardment:"'Struckoneby
one,inthesingularityoftheirvulnerablebodies,thehelplessonesstandatthecenterofmoderndestructionandhighlightitsdriftintohorrorism.Thisplacestheminapositionofperspectiveon
horrorthat,inspeakingofwar,nodiscussionoughtanylongerignore.Oftenexecratedasatremendousevilandasthemaximalexpressionofhumanviolence ,
warhasbeenregardedasinevitableformillennia.Butthemodernageespeciallyhasbeenabletomakeuseoftheoriesthat,
variouslyarticulatedandcuttingacrossdifferentdisciplinarylevels,havesucceededinendowingthisinevitabilitywithanatural
foundation.Irefertotheories,originatingintheearlytwentiethcenturyandnotuntouchedbytheeroticizationofhorroralready
discussed,thattraceviolencebackto"aggressiveness,definedasaninstinctualdrive,[that]issaidtoplaythesamefunctionalroleinthehouseholdofnature
asthenutritiveandsexualinstinctsinthelifeprocessoftheindividualandthespecies."2ThisisArendt'scharacterization,inanessayfromthe196osinwhichsheimputesthisnaturalisticacceptationofviolenceprimarilytothe
modernsocialsciences.Astheauthorimplies,theterm"socialsciences"isnottobetakeninanarrowsense.Itismeantsimplyasacomprehensivelabelforthevariousfieldsofknowledgethatemphasizethepulsionaloriginofthe
,Hobbeswasalreadyspeakingofwaraspartofhumannature,inhiscelebrated
descriptionofthestateofnatureasastateofwar.Themodernsocialsciences,tostaywithArendt'sthesis,goastepfurther,
however;theyascribewar,likeviolence,notjustto"anirrepressibleinstinctofaggression"butalsoto"asecretdeathwishofthehuman
phenomenonofvio[p.63]lance.Atthedawnofthemodernera,forthatmatter
species.1113ThusFreudandpsychoanalysisinevitablycometotheforeground.TheFreudianideaofadeathwishiswellknown:"adeathinstinct,thetaskofwhichistoleadorganiclifeback
intotheinanimatestate."4Hedescribesitasadrivethat,albeitoriginallydirectedinwardintheformofselfdestructiveness,alsoprojectsoutward,"againsttheexternalworldandother
organisms.`5Inotherwords,andtoadoptthetechnicalimprecisionOfArendtianterminology;itisadesirefordeaththatisatthesametimeaninstinctofaggression.Asisequallywellknown,
Freuddevelopedthisthemeduringthefinalphaseofthewritingsinwhich,from1914to1922,hedescribedthefunctioningofpsychicactivity.Thebackgroundistheperiodduringandshortly
aftertheFirstWorldWar,anepochinwhichdeathanddestructionwereoperativeonavastscale.Itshouldalsobenotedthat,asproofoftheplausibilityoftheintrinsiclinkagebetweenthe
deathwishandtheimpulseofdestruction,heresortstoanargumenttakenfromthefieldofbiology;tobeprecise,hedescribesthepassagefromsinglecellorganismstomulticellularonesin
termsofadeathwishthat,insteadofdirectingitsdestructiveimpulseinwardtowardthesinglecell,isredirectedoutward.SowhenArendtdenouncesthenaturalisticconceptionofviolence
derivedfromthe"modernsocialsciences:'shehitsthemark:theincursionintothefieldofthenaturalsciencesisasalienttraitofpsychoanalytictheoryinitsformativephase.Ratherthanat
Freud,though,thedenunciationoughttobedirectedattheimmensesuccessofcertainFreudiancategoriesinthesecondhalfofthetwentiethcentury,especiallyatthewaytheyhavebeen
absorbedandreworked,ifnothypostasized,bythevariousdisciplinesthathaveintersectedwithpsychoanalysis,onewayoranother,overthecourseofthecentury.Thephenomenonis,toputit
mildly,conspicuous.Especiallyontheplaneofmediapopularization,thecenturysawtheexpansionofahorizonofmeaningwithinwhichthedeathwishalongwiththedestructiveimpulses,and
notseldomtheirhorroristsidealaBataille,acquiredthestatusofestablished,unquestionable,andevidentprinciples.Anyreflectiononviolenceingeneralandwarinparticularwasvirtually
obligedtotakethemintoaccount.Atthestartofthethirdmillennium,inotherwordsintheeraofsocalledglobalwar,aprimeexampleofthisisabookpublishedintheUnitedStatesbyJames
Hillmanin2004.ItisentitledATerribleLoveofWarandis[p.64]basedontheJungiantheoryofarchetypes.ButthebookstandsoutnotbecauseofthereferencetoJung,ortopsychoanalysis
ingeneral,butbecauseofthenonchalancewithwhichHillmanrecuperatesandmixestogetherthemainstrandsoftwentiethcenturynaturalisticthoughtonviolencetocorroboratehisthesis.He
maintainsthatwar"belongstooursoulsasanarchetypaltruthofthecosmos"16andthatthisarchetypaltruthis,asthetitleoFhissecondchapterputsit,"normal]'Heproceedswithananalysis
ofthethemeofahorrorthatremainshumaneveninitsatrociousinhumanity,addingthatwarissublimeandbelongstothesphereofreligion.17"Ifwarissublime,wemustacknowledgeits
liberatingtranscendenceandyieldtotheholinessofitscall"18Thisdoesnotmean,obviously,thatHillmanwishesforaperpetualstateofwar.Hisaimisrathertogetridofthe"pacifist
rhetoric''that,indenyingthenaturalpsychicrootofthephenomenon,impedescomprehensionofit.Asthereaderwilleasilyintuit,whiletheauthorscited(ofteninappropriately)arehighly
disparate,itisprincipallycategoriesderivingfrompsychoanalysis,thesociologyofthesacred,andtheanthropologyofsacrificethatunderpinthearticulationofHillman'sdiscourse,The
theoreticaldensity,aswellastheinternalproblematicsofthesecategories,whichinhistextareforcedtoundergodrasticsimplification,aretransformedintobanalclichs.Inordertojustifywar
asanuorenounceableandvitalexperience,Hillmanoftenappealsnotjusttotheauthorityofhisauthorsbuttoasocalledcommonopinionthatbynowconstitutesthevulgate,intheformofthe
stereotypicalandtheobvious,ofthosesameauthors.Anexampleisthefacilitywithwhichhetakesforgranted'burfascinationwithwarfilms,withweaponsofmassdestruction,withpicturesof
blastedbodiesandbombsburstingintheair.""TothisHillmanadds,onaconfessionalnote,"thefascination,thedelightinrecountingthedreadfuldetailsofbutcheryandcruelty.Not
sublimation,thesublime.""Typicalaswellinthewayitcastsashadowofabnormalityifnotpathologicalstupidityorobtusenessoverthosewhodonotsharethefascinationwithbutchery,
Hillman'sthesishasitsownstringentlogic.Onceviolenceisrootedinthenaturalrealmoftheimpulsesor,ifoneprefers,inthe
archetypicalorderofthecosmos,thehorrorofwarcannotfailtotransmititsfascinationbothtoeveryone'svisualexperienceandtotheliterary
practiceofsome.And,evenmorelogically,itiscombatantswithfirsthandexperienceinthefieldwhosavorthefullfascination.ThewordsofthesoldiersthatHillmandiligentlyreportsinhis
textforthepurposeofdocumentinghistheoryproveit.Amongthem,thewordsofacinematographicversionofGeneralPattonstandout,when,facedwiththedevastationofbattleandkissinga
dyingofficer,heexclaims,"Iloveit.Godhelpme,Idoloveitso.Iloveitmorethanmylife."Thenthereistheauthen[p.65]ticdeclarationofamarinewhoconfesses,"ThethingIwishI'd
seenIwishcouldhaveseenagrenadegointosomeone'sbodyandblowitup:'Nooneelse,though,rivalsthelaudablecapacitytosynthesizeoftheanonymousAmericansoldierwho,in
describingabayonetcharge,definesitas"awful,horrible,deadly,yetsomehowthrilling,exhilarating.' Inthenameofarealismgroundedinthepowerof
clich,theentirerepertoryofwar'shorroristhusreducedbyHillmantotherealmofenjoyment."Thesavagefuryofthegroup,allof
whosemembersareoutforoneanother'sblood:'whichthecelebratedworkofRenGirardinscribesinthephenomenologyofritual,"becomesthetrivialwageofthewarrior.Forthatmatterthe
stereotypeofthesoldierexcitedbykillinghasalongandprestigioushistory.AcertainarousalbyviolencewasalreadycharacteristicofHomer'swarriors,andthewarmongeringrhetoricof
everyage,ennobledbywritersandpoets,isfullofsoldiersmadehappybydeath.Theeventsofthetwentiethcentury,andevenmorethoseoccurringrightnow,mightsuggesttothesingersand
scholarsofmassacrethattheychangeregister.Todayitisparticularlysenselessthatthemeaningofwaranditshorroraswell,obviously,asitsterrorshouldstillbeentrustedtotheperspective
ofthewarrior.Ifitistrue,asthehistorianGiovanniDcLunalaments,that "wars,withtheviolenceandcrueltytheyunleash,appeartohaveacommon
ground(killingandgettingkilled),alwaysthesameandimpervioustochronology,""itisalsotruethatonlywarriors,after
allfitthisparadigm.Thecivilianvictims,ofwhomthenumbersofdeadhavesoaredfromtheSecondWorldWaron,donot
sharethedesiretokill,muchlessthedesiretogetkilled.Nordoesthepleasureofbutchery,onwhichHillmaninsists,appear
toconstituteapossiblecommongroundinthiscase.Youwouldhavetoaskthevictimsofthebombing,cookedbyincendiary
bombsinthesheltersofDresden,orthosewhoseskinwaspeeledoffbyphosphorousbombsintheVietnamesevillages,where
thepleasureandexcitementwasforthem..
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Their predictions mobilize a crowd of babies seeking security from the teat of the state.
Democratic discourse cannot account for the its own fascination with violence, meaning
only sacrifice can break with the status quo.
BlentDiken2006
[DepartmentofSociology,LancasterUniversity,Alternatives31(2006),431452
Theevilisus.Thewaragainsttheevilisnotamatterofopposingothersbutofconfrontingourselves,our
owndesire.Inthissense,LordoftheFliesisastoryoffascisminusall.Thusinthefamousprefacehewrotefora
bookofethics,MichelFoucaultclaimedthatthemajorenemy,thestrategicadversaryisfascism....Andnot
onlyhistoricalfascism,thefascismofHitlerandMussolini...butalsothefascisminusthatcausesustolove
power,todesiretheverythingthatdominatesandexploitsus.46WhichisalsothereasonwhySimonhearsthe
followingfromtheLordoftheFlies:
continued
.Democracyisgreat,sothefilmtellsus,butitisalsoimpotent.Itlacksmobiliz
ingpowerandthe
capacityforradicalacts.BothPiggy,theintellectual,andRalph,thedemocrat,lackthisabilityexceptinthisincident,whereRalphdarestolook
evilintheeye.Themomentforaradicalactishoweversurpassed:afterRalphhasbecomethenewenemy,nooneneedsthetotemanimalanymore.Thus,Ralphs
actdoesnotamounttomorethananemptygesture.Butstillweshouldnotexcludethepossibilityofsuchacts;theyhaveatimeandamoment.Andradicaltheyare
inaimingforthedestructionofourmostcherishedobject.Ifevilisinus,thenanethicalactmustbeanactofself
destruction,anactthatundermines
whatmakeusawe.Significantlyinthisrespect,Benjaminwasthefirsttodivide
Schmittsconceptofexception,producingaremainderofit.ForSchmitt,exceptionisalimitconceptthatpresupposesanormalsituationasitsbackground.The
stateofexceptionaimsatthepreservationofthisnormalitywithextraordinarymeans.Inotherwords,Schmittsprojectistolegitimizethestateofexception,orto
normalizewhatisexceptional.Alongsimilarlines,wecouldarguethatthestateofexceptionontheislandisreactionary,or,tophraseitdifferently,thatviolenceis
rational.Thegeneralizedexception,thefestival,isJackswayofstrengtheninghispower.Inthis,everythingismadefluid;allhierarchiesarereversed.Butone
thingremainsconstant:Jack,theleader.Tobesure,BenjaminwasinmanywaysinspiredbySchmittsmethodologicalextremism,eventhoughhisownprojectwas
opposedtoSchmitts.WhereasSchmittwantedtolegitimizeNazipower,Benjamincriticizedit.Schmittwasconservative,Benjaminrevolutionary.Indeed,this
tensionfounditsbestexpressionintheirunderstandingofsovereignty.HencetoSchmittsexceptionBenjaminopposedthesuspensionofsuspension,areal
exception,or,better,anexceptiontoexceptionitself.Whatisdecisivehereisthenotionthat,whengeneralized,exceptionlosesitsstatusasalimitofnormality.
Thetraditionoftheoppressedteachesusthatthestateofemergencyinwhichweliveisnottheexceptionbuttherule.Wemustattaintoaconceptionofhistory
thatisinkeepingwiththisinsight.Thenweshallclearlyrealizethatitisourtasktobringaboutarealstateofemergency,andthiswillimproveourpositioninthe
struggleagainstFascism.57WhereasinSchmittexceptionisthepoliticalkernelofthelaw,itbecomesdivinejusticeinBenjamin.Andthenweareconfrontedwith
thedifferencebetweentwoexceptions:Schmittsexceptionisnothingelsethananattemptatavoidingtherealexception,therevolution,ordivinejustice.
Benjaminsexception,instarkcontrast,suspendstherelationalitybetweenthelawanditssuspensioninazoneofanomydominatedbypureviolencewithno
legalcover.58Thequestionofthisrealexceptionistheonethatcannotbeposedtodaywithoutimmediatelyfacingtheaccusationofbeinganihilistora
fundamentalist.Andwhyisitso?Toendwithananswertothisquestion,letusfocusonthefinalscene.SpeechlessThewholejungleisonfire.Ralphisbeing
hunted.Heishopeless,withoutbeingabletofindashelterfromviolence.Runningfrenetically,hemakeshiswaytothebeach,butcollapsesthere.Wornout,
breathless,heisabouttosurrendertohispredators,whoarenotfarbehindhim.Butmiraculouslyatthispoint,henoticesanavalofficerlookingathim.Obviouslya
shiphasseenthefire.Heissavedbythefire,whichwasintendedtodestroyhim.Shortlyafter,theotherboysarrivewiththeirpaintedbodiesandsharpened
spears.Theyarestartledwhentheyseetheofficer.Theofficer,inturn,lookspuzzled.Withthisscene,thefilmends.But,unforgivablyinourview,itomitsan
essentialdialoguefromthebook.Inthebook,whenthenavalofficerseesthenakedboyswithmasksandweapons,hethinkstheyareplaying,havingfunand
games,andcrucially(mis)interpretsthesituationasaJollygoodshow.LiketheCoralIsland.59CoralIslandisR.M.Ballantyneschildrensnovelfromthe
nineteenthcenturyinwhichthreeBritishboysonatropicalislandsuccessfullydefendcivilizationagainstpirates,cannibals,andwildanimals.Inotherwords,itis
anaveversionofLordoftheFlies.Whichmakesthedialogueessential,alsobecauseitisherethatthefirstlivingadultfigureappears.Crucially,however,this
figureturnsouttobeaninfantilizedadult,forwhomwarisagame,likeBlentDikenandCarstenBaggeLaustsen447theCoralIsland.Further,theboysinthe
filmarerescuedbysoldiersonlytomovetoanotherwar,toamoregeneralstateofexception.Inasense,therefore,theworldthefilmdepictsisaworldwith
nooutside.Theoutsideisasviolent,andasinfantilized,astheboysisland.Indeed,byomittingthiscrucialpoint,thefilmcreatestheillusionthatoutsidethe
islandthingsarenormalthatoutsidethereiscivilization.Theirony,however,isthattheboysare,inthefirstplace,ontheislandbecauseofawar.Theyare,so
tospeak,wagingawarwithinabiggerwar.Thisofficialwaroftheadultsisnotlessbutwithmoretechnology,biggercrowds,andmorepowerfulsadists
moreviolentthaneverythingthathappensontheisland.Thetwoworldsarecontinuous.60Hereinliesthesignificanceofthefactthatthefilmisaboutboys.Why
boys?PerhapsbecauseGoldingthoughtthatboys,ashalfformedbeings,couldbeperfectsymbolsofthecentralconflictbetweencivilizationandbarbarism.Thus
theboysinthefilmoccupyagreyzoneofindistinctionbetweensocietyandnature.Butstill,whydoestheonlymaninthefilmappearlikeaboy?Indeed,Lordof
theFliesisanallegoryofinfantilization.Afterall,thechildhoodofsocietyisthestateofnature.Andthenaturethat
comesaftersocietyisthestateofexception,aconditioninwhichthecitizenisreducedtoa
memberofacrowd.Atafirstapproximation,therefore,infantilizationisaboutregressiveevolution:a
movementnotfromthechildtotheadultbutfromtheadulttothechild,fromthehumantothe
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orangutan,fromsociety,bios,tothenature,zoe.Thestateofexceptionisaworldinwhichorangutan
stemsfromhuman
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beings.And,inasense,thebecomingorangutanofmaniswhatexplainstheincreasing
infantilizationofthecontemporaryculture,especiallyinthecontextofconsumptionandthewar
againstterror.Itiswellknownthatinpremoderntimesthechilddidnotexist;thatis,didnotconstituteadifferentbeing.Henceinpaintings,for
example,thechildrenweredepictedasgrownups,onlysmallerinsize,aschildmen.61Firstinmodernitychildhoodtooktheformofanexceptionalperiodin
individualchronology,andthechildemergedasasubjecttobenormalizedanddisciplined:thechildmanis,perdefinition,desocialized.Therefore,someofthe
mostsignificantpanopticinstitutionsofmodernity,thenurseryandtheschool,forinstance,markthedifferencebetweenthechildandtheman.Tobeaproper
manoneshouldfirstbeaproperchild;thatis,disciplinedandnormalizedinasiteofconfinement.Andthenonecouldmoveforwardtootherinstitutions,to
factories,universities,marriages,andfinallytotheelderlycare,448FromWartoWarlivingalifeonthemovefromoneclosedsitetoanother,eachwithitsown
laws,eachmarkedbyaninsideoutsidedivide.62Thisis,however,changingintodayscontrolsocieties,whosemainsymptomisthebreakingdownofpanoptic
boundaries:Indisciplinarysocietiesyouwerealwaysstartingalloveragain(asyouwentfromschooltobarracks,frombarrackstofactory),whileincontrol
societiesyouneverfinishanythingbusiness,training,andmilitaryservicebeingcoexistingmetastablestatesofasinglemodulation,asortofuniversal
transmutation.63Perhapstodaythedisciplinespecifictothenurseryisalsomovingbeyondthepanopticwallswiththeresultthatthemanchildis,again,
everywhere,ineverydomain.Thatoneschildhoodneverfinishesmeansthatthenurseryextendsitselftothewholesocietythat,inasense,theexception
becomestherule.Inthissense,infantilizationistheendoftheoutside,ofthedividebetweenthechildandtheadult.Inthesmoothbiographicspacethat
emerges,thedistinctionbetweenthechildandtheadultcanbecreatedonlyatafantasylevel,hidingthefactthattheoutsideofthenurseryisalsoanursery:the
infantilizedworldofthemanchild.Otherwise,outsidethisfantasyframe,thechild(theexception)andtheadult(therule)areindistinguishable,andthusthe
imperativesthatgovernadultlifearethesameasthosethatgovernthenursery:play,learning,protection.Inthenewspiritofcapitalismitisimperativetoplay;
thatis,tobenomadic,experimenting,andinspired.64Oursisasocietyinwhichplayisconsumption,consumptionisplay.Ideally,theconsumerisachild,who
shopsimpulsively,whosedesireistobearoused,channeled,andmanipulated.Second,weliveinaknowledgebasedsocietyoneinwhichweneverfinish
learning.Continuousassessmentisthusindispensabletoit.65Andfinally,oursisasocietyoffear,ofscaremongering,inwhichwearecontinuallytoldthatwe
needtobeprotected.Forsecurity,weareadvisedtosacrificeevendemocracy.Afterall,infantmeansspeechless.Thechildrenneednoagora;iftheyhadone,
theywoulddestroyitanyway,astheydidtheconchinLordoftheFlies.Iftheyounghumanfeelsintensegrief,anger,orotheremotion,heisnotabletocontainit,
andheisforcedintoactingout.Afrustratedchildisunabletointernalizethediscomfortortoreleaseitbyverbalexpression.Heridshimselfofthisunbearable
tensionbyanact,likekickingagainstthefloor....Crying,headbanging,screaming,orotherformsoftempertantrumsareachildswayofobtainingadenied
wish.66BlentDikenandCarstenBaggeLaustsen449Itisnowonderthatpoliticalinfantilizationtodaycomeswitharigid
polarizationbetweengoodandbad(youareeitherwithusoragainstus),whichreducesrealityto
fairystories,or,rather,toa
comedyof(t)errors:noweaponsofmassdestructionarefound;Bin
Ladenisnotcaught;Afghanistanseemstobemoredesertedthanever;democracyhasnotarrivedinIraq,
andsoon.Buteverythinggoesonandon.Inthis,theaudienceistreatedlikean
infantilized
crowd.Itisstriking,inthisrespect,toobservetheparallelbetweentheinfantilizedsubjectofsecurity
andthefrightenedsubjectofterror,thehostage.Thehostageisananonymousfigure,anaked,formless
body,whichisabsolutelyconvertible:anybodyandeverybodycanbeahostage.67Likewise,the
politicsofsecurityredefinesthecitizenasafearfulsubject,likeachild,tobeprotected.Any
body
andeverybodymustbeprotected.Consequently,boththeenemyandthefriendaredesubjectified;
whiletheenemyisreducedtoanillegalcombatantorafundamentalist,thefriend,thesubjectof
security,becomesinfantilized.ItisagainstthisbackgroundthatLordoftheFliesisanallegoryofa
biopolitical,or,better,apostpoliticalsocietythatelevates
securitytoitsmostsacredprincipleof
organizationintheformofapermanentstateofexceptionandtriestocombineitwithconsumerism(sothatweneedsecurityto
beabletoconsumeandneedtoconsumetobeabletofeelsecure).Afterall,violenceinLordoftheFlieswasjustanexceptionalcircumstance:Theboyswerejust
playing!Thecrucialquestioniswhetherthisisavalidanswerintodayssociety:Istheexceptionjustanexceptionorisitgeneralized?Whothentodaycountsas
evil,astheLordoftheFlies?Andhowiseviltobefought?Controlsocietyisasocietyinwhichfear/terrorandbusinesses,likeunidenticaltwins,worktogether
throughadisjunctivesynthesistoformasingledispositif.Itis,therefore,nocoincidencethatspiteasapostpoliticalstrategyreemergesintodayssociety.Hence,
withreferencetotherecentprotests/firesintheFrenchsuburbs,SlavojZizekasks:Whereisthecelebratedfreedomofchoice,whentheonlychoiceis
theonebetweenplayingbytherulesand(self)destructiveviolence,aviolencewhichisalmost
exclusivelydirectedagainstonesownthecarsburnedandtheschoolstorchedwerenotfromrich
neighborhoods,butwerepartofthehardwonacquisitionsoftheverystratafromwhichprotestors
originate.68Inthecontemporary,postpoliticalsociety,theagoraisnot
functioningasitis
supposedtobe:Violencecannotbetranslated
intoapoliticallanguageand,thus,itcanonlyassume
theformofanobscene,irrationaloutburst.Suchimpotentviolenceisselfsacrificial,andloudlyso.
Itisspite:LordoftheFliesassavior.
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Links
(Human) Rights Links
Human rights are about as radical as a David Matthews album. The affs activism is a
buzzard flying around the corpses of war, and that dependence ensures the continuation of
international violence.
WhenevertheWestisattackeditalwaysbelievesthatitistheEnlightenmentthatisthetarget.The
Enlightenmentlegacyisstillclungtoasifitisnovelandthreateningtoothersocieties,stillinsurgent,
fragile,everuncompromisedandfuturistic.Soldiersaresentouttodefendorexpandthislegacy,orsimplyjusttodemonstrate
thatitcannotbeintimidated,andwillbedefended.Thesesoldiersexecutesaturationbombings,hightechsweepsofcivilianneighbourhoodsand
brutaldisplaysoftherangeoftheirmateriel.Theybelieveintheenlightenedrighteousnessofthemassiveshowofforce.Soon,theywilldisrupt
socialnetworks,disableeconomiclife,ridiculecultureandperhapseventorturedetaineesandrapechildren.Thehavoctheywreakwillbefar
moredestructivethantheregimestheyhavereplaced.Butthiswillnotreallymatteroritwillbedismissedasaccidental,becausetheyareagents
oftheEnlightenment,whoseeventualtriumphwilljustifyeverything.Inconqueredterritory,politicalinstitutionswillprobablyonlybe
establishedviaweakcoalitionsofcommunalgroupsorthroughthecooperationofwarlords.Inthisway,acountrycansettleintoalooseif
pessimisticquiet,andyoumayevenbeabletopretendthatthemostsensationalorpublicisedofyourenemies,theVietCongorAlQaida,for
example,havebeendefeated.Athome,inpursuitofthisdefenceoftheEnlightenment,policepowerswillbeincreased,thecourtswillbe
restrainedandthemediaeitherseducedorintimidated.Yetthiswarwillprovokeevergreateractivismonbehalfof
humanrights[p.168]andtheEnlightenmentlegacy.Lawyers,judges,politicians,journalists,Internet
bloggers,newpoliticalmovementsandeventheleaderwritersofbroadsheetnewspaperswillreassert
theircommitmenttofreedomanddemocracy.
Therelationshipbetweenwarandhumanrightshasneverbeenanylesscomplicatedthanthis.Human
rightsachievedtheirpresentprominencenotthroughideologicaldeliberation,butastheprincipleswhich
victors,hopingforanewinternationalcovenant,heldupaswhattheyhadbeenfightingforintheSecond
WorldWar.Deliveredbywar,clearcommitmentstohumanrightswouldhelpbothtopreventwarsand
also,ironically,todecidewhichonestofight.Derridasaidfamouslythatthereisnolawwithoutforce
(Derrida,2002).Thereisnolawwithoutatleastthepossibilityofitneeding,oneday,tobeenforced.
Analogously,therearenohumanrightswithoutthepossibilitythattheymightonedayhavetobe
foughtfor.Thehistoryandpoliticsofhumanrightsinoureraarethoroughlycaughtupinwar.Human
rightsaresimultaneouslywhatwarshaveproduced,whatwarsareforandhowwecanresistthem.There
arenohumanrightswithoutthepossibilityofwarandviceversa.
Inpostmodernsociety,acommitmenttohumanrightsbecameasubstituteforpoliticalengagement.
Politicswassocompromised,itseemeduselessandimmovable,Yet,thefactthatthehistoricalfunction
ofdoctrinesofhumanrightsisimplicatedinextricablyinwarfareshowsthattherecanbenoseparation
ofhumanrightsactivismfromthemostbrutalexecutionofphysicalpower.Thisisnottosaythatthetwoare
identical.Norisittoreducetheimportanceoftheclashbetweenthem:humanrightsandviolencemaybehistoricallyconnectedbuttheyremain
infiercetension,evenincontradictionwithoneanother.Thisistheexactproblemthatweneedtoconfront:wehaveanalmostautomaticethical
obligationtoreduceviolence,yetwecannotignorethefactthatsimplegoodwillcannotensurerights.Ontheotherhand,violenceimplicitly
violates:mutilatingbodies,castinglivesadrift,ruiningsocialnetworks,obliteratingculturesandcompromisingthefreedomofcivicidentities.
Thereisnooutsideoftherelationshipbetweenhumanrightsandpower,becausethereisnowarsimplyandresolutelyseparablefromitsother.
Humanrightsareapoliticalandnotamoralissuetherefore,andourhopesofadvancingthemrequiresarenewalof,and
commitmentto,thepoliticalrelationship.
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(Human) Rights Links

Rights discourse backfires, obscuring the excessive violence at the heart of sovereignty.
Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat 2007
[ThomasBlomHansen(born22January1958)isaDanishanthropologistandleadingcontemporarycommentatoronreligious
andpoliticalviolenceinIndia.Hehasworkedonreligiousidentities,localpoliticalorganizationandinformalnetworksin
Bombayandpursuedaninterestintheanthropologyofpolitics,thepostcolonialstateandsovereignty.Morerecentlyhehasdone
researchonreligiousrevivalandtheeverydaymeaningsoffreedomandbelonginginpostapartheidSouthAfrica.Hansenispart
ofaninternationalresearchnetworkentitledTheReligiousLivesofMigrants,fundedbytheFordFoundationandtheSocial
ScienceResearchCouncilinNewYork,whichexploresreligiousmeaningsandinstitutionsamonginternationalmigrantsina
globalandcomparativeperspective.
HeiscurrentlyAdjunctProfessorofAnthropologyatColumbiaUniversity,SeniorResearchScientistatYaleUniversity,
VisitingProfessorattheUniversityofEdinburgh,andProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityofAmsterdamwherehe
servedasDeanoftheInternationalSchoolforHumanitiesandSocialSciences.Recently,Hansenwasofferedapositionasfull
professoratStanfordUniversitywhereheistoheadanewresearchinstitutefortheanthropologicalstudyofSouthEastAsia.[1]
FinnStepputatisSeniorResearcheratDanishInsituteInternationalStudies,
SovereignBodies:Citizens,Migrants,andStatesinthePostColonialWorld
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7996.html]
In this "age of rights" (Bobbio 1996), it seemed possible, until very recently, to claim that the exercise of
sovereignty in its arcane and violent forms was becoming a thing of the past, that sovereignty now finally rested
with the citizens, at least in liberal democracies. The world order after September 11, 2001, seems to belie this
optimistic assumption, and it may be useful to revise the standard history of what Foucault somewhat reluctantly
called "democratization of sovereignty." The languages of legality have, he argued, "allowed a system of rights to
be superimposed upon the mechanisms of discipline in such a way as to conceal its actual procedures--the
element of domination inherent in its techniques--and to guarantee to everyone, by virtue of the sovereignty of the
state, the exercise of his proper sovereign rights" (Foucault 1994, 219). The crucial point is that, today, sovereignty
as embodied in citizens sharing territory and culture, and sharing the right to exclude and punish "strangers," has
become a political common sense, or what Derrida calls "ontotopology" (Derrida 1994), that defines the political
frontlines on immigration in Europe, on autochthony and belonging in Africa, on majoritarianism and nation in
South Asia and so on. In order to assess and understand the nature and effects of sovereign power in our
contemporary world, one needs to disentangle the notion of sovereign power from the state and to take a closer
look at its constituent parts: on the one hand, the elusive "secret" of sovereignty as a self-born, excessive, and
violent will to rule; on the other hand, the human body and the irrepressible fact of "bare life" as the site upon
which sovereign violence always inscribes itself but also encounters the most stubborn resistance.
Continued
A part of Bataille's essay anticipates Foucault's work by arguing that modern bourgeois society, and communism
with even more determination, have striven to eradicate the wastefulness, irrationality and arbitrariness at the heart
of sovereignty: both as a mode of power, as a mode of subordination driven by the subject's projection of their own
desire onto the spectacle of wasteful luxury of the court and the king, and as a space for arbitrary and spontaneous
experiences of freedom and suspension of duties. The essence of Bataille's proposition is that because the exercise of
sovereignty is linked to death, excessive expenditure (depenser) and bodily pleasure can neither be contained by
any discipline, nor be fully "democratized" into an equal dignity of all men. Because sovereignty revolves
around death, the ultimate form of expenditure beyond utility, it constitutes in Mbembe's words an "antieconomy" (Mbembe 2003, 15).
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International Stability Link

What the aff calls stability is perpetual war waged in the name of order.
WendyC.Hamblet2005
[Canadianphilosopherwithaspecializationinethicsandviolence.Sheteaches
EthicsandMorality,andPoliticalandSocialPhilosophyatAdelphiUniversity
PeaceReview17:3945]Mono-cephalic means one-headed
Becauseofwarsgreatfunctionalitytothestate,thereremainslittlemysterytothelongtermsuccessof
warasastateinstitutionovertheformativemillenniaofcivilization.Thecontinuingpopularityofwar
amongmodernstatesostensiblydedicatedtodemocracy,freedom,andthedignityofhumanbeings,
remainsbafingtoviolencescholars.KarlvonClausewitzsOnWar,consideredbymanyscholarsto
bethecanonicaltreatmentofthewarphilosophy,attributestowaralogicallitsown:warcomposesa
compulsion,adynamicthataimsatexcessive
overow,absoluteexpenditureoftheenergiesofthe
state.Warseeksabsolutizationasitfeedsandresthepopulationsmartialenthusiasm;ifunchecked
bypoliticalgoals,warwillfulllitselfinthemaximumexertionofselfexpenditureselfannihilation.
Warcomposesapotlatchofstateresources,auselesssplurgeofthenationshumanandeconomic
wealthfornobetterreasonthanwantoncelebrationofstatepower.Thelanguageofabsolute
expenditureresonateswiththephilosophyofGeorgesBataille.Hisphilosophyexplainstwoprinciplesof
expendituretheprincipleofclassicalutilitydenedbyutilitariangoalsservingcurrentpower
relations,andthatofnonproductiveexpenditurethatis,orgiasticoutoworekstasisthatescapes
mundaneservitudetoreasonandutility.Politicalimplicationsofthetwoeconomiesareexposedin
BataillesPropositionsonFascism.There,thetwodialecticaloppositesrepresentextreme
possibilitiesforthestatestructures.Therstmodelaspirestoperfectorder,likethetimelessrealmofthe
gods,afrozenhomogeneousperfectionthatismonocephalic(singleheaded).Likethegod,the
monocephalicstatebecomesselfidentiedasasacredentitychangeless,eternal,andperfect,its
lawsandcustomsxedandimperative.Attheotherendofthestructuralspectrumresidesthesecond
formofstatetheacephalicstatedisordered,anarchic,andvolatile.Thisstateisseenbyordered
statesasaterrifying,heterogeneousprimitivelifeformwhereuncivilizedtribespracticemystical
thinking,incommensurabletruths,andmadaffectiveexperience.Unreasonable.Useless.Mad.People
withintheacephalicsocialstructureenjoyabundantrituallivesthatofferescapefromthemundanein
orgiasticfestivalsinvolvingdrunkenness,dancing,bloodrites,wantontortures,selfmutilation,and
evenmurderinthenameofdarkmonstergods.Themonocephalicstate,ontheotherhand,has
overcomealldeath.Thecivilizedstateboastsanenlightenedstableformthatpromotesreason,life,and
progress,whereastheprimitivesocietyisreferredtochaos,madness,anddeath.
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Biodiversity Link
We cannot kill nature, for nature is destruction. Even the current mass extinction event
expresses a sovereignty that exceeds all human understanding.
Allan Stoekl, Prof French and comparative literature at Penn State University, 2007
[BataillesPeak:Energy,Religion,andSustainabilityp.197]
Ifforamomentweassumethattheglobalworldofcommerce,repletewithelectronicmedia,the
Internet,virtualtelevision,andwhatnot,isthereplacementforandthesimulacrumofthenonunivcrsal21
city,wecanonlyconcludethatitcanbesoonlyaslongas"naturenolongerexists."Butthefactthat
naturenolongerexists,oratleastseemsnolongertoexist,depends,ironically,onanaturalgiven:the
presenceoffossilfuelsintheearthoilandcoal,primarily.Laborpowerdiscoveredthesefuels,putthem
towork,"harnessed"them,transformedtheirenergyintosomethinguseful.Butlaborpowerdidnotput
thefuelsintheearth.Andperhapsmoreimportantfromourperspective,itwillbehardpressedtoreplace
themwhentheyaregone.Nature
producedenergythe"homogeneous"energythatlendsitselftowork
andtheother,"heterogeneous"energythatissovereign,notservile.22Iftheveryterm"nature"is
contestable,onethingthatcannotbecontestedisthattheprimarysourcesofenergycomefromnatural
sources:millionsofyearsofalgaeaccumulatingincertainecosystems,forexample.23Thuspollution,
dependentonthisenergyfromnaturalsources,isultimatelynatural;sotooisglobalwarming.Sotoo
istheincomprehensibleunharnessedenergyoftheuniverse,whichourlaborandknowledgecanonly
betray.Sotoowillbemassivedie
offofhumansandotherorganismsatthepointofdepletion.Man
astheauthorofhisowncreationhomofaberisopenedbytheradicalexteriorityithefinitude,the
heterogeneity,butalsotheinfiniterichnessof"nature."Man,asSadewouldremindus,canneverhopeto
havehisreasondomesticateanaturethat"threatenstheadequacyofrationalsystematicity"24or
thatdefiestheseemingnecessityofallhumanactivity.Naturedealsdeath,andthereisnoway,
finally,tograspitbysimplyexploitingit("knowing"it)asaresourceoranalyzingawayitsthreatas
sublimedifference.
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Economy Link
At best the aff feeds the economys addiction to excess. Constant exposure to catastrophic
collapse is the permanent state of late capitalism.
MarcusADoel2009
[CentreforUrbanTheory,SchooloftheEnvironmentandSociety,SwanseaUniversity,
EnvironmentandPlanningD:SocietyandSpace2009,volume27,pages1054^1073]
Bystrangecoincidence,Ifindmyselfrevisingthispaperamidafinancialcrisis
thatforegroundsthequestion:what,ifanything,ishappening?Thecreditcrunchthatbeganinthesummerof2007precipitatedinSeptember
andOctober2008thespectacularfailureofbedrockfinancialinstitutions(egAIG,FannieMay,FreddieMac,LehmanBrothers,andMerrill
Lynch),theparalysisofmoneymarketsandinterbanklending,themarktomarketwritedownofhundredsofbillionsofdollarsworthof`toxic
assets'linkedtosecuritiesandderivatives,andapalpablesenseofpanicanddisbeliefasmarketparticipants,politicians,andmedia
commentatorsteeteredontheedgeoftheabyss.Exorbitantassetbubblesburst,incalculableoffbalancesheet
originatetodistributerisksoverwhelmedthebankingsystem,counterpartytrustevaporated,and
1068MADoelfinancialmarketsfroze.Atthisjuncture,financialcapitalismwasneitheran
ideologicalformationnoraselfcorrectingmechanism.Itwasabrokenapparatusonthecuspof
implosion.Thehabitualdiscourseofdissimulationcreditsqueeze,distressedandimpairedassets,marketcorrections,writedowns,andnegativegrowth
wasmoreorlesscompletelysupplantedbyafrankdiscourseofcrisis:systemicfailure,bankingcollapse,financialmeltdown,andeconomicdepression.Someeven
mootedthattheendofcapitalismwasnigh,atleastintheguiseofstructuredfinance(Blackburn,2008;Wade,2008),whileothersarguedforaresurgenceofthe
Real(Badiou,2008b;Haldane,2009).Inadesperateattempttoavertcalamity,statesacrosstheworldcommittedover$2trilliondollarstorecapitalizeand,in
somecases,nationalizethebankingsystem,acquireavastarrayoftoxicassets,guaranteeinterbanklending,andstimulateliquidity.Evenwiththislevelof
sovereignrisk,however,thefinancialsystemremainsvulnerabletowidespreadcreditdefaults,rapid
deleveraging,rampantdebtdeflation,andilliquidity,allofwhichwouldbeexacerbatedbyasharpglobalrecession.Giventhe
severityoftheglobalfinancialcrisis,miserlythinkinghasreimposeditselfwithavengeance.Financialinstitutionsandregulatorshavebeenaccusedofalmost
criminalrecklessnessandnegligence,riskmanagementhasbeenfoundwanting,andfinancialcapitalismstandsaccusedofsacrificingtheRealofservicing
productionanddistributiononthealtarofwantonspeculation.Hedgefunds,shortsellers,creditratingsagencies,marktomarketaccountancy,andthebonusculture
amongstbankershavebornethebruntofthewitchhunt.Thequestforanewfinancialarchitecture,tighterregulation,andcountercyclicalcapitalrequirementsis
alreadyontheagenda.Theaimistoreinintheexcessesoffinancialcapitalism:excessiverisk
taking,excessiveleverage,excessive
exposure,excessiveshortselling,excessivespecula
tion,excessiveoffbalancesheettransactions,
etc.Thefundamentaldifficulty,however,isthatnoneoftheseactivitiesisanepiphenomenon.Eachis
anessentialaspectoffinancialcapitalism.Allthatmiserlythinkingcandeliverisarecalibrationthat
cannotbutfailtothwartthecrisistendenciesoffinancialcapitalism.Whetheritiscastasprobableor
improbable,exposuretosystemicriskandcatastrophicfailureisalways
thefateofthesystem.The
financialcrisishasdramatizedthesystem'sperilousexposuretothecatas
trophicrisksofexorbitantasset
bubblesandtheproductsofstructuredfinance.Ithasalsodramatizedthefactthatthefinancialarchitectureoftheworldeconomyholdstogetheronlyinsofarasitis
heldtogether(Langley,2008).Thescopeandscaleofstateinterventionhaveunderscoredthefactthatfragilityisdistributedthroughouttheentireconstellationof
associations.And,forallofthetalkofadistinctionbetweenthefinancialsystemandtheRealEconomy,thecrisishashighlightedthe
baselessnessofvalue.Forwhenmarketparticipants,politicians,andmediacommentatorsteeteredontheedgeoftheabyss,whattheysensedwasthe
palpableabsenceofa`floor'tovalue.Stateinterventionwasnotsimplyanattempttorelievethebankingsystemofitsexposuretocatastrophicrisks,toxicassets,
andincalculableloses;itwasfirstandforemostanattempttoputa`floor'underthebaselessnessofvalue.Forattheheartofthefinancialcrisisisthevoid,andthis
voidhasaverypreciselocation.Thislocationisacornerstoneoffinancialcapitalism:offbalancesheetentities(OBSEs),especiallyassetbackedsecuritiesand
creditderivativessuchascollateralizeddebtobligations(CDOs),constantproportiondebtobligations,andcreditdefaultswaps.By2007,whiletheworld's
grossdomesticproductwasamere$54trillion,thetotalassetvalueofdevelopedeconomieshadbeen
inflatedtocirca$300trillionandthetotalvalueofderivativescontractsexceeded$500trillion.Little
wonder,then,thatstatebackedfiscalstimuluspackagesandquantitativeeasingareunlikelytohave
mucheffect.
Fromrestrictedeconomytoglobalfinancialcrisis1069
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Hegemony/Rogue State Link

