Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SHELL 1/4
THE AFFIRMATIVE’S APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC EXERTS BIOPOLITIAL
CONTROL OVER LIFE BY EXPOSING IT TO DEATH, USING THE IMAGE OF
APOCALYPSE TO JUSTIFY THE EXTERMINATION OF THOSE OBJECTS OF
POWER ISOLATED AS THREATS.
COVIELLO, assistant professor of English, 2000
[peter, “Apocalypse From Now On”, PG. 40-1, JC]
Perhaps. But to claim that American culture is at present decisively postnuclear is not to say that the
world we inhabit is in any way post-apocalyptic. Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed - it did not
go away. And here I want to hazard my second assertion: if, in the nuclear mhm of yesteryear, apocalypse
signified an event threatening everyone and everything with (in Jacques Derrida's suitably menacing
phrase) "remainderless and a-symbolic destruction," then in the postnuclear world apocalypse is an affair
whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in substance, apocalypse is defined now by the
affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people whose very presence might then be
written as a kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and prosperity of a cherished "general
population." This fact seems to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation, from 1989, that,
"Apocalypse is now a long running serial: not 'Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse from Now On.'" The
decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of apocalypse (the point Sontag goes on, at
length, to miss) is that the apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast economy of
power, it is ever useful. That is, though the perpetual threat of destruction - through the constant
reproduction of the figure of the apocalypse - the agencies of power ensure their authority to act on
and through the bodies of a particular population. No one turns this point more persuasively than
Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first volume of The History of Sexuality addresses
himself to the problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less life-threatening than ,
in his words, "life-administering." Power, he contends, "exerts a positive influence on life … [and]
endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and
comprehensive regulations." In his brief comments on what he calls "the atomic situation,"
however, Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern power must not be mistaken
for a uniform repudiation of violent or even lethal means. For as "managers of life and survival, of
bodies and the race," agencies of modern power presume to act "on the behalf of the existence of
everyone." Whatsoever might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this way serves to
authorize any expression of force, no matter how invasive, or, indeed, potentially annihilating. "If
genocide is indeed the dream of modern power," Foucault writes, "this is not because of a recent return to
the ancient right to kill' it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the
race, and the large-scale phenomena of population." For a state that would arm itself not with the power
to kill its population, but with a more comprehensive power over the patters and functioning of its
collective life, the threat of an apocalyptic demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can
scarcely be done without.
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SHELL 2/4
BIOPOLITICS NORMALIZES THE CREATION OF POPULATIONS AND THEIR
EXPOSURE TO DEATH. THIS ENSURES THE SOVERIEGN APPARTUS’S RIGHT
TO KILL.
Stohler 95
[Anne, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Race and the Education of Desire ,
p. 81-82]
Biopower was defined as a power organized around the management of life, where wars were waged on
behalf of the existence of everyone, entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in
the name of the life necessity, massacres have become vital. It is as managers of life and that so many regimes
have been able to wage so many wars, causing so may to be killed. at stake is the biological existence of a
population. If genocide is indeed the dream of modem powers, it is because power is situated and exercised at the
level of life, the species, the race, and the large scale phenomena of the population. The sovereign right to kill
appears as an "excess" of biopower that does away with life in the name of securing it. How does this power
over life permit the right to kill, if this is a power invested in augmenting life and the quality of it? How is it
possible for this political power to expose to death not only its enemies, but even its own citizens. This is the point
where racism intervenes. "What inscribes racism in the mechanisms of the state is the mergence of biopower.. . .
racism inscribes itself as a fundamental mechanism of power that exercises itself in modern states" racist discourse
it is a "means of introduction a fundamental division between those who must live and those who must die. It
fragments the biological field it establishes a break inside the biological field, it establishes a break inside the
biological continuum of human beings by defining a hierarchy of races, a set of subdivisions in which certain
races are classified as "good." fit, and superior.& establishes a positive relation between the right to kill and
the assurance of life. It posits that the more you kill and let die, the more you will live." It is neither racism nor
that state that invented this connection, but the permanency of war-like relations inside the social body.
Racism now activates this discourse in a novel way, establishing a biological confrontation between "my life and
the death of others" The enemies are those identified as external and internal threats to the population. "Racism is
the condition that makes it acceptable to put certain people to death in a society of normalization" The murderous
function of the biopolitical state can only be assured by racism. which is indispensable to it. Racism will develop in
modem societies where biopower is prevalent and with colonizing genocide." How else, could a biopolitical state
kill civilizations if not by activating the themes of evolutionism and racism. War ''regenerates" one's own race.
In conditions of war proper, the right to kill and the affirmation of life productively converge. Discourse has
concrete effects; its practices are prescribed and motivated by the biological taxonomies of the racist state.
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SHELL 3/4
ALTERNATIVE: VOTE NEGATIVE TO REJECT THE 1AC’S RHETORICAL CONSTRUCTION
LEGITIMATING NUCLEAR STRATEGIC THOUGHT IN THE NAME OF APOCALYPTIC DANGER.
Taylor 2k7
[byran, associate prof. communications@ Colorado-boulder, “the means to match their hatred”: nuclear weapons,
rhetorical democracy, and presidential discourse”, University of Colorado–Boulder, presidential studies quarterly,
vol. 37, no. 4, 667-692, JC]
This interdependency between security and rhetoric is further clarified in arguments conceptualizing nuclear
weapons as a legitimation crisis for the liberal-democratic nation-state (Deudney 1995, 209). Rosow (1989)
argues that traditional conceptualization of nuclear deterrence as a strategic issue obscures its status as "a
system of social relations" (564). In adopting this alternate perspective, Rosow argues, we may reclaim nuclear
weapons from official discourses that have sheared off from their necessary grounding in—and authorization
by—the discourses of the nuclear life world: "[Strategic] debate scarcely touches on the experience of nuclear
deterrence as a cultural and political-economic production. . . . The result is a serious discontinuity between
the claims on which the validity of nuclear policy rests . . . and the actual effects of nuclear deterrence on the
material well-being and consciousness in the advanced capitalist West" (564). Rosow's argument establishes the
democratic status of nuclear weapons as a rhetorical problem: he conceptualizes nuclear deterrence as a discourse
composed of "interpretive claims" and imperative expressions and theorizes its mediation of both institutional
structures and forms of identity. Viewed in this light, we can recognize how, as artifacts, nuclear weapons clarify
a fundamental contradiction between their destructive potential and their legitimating cultural discourses:
"The same forces that are to produce peace and prosperity, i.e., science, knowledge, rationality, also produce
the tools for destroying the very civilization they are designed to protect and whose values and future they
embody."Richard Falk (1982, 9) has suggested the implications of this condition for a nuclear-rhetorical democracy:
"Normative opposition to nuclear weapons or doctrines inevitably draws into question the legitimacy of state
power and is, therefore, more threatening to governmental process than a mere debate about the property of
nuclear weapons as instruments of statecraft." As a result, Rosow concludes, changes in nuclear policy may
exacerbate inherent conflict between "the [cultural] consciousness of democratic citizenship" and the
legitimacy of the state (1989, 581). As the state increasingly rests its security on weapons systems requiring
centralized control and automated decision making, it becomes increasingly difficult to assert that the
legitimacy of those weapons arises from authentic popular consent. Fault lines in this hegemony are opened
when public rhetoric informs Americans about the international consequences of nuclear imperialism and
encourages their identification with negatively affected groups. In the post-Cold War era, Rosow predicted, it
will become increasingly difficult for the state to normalize nuclear weapons as a familiar and legitimate icon.
