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Off 1

will pass but its tight

Cowan 6/7

[Richard, Columnist focused on Congressional policy, Immigration Reform Backers Insist BillWill Pass Within a Few Weeks, Reuters, 6/7/13,http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/07/immigration-reform-backers-insist-bill-will-pass-within-a-few-weeks/]

The Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, a nearly 900-page reworking of the nations 27-year-old

immigrationlaw, faces a tough fight in the Democratic-held Senate and an even harder battle in

the more conservative House of Representatives later this year.At its core is a plan to move 11 million peopleresiding in the United States illegallymany of whom came from Mexico years ago out of their illegal status and onto a 13-year path tocitizenship.At the same time, the legislation would spend around $6 billion more to strengthen border security and would change the way

temporary visas are issued, putting more emphasis on helping U.S. farmers and high-tech industries get foreign labor.It is gratifying to

see the momentum behind this package of common-sense reforms,which will make our country safer and help

11 million undocumented immigrants get right with the law, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reidsaid.While hepromised to givesenators ample opportunity to change the billa few dozen amendments are expectedReid also warned thathe would not allow opponents to debate the measure endlessly. Work on the bill will be wrapped up before theJuly 4 recess, Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said.The bills handling of the 11 million undocumented residents is particularly problematic for manySenate Republicans who see it as rewarding people who broke the law by entering the United States illegally while others waited in foreign landsfor their applications to be processed.We cant reject a dutiful, good person to America and then turn around and allow someone else whocame in illegally to benefit from breaking our laws to the disadvantage of the good person, said Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Sessions, who has been a leading voice against the legislation, added: It will definitely giveamnesty today to the 11 million.Sessions and other senators are expected to push for greater bordersecurity efforts and are also likely to try to eliminate the pathway to citizenship for the 11 million.

Nevertheless,backers of the bill were confident that it will pass within a few weeks ,putting the

onus on the Republican-controlled House to tackle the immigration overhaul, a top issueto Hispanic

voters who mainly backed Obama in last years election.Republican Senator John McCain, a member of the Gang of Eight that wrote thelegislation,said he remains optimistic that there are at least 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to pass the bill, the

number needed to clear any procedural roadblock.Weve got over 60 votes. Imconfident of that,McCain told

Reuters. He said he believed that by the time the amendment process ends, backers will have 70

votes on passage, the number supporters are aiming for to put pressure on the House to act.

There are some real concernsabout border security that we have to work through, but Im confidentthat we will be able to do so, McCain said.

Plan specifically derails immigration reform - Economic engagement initiatives

PERCEIVED as deprioritizing necessary focus on security issues and drug war

while kowtowing to Mexicoperception is key and hardliner target spin control toplay on fence sitters largest fears

Shear, 13(Michael, NYT White house correspondent, 5/5,http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/world/americas/in-latin-america-us-shifts-focus-from-drug-

war-to-economy.html?pagewanted=all)Last week, Mr. Obama returned to capitals in Latin Americawith a vastly different message. Relationships with countries

racked by drug violence and organized crime should focus more on economic development and less
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on the endless battles against drug traffickers and organized crime capos that have left few clear victors. The countries, Mexico in particular, need

to set their own course on security, with the United States playing more of a backing role. That approach runs the risk of being

seen as kowtowing to governments more concerned about their public image than the underlying

problems tarnishing it. Mexico,which is eager to play up its economic growth, has mounted anaggressive effort to play down its crime problems, going as far as to encourage the news media to avoid certain slang

words in reports. The problem will not just go away, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue. It needsto be tackledhead-on, with a comprehensive strategythat includes but goes beyond stimulating economic growth and alleviating

poverty. Obama becomes vulnerable to the charge of downplaying the regionsoverriding issue , and

the chief obstacle to economic progress, he added. It is fine to change the narrative from security to economics as long asthe reality on the ground reflects and fits with the new story line. Administration officials insist that Mr. Obama remains cleareyed about thesecurity challenges, but the new emphasis corresponds with a change in focus by the Mexican government. The new Mexican president, EnriquePea Nieto, took office in December vowing to reduce the violence that exploded under the militarized approach to the drug war adopted by his

predecessor, Felipe Caldern. That effort left about 60,000 Mexicans dead and appears not to have significantly damaged the drug-trafficking

industry. In addition to a focus on reducing violence, which some critics have interpreted as taking a softer line on

the drug gangs, Mr. Pea Nieto has also moved to reduce American involvement in law enforcement south of the border. With friction andmistrust between American and Mexican law enforcement agencies growing, Mr. Obama suggested that the United States would nolonger seek to dominate the security agenda. It is obviously up to the Mexican people to determine their security structuresand how it engages with other nations, including the United States, he said, standing next to Mr. Pea Nieto on Thursday in Mexico City. Butthe main point I made to the president is that we support the Mexican governments focus on reducing violence, and we look forward tocontinuing our good cooperation in any way that the Mexican government deems appropriate. In some ways, conceding leadership of the drugfight to Mexico hews to a guiding principle of Mr. Obamas foreign policy, in which American supremacy is played down, at least publicly, in

favor of a multilateral approach. But that philosophy could collide with the concerns of lawmakers in

Washington, whohave expressed frustration with what they see asa lack of clarity in Mexicos

security plans. And security analysts say the entrenched corruption in Mexican law enforcementhas long clouded the partnershipwith their American counterparts. Putting Mexico in the drivers seaton

securitymarks a shift in a balance of powerthat has always tipped to the United States and,analysts said, will carry

political risk as Congress negotiates an immigration bill that is expected to include provisions for

tighter border security. If there is a perception in the U.S. Congress that security cooperation is

weakening, that could play into the hands of those who oppose immigration reform, said Vanda

Felbab-Brown, a counternarcotics expert atthe BrookingsInstitution in Washington. Realistically, the border is as tight

as could be and there have been few spillovers of the violence from Mexico into the U.S., she added, but perceptions count in

Washington andcan be easily distorted . Drugs today are not very important to the U.S. public

over all,she added, but they are important to committed drug warriors who are politically

powerful. Representative Michael T. McCaul, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the Homeland Security