The USA is the only rogue state. It exemplifies the violent excess of destabilizing
sovereignty.
SuhailMalik2006
[teachesintheDepartmentofVisualArts,GoldsmithsCollege
TheoryCultureSocietyv.2323]
Thedenunciationofroguestatesisthusstructurallyhomologoustothebourgeoisdenunciationofavoyoucracyinorderto
securetheirownlegitimacy(tolegitimate,ifitcanbeputthisway).Whatiscriticalhereisthatthephraseroguestates
cametohaveprominenceexactlyasthetermandstrategicpolicyofglobalizationwasbeing
affirmedandinstigatedbytheClintonadministrationinitsearlyyearsthroughnationalandinternationalinstitutions.Thatis,roguestatesarean
indispensabledesignationforthesecuringoftheclaimtointernationallegitimacyforglobalization,bywhichisthereforemeantacertain
globalorder(for
whichterrorismisacentralrhetoricalandfactualoperation,asDerridamentions,
2005:66).Ofthemanyramificationsofthis(de)legitimationstrategyonlytwowillbetakenuphere:firstthecharacterizationofavoyoucracyandsecondwhat
purchaseonlegitimacyisretroactivelygrantedbythetermonthepowersthatmobilizeit.First,then,itistobenotedthatavoyoucracyisnotanoutright
abandonmentoforderbutis(presentedas)thepowerorforce(akratos)ofanillegitimateandquasicriminal(voyou)counterorder.Voyoucracysignalsa
sovereigntyexorbitanttothelegitimatesovereigntyoftheStateandlawinthenationalorinternationaldomain.Thedenunciationofroguestatesisthusamatterof
onekindofsovereigntyagainstanother,oflegitimateagainstsodesignatedillegitimatesovereignties.TothisendDerridaremarksinpassingthatifthevoyou
cracyrepresentsapower,achallengetothepoweroftheState,acriminalandtransgressivecountersovereignty,wehavehereallthemakingsofacounterconceptof
sovereigntysuchaswemightfindinBataille(2005:678).Wewillreturninduecoursetothisparticularcharacterizationofavoyoucracysinceitwillbringus
directlytotheproblemofwhetheraglobalknowledgecanbeestablished.Second,internationalandnationallegitimacyandillegitimacyasitisproclaimedandinstitutionalized
bydominantpowersreliesonadiscourseandpoliticsofdemocracyandfreedomor,insosaidcontraryroguepoliticalformation,theirdeprivation.Thisisevidentinthechartersandambitions
,the
democracyglobalizationcouplingservingtosecureinternationalpolitical
andeconomic
dominancebyalreadypowerfulstates(whichiswhyChinaseconomicmightandlimiteddemocraticpolitypresentsamorevexed
ofinternationalinstitutionssuchastheUN,NATO,theG8,theIMF,theEUandalso,notably,fortheUSAtoo.Democracyisinthiswayalegitimationofinternationalpower
problemforglobalizationunderthisaegisthan,say,IndiaorBrazil).DrawingontheexampleoftheUN,Derridanotesthattheorderingauthorityoverthe
internationaldomainwhichpromotesandactsasasupposedguarantorfordemocracymustinfactbethestrongestpowerinthatputativelydemocraticinstitutionand
polity.AssuchitorganisesandimplementsforusebytheUnitedNationspreciselysothatititselfmaythenusetheUnitedNationsalltheconcepts,ideas
(constitutiveorregulative),andrequisitepoliticaltheorems,beginningwithdemocracyandsovereignty(Derrida,2005:100,emphasisinoriginal).Animmediate
contradictionoraporiacomesthentobedemonstratedintheclaimtolegitimacy,tosettingthetermsoflegitimacyinandofdemocracy,bythecurrentlydominant
statepower(s):thatiftheconstitutionofthisforceis,inprinciple,supposedtorepresentandprotectthisworlddemocracy,itinfactbetraysandthreatensitfromthe
outsetinanautoimmunefashion(Derrida,2005:100).Putstarkly,thecontradictionisthis:universaldemocracy,beyondthenationstateandbeyond
citizenship,infactcallsforasupersovereigntythatcannotbutbetrayit(Derrida,2005:101).Thecontradictionbetweendemocracyandsovereigntyisrenderedhere
atasupernationallevelbutthisisonlyaparticularversionofwhattakesplaceatalldimensionsofdemocraticorganization:thatsovereigntyistheconditionof
democracyevenasitprohibitsafullyoperationaldemocracy.And,asiswellknownfromtheprotestofantiglobalizationmovements,thisnondemocratic,even
antidemocratic,sovereigntythatguaranteesandlegitimizesdemocracyisindemocratictermsonlyeveranabuseofpower;anabusethatis,asDerridaputsit,
constitutiveofsovereigntyitselfandsoconstitutiveofdemocracy.Itfollowsthatsovereigntyisrogueindemocracyanddemocracyisthereforeguaranteedand
harnessedbyapowerthatisitselfrogue.Ifthereistobeglobaldemocracy,theremustbeglobalsovereigntyandsoaglobalvoyoucracy,aroguestatethatis
beyondthetermsofthatdemocracy.Thesovereignstatethatorderslegitimacy,whichisthedefactoconditionoforder,isnecessarilyvoyou,rogue,counter
ordering;anidentityofopposingcategorieswhosecondensationcanherebemarked(beyondthetermsDerridasetsup)bythetermssovoyoureignorsoverogue,a
powerthatestablishesonlyaquasiorder.Today,Derridacontinues,suchstatesareonlytheUSAandwhatever(alwayssubsidiary)alliesitpicksupinthecourse
ButtheUSAisexceptionalinthisquasiorderinthatitis
theprimaryroguestatetheonlytruly
roguestate(asChomskyalsosaysfordifferent
reasons)becauseofitsoutstandinginternationalsovereignpowers.USinternational
dominationinthenameofacommon,globaldemocracyisthatofaglobalsovereignty
(thoughthisisnottosayworldsovereignty);itis,asisoftendeclared,aglobalabuseofpowernecessarilyso.ThisglobalsovereigntyoftheUSAissometimes
ofundertakingsuchactionsinimplementingitssovereignty.
exercisedthroughtheUNbutmustalsotakeplaceintermsofotheroutstandingmanifestationsofpowerifitistobesupersovereign,includingthatofitsmilitary
(quaforce),itseconomics(quaconsumption),itsculturalproduction(quaentertainment)anditspolitics(quademocracy).Suchsovoyoureignorsoveroguepower(s)
arenotoccasionedacrossoroutsideofdemocraticorganizationorpolitiesatwhateverlevel:ithappensthroughandindemocracy,insistentlyso.Soverogueryisthe
conditionfortheproductionofglobalknowledgeanditisthatbywhichknowledgeinitsglobalityhastobecomprehended.Buthowissovereigntytobeunder
stoodinitsidentitywithcountersovereignty?Wehaveseenthat,forDerrida,Bataillescounterconceptofsovereigntyspeakstothecounterorderofvoyoucracy.
WeshallnowtakeupthisaccountinordertomoreexactlydeterminethesovereigntyofAmericanglobaldominance.Doingsowillreturnusdirectlytothe
questionofknowledgeintheactualconditionsofglobalization.Bataillesinterestinsovereigntyisinageneralaspectthatisopposedtotheservileandthe
subordinate(1993:197);itisgeneralbecauseitcanbelongtoanyone.Suchgeneralitymeansthatthedeterminationofsovereigntycannotberestrictedtoits
traditionalidentificationwiththepowerofeithertheStateorlawasithasbeenfromPlatotoHobbes,Schmittand,inamorecomplicatedmanner,Agamben.Itcan
bethesovereigntyofthevoyou,forexample.Batailledrawsupaninitialdistinctionbetweenthegeneralaspectofsovereigntyandwhatthetermmeansasregardsa
legallyconstitutedandrecognizedstateorindividual(thatisthereforesubordinatetolaw).However,asDerridaproposes,initssovoyoureigntyorsoveroguery,itis
todaytheUSAalonethatsidestepsthisdistinction:yes,theUSAisofcourseasovereignstateinthelegallyconstitutedsenseandsoissubjecttointernationallaw;yetitisina
positiontocountermandtheobeisancetoanysuchlaworconsensusofageneralwill,sinceitalonehasthepowertodominateandauthorizenonlegalactionsinoutrightandblatantdefianceof
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exemplifiesatasupernationallevelthegeneralaspectofsovereignty
beyondlawofwhichBataillespeaks.
internationalconventionandexpectations.Inthisit
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Ethics Link
Their ethical stance allows the aff to think of themselves as good, creating a distance
from their own violence that makes annihilaiton inevitable.
Kenneth Irzkowitz 1999
[Assoc Prof Philosophy at Marietta College, College Literature 26.1]
Bataille rejects the notion of a unified good. When he criticizes the moral good, this is because by assuming such unity, morality
has
blinded us to the importance of disutility, to the praiseworthiness of nonproductive usages serving no
end beyond themselves. We generally assume that there are no such praiseworthy usages, but Bataille
insists that there are. Indeed, there is a whole realm of them, he contends, as well as the need for an
ethics corresponding to them, one able to take their violence into account.
Continued
The purpose of offering a series of such strong, disturbing characterizations is not to dismiss ordinary moral values but to supplement them, to say that such values are
not enough for us. At the same time that we outlaw and condemn all of these ruinous squanderings, our sovereign aspirations demand them. The list includes
brutality, murder, prostitution, swearing, sex, infamy, ruin, degradation, and finally treason. These are
activities we must prohibit, activities we cannot allow ourselves to participate in, but which at the
same time identify who we are. Hypermorality instructs that while we cannot take up such behaviors, we
cannot not take them up either. We cannot not squander ourselves in these and other ways, many of which are offensive of
mention to ordinary morality. To help emphasize just how offensive, there is a passage near the beginning of Death and Sensuality depicting the spectacle of primitive
ritual human sacrifice, the communal production of a wasteful expenditure witnessed in common. Bataille uses the word "sacred" to describe the experience of the
witnesses, underlining just how fundamental and revelatory to us he thinks such events were. Disturbing as it must be to us, he holds that the event of the spectacle of
ritual sacrifice has power of conveying a profound meaning, This sacredness is the revelation of continuity through the death of a discontinuous being to those who
watch it as a solemn rite. A violent death disrupts the creature's discontinuity; what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence, is the
continuity of all existence with which the victim is now one. Only a spectacular killing, carried out as the solemn and collective nature of religion dictates, has the
power to reveal what normally escapes notice. (Bataille 1962, 16) It is a disturbing thought that only a spectacular killing, that only events of this kind, can satisfy the
human desire for the experience of sacred meaning. Along with a fear of our own immoral excess comes the question of whether hypermorality invites unleashing this
destructive excess. Would Bataille like to see us unleashed, perhaps in the style of Charles Manson, to produce our own spectacles of ritual sacrifice? Certainly
Bataille describes irrational violence as having an undeniable meaning, one that is revelatory of the sacred continuity alluded to in the previous citation. Soon after that
citation he similarly asserts that we seek "the power to look death in the face and to perceive in death the pathway into unknowable and incomprehensible continuity"
(1962, 18). Where do we find this power? We find it in transformative experiences akin to the sacrifice described above. In other words, to acquire the power to know
the unknowable, the production of transformative violence is the key. In the name of this power, the production of violence is not an accident but a goal. This
production is the key to the transformative experiences that give our lives a sense of intensity, depth, and meaning. Hence, we always have ample motive to seek such
violence will be produced.

Moreover, no morality will ever be able to put an end to these productions. No morality has the power
to stop the persistence of the sacred violence in our lives, since this violcnce is the only key we have to
the experience of the miraculous, of the sacred. As for Charles Manson, Bataille would certainly try to
understand Manson's and our own violence in this context of the sacred, of our need for depth and
meaning. The production of transformative violence is fundamental to our being, whether we are
conscious of it in this way or not. He, then, would not regard Manson's production as an anomaly, as unlike what he himself would be driven to
experiences, to seek to bear witness to transformative violence. Given such ample motive, violence and spectacles of such
produce. Yet in our lives there are also limits. It is unlikely that Bataile would applaud Manson for the same reason he ultimately rejects Sade. They are both
indiscriminate; they both go too far. "Continuity is what we are after,' Bataille confirms, but generally only if that continuity which the death of discontinuous beings
can alone establish is not the victor in the long run. What we desire is to bring into a world founded on discontinuity all the continuity such a world can sustain. De
Sade's aberration exceeds that limit. (Bataille 1962, 13) In other words, our wasteful consumption must also have limits. To actually approve of our own
self-destruction goes too far. Later on in Death and Sen suality, Bataille continues, Short of a paradoxical capacity to defend the indefensible, no one would suggest
that the cruelty of the heroes of Justine and Jullette should not be wholeheartedly abominated. It is a denial of the principles on which humanity is founded. We are
hound to reject something that would end in the ruin of all our works. If instinct urges us to destroy the very thing we are building we must condemn those instincts
and defend ourselves from them. (Bataile 1962, 179-80) This passage is crucial for understanding Bataille's ethics. Usually Bataille writes on behalf of the violence
that remains unaffected by absolute prohibitions. Prohibitions cannot obviate this transformative violence. There is always ample motive to produce the experiences of
sacred transformation, i.e., to transgress the prohibitions. Yet self-preservation is also a fundamental value for BatailIe there is also ample motive to resist the violence
that denies the value of the well being of life itself. As he says in the second of the above passages, we must condemn what threatens to destroy us; our sovereign
aspirations can be taken too far. In another passage he speaks of our need "to become aware of... [ourselves] and to know clearly what... [our] sovereign aspirations are
in order to limit their possibly disastrous consequences" (1962, 181). It is when we are ignorant of these aspirations that we are most vulnerable to them, enacting
them anyway, albeit inattentively. In the end, hypermorality asks us to encounter our aspirations to evil, to join in what Bataille calls "complicity in the knowledge of
Evil" in order to construct what he calls a "rigorous morality" (1973, unpaginated Preface). What does it mean to encounter such aspirations, to join in such
complicity? Bataille's hypermorality requires that, as a culture, we appreciate the value of becoming more active in our productions of violence. From his earliest
writings to his latest, Bataille always bemoaned the decline of the practice of sacrifice in the modem world, beginning in the West, and he always believed that such a
decline only obscures our productions of violence, rather than doing away with them or the needs from which they stem. Two closely related discussions of this appear
in his early essays "The Jesuve" and "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh," where Bataille suggests that the decline of the practice of
sacrifice has been far less than a blessing for us. He argues that the production of violence continues, the danger of this production continues, although in the most
unrecognizable forms. The examples given in the essay "Sacrificial Mutilation" emphasize both how easy it is to distance ourselves from this danger as well as how
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terrible such a danger could be. They include a man twisting off his own finger and a woman tearing out her own eye, both terrible examples of our strange, cruel, and
uncontrollable needs for expenditure. Along similar lines, as a commentary on events of this kind, Bataile argues, The practice of sacrifice has today fallen into disuse
and yet it has been, due to its universality, a human action more significant than any other. Independently of each other, different peoples invented different forms of
sacrifice, with the goal of answering a need as inevitable as hunger. It is therefore not astonishing that the necessity of satisfying such a need, under the conditions of
present-day life, leads an isolated man into disconnected and even stupid behavior. (Bataille 1985, 73) Here as throughout his writings, Bataile emphasizes two key
aspects of the decline of sacrifice that we ignore at our own peril. In the first place, he contends that the violent need that ritual sacrifice was once able to address
remains with us despite all optimism to the contrary. We don't put violence on display in the same ritualized fashion, but the need remains constant. We've only
become less aware of it in ourselves, and less aware of ourselves as those who have need of such violence. Thus Bataille's first point is that the need for
nonproductive usages does not diminish when it is denied. His second point is that this denial in which the need persists represents a decline in self-awareness, one
with obviously dangerous consequences. No longer do we congregate as a community to witness the violence we desire to bring into this world and to affirm our lack
of control over this violence, our lack of control over this desire. We no longer congregate to produce the sacrificial spectacle, to produce thereby a community of
mutual complicity in the knowledge of the sacred continuity of being. We no longer allow ourselves to organize spectacles in the name of the sacred that enact that
which exceeds the good. Such spectacles would have to violate every stricture of human rights known to us today. Yet we have not changed, according to Bataile,
except for becoming less known to ourselves than ever. We
are now more than ever the condemned on the way to becoming
the destroyed by way of imagining ourselves as the good. Even an utter catastrophe like the
Holocaust does little to alter our naive self-image. In his short piece on David Rousset's book The
Universe of the Concentration Camp, Bataille refuses to side with the moralists because moralistic
self-delusion here is our problem, not our solution, There exists in a certain form of moral condemnation
an escapist denial. One says, basically, this abjection would not have been, had there not been
monsters .... And it is possible, insofar as this language appeals to the masses, that this infantile negation
may seem effective; but in the end it changes nothing. It would be as vain to deny the incessant danger of
cruelty as it would be to deny the danger of physical pain. One hardly obviates its effects flatly attributing
it to parties or to races which one imagines to he inhuman. (Bataille 1991, 19) Based on what we have
already seen in this paper, Bataille can never accept the moralist's claim, distancing us from the
purveyors of evil, no matter how attractive it is to join hands at a particular moment of victory over
an oppressive enemy. It would be inconsistent for him to specify a particular set of disagreeable
behaviors and state that they aren't human, that they aren't ours. Even at this point, standing in the ruins,
the main point would be to obstruct our all-too-ready inclination to find ways of denying the cruelty
at the heart of us all; to interfere with our desire to attribute all cruelties to the monstrous one or the
aberrant few. For hypermorality, this cruelty is precisely what we need to take into account of
ourselves, rather than to deny it as the evil of others.
.
How is this to be done? Bataille faces a serious dilemma that a contrast between his hypermorality and Aristotle's morality helps to show. The goal of morality is to
take virtuous behaviors into account, to make them part of our lives by learning through habituation to enjoy right behaviors with respect to our pleasures and pains.
Aristotle says that it is the job of "legislators [to] make the citizens good by forming habits in them .... and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one"
(1941, 952, 1103b). He continues saying that "the whole concern both of virtue and of political science is with pleasures and pains; for the man who uses these well
will be good, he who uses them badly bad" (1941, 955, 1105a). As he puts it, "We assume ... that excellence tends to do what is best with regard to pleasures and
pains, and vice does the contrary" (1941, 955, lIlO4b). How do we become excellent? We begin with instruction by role models, who demonstrate the praiseworthy
behaviors and the rule to follow in practice until we follow it automatically, internalized as part of our second nature of moral character. Such learning is by imitation
of those who delight in shunning the wrong pleasures, who delight in withstanding the right pains. Such imitation is difficult but noble and good, making us excellent.
In contrast to these virtuous displays serving Aristotle's purposes of moral instruction, what about the kinds of spectacles or displays Bataille proposes with his
hypermorality? Whereas Aristotle's are displays of virtue, Bataile's would be closer to displays of vice. Whereas the former invite imitation of the right relations to
pleasure and pain, the latter would invite imitation of morally wrong relations. In the former case we have a heroic role model. In the latter case ,
the role
model would be closer to the opposite, to the traitor, the practitioner of vice; the role model would be
closer to Sade
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The rejection of violence is the rejection of our humanity, ensuring explosing excess
culminating in extinction
It would be pointless to deny that most illegal violence is abhorrent or immoral. At the same time,
however, given the violence of the life of our culture, we need to understand immoral violence more
deeply than any blanket condemnation of it will allow. Beyond our condemnations, we need to
recognize that the acts we most prohibit are paradoxically also the very ones we most celebrate. A
foremost proponent of this need is the French philosopher and writer Georges Bataille. Relying on a
notion of excess energy and the problem of its expenditure, Bataille argues that the transgression of law is
what he calls an accursed yet ineluctable part of our lives. We make laws in the name of prohibiting acts
of violence, yet the problem of the expenditure of an excess of energy requires behaviors that violate
the very same rules we cherish and intend to uphold. The commentator Jean Piel took note of how Bataille managed "to view the world as if it were
animated by a turmoil in accord with the one that never ceased to dominate his personal life" (1995, 99). Here, the fact of an individualin-turmoil reflects the surplus
of energy disturbing life in general, rather than a moral deficiency for which an individual can be held accountable. For Bataille, an individual's wasteful behaviors are
ultimately reflections of the problem of the surplus of solar energy. Piel put it this way: "The whole problem is to know how, at the heart of this general economy, the
surplus is used" (1995, 103). How should the surplus of solar energy be used? Bataile contends that this surplus is never extinguished and that its expenditure always
leads towards the commission of violence. The surplus of energy is accursed and finally cannot serve us productively. The accursed excess confronts us with the
problem of how to expend energy when this results in usages that cannot made be useful. Thus the production of violence has a value for us as those condemned to the
realm of non-productive expenditures. We undoubtedly deny this value, as Bataille notes, when "Under present conditions, everything conspires to obscure the basic
movement that tends to restore wealth to its function, to giftgiving, to squandering without reciprocations" (1988, 38). Nonetheless, as Bataille puts it, "the
impossibility of continuing growth makes way for squander" (1988, 29). When this impossibility of useful expenditure is ignored, then we fail to recognize ourselves
on the deepest level, as who we most fundamentally are. Against this failure and in the name of a kind of inverted Hegelian selfrecognition, Bataille calls for the
transgression of our prohibitionist moral values. We need an ethics of squandering goods, of squandering what is good, in recognition of an overabundance over and
beyond all others, i.e. an overabundance that can only, at best, be squandered. He writes, life suffocates within limits that are too close: it aspires in manifold ways
to an impossible growth; it releases a steady flow of excess resources, possibly involving large squandenngs of energy. The limit of growth being reached, life enters
into ebullition: Without exploding, its extreme exuberance pours out in a movement always bordering on explosion. Bataille 1988. 30) As living lives that must enter
into ebullition, we find ourselves fundamentally committed no more to moral righteousness than to immoral out pourings of energy, to sudden and violent outbursts
The protests of moralism are secondary and never responsive to Bataille's

questioning of morality: "Supposing there is no longer any growth possible, what is to be done with the
seething energy that remains?" (1988, 31). We are told by reason and morality to do what is best, which is
to prohibit behaviors that are nonproductive or harmful. Our morality identifies the right with the useful
and productive, with whatever makes us better. Bataille, however, argues against this morality and for
the requirement of useless, nonproductive, violent outpourings of energy-a requirement for what he
calls "a draining-away, a pure and simple loss, which occurs in any case" (1988, 31). These violent,
nonproductive outpourings, according to Bataille, are required of us all as living beings regardless of
whether or not we take the responsibility to manage and arrange their occurrence in our lives. At issue, for
Bataille, is energy in excess, energy as an excess. As an excess, such energy must be discharged
explosively in outpourings that, in the end, are inevitable. Does it make a difference how an excess of energy is squandered if, in
exceeding all rational considerations.
the end, the results will have to be violent, if we cannot avoid taking actions that must be acknowledged as wrong? Bataille proposes that we face up to the value of
the choices that remain, rather than continue to shrink from the available options, especially those moral prohibitionism would regard as either dirty or simply
unacceptable. All expenditures, even acts of squandering, cannot be equally unacceptable; our available options lie with respect to the contrasting degrees of
unacceptability of various acts and the various amounts of waste each entails. He states that "in no way can [an] ... inevitable loss be accounted useful . . . but there
remains] a matter of an acceptable loss, preferable to another that is regarded as unacceptable (1988, 31). The key to the possibility of an ethics for Bataille is that
beyond the nave hopes of our prohibitionist morality, we can see that some acts of violence are preferable to others. He contends in this vein that we need something
counterintuitive, a kind of morality of evil, a morality able to face up to what he refers to as "a question of acceptability, not utility" (1988, 31). This distinction
between the acceptable and the useful transforms the idea of a moral project to where it becomes right to enact those wrongs that would constitute the best (i.e., least
damaging) uses of energy given the requirements of expenditure in situations of limited growth. For Bataille, it is "right" to "constructively" suspend moral
prohibitionist morality is an inevitable failure

in even imagining how a surplus of energy may best be discharged. By default, this morality results
in more violent discharges of energy, in lives that are, as a consequence, made worse. Like Nietzsche, Bataille proposes a revaluation of
prohibitions in order to substitute less damaging acts for the more violent alternatives. Our
moral values, a transformation of what Nietzsche calls "herd" morality. For both Bataille and Nietzsche, ordinary morality is too constricted with respect to the biggest
picture, to conducting the totality of our lives. The value of the "herd" morality breaks down when taking human life as a whole into account. To recognize ourselves
for all that we are means having to change the outlooks that now constrain us. In recognizing ourselves we alter our values and behaviors in the name of living the
fullest lives possible. A system of moral values, under construction, may be regarded as analogous to any system of valuation. For example, we may also construct a
system of
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trading equities on the stock exchanges. This latter value-system will select some equities as preferable to others, and makes trades accordingly. Good trades acquire
better equities while bad trades acquire worse ones. Moreover, the value-system as a whole is better to the extent it maximizes good trades. The best value-system
makes the greatest number of good trades, thereby maximizing profits, and minimizing what is lost. Analogous to this kind of value-system, a morality may be
regarded as a system of exchanges with the aim of maximizing excellence in living. As such, a morality values actions and intentions as better or worse in the name of
right and wrong. We ordinarily assume that an action is wrong simply if it violates the system of moral rules (the Ten Commandments, for example) and right if the
rules are upheld. Given this assumption, to do the right thing is analogous to using the stockpicking system correctly. On this level, when morality tells us what to do,
we are either right or wrong, depending simply on whether or not the rules are obeyed. But Bataille's Nietzschean morality demands that we evaluate the value of the
moral value-system itself, the success or failure of the system generating the rules. Those who trade equities know not to stand by a set of rules that loses money. A
value-system may sometimes have to be abandoned. For Bataille, the same is true for a dysfunctional set of moral values. Yet our moral system that sets the standard
of value for our behaviors has been subjected to no standards of evaluation. We need to abandon the assumption that the rules of morality are absolute, productive in
all contexts, and beyond dispute. We need to make it possible to employ so-called 'immoral" values when these have life affirming effects, and to suspend or
transgress 'moral" values when these serve a sufficient life-affirming purpose. The key is to recognize ourselves as the extreme beings we are. Bataille sees human life
as beyond the limits set by morality, as desiring nothing less than the wild, destructive, celebratory excesses by means of which we are granted ecstatic gifts. We
produce acts of violence in part because they have a supreme value for us, even though the thought of such acts as having supreme value is always laughable and
almost always denied. A typical day betrays little in the way of a lust for outrageous excess. However, for Bataile, a typical day reveals only a part of our being.
According to Literature and Evil, just as certain insects, in given conditions, flock towards a ray of light, so we all flock to an area at the opposite end of the scale
from death. The mainspring of human activity is generally the desire to reach the point farthest from the funereal domain, which is rotten, dirty and impure. We make
every effort to efface the traces, signs and symbols of death. Then, if we can, we efface the traces and signs of these efforts. (Bataille 1973, 48). In other words, there
is a radical duality at work in our lives, although traces of this duality are ordinarily effaced. For Bataille, there is first the fundamental value of the unacceptable and
second the unacceptability of this first fundamental value, i.e., the overwhelming need to efface the value of the unacceptable along with every trace of it as a value in
our lives. He contends that both the left and right poles of this duality are mainsprings of human selfrecognition. With the right pole of effacement, we suppress the
awareness of the left pole, of the presence of our own destructive desires. He acknowledges that the resulting self-conception does fit us to the extent that "the being
which we are is primarily a finite being (a mortal individual)... [with] limitations [that] are no doubt necessary" (1973, 50). Yet, at the same time, Bataille's own
writings never fail to emphasize the primacy of what is harmful to us, of what is neither useful nor good, of what is beyond our mere finitude. Throughout Literature
and Evil, for example, he repeatedly affirms the destructive behaviors and dark values that must come at the expense of survival needs. Mere survival is the necessary
but insufficient condition of striving to live a full life. To live fully actually means to live at the expense of future survival, to completely waste ourselves, blind to all
consequences. Along these lines, Literature and Evil argues that to live life really means nothing less than that we don't "flee wisely from the elements of death [but
instead] enter the regions that wisdom tells us to avoid" (Bataille 1973, 50). To live fully we must shun wisdom; in living fully we laugh even at death itself, in the
awareness that "When we enter the regions that wisdom tells us to avoid... we really live" (1973, 50). When we achieve "a heightened consciousness of being," we
burn, because only "by going beyond ... these limitations which are necessary for... preservation... [are we able to] assert. the nature of... [our] being" (1973, 50). The
first chapter of Literature and Evil similarly contends that "Death alone-or, at least, the ruin of the isolated individual in search of happiness in time-introduces that
break without which nothing reaches the state of ecstasy" (Bataille 1973, 13). This is because for every individual, "an irreducible, sovereign part of himself is free
from the limitations and the necessity which he acknowledges" (1973, 16). Indeed, in the same chapter, Bataille celebrates the desire for self-ruin as a divine or
sovereign inspiration, as one taught to us by religion, Greek tragedy, and the great books. In his words, The lesson of Wuthering Heights, of Greek tragedy and,
ultimately, of all reli gions, is that there is an instinctive tendency towards divine intoxication which the rational world of calculation cannot bear. This tendency is the
opposite of Good. Good is based on common interest which entails consid eration of the future. Divine intoxication . . . is entirely in the present. (Bataille 1973,
the dark forces that drive us towards ruining ourselves cannot be

dismissed-these forces are a crucial part of who we are. Concomitantly, we suffer from a problem of
self-recognition, of not knowing ourselves for who we are. This failure to know ourselves does not limit
our dissoluteness and ruinousness, only our self-knowledge as such. The selfimage of ourselves as good
prevents our acknowledging the problem of the surplus of energy that must be squandered, as the
problem of who we ourselves are beneath and beyond that of the irrational atrocities that particular
individuals commit. Our prohibitionist morality deals with evil only after the fact, without taking into
account the prior, fundamental value disruption has for our lives. The epigraph to this article from
Literature and Evil says that we won't recognize ourselves for who we are until we see ourselves as
condemned, which Bataille considers his main point (1973, 25). But the failure to recognize ourselves
has an alarming implication, that we may be headed in the direction of self-destruction, and that we are
actually driven in this direction by our need to produce our own final condemnation. Bataille gives us
reason to pause to wonder whether we are blundering towards self-annihilation beneath the amazingly
resilient image we have of ourselves as good. Do we have sufficient motive to avoid proceeding
violently and negligently, to the very moment of our own demise? To not have to go all the way to
self-destruction, we need to show and know ourselves outside of the house of the good, to recognize
ourselves for who we are also as evil, as condemned. But when we remain complacently within this
house or realm, Bataille's dialectic of self recognition remains for the most part unknown. From within
the house of the good, it makes little sense to alter the image of the human to include the necessity of evil.
Indeed it seems like an irrational or frivolous act to do so, as stated in The Accursed Share,
9) The main point, for Bataille, is that
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Labeling genocide a systematic product of modernity allowing us to ignore the violence
within ourselves.
DanStone,ProfessorofModernHistoryatUniversityofLondon,2006
[History,MemoryandMassAtrocityp.412]
Inthelightofresearchfindingsabout'ordinarymen'itmightatfirstseeminappropriatetotalkofthe
'sacrificial'natureoftheHolocaust.Thereis,however,anequallylargebodyofliteraturewhich
revealstheantisemiticcontextinwhichthe'ordinarymen'operated.'InthecaseoftheEinsatzgruppen,
theseapparentlycontradictorycharacteristicsoforderandpurityandsacrificeandviolencecoexistin
equalmeasure.Whatthisrevealsisneitherthe'undersideofmodernity'nora'relapseinto
barbarism';rather,itsimplymeansthattheNaziprojectoforderandbeautywastobeattainedby
unleashinganuntrammelledviolence.
CONTINUED
DoesthisfactmeanthatviolencewaseliminatedfromthelatterstagesoftheHolocaust?Evenexcludingthehundredsofthousandswhoperishedmiserablyinghettos
andmassshootings,those[p.10]subjectedtotheNazimachineryofdestructionthemostsinglemindedlybureaucraticmurderprocessyetdevisedwerenotfree
fromtheexerciseofviolence.Violenceneednotinvolvetherelationofindividuals;thestateisjustascapableoftreatingthe'objectofviolence'asone'potentially
worthyofbodilyharm,orevenannihilation'.Withorwithouttheelementofpleasuretotheperpetratorsofviolence," theHolocaustwasnoclinical
operationdevoidofemotionalinput.Therearemanyrecordedactsofsadismandbrutalityinthedeathcamps,actswhichareoftendismissedasthepersonal
proclivitiesofindividualguardsinasituationwheretheywerefreetoactouttheirfantasies,butwhichdonottypifythedeathprocedure.Thisissimplynottrue ;everysurvivor
accountofthecampsissuffusedwithanatmosphereofterrorwhichonlyapowerrelationshipbuiltontotalinequalitycan
produce.Itisnotevennecessarytoprovideexplicitdetails;listen,forexample,toElieWiesel'sdescriptionofarrivingatAuschwitz:Itwasnight.Therewere
thousands,atleastitseemedtomethattherewerethousandsandthousandsofJews,whocameherefromeverywhereandwentintothefire.AndIwasafraid,Iasked
myselfwhetherthismeanttheendoftheJewishpeople.28Thissimpledepictionpositivelyreeksoffear,itsundertoneofviolenceinescapable.Thosewhotalkof
'industrialdeath'havenotreflectedonwhatitmightbeliketoarriveatadeathcamp,aterrifyingexperiencewhichisoneofthekeymomentsinmanytestimonies.
Butapartfromtheviolenceexperiencedateverymomentinthecamps,29itispossibletoseethedeathprocessasawholeasanoutburstofviolence,onewhich
mobiliseditselfthroughchannelsofindustrialtechnique.Thisbringsustotheheartoftheconfusion.Isittheroleoftechniqueinitselfthat
marksouttheHolocaustassohorrific,becauseitwassodevoidofthepassionsassociatedwithmurder?
Arendtthoughtso:theseeminglyirresistibleproliferationoftechniquesandmachines,farfromonly
threateningcertainclasseswithunemployment,menacestheexistenceofwholenationsandconceivably
ofallmankind.[17]Thisisawayofthinkingwhichleadstothoroughgoingindictmentsof
modernity.GianniVattimo,forexample,writesof:thediscoverythattherationalisationoftheworldturnsagainstreasonanditsendsofperfectionandemancipation,anddoessonot
byerror,accident,orachancedistortion,butpreciselytotheextentthatitismoreandmoreperfectlyaccomplished.30[p.11]Thisisprobablyconvincingenoughtomeanthatthinkerswho
.Nevertheless,althoughenticing,Vattimo's
argumentistoosimpletobeentirelyconvincing.Itfailstoacknowledgethatnotallmodemitiesendin
catastrophe,andthatnotallbureaucraciesareinherentlygenocidal(thoughtheymaybecomeso).Oneofthegoodthings
todaycallforacompletionofthe'projectofmodernityorwhoappealtouniversalreasonarebeingnaive
toemergeoutoftheGoidhagendebatewasproofofawidespreadreluctancetoadmitthatthekillerscouldenjoytheirviolence,oratleasttoadmitthattheendless
catalogueofatrocitiesfoundinsurvivortestimoniesamountstomorethananecdotesofunusual,isolatedincidents.Takingphotographsseriouslyashistorical
evidencehasalsohelpeddemonstratethateverydayviolencewaspartoftheexperienceofgenocide.Nevertheless,itisclearthatthedominanceofthe
'modernity'critiquemeansthatthereisacertainperversecomforttobederivedfrombelievingthat
itwastheproceduresofadisciplinary,medicalised,rationalisedsocietywhichledinexorablytothe
deathworldofAuschwitz.Theindictmentofrationalsocietyhelpsblindus(willingly,if
unconsciously)totheextremeviolenceand,worse,thedesireforviolence,whichcharacterisedtheHolocaustexperience.
Itisanindictmentwhichperpetuatesaprocessofnotlisteningtothevictims,ofconcentratingonthe'objective'documentsoftheperpetrators.Yetthisconcentration
ontheperpetratorsparadoxicallyreplicatesarationalisedthoughtprocessinordertocondemnrationalisedsocietyperse.Itthereforebecomesallthemoredifficultto
facethefactthatviolencederivingfromthedesiretobreakfreeofarationalisedworldwasadefining
characteristicoftheHolocaust.
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Their moralistic outrage to torture is a vampire, sucking outrage from the state
AvitalRonell2008
[DiacriticsVolume38,Numbers12,SpringSummer2008]
Not to remain stuck to a fatherlandnot even if it suffers most and needs help mostit is less difficult to
sever ones heart from a victorious fatherland. Not to remain stuck to some pitynot even for higher
men (hheren Menschen) into whose rare torture and helplessness some accident allowed us to look.
Not to remain stuck to a scienceeven if it should lure us with the most precious finds that seem to have been saved up precisely for us. Not to remain stuck to ones
own detachment, to that voluptuous remoteness and strangeness of the bird who [End Page 165] flies ever higher to see ever more below himthe danger of the flies.
Not to remain stuck to our own virtues and become as a whole the victim of some detail in us, such as our hospitality, which is the danger of dangers for superior and
rich souls who spend themselves lavishly, almost indifferently, and exaggerate the virtue of generosity into a vice. [52] The inventory prescribes extreme forms of
detachment, even to the extent of urging the detachment from detachment, so that independence and the ability to command are properly tested. The problem with
testing ones independencethe test for Nietzsche is bound up with the possibility of independenceis that it copies the word that tries to describe the freeing
perspective for us: in-dependence, Un-abhngigkeit. In other words, independence depends on dependence, and can only come about by the negation of dependency.
But dependence comes first and always squats in any declaration of independence; so-called independence can never shake loose its origin in dependent states. The un
or in of what depends and hangs onto has to undo the core dependency and produce a nonaddictive prospect. This way of skating on the rim of negativity is typical
enough of the Nietzschean maneuver that, keeping up its stamina, endeavors not to trigger a dialectical takeover. The test site circumscribed by this text occupies a
zone between negation and projected reconciliation; it carves a hole in any possible synthesis. Independence can never be stabilized or depended upon, which is why it
has to submit punctually to the test of its own intention and possibility. The nots that Nietzsche enters into the decathlon of testing are also a way of signing his own
name by courting and swerving around the nihilistic threat: Nicht/Nietzsche. This is the text, remember, in which Nietzsche says that every philosophical work installs
a biographical register; he makes it clear that he has strapped himself into this text and also that its articulation should not be limited to the disseminated indications of
this or that biographeme. Nonetheless the test run that he proposes bears the weight of his history, including his never-ending break-up with Richard Wagner. Thus the
first self-testing command says: Not to remain stuck (hngenbleiben) to a personnot even the most lovedevery person is a prison, also a nook [52].
Beginning with the necessity of wrenching oneself loose from a beloved person, whether a prison or
shelter, the inventory goes on to name the urgency of breaking with ones country, even in times of war
or need, even when the patriotic introject wants and calls you. A superpower nation-state should be the
easiest to sever with. If the inventory is set up in terms of serial nots this is no doubt because
Nietzsche needs to enact the complicity of the Versuch with its linguistic appointees: the tester or
attempter must desist from adhering to the temptation that calls. The act, if such it is, of desistence is
not as such a negative one, as Derrida has argued in his reading of Lacoue-Labarthe: Without being
negative, or being subject to a dialectic, it both organizes and disorganizes what it appears to determine
[Desistance 41]. Being tested, which brings together attempter with the tempting, does not fall purely
into the zone of action or its purported otherpassivitybut engages both at once. Already the locution
being tested, always awkward and slightly wrenching, invites the intervention of the passive where action or at least some activity is indicated. The test takes one
through the magnetizing sites to which one is spontaneously, nearly naturally, attracted. This could be a resting place, a shelter and solace overseen by the friendly
protectors of the pleasure principle. But Nietzsche, like the other guy, takes the test beyond the pleasure principle. Elsewhere Nietzsche states that pity toppled the
gods; pity,
the most dangerous affect, counts for the one to which we are most prone. We are tempted
and tested by pity, roped in by its grim allure, and even if we are not gods, pity can make us
crumble and christianize. (This does not mean that Nietzsche advocates the vulgarity of some forms of indifference. Only that action and intervention should not
eventuate from pity, as do benevolent racism [End Page 166] and the like. Liberal pity policies would be nauseating to
Nietzsche; they are not radical, strong, or loving enough. Of course nowadays, I would even take liberal pity.) Science belongs to
the list of the desistedresistance would come off as too strong a term, too repressive and dependent on what presents itself. The inclusion of science in the subtle
athletics of the not may reflect the way Nietzsche had to break away from his scientific niche of philology, but there is more to it. It is not just a matter of releasing
oneself from a scientific commitment in order to pass the Nietzschean test. As the other term in the partnership, science itself stands to lose from too tight a grip and
needs eventually to loosen the bond. A true temptress, science fascinates, perhaps seduces and lulls. It captivates and often enough gives one a high, an intoxicating
sense of ones own capacity for mastery. Yet science itself is implicated in the relation thus structured. For science not only curates the test from a place of superiority,
but is itself subject to the rigors and renewals of testing. So even if it invites the blindness of fascination and the sum of addictive returns, science needs to be released
if only to go under, to dissolve its substantial mask and be turned over to fresh scientific probes. The movement of dislocation and disappropriation continues even to
the point of disallowing sheer detachment. Increasing the dosage of desistance to the level of turning on itself, Nietzsche proposes that one should not remain
dependent on ones experience of voluptuous detachment. He keeps the tested being in the vehicle of the dis-, and rigorously refuses to issue a permit for sticking to
any moment or structure of being that would seem welcoming or appropriate. (It is appropriate only to disappropriate, to trace ones own expropriation from a site that
persistently beguiles with the proper.) Thus one must desist even from becoming attached to ones own virtues, such as hospitality. Virtue itself, no matter how
generous or exemplary, can trip up the one being tested. Virtue
can enlarge itself, take over; it is vulnerable to imperial acts