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SHELL 4/4
RHETORICAL CRITICISM EXPOSES ASSUMPTIONS AND DISCOURSES WHICH PRECLUDE CO-
OPERATIVE AND DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT.
TAYLOR 2K7
[byran, associate prof. communications@ Colorado-boulder, “the means to match their hatred”: nuclear weapons,
rhetorical democracy, and presidential discourse”, University of Colorado–Boulder, presidential studies quarterly,
vol. 37, no. 4, 667-692, JC]
Rhetorical scholars thus view speech in democracy as "the medium within which the ethical self-government
of autonomous individuals can be articulated with the imperatives of democratic governance" (Hicks 2002,
224). They reconceptualize ideals of deliberative democracy such as inclusion, equality, and reason to
rigorously assess their associated discursive practices. They raise questions about how these practices hail
citizens to participate in the democratic process as particular kinds of acting subjects, endow them with a
sense of entitlement and agency, mediate their understanding of others' interests and the effects of their
actions upon those interests, and develop their ability to not only competently reason together means do not
subvert democratic ends (Cloud 2004, 79). Of particular concern here is the hegemony in democracy of
"reason" as a framing standard (i.e., of rationality) and a conventional practice of accountability that
constrains deliberation through normalized assumptions concerning the source and range of legitimate
support for expression and the ontological status of political interests in relation to language (Welsh 2002). In
challenging those assumptions, rhetorical scholars rigorously critique the ethics and politics of self-described
democratic discourse. They ensure that it does not prematurely foreclose the expression of relevant interests
and that it encourages their patient and ethical cultivation as a resource for innovative transformation of self
and other. Finally, rhetorical scholars of democracy oppose corrosive discourse which forecloses the
possibility of achieving mutual identification between opponents and thus cooperation.
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Even when fear is not suppressed, it can be misdirected. The political risk resulting from apocalyptic thinking
and exaggerated fears is that these con- cerns can get co-opted. How are we to fight off apocalyptic or global
terror- ism? Nuclear prophets like Jonathan Schell say we must rid the world of nu- clear weapons. Current
anti-terrorist politicians say we must rid the world of terrorists; we must wage a war against terrorism.
Ironically, political leaders argue that the possession of nuclear weapons is the means for preventing the
apocalyptic horrors of nuclear war. Just in case deterrence fails, government officials now tell us a missile defense
system should be in place. Six months after the attacks of 11 September 2001, the George W. Bush administration
announced plans to use modified nuclear weapons to destroy terrorist strong- hold stashes of weapons of mass
destruction, or to respond to terrorist attacks that make use of biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons. Officials
have told us for quite some time that governmental possession of chemical and biologi- cal weapons is one of
the means of preventing evil governments or terrorist organizations from using weapons of mass destruction.
Now, the claim is also made that the modified nuclear weapons being urged by the Bush administra- tion for
possible use in the “war on terrorism” will also function to deter ter- rorism. In the past, and again currently,
governmental leaders, by preying on public fears, achieve acquiesce to an ideology that portrays
international adver- saries as totally diabolical and completely untrustworthy. Under these condi- tions, and
supposedly in order to “save” their citizens from the “absolute evils,” military and political leaders present
military preparedness and military actions as the only, or best, insurance against nuclear apocalypse and
terrorist attacks.
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In the first part of this essay, I will argue against the utility of fear and apocalyptic thinking. Apocalyptic
prognosticators have a zero “accudoom” forecast record. By nature, only once could such a forecast be correct.
In reli- gious apocalyptic traditions, the rising of the sun on the proclaimed doomsday typically sends the
sheet-enshrouded devotees back from the appointed hilltop to their everyday tasks. Instead of being taken up
into the clouds, they find their feet firmly planted on the ground. The prophet may re-calculate and issue yet
another warning of the beginning of the end on a still later date, but the ranks of the faithful tend to thin. In the
nuclear doom tradition, the theoretical and experimental data of careful scientific research has often
dispelled similar forecasts. A temporarily frightened public returns to business as usual. Will governmental
assurances lull us into believing that, despite its great cost, a missile defense system will protect us for
ballistic missiles launched at us by diabolical (and hardly comparably powerful) rogue states such as Iran, and
North Korea or the “axis of evil,” as they are now termed? Now, will the Office of Homeland Security protect us
from the various forms of attack that terrorists may employ? Or, could the Office of Homeland Security be
propagating yet another myth of protection? Instead of bringing us security, the Office of Homeland Se- curity
may be a threat to democracy by undercutting civil liberties and intensify- ing militaristic and warist
attitudes at home, not just abroad.
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LINK – CONTAINMENT RHETORIC
CONTAINMENT RHETORIC EMPLOYS A METAPHOR OF GAURDIANSHIP OVER
WEAPONS WHICH POSES THE EXPERTS AND NUCLEAR POLICYMAKERS
AGAINST DEMOCRATIC CONSTRAINTS AND PREVENTS MOBILIZATION
AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
Taylor 2k7
[byran, associate prof. communications@ Colorado-boulder, “the means to match their hatred”: nuclear weapons,
rhetorical democracy, and presidential discourse”, University of Colorado–Boulder, presidential studies quarterly,
vol. 37, no. 4, 667-692, JC]
In this way, rhetorical repression may be better conceptualized as containment of the nuclear public sphere.
Here, scholars such as Alan Nadel (1995) and William Kinsella (2001) have argued that nuclear weapons created a
traumatic exigency requiring the development of cultural narratives to control the associated public
experience of fear and responsibility. The central motif of that narrative, Nadel argues, was "containment," a
term which captures the conflation of declared foreign policy, informal domestic policy, and official rhetoric "that
functioned to foreclose dissent, preempt dialogue, and preclude contradiction" (1995, 14). It is impossible
here to miss the reflexive nuclear metaphor in this demophobic image: "containment" is also the technical
process by which energetic "reactions" in fissile nuclear materials are stimulated to yield desired results, while
minimizing operator exposure to dangerous "contamination," avoiding inconvenient "leaks," and preventing
fatal and "explosive" breaches of control. This metaphor richly evokes, then, technocratic disregard for
nuclear democracy (i.e., as a raw material for official manipulation) and suggests how "engineered"
deliberation can reproduce the premises of nuclear guardianship (Farrell and Goodnight 1981, 298).
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LINK - BIOTERRORISM
BIOTERRORISM SCENARIOS CREATE A DOCILE FORM OF POLITICAL
SUBJECTIVITY, EXPOSING LIFE TO POWER INCLUDING EXTERMINATION AND
‘LETTING DIE’ AND PRECLUDES POSITIVE POLITICAL SOLUTIONS TO
ACTUAL THREATS.