Committee, has warned againstthe danger of drug cartelsforming alliances with terrorist groups. Whilethese threats exist, you would be surprised to find that the administration thinks its work here is done, he wrote in an opinion article for Roll Calllast month, pressing for more border controls in the bill. The Obama administration has said any evidence of such cooperation is very thin, but

even without terrorist connections, drug gangs pose threats topeace and security. Human rights advocates said

they feared the United States would ease pressure on Mexico to investigate disappearances and other abuses at thehands of the police and military, who have received substantial American support. The shift in approach suggests that the Obama administrationeither doesnt objectto these abusive practices or is only willing to raise such concerns when its politically convenient, said Jos MiguelVivanco, director of Human Rights Watchs Americas division. Still, administration officials have said there may have been anoveremphasis onthe bellicose language and high-profile hunts for cartel leaders while the real problem of lawlessness worsens. American antidrug aid is shiftingmore toward training police and shoring up judicial systems that have allowed criminals to kill with impunity in Mexico and Central America.United States officials said Mr. Obama remains well aware of the regions problems with security, even as he is determined th at they notovershadow the economic opportunities. It is clear Mr. Obama, whatever his words four years ago, now believes there has been too much securitytalk. In a speech to Mexican students on Friday, Mr. Obama urged people in the two countries to look beyond a one-dimensional focus on whathe called real security concerns, saying it is time for us to put the old mind-sets aside. And he repeated the theme later in the day in Costa Rica,

lamenting that when it comes to the United States and Central America,so much of the focus ends up


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being on security . We also have to recognize that problems like narco-trafficking arise in part when a country is vulnerable because ofpoverty, because of institutions that are not working for the people, because young people dont see a brighter future ahead, Mr. Obama said in a

news conference with Laura Chinchilla, the president of Costa Rica.

PC Key to immigration reformObama using it effectively nowHindustan Times 6/11 [Obama back in fray on immigration reform,http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/Americas/Obama-back-in-fray-on-immigration-reform/Article1-1074774.aspx]

US President Barack Obama made an outspoken pitch for a Senate bill oncomprehensive immigration reformon Tuesday,branding those opposedto it insincereabout fixing a badly broken system.Obama has gently pushedthe bill frombehind the scenes for months, fearing his open support wouldswell the ranks of conservativeswho see the bill as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants and who are determined to kill it.But as the legislation faced a crucial test vote in the Senate, Obama waded into the fray,

leveraging the political capital on the issue he won during last year's election campaign, particularly among Hispanic voters.

"This week, the Senate will consider a common-sense, bipartisan bill that is the best chance we've had in years to fix our broken immigrationsystem," Obama said at an event at the White House.The president also sought to disarm conservative Republicans -- even some who support immigration reform -- who argue that the bill should not

be passed without tough new border security measures."I know there's a lot of talk right now about border security so let me repeat: today illegal crossings are near their lowest level in decades."If passed, the Senate bill, as currently written and as hitting the floor, would put in place the toughest border enforcement plan that America hasever seen. So nobody's taking border enforcement lightly."

Obamaalso took direct aim at the motives of lawmakers who are opposed to the bill , which was drawn upin the Senate by a bipartisan group of lawmakers known as the "Gang of Eight."

"There's no reason Congress can't get this done by the end of the summer," Obama said, but castdoubt on the motives of those wanting to block the bill.

key to sustainable growth- stops double dip recession

Haseltine 10(Eric, Neuroscientist, Former Head of Science and Technology for US

Intelligence Community, "Why America's Economy is On the Brink of Going Down theTubes...for Good," The Huffington Post, August 24, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-haseltine/why-americas-economy-is-o_b_688483.html)

Recessions, especially the deep downturn that started in 2008, always cause us to scramble. Companies

routinely slash spending while governments do the opposite, trying to shock the

country's economic heart into beating again through heroic measures such as the recent

stimulus package. Concern about a possible "double dip" recessionhave the hands of corporate CFO's

and Washington officials hovering over the panic button again, mere months after the last push. Butour scramble to reduce the impact of the latest disaster distracts us from addressing the deep-seated problems that inexorably create the next disaster, and the one

after that. Why waste energy on the distant future, we reason, when we'll never get to that future if we don't solve the problem star ing us in the face?We allfocus on addressing here-and-now emergencies because we have no choice. What limits our options are not outside events, such as economic downturns, butinternal events that go on inside our bra ins. As aneuroscientist, I've learned that our brains are hardwired to avoid near term threats and to ignore long term

opportunities , because our brains are identical to those of our distant ancestors who faced a daily struggle for survival. W hen our brains evolved into theirpresent form, about 50,000 years ago, the environment was incredibly harsh and risky, limiting life expectancies to 20-25 years. Diverting attention from day-

today survival in those Paleolithic times would have invited disaster. Neuroscientists call this hard-wired preference for

quick fixes over long range pursuits temporal myopia: everything past the immediate

future looks fuzzy, or even invisible, and is therefore irrelevant. Unless we overcome our

temporal myopia, we'll continue to put band-aids on this economy and it will continue to deteriorate: in other words, we'll continue to

treat symptoms and never go for a complete cure. And what would such a cure look like? Let's start by looking at

disease that afflicts us. The fundamental problem with America's economy is a decline in the

capabilities and motivation of our workforce. True economic growth-- not the artificial
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kind spurred by fiscal policy-- stems from innovationssuch as Google's search engine that create entirely new businessesand markets. Such innovations grow out of technological advances, which in turn emerge from

earlier scientific discoveries.Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, reinforced this idea when he said"Capitalism expands wealth primarily through creative destruction -- the process by which the cash flow from obsolescent, low-return capital is invested in high-

return, cutting-edge technologies."And where do cutting-edge technologies come from? Modern Economists such as Paul Romer,

Robert Lucas and Robert Barro argue that technical innovations ultimately spring from the cognitive abilities of "human capital"(people) who attain these abilities through education and training. But the National Academy of Science report, "Is America Falling off a Flat Earth?" points out

that science, technology and math education of the American workforce has been in

steep decline for decades, as students now choose careers in business, law or media over the high tech jobs that

were so attractive in the post-Sputnik 60's and 70's . In stark contrast, workforces of countries

such as China are becoming much more tech savvy,such that China now rivals the US and Europe in patents andtechnical publications. S. James Gates, a physicist who served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology said, "If you look at U.S.