of expansion. One can become enslaved to ones virtue, attend to it immoderately, and turn oneself
into a hospital for the vampirizing other. In this ward, as in other Nietzschean wings, strong and superior beings encounter the danger of
infection, a weakening. They give too much and spend themselves as if they were infinitely capable of the offerings for which they are solicited. The offerings turn
into sacrifice; the superior soul gives itself away, finding that it is spent, exhausted. Thus the virtue of generosity, coextensive with hospitality, is turned into a vice.
Virtue tips into its other, and generosity soon becomes a depleting burden.
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The aff presents torture as a deviation from the norm, ignoring the exuberant cruelty
inherent to modern war. Only the alt can address the dark motivations that make the
theatrics of torture inevitable. .
AdrianaCavarero,ProfPoliticalPhilosophyatUniversitdeglistudidiVerona,2009
[Horrorism:NamingContemporaryViolencetrans.McCuaigp.7677]
TheofficialinvestigationsandjudicialproceedingsfollowingthescandaloftheAbuGhraib
photographshavetried,aseveryoneknows,topromotethethesisthattheessenceofthemisdeedlay
inthesadisticanddeviantbehaviorofafewofthesoldiersinvolved,ahandfulof"badapples:"22Corroboratingtheclassicconnection
betweenpoliticsandlying,thishasnotonlyconfirmedadeeplyrootedtendencyoftheU.S.authoritiestoengageindissemblingbehaviorbuthasobviouslyhelpedto
supplynewmatterformodernreflectionontorture,2,3compellingthecriticalliteratureonthemattertobringitsownargumentsuptodate.Specialemphasishasthus
beenplacedon"interrogationaltorture,""thatis,onthedifferencethatsupposedlyseparatesharshbutlegalinterrogationtechniquesfromthedegenerationofthese
techniquesintotorture.Thetaskofextractinginformationfromthevictims,or,ifoneprefers,makingthemconfessthetruth,belongsforthatmattertothetraditional
paradigmoftortureillustratedbyFoucault.Obviouslythough,foranalyzingthefactsofAbuGhraibtoday,thingsaremorecomplicated:onceyouallowlegal
practicesintendedtomaketheprisonersufferinmindandbody,perhapsevenlistingthemindetailindedicatedmanualsandthusrecommendingthem,todistinguish
betweenharshinterrogationandinterrogationaltortureoftenamountstonomorethanabstruseandghastlyquibbling.25Nordothingsbecomeanysimplerwhenit
comestothesecondtypeoftorturediscussedintheliteratureonthesubject,terroristictorture,bywhichismeantatechnologyofpainintendedtofrightenand
intimidateboththevictimswhoactuallyundergoitandtheiraccomplicesandsupporters.Cuttingloosefromthepretendedlegalityoftheinterrogationalmodel, the
discourseherepassesovernotonlyintotherealmofintimidationbutintothatofrevengeandhumiliation,
whichalludesymptomaticallytothesupplice.Andyetwearealways,evenintermsoffrankhorrorism,
withinthedomainofrational,oratanyratestrategic,behavior,inthedomainofviolentactsthat
appeartoselecttheirownendsorratherpretendtodoso.26Asthoughtotortureratherthansimply
killservedsomeusefulpurpose.Asthoughacertainutilityinformationinthecaseofinterrogational
torture;intimidation,humiliation,orrevengeinthecaseofterroristictortureweretheupshot.
ThatutilityplayedanyfundamentalpartintheatrocioustheaterofAbuGhraibis,however,doubtful.
Mostofthembitplayers,90percentofthedetaineesintheIraqiprison"wereofnointelligencevalue"27
accordingtotheassessmentoftheAmericanauthoritiesthemselves,inotherwordswereofnoutility
whenitcametosupplyinginformation.Asforintimidation,revenge,andhumiliation,thetorture
certainlyincludedthemamongitsgoalsanddrewnourishmentfromthemforitsowncruelty,yetnotin
suchawayastoassigntheseobjectivesadecisiveroleandmakethemthepivotofastrategiceconomy.
Asthephotographsdemonstrate,whatprevailedwasthepleasureoffarce,theentertainmentofa
horrortransformedintocaricature,alicensetodehumanizeonthepartofwillingactorsinan
atrociouspantomime.Inthissense,inthecontemporaryeraandintheglobalspotlightofhistory,the
viewpointoftheregularfighterinregulationuniformandendowedwithregularhorrorist
"appetites"achieveditsmostexpressiveportraitatAbuGhraib.Inanageinwhichthetraditional
figureoftheenemyhasbeendefinitivelyreplacedbythedefenselessascasualvictim,thetraditional
figureofthewarriorhasalsopromptlyadaptedtothegeneralfestivalofviolenceagainstthe
defenselessbymakingwayforanobscenecaricatureofitself.
Tocomparetheincomparable,youcouldevensaythat,aftertheimagesfromAbuGhraib,whathasemergedisacontrastbetweentheactorsofaviolenceagainstthe
helplesswhoshowthattheyaccompanytheircrimewithacertaintrivialenjoymentandtheactorsontheothersidewhorevealapropensityforthegrimandthe
lugubrious,eventhoughtheysometimeshymnthejoysofparadiseastherewardforslaughter.Butinthisrespect,thephenomenologyofcontemporaryhorrorismis
socomplexinthearrayofitsmodes,attitudes,andtonesastodiscourageanyreductivecontrast.TheverydisconcertingfactremainsthatAbuGhraib
presentedhorrorintheimbecileandidioticformoftheleer.Asthough,havinglosteventhehowl
thatfreezesinherthroat,allthatremainedofMedusatodaywereadullrepugnance.
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The war on terror will not bow to the rational kritik provided by the 1AC. Their stance of
transgressive innocence bolsters the war machine
NickMansfield2006
theory&event 9:4]
An example Bataille gives of this is Aztec human sacrifice. The Aztecs, according to Bataille, captured and then feted a particular human individual, on whom they
lavished the greatest wealth and luxury, art and adornment. At the end of a specified period of time, this individual would be brutally and ostentatiously slaughtered.
The aim of this festival was to open a channel through the otherwise sealed world of logical order, and allow humans to connect with the flows of continuity that
represented the truth of being, and from which in daily life, people needed to struggle to exempt themselves. This process was what Bataille understood as
transgression. Because they involved a wilful destruction of all that had been painstakingly accrued through disciplined practices of husbandry and production,
Bataille named these transgressive practices "consumption." War
is one of these transgressive rituals. Rather than seeing war

as an emotional explosion of primitivism, or the result of calculating strategy, Bataille saw war as one of
the processes whereby human societies broke out of the constraint of purpose and order to encounter the
truth they could not always live.
Several things need to be said about this process. Firstly, to
summarise the complex logic here. Transgression expresses a society's engagement with the irrational and
excessive flows of energy that have made all its systems and logics possible, but which also exceed and
threaten them. Engagement with these flows is a fulfilment of our nature, but it must be felt as a
contradiction of our normal, rational, life, that it simultaneously confirms. War opens up possibilities of
ecstasy, intensity and violence, while retrospectively constructing before and to endure beside and
beyond them, an imagined culture of reason, innocence and meaning. Dissociation and excess require
this zone as the antecedent of transgression, in fact, what is to be transgressed. Reason, morality and
purpose then are constructed as the necessary counterpart and context of excessive violence and
disarray. Following this logic, war then cannot be simply something executed by "the social" nor can it
be a simple version of it. It defines the social as the locus of an innocence that violence is to transgress, a
rightness that needs to be defied by a brutality that confirms and consolidates it. Innocence thus needs
war as that which both confirms and justifies it as innocence.
Secondly, this process of transgression requires a rethinking of subjectivity. The subjectivity of normal social life is an artificial construct made available by the flows of energy, but perched precariously upon them.
Such specific, individual or localised subjectivities are mere fictions, chimera. Bataille wasn't afraid to say that the truth of subjectivity was available, but only through
the process of transgression, the drive to radical exteriority. Only the subject that could instantiate the flows of the cosmic energy field was authentic to Bataille, and
humans recognized and tried to live this subjectivity. The figure that incarnated or represented this asymptotic subject, Bataille called the sovereign 11. The sovereign
embodied a subjectivity that lived the intense basic truth of cosmic force. Individual identity was only ever a pathetic degradation of this heroic possibility. The subject
of war, then, is radical exteriority imagined as livable, and is in defiance of any of the constraints and order that define conventional subjectivity. This sovereignty is
both the same as and different to the one Agamben derives from Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. It is a logic of exception from historical accountability. However, in
Bataille crucially, it is less a hardened singular authority than a dream of the instantiation of radical chaos, one that subjectivity aims to emulate in its truth. As Derrida
argues in "Force of Law"12and most recently in Rogues, this sovereignty must be seen in its dangerous doubleness, as both the risk of the worst and the only promise
of justice.
Thirdly, Bataille thought that rituals of sacrifice proposed a question. Rituals dramatised the human need to make contact with the forces of the
cosmos, but why did they have to take this form: the slaughter of a human being? What was specific about this process that made it sensible as an engagement with
cosmic truth? Sacrifice, he postulated, annihilated its object. It took something we might recognize as a version of ourselves, another human subject more or less
equivalent to us, and it turned this subject into an object and then destroyed it. Bataille argued that this process of annihilation of the object defined what consumption
was all about. It was simply the human act of denial of our own objectivity.
By thoroughly destroying the object, human beings

separated themselves from the possibility of considering themselves to be objects, and thus showed that they could
not be reduced to the level of the merely calculable that defined the rational practices of daily life. The human approach to objects in general involves, firstly, this
insistence on their reduction to pure objectivity, and secondly, on their being used up, being annihilated as a display of control over and contempt for the objects that
we believe we are showing are ontologically different from ourselves.
War then, turns what is not an object into an object, and

then annihilates it in order to show that we are not like it. It does this by first annihilating any impression or trace of alternative
subjectivity in the object, and then consuming it as an object, by physically destroying it in order to show the triumph of its own claim to not only exclusive
subjectivity, but a subjectivity projected backwards to us from the radical exteriority in which our truth resides.
It would be possible to use this insight to
speculate in subjective-cultural terms on the US government's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Horrified at being objectified,

being turned into a passive target by Al-Qaida, the US mounted a massive attempt to reclaim the
prerogatives of subjectivity. It needed to turn itself from object to subject, by insisting on the objectivity
of others, at first in Afghanistan and then Iraq. These others must have their subjectivity minimised -- by in the case of Iraq, the
ontology of the nation being reduced from millions of people to one demonised name ("Saddam Hussein"), by the obscuring of the casualty rates of the Iraqi people,
and by having their political aspirations reduced to being identical with the middle of any Western democracy. This objectification of subjectivity licenses violence and
restores subjectivity to the US. More than vengeance, more than strategy or oil, the original political popularity of the Iraq venture could be seen as an attempt to
reclaim a subjectivity lost by the mystery, the abject confusion of
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In sum, then, war allows us access to a triumphal and exterior subjectivity we feel
is our truth, by annihilating the other first as subject and then as object. Although this project fulfils us, we always
having been objectified.
represent and understand it as a transgression, a contradiction of our normal rational innocence. This latter point helps us to a provisional answer to one of the
questions we have been pursuing: how a war-like culture with a history of relentless conquest and genocide is able to believe itself so peace-loving and innocent. The
logic of war is understood as an adventure beyond innocence and reason and its conventional liberal interiorities out into an exteriority that provides a subjectivity
beyond constraint. An innocent domain then is perpetually retrospectively reinvented by the wars it requires as the thing that war leaves behind. Similarly, defining a
social rift, or even a policy, as a war -- war on crime, war on drugs, a culture war -- retrospectively identifies the social as a transgressed innocence, a site of authentic
self-identity and normality threatened by the poor, drugs, liberal dissent, and so on.
According to Bataille's double logic, then, war unfolds as a transgression of
radical innocence and of reason. Innocence and war would be part of one complex, necessary to one another, but they would be understood to be and represented as
fundamentally separate, and notionally opposite to one another. How does this complex relationship play itself out? Beside its transgressive nature, we have identified
two other things about war: the radical exteriority of its understanding of subjectivity and its will to annihilation of its object. It achieves this by first erasing any trace
of subjectivity in the object, and then destroying it as object. The aim here, according to Bataille's theory of consumption, is to arrogate subjectivity to oneself, by
rendering any notion of the subjectivity and consequently the being of the other impossible. One's own subjectivity emerges only as an uber-subjectivity, as the
supersession of subjectivity in an act of destruction. The destruction of the subjectivity of the war-object also then involves the destruction or at least the surpassing of
the warrior's own subjectivity. In destroying the subjectivity of the other, it imagines itself out in the stream of larger entropic energy that Bataille saw as the meaning
of the cosmos. The logic
of the annihilation of the other and the exteriority of subjectivity are the same
logic therefore.
The war/society complex can be seen then as the exteriorization of the subject by pursuing the will-to-annihilation of the object. This
defines the war/society in its radical disloyalty to itself. The war/society produces this logic in both its peaceful and aggressive phases: in military force, police tactic,
media campaign or social policy, but also in its economics, its consumption and its consumerism, yet the war/society is able to insist on the radical disjunction
between its different phases, a disjunction it cannot even really produce let alone stabilize. (Where exactly would the dividing line fall?) This common ground, even
when disguised by a refuge in the logic of transgression, indicates the dominant mode of the globalizing West, on its mission as the ultra-violent bestower, even
incarnation, of peace.
By constructing its own subjectivity as the supersession of subjectivity through the annihilation of all alternative subjectivities, the
subjectivity of the war/society is at work in war, but not at stake. Not only does war provide an image of innocence by representing its violent self as other to society,
but the exteriorising subject never has content enough to be in any way answerable. Because its logic requires the annihilation of its object, it can refuse to
acknowledge the position from which it could be interrogated or accused. Hence the refusal of the United States to imagine being answerable to the International
Criminal Court. The
war/society is protected from accusation, until it is defeated, and becomes an object

again. The west will not suffer interrogation of its innocence while it remains triumphant. What this
means is that the war/society will not amend itself, will not become responsible or fair or selfreflexive as long as it continues to believe that its historic mission has been a success. This cannot be
summarily dismissed as a commitment to the doctrine of "might is right," though the continuity between
the ancient faith in providence's manifestation of its truth through trial-by-violence and contemporary
belief in military victory as implicit vindication would repay investigation. What we can say with some
certainty is that what has been unwittingly chosen is a radical commitment to defeat as the only impetus
towards self-knowledge. Thus, as we have seen with the Vietnam War, only the indefinite postponement
of the acknowledgement of defeat can allow faith in war to endure.
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The affirmatives rational appeal against nukes reinforces the drive to nuclear destruciton
Ira Chernus, Assoc Prof Religion at the University of Colorado, Boulder, 1985
[Journal of the American Academy of Religion]
The relationships between war and myth illuminate at least part of that mysterious human nature
which apparently baffled Thomas Powers when he sought the irrational motives of war. They also help
explain the relative futility of four decades of persuasively logical arguments for nuclear
disarmament. While all wars are compounded of both pragmatic purposes and mythic dimensions, the nuclear age has reduced pragmatic purposes to
virtual insignificance. War between super-powers, whether cold or hot, is now almost entirely mythic enactment. When rational motives dwindle to irrelevance, it is
not only superfluous but actually dangerous to keep decrying the irrationality of war. We could go on debating the possibility of finding rational purposes for
nuclear weapons until they begin falling from the sky. That would be the ultimateand ultimately
pyrrhicvictory for the "defense intellectuals." Would it not be wiser to shift the grounds of the
debate and bring the deeper motivations of the nuclear arms race into the light of public
understanding? The first step in such a shift is to look at the mythic paradigms that have shaped our
perceptions of weapons and war in the nuclear age.
Continued
The persuasiveness of this mythic framework is enhanced by the media that disseminate it. Most people learn whatever they know about the
nuclear issue from "the news;" "the news" disseminates and legitimizes all our reigning mythologies. But the average person sees no connection
at all between "the news" and myth, because myth is taken to mean a lie (or at best a fantasy) while "the news" is assumed to be a literal record
of real happenings in the real world. So nuclear myth passes for literal truth. In a culture that defines literal truth as the only form of truth, any
mythology must pass as literally true to be credited. But the myth of rational nuclear balance rests especially heavily
on literal acceptance, for the faith in technical reason enshrined in the paradigm depends on an equally
firm faith in literalism. Indeed, the two faiths are two mutually reinforcing sides of a single coin.
Literal truth confines us to the realm of abstract reason which can only calculate causes and effects,
means and ends. It is essential to our fantasy of a world wholly comprehended and wholly controlled,
and thus to our dream of humanly-constructed global balance. Our passion for literalism fueled the similar dreams and fantasies that led to a world dominated by
technologythe technology whose ultimate product and most fitting emblem is the Bomb. Seeing only means and ends, however, literalism blinds us to the mythic
dimension. A myth which depends on literal acceptance therefore has a blindness to its own mythic nature built into it. It prevents us from understanding our own
Literal truth also fosters the nuclear contest because it is necessarily single-minded
truth, insisting on absolute oppositions between true and false, right and wrong, and (by extension) good
and evil. Our passion for literalism reinforces our vision of nuclear armament as an apocalyptic crusade
against the twin evils of the Soviet Union and irrationality itself. At the same time it creates a onedimensional world in which the given reality is the only possible reality. It stifles the capacity of myth
to stimulate imagination, discover new possibilities for the future, and show us the multiple dimensions
of truth. Robert J. Lifton has written at length on this aspect of nuclear age psychology. His theory of
psychic numbing rests largely on the insight that the "mythic zone" of our minds, in which new images
arise to reflect changing realities, has been frozen by the terror of nuclear annihilation. But this new
terror only intensified a process that began long before Hiroshima. Western civilization had been
learning for several centuries to see the world as a collection of inert objects, totally amenable to
human manipulation. Inevitably, we began to see other human beings as equally inert objects, and
then finally our own selves as inert and therefore dead. Literalism was as much a source as a sign of
this process. When taken literally, as it inevitably must be, the myth of rational nuclear balance is a myth
of and for "death in life." If our pervasive psychological deadness continues its triumphant march, it will
some day culminate in a universal physical deadness. Since there will be no retrospect afterwards, we must observe now in
deepest motivations.
prospect that the paradigm of rational balance will be a fundamental contributing factor to nuclear annihilation. So the danger of debating about the rational uses of
nuclear weapons is not confined to the futility of a debate that misses the essential point.
There is perhaps even greater danger in

continuing the debate because its terms and assumptions all lie in the realm of literal technical
reasoning. It reinforces the potentially lethal paradigm we have been describing, regardless of the
conclusions it attains.
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The affirmatives crusade against the deadly irrationality or nuclear weapons plays the
enemys game. Only the alternatives theatrical war can challenge nuclear violence.
Rather than trying to score more points in a game it cannot win, the disarmament movement would
be well advised to reject the game and its premises altogether. What would this mean in practical terms?
It would mean a new focus on the mythic dimensions of the issue and a concerted effort to apprise the public that all it stands to gain from
nuclear armament is the mythic satisfaction of re-enacting the dominant vision of nomos. Assuming that everyone knows what there is to lose, the public (this
being a democracy) could then make informed decisions about nuclear policy. At the very least, discussion of the mythic aspects could get us off the merry-go-round
of endlessly recycling the same old arguments. It is difficult to predict what new topics might come to the fore. I can only offer here a few tentative possibilities.
The absurdities of nuclear policy have led us to recognize the preponderant element of mythic play
in the nuclear contest, and in war as a whole. The next step might well be to notice a similar element in many of the institutions of
society, and then go on to see the large majority of human life as mythic enactment repeated for its own intrinsic satisfactions. When we speak of "the human drama"
(or "the human comedy") we voice an age-old intuition that life
may be best understood as an immense playor, more

precisely, an infinite number of little plays, interwoven in immensely complex ways. Indeed, the
human species might be defined as a living theater in which this endless play of plays is played out.
War is one scene in which the drama reaches heightened levels of intensity; but the same mythic dynamics we have
uncovered in war are constantly working (though most often unconsciously) throughout our lives. This is a rather large claim to make in a small paragraph. And I do not intend here to begin
unravelling its tangled complexities. I want only to suggest that there would be some important practical, as well as theoretical, implications to such a view of life. One implication is a new
understanding of the uniqueness of nuclear weapons. They are qualitatively different from all previous weapons because they are the first weapons that can destroy the theater in which the
human drama unfolds. From this perspective war between super-powers is indeed obsoletenot because it lacks any rational purpose or practical gain, but because the human drama will end if
the theater is demolished. The nuclear disarmament movement's most compelling cry is not "No more war!" but "The show must go on!" In fact, it seems unlikely that the human drama will
ever dispense entirely with its war scenes
. The appeals of war that we have outlined are probably too deeply alluring to
be relinquished. But the many
links between war and myth suggest a new approach to this issue too. Generally, when the question of the abolition of war
is raised, the answer is said to hinge on the issue of violence; those who believe that violence is innate in human beings hold that war is forever, while those who
disagree see a hope of eliminating war. The analysis offered here suggests that violence is not the crucial element in understanding war. Certainly the power and
intensity of war are related to its physical violence, but they are not identical with nor reducible to that violence. And the appeals of war go significantly beyond its
although some form of warfare may be inevitable, it is not clear that warfare need
involve killing. It may be possible to find other mythic scenarios that will offer the same fulfillments
as traditional war without demanding loss of life or even physical violence (Brown: 180-183). It is naive, of course,
intensity and power. Therefore,
to avoid the issue of violence altogether. There may be something in human nature that makes the abolition of violent war a futile dream. Even if this were the case,
War approached as play is likely to be less

destructive than war seen as a crusade against absolute evil. Its goal is not so much destruction of
the enemy as re-enactment of the intertwining of life and death in the human theater. In the nuclear age, its
we could still learn to see "conventional" war as a form of deadly serious play.
message takes on particularly potent meaning. While all "conventional" wars destroy life and nurture death, nuclear war would destroy death as well as life; it would
bring the cycle of life-and-deaththe very lifeblood of the human drama, as it is of warto a dead stop. Those who hope to abolish all warfare generally fail to see
this dimension of war. With their
moral commitment to maximize life and minimize death, they see the two
only as logical opposites and argue logically on behalf of life. Here, as in their logical arguments
against the Bomb, they may be defeating their own cause by accepting their opponents* premises.
The "defense intellectuals" and other devotees of unlimited human control have an equally
passionate belief in the rational conquest of death, though their path to conquest leads dangerously
close to the abyss. The nuclear peril is a sign that the denial of death, however well-meaning its
motives, is a questionable course. Rather than declaring war obsolete in order to stave off death, it
may be wiser to declare that the show, with its ever-turning wheel, must go on. Yet there is certainly a valid moral
imperative to seek peaceful solutions to every conflict. Philosophical speculations should not give us license to accept violence passively and stop searching for meaningful alternatives. The
overriding imperative of the present, however, is to find forms of war that do not threaten to destroy the theater in which war dramas and all other dramas are enacted. The most valuable form of
war today may be the war of human beings against weapons of omnicide. Many disarmament activists are loathe to see themselves as engaged in a war. Yet unconsciously the traditional war
paradigm holds sway over all of us, no matter how committed we are to peace. I suspect that a large majority of disarmament activists do unconsciously feel themselves in a warindeed a
war to the deathagainst the weapons that could destroy nomos forever. As the anti-nuclear movement grows, it will attract increasing numbers of people who feel comfortable with the war
The image of a nonviolent war against weapons may be

a useful aid in creating a broadly based mass movement for disarmament. It simply recognizes that
most people will not give up their attachment to a war of cosmic significance unless they are given
another such war in its place. Those who insist on the total abolition of war will not be happy with this suggestion. But those who
paradigm and many who positively enjoy the idea of a good fight in a good cause.
insist that the show must go on, with war and all, may see merit in it.
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Link TNWs
The affirmative deploys the means-ends reasoning that makes nuclear war possible. Only
the alts sacred over-flowing can confront the violence of nuclear weapons.
Beyond these practical considerations, the shift to a mythic
perspective has significant theoretical aspects. Many of the terrors of the modern world, both nuclear and nonnuclear, have grown out of an exclusive concern with technical means-and-ends reasoning. While much of life
is still re-enactment of scenes from the human drama, undertaken for its own sake, Western civilization has come to
deny this truth. A new focus on mythic play could teach us how frequently we are pursuing ends in themselves
without knowing it. More importantly, by raising this fact to consciousness it could give us a conceptual framework
in which to assess the value of those ends and thus free us to choose new ends. If nuclear armament has
become largely an end in itself, it is hard to imagine a more desperately needed lesson. We might discover that
freedom to perceive and choose our forms of play is also freedom from the rationalism, literalism, and psychic
numbing that plague us so perilously. We might discover, too, that we need not justify our lives as means to
some end which is in turn only a means to some other end. As our world overflows with more and more
means, it is increasingly drained of consciously perceived ends to give meaning to those means. Surely this
sense of meaningless futility is deeply related to our numbed apathy in the face of impending disaster. The
more we try to calculate purely rational means to save ourselves, the more firmly we fasten ourselves into
this trap. The myths and teachings of religious tradi- tions can help to free usnot so much by preaching the
moral sanctity of life as by teaching us to value ends over means and to find fulfillment in the play of life as an
end in itself. Only if we see life as an end in itself will we cherish it and preserve it. The world will always be
filled with conflict and folly and evil. We will always be tempted to ask, as Walt Whitman once did, what good
life and self can be amid "the empty and useless years." If we learn to see life as an infinite theater, though, we
may find deep meaning and comfort at such moments in Whitman's simple answer: "That you are herethat life
exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and
you may contribute a verse."
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Terrorism
Terrorism is an excess generated by the solutions designed to address it. There is no end to
the cycle of terror and counter-terror.
Stefano Harney & Randy Martin 2007
[theory & event 10:2 ]
If the Cold War contested the future, its apparent heir, the war on terror battles over the present. This is
more than the hyper-vigilance of a politics of fear. The terrorist is the quintessential figure of bad risk
however effectively it may be deployed. We cannot await it. The only safety lies in bringing its moment
into our midst, that is, by pre-emptive strike. Terror's temporality is anti-utopian, it implies the
immanence of the future in the present. The risk economy, the investment action upon a possible
future difference in the present, shares the same sensibility. Foreign and domestic applications of risk
management forge a nefarious connection in George W. Bush's 2002 National Security Document. In this proud proclamation of imperial
doctrine, pre-emption is bequeathed to one nation and friends (whether old or newly acquired) affirm their allegiance by replicating U.S. anti-inflationary monetary
policy. Low and behold this same language turns up in Iraq's strategy for national development. Inflation, when it is not an assault on labor (as low unemployment or
high wages) anthropomorphizes the world of goods (supply being chased by demand and puffing itself up accordingly).
Just as industrialization forced
association upon self-sufficient labor, and consumerism wove a common web of dreams in the marketplace, financialization imposes a generalized condition of mutual
indebtedness. Personal finance, like free wage labor, amounts to an enormous aggregation of the capacity to produce financial value while assuming the risks of failure
to realize value. Like production and consumption, financialization is also a form of dispossession of one array of life-making circumstances that forces an elaboration
of what people must subsequently do and be together. The future itself becomes a factor of production as each possible outcome is shifted into an actionable present.
The derivative represents the moment when a small intervention, an arbitrager's momentary opportunity, seizes upon a highly dispersed volatility and leverages it to
extensive effect. Unlike the entrepreneur, born of initiative, the arbitrager exists only through the action of others, deriving themselves as a cluster of volatilities. The
derivative is the extensive energy within the body of finance. It is also incorporated into the grand strategy for engaging and negating unsupportable risk and excess .
Terror wars are in this respect derivative wars. They "deter forward" using small deployments of risk
capable special forces to leverage imperial intervention. They succeed in their initial displacements
(of toppling regimes) but produce the very thing they claim to fight but that are in actuality their
condition of further circulation, namely terror. Terror is an inassimilable excess that occasions
intervention without end. Unlike earlier imperialisms that sought to extract, civilize and develop, this logic of occupation quickly becomes
indifferent to its prize and impatient with itself.
It would be tempting to see in the gap between a general interest in combating terror everywhere, and a particular
occupation of two energy states an affirmation of Bataille's equilibration of devastation and profit. Afghanistan's geo-strategic potential for transshipment of oil and
gas, Iraq's prized proven oil reserves, Halliburton's corrupt profiteering would seem to affirm the straightforward arithmetic captured by the slogan, "blood for oil."
Control of energy consumption would prove the ultimate colonization of Bataille's accursed share. As compelling as the slogan has been to lay bare the motives of
imperial excess, Bataille's thought would also have us refuse the enclosure of our own surplus capacity in so certain a lock down of interest-borne scarcity. There can
be no denying oil's requirement to the present economic convention. But the necessity of oil politics as they are presented must be contested if the present mode of
excess is to be seen as other than laying us all to waste as an inexorable drive to war to control supply in the face of imminent scarcity.
Specifically, blood for oil
is a pipeline that has smuggled in a Malthusian logic of genocidal scarcity. The argument goes like this. The days of expanding oil supply are behind us. The rate at
which new wells are drilled has been eclipsed by the rate at which new demand has expanded, in consequence, a bell-shaped forecast named for the geo-physicist who
made it, "Hubbert's Peak," pinpoints the date of diminishing returns. Population growth assures that there will not be enough oil to go around. Security for the
imperium dictate that it grabs hold of whatever remains. Oil and war are fraternal twins. Yet Hubbert's peak, so pointed in sounding the alarm, is also vulnerable on its
own economic foundations. As oil prices rise, abandoned fields again become profitable, along with the rationale for further investment to extract oil from otherwise
unappealing shale. The conflation of access to oil with control of its sources certainly lines up with imperial history. But that history discloses how the very regimes
installed to control oil territories repress domestic populations and wind up destabilizing access, a lesson reflected in the fully financialized oil futures markets by
While financial protocols have been installed as governing ideas, the occupation of Iraq looks like
anything but a design for control. Instead, oil exports have held steady, and risk has been distributed throughout a population that
meeting volatility with arbitrage.
has been cleaved from its national form and from its own productive capacities. Iraq's Public Distribution System, the last remnant of Baathist
socialism is to be displaced by small cash handouts to fuel the now rampant speculative economy.ii But to render socialism scarce is to commit an
error of measurement and concept. The extensive energy of consumption privileged the erotic as the alter to commodification, and maintained
socialism as that portion of the world devoted to a social economy that capital could not absorb. The erotic which animated consumer desire has
now been displaced by risk, which inhabits the intensities of circulation. Populations at risk may be treated instrumentally but they are also freed
from instrumentality-they exist, not to accomplish further accumulation, but as human assemblages in their own right.
The war on
terror claims that population makes no difference and touts its capacity to intervene anywhere at
anytime. Its excess belies another. The notion that intervention can be anywhere raises the prospect that it could be for anything.
The empire of indifference passes intervention from necessity to the realm of discretion, acting upon difference becomes a luxury within reach.
Added to this is the discretionary force of something like the derivatives market, a hitherto unfathomable wealth sundered from use that exists
only to further itself. The recourse to war that cannot discern between foreign and domestic, that attacks terror, but also crime, drugs, culture, and
the like, sketches in negative relief the magnitude of the difference that state and capital now resist. Never mind that they had a hand in
proliferating it all. The abundance of difference in our midst, along with excess wealth advertised for all-purposes, presents the immanence of the
social as a self-expanding luxury for all. The war on terror is not the only project legible in the transfer of Bataille's mode of excess into the
present. Terror gives urgency to the proliferation of financial risk but it also deflects attention from
that excess which the state has increasing trouble concealing--its own criminality. If capital morphs
under the present mode of excess, so too does its strange bed-fellow, the state-form.
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Link Respect/Empathy for Other

The rhetoric of empathy and respect is a rhetoric of method. Only the alternatives
willingness to risk communication as violence and interruption allows an ethical
relationship to the other.
GARYPETERS2004
[UniversityoftheWestofEngland,HumanStudies27:187206]
The essence of rhetoric is its lack of essence, its emptiness, which, nonetheless, bewitches and persuades thanks to a speech that literally formulates the body of the
speaker for the duration of the teaching event. This body does not mirror the other but, rather, flares-up as an embodied language: an improvi- sational gesture that
radically exceeds the reflexive power of the alter-ego, thus constituting a teaching, albeit one devoid of a body of knowledge that can be passed from teacher to
student. As Merleau-Ponty affirms: nothing really passes between them and yet the fact is we have the power to understand over and above what we may have
178) But, and this is the point, it is a power that is produced by the movement of
rhetoric into an exteriority that is radically absent from given forms of knowledge. In this respect, and
contrary to the derogation of rhetoric, it is an art of persuasion that does not hide absence behind the
illusory presence and substance of its fine words. On the contrary, rhetoric draws attention to and
intensifies the experience of a fundamental ontological void, the primordial silence (1981, p. 184)
between the speaking word (1981, p. 197). This is the power of rhetoric, the power to produce a world
in the face of a radical phenomenological pluralism that, in spite of Husserls efforts, unravels the
intersubjective lifeworld, casting its inhabitants out into a solitary exteriority that only rhetoric can
speak to, albeit obscurely. By all accounts this describes very well Heideggers manner of teaching, creating, in his case, a pedagogy where
spontaneously thought. (1981, p.
phenomenology and rhetoric, working in tandem, become the vehicle for the radical transformation necessary to remember and address again the question of
Being. Anticipating, in a sense, Merleau-Pontys observation that nothing passes between teacher and student and yet there is transformation, Rudiger Safranski
grasps the absence at the core of Heideggers singular, but famed, teaching when he recalls Jas- pers comments on Heidegger: It is astonishing how Heidegger
manages to captivate us. . . Admittedly, his students then will have felt much the same as we do today that one is drawn into his thought until one arrives at the
moment of rubbing ones eyes in astonishment and asking oneself: that was quite something, but what use is the. . . experience to me? Karl Jaspers strikingly
formulated this experience with Heideggers philosophizing in his notes. . . This is what Jaspers said about Heidegger: Among contemporaries the most exciting
thinker, masterful, compelling, mysterious but then leaving you empty-handed (Safranski 1999, p. 100). All of the rhetorical ingredients are here: mastery,
compulsion, mystery and nothingness.
Rhetoric gives nothing, it does not instruct, it persuades, and persuasion

masters the other not through a superior grasp of a knowledge that can be bequeathed by the teacher, but
through the production of a fascinat- ing, seductive and compelling body, occupying in a specific
manner, an other, more powerful world. Merleau-Ponty, with typical subtlety, grasps this particular mode of learning: I begin to understand
a particular philosophy by feeling my way into its existential manner, by reproducing the tone and accent of the philosopher. In fact, every language carries its own
teaching. . . (Merleau-Ponty 1981, p. 179). Merleau-Ponty is not describing empathy but something quite different. The model of learning suggested here is, like
Kants, imitative or reproductive and forms part of the model of exemplification where the singular manner of the teacher provides the model to be adopted by the
students and used in their own way. (Kant, 1973, para. 49) In this regard, and with the phenomenological project in mind, it is the fundamental productivity of the
phenomenological/ rhetorical compact which ensures that the reproduction in question is, paradoxically perhaps, the reproduction of production: production can
A pedagogy based upon the reproduction of production will

not be empathic but, rather, pluralistic. Instead of eroding the barrier between self and other through
dialogue and understanding, the infinite plurality of producers (and the production of infinite plurality) creates what Blanchot
only be re- produced. Pluralism, Language and Estrangement
calls a relation of the third kind. He writes: Now what founds this third relation, leaving it still unfounded, is no longer proximity proximity of struggle, of
services, of essence, of knowledge, or of recognition, not even of solitude but rather the
strangeness between us: a strangeness it will

not suffice to characterize as a separation or even as a distance. Rather an interruption An
interruption escaping all measure (Blanchot, 1993, p. 68). Teaching, in this view, would resemble a
regime of estrangement rather than of empathy, where teacher and student are cast as strangers rather
than ana- logical twins, and where the phenomenological continuity between self and other, so important
for Husserl as a guarantor for a predictable intersubjective world beyond/after the reduction, suffers
an interruption that, as Blanchot will argue, breaks the bonds of intersubjectivity. Instead of an
organic/psychic bond there is an interval; an empty space, a between that demarcates a radical
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pluralism not based upon the all-too- familiar notions of diversity, co-existence and toleration, all of
which sit only too comfortably alongside empathy and dialogue, but one signifying a fundamental
inequality that strips the other of its horizon (its sphere of own- ness), its position in space and time, its
selfhood. For Blanchot this does not leave nothingness but, rather, it leaves speech the violence of
speech.
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Link Schmitt
Schmitt is right that the state is built on the sovereign exception, but their politics justifies
endless extermination. The alternatives solves by declaring itself sovereign through the act
of sacrifice, creating the exception to the exception.
BlentDiken2006
[DepartmentofSociology,LancasterUniversity,Alternatives31(2006),431452
Significantlyinthisrespect,BenjaminwasthefirsttodivideSchmittsconceptofexception,producingaremainder
ofit.For
Schmitt,exceptionisalimitconceptthatpresupposesanormalsituationasitsbackground.Thestateof
exceptionaimsatthepreservationofthisnormalitywithextraordinarymeans.Inotherwords,Schmittsprojectis
tolegitimizethestateofexception,ortonormalizewhatisexceptional.Alongsimilarlines,wecouldarguethat
thestateofexceptionontheislandisreactionary,or,tophraseitdifferently,thatviolenceisrational.The
generalizedexception,thefestival,isJackswayofstrengtheninghispower.Inthis,everythingismadefluid;all
hierarchiesarereversed.Butonethingremainsconstant:Jack,theleader.Tobesure,Benjaminwasinmanyways
inspiredbySchmittsmethodologicalextremism,eventhoughhisownprojectwasopposedtoSchmitts.Whereas
SchmittwantedtolegitimizeNazipower,Benjamincriticizedit.Schmittwasconservative,Benjamin
revolutionary.Indeed,thistensionfounditsbestexpressionintheirunderstandingofsovereignty.Henceto
SchmittsexceptionBenjaminopposedthesuspensionofsuspension,arealexception,or,better,anexception
toexceptionitself.Whatisdecisive
hereisthenotionthat,whengeneralized,exceptionlosesitsstatusasalimitof
normality.Thetraditionoftheoppressedteachesusthatthestateofemergencyinwhichweliveisnotthe
exceptionbuttherule.Wemustattaintoaconceptionofhistorythatisinkeepingwiththisinsight.Thenweshall
clearlyrealizethatitisourtasktobringaboutarealstateofemergency,andthiswillimproveourpositioninthe
struggleagainstFascism.57WhereasinSchmittexceptionisthepoliticalkernelofthelaw,
itbecomesdivine
justiceinBenjamin.Andthenweareconfronted
withthedifferencebetweentwoexceptions:Schmittsexceptionis
nothingelsethananattemptatavoidingtherealexception,therevolution,ordivinejustice.Benjamins
exception,instarkcontrast,suspendstherelationalitybetweenthelawanditssuspensioninazoneofanomy
dominatedbypureviolencewithnolegalcover.58
Thequestionofthisrealexceptionistheonethatcannot
be
posedtodaywithoutimmediatelyfacingtheaccusationofbeinganihilistorafundamentalist.Andwhyisitso?To
endwithananswertothisquestion,letusfocusonthefinalscene.
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Link Theory (e.g., Critical Theory)