Spana 2k4
[monica sochoh, asst. professor of medicine at uPittsburgh, “bioterrorism: us public health and a secular apocalypse”, anthropology today, vol 20,
issue 5, p.8-13, oct 21, jc]
Bioterrorism scenarios permit explorations into ‘governmentality’ – the institutions, processes and practices
through which a population comprised of individuals is imagined, their conduct and well-being made meaningful,
their sense of self nurtured in specific ways, and their efforts directed to some purposes over others (Ferguson &
Gupta 2002; Foucault 1991[1978]). Bioterrorism scenarios are a symbolic structure through which a particular
kind of danger is construed, and particular social identifications and relationships are made, with manifest
political consequences (Campbell 1992, Weldes et al. 1999). As represented in official response scenarios,
bioterrorism is an amalgam of dangers against which the US population must be made secure – the foreign
terrorist, the replicating pathogen, and the panicky public. Around this definition, new networks of
authorities in and out of government are coming together to protect the common good (cf. Trouillot 2001);
their interests some- times converge, at other times conflict. Bioterrorism scenarios – through their authorship,
performance and dissemination – help to generate new political subjectivities. Arange of authorities find
reinvigorated purpose in providing protection against bioterrorism. Political and military leaders reassert
the duty to safeguard America from foreign enemies. Law enforcement professionals find new purpose in the
goals of subverting terrorist attacks and containing disorderly publics. Medical and public health practitioners
fulfil oaths to provide protection against bodily harm for patients and populations – the political boundaries of
which may shrink or expand, from the local to the national to the global. Present concern with bioter- rorism
may signal novel forms of ‘biopower’(Foucault 1980[1976]), where the task of governing becomes enhancing
the ability to fight off infection, i.e. building better ‘emergency response systems’ at the institutional level
and better ‘immune systems’at the individual level (cf. Martin 1994). ‘While an evangelism of fear has been
cardinal for the constitution of many states’ identity, the apocalyptic mode[…] has been conspicuous in the
catalog of American statecraft’(Campbell 1992: 153). Bioterrorism imaginaries of professionals charged with
ensuring preparedness are apparently secular: bioscience, technology and medicine are among the forces invoked
to deliver the population from danger. Approaching counter-terrorism scenarios as non-religious, however,
risks obscuring the complexity of US culture and politics. Religious and secular apocalypticisms frequently
interpenetrate one another (Stewart & Harding 1999). Tens of millions of Americans, it is esti- mated, believe
that the endtime prophesied in the Book of Revelation is soon to be realized: biological weapons are singled out
by some as the means of final destruction.13The latest installment in the evangelical ‘Left Behind’series – the best-
selling adult novels in the US – presents a ‘war-like’ Jesus in the Second Coming, an image that resonates with
President Bush’s portrayals of military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of ‘godly purpose’.14 Whether and
why various ‘publics’in the US (and else- where) embrace the vision of a bioterrorized future is an open question.
Prevalent in US popular culture, scenarios may constitute a modality of power through which current political
leaders produce consent for their counter-terrorist activities and professionals reproduce their expert status.
Mass culture effects, however, are uncertain, unstable and contradictory (Traube 1996). More ethnographic study is
thus needed to understand whether and under what condi- tions various ‘publics’ internalize dominant images of
themselves as being at risk of bioattack, and as legiti- mately protected by current domestic and foreign policy and
professional practices (cf. Skidmore 2003). An additional ethnographic and political question is what role
bioterrorist narratives play in reinforcing apocalyptic sce- narios in the minds of individuals and groups
fantasizing about bringing them about. Bioterrorism scenarios embody ambitions of both antagonist and
protagonist. Thinking hopefully about a future notthreatened by bio- logical attacks is doubly difficult in the
current environ- ment: apocalyptic rhetoric of an incontrovertible, impending doom ‘all too easily
overwhelm[s] the opti- mistic faith necessary for meaningful political action’ (O’Leary 1998: 412).
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Critical and cultural scholars are responding to this rapidly evolving nuclear landscape and in particular to the
Bush administration's rhetorical depiction of international nuclear proliferation as a pretext for military
intervention. Hecht (2003) characterizes this rigid and simplistic rhetoric as an instance of ahistorical and
hyperbolic "nuclear rupture-talk" that legitimates neo-imperialism. In their indictment of the administration's
pre-invasion allegations concerning Iraq's possession of WMD, Hartnett and Stengrim (2004) conclude that this
rhetoric not only constitutes a grievous fabrication of evidence but also "amounts to a pattern of lying that
poses a serious threat to the foundational principles of democracy" (152). And Rutledge (2007) has examined
the administration's related rhetoric in its ongoing conflict with Iran over its nuclear development program.
In her post-colonialist analysis, Rutledge (2007, 133) concludes that this rhetoric is suffused with irony,
ambivalence, denial, and paradox. It reflects, for example, "America's continued attempts to protect the
secret of nuclear power while acknowledging the impossibility of doing so." It allows U.S. rhetors to avoid
acknowledging that nuclear domination has been achieved "at the cost of continued economic and political
exploitation of nations like Iran." It suppresses the inconvenient truth that "America hypocritically builds
bigger and more destructive nuclear weapons while expecting other nations to resist the temptation to
develop those same weapons." And finally, it allows the nation to shift ambivalence about its own nuclear
history onto enemies, thus "directing attention away from its own role in creating the horrible potentiality of .
. . nuclear destruction."
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The final risk facing apocalyptic thinking and exaggerated fears is moral. Apocalyptic thinking and exaggerated
fears are too farsighted. Farsightedness or hyperopia is the pathological condition in which vision is better
for distant than near objects. For example, nuclear prophets do bring into sharp focus a hopefully distant
object—the prospect that somewhere down the road we will reach an omega point where the destructiveness
of war will in fact be apoca- lyptic. The judgment is surely correct that the precipitation of global doom would be
a profoundly immoral act. But people who are farsighted fail to bring nearby objects into sharp focus. Even if
nuclear apocalypse or further terrorist attacks of the magnitude of 11 September might not be very far down the
road, numerous other war-like objects are much closer to us. In fact, they surround us. Since World War II,
no year has passed in which fewer than four wars were being waged somewhere on this planet. When we
devote too much of our attention to imagining the worst that could happen, we risk inflicting moral hyperopia
on ourselves. Just as we are being myopic when we focus primarily on crime in the streets when confronting the
problem of human violence, even so we are being hyperopic to focus predominantly on the threats of nuclear
apocalypse and global terrorism when confronting the problems of large-scale violence. Apocalyptic thinking
and exaggerated fears risk leaving us morally shortchanged when they lead us to fail to fight against the
horrors of violence that are not distant or possible threats but everyday realities. We need to respond to on-
going atrocities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa that are on a scale quite adequate for moral
outrage, and we need to seek feasible protection from devastating harms such as AIDS, hunger, and environ-
mental degradation that actually are currently afflicting us.
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INTERNAL LINK - GENDERED VIOLENCE
THE APOCALYTPIC IMAGINATION ENTAILS GENDERED VIOLENCE BY REVEALING THE
SECRET OF LIFE IMAGINED AS CREATION THROUGH DESTRUCTION OF THE FEMINIZED
BODY.
WARREN 2K8
[becket, dawn of a newapocalypse: engagements with the apocalyptic
imagination in 2012 and primitvist discourse, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/warren%20beckett.pdf?
acc_num=bgsu1218993516.]
A recurring staring point to defining what apocalypse, and the concepts so derived, is to look at its etymology.
Jacques Derrida’s essay “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy,” (which serves as a starting
point for much of the discussions of the apocalyptic character of post-modernity), begins with the assertion by
André Chouraqui that the Greek apokalupsis is a translation of the Hebrew gala. He expands upon the similarities
thusly: Apokaluptō no doubt was a good word [bon mot] for gala. Apokaluptō, I disclose, I uncover, I unveil, I
reveal the thing that can be a part of the body, the head or the eyes, a secret part, the sex or whatever might
be hidden, a secret thing, the thing to be dissembled, a thing that is neither shown nor said, signified perhaps but
that cannot be or must not first be delivered up to self-evidence (1984: 4). Keller finds the origins of the word
apocalypse as gendered in that the unveiling of Apo-Kalypso “connotes the marital stripping of the veiled
virgin… The moment of truth blinks with cosmic excitement” (1996: 1). Taken together, these two explanations
of the origin of apocalypse reveal important aspects that are frequently overlooked in favor of spectacular
destruction: the revelatory aspect, that apocalypse is concerned with epistemological concerns to as great an
extent as metaphysical or ethical claims; and that construction, maintenance or subversion of gender roles
are often, if not always at stake within the apocalyptic imagination.