performance on various international metrics, depending on which one you use, we come out something like 24th or 25th in the world." In my own informal

survey of middle school and high-school students, conducted during school speaking engagements to increase the allure of science, most kids tell me that theyplan to steer clear of science because it's "way too hard." Other kids observe that "scientists are nerdy." As a result of these widespread attitudes -- nurtured by

Hollywood's portrayal of scientists as socially clueless eccentrics -- innovation-fueled economic growth will

increasingly take place outside America's borders, and our economy will spiral into

relative decline for the foreseeable future. We can pull out of this dive, however, if we see

through our temporal myopia to some hard facts: we will never motivate the majority of

America's youth to give up "cool" careers that promise to make lot of money for"nerdy," un-cool science and technology careers that require hard work in school. We

have simply grown too comfortable as a society and lost the fire in our belly. During World War II,and right after Sputnik, did students, teachers and parents let the prospect of hard work learning science, math and engineering deter them? No, because we facedobvious crises.Harvard Business School Professor, John Kao, author of Innovation Nation: How America is Losing Its Innovative Edge, Why It Matters and

How We Can Get it Back said, ""Fifty years ago the Soviet sate llite Sputnik burst the nation's bubble of complacency and challenged America's sense o f global

leadership. But we rose to the challenge with massive funding for education, revamped school curricula in science and math, created NASA and put a man on the

moon." Today we face a brain race vs. a space race that is every bit as problematic for

America as the first Russian satellite, but this crisis amounts to a "silent Sputnik" that

flies under America's radar. Out of sight, out of mind. I believe that Americans are unlikely to notice, let alone react

to such a stealth threat. The only answer is to reach out to motivated Americans, in places like

China and India, who don't yet know they're going to be Americans. Let's gear up a recruiting system thatcombs secondary schools in China, India, Russia, Europe and South America for top science and technology talent, just as college football programs look for the

best high school athletes. We'll offer these kids -- who do have fire in their bellies because they've grown up in countries that haven't gotten complacent -- full

scholarships to American colleges and a fast track to US citizenship once they complete their studies. This will, in the long run, inject

new vitality into our workforce and our economy and help cure our deep economic ills.

nuclear wars and turns whole case

O Hanlon et al, 12OHanlon 12 Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and Senior

Fellow in Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution,former Professor at the University of Michigan [The Real National Security Threat: America'sDebt, Los Angeles Times, July 10th,http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlon]

Alas, globalization and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American dream into question for the workingclasses. Another decade of underinvestment in what is required to remedy this situation will make an isolationist or populist president far morelikely because much of the country will question whether an internationalist role makes sense for Americaespecially if it costs us well over

half a trillion dollars in defense spending annually yet seems correlated with more job losses. Lastly, American economicweakness undercuts U.S. leadership abroad. Other countries sense our weaknessand wonder about our

purport 7ed decline. If this perception becomes more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes more persuasive, countries will

begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism about America's future. Allies and friendswill doubtour commitmentand may pursue nuclear weaponsfor their own security, for example;adversaries will sense opportunityand be less restrainedin throwing around their weightin their own
http://www.hbs.edu/http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlonhttp://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlonhttp://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlonhttp://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlonhttp://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2012/07/10-economy-foreign-policy-lieberthal-ohanlonhttp://www.hbs.edu/


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neighborhoods. The crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely become less stable. Major war willbecomemore likely.When running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy visions:healing America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change, dramaticallycurbing globalpovertythrough development aid, moving toward a world free ofnuclearweapons. These were, and remain, worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his successor,

there is now amuchmore urgent big-picture

issue:

restoring U.S. economic strength.

Nothing else is

reallypossibleif thatfundamentalprerequisite toeffectiveforeign policyis not reestablished.


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Off 2

We cannot speak on behalf of the Zapatistasthis is against their philosophy and

falsely represents them.

Tormey 06 Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK, and Director of the Centrefor Social and Global Justice based in the School of Politics and International Relations [Parliam Aff (January 2006) 59 (1): 138-154.http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/1/138.full#sec-1] ADoan

HIGH up in the mountains of the south east of Mexico an experiment is taking place that tests some of the most cherished notions politicaltheorists have held and still hold about the nature of politics, of rationality, of order, of emancipation.2 The experiment is being conducted by

the Zapatistas, a group that insists that it is exercising power not on behalfof the people of theChiapas, the region it liberated from the federal government in 1994,but with the people of the

Chiapas. Whilst seeking to give voice to people they are not speaking for them , if they are speaking at all (no officialcommuniqus were issued between the end of 2001 and January 2003the Zapatistas had announced that they were too busy listening to

people). The Zapatistas are seeking a way in which people living in the region can not merely findtheir own voice, butbe heard by those who would otherwise remain deaf, which, predictably,includes those who would seek to represent them : the official parties of the Mexican political

establishment; various Marxist and revolutionary groups; and movements representing the poor or particular indigenous groups. But howare the Zapatistas different to the various groups before them who were unembarrassed to lead, to represent? What have they seen or thoughtabout which makes them suspicious not merely of the actuality of political representation in Mexico, but its very logic? Why have they set their

face against, what for occidental political thought, is politics?The stance and philosophy of the Zapatistas is, I wouldargue, remarkable in itself, but also symptomatic of a more general shift in the underpinnings ofthe political field, one that problematises and pointsbeyond representation. This is a shift that firstannounced itself in relation to philosophy, ethics and literature some decades ago, in turn spreading to black studies, feminism, queer and lesbianstudies, and latterly to post-colonial and subaltern studies. It can now be felt and heard in what is sometimes termed the new activism. The notin my name sentiment that resounded in response to the war in Iraq speaks directly to this mood, and to a politics that sets its face against beingrepresented by others, particularly governments. The rejection of what might be termed the pragmatics of representation (speaking for)coincides with, reinforces and feeds off the much commented upon crisis of representative politics across the liberal-democratic world. As has

been well documented, fewer people are voting (particularly at subnational and supernational level), joining political parties, or engaging with