You must sacrifice the theoretical knowledge of the 1AC. It is servile production that
ultimately means nothing.
JasonDeBoernodategiven
[BatailleversusTheoryhttp://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7XwWuL0tswIJ:www.sauer
thompson.com/essays/Bataille%2520Versus%2520Theory,%2520an%2520essay%2520by%2520Jason
%2520DeBoer.doc+Bataille+versus+Theory%E2%80%9D+Fierce+Language&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]
ThewritingsofGeorgesBataillehaverecentlybecometheobjectofacertainresurgence,orrather,arecuperation,withintheacademy.AsBataillesdeathin1962
recedesintothepast,thenumberofcriticalessaysandarticlesabouthimcontinuestogrowatanincrediblerate.Mostofthiscriticismhastakentheapproachof
situatingBatailleandhisideasintoapredeterminedframeworkofpostmodernthought,eitherthroughthesystematicembellishmentofhisroleas
anintellectualinfluenceonFoucault,Derrida,andothers,orhisroleasanintermediaryfigurebetweenNietzscheandtheFrenchpostmodernists.Whilethere
certainlyismeritandvalidityinlinkingBatailleintellectuallytothesewriters,itistheradicalnessandoriginalityofBatailleswritingwhichultimatelybecomeslost
intheseanalyseswhenviewedthroughsuchanhistoricallens.ItseemsinevitablethatBataille,likeNietzsche,willbesubjectedtoacriticalscrutiny, which,in
theguiseofearnestanalysesandclosereadings,servesforemosttodispelthethreatthatsuchwriters
posetoacademia.Acalculatedprocessofintellectualtamingisdeployedagainsttheseradicalthinkers;thisprocessionofcommentariesanddissections
nearlyalwaysleavesnothingbutadilutionoftheoriginalwork.Toavoidthis,IwillnotconcernmyselfwithsituatingBatailleswritingswithinthepresentstateof
theory(whetheritbephilosophical,critical,sociological,orpsychological).Rather,Ithinkitwouldbemorenobletoattemptacritiqueofthetheoreticalenterpriseby
analyzingitthroughBataillesownarrayofconcepts.IftheideasofthinkerslikeNietzsche,Sade,orBataillearetobeaffordedthecredencetheydeserve,itisonly
fittingthattheoryitselfbejudgedaccordingtotheirclaims,whichmayruninoppositiontotheclaimsmadebytraditionaltheory.GeorgesBatailleorganizeshis
writingsaroundmanycoreconceptsorideas,manyofwhichremaindiffuseandsomewhatunderdevelopedintheirdefinitionsormeanings.Communication,
sovereignty,heterology,innerexperience,thesacred,dpenseorexpenditure,transgression,excess,etc.;eachconceptappearsinhistextsasamomentary
connotation,abriefenunciationthatcreatesanimpactinthereader,thendisappearsbeforebecomingfullyensnaredwithintheparametersofconceptualization.
PerhapsitisthisvaguenessorambiguityinherentinallofBataillesconceptsthatpreventsthemfrombeingappropriatedbythetheoreticalmainstreamandbeingput
toworkinadogmaticsystem.Inorderforanideatobeputtowork,forittobeabletoperformafunction,perhapsitmustfirsthaveaproperdefinition...whichmany
ofBataillesconceptslack.Thebroadnessofhisterms(indeed,Bataillesmovefromarestrictivetoageneraleconomyshowsadigressionfromthespecific,from
specialization)maykeepthemfrombeingutilizedbyothers;thissubversionofutilityarisesfromthedifficultyofpinpointingwhereorwhenaBatailleanconcept
beginsorends.Thissacrificeofclaritycertainlyisanintentionalstrategy,Bataillesownemploymentofunworkableconcepts.Itiswithinthisarenaofthoughtthat
Iwishtoexaminethecontemporarystateoftheory.Whenonewantstodiscussthingssuchasphilosophy,literatureandpoetry,assuch,intheirbroadestsense,it
seemsimpossibletoprovideaworkingdefinitionwhichencapsulatesenoughofthedefinedtoprovideabasisformeaningfuldiscourse.Assoonasonemakes
statementsaboutphilosophy,etc.thestageissetforinterpretivebreakdown.Withoutageneralconceptofphilosophytherewillbeconfusionastotheterms
meaning;withsuchanormativeconcept,therewillbedisagreementoverthevalidityofsuchanorm.Traditionally,philosophershavecounteredtheproblemsof
conceptualvaguenessbyimposingstricterandstricterspecializationontheirterms.Bataille,ontheotherhand,hasreveledintheimprecisionofsuchtermsas
philosophy,and,insteadofspecializingandbuildingonsuchtraditionalnotions,hehasdeployedhisownsetofconceptsfromthebasisofwhim(whichhesawas
theoppositeofspecialization).Hisattacksagainstphilosophystrikeitasagenerality,beforethecomplexitiesandspecialtiesofepistemology,ontology,philosophyof
language,etc.muddytheissueandmakesuchametacritiquemoredifficult.ForBataille,philosophymustbeattackedinsofarasitisa
generalproject,notinitsparticularandmultiplemanifestations,andthiscanonlybedonebycontrasting
philosophywithothergeneralconceptswhichdifferfromandopposeit...thesacred,excess,
communication,etc.Withthisviewinmind,Iwillattempttocompareandcritiquethetheoretical
enterpriseitself,usingBataillesnotionsasbothguidelinesandweapons.Firstly,though,Ishould
remarkonthevictim,thegeneralityreferredtoastheory.Theory(again,whetheritbephilosophical,
critical,sociological,etc.)canbesaidtoconsistofavarietyofrelatedmovements.Itcanbethoughtofas
theanalysesofgivens,predictionsforthefuture,thesystematicorganizationofknowledge,thevery
pathalongwhichthoughtmust
follow,oreventhoughtitself.Theoryisalmostinvariablyaprocessthat
maintainsknowledge(guaranteedbycertainty)asitsendresult.Batailleconteststheclaimthataprocess
ofexaminationleadssomehowtoknowledge,becauseforhimthisexternaltheorizingcanonlydepart
fromordenytheonlycertainknowledgethathumansmayhave:Wehaveinfactonlytwocertainties
inthisworldthatwearenoteverythingandthatwewilldie.Bataillepositsknowledgeofdeathnotastheend
resultofatheoreticaloperation,butasaninnerexperiencefromwhicheverythingelseradiates.Thisknowledgeofdeathisinnowayan
understandingorcomprehensionofdeath;itisonlythecertaintythatdeathwillsomedayconsumeus,onlyaknowledgeofmortality.Death
cannotberegardedasanobjectofknowledgebecauseitcannotbemanagedorsubordinatedbythought.Deathissovereign,henceinconceivable.
Knowledgeofourownmortalitycanonlybeperipheraltodeathitself.(Bataillesothercertainty,thatwearenoteverything,pavesthewayfor
hisnotionsofheterologyanddiscontinuity,whichIwillexamineinanotheressay.)Thus,thesupposedendproductoftheory,knowledge,is
declaredimpossiblebyBataille,exceptforthecertaintiesofdeathandthediscontinuityofbeings.Hewrites:wecanhavenoknowledgeexcept
toknowthatknowledgeisfinite.Death,intheend,consumesthought.AnytruthclaimsoftheoryarenotsustainableaccordingtoBatailles
rigidcriteriaforknowledge(namely,thatonlyabsolutecertaintycouldguaranteeknowledge).Bataillesthoughtdesirestoexceedthevery
notionthatknowledgeispossibleorthattheoryproduceswhatitclaims:goingtotheendmeansatleastthis:thatthelimit,whichisknowledge
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asagoal,becrossed.Bataillecontinuestoattackknowledgeinsofarasitrelatestothestrivingsoftheory,
withknowledgeeitherastheendproductoftheorysworkorasthe
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Link Theory (e.g., Critical Theory)

presumedfoundationfromwhichtheoryissues.Sinceknowledgeisalwayslinkedtoworkandproject,
itisalwaysserviletoaconcernforthefuture;ittakesusawayfromthesovereigntyofinner
experience,whichisonlyconcernedwiththemoment.Thisinnerexperienceisincapableoftheorization;itevadestheprojectorientedgraspoflanguage:
Everydaythesovereigntyofthemomentismoreforeigntothelanguageinwhichweexpressourselves,whichdrawsvaluebacktoutility:whatissacred,notbeing
anobject,escapesourapprehension.Thereisnoteven,inthisworld,awayofthinkingthatescapesservitude,anavailablelanguagesuchthatinspeakingitwedonot
fallbackintotheimmutablerutassoonasweareoutofit.Bataillessuspicion,evenhatred,oflanguagerunsdeep.However,thisdoesnotpreventhimfrom
accordingtheory,philosophy,andsciencetheirplaceintheworld.Hebelievedthatmanshouldrelegatesuchoperationstoalessprominentroleinhisthought,and
insteadconcentratemoreonhisowninnerexperience.Bataillecreatesadichotomybetweenexperienceandtheorywithsilence,sovereignty,andconcernwiththe
momentfunctioningasaspectsofinnerexperience,andlanguage,servility,andpreparationforthefutureexistingasinherentaspectsoftheory.Byopposinglanguage
withinnerexperience,Bataillecreatesadilemmaforhimselfandhisownwritings.Hissteadfastpositionmakeshimsomethingofanidealistregardinginner
experience;Batailleleaveslittleroomforreconciliationbetweenatruesilencewhichresistsdefinitionsandasovereignuseoflanguagewhichisabletoresistproject.
Itispoetry,hefinallydecides,thatisabletooccupythisspace,asaformoflanguagethatissacredatermBatailleusedatheistically,meaningopposedtoutility,
usefulness,andconcernforthefuture.Evenwithhisextremecynicismthattheorycouldevertransgresstheservilenatureoflanguageinordertoofferaglimpseinto
innerexperience,Bataillecontinuedtowrite,andnotjustpoetry.InordertojustifytheagendabehindtheoreticalwritingslikeNietzschesorhisown,whichwere
abletoperformametaphilosophicalcritiqueoftheorywhilestillusingsomeofitsformsofquestioning,Batailleneededtotemperhisidealismwithamodified
definitionofproject:Neverthelessinnerexperienceisproject,nomatterwhat.Itissuchmanbeingentirelysothroughlanguagewhich,inessencewiththe
exceptionofitspoeticperversion,isproject.Butprojectisnolongerinthiscasethat,positive,ofsalvation,butthat,negative,ofabolishingthepowerofwords,hence
ofproject.Inotherwords,hisisatheorywhichquestionsitselfbyattackingthefoundationoftheoryitself:language.Inthisway,throughatypeofwritingthat
strivesforsilence,eventopicssuchasinnerexperiencecanbebroached.Principleofinnerexperience:toemergethroughprojectfromtherealmofproject.
AlthoughBataillewritesthatthenatureofexperienceis,apartfromderision,nottobeabletoexistasproject,itisthisderisivecharacterofexperiencethatcanbe
expressedinatheorythatridiculesitself,thatacknowledgestheimpossibilityofitsowngoal:knowledge.Bataillefindstheperfectformofsuchantifoundational
thinkingintheaphoristicwritingsofNietzsche:Iamtalkingaboutthediscoursethatentersintodarknessandthattheverylightendsbyplungingintodarkness
(darknessbeingthedefinitivesilence).Iamtalkingaboutthediscourseinwhichthoughttakentothelimitofthoughtrequiresthesacrifice,ordeath,ofthought.To
mymind,thisisthemeaningoftheworkandlifeofNietzsche.NotonlydidNietzschemirrorBataillesowndisgustforChristianityandphilosophy,butthewriting
formwhichNietzschechampioned,theaphorism,becameanotherweaponinBataillesarsenal,ausefultoolagainsttheutilityofphilosophicallanguage.Onlyan
aphoristic,fragmentarywritingcanharbortheviolent,sacredqualitiesofpoetry;onlyanincompleteformofwritingcantraceorelucidatetheimpossibilityof
knowledgeasaproductoftheory,byrevealingalackwithinknowledgeitself.ForBataille,theswiftviolenceofaphorismwasthemosteffectivemethodofattacking
philosophicaltheory,bycritiquingalltheoreticalfoundationsinaseriesofbroadstrokes:Acontinualchallengingofeverythingdeprivesoneofthepowerof
proceedingbyseparateoperations,obligesonetoexpressoneselfthroughrapidflashes,tofreeasmuchasispossibletheexpressionofonesthoughtfromaproject,
toincludeeverythinginafewsentences...ItwasthisstylisticstrategythatBatailleadoptedforcircumventingtheoreticalproject,andheunderstoodthedifficulty(in
fact,theimpossibility)ofproceedinganyotherway.Bataillebelievedthatonlyaviolenttheorycouldusurpautilitarianone,onlyaviolenttheorycouldcleartheway
forviolence,whichwouldputanendtothepossibilityoflanguage.Theexcessofviolenceissilent,theoppositeofthesolidaritywithotherpeopleimplicitinlogic,
lawsandlanguage.Inaway,violenceconsumestheory;itsveryexcesscounterminesreason.Hewrites:theexpressionofviolencecomesupagainstthedouble
oppositionofreasonwhichdeniesitandofviolenceitselfwhichclingstoasilentcontemptforthewordsusedaboutit.Andtherecertainlyisaviolentnatureto
Bataillesnihilisticcritiqueoftheoryandphilosophy.Indeed,hemayconsideronedeficitofphilosophytobethatitdoesnotstriveviolentlyforsilence,butinstead
onlymeeklylaborsoverquestionafterquestion:Philosophycannotescapefromthislimitofphilosophy,oflanguage,thatis.Ituseslanguageinsuchawaythat
silenceneverfollows,sothatthesuprememomentisnecessarilybeyondphilosophicalquestioning.Atanyrateitisbeyondphilosophyasfarasphilosophyclaimsto
answeritsownquestions.Philosophicaltheory,lostintheservilityofwork,isdoomedtostrugglefroman
untenablefoundation(anonarbitrarybasisforlanguage)toanimpossibleendproduct(certain
knowledge,besidesthatofmortalityorthediscontinuityofbeings).Bataillebelievedthatgoaland
authorityaretherequirementsfordiscursivethoughtandthatsubsequentlydiscourseformsprojects.If
thisgoalisknowledge,thisauthority,forphilosophy,isultimatelyexternalandmetaphysical,hence
religious.ForBataille,theonlyauthorityisinnerexperience,butitsauthorityisinnowayexternalized.Outsidethe
self,therewasonlychanceandtherandomnessoftheuniverse.InsteadofGod,chance.IftheorysoughttheguaranteeofGodtosupportits
claims,itwasbothmisguidedandultimatelyemptyofvalue.Forthosewhograspwhatchanceis,theideaofGodseemsinsipidandsuspicious,
likebeingcrippled.Bataillewasnoirrationalist,buthiscritiqueofthemetaphysicsanchoringtheoryfinallyinvolvedarejectionofreasonitself,
inordertopurgethemindofanyneedforaconnectionwithaGodormetaphysicalfoundation.Butthesupremeabusewhichmanultimately
madeofhisreasonrequiresalastsacrifice:reason,intelligibility,thegrounditselfuponwhichhestandsmanmustrejectthem,inhimGod
mustdie;thisisthedepthofterror,theextremelimitwherehesuccumbs.Itisanecstaticmomentofdoubt.Hebelievedthatonereaches
ecstasybyacontestationofknowledge.Batailleschallengetotheoryreachesitszenithastheabandonmentortransgressionofreasons
needforGod.Salvationisthesummitofallpossibleprojectandtheheightofmattersrelatedtoprojects.Bataillesatheologyreplacestheauthorityofmetaphysical
foundationwiththesovereignauthorityofexperience,andtheworkofphilosophyisovercomeinanactoftransgression:Comparedwithwork,
transgressionisagame.Intheworldofplayphilosophydisintegrates.Iftransgressionbecamethe
foundationstoneofphilosophy(thisishowmythinkinggoes),silentcontemplationwouldhavetobe
substitutedforlanguage.Thisisthecontemplationofbeingatthepinnacleofbeing.Itisatthis
pinnaclethattheorybecomesavictim,asacrificeatthehandsofagreat,silenttheorist,Georges
Bataille.
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Agamben Link
Agamben reduces sacrifice to a political problem of homo sacer. The failure to fully confront the sacred nature of
violence dooms them to repeating communities of extermination.
Jeffrey Librett 2007
[Professor German University Oregon diacritics 37.2-3]
This philosophical program in Agambens early essays guides his later work on the homo sacersovereign relation but also distorts and disturbs the later work in three principal ways. First, it prompts
him to propose an exclusively juridicopolitical understanding of the sacredness of the homo sacer,
effectively scapegoating the juridical sphere for a more broadly theopolitical problem, while placing
the specifically Christian background [End Page 11] of his antinomianism in a misleadingly secular,
rational, and universalist light. Symptomatically, in order to accomplish this juridicopolitical reduction
Agamben must reject Batailles analysis of sacrificealong with the entire modern anthropological
reading of the sacredout of hand. For this rejection protects his discourse against any sustained
confrontation with the importance of the sacrificial dimension for both what he calls the homo
sacer and his own approach to law in his theorization of the homo sacer..
Second, Agambens philosophical program impoverishes the account he provides of the Nazi death
camps as an extreme example of the sovereign-homo sacer relation by making it impossible for him
to appreciate the importance of Christian antinomianism in the formation of National Socialist ideology.
For Agambens philosophical orientation requires or presupposes that he ignore or underestimate, first of
all, the sacrificially anti-Semitic dimension of Christian antinomianismthe tendency of such
antinomianism to make Judaism responsible for the ontological desert into which representation exiles us
all. Further, as a consequence of his continuing commitment to this tradition, Agamben cannot see how
important the tradition remains, even if in a displaced form, for Nazi anti-Semitism. I argue that
Agambens animus against the letter blinds him to the Christian and sacrificial dimensions of the
Holocausthe ignores the former and explicitly, emphatically denies the latter dimensionbecause this
animus represents his own commitment to the Christian antinomianism that, in its racialized National
Socialist form, attempts to rid itself of the letter by sacrificing not only Judaism but the (biologically,
racially construed) Jews. Because his radically antinomian program would become unsettled by his
recognition of its important overlap with the ideological bases of National Socialism, Agamben cannot
ultimately acknowledge the Christian and sacrificial aspects of the Holocaust.
Finally, in Remnants of Auschwitzhis main reading (outside of Homo Sacer) of the significance of the
Nazi death campsAgamben positions testimony as the exemplary instance of the speaking of speech,
the taking-place of language. The result of the destruction of European Jewry becomes here the revelation
of poetic speech as a manifestation of the absolute. Unwittingly, Agamben ends up participating in the
very kind of theodicy he ostensibly wished to avoid by denying the sacrificial character of the
Holocaust in the first place. This observation makes it difficult to avoid the conclusion that his politics is
to be founded not merely on metaphysics, as Adam Thurschwell rightly stresses, but also on positive
religious commitments [see note 1] as in turn his religionor his messianismis, as he repeatedly
suggests, to be realized as a politics.2
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Psychoanalysis Link
Reject their mournful psychoanalys, which treats desire as lack rather than glorious excess. Our commitment to risk
destruction for exuberance cannot be second-guessed under the sterile gaze fo the analyst.
In giving expression to the sense of elective communities, Bataille's exposition relies heavily on the figure lovers. Lovers are exemplary of elective community,
finding one another by chance, attracted by one another [p. 40] with a momentum and intensity indifferent to the demands of work and social cohesion. The
appearance of the beloved on the scene falls with the swiftness and decisiveness of an ax, tearing the lover away from all other interests, including that of
self-preservation, bestowing on him the exhilaration of total risk. The beloved shines with a "precarious radiance" that exerts upon the lover a violence and suspension
like that of falling dice, which arrange existence anew. "The lovers' world, like life," writes Bataille, "is built on a set of accidents that give an avid, powerful will to be
the response it desires" (CS 51/20). In other words, the attraction configured by chance requires the lover to stake herself, putting her entire being in play, ut it requires
this as an obsession and not an obligation. As Bataille puts it n On Nietzsche,
"the desire in us defines our luck," shapes the chance

constellation of beings and events wherein it finds itself, and it does so by risking itself and by virtue of
the risk it itself is (OC 6: 88/ON 73; tm). And that means the coincidence of wills in the face of
chance-which is the contact of love itself-results from a gamble and not a calculation. "It 'risks' me and the one I
love"; it plays us [II inc 'use! en jets, met en jets l'tre aiin], says Bataille of carnal love. The lover's response to the radiance of the beloved is incomprehensible and
outrageous! So much so that "[c]ompared to the person I love, the universe seems poor and empty" (OC 6: 84/ON 69). The example of lovers is of particular
importance because it articulates both the insufficiency and the innocence that dominate Bataille's ontological considerations. In a sense, the tenuousness and
tenderness of lovers reflects a more generally constitutive condition of human life, that "[t}here exists at the basis of human life a principle of insufficiency" (OC 5:
97/IE 81). When that insufficiency is repressed and mythologized into the ontological primacy of the individual, making of sociality a contract added on for the sake
of security, existence is rendered guilty. But guilty
insufficiency is as restricted a sense of human being as Marxist

economic analysis is of community; indeed, both subsist on the reftssal of chance, the one staking its
future on the calculated probability of survival, the other on dialectical necessity. The lovers who
chance everything and are constituted in that risk (hasard), however, exhibit all the "magnificence"
of an existence "created in the image of a universe untouched by the defilement of merit or
intention" (CS 53/21). Their contact is so innocent that it excises itself altogether from the world of
reward and punishment, justification and critique, their insufficiency excessive to the impoverished
world of need. Thus, Bataille insists, "What characterizes man from the outset and what leads up to the completed rupture at the summit is not only the will
for sufficiency, but the cunning, timid attraction on the side of insufficiency" (OC 5: 105/EE 88). And "what attracts isn't immediate being, but a wound" (OC 6:
The
cracked being, however, is at once, at the very point where its self-enclosure ends and it opens onto
the world, exposed and naked, falling outside itself, a lucky being, a chance being. Insufficiency and the excess of suffering that characterizes it is the
45/ON 22). Excessive insufficiency is an ontological condition, since "[aj being that isn't cracked [p. 41] isn't possible;' writes Bataille (OC 5: 259/G23).
condition of play. with it and through it "we go from enduring the cracks (from decline) to glory (we seek out the cracks)" (OC 5: 259/G 23). Community is not,
therefore, an extant division or willed unity within the social order, but a configuration of luck and chance where one being opens onto another and is what it
is only through this opening. The language of exposure and ex-position goes a long way in articulating the structural conditions of this occurrence, but it is
nevertheless insufficient to characterize the contact here at issue. Bataffle insists rather that this opening is a wound and elective community the affective attraction of
one lacerated insufficiency by another. Community is constituted in the overlapping of wounds, the sharing not only of what
cannot be shared, but the sharing of a suffering that is neither mine nor yours, a suffering that does not belong to us, but which gives us to one another, and in doing so
both maintains and withdraws the beings so configured. In community, the other does not complete me but completes my insufficiency, shares the luck which is never
only mine. Elective community is like a lovers' kiss-an exhilarating affirmation of chance, the will to be what befalls it but that its will could never
produce. With respect to the lover, we desire like a gambler wagers. "Like the winnings of a gambler;' writes Bataille, "sexual, possession prolongs desire-or
extinguishes it" (OC 6: 106/ON 86).The sheer momentum of the movement requires that its strength be squandered .
Desire is unsatisfied not

because it fails, but because it exceeds the search for satisfaction, because it is also raw expenditure.
For this reason, desire is misunderstood if it is represented as the infinite tragic movement toward an
inaccessible object, as though desire not only is prohibited by its very structure from attaining its aim,
but as though its structure is fundamentally teleological. The obsession with this logic is always
mournful (psychoanalysis) or moral (transcendental philosophy) and in both cases remains theological
insofar as the concern is governed by or measured against an imaginary sense of propriety or ownership
or end. The desire that binds lovers is not so much directed toward an unattainable sumnut,
however, as it is itself the summit, the point "where life is impossibly at the limit."' Desire and summit can no
more be separated than lightning and its flash. In this respect Bataille is unequivocal: "The summit isn't what we 'ought to reach,' " (OC 6: 57/ON 39; tni)). Rather,
"It's what is. Never what should be" (OC 6: 111/ON 91). If desire is unsatisfied, that is because it exceeds the conservative search for satisfaction, because it is not
teleological, because we are driven beyond the need of satisfaction without being driven to anything, because our unfinished character is in this very way excessive,
The lovers' love is sacred. It does

not belong to the profane order of work and its accumulated labor, the profane and banal order of
capital. For Bataille, the sacred designates an object that is beyond all others in value, but the
sacred character of our carnal love has nothing to do with divine love. The sacrifices brought about
by the love of lovers require expenditure without recuperation; we give up our careers as dancers, we speak on the phone for
[p. 42] not impoverished. If love is unsatisfied it is because it has perished, leaving us wasted and ruined.
hours on end, we waste the day in bed, and we give ourselves over entirely to that waste and identify ourselves with it.
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Link Anti-Capitalism
The Revolution must be awesome.
A The aff works to liberate the futrue through accumulation of anti-capitalist productivity.
This drive to hoarde dooms them to new cycles of capitalist accumulation. We cannot
escape the ghosts of past oppression through laboring for the future.
Wendling, 2k6. (Amy Wendling, Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Creighton College. Reading
Bataille Now. Ed. Winnubst. P 64-51)
SovereigntyandtheRevolutionarySubjectBataille'sdiscussionof"sovereignty"occupiestheentirethirdvolumeofTheAccursedShare.Thisvolumeexplainsthe
finaltwochaptersofvolume1,inwhichBataillesketchestheformsofconsumptioncharacteristicofSovietindustrializationasamodalityoftheformsof
consumptioncharacteristicofthebourgeoisworld,asacruelaccumulation .Insovereignconsumption,consumptionisnot
subjectedtoanendoutsideofitself.InthetermsofclassicalMarxism,toactsovereignlyistoprivilegeuseover
exchangevalue,orindividualoverproductiveconsumption.Inatemporalschema,toactsovereignlyisto
privilegethepresentoverthepastorfuture.Wemightrecognizesovereignconsumptionas
noncoercivepleasureorplay,consumptionthatexceedsaproductive,work
driveneconomy.A
sovereignworldwouldhavethevisionandthelanguagetoaccommodatesucharecognitionandtoaccommodateitinamodeotherthandubbingitirresponsible,
irrational,childlike,ormad.Letmeofferanexampleofsovereignconsumptionfromtherealmofsexuality,arealmthatBataillealsohighlightsinbothhisfictionand
hisphilosophy.Thecompulsoryproductiveheterosexualitycharacteristicofbourgeoisculturesisalsopartofthecoerciontoproduction.Bataille'spor[p.47]
nography,allofwhichdescribesnonreproductiveifmostlyheterosexualsex,fitsintohisprojectforthisreason.Nonreproducrivesexsexforsex'ssake,queersex,or
sexforpleasureareallmodesofnonproductive,orsovereignconsumption:consumptionthatdoesnowork,producesnonewworkers,andusesenergywithout
recompense.Allbourgeoisculturaltaboosaboutsexualityarerootedinthecoerciontoproduction.ForBataille,thesovereignindividual,aversionoftheNietzschean
nobleorHegelianmaster(1991b,219;1973,267),"consumesanddoesn'tlabor"(199lb,198;1973,248).LikeNietzsche,Bataillearguesthatbourgeoissocietieswe
readilyrecognizethemasourownhavemadethissortofconsumptionimpossibleforusbyinvertingthevaluesattachedtoit .Accumulationeclipses
thecharacterofthesovereign:westockpile,hoard,andholdinreserveratherthanuseorenjoy.
Ourdeepestpleasuresderivefromthehoardingitself:fromthesecurityofknowingitisthere,
shouldwewantit.Becauseofthisoutpleasuresremainvicarious,theoretical,indefinitelydeferredand
abstract.Inaninversionofeconomicvalues,thepressuretoaccumulateeclipsesBataille'ssovereignconsumption.Similarly,
inNietzsche,thepriest'sinversionofmoralvalueseclipsesthegoodnessofnobility.ForBataille,thebourgeoisclassisthe
firstandultimatelyonlyrrevolutionaryclass:anasceticclassthatrevoltsspecificallyagainstthesovereignnobilityinfavorof
accumulation.Thebourgeoisrevolutionoveragainstsovereigntyconditionsandinescapablyschematizesallsubsequent
revolutionandappealstorevolution.Theveryideaandpracticeofrevolutionisitselfbourgeois.Revolution
isabourgeoisconcept,andtheworldinwhichBataillefindshimselfcontinuestobetheworldofa
feudalorderthatisbreakingdown.Bataillewrites:1cannothelpbutinsistontheseaspects:Iwishtostress,
againstbothclassicalandpresentdayMarxism,theconnectionofallthegreatmodernrevolutions,fromthe
EnglishandtheFrenchonward,withafeudalorderthatisbreakingdown.Therehaveneverbeenanygreat
revolutionsthathavestruckdownanestablishedbourgeoisdomination.Allthosethatoverthrewa
regimestartedwitharevoltmotivatedbythesovereigntythatisimpliedinfeudalsociety,(1991b,
279;1973,321)Conceptually,revolutiondemarcatesthetransitionfromsovereigntyto
accumulation.Revolutionwillalwaysbeconnectedwiththedissolutionofafeudalorderandtheprivilegesemblematizedby
suchanorder:accesstononproductiveconsumption,enjoyment,orusevalueitself,byrightofbirth.[p.48]Butwhynot,rather,
aconceptionofplenitudeandentitlementforall,alsobyrightofbirth,insteadofcompetitionandstruggleforsurvival?
SuchaviewisimpossiblewhenNietzscheanressentimentistheimpetusforliberation,because
postrevolutionarysubjectshavelearnedtodemonizetheverythingsthattheymostdesire.This
pointgoessomedistancetowardexplainingwhyrevolutionaryclasshatredisinsufficientlyanalytic
andconfusesthearistocracywiththebourgeoisie.Italsoexplainswhytherevolutionattemptedin1848wasadisaster.Bataille
writes:ThedaysofJuue,theCommune,andSpartakusaretheonlyviolentconvulsionsoftheworkingmassesstrugglingagainstthebourgeoisie,butthesemovements
occurredwiththehelpofamisunderstanding.Theworkersweremisledbythelackofobstaclesencounteredalittleearlierwhenthebourgeoisie,inconcertwith
them,roseupagainstmenbornofthatfeudalitywhichirritatedeverybody.(1991b,289)Underthishistoricalerror,bornoftheprecipitousmixingofclasses,the
particularityofthebourgeoisieismisunderstood.Thebourgeoisisnolordorladywaitedupon,butamoneygrubbing,guiltridden,obsessiveworker,toocheapto
hirehelp,selfrighteouslyconfirmedinhisorherworkethicandasceticwayoflife.Iamnotsuggestingthatthebourgeoisdoesnothaveprivileges.Heorshedoes,
butnotinthesamewayasthefeudallordorlady.Thebourgeoisgoalisalwaysfurtheraccumulation,neverconsumption,andthereforeneversovereignty.
Bataillewrites,"Themasseshaveneverunitedexceptinaradicalhostilitytotheprincipleofsovereignty"(l99lb,288;1973,329).Themassesdonotuniteagainst
accumulation,exceptwhenthataccumulationisexpressedassovereignty,andthereforenotasaccumulationatall,butasconsumption.Theproletarian
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workerperceivesanexcessiveconsumptionasthenecessaryresultofthebourgeoisaccumulationofproperty.Butthisisamisperception,forthebourgeois
doesnotenjoybutaccumulates.Whentheproletarianworkercomestopower,abourgeoisrevolutionrecurs
becausethismassworker,theslaveascendant,foreveroperatesinaneconomyofscarcity:
hoardingresourcesfromthememoryofbeingdeprived.Theproblemofaccumulationbegins
again.Thestructureisofactualscarcity,followedbyperceivedscarcityandhoardingthatholdson
asahistoricalremainder.Neverfullyovercome,thisremainderbecomespartofthehistorically
sedimentedfearthroughwhichbourgeoisculturesfunction.Theproblemisthataresentful
revolutionarysubjectisunfitandunabletoenjoywealthand,byextension,politicalsovereignty.In
TheGermanIdeal[p.49]ogy,Marxanswersthiscriticismbyclaimingthatthroughtheprocessofrevolutionaryaction,theproletariatisabletoovercome
accumulatedhabitandconditioning,learntoconsumewell,andthusbecomefitforrule(1978,193).Onlyanupsurgeofviolentrevolutionaryactionwillbea
sufficientlessoninconsumption,atrialbyviolencethatreturnsthebondsmanbacktothesceneofthestruggletothedeath.ForMarx,theemergentsubject,baptized
byfire,istransformedintoabeingcapableofsovereigntyordeadattheendoftheprocess.Butwehaveseenthattheprocessofrevolutionary
actioninstillsnotliberationbutafearfulrepetitionofservitude,nowinternal.Inshort,
transformationisneversoneatasMarxwouldhaveit.Theproblemofhowsubjectswhohavelived
throughoppressionwieldpowerhasbeennotoriouslysticky,reappearinginallthoughtful
considerationsofpostrevolutionarysubjects.
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B. The alternative sways to the rhythms of the revolution. Only abandoning the security of
programmable protest can exorcise the capitalist demons haunting anti-capitalist
production.
Wendling, 2k6. (Amy Wendling, Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Creighton College. Reading
Bataille Now. Ed. Winnubst. P 64-51)
Conclusion T remain hopeful about postrevolurionary subjects and the abilities of such subjects to occupy positions of power in
critical and self-aware ways. I also remain hopeful about a notion of sovereignty partially liberated
from the context of oppression in which it was forged and about consumption as
enjoyment that somehow exceeds a context of production, or work. In seeking to keep sovereignty
alive, Baraille too does not envision a return to the oppreslive sovereignty characteristic of a feudal system . Sovereignty
operates for Bataille more as a conceptual, methodological, and practical postulate rather
than as a historical nostalgia. But it is precisely because of this that sovereignty can stage its insurgency anywhere.
Baraille suggests that enjoyaunt itself is the upsurge of sovereignty: "The enjoyment of production is in opposition to accumulation
(that is, [in opposition) to the production of the means of production) . . . [Sovereignty is] neither anachronistic nor insignificant
[because it is the general) condition of each human being" (1991b, 281; 1973, 322, my emphasis). Sovereignty is the
overcoming of the urge to hoard; the overcoming of bourgeois subjectivity; the refusal of
the historical sedimentation of cruelty, accumulation, and the bad conscience, Acting
sovereignly, I leave behind fear, and I stop living in expectation of death. I fear the loss of
enjoyment more than death. Bataille's sovereignty anticipates the existentialist refrain of freedom at any cost. But
unlike in existentialism, Bataille's sovereignty preserves corporeality: I live sovereignly, not despite my feats of
death, but because of my enjoyment of life. For according to Baraille, "if we live sovereignly, the
representation of death is impossible, for the present is not subject to the demands of the
future. That is why, in a fundamental sense, living sovereignly is to escape, if not death, at least the anguish of [p. 51] death. Not
that dying is hateful-but living servilely is hateful" (1991b, 219). Nor has Bataille given up on communism: "Sovereignty is no longer
alive except in the perspectives of communism" (1991b, 261; 1973, 305). For communism is the only kind of thinking and practice
that tries to restore individual consumption, to restore use-value and with it enjoyment as the general condition of life. Bataille
knows that the jury is out on communism: its historical moment is too near to rake a clear view of its implications as a whole.
Because of its historical proximity, communism has fallen between the cracks of dogmatic and politicized positions. Bataille writes
that "the lack of interest in understanding communism evinced by practically all noncommunists and the involvement of militants in
a cohort acting almost without debate-according to directives in which the whole game is not known-have made communism a
reality that is foreign, as it were, to the world of reflection" (1991b, 264). Bataille's comments on communism in volume 3 of The
AccnrsedShare seek to redress this gap, forcing the owl of Minerva to rake her customary flight earlier than usual. Cleansed of
teleology, communist revolution becomes the theoretical and practical pursuit of such enjoyment, of a different kind of liberation.
And in contemporary thinkers as diverse as Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, and Antonio Negri, we find sketches of
non-teleological liberations, which are no longer revolutions that reinstate repressive

subjectivities. Derrida speaks of ongoing, underground practices of resistance (1994, 99).
Haraway insists on the non-innocence and impurity of all positions of resistance that
appear alongside hegemonic cultural ideals (1991, 1997). Addressing the temporal deferral of communism itself,
Negri writes, "Communism does not come in a 'subsequent period,' it springs up contemporaneously as a process constituting an
enormous power of antagonism and of real supersession" (1991, 181). Anticipating these thinkers, Bataille situates the real
interest of communism in its vision of a human being whose general condition is to

play without labor in an economy of plenty. No price must be exacted for enjoyment, and there is no
question of entitlement. The
eclipse of this assertion, in favor of the accumulating and stockpiling