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MOURNING DA
APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC FORCLOSES A POLITICS OF MOURNING AND
TURNS ENLIGHTENMENT IDEALS INTO THEIR HOLLOW DOUBLES, OFFERING
ONLY VIOLENCE, TURNING THE CASE.
WARREN 2K8
[becket, dawn of a newapocalypse: engagements with the apocalyptic
imagination in 2012 and primitvist discourse, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/warren%20beckett.pdf?
acc_num=bgsu1218993516.]
For Jay, what those engaged with the apocalyptic imagination are unable to mourn is Kristevan mother figure.
He contends “It is thus tempting to interpret the apocalyptic moment in the critique of technological and
scientific hubris as a convoluted expression of distress at the matricidal underpinnings of the modernist
project, indeed of the entire human attempt to uproot itself from its origins in something we might call mother
nature” (1994: 42). The inability to mourn is not just that of the mother or a matricidal impulse of modernity;
instead it is the inability to mourn the failure of the promises of the Enlightenment. We cannot mourn the
passing of Enlightenment ideals because its institutions, having largely failed to deliver its promises, continue
to move around like an animated corpse. To parallel Jay’s mourning of the loss of the mother, the
Enlightenment on its legs of liberal democracy and scientific knowing, prattles forth like a parent suffering
from severe dementia, offering abuse and little else. While some of the family knows that it is now in fact its
“time,” most are unwilling to let go of pleasant memories from the past.
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RAINFOREST ABJECTION DA
APOCALYPTIC RHETORIC SUSTAINS A SENSE OF ABJECTION OR AN
INCLINATION TO EXPECT THE SYSTEMIC VIOLENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL
DESTRUCTION.
WARREN 2K8
[becket, dawn of a newapocalypse: engagements with the apocalyptic
imagination in 2012 and primitvist discourse, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/warren%20beckett.pdf?
acc_num=bgsu1218993516.]
Jay finds this sullen disposition to be at the heart of “the apocalyptic imaginary as a whole, and not merely its
postmodern variant” (1994: 36). While Jay also finds the writings of Jean Baudrillard and Jean Francois Lyotard to
be indicative of this mode of thinking, the anglophone Anthony Giddens has written about this disposition in a way
that proves useful. Giddens finds the “sense of foreboding which so many have noted as characteristic of the
current age” (1990: 131) to be based upon the way in which risk has become globalized in the modern world.
He finds seven points that characterize the “specific risk profile of modernity” (ibid: 124): 1) risk’s intensity,
that there is a risk of nuclear war that could potentially end all human life on the planet; 2) contingent events
that can effect extremely large numbers of people; 3) the impact of human knowledge on the natural world,
particularly technology’s impact on environmental conditions; 4) institutionalization of risk in global market
exchanges, of which the current global food crisis is representative; 5) the awareness of risk being risky, that
is uncertain; 6) this awareness is held by many people; 7) and that no expert can be completely proficient in
managing risk. Similar to this overwhelming position of risk, Keller identifies a feeling of pending apocalypse
existing within society as a cryptoapocalypse, a sort of Kristevan abjection within the “subliminal margins” of
human psyche. It makes people “inclined to expect the burning of the rainforests” by naturalizing feelings of
foreboding and inevitability, “enabling their own numbed complicity in the economic system that is causing
the end of the world for so many Amazonian species” (1996: 8). Taken together these factors help to explain
the sense of pending cataclysm that is identified with adopting the apocalyptic imagination, but it is only one
component.
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Taylor 2k7
[byran, associate prof. communications@ Colorado-boulder, “the means to match their hatred”: nuclear weapons,
rhetorical democracy, and presidential discourse”, University of Colorado–Boulder, presidential studies quarterly,
vol. 37, no. 4, 667-692, JC]
The implications of this condition for nuclear democracy generally—and constitutional constraints on
presidential war powers, specifically—are quite serious. The president is believed to be the only one who can
authorize the launch of nuclear weapons and is commonly viewed as having the right to do so under conditions of
attack. Although he is required to discuss options with advisors before transmitting his decision (and launch
command codes) to military commanders, the president also has the right to predelegate launch authority to those
commanders (Born 2006, 26-27). This right has been exercised throughout the Cold War in periods of crisis, and
historians have demonstrated that those commanders have subsequently exercised their operational autonomy in
ways that undermine declared policies (Nolan 1989; Rosenberg 1983). Additionally, Falk notes (1982, 3), "Political
leaders in the United States have failed throughout the nuclear age to consult with, or disclose to, the public
the occasions on which the use of nuclear weapons was seriously contemplated." This situation has created a
frightening and largely unacknowledged gap between official policies of nuclear control and actual military
practices that has heightened nuclear risk and created an ongoing mystery regarding whether and how the
ideals of democratic rule are preserved in moments of crisis. Throughout the Cold War, this problem plagued
demophobic Realists who feared on the one hand that "excessive [nuclear] power in the hands of an aroused or
angry citizenry could lead to more than political upheaval and revolution; it could lead to annihilation" (Rosenthal
1991, 123) and, on the other, that near-disasters such as the 1962 Cuban missile crisis demonstrated an unacceptable
level of risk created by nuclear elites. For philosopher Elaine Scarry (1990), the problem of centralization is
fundamentally moral: the semi-automated status of nuclear weapons subverts a requirement of democratic
rule that bodies which may be destroyed in war must have the opportunity to consent to their conscription
and deployment. Third, Hudson (2004, 320) argues that the postwar national security state practices anti-
democratic repression as officials invoke its imperatives to justify their subversion and suspension of
domestic civil liberties. Telescoping this claim to focus on nuclear weapons and rhetoric, we may concede the
historical impact of anti-Communist rhetoric on mainstream public regard of anti-nuclear dissent. Additionally, we
may consider how—in the 1953 resolution of the U.S. government's case against the Rosenbergs—repression
has included the ultimate act of executing nuclear spies (Carmichael 1993; Garber and Walkowitz 1995). This
outcome is achieved through rhetorical practices such as courtroom cross-examination, and it also functions
in the public sphere as a "message" confirming the nuclear state's level of commitment to disciplining threats
posed to its order by political difference.
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If disciplinary bio-politics are constituted in the governmentality, management and instrumentality of human
life, such as the doctrines of Human Rights, then the bio-politics of control and abandonment are constituted as
"necropolitics," the profitable designation of bodies, races, gender, nations, and sub-populations selected for
access, left to death, and/or made to die. The mutual positioning taken up in Silko's "novel" [10] and in Mbembé's
"political science" and Sandoval's "Chicana, feminist theory" [11] are the deadly and catastrophic stakes of
bodies, complexity, control, bio-power, and bio-political technologies not simply designed to subdue the mass
proletariat and exploit labor power, but to expropriate the value of living flesh itself.