official political processes, which are for the most part resolutely representative in orientation.My suggestion is that thesetwo moments are linked: that the questioning of representational approaches theoretically andphilosophically is mirrored in the growing dissatisfaction with representational politics either asa basis for mobilising people qua citizens (the political science dilemma) or for thinkingabout how the world might otherwise look (the normative political theory dilemma).Assuming thisto be the case, then what is curious is the degree to which political theory is still evidently wedded to the model of representation as a means forthinking about how communities can function or organise themselves. Rather than witnessing an emerging literature on post-representation, wesee merely the remodelling of representation in ever more baroque fashion so that groups, minorities or diverse interests can be integrated into

existing representative systems of governance.3 Like Platos Pharmakon, representation has become both poisonand cure, both a source of disaffection and the means for its overcoming. In my view thisrepresents a failure of the normative imagination, an unwillingness to contemplate life after

representation.It is as if the memories of Rousseau and Marx weigh so heavily on the minds of the living (to borrow from the latter) thatwe are unwilling even to contemplate what is implied in post-representation for fear of invoking the dreaded totalitarian impasse of the

General Will. This in turn implies thatpolitical theorists have nothing to say in response to those who

are disillusioned with representative structures or those such as the Zapatistas who are attemptingto elaborate structures, institutions and processes that go beyond representation . I want to take issue withthis position and to suggest that we can meaningfully think the beyond or outside of representation. Indeed not to do so is to consign

normative theorising to irrelevance. It is to shrug our shoulders in the face of those who share the intuition that no amount of tinkering willsalvage the antique presuppositions propping up the representative claim.

Andour vastly different perspective means we cannot understand the struggle of the

Zapatistas, and thus cannot accurately represent themthe 1AC creates barriers between
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the privileged debater and the struggling Zapatista, ultimately reinforcing oppression by

silencing the Zapatista.

Alcoff 95 - Linda Martn Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNYGraduate Center [Personal Website, THE PROBLEM OF SPEAKING FOR OTHERS, 1995,http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html]ADoan

Feminist discourse is not the only site in which the problem of speaking for others has been acknowledged and addressed. Inanthropology there is similar discussion about whether it is possible to speak for others eitheradequately or justifiably.Trinh T. Minh-ha explains the grounds for skepticism when she says that anthropology is"mainly a conversation of ùs' with ùs' about `them,' of the white man with the white man aboutthe primitive-nature man...in which `them' is silenced.`Them' always stands on the other side ofthe hill, naked and speechless...`them' is only admitted among ùs', the discussing subjects, whenaccompanied or introduced by an ùs'..."4 Given this analysis, even ethnographies written by progressive anthropologists are a

priori regressive because of the structural features of anthropological discursive practice.The recognition that there is a problem in speaking for

others has followed from the widespread acceptance of two claims. First, there has been a growing awareness thatwhere one speaks from affects both the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that onecannot assume an ability to transcend her location. In other words, a speaker's location (which I takehere to refer to her social location or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on

that speaker's claims, and can serve either to authorize or dis-authorize one's speech. The creation ofWomen's Studies and African American Studies departments were founded on this very belief: that both the study of and theadvocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, andthat we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location betweenspeakers and those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said.Theunspoken premise here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the next section.The secondclaim holds that not only is location epistemically salient, but certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous.5 In particular, the practiceof privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reenforcing theoppression of the group spoken for. This was part of the argument made against Anne Cameron's speaking for Native women: Cameron'sintentions were never in question, but the effects of her writing were argued to be harmful to the needs of Native authors because it is Cameron

rather than they who will be listened to and whose books will be bought by readers interested in Native women. Persons fromdominant groups who speak for others are often treated as authenticating presences that confer

legitimacy and credibility on the demands of subjugated speakers; such speaking for others doesnothing to disrupt the discursive hierarchies that operate in public spaces. For this reason, thework of privileged authors who speak on behalf of the oppressed is becoming increasinglycriticized by members of those oppressed groups themselves.6

Reject the hierarchical rituals of speaking to ensure liberty. We must open up

spaces to allow the other to speakacademic spaces are critical locations for this

effort. Vote negative to listen.

Alcoff 95 - Linda Martn Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the CUNYGraduate Center [Personal Website, THE PROBLEM OF SPEAKING FOR OTHERS, 1995,

http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html]ADoanThe final response to the problem of speaking for others that I will consider occurs in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's rich essay "Can the SubalternSpeak?"14 Spivak rejects a total retreat from speaking for others, and she criticizes the "self-abnegating intellectual" pose that Foucault andDeleuze adopt when they reject speaking for others on the grounds that their position assumes the oppressed can transparently represent their owntrue interests. According to Spivak, Foucault and Deleuze's self-abnegation serves only to conceal the actual authorizing power of the retreating

intellectuals, who in their very retreat help to consolidate a particular conception of experience (as transparent and self-knowing). Thus, topromote "listening to" as opposed to speaking for essentializes the oppressed as non-ideologically constructed subjects. But Spivak is also critical of speaking for which engages in dangerous re-presentations. In the end Spivak prefers a "speaking to," in which the intellectual neither abnegates his or her discursive role nor presumes
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an authenticity of the oppressed, but still allows for the possibility that the oppressed will produce a "countersentence" that can then suggest anew historical narrative.Spivak's arguments show that a simple solution can not be found in for the oppressed or less privileged being able tospeak for themselves, since their speech will not necessarily be either liberatory or reflective of their "true interests", if such exist. I agree with heron this point but I would emphasize also that ignoring the subaltern's or oppressed person's speech is, as she herself notes, "to continue the

imperialist project."15 Even if the oppressed person's speech is not liberatory in its content, it remainsthe case that the very act of speaking itself constitutes a subject that challenges and subverts theopposition between the knowing agent and the object of knowledge, an opposition which has

served as a key player in the reproduction of imperialist modes of discourse. Thus, the problem withspeaking for others exists in the very structure of discursive practice, irrespective of its content, and subverting the hierarchical rituals of speaking

will always have some liberatory effects.I agree, then, that we should strive to create wherever possible theconditions for dialogue and the practice of speaking with and to rather than speaking for others.Often the possibility of dialogue is left unexplored or inadequately pursued by more privilegedpersons. Spaces in which it may seem as if it is impossible to engage in dialogic encounters need to be transformed in order to do so, such asclassrooms, hospitals, workplaces, welfare agencies, universities, institutions for international development and aid, and governments. It has long

been noted that existing communication technologies have the potential to produce these kinds of interaction even though research anddevelopment teams have not found it advantageous under capitalism to do so.However, while there is much theoretical and practical work to bedone to develop such alternatives, the practice of speaking for others remains the best option in some existing situations. An absolute retreat

weakens political effectivity, is based on a metaphysical illusion, and often effects only an obscuring of the intellectual's power. There canbe no complete or definitive solution to the problem of speaking for others, but there is a

possibility that its dangers can be decreased.The remainder of this paper will try to contribute toward developing that

possibility.