of the means of production for future use, is communism missing its own best point
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We must sacrifice the need to promote the greater tood to break with capitalism.
Yang 2k. (Mayfaire Mei-Hui, Professor of Anthropology @ the U of California, Santa Barbara. Current
Anthropology, Volume 41, Number 4. Aug-Oct. 2000)
AnotherbodyofcritiquesofcapitalismemerginginFrenchintellectualcircles(Schrift1997,BottingandWilson1998)offersaverydifferentapproachfromthemore
dominanttraditionofpoliticaleconomywhichprivilegesthetropesoflaborandproduction.InspiredbyMarcelMausss(1967)classicworkonprimitivegift
economiesandbyaNietzscheanchallengetotheasceticistethicsandutilitarianismofcapitalism,thesewritersincludeGeorgesBataille(1985,1989a,1989b),
JeanBaudrillard(1975),PierreBourdieu(1977),MarshallSahlins(1972,1976),andPierreClastres(1987).Insteadoftakingcapitalismasthesubjectofanalysis,
thesewritingsseektomounttheircritiquefromoutsidecapitalism,focusingontheradicaldifferenceofprimitiveeconomiesandthewayinwhichprimitive
gift,sacricial,ritual,andfestivaleconomiespresentoppositionallogicsandharborthepotentialfor
alternativesocialorders.Despitecertainshortcomings,theseworksaremoreconducivetoreconceptualizingcapitalisminsuchawayasto
revealthemultiplicityofeconomies,thetensionsbetweenthem,andtheirdifferentialembeddingswithinthelargersocialformation.ThepassagefromThe
GrundrissewithwhichwebeganisalsocitedbyBaudrillardinTheMirrorofProduction(1975:8687),buthedoessoinordertolaunchhisuniquecritiqueof
historicalmaterialism.BaudrillardobjectstoMarxsassumptionthatthecontradictionsoflaborandownershipincapitalismcanbeprojectedbackto
precapitalistsocietiessuchasprimitive,archaic,andfeudalformsastheirstructuralpivots.AlthoughMarx.challengedbourgeois
society,histheoriesdidnotgofarenoughtoextricatethemselvesfromtheproductivistandutilitarian
ethicofcapitalismfoundinsuchconceptsassubsistence,labor,economicexchange,andrelations
andmeansofproduction.ForBaudrillard,thisfailureto
achievearadicalbreakfromcapitalist
epistemologymeansthatMarxismliberatesworkersfromthebourgeoisiebutnotfromtheview
thatthebasicvalueoftheirbeingliesintheirlaborandproductivity.Historical
materialismisthus
unabletograsptheprofounddifferencebetweensocietiesbasedonsymboliccirculationand
societiesbasedonownershipandexchangeoflaborandcommodities.Notionsoflaborandproductiondoviolenceto
thesesocieties,wherethepointoflifeandthestructuralorderarepredicatednotonproductionbutonsymbolicexchangewithhumans,spirits,andancesors.
Historicalmaterialismcannotseethatthesesocietiespossessmechanismsforthecollectiveconsumptionofthe
surplusanddeliberateantiproductionwheneveraccumulationthreatensthecontinuityofcyclesofreciprocity(p.143).Itfailstorecognize
thattheydidnotseparateeconomicsfromothersocialrelationssuchaskinship,religion,andpoliticsordistinguishbetweeninfraandsuperstructure .Italso
perpetuatestheEnlightenmentinventionofNatureasaresourceforhumanproductionratherthan
anencompassingsymboliceldwhoseofferingstohumansmustbecompensatedthrough
sacrice.13BaudrillardsemphasisonconsumptionandtheradicaldifferenceofprecapitalistformationsowesmuchtotheearlierworkofGeorgesBataille.
Batailleproducedaverydifferentkindofcritiqueofcapitalism,onefocusednotonproductionbutonconsumption.Hefoundthatinarchaiceconomiesproduction
wassubordinatedtononproductivedestruction(1989a:90).Thegreatmotiveforceofthesesocietieswasnotthecompulsiontoproduce(whichunleashesa
processofobjecticationwherebyallformsoflife,includinghumans,becomethings)butadesiretoescapetheorderofthingsandtoliveforthepresentmoment
throughexuberantconsumptionintheformofexcessesofgenerosity,display,andsacrice.ThesocietiesofKwakwa_ka_wakwpotlatchfeasting,Aztechuman
sacrice,Islamicmilitarism,andTibetanmonasticLamaismallunderstoodthenecessityofnonproductiveexpenditure(Bataille1989b).Theysetasideamajor
proportionoftheirwealthforexpenditureswhichensuredthewastingandlossofwealthratherthanrationalaccumulation.Thisdestructiveconsumptionallowed
themtoavoidthedeadlyhandofutilityandtorestoresomeofthelostintimacyofanexistencewithoutaseparationbetweensacredandprofane.WhereasWeber
(1958)lookedtoreligiontoexplaintheoriginsofthecapitalistethic,Bataillelookedtoarchaicreligionforseedsofasubversionofcapitalism.Ifforms13.
ofarchaicritualprestationandsacricialdestructionofwealthcouldbereintegratedintomoderneconomies,capitalismwouldhavebuiltinmechanismsforsocial
redistributionandforlimitingitsutilitarianproductivismandincessantcommodicationofnatureandculture.Itsexpansionarytendencieswouldsufferfrequent
shutdownsandreversals.Baudrillardconteststhefunctionalexplanationthatprimitivemagic,sacrice,andreligiontrytoaccomplishwhatlaborandforcesof
productioncannot.Ratherthanourrationalreadingofsacriceasproducingusevalues,sacriceisengagementinreciprocitywith
thegodsfortakingthefruitsoftheearth(1975:8283).
Bataillesprojectcalledforwideningtheframeofoureconomicinquirytowhathecalleda
general
economy,whichaccountednotonlyforsuchthingsasproduction,trade,andnancebutalsoforsocial
consumption,ofwhichritualandreligioussacrice,feasting,andfestivalwereimportantcomponentsinprecapitalisteconomies.In
Bataillesapproach,religionwasnotanepiphenomenalderivativeoftheinfrastructuresofproductionbutaneconomicactivityinitself.Ageneraleconomytreats
economicwealthandgrowthaspartoftheoperationsofthelawofphysicsgoverningtheglobaleldofenergyforallorganicphenomena,sothat,whenany
organismaccumulatesenergyinexcessofthatneededforitssubsistence,thisenergymustbeexpendedanddissipatedinsomeway.Whatheproposedinhis
enigmaticandmesmerizingbookTheAccursedSharewasthat,inourmoderncapitalistproductivism,wehavelostsightofthis
fundamentallawofphysicsandmaterialexistence:thatthesurplusenergyandwealthleftoverafter
thebasicconditionsforsubsistence,reproduction,andgrowthhavebeensatisedmustbeexpended.If
thisenergyisnotdestroyed,itwilleruptofitsowninanuncontrolled
explosionsuchaswar.Giventhe
tremendousproductivepowerofmodernindustrialsocietyandthefactthatitsproductivistethoshascutoffvirtuallyalltraditionalavenuesofritualandfestive
expenditures,energysurpluseshavebeenredirectedtomilitaryexpendituresformodernwarfareonascaleunknownintraditionalsocieties.
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BataillethoughtthattheincessantgrowthmachinethatisthepostWorldWarIIU.S.economycouldbedeectedfromacatastrophicexpenditureonviolentwarfare
onlybypotlatchingtheentirenationaleconomy.Ingivingawayitsexcesswealthtopoorernations,asintheMarshallPlantorebuildwartornEurope,theUnited
StatescouldengageinanonmilitaryrivalryforprestigeandinuencewiththeSovietUnion,thatothercenterofindustrialmodernitysradicalreductionof
nonproductiveexpenditure.14Thus,Bataillewishedtoresuscitateanimportantdimensionoftheeconomy,nonproductiveexpenditure,thathasallbutdisappearedin
bothcapitalistandstatesocialistmodernity.
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Sacrificial expenditure challenges the logic of accumulation that sustains consumerism
Yang 2k. (Mayfaire Mei-Hui, Professor of Anthropology @ the U of California, Santa Barbara. Current
Anthropology, Volume 41, Number 4. Aug-Oct. 2000)
Scholars such as Jean-Joseph Goux (1998) have pointed to a troubling overlap between Batailles views on
luxury and sacricial expenditure and postmodern consumer capitalism. Consumer capitalism is also
predicated on massive consumption and waste rather than on the thrift, asceticism, and
accumulation against which Bataille directed his theory of expenditure. It exhibits potlatch
features in the tendency for businesses to give goods away in the hope that supply creates its own
demand; it collapses the distinction between luxury and useful goods and between need and desire
(Goux 1998). Unlike modernist capitalism, postmodern consumer capitalism is driven by consumption
rather than production. Thus, Batailles vision of the ritual destruction of wealth as defying the principles
of accumulative and productive capitalism does not address this different phase of consumer capitalism,
whose contours have only become clear since his death in 1962. It seems to me that despite their overt
similarities, the principles of ritual consumption and those of consumer capitalism are
basically incompatible. If Bataille had addressed our consumer society today, he would have said
that this sort of consumption is still in the service of production and productive accumulation,
since every act of consumption in the world of leisure, entertainment, media, fashion, and home de
cor merely feeds back into the growth of the economy rather than leading to the nality and loss of
truly nonproductive expenditure. Even much of modern warfare is no longer truly destructive but tied
into the furthering of military-industrial production. Nor, despite its economic excesses, does our
consumer culture today challenge the basic economic logic of rational private accumulation
as a self-depleting archaic sacricial economy does.15 Furthermore, capitalist consumption is
very much an individual consumption rather than one involving the whole community or
social order.
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Alternative Solves Extincton
Only a confrontation with the violence of human ritual can prevent extinction
WendyHamblet,AsstProfPhilosophyatAdelphiUniversity,2004
[SacredMonstrous:AReflectiononViolenceinHumanCommunitiesp.713]
Theontologicalassumptionsandlogicalmechanismsthatstructureouractionsandareplayedoutin
ourexperiencesissuefromanexistentialgroundfardeeperandmorecomplexthancanbefathomed
byrationalanalysis,andtheyexerciseapowerfargreaterthanthatofrationalargumentafactthat,untilthepostmodernera,perhapsNietzschealonehillyappreciated.
Nevertheless,persistentmechanismsstructuringsequencesofactionscanberationallyanalyzed.Theycanbeidentified,trackedandemployedasaninterpretivedevicetoindicatepossibilities
forfutureactions.Persistentmechanismshavebeentracedoverlifetimes,overgenerationsoflifetimes,overcenturiesandevenmillennia.Thisisbecausesequencesofactionsrepeatedover
longperiodsoftimebecomeinscribedintothebodiesoftheparticipants,justas,overtime,sequencesofpracticesbecomeinscribedintothe"bodies"ofparticipatingculturesinto[p.8]the
painfulrecollectionsoftheirelders,intothesubmissivetimidityoftheirwomenfolk,intothefleshyexpectationsoftheiryoung.Bodilypracticescometosettledeepintotheresentmentriddled,
guiltprone,swaggeringortimorousmaterialityoftheirprogeny.Actionsrepeatedoverlongperiodsbecome"ritualized."Thatis,theytakeon,byvirtueoftheirtimedefyingpersistence,a
portentousseriousnessa"sacred"importinthemindsofpractitionersandtheirinheritors.Thisishowtraditionsareformedandcometoassumea"timelessvalidity."Thepracticesthatmark
individualsasbelongingtoaculturalgroup,andthatmarkculturesasselfidenticalovertimeanddistinctfromalienothers,comeeventuallytobeobsessivelyregulatedwithstrictgovernance
overtheplace,time,andcircumstancesoftheirrepetition.Allmannerofvaluableandnotsovaluablepracticesbecomepartofapeopleinthisway.Peoplebecomeweddedtotheircustoms
("rituals"inethologicalparlance).Givingupwhatwedocomestobeequatedwithgivingupwhoweare,forsakingthegloryofourpastsandbetrayingourdestinies.Thusritualsacquirea
timehonouredweightinacommunity.Theircommunicativepowerextendstheidentityandindeedoften,inthebeginning,theverylifeofthegroupacrossvastlyfluctuatingpoliticoeconomic
circumstances.Ritualscompriseamediumofcontinuance,apowerfullyconservativeforce,preciselybecausetheycomposeakindofcommunication,themostconcretekind,Rituals,as
sequencesofactionsrootedinpragmaticinteractions,conveythetraditional"wisdom"thatregulatesthelifeofthegroupmattersofhygiene,sexualpractice,marriagecustom,ritessurrounding
birthanddeath,andespeciallyritesofpassageinitiatingnewcomerstofullmembershipinthefold.Manyofthepracticespersistinginthiswaywereoriginallyadaptiveandmanyremaincrucial
tothehealthycontinuanceofthegroup.Whethertheyremainadaptivewithintheevolvingsocialunitornot,their"goodness"iscategoricallyaffirmedwitheachrepetitionbyeachnew
generation,perceivedasempiricallytestedandreconfirmedacrosstime.Ritualtraditionsthusbecomeemotionallysignificant,utterlytangible,materiallyembeddedrealities,andthoughtheir
originsandfunctionsmayhavebecomeutterlylosttothegroup'smemoryorshroudedinmyth,theircommunicativepowerremainsfullyfunctionalevenwithoutmemoryor
ritualtraditionsdonotsimplyconveyrationallyidentifiableandmeaningful
informationideologies.Infactsomeritualsdonotconveyanyexplicitmessagesatall,but,rather,
theycompriseaninformingprocessthatdirectly"affects"(inallthemultivocalsensesinwhichthis
termisclassicallyunderstood)theaddresseeasmuchastheaddressor.Manyscholars,likeMircea
Eliade,havearguedthatthetruthsexpressedinmythscompriseontologicalandideological
disclosuresthatdictatevisionsofcosmicrealityandpatternsofdominanceandexchange.However,if
understanding.'Therefore
mythsarethesymbolicexpressionofdeeper,older,experientialtruths,ascontemporaryscholarshipnowagrees,thenitisreasonabletoaccepttheclaimofmany
anthropologiststhatourthinkingandourbehaviorstodayremaininformedbythepracticesrepeatedbyourdistantforbears.[p.9]Experiencesspeaktothecoreof
ourpsyches.Theyseepintotheverysinewsofourbodiesandcarvethemselvesintoourfeelingsanddesiressothatnew'needs"cropupwhereoldpracticeshave
gonebefore,newneedsthatnowrequiresatisfaction.WalterBurkertexplainsthisbiologicalprocesscalled"imprinting":Biologyhasdrawnattentiontothe
phenomenonof"imprinting,"anirreversiblemodificationbyexperience,distinctfromnormallearningbytrialanderror;itismostnotableinearlystagesoflife.In
fact,religiousattitudesseemtobelargelyshapedbychildhoodexperienceandcanhardlybechangedbyarguments;thispointstotheimprintingeffectsofritual
tradition.4Thereareotherindicationsthatritualpracticeshavepowerfulandlastingeffects.Sincetheritualspracticedbyearlyhumancommunitieswerealmost
entirelyritualsofmurder,tortureandexpulsion,longstandingritualsmayverywellhavemanipulatedtheevolutionarychain.Afterall,ritualmurders,ritual
castrations,andritualexpulsionsareveryrealextinction,veryrealclosureofcertaingeneticlines,veryrealejectionfromthegeneticpoolofthesocialgroup.Thus,
thepowerfulindividualswhooversawtherituallifeofthecommunity(priests,kings,medicinemen)couldnotonlyselfselectforsurvival.Theywereinapositionto
fixandmanipulatethebiologicalaswellasthereligiousandmoralcompositionofthegroupanddefine,byeliminationofthe"contaminating"elements,themarkers
ofidentitypeculiartoit.5Foranumberofsoundreasons,then,thepowerofritualhistoriesandtheirmythologicalexpressionsneedstobetakenseriously.Thusit
seemsimportantforthinkinghumanbeingstoexaminenotonlytheirpresentritualsandtheirrecenthistories,fortracesoftheinformingviolences,buttoconsider
aswelltheritualsthatwerepracticedbyourancestorsinthedistantpastofhumantime.Granted,thisexaminationofselfandspeciesmayexposethingsmore
comfortablyleftconcealed.AsEdwardShilshasassertedinhisarticle"TheSanctityofLife":Topersonswhoarenotmurderers,concentrationcampadministrators
ordreamersofsadisticfantasies,theinviolabilityofhumanlifeseemstobesoselfevidentthatitmightappearpointlesstoinquireintoit.Toinquireintoitis
embarrassingaswellbecause,onceraised,thequestionseemstocommitustobeliefsthatwedonotwishtoespouseandtoconfrontuswithcontradictionswhich
seemtodenywhatisselfevident.6ThusIdonotexpectthatanexposureofthecontinuitybetweenourcurrentsupposedlybenignselfdefiningpracticesandthe
bloodypracticeswherebyhumancommunitieshavehistoricallytakenshapewillprovereassuringofourassumptionsofthemoralprogressofthespecies.But,
hopefully,thisexposurewillrequireustolookatourselvesdifferently.PerhapsitwillunsettletheselfrighteousassumptionspeculiartoWesterncapitalistnationsand
forceus,as[p.10]individuals,toquestionourownbehaviorsandsuspectapersonalquotaofthelegacyofviolence.Ancientritualshaveprovenfascinatingto
expertsfromawiderangeofdisciplinaryfields.Psychologists,behaviorists,classicists,philologists,literarytheorists,historians,zoologistsandanthropologistshave
contributedtotherichdiscourseonthisintriguingsubject.Whatstrikesmeasuncannyisthenumberofcorrespondencesamongthevarioustheories,correspondences
allthemoresignificantforthediversityofinductivebasesgroundingthevariousdisciplines,forthedissimilarapproachesandmethodsofinvestigation,andforthe
diversityofassumptionsandimpulsesdrivingtheirpursuitsforinsight.Ishallassumethatthemysteriouscorrespondencesamongthetheoriescanofferusafirm
groundforthoughtaboutthenatureofourspecies'earlyritualhistories.TheExaggeratedandtheGrotesqueThedebateoverritual'spenetrationintohumanpsyches
andculturalformsfirstbeganinthe1960swiththeshockingclaimofbehavioralphysiologistKonradLorenzthathumanadaptiverituals,designedtoensurespecies
survival,hadturnedmaladaptiveearlyinthedawnofhumantime,thwartingthehealthydevelopmentofthespeciesinthedirectionofagrosslyexaggerated
aggressiveness.Inhismasterpiece,OnAggression>7Lorenzdoesnotsimplyclaimthathumansmaintainbeastlyinstincts,but,rather,thatthebeastsaremore
adaptivelyevolvedthanhumankindandthuslessdisposedthanhumanstomurdertheirownkind.Lorenzexplainsthat,inearlyhumans,thedevelopmentofcultural
artifactsrapidlyoutpacedbiologicalevolution.Humansdevelopedanarsenalofweaponryofunparalleleddestructivepotentialandvarietyofform,whilefailingto
developtheinhibitors,naturaltoanimals,thatwoulddiscouragetheirturningthoseweaponsuponeachother.Lorenz'spointispreciselythathumansaredifferent
fromanimals(apointlosttomanyofLorenz'smorecriticalreaders8).Animalsadaptedmoreeffectivelytoenvironmentalchangesalongaslowerevolutionarypath
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sothathealthybrakingmechanismskeptpacewiththeirdestructivepotential.Humanbeingswerenotso"evolutionarily"lucky.Intraspecificaggressionis
originallyanadaptiveprocess,Lorenzexplains.Itdevelopsinspeciestoservefourimportantselective
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functions.First,ithelpstomaintainanevendistributionofanimalsoveragiveninhabitablearea.Second,itaidsinsexualselection.Therivalfightnaturallyselects
thehardier,moreaggressivefighterstocommandbothterritoriallyandsexually.Therebyathirdbenefitisaccomplished.Familydefenseisenhancedsincethe
selectiveprocessfavorstheevolutionofparticularlystrongandcourageousdefendersoffamilyandherd.Fourth,intraspecificaggressionleadstotheestablishment
ofarankingorderinthegroup,afeatureLorenznotesascrucialtothedevelopmentofadvancedsociallifeinhighervertebrates.Ironically,the"peckingorder"that
[p.11]resultsfromaggressiverivalryultimatelybringsstabilitytothecommunitysinceitcreatesasocialsituationinwhichfightsbetweenthemembersarelimited
totheserviceofsortingandorderingfunctions."intraspecificaggression,then,servesimportantfunctionsinthehealthyevolutionoftheanimalgroupandremains
adaptivewhereitslimitsareintact.Underrestrictedconditions,itaccomplishesthecooperationandcohesionthathindthegroupandenhanceitschancesforsurvival
inhostileenvironmentsandoveragainstotheranimalgroups.Humans,however,aredistinguishedfromanimalsinthisregard:humansevolvedveryquicklyintothe
kindsofbeingswhowerenotrestrictedbytheirenvironment.Theygainedarelativefreedomtiomenvironmentalexigenciesveryearlyintheirevolution,beginning
withtheirmasteryoffire.Thisremainsthecruxoftheproblemforhumankind'sexaggeratedlyaggressiveurges.Inaparticularlydisturbingpassage,Lorenz
tells:Obviously,instinctivebehaviormechanismsfailedtocopewiththenewcircumstanceswhichcultureunavoidablyproducedevenatitsverydawn.Thereis
evidencethatthefirstinventorsofpebbletools,theAfricanAustralopithecines,promptlyusedtheirnewweapontokillnotonlygamebutfellowmembersoftheir
speciesaswell.PekingMan,thePrometheuswholearnedtopreservefire,usedittoroasthisbrothers;besidetheregularuseoffireliethemutilatedandroasted
bonesofsinanthropospekinensishimself.!OLorenzexplainsthatwhenintraspecificaggressionexertsselectivepressuresuninfluencedbyenvironmentalpressures,
itcandevelopinadirectionthatismarkedlymaladaptive.Evolutionofthespeciescanthentakeaturnthatcanheirrelevantordetrimental,orevencatastrophictothe
survivalofthespecies.Aggressivebehaviorcan,morethananyotherqualitiesandfunctions,
becomeexaggeratedtothepointofthegrotesqueandtheinexpedient.Humanshavebeenparticularlyexposedtothe
illconsequencesofmaladaptiveselectiveprocesses,accordingtoLorenz,The"grotesqueandinexpedient"destructiveintensityofthehumanbeingisa"hereditary
evil"thatdrovetheearliestmentoslaughtertheirfathersandbrothersandneighbours.Lorenzassertsthatselectiveprocessesgoneastrayarewhatwearestill
witnessingtodayinelaboratedisplaysofaggressiveprowess,thosepervertedelaborationsofswaggeringmachismoandoverblownbravadostillpracticedin
obsessivelypatriarchalsocieties.Innature,fightingisaneverpresentphenomenonandtheweaponsandbehaviormechanismsthatservethatprocessarehighly
developed.Yetfightsbetweenintraspecificrivalsrarelyendindeath.Encountersbetweenpreyandpredatormayresultindeathbutthisdoesnotconstitute
aggression,onLorenz'sterms.AccordingtoLorenz,avictimsoughtforfooddoesnotincite"aggressive"impulsesanymorethanachickenintherefrigeratorincites
humanaggression.Animalsstalkingfooddonotdisplaythe"expressivemovements"thatsignalaggression.Ontheotherhand,thosesignalsareclearlydisplayedin
the[p.12]wayyoungboysthrasheachotherintheschoolyardoryoungmenbrawlinbarrooms,oreyedintheheatedexplosionscharacteristicofpoliticaldebates
orsportscontests(amongbothparticipantsandspectators).1venturethespeculationthatthemereinventionofatombombsbybeings
asflammableaswearetestifiestotheperversionofhumanaggressiveimpulsestoward"the
grotesqueandtheinexpedient."Lorenzdistinguishesbetweenritualstransmittedbytraditionandthosepassedbyheredity,butthedistinction
isamootone,Ritualsthathavebegunastraditionalpractice,liketheredirectedaggressionritual(aritualthatpreventsaggressiontowardthemateoranotherintimate
memberofthesocialgroupbydivertingittowardamoreremoteordefenselessobject)become,afterlongpractice,partofwhatLorenzcalls"thefixedinstinct
inventoiy"2ofthespecies.Thisindicatesthatritualstakeholdonewayoranother.Theywilleventuallybecome
identifyingmarksofthegroupwhetherconsciouslyaccepted,enforcedandtransmittedtotheyoung,or
absorbedintothebodiesoftheparticipantstodevelopintoneedsthatbecome,inturn,drivingforces
thatrequiretheirmeansofdischarge.PerhapsthemoststunningamongLorenz'smanyshockingclaimsisthepriorityofaggressionrituals
toritualsoflove,nurturanceandfriendship.Thelatter,explainsLorenz,developedovermanygenerationsastransformationsof"ceremoniesofappeasement,"
ritualsmeanttoredirectaggressionbyplacatingtheattacker.Intraspecificaggressionselectivepracticesgrown"grotesqueandinexpedient"arefundamentaltothe
humanworld,thousandsofyearsolderthanloveorfriendship,andsourceandoriginofthelatter.Lorenzasserts:intraspecificaggressioncancertainlyexistwithout
itscounterpart,love,butconverselythereisnolovewithoutaggression.13Evenlaughterinitsoriginalformwasprobablyanappeasementorgreetingceremony
developedfromredirectedaggression.'4Isuggestthatwecanstillwitnessitsaggressiverootsinthecruelwaythatchildren(andmanyadults)ridiculeotherswhoare
mentallyorphysicallydifferentorculturallyalientothehomegroup.Lorenz'sprojectistodemonstratethat,byobservingthenaturalbehaviorpatternsoftheanimal
world,wewilldiscovernotonlymuchthatwillremindusofourownbehavior,butmuchthatwarnsusthatourbehaviormaynotbeunderthestrictgovernanceof
reasonthatwebelieveittobe.Lorenziscommittedtocollapsingthepopularfallacy(thefallacyuponwhichwasoriginallyfoundedthedisciplineofanthropology)
thatallthatis"natural"isadaptive.Ourinclinationsmayalltoooftenfollowblindlythepatternedmaterialityofourhistoriesand,sinceourhistoriesareprimarily
murderous,thatisaproblemforhealthyhumanengagement.Manypeopletodaystillrefusetheevolutionaryexplanationforthedevelopmentofhumankindonearth.
Itnotonlycontradictstheirreligiousmythsandchallengesthenotionofhumancentralityinthecosmicdrama,buttheclaimthatweareevolvedfromapesoffends
theirsenseofspeciessupe[p.13]riority.However,ifLorenziscorrect,thecommonoriginofhumanandbeastisnotatalltheproblem.Itisthedifferencesbetween
usandtheanimalssincetheforkingintheevolutionarychainthatcausesourgreatestproblems.Lorenzhasfallenfromtheforegroundofthediscussionofhuman
naturelargelybecauseheemploysthelanguageof"instincts"tospeakabouthumanbehavioraldispositions.Theconceptofinstincthaslostfavourinphilosophical
andsocialscientificdiscoursenotmerelybecausethattermremindsusofthediscomfitingfactofouranimalancestry,butbecausetheadmissionofinstinctive
behaviorssuggestsa"biologicalfatalism"thatprecludestheviabilityofanalyticalsolutionstohumanproblems."Instinctsaremorallyblindandthusitisdisturbingto
thinkourbehaviorsundertheirsway.ButitisimportanttonotethatLorenzhimselfwasnobiologicalfatalist.Hefirmlybelievedthatwecan,overtime,altereven
fundamentaldispositions.Buthisfinalanalysisofthehumansituationwasnotoverlyoptimistic,astheconcludingwordsofhisbooktestify:howabjectlystupidand
undesirablethehistoricalmassbehaviorofhumanityactuallyis.16Lorenzdoesnotintendtoclearhumanbeingsofthechargeofmaladaptivebehaviors.Rather,he
wantsthehistoryofthatinaladaptativenesstostandasanethicalwarningtothespecies.Unlesswedevelophealthierritualsof
engagement,wearedoomedtothebiologicallyjustdesertsofspeciesextinction.
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Sacrifice confronts the horrific violence dripping through our language of justice and
peace. The aff dooms us to excessive murder in the name of the good.
The problem with equating Bataille and Kierkegaard is that the depiction of sacrificing the low for the
high suggests a more conventional moral position than Bataille puts forth, one where sacrifices are
understood as good, in the name of a greater good, whether we reach this good or not. This is precisely the position Bataille sets out to
resist, however, and not only because, as he puts it, "we do not possess the excessive store of strength necessary to attain the fulfillment of our sovereignty" (1962,
167). The problem is more one of the value or direction of our exertions than of their strength or brute force. Some of our exertions are good but others are evil.
Sovereignty actually takes us in the latter direction, with our sacrifices authenticated but in the name of
something other than the good, perhaps something not higher but lower. Bataille's own words to this effect are that "Evil-an
acute form of Evil-has a sovereign value for us. But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a 'hypermorality" (4973, unpaginated preface). indeed, his view is that our
ultimate aspirations will be misunderstood unless we see them less on the side of good than of evil. When he calls for a hypermorality, he demands we recognize that in fully accounting for
ourselves, the prohibition of evil aspirations does not suffice. Here Bataille invokes Sade to represent sovereign aspirations as entirely gratuitous, what Bataile calls "the need for an existence
freed from all limits" (1962, 162). Sade is an exemplar to show us that we have such aspirations. What we can see in him, says Bataille, "is the ruinous form of eroticism. Moral isolation means
"pleasure is . . close to
ruinous waste" (1962, 166), with "[e]rotic conduct ... the opposite of normal conduct as spending is the
opposite of getting" (1962, 166). In this view, we regularly engage in behaviors that actually amount to
an extravagant exercise in" squander[ing ourselves] ... to no real purpose" (1962, 166). Moreover, these include both
that all the brakes are off; it shows what spending can really mean" (1962, 167). One thing such spending shows, according to Bataile, is that
sexual behaviors as well as others far more extreme, &uta&ty aa munlcc are further steps in the same direction. Similarly prosti tution, coarse language and everything to do with eroticism and
infamy play their part in turning the world of sensual pleasure into one of ruin and degradation. Our only real pleasure is to squander our resources to no purpose, just as if a wound were bleeding
away inside us; we always want to be sure of the uselessness or the ruinousness of our extravagance. We want to feel as remote from the world where thrift is the rule as we can. As remote as we
can: that is hardly strong enough; we want a world turned upside down and inside out. The truth of eroticism is treason. (Bataille 1962, 166-67) The purpose of offering a series of such strong,
disturbing characterizations is not to dismiss ordinary moral values but to supplement them, to say that such values are not enough for us. At the same time that we outlaw and condemn all of
these ruinous squanderings, our sovereign aspirations demand them. The list includes brutality, murder, prostitution, swearing, sex, infamy, ruin, degradation, and finally treason. These are
activities we must prohibit, activities we cannot allow ourselves to participate in, but which at the same time identify who we are. Hypermorality instructs that while we cannot take up such
behaviors, we cannot not take them up either. We cannot not squander ourselves in these and other ways, many of which are offensive of mention to ordinary morality. To help emphasize just
, the communal production of

a wasteful expenditure witnessed in common. Bataille uses the word "sacred" to describe the experience
of the witnesses, underlining just how fundamental and revelatory to us he thinks such events were.
Disturbing as it must be to us, he holds that the event of the spectacle of ritual sacrifice has power of
conveying a profound meaning, This sacredness is the revelation of continuity through the death of a
discontinuous being to those who watch it as a solemn rite. A violent death disrupts the creature's
discontinuity; what remains, what the tense onlookers experience in the succeeding silence, is the
continuity of all existence with which the victim is now one. Only a spectacular killing, carried out as
the solemn and collective nature of religion dictates, has the power to reveal what normally escapes
notice. (Bataille 1962, 16) It is a disturbing thought that only a spectacular killing, that only events of this
kind, can satisfy the human desire for the experience of sacred meaning. Along with a fear of our own immoral excess comes
how offensive, there is a passage near the beginning of Death and Sensuality depicting the spectacle of primitive ritual human sacrifice
the question of whether hypermorality invites unleashing this destructive excess. Would Bataille like to see us unleashed, perhaps in the style of Charles Manson, to produce our own spectacles
of ritual sacrifice? Certainly Bataille describes irrational violence as having an undeniable meaning, one that is revelatory of the sacred continuity alluded to in the previous citation. Soon after
that citation he similarly asserts that we seek "the power to look death in the face and to perceive in death the pathway into unknowable and incomprehensible continuity" (1962, 18). Where do
described above. In other words, to acquire the power to

know the unknowable, the production of transformative violence is the key. In the name of this power,
the production of violence is not an accident but a goal. This production is the key to the
transformative experiences that give our lives a sense of intensity, depth, and meaning. Hence, we always have
we find this power? We find it in transformative experiences akin to the sacrifice
ample motive to seek such experiences, to seek to bear witness to transformative violence. Given such ample motive, violence and spectacles of such violence will be produced. Moreover, no
morality will ever be able to put an end to these productions. No morality has the power to stop the persistence of the sacred violence in our lives, since this violcnce is the only key we have to
the experience of the miraculous, of the sacred. As for Charles Manson, Bataille would certainly try to understand Manson's and our own violence in this context of the sacred, of our need for
depth and meaning. The production of transformative violence is fundamental to our being, whether we are conscious of it in this way or not. He, then, would not regard Manson's production as
an anomaly, as unlike what he himself would be driven to produce. Yet in our lives there are also limits. It is unlikely that Bataile would applaud Manson for the same reason he ultimately rejects
Sade. They are both indiscriminate; they both go too far. "Continuity is what we are after,' Bataille confirms, but generally only if that continuity which the death of discontinuous beings can
alone establish is not the victor in the long run. What we desire is to bring into a world founded on discontinuity all the continuity such a world can sustain. De Sade's aberration exceeds that
limit. (Bataille 1962, 13) In other words, our wasteful consumption must also have limits. To actually approve of our own self-destruction goes too far. Later on in Death and Sen suality,
Bataille continues, Short of a paradoxical capacity to defend the indefensible, no one would suggest that the cruelty of the heroes of Justine and Jullette should not be wholeheartedly
abominated. It is a denial of the principles on which humanity is founded. We are hound to reject something that would end in the ruin of all our works. If instinct urges us to destroy the very
thing we are building we must condemn those instincts and defend ourselves from them. (Bataile 1962, 179-80) This passage is crucial for understanding Bataille's ethics. Usually Bataille writes
on behalf of the violence that remains unaffected by absolute prohibitions. Prohibitions cannot obviate this transformative violence. There is always ample motive to produce the experiences of
sacred transformation, i.e., to transgress the prohibitions. Yet self-preservation is also a
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fundamental value for BatailIe there is also ample motive to resist the violence that denies the value of the well being of life itself. As he says in the second of the above passages, we must
condemn what threatens to destroy us; our sovereign aspirations can be taken too far. In another passage he speaks of our need "to become aware of... [ourselves] and to know clearly what... [our]
It is when we are ignorant of these aspirations that

we are most vulnerable to them, enacting them anyway, albeit inattentively. In the end, hypermorality asks us to encounter our aspirations to evil, to join in what Bataille
sovereign aspirations are in order to limit their possibly disastrous consequences" (1962, 181).
calls "complicity in the knowledge of Evil" in order to construct what he calls a "rigorous morality" (1973, unpaginated Preface). What does it mean to encounter such aspirations, to join in such
complicity? Bataille's hypermorality requires that, as a culture, we appreciate the value of becoming more active in our productions of violence. From his earliest writings to his latest, Bataille
the decline of the practice of sacrifice in the modem world, beginning in the West, and he
always believed that such a decline only obscures our productions of violence, rather than doing away with them or the needs
always bemoaned
from which they stem. Two closely related discussions of this appear in his early essays "The Jesuve" and "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh," where Bataille
suggests that the decline of the practice of sacrifice has been far less than a blessing for us. He argues that the production of violence continues, the danger of this production continues, although
in the most unrecognizable forms. The examples given in the essay "Sacrificial Mutilation" emphasize both how easy it is to distance ourselves from this danger as well as how terrible such a
danger could be. They include a man twisting off his own finger and a woman tearing out her own eye, both terrible examples of our strange, cruel, and uncontrollable needs for expenditure.
Along similar lines, as a commentary on events of this kind, Bataile argues, The practice of sacrifice has today fallen into disuse and yet it has been, due to its universality, a human action more
sacrifice, with the goal of answering a need as

inevitable as hunger. It is therefore not astonishing that the necessity of satisfying such a need, under the
conditions of present-day life, leads an isolated man into disconnected and even stupid behavior. (Bataille
1985, 73) Here as throughout his writings, Bataile emphasizes two key aspects of the decline of sacrifice
that we ignore at our own peril. In the first place, he contends that the violent need that ritual sacrifice
was once able to address remains with us despite all optimism to the contrary. We don't put violence on
display in the same ritualized fashion, but the need remains constant. We've only become less aware of it
in ourselves, and less aware of ourselves as those who have need of such violence. Thus Bataille's first
point is that the need for nonproductive usages does not diminish when it is denied. His second point is
that this denial in which the need persists represents a decline in self-awareness, one with obviously
dangerous consequences. No longer do we congregate as a community to witness the violence we
desire to bring into this world and to affirm our lack of control over this violence, our lack of control
over this desire. We no longer congregate to produce the sacrificial spectacle, to produce thereby a
community of mutual complicity in the knowledge of the sacred continuity of being. We no longer
allow ourselves to organize spectacles in the name of the sacred that enact that which exceeds the good.
significant than any other. Independently of each other, different peoples invented different forms of
Such spectacles would have to violate every stricture of human rights known to us today. Yet we have not changed, according to Bataile, except for becoming less known to ourselves than ever.
We are now more than ever the condemned on the way to becoming the destroyed by way of imagining ourselves as the good. Even an utter catastrophe like the Holocaust does little to alter our
naive self-image. In his short piece on David Rousset's book The Universe of the Concentration Camp, Bataille refuses to side with the moralists because moralistic self-delusion here is our
problem, not our solution, There exists in a certain form of moral condemnation an escapist denial. One says, basically, this abjection would not have been, had there not been monsters .... And it
is possible, insofar as this language appeals to the masses, that this infantile negation may seem effective; but in the end it changes nothing. It would be as vain to deny the incessant danger of
cruelty as it would be to deny the danger of physical pain. One hardly obviates its effects flatly attributing it to parties or to races which one imagines to he inhuman. (Bataille 1991, 19) Based on
what we have already seen in this paper, Bataille can never accept the moralist's claim, distancing us from the purveyors of evil, no matter how attractive it is to join hands at a particular moment
of victory over an oppressive enemy. It would be inconsistent for him to specify a particular set of disagreeable behaviors and state that they aren't human, that they aren't ours. Even at this point,
standing in the ruins, the main point would be to obstruct our all-too-ready inclination to find ways of denying the cruelty at the heart of us all; to interfere with our desire to attribute all cruelties
to the monstrous one or the aberrant few. For hypermorality, this cruelty is precisely what we need to take into account of ourselves, rather than to deny it as the evil of others. How is this to be
done? Bataille faces a serious dilemma that a contrast between his hypermorality and Aristotle's morality helps to show. The goal of morality is to take virtuous behaviors into account, to make
them part of our lives by learning through habituation to enjoy right behaviors with respect to our pleasures and pains. Aristotle says that it is the job of "legislators [to] make the citizens good by
forming habits in them .... and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one" (1941, 952, 1103b). He continues saying that "the whole concern both of virtue and of political science
is with pleasures and pains; for the man who uses these well will be good, he who uses them badly bad" (1941, 955, 1105a). As he puts it, "We assume ... that excellence tends to do what is best
with regard to pleasures and pains, and vice does the contrary" (1941, 955, lIlO4b). How do we become excellent? We begin with instruction by role models, who demonstrate the praiseworthy
behaviors and the rule to follow in practice until we follow it automatically, internalized as part of our second nature of moral character. Such learning is by imitation of those who delight in
shunning the wrong pleasures, who delight in withstanding the right pains. Such imitation is difficult but noble and good, making us excellent. In contrast to these virtuous displays serving
Aristotle's purposes of moral instruction, what about the kinds of spectacles or displays Bataille proposes with his hypermorality? Whereas Aristotle's are displays of virtue, Bataile's would be
closer to displays of vice. Whereas the former invite imitation of the right relations to pleasure and pain, the latter would invite imitation of morally wrong relations. In the former case we have a
heroic role model. In the latter case, the role model would be closer to the opposite, to the traitor, the practitioner of vice; the role model would be closer to Sade. Hence, finally, whereas in
Aristotle, the learner easily accepts the identification with the role model and wants to continue to imitate his/her virtuous pursuits and aversions, in the latter case, such identifications would
hypermorality proposes that we

witness ourselves as we can never accept ourselves. In the sacrificial spectacle, we witness ourselves
far removed from the Aristotelian model, closer to vice than virtue, closer to evil than good, closer to
the other's pain than to his or her pleasure. For Bataille, only by witnessing ourselves in this way (as
we are) do we begin to take into account the cruelty that lies at the heart of us all. Still, how far in the direction of
have to be tenuous at best, always fraught with ambivalence and would even be unacceptable. In this sense, Bataille's
praiseworthy cruelty can we really go? Bataille bemoans the decline of the practice of ritual sacrifice, seeing in our cultural and personal excesses of violence the same need at work as in the
ritual sacrifice, albeit in a far more destructive fashion. But there can be no clear solution to this problem we face, even assuming it has been correctly understood and portrayed. Bataille himself
admits in discussing Sade that we cannot consent to practices that are overly destructive On the other hand, only the sacrificial spectacle would seem to be effective in showing us to ourselves,
with the prospect of such showing lying at the heart of hypermorality itself. What to do in the face of such a dilemma? It is obviously horrible to exercise cruelty, yet perhaps even worse to do
, "Our
ignorance only has this incontestable effect: It causes us to undergo what we could bring about in our
own way, if we understood" (1988, 23). Pie! asks us, in support of Bataille, to consider the only options
we have, Will. - [we] continue to "undergo" what.. [we] could "bring about." that is, to let the surplus
provoke more and more catastrophic explosions instead of voluntarily 'consuming" it, of consciously
destroying it through ways .[we) can choose and" agree to"? (Pie! 1995, 104).
nothing, to find no way to praise and pursue this exercise. Doing nothing, we can have the pleasant ease of remaining ignorant of our situation and dilemma. But as Bataile explains
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The tragic spectacle of sacrificial violence enacts the best ethical relationship to the horror
described by the 1AC. As we wound, we ourselves are broken. If we flay the affirmative,
we also wear their skin.
David Allison, Prof Philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook, 2009 [The Obssessions of George Bataille:
Community and Communication ed. Mitchell/Winfree p. 122-123, 127]
To communicate with another is to break through his integrity, his independence, his autonomy, his
nature-to intrude upon him, unsettle him, wound him. Communication takes place when beings put
themselves at risk, each putting himself and the other in the region of death and nothingness.
Communication is suicidal and criminal. It is striking that the longing to communicate with those most unlike ourselves-with sacred and
demonic beings-so dominates ancient humanity. The outer zone where the sphere of work and reason comes to an end is the sacred--sacrum,
Sacrifice-of goods, other animals, even of our firstborn children--is the most significant of all
human acts (OC 2: 1 3/VE 73). It is as fundamental as the satisfaction of needs. The word
sacrifice-sacrum ficio---etymologically means "to make sacred. In a sacrifice something supremely
precious-our finest harvest and livestock, our firstborn son-_is set aside from all use, separated
absolutely from the profane sphere. What is set apart from all profane use is separated absolutely,
definitively, in being destroyed. The knife that tears open the body of the sacrificial victim, tears
apart his protective hide or skin that kept him functioning, releasing blood and the writhing turmoil of
spilt organs, reveals the violence of a stag or boar taken from the wilderness, the inner violence of its life, reveals anonymous untamed forces in the child.
"separated.
The shaman, the priest, Abraham penetrates into the sacred zone, and there, in the violence of the knife and consuming fire, sacrifice reveals the sacred. The
sacrificial priest leaves the profane sphere to perform the sacrifice and act in the name of the people who identify with his act. Bringing to him of their harvest and
Those who perform sacrifice identify

themselves with the victim. The[p. 123] Aztec priests covered themselves with the blood of the
sacrificial victims, excoriated them, and pulled the skin of the victims over their own naked bodies. And
livestock, the beast of the wilderness, or their firstborn child, they participate in his deed.
we who consign to the sacred sphere our resources, the game from our hunt, our own children, identify with them, identify with the victims. The stag or wild boar
sacrificed would have sustained and nourished us, How could we not identify with our own firstborn child, sacrificed to the mountain god Jahweh? At the moment of
the blood sacrifice, the participants find their own identity plunged into the void. When the fire blazes upon a sacred victim, it blazes too on us .
We slash
open, crucify, or burn in holocaust the divine force that has been revealed in the sacrificial victim. The
slashings and fire we inflict on what is precious to us-our finest livestock and harvest, our firstborn son
wounds us irremediably. We communicate with wounds inflicted and self-inflicted. The communication
takes place between humans and sacred beings, each rent, wounded, exposed to one another by their
wounds. God and humans communicate in the violation of the integrity of their natures, in crime.
Continued.
Tragedies, whether the real tragedies of individuals or those represented in tragic theater, hold us in anxiety and
in fascination. Our energies are expended in contact with terrifying cataclysms of nature and with individuals
torn asunder, whose agonies rend our self-sufficiency. Tears and grieving disconnect the future and recognize that
the force and meaning of the past have come to an end. The forces of life hold on with strength and will to the
present with all its irrevocable loss, inconsolable with words and projects. Tragic art holds humans in thrall to
losses that they themselves have not known. Communication occurs when doctors, nurses, and truck drivers go to
the 50 million people today displaced by wars and famine, to perform surgeries in dusty tents, distribute sacks of
food, nurse children dying of AIDS. [p. 127] "What seems 'faultless' and stable-a whole that has a look of
completion (house, person, street, landscape or sky). The 'fault,' or defect can appear though" (OC 5: 266/C 30). They, too
are incomplete. They are not crystallizations in the intersections of the universal laws of the universe. "On the same level you find-the ridiculous universe, a naked
woman, and torment" (OC 5: 267/C 31). In current language, communication strongly denotes communication among humans; but Walter Benjamin found biologists
wondering whether in fact all animate organisms communicate, whether communication belongs to the nature of animate organisms. However, communication there
meant the transmission of information. In Being and Time, Heidegger, replacing the substantive account of things with the relational account of implements, reduces
things to the force that informs the user. The term communication, as Bataille uses it, to denote the contact of a sovereign being with what is other, is first the
communication with the sacred and demonic; it is also communication with other species, inanimate
things, the material universe. It is with our incompleteness, our orifices gaping open, and our
unanswerable questions that we communicate with a world out of joint, spread about us disconnected, a concatenation
of riddles, fragments, and dreadful accidents.' Indeed, communication with the sacred and with natural things is prior to communication with other humans.
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Alternatives Solves Ontology