Articulating the necropolitical and indigenous politics of land, Silko writes, "North was the direction of Death"
(Almanac 590). Within the continental "Americas" and by virtue of catastrophically under-acknowledged and
profitable exclusion and genocide across these lands, indigenous and non-white im(migrant) bodies occupy what I
term "zones of morbidity." For Silko, born in the Laguna Pueblo, this genocide continues through geo-economic
ecocide in the form of the largest un-reclaimed uranium mine in the United States, the Jackpile-Paguate mine, sitting
in the middle of the village. Given the vast complex of irradiation sicknesses, cancer clusters, and death
through uranium mining, nuclear weapons testing and radioactive waste disposal facilities found across and
adjacent to the traditional territories and current reservation lands of most Western states tribes, a case for
contemporary environmental racism as genocide could be made on behalf of indigenous peoples without any
historical considerations. The continuation of extermination practices and policies of the federal and state
governmental bodies, nuclear and genetic laboratories, military and police agencies, working directly with
corporate energy interests under the political and economic support and racist social oppression by the U.S.
middle class and international corporate elite makes for a tale of necropolitical technologies. This is precisely
what is found in Silko's rendering of contemporary storytelling and prophecy through the Almanac. The prophecies
of death or necropolitical design and political affect travel within and among the dead, the dying, the living and the
morbid. And as her Almanac demonstrates a prophetic and differential future must be mapped in consultation
with the remains of history, tradition, and culture because under these necropolitics of control, direct
opposition to power is not only futile; it is deadly.
Arizona Debate Institute 2009 19
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WARREN 2K8
[becket, dawn of a newapocalypse: engagements with the apocalyptic
imagination in 2012 and primitvist discourse, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/warren%20beckett.pdf?
acc_num=bgsu1218993516.]
Is the apocalyptic imagination, like fascism intrinsically violent? Carpenter wonders, “If Revelation puts sex into
discourse as gynephobia and homophobia, then sexual and gendered violence may be integral to ‘apocalypse’as we
know it: the sexual politics of ‘apocalypse’may be unable to dispense with violence because that violence – a
gendered violence – may be what is at stake in the vision of apocalyptic power” (1995: 111). Carpenter suggests
that a “gay apocalyptic” is a potential way to somewhat work around this violence, an approach to the
apocalyptic imagination first developed in the 1960s. The revolution of the imagination seems to be a strong
component, Carpenter explains : But the events of the revolutionary sixties also gave rise to an oppositional
apocalyptic: readings of Revelation that valorize a line of prophets linked in a common opposition to “culture,” and
that celebrate apocalyptic vision as a rapturous opening of the seals of prophesy or the doors of perception, a
longed for “coming out.” In this “gay apocalyptic,” representations of Revelation take on the structure of a
visionary “coming-out” narrative, a prophecy of something to be revealed at the end of History but not in
history (1995: 120). This “gay apocalyptic” bears similarity to Keller’s counter-apocalypse, and also reflects
Collins’s characterization of the apocalyptic imagination being a revolution of the imagination. Opening the “doors
of perception” is one approach to changing the ways in which truths often taken as givens are challenged.
Rather than ignoring the gendered violence of Revelation, it must be acknowledged and be part of that which
is to be done away with. Rather than the Whore of Babylon being defeated, the apocalyptic imagination could
be employed to defeat such dichotomies of whore and mother. Richard Dellamora finds William S. Burroughs to
be a figure representative of such an engagement with the apocalyptic imagination, though he uses the term “queer
apocalypse.” (1995). This term may be somewhat more apt because it does not connote the diametric way of
thinking that is to be subverted; rather than gay as opposed to straight, queer has been used to describe the state of
flux in which sexuality exists. Kermode, does not find much to be found of use in the apocalyptic imagination,
including Burroughs. What is particularly problematic for Kermode is “The most terrible element in apocalyptic
thinking is its certainty that there must be universal bloodshed” (2000: 107). This is certainly true of many
manifestations of the apocalyptic imagination, particularly Christian Revelation as deployed by those who seek to
create or protect their authority. However it is overstatement to characterize it as a necessary element of the
apocalyptic imagination. While bloodshed and destruction are often present, it is not so in some of the Jewish
apocalypses examined by Collins, and seems to be mitigated or at least downplayed in some contemporary
manifestations. The conflation between judgment and punishment is what makes bloodshed seem necessary.
The revolution of imagination within queer or counter-apocalypse can call out domination and oppression
without demanding that an archangel line those responsible up against the wall.
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First, although there is scholarly disagreement surrounding the utility of "the rhetorical presidency" as an analytic
concept (Ivie 2005; Medhurst 1996), it is largely uncontested that presidents use the full power of language at
their command to interpret the interests of the nation and to advocate policies that serve them. Here, politics,
poetry, and rhetoric may intersect as nuclear presidents draw on formal literary devices such as metaphor
and ideological narratives establishing what is true, beautiful, and good for the nation in order to justify
America's historical development of nuclear weapons. Here, Hall's poem reminds us that poetic language
dialogically shadows the rational deliberation of nuclear policy and potentially intervenes in its abstractions and
exclusions.
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Finally, nuclear weapons contribute to the anti-democratic condition of distortion. Hudson (2004) depicts this
condition as an illegitimate stranglehold exerted by agents of the military-industrial complex on public
deliberation of national security policy. He lists associated practices such as persistent threat exaggeration and
incongruous promotion of anachronistic weapons systems and attributes these to the ongoing need of institutional
actors to preserve their authority, legitimacy, and profitability. This political-economic determinism,
however, does not explain the cultural dependency and productivity of such rhetoric. Additionally, the trope of
"distortion" invites us to prematurely judge nuclear rhetoric as either converging with or diverging from a
preexisting, objective truth condition. Alternately, we may consider that the critical significance of this rhetoric
lies not in its referentiality, but in its capacity to shape the conditions of deliberation by advancing particular
discourses and frames over their competitors.
Central to this discussion is the famous conceptualization by Robert Jay Lifton and Richard Falk (1991) of
"nuclearism" as a potent mixture of ideologies including bureaucracy, nationalism, religious fundamentalism,
militarism, technological determinism, and instrumental rationality. This hegemonic condition, argue Lifton and
Falk, fuels the promotion of nuclear weapons as a "solution" to perceived problems of national security. It
inhibits democratic discourse by inducing primitive and inappropriate defenses in the public mind as a
response to the terrifying threat of nuclear annihilation. These mechanisms include a quasi-religious faith in
nuclear weapons as a source of "salvation" in national security and "psychic numbing" that mediates dread
and guilt arising from repressed understanding of the actual consequences of nuclear weapons development
and use.
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In his related critique of rhetoric surrounding the global war on terror, Robert Ivie (2005) establishes that the
continued degradation of American political culture stems from long-standing "demophobia." In this condition,
democracy is an ideal that must be enforced on international others to preserve essential American interests.
Simultaneously, however, it is viewed as a threatening source of domestic dissent and change that offends the
republican and federalist sense of political order. Ivie unflinchingly probes this throbbing paradox in the history of
U.S. war making: even as they claim to serve democracy through military adventurism abroad, U.S. officials
consistently distort the interests of their opponents and cripple citizen deliberation. They do so through use of
a "decivilizing" rhetoric that blends irrational, aggressive, rigid, paranoid, and exceptionalist discourses to
demonize Other-ness and delegitimate domestic dissent. The consequences of this practice, Ivie argues, are
grave indeed. It degrades cultural diversity required for successful adaptation to changing political
conditions; it suppresses the contradiction between the ideal of deliberation and the coercive use of armed
force; it exacerbates tensions that lead to war's irrevocable destruction; and it marginalizes alternate formats
(such as poetry) that may serve political deliberation. Ivie's solution to these problems is neither direct nor
simple: he calls for nothing less than a radical reorientation to the possibilities of political discourse. Here,
political speakers would privilege the comic pole of Burkean discourse and reject short-sighted, cynical, desperate,
and self-indulgent discourses. Instead, political actors resign themselves to continuous and "adventurous"
struggle (Peterson 2007) and cultivate the civil possibilities of rhetoric and performance for achieving
tolerance, coexistence, and dialogue. As a result, militarist and imperialist discourses of national security that
have attained unwarranted authority and autonomy may be rejoined with a full range of democratic voices.