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Off 3

Melancholy negates the will to actit makes us slaves of the powerful and makes

our fears of death absurd. Their attempt to frame politics around the spectacle of

suffering represents a failure to dream that dooms their solvency and independentlyturns and outweighs the caseDeleuze and Parnet 87famous philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne, Dialogues II, European Perspectives, withClaire Parnet, freelance journalist, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam, 2002 pgs.61-62

When Spinoza says 'The surprising thing is the body ... we do not yet know what a body is capable of ... ', hedoes not want to make the body a model, and the soul simply dependent on the body. He has a subtler task.He wants to demolish the pseudo-superiority of the soul over the body. There is the soul and the body and bothexpress one and the same thing: an attribute of the body is also an expressed of the soul (for example,speed). Just as you do not know what a body is capable of, just as there are many things in the bodythat you do not know, so there are in the soul many things which go beyond your consciousness.Thisis the question: what is a body capable of? what affects are you capable of? Experiment, but you need a lot ofprudence to experiment. We live in a world which is generally disagreeable, where not only people but

the established powers have a stake in transmitting sad affects to us. Sadness, sad affects, are allthose which reduce our power to act. The established powers need our sadness to make us slaves. Thetyrant, the priest, the captors of souls need to persuade us that life is hard and a burden.The powersthat be need to repress us no less than to make us anxious or, as Virilio says, to administer andorganize our intimate little fears. The long, universal moan about life: the lack-to-be which is life ... Invain someone says, 'Let's dance'; we are not really very happy. In vain someone says, Whatmisfortune death is'; for one would need to have lived to have something to lose. Those who aresick, in soul as in body, will not let go of us, the vampires, until they have transmitted to us theirneurosis and their anxiety, their beloved castration, the resentment against life, filthy contagion.It is alla matter of blood. It is not easy to be a free man, to flee the plague, organize encounters, increase thepower to act, to be moved by joy, to multiply the affects which express or encompass a maximum ofaffirmation. To make the body a power which is not reducible to the organism, to make thought a powerwhich is not reducible to consciousness. Spinozas famous first principle (a single substance for allattributes) depends on this assemblage and not vice versa. There is a Spinoza-assemblage: soul and body,

relationships and encounters, power to be affected, affects which realize this power, sadness and joy whichqualify these affects. Here philosophy becomes the art of a functioning, of an assemblage. Spinoza, the man ofencounters and becoming, the philosopher with the tick, Spinoza the imperceptible, always in the middle,always in flight although he does not shift much, a flight from the Jewish community, a fl ight from Powers, aflight from the sick and the malignant. He may be ill, he may himself die; he knows that death is neither thegoal nor the end, but that, on the contrary, it is a case of passing his life to someone else.WhatLawrence says about Whitmans continuous life is well suited to Spinoza: the Soul and the Body, the soul isneither above nor inside, it is with, it is on the road, exposed to all contacts, encounters, in thecompany of those who follow the same way, feel with them, seize the vibration of their soul and theirbody as they pass,the opposite of a morality of salvation, teaching to soul its life, not to save it.


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Off 4

The affirmative recognizes the oppressive system of the west through oppositional

discourse and governmental pragmatic action. That leads to a form of neoliberal

subjectivity that superimposes itself on the world in order to justify mass violenceand homogenization. This causes constant economic crisis, transition wars, and

social death.

Bifo 2011 (Franco Berardi, Professor of Social History and Communication at the Academia di belle Arti in Milan and Founder ofA/Traverse, After the Future, ed. Genesko%26Thoburn, AKPress, p. 141-47)

The financial cycle is bleeding the social environment dry: sucking energies, resources, and the future. And givingnothing back. Recovery of the financial process of valorization of capital is totally separated from the cycle of material production and socialdemand. Financial capitalism has obtained autonomy from social life. Lets consider the political side of the same problem: once upon a timewhen society was suffering the blows of recession, workers reacted with strikes, struggle and political organization, and forced state intervention

in order to increase demand. Industrial growth needed mass consumption and social stability. What is impressive in the ongoingcrisis, on the contrary,is the widespread passivity of the workers, their inability to unionize. The politicaltrend in Europe is the meltdown of leftist parties and the labor movement. In the US, Obama is daily attacked by racist and populist mobs, but no

progressive social movement is emerging. 1.2 million people have had their mortgages foreclosed upon and lost their houses following the sub-prime swindle, but no organized reaction has surfaced. People suffer and cry alone. In the old time of industrialed into billions of financialsegments, and disseminated into millions of financial agents scattered all around the world. The workers themselves are part of recombinantfinancial capital. They are expecting future revenues from their pension fund investments. They own stock options in the enterprise exploiting

their labor.They are hooked up, like a fly in a spider web, and if they move, they get strangled, but if they dont move, thespider will suck their life from them. Society may rot, fall apart, agonize. It is not going to affect the political and economic stability of

capitalism. What is called economic recovery is a new round of social devastation. So the recession is over, capitalism isrecovering. Nonetheless, unemployment is rising and misery is spreading. This means that financialcapitalism is autonomous from society. Capitalism doesnt need workers: it just needs cellular fractals of labor, underpaid, precarious, de-

personalised. Fragments of impersonal nervous energy, recombined by the network. The crisis is going to push forward technological change, and