Sacrifice enacts ecastic community, celebrating a non-servile ontology beyond enslavement
to fear of loss
JesseGoldhammer2005
Iproposetoassumeasalawthathumanbeingsareneverunitedwitheachotherexceptthroughtears
orwounds,anideathathasacertainlogicalforceinitsfavor.Whenelementsarrangethemselvesto
createthewhole,thisiseasilyproducedwheneachofthemloses,throughatearinitsintegrity,aportion
ofitsparticularbeingforthebenefitofthecommunalbeing.Initiations,sacrifices,andfestivals
representjustsuchmomentsoflossandcommunicationbetweenindividuals.78Thispassage
capturestheimportantinterconnectednessofsacrifice,ontology,andcommunityinBataille's
thought.Humanbeingsarenotunitedbyself
interestoraltruism;theyarenotboundtogetherbyfear,
faith,orcontract.Com
p.184munitybeginsonlywhenuseless,violent,andwastefulactivities
forcehumanstoconfrontdeath,callingtheintegrityoftheirselvesintoquestion.This
confrontationwithnonbeingisliberatingbecauseitgeneratesanonservileontology:Indeed,inthis
stateofbeing,oneisnotevenaslavetoone'sself.Bataillewrites:"Thesacrificialtearopeningthe
festivalisaliberatingtear.Theindividualwhoparticipatesinthelossisvaguelyawarethatthisloss
engendersthecommunitysustaininghim.""Communityandlibertythusparadoxicallyariseduring
frenzied,violentmomentsofselfdisintegration,whencommunicationbetweenindividualsis
nondiscursiveandecstatic.ThegroupAc6phale,Bataille'sfinalcollaborationofthe393as,attemptedtousesacrificialpracticesin
ordertoconjureaBatailliancommunityintoexistence.UnliketheCercleorContreAttaque,Acbphalewasasecretsocietywhosemembers
expressednointerestinengaginginpoliticsororganizingamassmovement.Instead,Acphalemetandconductedsacrificialritesinthe
SaintNomlaBretbcheforestoutsideParis.InanefforttopracticewhattheCollegehadbeencontentmerelytodebate,Acphalesoughtto
reconstitutethesacredineverydaylife.Itsgoal,accordingtoStoekl,was"tostimulatetherebirthofthekindofsocialvaluesBatafflehad
espousedintheCritiquesocialeessays:expenditure,risk,loss,sexuality,death?'8IncreatingAc6phale,Bataillewishedtobypasspolitics,
whichhadprovedtobeonlyanimpedimenttotheformationofhissacrificialcommunity.ThemembersofAcphaleominouslycontemplated
conductingarealhumansacrifice,butnoonewaswillingtoplaytheroleofexecutioner.Thefailureofthesesorcerer'sapprenticesthetermused
byBatailletodescribeAcphale's"work"illustratestheexhaustionofBataille'sconceptofsacrifice.Thereisadirectconnectionbetween
Bataille'sreadingoftheregicideofLouisXVIandAcphale'sconjuringofasacrificialcommunity.Thesacrificeofthekingandofpolitics
preparesforthepossibilityofacommunityformedbyatragicbutjoyfuldispositiontowarddeath.Deathisvitaltocommunalformationbecause,
asRichmartremarks,"itrevealstoallpersonsboththeirfinitudeandextensionintounboundedecstasy."81Innotestitled"JoyintheFaceof
Death:'Batailleruminatesontheregicide'sprincipalmystery,whichinauguratedthediscdurseonsacrificialviolence:"Humanheartsneverbeat
ashardforanythingelseastheydofordeath?'Maistremarvelsatsoldiers'enthusiasmonthebattlefield.Sorelreflectsontheattractive,
contagious,andsublimequalitiesofmartyrdom.Bataillerespondssimilarlytotheimportanceoftheexperienceofsublimeviolence:"Itseems
thatasortofstrange,intensecommunicationp.185isestablishedamongmeneachtimetheviolenceofdeathisnearthem?'Batailie,likeMaistre
andSorel,believesthattheindividualexperienceofdeathpromotesakindofecstaticcommunicationthatpossessesimportantsocialeffects.
Unlikethem,however,Bataillepointstoafundamentaldisruptionofbeingastheimpulsetocommunicate:Thegrave,decisivechangethat
resultsfromdeathissuchablowtospiritsthat,farfromtheusualworld,theyarecast,transportedandbreathless,somewherebetweenheaven
andearth,asiftheysuddenlyperceivedthedizzying,ceaselessmotionpossessingthem.Thismotionthenappearstobepartlydreadfuland
hostile,butexternaltotheonethreatenedbydeathortheonedying;itisallthatisleft,deprivingtheonewhowatchesthedyingasmuchasthe
onewhodies.Thusitisthat,whendeathispresent,whatremainsoflifeonlylivesonoutside,beyondandbesideitself .Ecstatic
experiencelifethat"livesonoutside,beyondandbesideitself"isthebasisforthekindof
communicationthatrendersBatailliancommunitypossible.Thisexperienceisinstantiated
sacrificially,allowingthesacrificertoparticipateintheunrecoverablelossofthesacrificed.The
cumulativeeffectofsuchaconfrontationwithdeathisontologicaldestabilization,whichBataille
characterizesasapermanentlywoundedself.ForBataille,theregicideinvolvessuchatotallossthat
itaugurstheformatioiofacommunityinwhichallpoliticalconcepts,includingmanhimself,have
beensundered,leavingnothingbehindsaveunemployednegativityitself.WhileparticipatinginAc6phale,Bataille
heldthatsacrifice'stearingofbeingwouldjoinhumanstogetherthroughcommunicationthatinvokedaunique.communality:"Thosewholookatdeathandrejoice
arealreadynolongertheindividualsdestinedforthebody'srottendecay,becausesimplyenteringintothearenawithdeathalreadyprojectedthemoutside
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themselves,intotheheartofthegloriouscommunityoftheirfellowswhereeverymiseryisscoffedat...Thecommunityisnecessarytotheminordertobecome
awareoftheglory.boundupintheinstantthatwillseethemtornfrombeing.""
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Sacrifice breaks with the ontology of goods, enabling ecastic community beyond the
humanist subject
Chris Gemerchak, PhD Philosophy from Katholike University in Leuven Belgium, 2009
Bataille assimilated the wisdom of the underground man who realized the inhumanity of subjecting
oneself to reason and mathematics, calculation and prosperity, and who asserted the positive value of
letting pure caprice and whimsical desire command one's actions, even if-no, precisely because-it goes
against reason and common sense. Alternatively, I could have asserted that the foundation of Bataille's
ethics rests on a refusal to submit to the homogeneous economy of goods insofar as that is to forfeit the
fullness of our humanity, that one should not treat others as things insofar as that is to turn oneself into a thing among things, self-same, separate and
isolated. Neither response would have been wrong, but neither do they get to the obscure heart of the matter-the very obscurity of which is why it was and remains a
very challenging question, one that has stayed with me ever since that sweltry afternoon. For while it may be true that there are obvious answers, it is not necessarily
the case that they do justice to the question, or even understand the question in a deep sense. On the one hand then, it is possible to specify clearly Bataille's views
concerning ethics or morality as those terms are commonly understood: namely, as concerning the deliberative choices of a subjective agent, an individual who
autonomously determines the best course of action in the interest of the greatest good and according to existing norms. For it is precisely this style of normative,
utilitarian ethics that Bataille will challenge on the grounds that it is inadequate to the breadth and ambiguity of life. And this is because every term involved
in such an ethics-deliberation
and action, but particularly individual, interest, good and shouldis

representative of the very type of humanist ideology and representational thinking that Bataille sees
not only as distorting but also as alienating with regard to the human province. This is not to suggest that
Bataille advocates an unrealistic, anarchistic gesture of eliminating morality full stop. In fact the existence
of traditional morality is rather convenient in terms of having something against which one can resist.
What he contests rather is the hegemony of an ethics that adheres to the principle of reason, which,
as he asserts frequently, comes down to the calculations of interest for the good of the individual or a
community of individuals and is oriented toward survival in the future rather than life in the present. If he is to contest the
ethical perspective that guarantees the sovereign rights of these terms-'individual' and 'community,' 'good' and 'interest'-then the first step is to undermine the stability
of these terms themselves. To approach the core of Bataille's thought with respect to being "ethical"-or ethical being-we will thus follow Bataille's methodology as he
The first move is a

radical questioning-or better, putting at risk-of the ethical individual, the [p. 65] humanist subject
(individual or group) as the paradigm of an ethical being. That which undermines the individual perspective, and thus is at the
tries to unearth the component elements of traditional ethics from their sedimentation. This method involves a double gesture.
core of his ethical thought, is a moment of communication, an "inner experience" (l'exptirience intrieure) that reveals the existence of community. This will become
clearer as we continue. For now let us say that his new ground and paradigm of ethical thought will be community. The second move then, as just suggested, will be to
rethink this alternative "ground" of ethics and to rethink "the Good" which is at stake, a task that will engage us in an exploration of his thought concerning the
transformation of communal being, the being of community No Interest in the Individual Bataille was infamous for the lengths to which he would go to undermine
our habitual perspectives, and the fundamental target at which his various excesses took aim is the one habit it seems hardest for us to unlearn-the individual
perspective. As indicated above, the first step in any articulation of his morality is the calling into question of the subjective agent itself, the human subject understood
in the traditional sense of an active, self-reflexive identity or ego (the "I" or the Cartesian subject) who autonomously determines a course of action based upon prior
knowledge of its goals and in conformity with a doctrine of human goods and norms. In question is effectively any notion of a transcendental subject with good
The central problem to address when articulating Bataille's ethics of community is thus his
critique of the ideology of the subject qua individual, which is the primary obstacle to overcome if
community is to emerge. Yet Bataille knew how recalcitrant our mentality is when it comes to challenging this notion. He knew that the individual
intentions.
perspective is not to be swept away with a single gesture. Indeed, one of the cornerstones and constants of his thought is precisely the attempt to undermine the notion
of a self-identical subject-the subject as a thing-or the notion of identity full stop. One might even go so far as to say that the entirety of his anthropological and
religious thinking rests on the notion of the insignificance of the individual in isolation. This assertion, however, brings with it an entire shift of perspective concerning
our activities and values, our capitalist economy and parliamentary democracy, and of course our ethical doctrines. For with this challenge to humanist ideology as a
starting point, all those ways in which an individual affirms oneself and pursues ones own interest-right down to the very desire to persevere in being, to stay alive, to
banish death from life-are viewed as betrayal of the truth of existence: the truth of "intimacy." Intimacy, to be sure, is a term which resists positive definition. It is not a
state that [p. 66] can be achieved.
It is simply there in anguishing and ecstatic moments of self-loss or

coniniunication: anguishing because of the violence enacted on the individual who has the impression of
being torn, of dying to oneself as an individual; ecstatic in that the habitual perspective of being a separate
individual-of having one's own existence apart from others and the things of the world-dissolves in
communication with the outside, a brief moment of release that effectively extends one beyond (one's)
being and out into nothingness. These terms will be clarified as we continue. In short then, the challenge
of intimacy or communication to the hegemony of individuality is the hidden foundation of Bataille's
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identifiable morality. The challenge is precisely this: intimacy and communication occur in moments
where one puts one's existence into play by assuming the risk of death (se niettre ell'/e,4), such that
failure to do so, to flee from death or fear for one's continued existence in the future is to forgo the
truth of "sovereign" (free and useless) existence and accept a life of servitude: "Play ... leads to the
inoperable spirit (ci l'esprit dsoeuvr)" (OC 5: 234/US 208; tm); play has "as its end the indifference
to every end, being only an occasion to show a soul beyond the concerns of utility" (OC 12: 106). To the "obvious" answers to the question of Bataille's
ethics that I mentioned above, we could thus add something like this: to exist in the service of some interest, to subordinate present life to an end or future goal, to
judge actions according to their usefulness, consider the greater good or even think of consequences beyond the present moment ... in short, to work or employ one's
negativity in any way is a betrayal of the humanity within us, is a "fragmentation" of existence and the time of existence.
Continued
It is possible to pinpoint almost exactly the crossroads where this difficulty first became explicit. We jump to July 4, 1939, the date of Bataile's final lecture to the
loose association of influential intellectual figures known as the "College of Sociology?' Political forces and technological rationality had combined to bring Europe to
a state of critical mass, With the dying breath of the College, Bataille articulates what he claims to be the "final question of man, or, to take it further, the ultimate
question of being," which hangs in the balance as the group disbands, and its members go their separate ways. Now during his lecture leading up to the formulation of
this 'ultimate question,' Bataille refers to certain cardinal notions that had emerged in his most recent writings and that he would continue to reformulate and refine
with an increasing sense of urgency in the years that immediately followed.' Foremost among these is one of his most influential concepts penned in the seminal article
from 1933 ("The Notion of Expenditure," OC I: 302-20/yE ll-29) and pursued under different guises for the better part of thirty years, namely, the "principle of loss"
or "nonproductive
expenditure. With this he means violent, destructive, or "unreserved" expenditure

that is blind to and in defiance of recompense and that generates sacred, symbolic, or nonutilitarian
value.
In addition to, and perhaps in contradiction with, the active sense of loss as excessive expenditure that had
often dominated his thought to this point, in this final lecture to the College he also emphasizes one of his
other fundamental principles, the "insufficiency" of being(s)," which brings with it mutually implicative
ontological and anthropological connotations. First, the principle of the insufficiency of being rejects the
traditional notion that Being is something substantial and knowable (or even something at all), some
higher identity or essence that serves as a foundation and goal of existence. Being, rather, is no-thing and
nowhere, is movement and pure difference. Second, this principle also establishes the radically desirous, open, or social nature of the
human being. According to the insufficiency of being, the human [p.70] being is desire pure and simple: "revealed nothingness, an unreal emptiness, the presence of
the absence of a reality,"" which seeks to recognize itself in another being of desire, another emptiness housed within an external form. If one is not to close one's eyes
to an upsetting consciousness of the truth of existence, then one must be willing to acknowledge the fact that one is essentially nothing, an absence misguided by
reflection into thinking it is a presence. It is just such a revelation that Bataille, in countless ways, attempts to bring to light. But as suggested earlier, the principle of
individuation is always putting up its defenses to this abysmal truth.
Consequently, the insufficient or "incomplete" nature of the human being entails that the being in question is always and everywhere searching for something that will
provide it some self-assurance and restore its sense of identity. If the subject is essentially insufficient or incomplete it will attempt to fulfill or complete itself outside
itself, whether through production, acquisition, or merger. It would seem then that the human
being is defined by a fundamental

impasse: the desire to lose is coupled with desire as insufficiency, which quickly translates into the
desire of the individual to "lose itself in some other ['vaster being"] that exceeds it" (OC 2: 369/VE 250),
to gain being by losing it. Again, he declares a fundamental 'need' for loss as expenditure: "Men,
assembling for a sacrifice and for a festival, satisfy their need to expend a vital excess. This "loss,"
however, is not exactly irrevocable: "The individual who participates in loss is obscurely aware that this
loss engenders the community that supports him" And this brings us back to Batailles "ultimate question,"
which reads as follows: "[I]t is difficult to know to what extent the community is but the favorable
occasion for a festival and a sacrifice, or to what extent the festival and the sacrifice bear witness to the
love individuals give to the community" (OC 2: 371/VE 251). This simple opposition, proving
undecidable, would have a crippling effect on Bataille's attempt to identify a real community that would
remain faithful to his inviolable principles.
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Sacrifice shatters the ontologies of wholeness we use to rationalize the world
AlexanderIrwin,AsstProfReligionAmherstCollege,2002
[SaintsoftheImpossible:Bataille,Weil,andthePoliticsoftheSacredp.161163]
Becausesacrificeresistsrationalormoralpurpose,Batailleprovidesitwitharadicallydifferentcharge.Duringmostofthe,
rg3os,Batailleviewssacrificeasaformofcollectiveviolence,butonethatnolongeroperateswithinthedomainofpeople's
beliefs,servingtostructureandboundtheminpolitically meaningfulways.Instead,Batailleconceptualizestheeffectsof
sacrificialviolenceontologicallybecauseheidentifiesreification,notmoraldecadence,asthefundamentalmodernproblem.In
hisview,capitalism,utilitarianism,andparliamentarianismhavereducedhumanbeingstoservilethings.ThespiritofBataille's
diagnosisofthehumanconditionisnot,primafacie,dissimilarfromthatofeitherMaistreorSorel.They,too,arguethatthe
morallyregenerativepropertiesofsacrificialviolencewillservetohealhumanbeingsoftheirreification.ButbecauseBaraille
includesmoralityitselfamongthosephenomenathatcontributetothedecadenceofthemodernage,herejectshispredecessors'
concernwithareturntomoralandspiritualwholeness.Bataillecriticizesthegoalofhumanwholenessasa
religiousandphilosophicalfantasythatservesonlytoenslavehumanbeingstotheidealdictatesof
reasonandmorality.Furthermore,evenifwholenessweredesirable,sacrificialviolence,asBataille
conceivesofit,nolongerpossessesaregenerativecapacity.Rather,sacrificeisaviolentoperation
thatexposeshumanbeingstodeath,loss,rupture,andfragmentationelementsofaccursednessthat
Batailletreatsasessentialcomponentsofhumanity.Ratherthanallowinghumanbeingstoflee
fromtheirbasehumanityintorealmsofidealismandpurity,suchasreligion,philosophy,orpolitics,
Baraillesuggeststhatsacrificeoffersthemavisceralreminderthattheirhumanityisthoroughly
intertwinedwithwhathumansrejectasradicallyorher,namely,deathornotbeing.Thus,the
antidotetoreificationinthemodernageconsistsnotinregenerativemoralityorreconstructed
wholeness,butratherinaconfrontationwithwhatBataillecallstheaccursedshare(hapart
inaudite).14ForBataille,unityandwholenessareantitheticaltobeinghuman,whichavoids
reificationonlywhenitconfrontsitsownabsence,anexperienceachievedthroughsacrifice.
AlthoughBatailleradicallyrejectsmanyofthepreviousdefinitionsofsacrificialviolenceinthe
Frenchdiscourse,heretainsitsmostimportantfeature:communality.EveninBataille'shands,
sacrificialviolenceillustratestheparadoxofacommunitybuiltaroundviolentdestruction.Maistre
characterizedsacrificiallossconservatively:deathreinvigoratedpreexisting,divinelysanctioned,social
andpoliticalnorms.TheFrenchrevolutionariesandSorelviewedsacrificemorecreativelyasthe
collectivetakingofalifeforthesakeofanewsociopoliticalorder.BecauseBatailledefinessacrificeas
violent,unrecoverableloss,itcontributestoaconceptofcommunityfundamentallyopposedtothose
envisionedbyMaistre,Sorel,andtherevolutionaries.Republicanism,monarchism,and
anarchosyndicahsmallpresupposethepossibilityofauthority,eveniftheypositradicallydifferent
embodimentsofit.Baraille'sconceptofsacrificegivesrisetoacommunityinwhichtheactof
foundationnevercoheres.Whatbindsthecommunitytogetheristhesharedexperienceof
unrecoverableviolentloss.Sacrificecultivatescommunitybyfosteringanondiscursivecommunicationbetweenhuman
beingswhosesunderedindividualitypermitstheformationofanecstaticbond.Thisbondgivesrisetoametapolitica.l
communityinwhichsovereigntyhasneitherbasisnordominion.InBataille'sview,sacrificecannotparticipateinthe
constructionofrepublicanism,monarchism,oranarchosyndicalismbecause,liketheobelisk,thoseideasofcommunitybetray
theirsacrificialoriginbypositingthepossibilityofarenewederectionofauthority.Baraille'sconceptofsacrificeinvites
reflectiononwhatcommunitywouldbeifitwerenevertorecoverwhatwasviolentlydestroyedtocreateit.Thisisa
fundamentallyantipoliticalnotionofcommunityinsofar,asitsubvertsalltheconceptsthathavehistoricallymadepolitics
possible.AlthoughMaistre,Sorel,andtheFrenchrevolutionariesagreeonlittlepolitically,allpositatheoryofsacrificial
violencethatrequiresreplacementorrecoveryofthatwhichsacrificedestroys.
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Alternative Solves Resistance

Rational political discourse fails. Only claiming the sacred enables resistance to power.
AlexanderIrwin,AsstProfReligionAmherstCollege,2002
[SaintsoftheImpossible:Bataille,Weil,andthePoliticsoftheSacredp.214225]
How,inthecontextofacountrywithoutafuture,asocietywhosemoralbaseshadcollapsed,a
civilizationpoisedonthebrinkofsuicide,wasitpossibletofindmeaninginlife,toarticulateethical
positions,tospeakofbeauty,loyalty,love?Noareaofindividualorcollectivelifeappearedunaffected
bythecontagionofmeaninglessness,violence,cynicism,andsham(RCL,).Thelanguageitselfinwhichconventionalphilosophicalandpoliticaldiscoursehad
beenconductedappearedcorruptedtothepointofuselessness.Formany,wordslike"democracy,""freedom,"or"revolution"tosaynothingofthestillmorevacant
abstractionsoftheologyandoldfashionedmoralphilosophycouldelicitnothingbutindifference,orasneer.Theoldvalueswereunquestionablydefunct.Buthow
(fromwhatmaterialsandaccordingtowhatguidelines)werenewvaluestobediscoveredor"created"(BOGII,a73)?Evenifnew,legitimatevaluesweresomehow
toemerge,moreover,itseemeddoubtfultheycouldbedisseminated.Publicdebateonethicalandpoliticalquestions
whether
intheacademy,theintellectualandartisticworld,ortheparliamentaryinstitutionsofbourgeois
democracyappearedtoleadnowhere.Rationaldiscussiondegeneratedintodemagogueryor
remainedpowerlessinthefaceofimmediateorthreatenedviolence.Anendlessproliferationof
mutuallyexclusivetheories,claims,andprogramsfilledaplethoraofshortlivedreviews,bulletins,
journals,books,andmanifestos,yettheoutpouringoffranticintellectualenergygeneratedfewifany
meaningfulresults.Toarguepoliticalandmoral[p.215]positionshonestlyappearedimpossiblewhen
theverylanguageofdiscussionhadbeenunderminedbypropagandisticmisuseandwhenHitler's
exampleseemedtodemonstrateconclusivelythatnotideasbutbruteforceultimatelychartedthecourse
ofhistory.How,evenifgoodideascouldbedevised,couldtheyeverbeconvincinglyexpressedand
allowedthechancetoexertinfluence?Thebetterpoliticalandsocialideaswere,Weilarguedinthe
concludingpagesofReflections,themorelikelytheyweretochallengefundamentalsocietal
assumptions,andthemorecertainitbecamethatmediaenfiefedtothestatusquowouldcaricature
orignoretheseideas,effectivelypreventingthemfromeverbecomingmattersofseriouspublic
debate.ThesearethechallengeswithwhichWellandBataillefoundthemselvesconfrontedinthe
19305.Theyareissuesthatwillperhapsstrikeusasnotwhollyunrelatedtoourownexperience.The
difficultyBataille,Weil,andtheircontemporariesconfrontedwasthenecessitybothtocreate(or
discover)valuesandtocommunicatethem.Thesocialcontextrenderedthesetasksurgentandinseparable.AsWeilagainnotedinthe
laterpagesofReflections,thestructuresofeducation,information,capital,andpowerinEuropeansocietyhadcreatedasituationinwhichthosepossessingtheskills
andtoolsforeffectivecommunicationhadnothingmeaningfultosay,whilethosewithinsightsintothetruthofthesocialmechanismweredeprivedofmeansof
reflectionandcommunication,How(ifatall)couldthetwodimensionstruthandexpressivepower,contentandformbebroughttogether?Theproblemmayagain
strikeusasnotwithoutrelevancetoourownhistoricalmoment.
CONTINUED
Theelusive,"sliding"qualityofthesacredwasoneoftheconcept'smostimportantadvantagesfromBataille'sandWell'sperspective.Inclosing,Iwouldliketofocus
onaparticularaspectofthiselusiveness.ConnectedtotheDurlcheimianpolaritybetween"right"and"left"formsofsacralityisanotherfundamentalambiguity,one
BatailleandWeilturnedtoadvantage.InbothBataille'sandWeil'swork,passagescanbefoundinwhichsacrednessappearsaswhatcanbestbetermedatextual
phenomenon:aparticularwayofwritingorrepresentingbeings,relations,andpractices:aboveallamodeofwriting/performingone'sself.Seenfromthisangle ,
sacrednessorsainthoodwouldbeaboveallastyleofselfproductionandspecificallya
literarypoliticalattitudeofmobileothernessadoptedwithrespecttothenormalizing,monopolar,
monolithicpowerBataillelabeled"homogeneity"andWell"thesocial."Onthisreading,sacredness
appearsnotasaparticular,fixedcontentorattribute,butasashiftingstanceofperpetualselfgivingin
andasselfdistancing:astancethatmaintainsthegapbetweentheselfandthesocialorder,holding
openthatseparationorwoundasthefreespaceforcritiqueandspontaneouscreativeaction.Ifthe
sacredisseeninthisway,sacrednessor"sainthood"mightbeunderstoodasatacticalself
positioning
comparabletothatdescribedbyDavidHalperininhisdiscussion(withintheframeworkofanimpressivepieceofcontemporaryhagiography)ofopportunitiesfora
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Foucauldianqueerpoliticalpraxis.Halperinanalyzesqueer"identity"notasarigidessencebutasatacticalpostureofresistance.Queernessisnotastablefeature,
disposition,orsetofpredeterminedbehaviors.Instead,forHalperin,queer"identity"isorshouldbean"eccentricpositiouality"or"strategicpossibil[p.221]ity"
definedbyitsoppositionalcharacterandsubjectatalltimestoshiftsandrevisions.'Asanothertheoristhassuccinctlyphrasedit,"Thegreatvirtueof'queer'[lies]
preciselyinitsundefinability;[...]Thepointispreciselytorefusetheacceptedidentities,theexpectedandpredictablealignmentsordivisions."Whateveritsultimate
fatewithinthefieldofcontemporary
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theory,thenotionofqueernessas"positionality"illuminatesasignificantaspectofthewayinwhichnotionsofthesacredfunctionedforBatailleandWell.Bataille
andWellfrequentlydiscussedsacredness,heterogeneity,orsainthoodintermsthatallowthesequalitiestoappearasnamesormarkersforastrategicstanceor
"potentiallyprivilegedsitefortheanalysisofculturaldiscourses."12Forthesefigures,sacralitynamesanintellectualstyle,apatternofselfpositioninginpolitical
spaces.SainthoodaspracticedbyWeilandBatailleisasystematicallycriticalorientationtosocietyandpolitics,alwaysoperatingfromastanceofheterogeneityand
risk.Sacralityistheperformativeassertionofalterityandunmasterability.AsWeiliangoodorasBatailleanevil,the
sacredisa"sliding"positionalityofresistancetothenormalizingeffectsofdominantsocialvaluesystems,theperpetualreassertionofacritical"nonidentity.1113
Thissortofnonidentity,muchmorethanahaughtyrejectionofcommunalbondsassuch,waswhatWeilintendedwithherfamousrefusalto"liveinasetting
[milieu]whereonesays'we'andtobeapartofthat'we'"(AD,z6).Toposition!constructoneselfassacredistomodelamovementconfoundinghegemonicforces'
effortstoassignstable,manipulablesocialandpoliticalidentities(e.g.,"woman,""Jew,""philosopher,""leftist,"or"homosexual")correlatedwithpredictable
patternsofthoughtandbehavior.Weil'sandBataille'smobilizationofreligiouslanguageinpoliticalspacefunctionedasameanstoeludestandardgridsof
ideologicallocalizationandcontrol.Yetnumerouspassagescanalsobecitedinwhichbothauthorsdescribeandinvokethesacrednotasa"textual"phenomenon,
butasarealandpotentforcecapableofexertingaconcreteinfluenceontheworld.ThisispatentlytrueofWeil'sabsolutegood(objectofthesaint'sloveandradical
obedience),whichsheroutinelycharacterizesasabindingandtransformingenergy,an"activeforce"(E,336)whosepowerfuleffectsonindividualhumanbe[p.
222]ingsandcommunalmilieuscanbediscerned,bythequalifiedobserver,withaprecisionandassurancecomparabletothoseattainedintheprediction,
verification,andmeasurementofphysicalforcesbythenaturalsciences."Meanwhile,SuzanneGuerlachasshownconvincinglythatBataille,too,is
concernedwiththesacrednotmerelyasatextualphenomenonorliterarytrope,butasareal
affectiveforcecapableofgeneratingrealpoliticaleffects.IncontrasttohislateradmirersintheTelQuelgroup,preoccupied
aboveallwithtextualtransgressionandwith"aquestionofphilosophy,andofitsend,"Bataillehimselfpursued"thereligiousquestionofthesacred(which,since
Durkheim,isrelatedtotheimplicitlypoliticalissueofsocialcohesion)."AsGuerlacindicates,thispreoccupationhasbeenasourceofdiscomfitureforBataille's
antireligiousadmirersandexegetes,whohavegenerallysoughtto"evacuate"thedimensionofthesacredfromtheirinterpretationsofhiswork."Whichisit,then?Is
thesacredacriticalpositionality,orisitanexplosiveemotionalforceunleashedthroughcertainformsofindividualandcollectivepracticeandcapableofalteringthe
shapeofwhatitmaynolongerbeappropriatetocall"subjectivity"?Issainthoodastanceoneadopts,atheatricalmaskoneborrows,orisitaheterogeneousforcethat
borrowsus(andthattransforms,transmutes,perhaps"decreates"usintheprocess)?BitailleandWellrefusedtodecidethisquestioninbinaryterms,and the
protean(callit"formless"[BOGI,117])characterofthesacredenabledthisequivocation.Thereinlay
apartofitsappeal."Thesacred"couldpointsimultaneouslyandequallytoan"eccentricpositionality"
andtoanemotionalenergy,a"forceagissante"unleashedthroughthecommunicativepractices
thesewriterssoughttomodel.Preciselythisdoublevalencemadetheconceptvaluableforthe
revisioningsofpoliticalandliterarypracticeonwhichBatailleandWeilembarked,Yetifsacrednessisa
force(themotorofthe"sovereignoperation"),itisneverinthesetwowriterstheunilateraldischargeof
power.Onthecontrary,sacrality/sovereigntymanifestsitselfasperpetual"revolt,"never"the
exerciseofpower"(BOGV,zar).Sacrednessisthemobile,multifacetedcontestationofalleffortstofix
powerinrigidhierarchiesthatplacesomehumanbeings"at[p.223]thedisposal"ofothers(RGL,52,
8384).Thatthisstratificationandtheresultingexploitationregeneratethemselvesperpetuallywithinany
complexsocialorderasaconsequenceofitsunavoidabledivisionoflaboronlymeansthatresistanceto
oppressionmustbejustastirelesslyrenewed.SainthoodbecameforBatailleandWeilawaytoname
(and,bynaming,summon)therealenergyofmoralwakefulnessnecessaryforthisongoingeffort.The
sacredasBatailleandWellembodieditwasnottheengineofatheocratictyranny,noraninvestment
ofcertainstructuresofpowerwithsupernaturallegitimation,butrathertheendlesscontestationofall
formsofauthoritythatwouldconfiscateautonomyorclaimunconditionalallegiance.Thedivine(theimpossible)providedleveragefortherelativization
ofallmerelyhuman,merely"possible"powerclaims.Asthereligiousinsurgentsofallerashaveknown,menandwomeninhabitedbytheholyassumea
"marvelous,"thoughnodoubtalsodangerous,freedomvisvistheestablishedsocialorder(BOGI,270).ForBatailleandWell,suchfreedomwhichmaybecome
an"obligation"(EL,8o84)isthelibertytoventureperpetuallyintothose"places"(social,political,religious,erotic)thatare"mostrepugnanttodecentsociety"
(BOGI,270).Itisintheexperienceofthistransgressivefreedomthattheemotiveandpoliticaldimensionsofsainthood(itsdualaspectsasactiveforceandcritical
positionality)cometogether.Itistoparticipationinthisinterminableperformance,thenevercompleted"ritesofliberation"(270),thatBatailleandWeilincite.
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Sacrifice enacts a headless community, radically challenging all hierarchy and authority
JesseGoldhammer2005
Becausetheobeliskislikeanauthoritativepiledrivenintoafoundationalswampfilledwithsacrificialblood,itcannotreturntotheFrenchwhatthey,inafitof
revolutionaryfervor,destroyed.InthePlacedelaConcorde,spatiallyspeaking,anemptynotionofauthoritysurroundsatraditionallyelevatedone.AsDenisHolier
writes,"Bataille'sPlacedelaConcorde...istheplacewherelossisincarnateembodiedinamanwhoidentifieshimselfbyhislack.Theheadlessman,
Acephalus,risesupwheretheguillotineletinthefreezinggalesofemptyspace."'Holier'sobservationreveals
Bataille'sagreementwithMaistre:theregicidewasaprofoundlyevilact,whichMaistrelamentedandBataillecelebrated.RatherthanauguringthereturnofGod,as
Maistrehadhoped,theregicidekilledhim,leavinginhisplaceanabsencesocompletethatitforbidstheaccumulationoftranscendentalpower.Negativityor
destructionwithoutrecompense:suchisthefruitoftheregicideandthebasisforBataille'sconcept
ofsacrificialviolence.Theregicidedoesnotmakewayfortheobelisk,whichrepresentsnoneotherthan
thenextgeneration'ssovereignintentions.Rather,theregicidecallsintoquestionanyfutureclaimto
authority,leavingthePlacedelaConcordetorepresentnotaplaceofpeace,butratheroneofpermanentdisorientationandsubversion.Somewhereunderthe
obeliskremaintheimpressionoftheguillotineandthebloodoftheking.InformingBataille'snovelinterpretationoftheregicide,antipathytowardmorality,and
subversionofpowerindeed,hisattitudetowardpoliticsintoloisatrenchantrejectionofidealism.Herejectsalltraditionsofthoughtthatvaluetheidealorelevated
overthematerialorbase.OneofhismosteloquentcritiquesofidealismappearsinanearlyessayinwhichBataillearguesthatthebig toeis"themosthumanpartof
thebody."Usingthebigtoeasametaphorforseductivebaseness,Batailleexplainsthathumanbeingsrejectaspectsoftheiruniquenesswhentheycelebrateallthatis
nobleandpureinthehopeofmaskingallthatislowandimpure:Althoughwithinthebodybloodflowsinequalquantitiesfromhightolowandfromlowtohigh,
thereisabiasinfavorofthatwhichelevatesitself,andhumanlifeiserroneouslyseenasanelevationHumanlifeentails,infact,therageofseeingoneselfasaback
andforthmovementfromrefusetotheideal,andfromtheidealtorefusearagethatiseasilydirectedagainstanorganasbaseasthefoot.'OBatailleusestheimage
ofthebigtoetocriticizethemetaphysicsofelevation.Humanserrintheirbeliefthathumanityisuniquelyanidealachievement.Idealismisreason'sattempttohide
thetruthaboutbeinghumanfromhumanbeings.ThiserrorledhumanbeingstodemonizetheverypartoftheirbodiesthatBataillearguesisthemosthuman,an
exerciseinselfloathing.Withoutthe"grotesque"bigtoe,humanscouldnotstanderect,norcouldtheydifferentiatethemselvesfrombeasts.Thisobservationrecalls
Maistre'sclaimthatthegreatesthumanachievementsaremiredintheworst.Bataille'scelebrationofthebigtoeisareminderthatwhatitmeanstobehumanis
inescapablydeformed,dirty,base,immoral,material,andincapableofrationalthought.Atthesametime,however,Batailledoesnotseektoelevatethebigtoetoa
higherstatus.Itsvalueconsistsparadoxicallyinitsabjectness.Liketheregicide,thebigtoesymbolizesapermanentdestabilizationoftheboundariesestablishedby
idealisticthought.WhentheformerroyalexecutionerSansonguillotinedtheking,neithermonarchistsnorrepublicansimaginedthatthesacrificewouldbea
permanentlydestabilizingloss.BoththeRomanandChristiansacrificialtraditionsinstructedotherwise.DuringtheRevolution,theexamplesofBrutusandJesus
illustratedthatdifferentformsofsacrificialviolencecouldbeusedtodestroyaswellascreateauthority.Inthemindsoftherevolutionaries,andthenlaterinthe
writingsofMaistreandSorel,theconceptofsacrificialviolencebecameinextricablylinkedtotheformationofbothpoliticalandspiritualcommunitiesbound
togetherbytraditionallyelevatednotionsofpower.Sacrificeaccomplishedthisremarkabletaskbyskillfullymanipulatingthesacredcategoriesthatstructurepeople's
perceptionsofauthority.Impurityandpurity,sinandredemption,moraldecadenceandregenerationthesearetheduelingsacredpolaritiesalteredbysacrificial
bloodshedintheFrenchdiscourse.Sacrificenegotiatesbetweenthesetermsbyfosteringdifferentformsofexchange.Killtheking,therevolutionariesbelieved,and
therepublicwouldbepurified.Embracingasimilarlogic,MaistreclaimedthattheTerrorwouldpunitivelycleansetheFrenchoftheirsecularhubris.Morethana
hundredyearslater,SorelarguedthatproletarianmartyrswouldregenerateworkingclassmoralitysavinginthereligioussenseofthewordFrenchsocietyfrom
bourgeoisdecadence.Inallthreecases,thesacrificialdeathofonehumanbeinggeneratednewsocialbondsbyneutralizingandreconfiguringthesacredbasesofthe
oldones.Sacrificiallossthuscametobeassociatedwiththecreationofnewmorality,newauthority,andnewpoliticalregimes.SacrificialInnovationintheWorkof
BatailleBataille'sinterpretationoftheregicideasasacrificethatcannotrecoverwhatithaslostpresentsaradicalchallengetotheRomanandChristiansacrificial
traditionsaswellastotheirincorporationintotheFrenchdiscourseonsacrificialviolence .Unrecoverablesacrificiallossisaviolent
operationthatonlywastes.Inproducingnothinguseful,sacrificesubvertsallidealisticdistinctions.
Strippedofidealism,Brutus'filicideandJesus'crucifixioncannolongerparticipateinthetaskof
foundationbecausesacrificelosesitsabilitytoproducepopularauthorityorredemption.Inorderfor
authoritytobelegitimateorforredemptiontocleansebodiesorsouls,thesacrificialoperationmustbecapableofestablishingstable,hierarchicalboundariesbetween
sacredpolarities.Cathartic,expiatory,andredemptiveexchangepermitsthisdelimitationtotakeplacebecauseviolentlossisbalanccdagainstsomekindof
psychological,spiritual,ormoralgain.However,regicidethatdoesnotrecoversomethingfromtheviolentdestructionofthekingthatdoesnotmakesacredina
particularwayisuseless.Inthisway,Bataillianspcrificepermitsnoestablishment,noobelisk,nohighersourceof
powerorauthority,becauseitisatotallosswithoutsacredexchange.Ithasnocapacitytoestablish
order,as,forinstance,betweensacrilegiousanddivinebloodshed,orbetweenforceandviolence.It
canneitherrecover,normakeuseful,thepuresacredauthorityoftheking.Onlyifconceivedin
idealandcompensatorytermscanthecollectivetakingofalifedelineatebetweenhighandlow,
pureandimpure.IfthedesiretopracticetheartofpoliticswerecomparedtothemythofIcarus,a
favoriteofBataille's,thensacrificewouldcorrespondtothesun'sblinding,wastedenergy,which
meltedIcarus'wings,remindingallhumanbeingsofthefragilityoftheiractivitiesandtheir
existence.Batailliansacrificechallengeshumanbeingstoconfrontandtestthelimitsoftheirbeing,
withouteverallowingforthereestablishmentoforder.Itisaviolentandecstaticstateofpermanent
alternationbetweenpurityandimpurityWithnofinality,noconservation,andnoreserve,Bataille's
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conceptofsacrificereflectsnotjustacritiqueofidealismbutalso,morespecifically,ofHegeliandialectics.BatailleattendedA.lexandreKojve'slecturesonHegel
duringwhichKojvefamouslydeclaredhistorytobeover.Bataille'sconfrontationwithHegelianphilosophylefthimfeeling"suffocated,crushed,shattered,killed
tentimesover.""Ifhistorywasover,whatwaslefttodo?InalettertoKojve,Bataillewonderedwhatitmeanttoactfreelyinsuchacondition:"Ifaction("doing")
isasHegelsaysnegativity,thequestionarisesastowhetherthenegativityofonewhohas'nothingmoretodo'disappearsorremainsinastateof'unemployed
negativity'PersonallyIcanonlydecideinoneway,beingmyselfpreciselythis'unemployednegativity'(Iwouldnotbeabletodefinemyselfmoreprecisely).,12
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A2 A2
A2 Bataille misunderstands x (e.g., excess)
This argument is irrelevant--we dont have to prove Bataille is right about everything to
win that the aff is utterly incapable of addressing the states inherent tendency to excessive
violence
Sacrifice provides the key to understanding violence in human societies
JesseGoldhammer2005
Turnerarguesthatsacrificepermitshumancollectivitiestocopewiththe"negativesentiments"that
accumulateasaresultofhierarchicalsocialstructures.Hispointabouttheoriginofsacrificialritesispolitical:
thedistributionofpowerinanysocietyancientormo4ernproducesconflict,which,inturn,findsanoutletin
sacredpractices.Turneroveremphasizestheextenttowhichsacrificeservesasavalveforthereleaseofsocial
pressure.Sacrificehastoomanydiffer'entmodalitiesandmeaningstobereducedtoonefunction.Atthesame
time,however,Turnermakesclearthatoneimportantfunctionofsacrificeisthereductionofconflict,whichhe
characterizesasthefosteringof"generichumancommunality"UnlikeRenGirard,wholimitstheroleofsacrifice
tothereductionofintracommunalviolence,Turnerrecognizesthatsacrificeisalsoaritualstageuponwhich
communitiesplayoutsocial,political,andeconomicconflicts,sometimeswiththeintentionofrenovating
them,sometimeswiththegoalofreconfiguringthemaltogether.32Inclaimingthatsacrificefosterscommunal
unity,Turnerassumesadistinct politicalattitudetowardsacrifice.Thisattitudehingesuponhisrecognitionthat
sacrificeisanambiguousandprocessorientedformofviolencethatalternatesbetweenstructureandchaos.
AccordingtoTurner'sterminology,sacrificeis,ononehand,aprophylaxis,whichfunctionstomaintain,reinforce,
orconstructsociomoralboundaries.Inthisform,sacrificeishighlyritualistic,apreventivetalismanagainst
communaldisaggregationandharm.Ontheotherhand,Turnerwritesthatsacrifice"maybeanindicatorofthe
dissolutionofallstructuralfinesorboundaries,anannihilatorofartificialdistances,restorativeof
communitashowevertransiently,'133Incontrasttoprophylacticsacrifice,thisdescriptionofsacrificial"abandonment"capturesthecapacityofsacrificetodissolve
theboundinglimitsofsociallife.Together,theseopposingsacrificialimpulsesillustratethatthesacrificialprocessisnot,strictlyspeaking,amovementtoorfromanorderedsociety.Instead,the
sacrificialprocesscontainsoppositemovementsconsistentwithNietzsche'sApollonianandDionysianforcesthatcontributeindifferentwaystocommunalunityandcoherence.Describingthis
doublemovementjurnerwrites:Inthesacrificeofabandonment,theclassicaltheologicalnotionsofsin,redemption,andatonementallfindtheirplacesasphasesinaprocesswhichseeks
personalandsocialrenewalthroughthesurgicalremoval,interiorlyinthewill,exteriorlybytheimmolationofavictim,ofthepollution,corruption,anddivisionbroughtaboutbymere
participationinthedomainofsocialstructure.Sacrificeishereregardedasalimeo,orentryintothedomainofcorrununitas,whereallthatisandeverhasbeenhumanandtheforcesthathave
causedhumanitytobearejoinedinacirculationofmutualloveandtrust.Inthesacrificeofprophylaxis,structurecertainlyiscleansed,butleftintact;hereenlightenedselfinterest
Turner'ssacrificialprocessholdsintensionanddisplaysopposingViolentimpulses.Thesacrificeof
abandonmentrestoresa"primitive,"undifferentiatedunitytothesacrificingcommunity;theprophylactic
sacrificeinstantiatesmoralframeworksandstructuralbonds.AccordingtoTurner,prophylacticsacrifice"employsthemetaphorofdeathto
prevails.
establishorreestablishstructuresofsocietyandculture,withwhichorderlylifemaybelived?'Thus,theprophylacticsacrificecapturesthedominantmeaningofmartyrdom,whichusesthe
"metaphorofdeath"tohighlightasetofidealsorparticularwayoflife.Incontrast,thesacrificeofabandonmentgenerallymapstoscapegoats,inwhosedestructioncommunitiescathartically
sacrificeisnotexclusivelyareactiontocrises,tothenaturalorhumanforcesof
dissolution.Sacrificecanalsoservetosetinmotiondisuniingforcesinordertoestablishpowerrelationsona
newbasis.ForTurner,sacrificeisultimatelyapotentstructuring,restructuring,and"destructuring"force
capableofbondingcommunities.34Turner'spoliticalattitudetowardsacrificeisinstructiveforthinkingabouttheFrenchRevolution,whichencompassedsucha
participate.Finally,Turnerrevealsthat
varietyofsacrificialpractices.Paradoxicallyanachronisticandmodern,thesepracticesformedasacrificialprocessthroughwhichdifferentsegmentsofFrenchsocietyalternatelysoughtpolitical
protectionanddissolution.Inthehandsoftherevolutionaries,whowereselfconsciouslyawareoftheirintentiontotransformFrenchpoliticsradically,sacrificecametoservebothfunctions.
TherevolutionariesusedsacrificetodemolishtheOldRegimeandtoshoreupthenewRepublic.TheinstrumentaluseofsacrificeduringtheFrenchRevolutionillustratesthatthereisno
conservatismintrinsictothesacrificialmechanism.EchoingNietzsche,italsodemonstratesthatancientideasofcommunalviolencecanparticipateinaswellasmaskmodernpoliticalstruggles
.ThosewhodismissthesacrificialpracticesoftheFrenchrevolutionariesasanachronisticbarbarism
fundamentallymisshowthoseselfsameactscontributedtothedissolutionandestablishmentofpolitical
obedience.Accordingtothisviolenttradition,whichhassuchpowerfulrootsinancientWesternpoliticsand
religion,authorityandcommunit'beginwithneithertheword,thedeed,northecontract.Instead,inthe
forpower
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beginning,thereisonlysacrificialblood.
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A2 Kritik contradicts itself because productive/achieves good