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Liberal scholars and other commentators who assess the relationship between nuclear weapons and democracy
balance cynicism and optimism (see, for example, Falk 1982; Mitchell 2000; Peterson 2007). Their tone frequently
evokes the morbid genres of diagnosis, autopsy, and obituary, but their grieving, condemnation, and pleading also
seek a healing—if not outright resurrection—of the nuclear-democratic body. This activity typically grows more
active during periods of nuclear instability, in which possibilities for reconfiguring the relationship between nuclear
officials and citizens are at least temporarily opened. During the late Cold War and post-Cold War periods, then,
several speakers addressed this relationship in the context of extraordinary changes in international politics
(Deudney 1995; Falk 1982; Rosen 1989; Rosow 1989; Stegenga 1988). Collectively, these speakers considered how
institutions sediment around the artifact of nuclear weapons and how that process yields rhetoric that
undermines the possibility of robust democratic speech. To varying degrees, these critiques all assert a
fundamental incompatibility between nuclear weapons and the ideals of the democratic state. They argue that
oppressive conditions surrounding the development of nuclear weapons subvert the capabilities of citizens to
acquire, deliberate, and act on information concerning nuclear policy. As a result, the nuclear public is
characterized as fragmented, alienated, uninformed, and unable to participate in deliberation with forceful
and reasoned discourse. Commonly listed elements in this indictment include: an official regime of secrecy
which suppresses and distorts nuclear information; official cultivation of a climate of permanent emergency
that promotes public inertia and acquiescence to authoritarian rule; undue deference by nominal agents of
congressional oversight to the interests of military elites and corporate defense contractors; a timid and amnesiac
news media; and official demonization of anti-nuclear dissent as extreme, irrelevant, and unpatriotic (Rosen 1989).
"This long train of official lies," argues James Stegenga (1988, 89), "has made truly informed consent an
impossibility" (emphasis in original).
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Other studies of this pivotal moment in nuclear-rhetorical history have focused on the success of the Reagan
administration in depriving the Freeze movement—and anti-nuclear opponents generally—of viability and
legitimacy. Bjork (1992), Goodnight (1986), Holloway (2000), and Rushing (1986) have all focused on how
Reagan's depiction of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) skillfully invoked mythic national narratives, and
joined these images with a proposed redemption of tainted nuclear techno-science. This rhetoric legitimated a
preferred strategic vision and continued the seemingly endless presidential quest to resolve nuclear weapons
within the fiendishly conflicting demands of national security and international peace. Sadly, these scholars
conclude, this rhetoric was either unable or unwilling to acknowledge how the SDI proposal merely deferred
inconvenient ambiguity and paradox, such as the utility of strategic "defenses" for supporting a U.S. nuclear first
strike against a nuclear-armed opponent. Nonetheless, this rhetoric effectively neutralized Freeze rhetoric
because it appropriated the movement's concern with the morality of the arms race and appeared to share its
commitment to ending that frustrating and frightening condition.
Mitchell (2000) has critiqued the implications for democracy of ongoing institutional and presidential BMD rhetoric.
Because this rhetoric is shot through with distortion, deception, and self-interest, he concludes, it constitutes a
wasteful, fraudulent, and technically compromised enterprise that should be either reorganized or canceled. It
has undermined the integrity of scientific research and eroded the international credibility of U.S. military
and political officials. It has increased the cynicism and alienation of U.S. citizens and their withdrawal from
the nuclear-political process. Finally, Mitchell concludes, it has inhibited the progress of significant nuclear
arms control and reduction.
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The first involves reappreciating the significance of presidential rhetoric in shaping the story of the nuclear state. In
the introduction to this essay, I considered a provocative allegory linking presidential rhetoric to the voice of world
destroyer. That image is potentially useful as a spur to consider what seethes and languishes beneath the
discourse of nuclear policy deliberation. It obscures, however, the historical process by which nuclear
presidents have talked themselves and the nation into a seemingly rational—albeit life-threatening—accommodation
of potential global destruction. Here, critics should continue to follow the rhetorical career of "good reasons"
justifying nuclear "solutions" to the "problems" of national security. Specifically, they should challenge the
continued use of irrational, religious imagery that conflates presidential authority with nuclear potency and
thus sustains imperial rule at the expense of a democratic republic.
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Beyond the prospect for factual rebuttal, apocalyptic thinking and exaggerated fears run a psychological risk.
Compare the responses to the nuclear threat and the terrorist threat. Regardless of whether the big boom will bring
on global doom, does belief in nuclear war as apocalyptic motivate people to eliminate this threat? Much of the
public protest against governmental plans relied on the myth of the motivating power of fear to spur otherwise
apathetic citizens to rally around the anti-nuclear cause. But as we well know, the anti- nuclear bandwagon is not
exactly overflowing these days. Initially after the events of 11 September 2001, many people were motivated to act.
Unfortunately, already many people are beginning to suppress their fear. Suppressing negative emotions or
entering a state of denial represents the psychological risk that faces apocalyptic thinking and exaggerated
fears. The saying that the main responses to fear are fight or flight is instructive. We have no way to
guarantee that people frightened by accounts of the horrors of nuclear war or terrorist attacks will fight
back. Many people take flight, especially when they feel disempowered in the political arena and see how
limited the success of past efforts has been. These persons may suffer from psychic numbing. When fear is
suppressed, the call to action is avoided.
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One of the messages of the nonviolent movements of the twentieth cen- tury that we should appropriate is that
hope serves us better than fear. A telling inadequacy of fear, whether proportionate or excessive, is that fear is
only negative. Nuclear prophets frightened many people with the negative images that they presented
repeatedly. Anti-terrorist politicians do the same. Their negative images give many people nightmares when
they are asleep and anxi- ety when they are awake. This negativity can get out of hand, unless we couple it with
a positive vision. In order to attain hope, we need to know about the feasibility of nonvio- lent struggle. In this
regard, Ackerman and Duvall note: We also believe that nonviolent resistance deserves more attention than it has
generally received. In our time violence generates more news be- cause, for many, history is perceived as a
spectacle. But if it were under- stood more commonly as a process, then the dynamic effect of nonvio- lent
sanctions would be more easily appreciated. This form of power is not arcane; it operates on the same level of
reality that most people live their lives, and it is comprehensible for that reason. Contrary to cynical belief,
the history of nonviolent action is not a succession of desperate idealists, occasional martyrs, and a few
charismatic emancipators. The real story is about common citizens who are drawn into great causes, which
are built from the ground up.10
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***AFF ANSWERS***
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For I.F. Clarke, the new apocalyptic fictions were not only nihilistic but also didactic because the discovery of the
“new-found human capacity for creating the most genocidal instruments conceivable ... transformed the tale of the
Last Days into a most admonitory form of fiction that centres on the dangerous pursuit of super-weapons” (21).