the substitution of human labor with machines.The employment rate is not going to rise in the future, andproductivity will increase. A shrinking number of workers will be forced to produce more and more, and to work overtime. The realbubble is the work bubble. We have been working too much; we are still working too much. The human race does not need more goods, it needsa redistribution of existing goods, an intelligent application of technology and a worldwide cut in the lifetime dedicated to labor. Social energieshave to be freed from labor dependence, and returned to the field of social affection, education, and therapy. We should take seriously the conceptof autonomy. In the present condition autonomy means exodus from the domain of economic law: Out-onomy, abandonment of the field ofeconomic exchange, self-organization of knowledge and of production in a sphere of social life which is no longer dependent on economicculture and expectationsbarter, free exchange of time and of competence, food self reliance, occupation of territories in the cities, organizationof self-defense. The fantastic collapse that has shaken the global economy since September 2008 has opened a new phase in the history of theworld. After some months of amazement and confusion, media, political institutions and economists have started to repeat the self-reassuringmantra: recovery is coming soon. I do not know what will happen next, but I think that the word recovery means very little in the currentsituation. What is sure, in my opinion, is that the workers will not recover if neoliberal ideology is not abandoned, and if the myth of growth isnot substituted with a new kind of narration. Unemployment is rising everywhere and salaries are falling. And the huge debt accumulated for the

rescue of the banks is weighing upon the future of society. More than ever, economic rationality is at odds with socialrationality. Economic science is not part of the solution to the crisis: it is the source of theproblem. On July 18th 2009 the headline of The Economist read: What went wrong with economics?The text is an attempt todownplay the crisis of the Economics profession, and of economic knowledge. For neoliberal

economists the central dogma of growth, profit and competition cannot be questioned, because it isidentified with the perfect mathematical rationality of the market. And belief in the intrinsicrationality of the market is crucial in the economic theology of neoliberalism. Butthe reduction ofsocial life to the rational exchange of economic values is an obsession that has nothing to do withscience. Its a political strategy aimed to identify humans as calculating machines,aimed to shape

behavior and perception in such a way that money becomes the only motivation of social action. But it is not accurate as a description of social

dynamics, and the conflicts, pathologies, and irrationality of human relationships. Rather, it is an attempt at creating theanthropological brand of homo calculans that Foucault (2008) has described in his seminar of 1979/80,


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publishedwith the title The Birth of Biopolitics. This attempt to identify human beings withcalculating devices has produced cultural devastation, and has finally been showed tohavebeen basedupon flawed assumptions. Human beings do calculate, but their calculation is not perfectly rational, because the value of goods isnot determined by objective reasons, and because decisions are influenced by what Keynes named animal spirits. We will neverreallyunderstand important economic events unless we confront the fact that their causes are largely mental in nature, say Akerlof and Shiller (2009:1) in their book Animal Spirits, echoing Keyness assumption that the rationality of the market is not perfect in itself. Akerlof and Shiller areavowing the crisis of neoliberal thought, but their critique is not radical enough, and does not touch the legitimacy of the economic episteme.

Animal Spirits is the title of an other book, by Matteo Pasquinelli (2008). Pasquinellis book deals with bodies and digits, and parasites, and goesmuch deeper in its understanding of the roots of the crisis than its eponymous publication: Cognitive capitalism emerges in the form of a

parasite: it subjects social knowledge and inhibits its emancipatory potential (Pasquinelli 2008: 93). Beyond the computer screen, precariousworkers and freelancers experience how Free Labor and competition are increasingly devouring their everyday life (Pasquinell i 2008: 15).

Pasquinelli goes to the core of the problem: the virtualization of social production has acted as the proliferationof a parasite, destroying the prerequisites of living relationships, absorbing and neutralizing theliving energies of cognitive workers. The economic recession is not only the effect of financialcraziness, but also the effect of the de-vitalization of the social field. This is why the collapse of the economicsystem is also the collapse of economic epistemology that has guided the direction of politics in the last two centuries. Economics cannotunderstand the depth of the crisis, because below the crisis of financial exchange there is the crisis of symbolic exchange. I mean the psychotic

boom of panic, depression, and suicide, the general decline of desire and social empathy. The question that rises from the collapse is so radicalthat the answer cannot be found in the economic conceptual framework. Furthermore, one must ask if economics really is a science? If the wordscience means the creation of concepts for the understanding and description of an object, economics is not a science. Its object does not exist.The economic object (scarcity, salaried labor, and profit) is not an object that exists before and outside the performative action of the economic

episteme.Production, consumption, and daily life become part of the economic discourse whenlabor is detached and opposed to human activity, when it falls under the domination of capitalistrule. The economic object does not pre-exist conceptual activity, and economic description is in fact a normative action. In this senseEconomics is a technique, a process of semiotization of the world, and also a mythology, a narration. Economics is a suggestion and a categoricalimperative: Money makes things happen. It is the source of action in the world and perhaps the only power we invest in. Life seems to depend onit. Everything within us would like to say that it does not, that this cannot be. But the Almighty Dollar has taken command. The more it is deniedthe more it shows itself as Almighty. Perhaps in every other respect, in every other value, bankruptcy has been declared, giving money the powerof some sacred deity, demanding to be recognized. Economics no longer persuades money to behave. Numbers cannot make the beast lie downand be quiet or sit up and do tricks. At best, economics is a neurosis of money, a symptom contrived to hold the beast in abey ance. Thuseconomics shares the language of psychopathologyinflation, depression, lows and highs, slumps and peaks, investments and losses. (Sordello1983) From the age of the enclosures in England the economic process has been a process of production of scarcity (scarcification). Theenclosures were intended to scarcify the land, and the basic means of survival, so that people who so far had been able to cultivate food for theirfamily were forced to become proletarians, then salaried industrial workers. Capitalism is based on the artificial creation of need, and economicscience is essentially a technique of scarcification of time, life and food. Inside the condition of scarcity human beings are subjected to

exploitation and to the domain of profit-oriented activity. After scarcifying the land (enclosures) capitalism has scarcified time