Voting neg enacts the sacrifice described in the alternative text. Even if achieves some
external goal, that is purely an accidental by-product. At the moment of sacrifice, it is pure
expenditure without the expectator of reward.
Even if they win thats the alt is somewhat calculative, the aff and perms subsumption of
sacrifice to a political program links a great deal more. The fact that we are willing to risk
the 1ACs impact proves we are giving up the goods that block our access to the sacred.
If the kritik is productive, it is only accidently. The initial moment of the alternatives
sacrifice is one of pure loss.
AlexanderIrwin2002
[ProfReligionatAmherstCollege,SaintsoftheImpossible:Bataille,Weil,andthePoliticsoftheSacred
p.1415]
Revolutionisnotattheveryleast,notprimarilyameanstoapracticalend(theoverthrowof
capitalism,thecreationofaworkers'state);itisanendinitself,asacrificeindefianceoftheprinciple
ofutility.TheBatailleanrevolutionaimsnotatvictory,butatpureloss.Thepoliticaltriumphofthe
proletariat,ifitwereinfacttocomeaboutasaresultofsuchaneffort,wouldhavetobeseenasakind
ofaccidentalbyproduct.YetBatailleisnotentirelylimpidonthequestionsofendsandmeans.Certainpassagesin"TheNotionofExpenditure"
(includingthelinesjustcitedonthedesireof"themiserable"toenter"thecircleofpower")canbereadaspositingoverarchingpoliticalaimsforthesacrificial
revolution,thuscallingintoquestionthepurityof"pureloss"inthepoliticalrealm.WhilehechallengedDurkheim'sdomesticationofthesacred,thereductionof
sacrificetosocialutility,Bataillerecognizedthatsuchutilitydidinfactattachtosacrificialoperations(asMausshadshownthatitdidtopotlatch)andthatnotonly
sociologistsbutthepractitionersof"primitive"sacrificethemselvesmightverywell,ifquestioned,describetheirritualbehaviorsintermsofutilitarianaims.Bataille
didnotdenytheutilitarianaspectsofsacrificeanditsequivalents,buthedidmaintainthattheseaspectswere
secondaryandthatintheconceptofpureexpenditurehehadidentifiedsacrifice'sessentialnature.
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A2 Util Good
Utils search for the greatest good collapses into the greatest evil, for it imposes a false
bottle-kneck that ensures catastrophic expenditure.
DanStone,ProfessorofModernHistoryatUniversityofLondon,2006
[History,MemoryandMassAtrocityp.7073]
InhisIntroductiontothePrinciplesofMoralsandLegislation(1789),abookoriginallyintendedasthe
prefacetoahugetractoncrimeandpunishment,Benthamsought'torearthefabricoffelicitybythe
handsofreasonandofthelaw'.4Inthisfirst'scientific'penalcode,Benthamarguedthathumannaturewas
governedbytwobasicfeelings:pleasureandpain.Hebelievedthesefeelingsexistedasempiricalfactsandrequirednospecialproof.Butfrom
thisbasicpremisehejumped[p.71]toavaluejudgementthatpeopledesiredthemaintenanceofpleasureatalltimes,akindofpsychological
hedonism,whichhedescribedthus:Bytheprincipleofutilityismeantthatprinciplewhichapprovesordisapprovesofeveryactionwhatsoever,
accordingtothetendencywhichitappearstohavetoaugmentordiminishthehappinessofthepartywhoseinterestisinquestion:or,whatisthe
samethinginotherwords,topromoteortoopposethathappiness.[PML:11121Bentham's'calculusoffelicity',thesupportofthemajorityfor
agivenpolicy,requirednojustification,becauseitwasnecessarilybringingthegreatesthappinesstothegreatest
number.GiventhepossibilityforimmoralapplicationsofBentham'sutilitarianism,wecanseewhysomanytodayfeelappalledbyit.Forexample,howisthe
libertyofarapisttobebalancedwiththepainofthevictim?Benthamitearbitrationisbasednotonconcernsofequalitybutonvaguenotionsof'generalwelfare'.
Clearly,onecannotcountenanceaphilosophywhichnecessitatesadegreeofpaincommensuratewiththedegreeofhappinesstobeattained,andthathasnomoral
argumentagainstthemiseryofthefew.TheexterminationoftheJewswasjustified(whenitwasmentionedatall)on
similarutilitariangroundsthecreationoftheVolksgenieinschaft.Itwouldthusappeartobethe
ultimateproofoftheunacceptabilityofBentham'sphilosophy.ButcantheoriginoftheNazis'goalbeexplainedrationally?
Sinceitisborneof'irrational'fearsofracialpollutionandsoforth,thejustificationcomplieswithutilitarianism,butthebirthofthethoughtanditsrealisationdonot:
'OnlythetrulymadcouldhavebelievedthatitwaswarthattheywerewagingagainsttheJews.'5Thus,nomatterhowindebtedtotheworkingsofZweckrationcditdt
(purposiverationality)thebureaucracyofmassmurderwas,theutilitarianjustificationofgenocideforrhetoricalpurposesseemsonlytoscratchthesurfaceofthe
Holocaust.6TheNazisdidjustifytheiractionsonutilitariangrounds,andwithoutformallydeviatingfromthehedonisticpsychologyofBentham.Butonenever
escapesthefeelingthatthiswasmerelyacover.Despitethefindingsofhistorianswithregardtowhatordinarypeopleknewatthetime,sothatitisnolongerpossible
toclaim'Niemandwardabeiandkeinerhat'sgewujlt',7theexterminationoftheJewswasnot(otherthantacitly)apubliclymandatedpolicy.AndsinceBentham
himselfworriedthatincreasedstateinterventionwouldonlydiminishthepossibilitiesforthepursuitofindividualhappiness,theutilitarianclaimbecomes,intheNazi
contextofthe'55State',simplyanofficial[p.72]lie,althoughthoseinvolvedintheactualkillingsattemptedtoconvincethemselvesandothersoftheveracityofthis
he.AsSSObersturmfiihrerKarlKretschmerwrotetohiswifeon27September1942:'AsIsaid,Jaminaverygloomymood.Imustpullmyselfoutofit.Thesightof
thedead(includingwomenandchildren)isnotverycheering.Butwearefightingthiswarforthesurvivalornonsurvivalofourpeople.'8NorcanoneequateHitler
withtheBenthamiteidealofthelawmaker,evengiventheclaimthatthe'happinessoftheindividuals,ofwhomacommunityiscomposed...istheendandthesole
endwhichthelegislatoroughttohaveinview',thatitis'thesolestandard,inconformitytowhicheachindividualought,asfarasdependsuponthelegislator,tobe
madetofashionhisbehaviour'(PML:34,Bentham'semphasis).ThetroubleisthatBenthamequatedutilitarianismwithconsciouscalculation,henceusefulness,even
thoughthiswasnotconsistentwithhisbasicdefinitionoftheprincipleofutility.Inotherwords,forBentham,thegreatesthappinessforthegreatestnumbermust
necessarilybewiththeaimofincreasingproduction,ofprovidingbenefitsforitsrecipients.AndasHannahArendtremindsus,itispreciselytheabsenceofutilitarian
criteriafortheconcentrationcampswhichlendsthemtheir'curiousairofunreality'.9Whatisrequiredhereisautilitarianismthatgoes
beyondutility,thataccountsfortheapparentparadoxthatutilitariangoalscanaimatuselessnessas
muchasat'usefulness'.ThismightprovideaclearerresponsetotheHolocaustthanthestatementssotypicalofearliercommentators,caughtinthe
sametrapasBentham.They,ontheonehand,claimedthattheHolocaustmustbeirrationalpreciselybecauseitservednousefulpurpose.Itisusuallythefactthatthe
murdersdivertedenergyawayfromthewareffortthatiscitedinordertobackupthisclaim;asAlainI'inkielkrautwrites:'WeknowtodaythattheGermanswent
againsttheirowninterestsbyeliminatinganoftenirreplaceablelabourforcewhichfedtheirwartimeeconomy."Anemphasisontheusefulnessofthe'useless'might
providemoreinsightthanthosetheorieswhich,ontheotherhand,soughttoaccountfortheHolocaustwithinsomesortofMalthusianschemeoftheriddingof
surpluspopulations(Rubenstein/AlyandHeim),orwithina'Marxist'frameworkinwhichthelanguageofthe'JewishQuestion'wasmerelyafrontfortheeconomic
gainstobehadfromtheeliminationoftheJews(KrausandKulka).Bothinterpretationscanbedisprovedonstraightforwardempiricalgrounds )'An
interpretationofutilitarianismfoundedonuselessnesswouldbethoroughlyconsistentwiththelogic
ofBentham,butfundamentallyoutofstepwithhisemphasisonthebenefitstobederivedfrom
it.SuchasystemofthoughtistobefoundinthewritingsofBataille.Centraltohisworkisadenialthat
theenergywithinhumansocietyis[p.73]adequatelyaccountedforbythenotionsofproductionand
conservationcontainedwithinclassicaleconomictheories.Suchtheories,heclaims,arethereforethoseofa'limitedeconomy'.AsmuchacritiqueofMarxas
ofSmith,Batailleargues,fromhisessay'TheNotionofExpenditure'(1933)toEroticism(1957),thattheproductionanddistributionofwealthcannotencompassthe
entiretyofhumanactivity:Thelivingorganism,inasituationdeterminedbytheplayofenergyonthesurfaceof
theglobe,ordinarilyreceivesmoreenergythanisnecessaryformaintaininglife;theexcessenergy
(wealth)canbeusedforthegrowthofasystem(e.g.,anorganism);ifthesystemcannolongergrow,or
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iftheexcesscannotbecompletelyabsorbedinitsgrowth,itmustnecessarilybelostwithoutprofit;it
mustbespent,willinglyornot,gloriouslyorcatastrophically.12Indeed,Batailleaffirmsthatthe
excesscanneverbecompletelyabsorbedintotherationaleconomy,thatprofitwillunavoidablybe
squanderedby
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'dissipat[ing]asubstantialportionofenergyproduced,sendingitupinsmoke'(AS,I:22).The'general
economy'comprisesboththe'limitedeconomy'ofMarxistsandliberals,aswellastheenergywhich
cannotbeused'profitably'fortheincreaseofequipment.3Theexperienceofthis'lifebeyondutility'
Batailleterms'sovereignty'(AS,II:198).WhereBenthamtalkedofaffectintermsofpleasureand
pain,andthecontrolledbalancebetweenthemtobemaintainedbycalculatedaction,Bataille'sconceptof
sovereigntywastogivefullreigntoaffect:sovereigntyis'thenegationofprohibition'(AS,II:254;cf.
403).Incontrasttotheutilitariangoaloftheproductionofproduction(thatis,spendingonthebasisofan
expectationoffuturereturns),sovereigntyjustifiedalluselessconsumption,allnonproductive
spending(AS,II:312).Sovereigntywastheexperienceofsociety's'heterogeneousenergy',entirely
dissociatedfrominstrumentalaction.Failuretopermitthefunctioningofthegeneraleconomy,thatis
tosay,failuretopermitthesquanderingofexcessenergy,leadstobottlenecksinthesystemand
'deprivesusofthechoiceofanexudationthatmightsuitus'(AS,I:234),withpotentiallycatastrophic
results.AlreadywecanseewheresuchthoughtisleadinguswithregardtotheHolocaust.Canthe
Holocaustbeseenastheattempt,underthebourgeois'limitedeconomy',toattainaliferuledbybanished
sovereignvalues?
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A2 Util Good
Util fails because it is impossible to distinguish between pleasure and pain.
Mark Sullivan 2004
[MD PhD, Department Editor of American Pain Society Bulletin
American Pain Society Bulletin v. 14 n. 6 Pain and Ecstasy: From Suffering to Sacrifice to Exaltation]
As Sontag mentions, the modern view is that pain and pleasure are directly opposed to each other.
One excludes the other in a simple zero-sum game. Jeremy Bentham founded that most modern of
ethical theories, utilitarianism, on just this hedonic calculus. Utilitarianism calculates the ethical value of
an action by summing the pleasure created and subtracting the pain produced. This theory acknowledges
that something could be both pleasurable and painful. But the possibility that something could be
pleasureable because it is painful throws the theory into disarray. Subsequent modern philosophers have challenged parts
of Benthams calculus. For example, John Stuart Mill thought some pleasures were higher, or qualitatively better, than others, but he did not challenge the opposition
between pleasure and pain. This theme can be found in modern poetry as well. The first stanza of Emily Dickinsons poem 125 is: For each ecstatic instant We must
an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy. The modern framework rationally balances pain and pleasure in terms of ethical value and of what is
deserved. To understand ones reaction to the photo of the ecstatic tortured Chinese man, one needs to look beyond this framework. This photograph does not really
show the simultaneous experience
of pain and pleasure. It shows both pain and ecstasy. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines ecstasy as the state of being beside oneself, thrown into a frenzy or stupor, with
anxiety, astonishment, fear or passion. So it is clear that ecstasy can be produced by unpleasant experiences. As they further explain, The
classical senses of [the Greek word for ecstasy] are insanity and bewilderment, but in the late Greek the etymological meaning received another application, viz.,
withdrawal of the soul from the body, mystic or prophetic trance; hence, in later medical writers the word is used for trance etc., generally. Both the classical and
post-classical senses came into the modern languages, and in the present uses they seem to be blended (OED Online, accessed 9-22-04). So
ecstasy
encompasses the mystical state of rapture where the body was supposed to become incapable of
sensation, while the soul was engaged in the contemplation of divine things. The Chinese man does indeed appear as if he might be engaged in the
contemplation of divine things. To help with the understanding of how pain is compatible with ecstasy, Sontag refers us to the ecstasy of martyrs like St. Sebastian. St.
Sebastian was an early Christian popularized by Renaissance painters and believed to have been martyred during the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor
Diocletian. When it was discovered that he was a Christian who had converted many soldiers, Sebastian was ordered to be killed by arrows. The archers left him for
dead, but a Christian widow nursed him back to health. He then presented himself before Diocletian, who condemned him to death by beating (Encyclopedia
Britannica Online, 2004). A martyrs death brings him to God. This is enough to make the dying process ecstatic. The pain thus endured was thought to provide a
cleansing of sins and perhaps thereby to further contribute to ecstasy. The example of St. Sebastian helps one understand pain as a path to ecstasy. But this Chinese
man is not known to be a martyr in the traditional religious sense, so some broader path between pain and ecstasy must be found. Perhaps this man murdered the
prince as part of a popular revolt, and thus became a martyr for a political cause. Even if this were true, one still needs to understand the path from pain to ecstasy on
psychological rather than purely spiritual terms. Sontag offers us a suggestion of this path: from pain to sacrifice to exaltation. The pain is suffered for the sake of
another. The purpose of the pain lies outside of the sufferer. And the experience of pain for this purpose literally takes the sufferer out of himself in ecstasy. This is a
view of pain and suffering rooted in religious thinking, but perhaps the sense of sacrifice need not be explicitly religious. One nonreligious modern example of pain
and ecstasy is the Ecstatic Birthing program in the United Kingdom. Ecstatic Birth is a system designed to help women give birth consciously, easily, and without
medical intervention. We can give up our devotion to pain and struggle, expand and give birth to our babies, our projects and our lives in ecstasy (Ecstatic Birth,
2004). This program is similar to other natural birth programs in the United States that focus on relaxation through breathing and visualization as a means to avoid
pain medication and other medical intervention (Gaskin, 2002). Although a primary purpose of these programs is to avoid the hospital and medications, the programs
also focus on using the pain of uterine contractions as energy that may promote bliss. This is supposed to produce a healthier and happier baby. What is not modern
about this image of the Chinese man,
and what makes the viewer cringe, is its picture of extreme suffering as a kind
of transfiguration. This simply does not compute in a secular and scientific world view. In this world,
pleasure is good, and pain is bad. The notion that pain and pleasure can fold back onto each other in
complex ways is absent. The ways in which pain and pleasure can annihilate the self and liberate one
from the bounds of the ego are not included. One exception to this rule is an intriguing study that
showed that noxious thermal stimuli produced activation in putative reward circuitry as well as
classic pain circuitry. (Becerra, Breiter, Wise, Gonzales, & Borsook, 2001). The authors conclude that
their data support the notion that there may be a shared neural system for evaluation of aversive and
rewarding stimuli. Although this finding provides a possible physiological mechanism for the ecstasy
of martyrs, it makes it no less disconcerting. Here, let us return to the eroticism that was Batailles
primary concern. He considered eroticism a little death precisely because the boundaries of the self
are overcome in sexual climax and the edicts of the rational ego often ignored in its pursuit. We dismiss
the pursuit of sexual ecstasy through pain, i.e., masochism, as a perversion that has nothing to teach the
rest of us. But for Bataille, this was only one example of liberation through surrender, a paradoxical
but universal feature of the human psyche. So, gaze upon this disturbing image of the Chinese man and
observe how it makes you feel. Draw your own conclusions.
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A2 Cede Political to the Right/Militarism

We outweigh. At best, this argument proves we arent politically productive. Were winning
the imperative to recover the ecstasy of sacrifice is more important than politics, even if it
dooms us to nuclear war.
Turn-The political discourse of the aff has ZERO chance of checking back militarism.
Wars exuberant horror has become its own reward, and the affs indignation conceals the
utter irrationality of state violence.
Similarly,themethodusedbytheStatetosubordinatethewarmachinetoStatepurposesandmeaning
remainsalwaysproblematicfortheState.WehaveseenabovehowtheStateappropriatesand
subsumesnomadiclogic,marshallingandharnessingit,butthatthen,theinstitutionsoftheStateoverspilltheconstraintsof
Statelogictoreinventthemselvesaswarmachines.Thesamethinghappensspecificallyinrelationtowar.TheStateappropriatesthewarmachineandgivesitwaras
itssetobject.Becauseofitsuniversalisingthinkinganditscommitmenttofinality,theStatealwaysdrivestotransformitswarmachineintototalwar.ThislinksState
wartocapitalism,accordingtoDeleuzeandGuattari,becauseonlycapitalismcanprovidetheresourcesthatmaketotalwarpossible.Furthermore,intotalwar,the
socialanditsfuturechangefrombeingamereresourcetobeingthemeaningandpurposeofwar.Alternative[p.96]societiesintotalwararenotmerelytobe
subduedbutannihilated.Inthissense,totalwar"merelyrealizesthemaximalconditionsoftheappropriationofthewarmachinebytheStateapparatus"(Deleuzeand
Guattari,1987,p.421).
ButunconditionedwarisitselfalwaysathreattotheState,notonlytheStatesittargetsbuttheStatethatseekstoput
itintooperation.Oncewarfarehasbecomeunlimited,withanabsoluteobject,thentheStateisitselfencounteringitslimitsandflirtingwiththe
perilousgameoftryingtoputthemintooperation.TheStatehasgivenrisetoaworldwidewarmachinetowhichitincreasinglybecomes
subordinate."theappropriationhaschangeddirection,orratherthatStatestendtounleash,reconstitute,animmensewarmachineofwhichthey
arenolongeranythingmorethantheopposableorapposedparts"(DeleuzeandGuattari,1987,p.421).Thewarmachinethenencompassesthe
wholeearth,andexceedstheStatesthathavechosenit.ThisremappingoftheplanetbyawarmachineinexcessoftheStatewas,inDeleuzeand
Guattari'shands,awayofdescribinginanewwayaworldunderthreatofMutuallyAssuredDestruction,duringtheColdWar.However,itis
worthconsideringthisintermsoftheWarOnTerror,whichhasequallyheldtheworldhostagetoawarmachineperhapsimpossibletocontrol.
"[litisnecessarytofollowtherealmovementattheconclusionofwhichtheStates,havingappropriatedawarmachine,andhavingadapteditto
theiraims,reimpartawarmachinethattakeschargeoftheaim,appropriatestheStates,andassumesincreasinglywiderpoliticalfunctions"
(DeleuzeandGuattari,1987,p.421).Thewaronterrorunleashesatotalwarmachinethatoverflowsthelogic
oftheStateandthattheStateisunabletocontrol.Inturn,thecultureoftheState,itscommitmentto
identity;citizenshipandorderareunderthreatfromtheimpulsetoviolenceanddominationostensibly
usedtoprotecttheState.Becauseitdoesnotrecogniseresponsibility,thewar
machine,evenwhenthe
Statebelievesithasitundercontrolintheinstitutionofthemilitaryorder,cannotbeheldaccountable.
AswehaveseeninFreudandBataille,theinclusionofthislogicwithintheStatealwaysmeansthatthemilitaryordercansoeasilyslipoverintoatrocity.Italso
meansthattheimperativeofwarcanbeusedtoevadethenormalconstitutionalrestraintsofcivilsociety:thecultureofwarbringsintopoliticsaviolenceand
desperationprotectedfromlegalnicetieslikecivilrightsbyasentimentalandphysicalcrudenessandimpatiencethatoverridesthesubtletiesoflaw,andeventhe
discussionofpoliticalpriorities.Wemustpayattentiontothegravityofgenerals.Wemustsupportthetroopsnomailerhowcynicalorabsurdisthewarinwhich
theyarepreparedtofight.[p.97]
Thereareother,perhapsmorephantasmatic,waysinwhichthewarmachineredefinestheState.Forexample,inentertainment,politicsbecomes
subordinatetoakindoflust,inwhichtheStatebecomesthemerenominalshellofavisceralviolence.
AteenagersecretlyrefightstheGulfWar,Hewinsafaster,asimplervictorythistime,purginghis
country'spurposeofanycomplicationorhesitation.Hecanignoreallnaggingvoices.Sopure,so
patriotic,souncompromising,sointent,someaningful,soviolentishistrajectory,theparliamentary,
bureaucratic,media
savvysophistriesthattheStateitselfhastonegotiatecannotinhibithim.There
isaclean,vicious,notableandunironicsplendourinhisviolencethathefeelsheneedstohide,even
thoughheisproudofit.Heismoremerciless,morepurposeful,morerightthaneventherighteousnesshecommemorates.Foldedintohisgloryisthe
validationofthevictoryofhisnationandthecarnalluxuryofthecrueltyitlicensesbutcannotpubliclyenact.Hismissionisadaylightvalidationofthetroopsbut
lackstheconscienceandconstraint,andthereasontoberight.So,hisdirtywarisadirtysecrethekeepsfromevenhimself.Bodiesflybackwardsoverhishead,
uncounted,unnamed,anilldefinedyetmaniacalvermin,easilyforgotten.EventherighteousvictoryofthemissionaryStateplayedoutinyourdarkenedroomis
shameful:abittoounrestrained,abittoocruel,abitmorethanmightbenecessary.ThelicenceprovidedbythevictoriousStatevalidatesbutchokesthecruel
subterfugeoftheviciousrighteouschild.
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ThehotcathexisofnationalsolidityensuresthePresidentofinalienablerighteousness.Fromhereon
in,itisalljustplanningandpersuasion.Heknowsitcanonlyendwell.Evencrueltyandsubterfugeare
allowed,perhapsevenenjoyedintheconfirmationofrighteousness.Whocanstopus?Forceandthen
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successexcuseeverything,creatingrealitiesonthegroundthatmustbeaccepted.Whothencansaythey
arebetterthanuswhenwehavewon?Thereis
nologicofempire,justaggrandisement,the
meaningfulnessofmore,ofstronger,of,ofFREEDOM.Noonecantakeitaway.Thepointisthat
evenwhenitisvalidatedbythehigherreasonoftheState,evenwhenitissuppressedintothestrict
lineamentsofthemilitaryapparatus,evenwhenthereisaliberalism,ahumanism,aliberation,a
democracy,arationalism,anidealism,humanrights,acoherentacademicargument,alaw,ajustice,
adiscourseofgenderequity,nationalprogress,humanmeaningandsoonandsoforth,itisalwaysa
violenceunleashingcruelty,righteousness,calumny,honour,intimidation,sentimentality,brutalityand
alltheotherlogicsoftherampantwarmachine,thewar
machineandreasonallowing,excusing,
validating,concealingoneanother.
[p.98]Howdoesthefightingchildconnectwiththerighteouspresident,theponderinggeneral,theambitiousjournalistandtheanxiousactivist?Theyplay
outameaningfulgiveandtakewheredifferentlevelsofdecisionvalidateoneanother.Thehiddenlineamentsofthefightingboymayormaynotfeedthehard
calculationofthepresident;theheroicworldlinessofthesoldiermayormaynotrequirethepresident'sdutyofcynicalcare,butdrawsonit,andisreleasedbyit
anyway.'Whatliesbehindthedecisionsthatgetmade,whatmemories?Whattraces?Whattrustinnowornever,nowandforever?Whatlustsareinquestion?
Somethinggivesusenergy,faith,hope,trust,wheredoesitcomefromifnottheunleashingofthedisruptiveenergyofrebuildingtowhichourviolenceiscommitted?
Inotherwords,wearedoingitnow.ThedoublelogicofthewarmachineandtheStaterunthroughthesocialbody,thewayittwistsinonitself,choosingand
unchoosingtheviolencethatbringsbothorderandfreedom,inourpolitics,inourdiplomacy,inoursocialvision,inourrelationshipsandinourentertainment,all
enfoldedinandoveroneanother,refusing,frustratingandfeedingononeanother.Thewarthatappalsus,thatweconjureasthe
foreverlastresort,defiesallofourvalues,butitalsoreassuresus,flattersusandfreesus,andwetrust
it.Theorderthatweimplementistheconsolidationoftheenergyofdisruption,harm,movementand
selfmutilationwerevile,and,inturn,onlyorderrequiresmovement.Itwillnotend,thisfeedingand
foldingoverofthatwhichdespisesmultipliesandalienatesitself.Itwillneverbeover.
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The affs critqiue of militarism is redundant. Only sacrifice without purpose or good
creates the glorious expenditure and community that can avert extinction.
AllanStoekl,ProfFrenchanccomparativeliteratureatPennStateUniversity,2007
[BataillesPeak:Energy,Religion,andSustainabilityp.189192]
Thereisvirtuallynopointanymoreintryingtoworkoutacritiqueofmodernity:depletiondoesitfor
us,relentlessly,derisively,definitively.Perhapstheknowledgemodernityhasprovided,bothtechnicalandtheoretical,hasbeennecessary;inthis
casethefossilfuelregimeinseparablefrommodernityhasbeenanecessary,ifephemeral,stageofhumandevelopment.Butthefall,thedie
off,looms.
Thelargerproblem(entailingataskneverfullyundertakenbyBataille)istothinka"good"dualitythe
postmodernaffirmationofsheerexpenditurethroughdreadandtherecognitionoflimits(interdiction,themortalityofreference)onthe
scaleofhumanmusclepowerandthefinitudeofthebody.Areturntothepast?Notreally,sincetheimminentdepletionoffossilfuelresourceswillpushusinthat
directionanyway:musclepower,bodypower,willbea,ifnotthe,majorcomponentintheenergymixofthefuture."Butcertainlywhatisimperative
isanawarenessthatanyeconomynotbasedontheprofligatewasteofresources(commonlycalleda"sustainable"economy)mustrecognizeand
affirmthetendencytoexpend,indeedbebasedonit.Andinseparablefromthattendency,asweknow,are
thepassions,asBataillewouldcallthem:glory,butalsodelirium,madness,sexualobsession.Or,
perhapsclosertohome,awordrarelyifeverusedbyBataille:freedom.Notthefreedomtoconsume,the
wasteoffossilfuelinputs,butthefreedomoftheinstant,fromthetask,freedomdisengagedfromthe
linkageofpleasuretoalong
term,everreceding,andlargelyunjustifiedgoal.An"intimate"freedombutnotthe
freedomofprestige,rank,notthefreedomofManinandassecurity."Expenditurewithoutreturn"isafloatingconcept,definedinoppositiontotherestrained
economywhosepossibilityitopensbutwhichitdefies.Asanendnotleadingoutsideitself,itcouldbeanything;butwhatismostimportantisthatwithit there
isamovementof"communication,"ofthebreakingofthenarrowlimitsofthe(ultimatelyillusory)
selfinterestedindividual,andnodoubtaswellsomeforiiilfpersonalorcollectivetransport,enthusiasm.Thisconcernwithamouvementhorsdesoi
cannodoubtbetracedtoSade,butitalsoderivesfromtheFrenchsociologicaltraditionofDurkheim,wherecollectiveenthusiasmwasseentoanimatepubliclifeand
givepersonallifealargermeaning."AsBatailleputsitinL'economieahimesuredel'univers(EconomyontheScaleoftheUniverse):"Youareonly,
andyoumustknowit,anexplosionofenergy.Youcan'tchangeit.Allthesehumanworksaroundyou
areonlyanoverflowofvitalenergy...Youcan'tdenyit:thedesireisinyou,it'sintense;youcould
neverseparateitfrommankind.Essentially,thehumanbeinghastheresponsibilityhere[alachargein]
tospend,inglory,whatisaccumulatedontheearth,whatisscatteredbythesun.Essentially,he'sa
laugher,adancer,agiveroffestivals."Thisisclearlytheonlyseriouslanguage.(CC,
7:1516)Bataille'sfuture,derivedfromDurkheimaswellasSade,entailsacommunityunited
throughcommonenthusiasm,effervescence,andinthissensethereissome"good"gloryitisnotatermthatshouldbeassociatedexclusivelywith
rankorprestige.CertainlytheDurkheimianmodel,muchmoreorthodoxand(French)Republican,favoredanegalitarianismthatwouldprevent,throughitscollective
enthusiasm,theappearanceofmajorsocialinequality.Bataille'scommunitywouldcontinuethattraditionwhilearguingfora"communication"muchmoreradicalin
thatitputsinquestionstablehumanindividualityandthesubordinationtoitofall"resources."Onthisscore,atleast,itisaradicalDurkheimianism:thefusion
envisagedissocompletethattheveryboundariesoftheindividual,notonlyofhisorherpersonalinterestsbutofthebodyaswell,arerupturedinacommunitythat
wouldcommunicatethrough"sexualwounds."DeCerteaubringstoanyreadingofDurkheimanawarenessthattheeffervescenceofagroup,itspotentialfor
"communication,"isnotsomuchamassphenomenon,aneventofsocialconformityandacceptance,buta"tactics"notonlyofresistancebutofintimateburnoffand
ofanecstaticmovement"outofoneself"Ifwearetothinka"communication"inthepostfossilfuelera,itwillbeoneoflocalincidents,ruptures,physicalfeints,
evasions,andexpulsions(ofmatter,ofenergy,ofenthusiasm,ofdesire)notoneofmassorcollectiveeventsthatonlyinvolvearesurrectionofa"higher"goalor
justificationandaconcomitantsubordinationofexpenditure.)Yetthereisnothingthatisinherentlyexcessive.Becausewastecanveryeasilycontributetoasenseof
rank,orcanbesubsumedasnecessaryinvestment/consumption,noempiricalverificationcouldevertakeplace. Heterogeneous
matterorenergyeludesthescientificgazewithoutbeing"subjective."ThisistheparadoxofBataille'sproject:theveryempiricismwewouldliketoguaranteea
"selfconsciousness"andapurea'epenseisitselfafunctionofaclosedeconomyofutilityandconservation(thestudyofastableobjectforthebenefitandprogressof
mankind,etc.).Expenditure,depense,intimacy(thetermsarealwayssliding;theyareinherentlyunstable,for
goodreason)areinsteadfunctionsofdifference,oftheinassimilable,butalso,aswehaveseenona
numberofoccasions,ofethicaljudgment.ItisaBatailleanethicsthatvalorizestheMarshallPlan
overnuclearwarandthatdeterminesthatoneislinkedtosacrificeinallitsforms,whereastheotheris
not.Inthesamewaywecanproposeanethicsofbodily,"tactical"effortandloss.Wecangosofarasto
saythatexpenditureisthedeterminationofthesocialandenergeticelementthatdoesnotleadoutside
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itselftosomehighergoodorutilityParadoxicallythisdeterminationitselfisethical,becausean
insubordinateexpenditureisanaffirmationofacertainversionoftheposthumanasaftereffect,beyond
theclosedeconomyofthepersonalandbeyondthesocialasguarantorofthepersonal.Butsuchadeterminationdoesnotdependonan
"initself,"onadefinitivesetofclassifications,onataxonomythatwillguaranteethestatusofacertainactorofacertainpolitics.
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A2 Sacrifice is violent
Humans cannot escape the problems of violence and death.
At best, we can enact a theatrical sacrifice that disperses the violent energies that would
otherwise be accumulated by the state for its policies of extermination.
This argument proves why they will never win a link turn or perm. If they are too
squeamish to confront the sacrifical violence of the 1AC, then they have no chance of
contesting the appalling savagery of the state.
Violence is inevitable, which means sacrifical expenditure is the best way to break apart the
dominating violence of the state.
Alexander Irwin, Asst Prof Religion Amherst College, 2002
[Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred p. 39-40]
This chapter's exploration has already clarified significant points regarding Bataille's attitude vis--vis a possible "closure" of
Even as he resisted the Durkheimian view of sacrifice's utility and