Apocalypse can therefore be an appropriate mode for writers keen to protest against complacent political
systems, harmful environmental policies, and reckless technological and scientific experimentation; the form
allows authors to extrapolate from current events and imagine a terrible future should certain actions be
taken. Even if social criticism is not the intention of the author, a disaster scenario that is the result of human
action (or, frequently, inaction) functions as a warning to readers. In this way, politics, technologies, ecological
issues and science may be construed as significant causative factors in either the end of the world or a world
very much worse than it is now.
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WARREN 2K8
[becket, dawn of a newapocalypse: engagements with the apocalyptic
imagination in 2012 and primitvist discourse, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/warren%20beckett.pdf?
acc_num=bgsu1218993516
Jay, drawing on Sigmund Freud, contends that the apocalyptic imagination rests on vacillations between
melancholia and mania stemming from an inability to mourn a lost object. He explains: For there can be little
doubt that the symptoms of melancholy, as Freud describes them, approximate very closely those of apocalyptic
thinking: deep and painful dejection, withdrawal of interest in the everyday world, diminished capacity to love,
paralysis of the will, and most important of all, radical lowering of self- esteem accompanied by fantasies of
punishment for assumed moral transgressions (1994: 37). Jay’s characterization of the apocalyptic imagination
only describes some of its manifestations, completely ignoring its possible constructive uses. While a
resignation to waiting for retribution, whether divine or natural is a possible course of action, so too is taking
predictions of a worst case scenario as a motivation to action. Jay also seems to be overly dismissive of the
“anti- redemptive postmodernist voices in the apocalyptic chorus,” characterizing “Derrida’s valorization of
infinite, unconstrained linguistic play” (ibid: 38) as an example of the accompanying manic impulse that also leads
to inaction. This argument seems to be based on a misreading of Derrida, or an overlooking of his work, such as
“Force of Law” in which he calls specifically for a socially engaged project of deconstruction.
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ALT NO SOLVE
THE ALTERNATIVE CANNOT CHANGE DOMINANT NUCLEAR DISCOURSE – ESPECIALLY IN
DEBATE.
SANDLIN 2K4
[Micahel, review of "people of the bomb: portraits of america's nuclear complex by hugh gusterson",
http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/p/people-of-the-bomb.shtml]
And today, more than ever, Livermore nuclear scientists are flush with taxpayer dollars. The Bush administration is
still pining for the warped Reagan dream of militarizing space, while "mini-nukes" are being developed to smoke
out state-less, spiderhole-dwelling warlords. Gusterson leaves us with the idea that US nuclear dominance-as-
defense has become the reconstructed "natural" order of the day. The utopian dreams of anti-nuclear critics
like Gusterson, Jonathan Schell and many others, advocate worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons as the only
truly fail-safe policy. Although realistically, unless there's an unexpected Green Party putsch in Washington, this
country's dominant discourse on nukes and militarism will probably be, at best, limited to whether nuclear
weapons should function as deterrents or as pre-emptive instruments of global restructuring. Any heretical
dovish discourse calling for peacetime economic conversion of military industries, or faith-based multi-lateral
nuclear abolition, will likely be relegated to chicken-wired "free speech zones" and academic echo chambers.
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INDIVIDUATION DA 1/2
THEIR INDIVIDUIZED RESPONSE TO THE 1AC IGNORES THAT THE
INDIVIDUAL IS ITSELF A PRODUCT OF THE POWER THEY CRITICIZE. THE ALT
PRODUCES QUALITATIVELY MORE VIOLENT CONSTRAINTS.
Shapiro 2007
[Steve, Gather, Foucault and Constraints on Individualism, 4-22-07 http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?
articleId=281474976965588, Accessed 7-8-09, JC]
Think of the amount of suffering that binds us within small deviations of relative constraints. Any biopolitical
means is already a constraint of individualism in itself, therefore any attempt other than the attempt of
the individual to end that constraint is already deviating that biopolitical limitation the individual.
Attempting to change a constraint will only lead to a greater biopolitical constraint over the individual.
Any attempt to end the suffering of the individual will only lead to more suffering. Essentially, this action
is the destruction of that constraint altogether, but a destruction of a constraint can be as devastating, if
not more devastating, than the status quo itself. The constraint cannot be destroyed by any means, it can only
be limited through use of power over the initiation of that constraint. What can seem like agonizing to one
outside the constraint can be a simple form of life for another within it. Changing that form of life tremendously
increases the power structures over the individuals within the constraint, further leading to power over that
individual's mind. Interference can devastate the mind of the individual, making the lifting of the constraint even
more difficult. In particular instances, it takes more exertion of power to deviate a system than to control
it. “Breaking free” in essence, is the only possible change that can be enacted by the individual as a means
of deviating the constraint. Examining the contextuality of the historical abstract can lead us to a possible non-
biopolitical deviation of the status quo. Instead of attempting the impossible, destroying the constraint altogether,
the individual can lift that constraint through the visualization of its context. Only when the individual discovers
the source of his suffering can he truly be free from that constraint.
Arizona Debate Institute 2009 35
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INDIVIDUATION DA 2/2
THE ALTERNATIVE, BY RELYING ON YOUR INDIVIDUAL BALLOT TO EXPRESS
CRITICISM OF THE 1AC, SUSTAINS POWER’S INDIVIDUATING FUNCTION TO
CREATE DOCILE INTELLECTUALS. NO ALT. SOLVENCY.
Foucault also describes the growth of an individualizing political rationality "whose role is to constantly ensure,
sustain, and improve the lives of each and every one."71 This rationality develops into a system that he calls
'pastoral power.' The issue in this system is the relationship between the leader and the led and how it is to
be conceptualized. Foucault traces the origins of pastoral power back to Hebraic and early Christian
writings, where the leader is the shepherd and the led are the sheep. According to these writings,
obedience is a virtue, and the knowledge about each individual sheep by the shepherd is essential. The
shepherd, who should be ever-watchful, must know what goes on in the soul of each one . This account is
contrasted with the Greek view that focused upon the relation between the city and the citizen. Instead of
the leader involving himself with individuals, he is to seek the unity and flourishing of the state as a whole.
It is not that the Greek view has been superseded by the Judeo-Christian one; instead the two have grown
together: "Our societies proved to be really demonic since they happened to combine those two games—the
city-citizen game and the shepherd-flock game—in what we call the modern states."72 Two elements are
pivotal to this combination. First, individuals must be governed by their own truth. We hold a certain
conception of ourselves and attempt to live in accordance with it. We think of our identities as something
deep and natural and hence relate to ourselves as the bearers of a truth. One principal mechanism through
which this is expressed is our sexuality. Again, this is seen as something natural and therefore as something
to which we ought to be true. If a man is not sure about the truth of his sex, he may go to a psychiatrist
who interprets what he says and explains his truth back to him. The conceptual preconditions of such a
relationship are, first, that there is a truth about one's sex, and second, that one may be incapable of
understanding that truth but that another, through one's confession, can. Self-awareness, self-
discipline, and self-correction are at the heart of this conceptualization. It is simply a later instance of
Christian techniques of self-mortification, techniques which introduced this linkage between obedience,
knowledge of oneself, and confession.73 The second central element of this modern political rationality is the
fostering of individual lives in a way that adds to the strength of the state.74 Healthy, productive, docile
citizens are essential to that strength. This is, in one sense, the pinnacle of disciplinary power. The forces
of individuals must be maximized in a manner that adds to the outcome of the disciplinary institution
itself. The same is true with the state, supported by all of these various disciplinary practices within society, but
in turn supporting them. It is a network of power, beginning with the lowly but ubiquitous practices of discipline,
the techniques and strategies of bio-power, all producing the sort of individual who can live within the modern
state and who in turn maintains that state as it supports those disciplinary and bio-power practices and
institutions. Since modern power produces individuals, it is useless to attempt to subvert that power
through an appeal to individualism or an assertion of the rights of the individual. Through a historical
analysis of the rationality specific to the art of governing modern states, it is clear that those states have been
both individualizing and totalitarian from the very beginning.75 Hence Foucault's claim: "Opposing the
individual and his interests to it is just as hazardous as opposing it with the community and its
requirements."76 The liberal individual, his normative intuitions, and the rights that he bears are the
effects of power, and therefore the liberal individual cannot be the basis for an attack on the modern
power regime.