itself, forcing people who dont have property other than their own life and body, to lend theirlife-time to capital. Now the capitalist obsession for growth is making scarce both water and air.Economic science is not the science of prediction:it is the technique of producing, implementing, and pushingscarcity and need. This is why Marx did not speak of economy, but of political economy. Thetechnique of economic scarcification is based on a mythology, a narration that identifies richness as property and acquisition, and subjugates the

possibility of living to the lending of time and to the transformation of human activity into salaried work. In recent decades, technological changehas slowly eroded the very foundations of economic science. Shifting from the sphere of production of material objects to the semiocapitalist

production of immaterial goods, the Economic concepts are losing their foundation and legitimacy. The basic categories of Economics arebecoming totally artificial. The theoretical justification of private property, as you read in the writings of John Locke, is based on the need ofexclusive consumption. An apple must be privatized, if you want to avoid the danger that someone else eats your apple. But what happens whengoods are immaterial, infinitely replicable without cost? Thanks to digitalization and immaterialization of the production process, the economicnomos of private property loses its ground, its raison detre, and it can be imposed only by force. Furthermore, the very foundation of salary, therelationship between time needed for production and value of the product, is vanishing. The immaterialization and cognitivization of productionmakes it almost impossible to quantify the average time needed to produce value. Time and value become incommensurable, and violence

becomes the only law able to determine price and salary. The neoliberal school, which has opened the way to the worldwide deregulation ofsocial production, has fostered the mythology of rational expectations in economic exchange, and has touted the idea of a selfregulation of the

market, first of all the labor-market. But self-regulation is a lie. In order to increase exploitation, and to destroy social welfare,global capitalism has used political institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization,not to mention the military enforcement of the political decisions of these institutions. Far from beingself-regulated, the market is militarily regulated. The mythology of free individuals loyally competing on the base of perfect knowledge of the

market is a lie, too. Real human beings are not perfect rational calculating machines. And the myth of rational expectations hasfinally crashed after the explosion of the real estate mortgage bubble. The theory of rationalexpectation is crucial in neoliberal thought: the economic agents are supposed to be free to choose in a perfectly rational


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way the best deal in selling and buying. The fraud perpetrated by the investment agencies has destroyed the lives of millions of Americans, andhas exposed the theoretical swindle. Economic exchange cannot be described as a rational game, because irrational factors play a crucial role insocial life in general. Trickery, misleading information, and psychic manipulation are not exceptions, but the professional tools of advertisers,financial agents, and economic consultants. The idea that social relationships can be described in mathematical terms has the force of myth, but itis not science, and it has nothing to do with natural law. Notwithstanding the failure of the theory, neoliberal politics are still in control of theglobal machine, because the criminal class that has seized power has no intention of stepping down, and because the social brain is unable torecompose and find the way of self-organization. I read in the New York Times on September 6th 2009: After the mortgage business implodedlast year, Wall Street investment banks began searching for another big idea to make money. They think they may have found one. The bankers

plan to buy life settlements, life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash, depending on the life expectancy of the insuredperson. Then they plan to securitize these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds of thousands together into bonds. They willthen resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die. The earlier the

policyholder dies, the bigger the return, though if people live longer than expected investors could get poor returns or even lose money. Imaginethat I buy an insurance policy on my life (something I would absolutely not do). My insurer of course will wish me a long life, so Ill pay the feefor a long time, while he should pay lots of money to my family if I die. But some enlightened finance guru has the brilliant idea of insuring theinsurer. He buys the risk, and he invests on the hope that I die soon. You dont need the imagination of Philip K. Dick to guess the follow up ofthe story: financial agents will be motivated to kill me overnight. The talk of recovery is based on necronomy, the economy of death. Its not new,as capitalism has always profited from wars, slaughters and genocides. But now the equation becomes unequivocal. Death is the promise, death isthe investment and the hope. Death is the best future that capitalism may secure. The logic of speculation is different from the logic of spectaclethat was dominant in late-modern times. Spectacle is the mirrorization of life, the transfer of life in the mirror of spectacular accumulation.Speculation is the subjugation of the future to its financial mirror, the substitution of present life with future money that will never come, becausedeath will come before. The lesson that we must learn from the first year of the global recession is sad: neoliberal folly is not going away, thefinancial plungers will not stop their speculation, and corporations will not stop their exploitation, and the political class, largely controlled by thecorporate lobbies, is unwilling or unable to protect society from the final assault. In 1996 J. G. Ballard (1996: 188) wrote: the most perfect crimeof allwhen the victims are either willing, or arent aware that they are victims. Democracy seems unable to stop th e criminal class that hasseized control of the economy, because the decisions are no longer made in the sphere of political opinion, but in the inaccessible sphere of

economic automatism.The economy has been declared the basic standard of decision, and theeconomists have systematically identified Economy with the capitalist obsession of growth. Noroom for political choice has been left, as the corporate principles have been embedded in the technical fabric of language and imagination.

The way the west sustains itself is through intertwining media and digital capitalism

with work and social places. Neoliberalism constantly produces crisis to rationalize

its capacity for control - this makes the destruction of all life the very impulse of the

economyJamesWiltgen 2005 (Professor of History and Critical Theory at CalArts, "Sado-Moneatrism or Saint Fond Saint Ford", in Consumptionin the Age of Information, ed. Cohen and Rutsky, BERG, New York, p. 107-10 6 [NN])How does digital capitalism intertwine with the concept of uncertainty? Whatkey changes have taken

place in the structuring of the world, via the digital and the biotechnological, what forceshave emerged orcoalesced, and finally, how do they affect the realm of subjectivity and consumption? Here, Arthur Kroker has transposedMcLuhan into the twenty-first century, performing an interrogation of what he calls the digital nerve, basically the exteriorization of the human sensorium into the

digital circuitry of contemporary capitalism (Kroker, 2004: 81). This (in)formation, streamed capitalism, rests notexclusivelyon exchange value, nor material goods, butsomething much more immaterial,a post market, postbiological, post image society where the driving force, the will to will, has ushered in a worldmeasured by probability.In other words, this variant of capitalism seeks to bind chaos by ever-increasing strictures, utilizing an axiomatic based on capture and control, with vast circuits ofcirculation as the primary digital architecture.This system runs ona densely articulated composition, similar to theearlier addressed concept of sado-monetarism, based upon extensive feedback loopsrunningbetween exchange value and abusevalue. This assemblage, however, has multiple levels, and not all are connected to the grid at the same speeds; a number of d ifferent times exist within thisformation, including digital time, urban time, quotidian time, transversal time, etc. Spatially, the structure relies not on geography but strategic digital nodes for the