reasonableness, Bataille remained Durkheimian enough to see sacrificial
dynamics as the enduring paradigm for relations between individual and
collectivity. Bataille never fully banished from his writing the Durkheimian
schema of a sacrificial convulsion productive of shared meaning and
communal cohesion (even if, for Bataille, what is shared is the calling into question of all meaning, at the
sacrifice.
"extreme limit of the possible"). Thus, the specter of a (constantly suppressed, constantly resurfacing) "utility of the useless
1154 haunts Bataille's writing on/of sacrifice. On the border (along the dchirure) where sacrificial violence passes into
language, perhaps matters could not be otherwise.
Nancy's demand for a politics that renounces dark "outsides" retains its force. Yet if the price of dissipating the specter of
sacred [40] violence is subscription to the bald claim that "There is no 'obscure God.' There is no obscurity which would be
God," then we can see that the closure of the sacrificial vision must be undertaken not only "after Bataille [...j and beyond
him,"55 but directly against him. For if it is undeniable that "fascination is already proof that something has been accorded to
obscurity and its bloody heart,"- 16
is no less true that Bataille as the Acphale held his own bloody heart in his hand and vowed to "live only from what
fascinates" (BOC I,
Through the avatars of sacrifice, Bataille interrogated the permutations of

what he saw as the fundamental violence of the human being. He sought
to understand, on the one hand, how violence connects humans to an
acephalic universe and, on the other, how violence functions in the political
realm. Violence (sometimes overt, sometimes veiled) is the key instrument of political
tyranny, of "Caesarian" domination and the exploitation of the poor by the rich. How could such
domination and exploitation be opposed? Since Bataille considered violence
an irreducible aspect of human nature, it could not for him be a question of
"nonviolent resistance," but of searching for a different kind of violence
that could resist dominating force. Bataille's investigation of sacrifice was an
ongoing quest for liberative potentials in the conjunction of violence and an
atheistic "religious spirit. 11-17
As Bataille pursued his obsessive investigation of sacrificial violence in its psychological, political, and
poetic dimensions, another French thinker was exploring related issues. Simone Weil saw in the concept
of "force" a principle connecting war, social exploitation, cosmic order, and mystical truth. For Weil,
force was encountered as the instrumentality of dehumanizing oppression. Yet to eliminate force
from human life was impossible, since in a real sense our existence is made of force composed of that
which destroys it. Chapter z will trace Well's efforts to come to terms with the challenges posed by this
contradiction.
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A2 Sacrifice is violent
Sacrifice creates a community against the violence of the state. We are motivated by a
tragic politics mutually exclusive with the extermination their evidence asssumes.
Alexander Irwin 2002
[Prof Religion at Amherst College, Saints of the Impossible: Bataille, Weil, and the Politics of the Sacred p. 22-24]
While Acphale sought communal bonds, the accents of a defiant individualism

also reemerged in Bataille's writings in this period. One expression of this
ambiguous coexistence of group identification and individual authority was the
"shamanistic" position occupied within the secret society by Bataille himself . Roger
Calllots notes that for Bataille, the "theoretical interest" of shamanism was vivid "only to the extent that he could aspire to
become a shaman himself. 1130 At the same time that he preached the ideal of the headless community "without a chief" (BOG
1,489), there can be no doubt that, in the group Acphale as actually constituted, Bataille himself claimed the clear and
unequivocal leadership role, amounting to a sacerdotal authority. "The cards were in his hands alone; he dealt them out in his
own way following a hierarchy of participants of which he remained the only master" (ML, zz).
was to be the matrix of a rekindling of sacred forces,
If the community
Bataille in his own person was

the primary channel and vector of those forces. Pierre Klossowski, who participated in some of the group's
rituals, affirms that the acephahc figure that symbolized the aspirations of the community was in fact a portrait
of Bataille himself. The Acphale is "purely Bataille emblematized by Masson. The figure of the god with his
attributes" - the sword, the flame, the labyrinth represented by the visible entrails - "formed a sort of mandala
in which Bataille contemplated, and invited us to contemplate, his own experience."31 Bataille thus cast
himself in a double role incorporating the two dimensions of Durkheimian sacrifice. As the Acphale, Bataille
became both a symbolic figure representing the community to itself and a shaman or sacrificial priest palpably
unleashing sacred forces through rituals intended to fuse the members in intense solidarity. The Acphale is a
forbidding and isolated figure, but his solitary self-mutilation liberates the energies that make possible the
cohesion of the group.
Nietzsche had also been a lonely thinker haunted by the notion of community. Placing Acphale under
Nietzsche's intellectual sign, Bataille underscored the significance for the community of the emblematic or
heroic individual. Thus, Bataille's mythologizing of "Nietzsche-Dionysos" in the pages of the journal Acphale
con [p. 23] stitutes not only a homage to a philosophical predecessor, but an account of the role Bataille
envisaged for himself. Following Karl Jaspcrs's suggestions in Nietzsche: Fin fuhrung in this Verstandnis seines
Philosophierens (1936), Bataille believed an "imitation of Nietzsche" (atheistic rewriting of the imitatio Christi)
was possible and necessary, for those willing to abandon the confines of a "small politics" for the open-ended
exploration of the "total possibilities of humanity."" Shaping oneself to the Nietzschean ideal opened the road
to a community freed from all forms of servility.
In the Acphale texts devoted to defending Nietzschean thought against fascist co-optation, Bataille stressed
both Nietzsche's representative character (which enables Nietzsche to point to, in some sense to become, the
binding force of a new form of human community) and the terrible solitude that was Nietzsche's lot. "Because
he could not confuse emasculation and knowledge, and because his thought opened on a lucid explosion which
could not cease before having exhausted his forces [...], Nietzsche collapsed in a humiliating solitude." But
Nietzsche became by his very isolation a symbol and rallying point, the "hero" of all who refused conformity
and servitude (BOG I, 480). "In the image of the one [Dionysosj he was avid to be even to his madness,
Nietzsche is born of the Earth torn by the fire of the Sky, is born lightning-struck and in that way charged with
this fire of domination becoming FIRE OF THE EARTH" (484). Nietzsche, fused with Dionysos, rises to
messianic stature: "THE SACRED -NIETZSCHEMJ - FIGURE OF TRAGIC DIONvsOs DELIVERS LIFE FROM
SERVITUDE" (484). Bataille salutes in Nietzsche the "incarnation" of humanity's maddest and most exalting
possibilities, life and thought transformed into a "festival," the assertion of a freedom so vast that "no language
would suffice to reproduce its movement"
As a sacred figure, Nietzsche forms a pendant to the "heterogeneous" fascist leader, radiating a "force that
the
community summoned by Nietzsche is rooted not in imperative violence
but in a "tragic experience of self and world," an "experience of the
negative [...] or of the impossible," consisting precisely in the "affirmed
certainty that it is not possible to place oneself outside the reach of
tragedy. 1133 [p. 24] This is what Bataille means by "religion": a community
without domination, united at once by the demand for a mad freedom
and by the awareness of shared vulnerability to tragedy . From the
conjunction of freedom and tragic consciousness springs a paradoxical,
nonhierarchical, permanently wounded sovereignty. Such sovereignty
shatters the regular course of things" and inspires ecstatic communal devotion (BOG I, ',4. Yet
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separates people from each other irrevocably in the very moment that it
exposes them to each other in the nakedness of tragic compassion . (The
Acphale stands naked and isolated, with his heart in his hand and a death's head lodged in his groin.) Decisive for Bataille's
subsequent thought is the understanding that humans commune in the limit experience of the tragic sacred and that sacrality
must be crystallized or channeled ("incarnated") by a sacred-symbolic individual. This figure animates community while at the
same time remaining separated from community in an infinite solitude that is both sovereignty and "humiliation."
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A2 Alt > Fascism

We produce a headless community, a commitment to sacrifice the political authority that
would make fascism possible. All their arguments about how the kritik rejects the state
prove that we are 100% aligned against totalitarian politics.
The alt ruptures the authority that enables fascism. Only the perms linking of sacrifice to
the sovereign imperative of the plan produces the fascism they describe.
Jesse Goldhammer 2005
[Lecturer/Instructor, Institute of Government Studies, U.C. Berkeley, The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in
Modern French Thought p. 169-174] acephalic meand without head
Most important, Bataille's fascism essay reveals that his sacrificial view of
proletarian revolution is in tension with his critical understanding of fascist
power. Seeking to prevent the proletarian revolution from taking a fascist
turn, Bataille argues that any attempt to use sacrifice for the sake of
political foundation risks fascism, the logical culmination of sacrificial
founding violence used to constitute authority. By claiming that unproductive
sacrificial loss ruptures political authority, Bataille's discussion of fascism begins his
repudiation of the French discourse on sacrificial violence. In his essay on unproductive expenditure, Bataille offers no
vocabulary for the internal dynamics of transformative sacrificial processes. How does the unrecoverable sacrifice of a person
or thing affect the participants? What role does such sacrifice play in the realm of politics? Seeking to answer these questions
in his essay, on fascism, Bataille significantly broadens his analysis of sacrifice from a study of the act itself to an inquiry into
the sacred concepts upon which it depends. He introduces the concepts of homogeneity and heterogeneity in order to describe
two opposing modes of existence, each of which highlights different roles of the sacred in modern life. Homogeneity, which is
similar to the profane, describes societies structured by production, rationality, specialization, organization, conservation,
predictability, and preservation. For Bataille, these terms characterize modern Western bourgeois society, which excludes
anything that does not conform to its homogeneous structure. "Above all:' writes Michle Richman, "homogeneity is identified
as comtnensurabiity among elements and a consciousness of the process whereby 'human relations can be maintained by a
reduction to fixed rules based on the identity of person and well-defined situations; in principle, violence is excluded from the
course of an existence so defined! '129 The hallmark of the homogeneous society is the contract, which forms the basis of all
social bonds because, as jean-Michel Heimonet observes, "the contract establishes a general equivalence among men, things,
and men and things."" Heterogeneity; which is more closely associated with sacredness, is a bipolar category that
encompasses everything that is unproductive, irrational, incommensurable, unstructured, unpredictable, and wasteful.While
homogeneity excludes violence, heterogeneity is the chief domain of violence. Bataille offers five descriptions of
heterogeneous elements: (i) taboo and mana; (2) everything resulting from unproductive expenditure, including excrement,
eroticism, and violence; (3) ambiguous phenomena that are simultaneously attractive and repulsive; (4) excess, delirium, and
madness; and () any reality that is affectively forceful or shocking.3t The bipolarity of heterogeneity captures two related but
opposing, shifting, and unstable characteristics of sacred things; purity and impurity." Pure sacred and impure sacred, which
Bataille labels "right" and "left" respectively, challenge Mauss's and Durkheim's rigid theoretical views on sacred objects,
which they consider (negatively) as the source of all prohibitions.33 Mauss and Durkheim qualir the sacred as dangerous and
repulsive. In contrast, building upon Maistre's observation that the pure authority of-the king requires the impure violence of
the executioner, Bataille captures the ambiguity of the sacred by qualifying it as a form of energy that fluctuates between two
oppositely charged poles.34 Bataille also counrerintuitively describes both heterogeneous sacred polarities as sovereign in an
effort to convey the double significance of the sacred.When qualified with the word "imperative," the term "sovereign"
describes sacred things, such as kings, who are noble, pure, elevated, and singular.35 In contrast, Bataille uses words like
"base:' "abject:' and "accursed" to characterize subversive sovereignty, sacred power that is ignoble, impure, mired, or
chthonian. The executioner, who also participates in the formation of monarchical power (imperative sovereignty), exhibits
subversive heterogeneity that is radically impure, and as a result is placed completely outside the social hierarchy defined by
the king. Thus, Bataille's theoretical elaboration on Maistre's original distinction reveals that both the king and his executioner
are sovereign, but in consequence of opposite sacred qualities and with different ontological effects. Bataille's dualistic
concept of heterogeneity serves as the basis for his novel understanding of sovereignty. Because heterogeneity is its primary
animating force, sovereignty has two forms, the imperative and the subversive. Imperative sovereignty describes ruling power
whose legitimacy is constructed on a hierarchical, elevated, and amplified basis. In his postwar writings on sovereignty,
Bataille describes its imperative form as belonging to kings, priests, chieftains, and "all men who possess and have never
entirely lost the value that is attributed to gods and 'dignitaries."36 Although imperative sovereignty is the preeminent source
of state power and is typically associated with mastery and supremacy, Bataille argues that it,is actually servile because it is
useful. In contrast, subversive or revolutionary sovereignty derives its power from the abject and useless. Bataille writes: "Life
beyond utility is the domain of sovereign ty:'37 Subversive sovereignty is experienced as unproductive loss and dissolution;
instead of authoritatively establishing limits (laws), this revolutionary form of power comesinto being when limits are
transgressed. For this reason,
sacrifice plays an essential role in the invocation of an

impure heterogeneous sovereignty. When useless, sacrifice also gives rise to
an acephalic community, which has no trace of, imperative sovereignty
and, therefore, no leader or authority. No headless community can form,
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however, if its members seek to conserve some aspect of the sacrifice.
Bataille
rejects sovereignty that relies upon purity and hierarchy in order to establish dominion. Bataille uses the concepts of homogeneity and
heterogeneity to describe the affective qualities of politicalpower embodied by leaders, institutions, symbols, and the like. All traditional forms of
political power combine homogeneous and heterogeneous elements, albeit in different ways. Consider three extremes: liberalism, monarchism, and
fascism. The liberal state is the most homogeneous. As Stoeki interprets Bataille's fascism essay, however, homogeneous forces never completely
"The imperative, or sovereign, form of

heterogeneity goes to aid the homogeneous forces: it guarantees the
stability of a society which can give itself meaning only through the
sadistic exclusion of impure heterogeneity."" Stoeki's reading of Bataille suggests a quasi-Weberian
exclude heterogeneous ones, even in liberal states:
interpretation of liberal states: -parliamentary regimes remain stable thanks to legal-rational authority, which they achieve, in
part, through the force of the law, namely violence. The homogeneous state maintains, through the army and police, a store of
imperative heterogeneity, which guards the boundaries of the state's homogeneous authority through violent exclusion.
Monarchies and fascist regimes operate differently. As Stoeki points out, "The king or the fascist leader (as imperative
heterogeneity) is in a way excluded from the homogeneous activities of society, but he dominates that society and embodies
it."" In the case of the king, the imperative sovereignty of the monarchy, which itself relies on the equally imperative
heterogeneity of Christianity, cooperates with and coopts the subversive (impure) heterogeneity of the executioner in order to
police the boundaries of the royal body. For the fascist leader, as Bataille's essay reveals, the mixture of homogeneity and
heterogeneity becomes increasingly potent and complex. His analysis, which focuses particularly on fascism's appropriation of
religion and the military, reveals a fascination with the important role of imperative
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A2 Alt > Fascism

heterogeneity in the fascist movement. Although Bataille recognizes, even admires, the revolutionary potential of this mixture
only communities organized on

the basis of subversive heterogeneity can be truly liberating. The fluidity of the
of pure and impure sacred fascist power, he remains convinced that
categories used by Bataille to describe the psychological structure of fascism demonstrates the importance of the sacrificial
mechanism, which inserts an element of agency into what otherwise appears as an unchangeable world of sacred polarities.
The crucifixion of Christ clearly demonstrates this mechanism when it transforms the impure, bleeding, and agonized body of
Christ into the pure, transcendental figure of the corpus nsysticurn. Bataille, like his predecessors in the discourse, recognizes
sacrificial violence makes things sacred. Unlike them, however, Bataille

also realizes the theoretical importance of the capacity of sacrifice to
negotiate between different forms of the sacred. For Bataille, the
imperative heterogeneity of the army is not the same kind of sacred
power as the subversive heterogeneity of the proletariat . Indeed, in his discussion of
that
the army Bataille characterizes it as imperatively heteroge-neous: hierarchy and discipline in the service of death. Because the
army amalgamates purity and violence, it possesses an ambiguous attractive power, which Bataille describes in the following
way: "This process is the intermediary through which disgusting slaughter is radically transformed into its opposite,
glory-namely, into a pure and intense attraction. "40 Although armies are not engaged in sacrificial acts per .se, the military
demonstrates that violence can be transformed into a positive, glorious accessory of political power. Similarly, religion has a
dual characterization that contributes to its own form of attraction. Bataille writes: "The supreme being of theologians and
philosophers represents the most profound introjection of the structure characteristic of hooaigeueity into heterogeneous
existence: in his theological aspect, God preeminently fulfills the sovereign form?'41 Religion is attractive because it elevates
the abject through sacrificial symbolism, such as Christ's sacrifice. Religion confers order, status, and purity on death, which is
originally and profoundly impure. In describing the affective power of fascism, Bataille focuses on the army and religion
because of their long, combined historical complicity in the foundation and exercise of political power. Bataille perceives both
institutions as possessing violent and/or sacrificial mechanisms that provide for the purification of impure heterogeneity. In
their ability to convert subversive heterogeneity into pure or imperative heterogeneity-to transform abject sacred into pure
sacredthe army and the church support the augmentation and stabilization of authoritarian political power. Like the French
revolutionaries, Maistre, and Sorel, Bataille appreciates that the effectiveness of political power-its authority-is intimately
linked to the afectivity of violence. Bataille's analysis of the emergence of fascism also suggests that he is particularly attuned
to the affective impact of fascism's use of both martial and religious violence. "Fascist power;' Bataille writes, "is characterized
by a foundation that is both religious and military, in which these two habitually distinct elements cannot be separated.""
Bataille discovers that fascism taps into the same sacred well of affectivity as other regimes, but in ways that vastly increase
Bataille admires fascism's ability to convert impure

heterogeneity into a pure sweetener of its authority, he rejects the desirability of
a revolution based on imperative heterogeneity. Like other forms of Western
politics, fascism is politically unfeasible without imperative heterogeneity,
the pure sacred product of armies or churches. Sword and scepter participate in the
mass enthusiasm. Although
establishment of authority by conferring legitimacy upon the exercise of power, which is elevated and concentrated in the
leader or Fhrer. With or without these institutional props, Western forms of authority, be they traditional, legal-rational, or
charismatic, rely on the pure sacred qualities of imperative heterogeneity. Furthermore, in the Western political tradition, this
uplifting of power to the status of right always occurs at the expense or with the complicity of subversive (impure)
heterogeneity What makes fascism unique, according to Bataille, is that it is the most authoritative of all political regimes.
Bataffie compares the "total power" of the fascist chief with that of a king, who "manifests ... the fundamental tendency and
Fascism requires
supreme authority, which is concentrated like royal power in its chief. It is this
kind of authority that Bataille hopes to destroy by marshaling the impure
heterogeneity of unproductive sacrificial violence.
principle of all authority: the reduction to a personal entity, the individualization of power."43
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A2 Alt > Nihilism

Extend the alt debate from above. Sacrifice is key to both liberation from domination and
an ethical stance that can give value to our existence.
The ecastic community provides the only avenue for politics and ethics in an age of
totalitarianism masquerading as liberal democracy.
Christopher Stanley
1998 [University Leeds, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law VoI.XI no.32]
ThispointismadethroughtheapparentmovementinthethoughtofBataillefromexterioritytointeriority,whichIinterpretasamovefromlapolitiquetole
politique.Batailleappearstostop"thinking"communityinaturnto"innerexperience":butthisisonlyanappearance.BataiUeisneitherconcernedwiththe
innerorexperience(asDerridanotesinhisessayonBataille))6Theeventofexcessleadingtothispointofrupturein
termsofBataille's"activitiesincommunity"werebothpoliticalandaesthetic(totalitarianismandsurrealism).
Thisperiodofexcessresonateswiththecontemporary.Thismayappearasanunexpectedallusion.
However,statementsto"thinkthepolitical"intermsofradicalfinitudeexpresstherealization
thatthecurrentmanifestationofdemocraticliberalismisthatofan"unheardtotalitarianism"
andthat"democracyistocome".Theexcessesofthecontemporarymaybelessobviousthanthatofthe1930sand1940s.Theeradicationofconflictinterms
ofideologyandpoliticaleconomywhichcontemporarydemocracypurportstodeliverincurstheflatteningofmeaningandthetotalisationofvalue. The
politicalspherehasbeen"closed"inaprocessofsimulationandmultipleorderingof
representation(asBaudrillardwouldsuggest).17Itisinresponsetothisappearanceofclosurethatare
thinkingofthepoliticaloccurs.Thespaceofthis"thinkingthepolitical"isintheinterstitialof
theremainderatthe"endofpolitics":arejectionofthetyrannyofrepresentationandthecommencementofthinkingthepoliticalthroughthe
philosophicalastheonlyresponseavailablein"opposition"tothesovereigntyofformexternallydeterminingdesireandlanguage."After"lawandsocietycomesjusticeandcommunity
bothintermsofrepressiverhetoricandintheaffirmationoffinitudeandimminence.Bataille'srealisationatthepointofhis"turn"tointeriorityhavingthoughtthelimitofcommunity
wasthatthelimitisnotofthesubject'sinterioritybutacrossing(glissement)beyondandtowardtheoutsideofthelimit.Thereislesscontradictionthanmightatfirstappearbetween
Bataille'swritingsontransgressionanddesireandthoseonsovereigntyandcommunity.Bothareexpressionsofworkingatthelimitasexcavationsinthecommunicationofcommunality.
Theyarereliantupononeanother.18Ifhislaterwork(suchas"InnerExperience"whichisofteninterpretedasreflectingaSartreanexistentialisminthesenseofraisingan
engagement)19hasbeenneglectedwithincontemporarycommentariesitisbecauseithasbeenpossibletoappropriateBatailletotheexcessiveandrelativistclaimsofthepostmodern.
However,itisthe"uneasinessofpoliticalexigency"hauntingBataitle,which(andthisistheparallelmoveinthepostmodern)causeshimtoconsidersacrificenotintermsofeconomy
andtranscendencebutintermsasfinitudeandabundance:fromtheeconomyofthelimitasscarcitytotheeconomyofthelimitasabundanceandexcessofcommunication(thelimitasa
pointofpassagenotclosureinaHeideggariansense).ThereisarelationbetweensacrificeandfinitiudeintermsofeconomybutitisBataille's"move"fromexterioritytointeriority
whichsuggeststhinkingat"anotherlimit"whereintheissueofsovereigntyisrefiguredintermsoffinitudeandsacrificeasabandonmentasopposedtotransgression.This"move"to
abandonmentisthesubjectofthedialoguebetweenBlanchotandNancyandcanbetracedthroughBataille'sinvolvementintheAc~phaleGroupandinhisnovel"TheBlueofNoon"
(1935).SignificantatthisstageisBataille'sthoughtonthedynamicsofsocialgroupsleadinghimtothethinkthe"limit"(contestation)ofcommunityin"InnerExperience"(1943).By
meansof"experiments"conductedinthesecondhalfofthe1930sinthenamesofgroupssuchasContreAttaque,AcdphaleandtheCollegedeSociologie,Bataillesoughttograspthe
natureofcommunalexistencethroughtheexperienceofpoliticalextremityintheformoftheSovietexperienceandFascism.20Bataillewantedtounderstandthemysteryofthesocial
bonddistinguishesBataille'sworldofexcess,irony,violence,Blanchot'seconomyofimpersonalityandnocturnaldispersion,andtheLevinasianuniverseofgravity,disymmetryand
responsibility,asingleconfigurationofcommunicationinsists."SeeJosephLibertson,Proximity:Levinas,Blanchot,BatailleandCommunication(BostonMA:Kluwer,1982),3.and
perceiveinthesamegesturethesenseofawakeningoftheGreatPoliticsforwhichNietztschesolonged.Bataille'sactivitiesduringthisperiodwereinformedbythebeliefthat
totalitarianism"completed"historyandthattherewasanotherwayofbeingtogethersavetheseductionofFascismorbetrayalbythebureaucratichorrorofStalinism.21Thesetwoideas
motivatedBatailletorethinkthesocialbondintermsofritual,mythandsexuality,engaginginareconfigurationofthepoliticalintheremainderoftheexcessofideologicalandaesthetic
forms.Intheend,intheearlyyearsoftheColdWar,Batailleappearstocapitulateinthesenseofrelyingonapoliticalneutrality,hebypassestheoppositionbetweenresistanceand
collaborationintherecognitionthatneutralitymeanttherefusalofallactionandadistancingfromallpoliticalundertaking.Thisapparentfailurecanbecontestedif"InnerExperience"is
interpretedasatextnotofaesthetics(inthesenseofHeidegger's"move"topoeticsaftertheRectoralAddressof1933orofBlanchot'srecitsduringtheColdWarperiodafterhis
ambiguouspoliticalpositionduringtheOccupation).Thepointofcontestationcrucialtothis"move"isBataille'sideaofexperienceasekstasisreferringalsototheoutside,astheprefix
ekdetermines.Theexperienceisalsosomethingimpossible(thelimitintheextremelimitofpossible).
Bataille'spoliticsbecomesnotapoliticsof
thepossiblebutapoliticsoftheimpossible:heremainspoliticalinthesenseofBeardsworth'srethinkingofthequestionofthepoliticalintermsof
radicalfinitude.Bataillemovedduringthe1930sfroman"outward",actionorientateddefinitionofdesire(virility)toan"inward"one.Itisamove"from"politicstophilosophyenabling
arethinkingofthepolitical.ItisamoverelatedtotheevolutionofEuropeanpoliticsandtheoutwarddefinitiononlyachievesresonanceagaininParisinMay1968inthemarginalityof
thesituationistorautonomes.PriortothepointofBataille's"withdrawal"fromthepoliticalheexperiencedtheconflictbetweenoppositionandcollaborationwhichthrusthimtoward
partialsolutionsthroughalternativemechanismsofcommunality,sacrificeandsovereignty.InMay1968itappearedasthoughthecollectiveritualsthathadfascinatedmembersofthe
"secretsocieties"Bataillewasinvolvedwithinthe1930swerebeingstagedontheboulevardsoftheLatinQuarterinParis.22This"explosivecommunication"(atthelimitof
communicationinthesenseoftheaffirmationofexposuretotheoutside(other)intheincompletionofmeaning)resultedfromadissymmetryofdesirewhichisthefoundationofanethic
ofallrelationswithothers(followingLevinas).Inthisformulationdesireisbothfatalandvitalandisplacedasasovereignfunctionaboveorremovedfromlawandconvention.The
politicalandsocialcontextBataillewitnesseddeniedhimtheabilitytoexperiencedesireandcommunityoutwiththeLawinthisformasabundancebecauseofactivity:workasopposed
TherestrictionsofexcessivepoliticaleconomyforcedBataille's
"turn"to"innerexperience".23Thetensionbeforethelimitofthepoliticalapparentlycauses
Batailletowithdrawfromthepolitical.Itisawithdrawalwhichenableshimtodiscoveran
"abundance"ofdesire(desirewithoutthelimitimposedbythesovereigntyoflaw)throughthe"devastation"ofthesubjectthroughinner
experienceastheexposureofthesubjecttotheoutside.Itisthis"devastation"(theexposuretoabundance)andhis
rejectionoftheaimsofAcephale(thatcommunalityshouldcommencewiththerelationship
betweenthegroupandsacrificeasfoundationalintheconstructionofthesocialbondandtherefore
intheinterrogationoftheprohibitionwhicheliminatesviolence)whichcouldpromptBatailletostate
tounworking;experimentasopposedtoinnovation.
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Kirk, Flynn, et al
"Thecommunityofthosewhodonothaveacommunity". Bataillecouldonlyarriveatthiscommentthroughthearrivalatthelimitof
24
deathinthesacrificeofanotherwhoseexistenceconfirmstheexistenceofthesingularbeing,forcingtheconfrontationorexposurewiththelimitofbeingatthepointoffinitude Itisa
movefromarestrictedtoageneraleconomyofdesirewhicheliminatessovereigntythroughthe"devastation"ofthesubjectwhosedesireisotherwisethanforLaw.Bataille'srecognition
isthatofthelimitofthesocialbond(ascomunusorcommunis)whichinthe1930shehadstruggledtounderstandbutwhichcouldonlybecomprehendedthroughunworking(atwhich
pointsovereigntyisnothing)andatthelimitofthoughtandlanguage.
.
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Kirk, Flynn, et al
A2 K Romanticizes Natural/Past
We do NOT romanticize the past. We invoke a new form of sovereignty, not a return to
some natural essence.
Bataille conflicts with romanticism --- cant return to lost origins
Rebecca Comay 1990
[Yale French Studies 78]
Intimacy" would involve, then, not the transparency of identity, but rather
the opaque intransigence of what connects at the point of greatest secrecy. "Normal" communication (in the "profane"
"
sense of correspondence and consensus) cannot be more fragile, therefore, than when "sovereign communication" silently
rules. The darkness of "common subjectivity" (to use Bataille's language) would thus be prior to the communal mergers of
intersubjectivity, at least as classically conceived. Communication, in my sense, is in fact never stronger than when
communication, in the weak sense, in the sense of profane language which makes us-and the world-penetrable) proves useless,
and becomes the equivalent of darkness. We speak in various ways to convince others and to seek agreement .... This
incessant effort. would be apparently impossible if we were not first bound to one another by the feeling of common
subjectivity, impenetrable to itself, and for which the world of distinct objects is impenetrable. [9, 311] And is it enough to
point out that Bataille's "nostalgia" is at best an "uneasy" one (5, 155), opposed to every form of pastoralism and every form of
This "unease' is, indeed, at the root of Bataille's confrontation

with Breton,9 with Bumler (1, 447-65), with Romanticism (9, 206), with
Hemingway (8, 230-33), with (at times) Proust (5, 156-75), with naturalism
("the poetic fallacy of animality" [7, 293]), with sexual liberationism,' with
"Orientalism" (5, 30): with every attempt to reduce transgression to the
sentimental movement of restoration and return. Such nostalgia would have
the "suspicious and lugubrious" (5, 540) stupor of an idealizing
aestheticism: "the European's sickly taste for an exotic color" (5, 30)-"like a film about 'primitive' countries" (1,
530)-a numbing abstraction from present conditions which only masks an accommodation to
the status quo. It would occlude the historic specificity of the given with the
passive longing for the past, hypostatizing present circumstances by the very
appeal to bygone days. History itself would prevent such an easy
overcoming. 9. Bataille's (not unambivalent) critique of the surrealists tends to focus, among other things, on the
naive escape?
naivet of their appeals to transcendence (the "sur") which would, in his view, obscure contemporary social conditions (with its
concomitant technical rationality) thus leading to various regressivities and archaisms. For the clearest elaborations of this
argument, see "La 'vieille taupe' et le prefix sur dans les mots surhomme et surrealiste" (2, 93-112), "La Valeur d'usage de D.
A. F. de Sade" (2, 54-69), "La Religion surrealiste" (7, 381-95), and "Le iurralisme en 1947" (11, 259-61). 10. "Despite
appearances, I am opposed to the tendency that seems to prevail today. I am not one of those who see in the abolition of sexual
taboos a way out"
The radical impurity of beginnings and ends-the ambivalent birth and death of "history"-should prohibit any temptation to
regress. "The nostalgia for a bygone world is ... based on a shortsighted judgment . . ." (7, 126). Even if we do have a
paradoxical nostalgia for it, we can only by some aberration regret the loss of the religious and royal edifice of the past. The
effort to which this edifice responded was only an immense failure and Hit is true that the essential is missing from our world
we can only go further, without imagining, even for an instant, the possibility of a return back. [8, 275] From what would one
escape? It is too late to speak of leaving. Has not the "experience" of fascism itself blurred forever the line between
effervescence and utility, organizing lumpen uselessness into the efficiency of state service, fusing charismatic sovereignty
with the mechanical rationality of order, marking the final penetration (to speak Habermasian) of Zweckrationalitat into the
lifeworld of pure dpense? (1, 339-7 1). Such blurring indeed would erode the last enclave of uncontaminated
spontaneity-implicating the body, the unconscious, desire, sexuality itself within the restricted circuit of the commodity
exchange. A blurring which would paralyze-as Adorno and Horkheimer saw all too clearly, Marcuse not clearly enough-all hope
of exit and mock every fantasy of regression as being the collusive daydream of the herd. Making "Auschwitz" henceforth (as
Bataille puts it, with an almost Adornian pathos) the very "sign of man" (11, 226), the decisive rubric of our day. Turning the
To what would one return?

Historic precedents are neither conceivable nor provided. There is no
historic form of sovereignty which is not already implicated in the
machinations of profane rationality. Even the most "primitive" potlatches of the Tlingit and Kwakiutl
present into a "field of ashes" (5, 40), without an option of escape.
were already contaminated by the calculus of acquired rank and power (Bataille does not, despite appearances, share Mauss's
idealizations of the communifying bond of archaic "generosity.") Early potlatch was already caught up in the rational circuit of
exchange. Tribal depense proves to be a "comedy" (7, 73) of compensation and control 82 Yale French Studies an insurance
policy underwritten by the machinations of a "crooked will" (7, 75). For the Pacific chieftain indeed is guaranteed to win
through losing-gift summoning countergift-stockpiling prestige and honor in return for the dilapidations of the fiscal reserve.
"He enriches himself with his contempt for wealth, and what he shows himself to be miserly of is the power of his own
generosity" (7, 72). Nor is prehistoric "nature" a nostrum. If it is true that, in his invocation of
"ends in themselves" (1, 305), Bataille would seem to invoke the most classical split between the natural and the cultural the
immanent entelechy of phusis pitted against the exteriority of techn (Aristotle); the apparent "purposelessness" of the flower
pitted against the functionality of the artifact (Kant); the wasteful effusions of the songbird pitted against the niggardly
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Kirk, Flynn, et al
efficiencies of the craftsman (Schiller)-he is unsentimental in his attachments, and dismisses every yearning for archaic Nature
as being just "poetic fulguration" (7, 294). Despite appearances. It is true that our meager acts of effervescence are said to be
just "the expression of the Earth and its laws" (2, 155)-the very laws of "cosmic energy" which one would ignore, warns
Bataille, at one's own peril (7,33). True, too, that "communication" at times seems modelled on the labyrinthine bondings of
molecular existence (1, 433ff.). And it is true that the undulations of expenditure seem to suppose a "link between lovemaking
and lightwaves" (5, 283)-"perhaps arbitrary," demurs Bataille, but no less telling. But this is not the "cosmic
Lebensphilosophie" some might imagine. '1 For natural immediacy is not an option. "In this kind of situation there is no
recourse to animality" (8, 196). The unfettered immediacy of natural existence (apparently unquestioned by Bataille)'2 is
neither possible nor desirable for humanity. For one thing, such immediacy remains "unfathomable" (7, 294). For another, it
lacks all verve. The soggy indifference of "life" ("like water in water" [7, 295]) in fact is devoid of sacred tension. The animal
(unfettered by work and prohibitions) knows not the joyful horror of transgression; it knows just the "slumber" (7, 313) of
instinctual life. Libertarian appeals to 11. Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1987(, 235. 12. On evidently Hegelian grounds. The epigraph to Thorie de Ia religion cites Kojve (whose testimony is
taken to be impeccable( on the difference between the immediacy of animal hunger and the mediated "negativity" of human
desire REBECCA COMAY 83 nature would only neutralize "sin" as wholesome spontaneity (fun sex, healthy appetite): Genet
the violation of
taboos is not a "return to animal violence" (10, 68): transgression
(dialectically?) 1-3 preserves the very prohibition it would surmount.
and Sade, Baudelaire and Proust knew rather the awful attraction of forbidden fruit. For
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Kirk, Flynn, et al
A2 Alt is patriarchal
Turn: Our model of sacrifice is expenditure, breaking down the accumulating forces that
enable traditional masculine conquest
JesseGoldhammer2005
Althoughvirilityiscommonlydefinedasanaccumulationofmaleforce,especiallysexualpotencyBataille
viewsitthroughthelensofunproductiveexpenditure.Theresultisaconceptofmalepowerthatreliesonan
ontologyofwaste,notaccumulation.ForBataille,themaleerectionhasnopurposeotherthantowasteitself,an
imagecapturedbyTroppman,themaincharacterinBataille'snovelLeBleuduclef(BlueofNoon),writtenin1935
butnotpublisheduntil3957.SusanRubinSuleimanremarksthatTroppmanissymbolicallycastrated,areflectionof
Bataffle'scharacterizationoftheimpotencefeltbyantifascistFrenchintellectualsintheI930s.Forinstance,when
TroppmanisunabletomakelovetoabeautifulwomannamedDirty,sheeuphemisticallytauntshim:"Ifonlyyou
couldloseyourhead?'60Suleimanarguesthatthisslippagebetweencastrationanddecapitationindicates
increasedvirilityfromauniquelyBataillian
perspective:
Decapitationisasymboliccastration,ifFreudistobebelieved;butTroppmanisalreadysymbolicallycastrated,so
hisdecapitationwouldberedundant.(Troppnian,incidentally,wasthenameofamassmurdererbeheadedinParis
in5870.)Unless,ofcourse,"losinghishead"restoredhispotency,accordingtothatcharacteristicallyBaraillian
equationwhichstatesthataviolentlossofcontrolisthepreconditionofjouisaauce,aradicallettinggo.61
Itispreciselythis"violentlossofcontrol:'anticipatedbyunproductiveexpenditure,celebratedinBlueofNoon,
andcapturedinBataille'sContreAttaquewritings,thatcharacterizesBataille'sconceptofvirility.Virilityis
paradoxicallyaformoforgiasticpowerlessnessorjouissance,asortofantiauthoritarianauthority.Thisstateof
beingformsanexactparalleltoBataille'snotionofsub
p.180
versiveoracephalicsovereignty62Indisposingofitselfeffervescently,virilitypermitsontologicalselfsacrifice
intheserviceofarevolutionthatwastesunproductivelyallthatitopposes.Therevolutionaryroleofsovereign
virilityisthusmetapoliticalbecauseitpromisesaselfwoundingmasculinitythatturnstheproletariatinwardand
uponitself.Sovereignvirilityalsothwartstraditionalnotionsofpoliticalfoundation,whichrequireidealismand
elevatedauthority.
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144

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No head is better than one.

Shells Pups of War and Cerberus.................................................8

The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff).............................................9

Essential Dual Purpose Blocks.....................................................18

Pups of War Essential Blocks.......................................................37

War Link v Link Turn Debate.................................................37

Cerberus Essential Blocks............................................................44

Cerberus Realism 2nc......................................................................50

A2 Bataille misunderstands x (e.g., excess)...................................98

Shells Pups of War and Cerberus

Labor on, Hercules!

The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff)

The Pups of War 1NC Shell Link (v K aff)

ShellCerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)

and Finn Stepputat 2007

"war on terror" and the attacks on Afghanistan and

The enemies, or "deviants," within this space of

Cerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)

their public authority through a capacity for visiting

violence on human bodies.

sovereign power originates in

sovereignty has no positive existence

Cerberus 1NC Shell Link (v Policy Aff)

modern society remains

"the production of a biopolitical body is the

"inclusive exclusion" is captured in the Roman concept of

Cerberus /Yelping Pups 1NC Shell Alt/MPX

Cerberus /Yelping Pups 1NC Shell Alt/MPX

Cerberus /Yelping Pup 1NC Shell Alt/MPX

Cerberus /Yelping Pup 1NC Shell Alt/MPX

Essential Dual Purpose Blocks

Perm 2nc (Both)

Perm 2nc (Both)

Perm 2nc (Both)

summit isn't what we 'ought to reach,' " (OC 6:

Perm 2nc (Both)

being subject to chance is acphalic, a headless being, a

Perm 2nc (Both)

A2 Aff challenges militarism (Both)

A2 Aff challenges militarism (Both)

A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)

A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)

A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)

A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)

A2 Policy-Making/Fiat Framework (Both Ks)

A2 Public Sphere/Demands on State Good (Both Ks)

A2 Public Sphere/Demands on State Good (Both Ks)

Impact Calculus versus Extinction (Both Kritiks)

Impact Calculus versus Extinction (Both Kritiks)

Impact Calculus versus Extinction (Both Kritiks)

Impact Calculus versus Extinction (Both Kritiks)

Pups of War Essential Blocks

Pups of War Link v Link Turn Debate

Pups of War Link v Link Turn Debate

Pups of War Alternative 2NC

Pups of War Alternative 2NC

Pups of War Alternative 2NC

Pups of War A2 Coalitional Politics/Strategic Essentialism Good

force of contestation [p. 33] that is

has been dulled,

for the decomposition and exclusion of

nothing worthy or capable of

Cerberus Essential Blocks