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Even the issue of an Iran with nuclear weapons is no longer discussed with the same apocalyptic language that
has been used in the past, with most panelists now saying the biggest threat is an Iran emboldened to "act
out" with what Lieberman called its "terrorist proxies."
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Spana 2k4
[monica sochoh, asst. professor of medicine at uPittsburgh, “bioterrorism: us public health and a secular apocalypse”, anthropology today, vol 20,
issue 5, p.8-13, oct 21, jc]
Instructive in terms of the capacity of biological weapons to inflict human suffering on an immense scale, bioterrorism
scenarios nonetheless invite elaborate fantasies as to the cataclysm that could ensue. Playing one- dimensional roles in
bioterrorism scenarios, members of the public usually surface as mass casualties or hysteria- driven mobs who self-evacuate
affected areas or resort to violence to gain access to scarce, potentially life-saving antibiotics and vaccines. These images,
around which offi- cial response systems are being built – the public as a problem to be managed during a crisis – preclude
careful consideration of, and planning for, ways to solicit the cooperation of an affected population. The emphasis is on crowd
control rather than enhancing the people’s ability to cope with a public health emergency. In addition, such images help skirt
the difficult issue of how to ensure a fair distribution of resources during an epidemic emergency, by perpetuating a more
simplistic notion of the ‘natural’ volatility of people in grave peril. The apocalyptic mode of scenarios comes at the cost of
fatalism and questionable substantive claims such as those involving mass responses to disaster. Scenarios also have positive,
generative effects as well. They are a compelling medium through which policy-makers and public health and
safety professionals come to comprehend the complex dangers posed by biological weapons. As deliberately
staged interactions among disparate communities, sce- narios temporarily embody a larger response ‘system’, one
typically outside of individual experience. The mayor sees the dilemmas of the hospital administrator who sees the
dilemmas of the emergency room physician who sees the dilemmas of the health department, and so on. Bioterrorism
scenarios foster acquaintances, social connections and understandings across disciplinary bound- aries . In this
respect, bioterrorism scenarios have been revelatory experiences for officials unaware of how public health
actually operates or what limited ability it has to deal with unforeseen events, given its historically low pri-
ority in government, or how a dysfunctional health care system bears directly upon security matters.
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PERM SOLVENCY
ABSTRACT CRITICISM OF THE NUCLEAR PARADIGM IS MEANINGLESS
WITHOUT THE ASPIRATION TOWARDS CONSEQUENTIAL POLITICAL
CHANGE. PERM SOLVES BEST.
WARREN 2K8
[becket, dawn of a newapocalypse: engagements with the apocalyptic
imagination in 2012 and primitvist discourse, http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi/warren%20beckett.pdf?
acc_num=bgsu1218993516.]
When Derrida asks “wouldn’t the apocalyptic be a transcendental condition of all discourse, of all experience even,
of every mark or every trace” (Derrida, Apocalyptic Tone, 1984: 27), and claims that the genre of written
apocalypse is an “exemplary revelation” of such a structure, Derrida is suggesting that all works that are
concerned with truth claims are in fact apocalyptic, in that their purpose is to reveal certain truths. To
illustrate this central point, he repeatedly distinguishes between end and closure. The apocalyptic imagination
is concerned with ends rather than closures, and one must be clear as to what is meant by end. Eschatology is
the detailing of the enactment of a teleology. The end concerning Derrida is the end meaning purpose, not the
end of purposes. Apocalypse forever ought not be conceived as destructive, but rather, deconstructive, or
calling for deconstruction to come. Derrida conceives deconstruction as problematizing, destabilizing,
complicating and bringing out the inherent paradoxes of that which it turns its attention to. Though it may
sometimes be characterized as apolitical or merely anesthetizing politics, Derrida at least sees the project of
deconstruction as much more consequential, and critical legal studies to be an exemplary enactment: “in
order to be consistent with itself, not to remain enclosed in purely speculative, theoretical, academic
discourses but rather (with all due respect to Stanley Fish) to aspire to something more consequential, to change
things” (1992: 8). The dig at Fish is particularly telling, in that while Fish acknowledges the constructed nature of
law, he distances himself from critical judgments against existing political- juridical systems because they at least
work. This distancing from criticism of meaningful things in favor of mere criticism of meaning is not a full
enactment of deconstruction for Derrida. Deconstruction attempts to end established interpretive ends, reveal
those meanings that have been obscured, and enact change.
Arizona Debate Institute 2009 39
Fellows Apocalyptic Rhetoric K
AT: MOURNING/RAINFOREST DA
THE KRISTEVAN NOTION OF ABJECTION MYSTIFIES THE BODY AND SUBUMES
HOMOSEXUAL DESIRE AND THE “PRIMITIVE” OR “ORIENTAL”. THIS PROVES
THEIR IMPACT ANALYSIS NORMALIZES SYSTEMIC FORMS OF VIOLENCE
AGAINST SELECTED POPULATIONS. INTERNAL LINK TURNS THE DA.
CHRISTIAN 2K4
[laura, of housewives and saints: abjections, transgression, and impossible mourning in Poison and Safe, camera
obscura, 19.3]
In situating the concept of abjection, Kristeva summons [End Page 96] the image of an infant who, gagging on
a surfeit of milk, choking on the enigmatic signifiers of its mother's desire, vomits itself out, expelling itself,
abjecting itself with the same convulsive motion through which it establishes itself as provisionally and
tenuously separate from the mother's body. This process, coincident with what is known in classical Freudian
discourse as the primal repression, lays the psychic foundations for the separation between self and other, subject
and object, concomitantly establishing the conditions for the infant's entry into language. The return of the abject
is thus associated with various borderline phenomena—the collapse of bodily boundaries, as well as the
breakdown of structures of signification.
In a sense, one encounters the limits of Kristeva's concept of abjection precisely at the point where it promises
to be the most generative. As soon as Kristeva attempts to position this psychical mechanism of foreclosure
(forclusion) within a broader sociosymbolic system, her analysis succumbs to a mystification of the maternal
body as the universal locus of a presymbolic multiplicity of drives (the semiotic). Butler and others have
observed how Kristeva subsumes not only homosexual desire but that which is marked as "primitive" or
"Oriental" under the ultimately metaphysical category of the "maternal-feminine."6 Haynes's films trouble
this category, suggesting that the abject assumes different codings and is identified with different marginal
zones of social life in different sociohistorical contexts. When the abject erupts in Haynes's films, virtually
rending the fabric of the text, it is not simply equivalent to the return of the "demoniacal potential of the
feminine."7 It is always situated in a specific sociosymbolic economy.