core of the system, and connectivity radiates out from these nodal points (Kroker, 2004: 125). For example, a key site for these points would be the Net corporation,defined as as a self-regulating, self- reflexive platform of software intelligence providing a privileged portal into the digita l universe (Kroker, 2004: 140).Indeed, his mapping of digital capitalismhas clear parallels with the shifts Katherine Hayles analyzes, in particular the underlying,driving mechanism whereby information severs itself from embodiment. Boredom and acquisitiveness become the

principle markers of this new form of capitalism, which provides a rationale, or a new value set for the perpetual oscillation between the two poles, producing aninsatiable desire for both objects and a continuing stream of fresh and intense experience. Perhaps the most densely argued assessment of capitalism, wh ose obvious

parallel would be Marxs Capital, is the two volumes by Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus. With al l the concern over the theoretical

concepts developed in these books, it remainsextremely important to understand the analysis as possessing afundamental focus on the question of political economy. Capitalism forms, via its structural andaffective matrix, a system capable of unparalleled cruelty and terror, and even though certain


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indices of well being have increased, exploitation grows constantly harsher, (and) lack is

arranged in the most scientific ways(Deleuze & Guattari, 1983: 373). Their framework for analysis targets the global, where the deepestlaw of capitalism sets limits and then repels those limits, a process well known as the concept of deterrorialization. Capitalism functions, then,byincessantly increasing the portion of constant capital, a deceptively concise formulation that hastremendous resonance for the organization of the planetresources continually pour into the

technological and machinic apparatus of capture and control, to the increased exclusion of thehuman component(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 4667). In other words, it not only thrives on crisis but one of theprinciple definitions of capitalism would be to continually induce crisis; nostalgiafor a lost Sado-

Monetarism or Saint Fond-Saint Ford 109 time only drives these processes. The planet confronts the fourth danger, the mostviolent and destructive of tendencies, characterized as a turning to destruction, abolition pure and simple, the passion of abolition (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987: 229). Deleuze and Guattari make clear this fourth danger does not translate as a deathdrive, because for them desire is always assembled, a creation and a composition; here the task

of thinking becomes to address the processes of composition. The current assemblage, then, has mutated from itsoriginal organization of total war, which has been surpassed toward a form of peace more terrifying still, the peace of Terror or Survival

(Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 433). Accordingly, theworldwide war machine has entered a post fascist phase, whereClausewitz has been dislocated, and this war machine now targets the entire world, its peoples and economies. An unspecified enemy

becomes the continual feedback loop for this war machine, which had been originally constituted

by states, but which has now shifted into a planetary, and perhaps interstellar mode, with aseemingly insatiable drive to organize insecurity, increase machinic enslavement, and produce apeace that technologically frees the unlimited material process of total war (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987:467).7 Deleuze has analyzed these tendencies extensively in his own work, in particular with his dissection of active and reactive forces in his

book on Nietzsche but also in his work on Sade and Masoch, where he points to a type of sadism that seems capable of attempting a

perpetually effective crime,to not only destroy (pro)creation buttoprevent it from everhappening again, a total and perpetual destruction,one produced by a pervasive odium fati, a hatred of fate that seeksabsolute revenge in destroying life and any possible recurrence. (Deleuze, 1989: 37). This tendency far outstrips what Robert Jay Lifton hasdescribed as the Armageddonists, in their more commonly analyzed religious variant and in what he calls the secular type, both of which seethe possibility of a world cleansing, preparing the way for a new world order, be it religious or otherwise (Lifton, 1987: 59). Embedded withinthe immanence of capitalism, then, one can find forces which would make fascism seem like child precursors, and Hitlers infamous Telegram

71 would be applied to all of existence, perpetually. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 467). One final complication in terms of currently emerging

subjectivities, the well-known analysis in Anti-Oedipus where capitalism, as basically driven by a certain fundamentalinsanity, oscillates between two poles of delirium, one as the molecular schizophrenic line ofescape, and the other as paranoiac molar investment(Deleuze & Guattari, 1983: 315).8 These two markersoffer dramatically different possibilities for the issues of subjectivities and agency, and questionsof consumption and the political can be posed within their dense and complex oscillations.

The neoliberal crisis described by the affirmative was precipitated by a high produced by

affect in its attempt to resolve depression - Affect is the cause of the depression and the

affirmative's attempt to use debate to offer ethcis will only magnify the impact.

FrancoBifoBerardi2009(Professor and Pirate, The Soul at Work, Semiotext(e), p. 166-67)

Advertising, reasserts at every street corner, at every moment, day and night, the freedom ofinfinite consumption, the joys of property and of victory through competition. In the 1990s, capitalismmobilized an immense intellectual, creative, and psychological energy in order to start the valorization process of the collective intellectual

network. But by imposing an unlimited systematic exploitation on the human mind, the productiveacceleration created the conditions for an extraordinary psychological breakdown . Prozac culture wasanother name for the emerging new economy. Hundreds of thousands of Western economic operators and managersmade innumerable decisions under conditions of chemical euphoria, while they were highfrom their abuse of psychotropic drugs. But the human organism cannot take endless chemical euphoria and productivefanaticism: at some point, it begins to surrender. As happens withpatients affected by bipolar disorder, euphoria is


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replaced by a long-term depressionhitting the very source of ones own motivations, entrepreneurship, self-esteem, desire, andsex appeal. We cannot fully understand the crisis of the new economy without taking into accountthe fact that it coincided with a Prozac-crash. The cognitive workers individual depression isnot a consequence of the economic crisis, but its very reason. It would be easy to imagine thatdepression is a consequence of business going badly; after years happily spent working with

profit, stocks values collapse and the new brain workers fell into a deep depression. This is not thecase. Depression comes from the fact that our emotional, physical, and intellectual energy cant bear the rhythm imposed by competition andchemical-ideological euphoria inducers for long. The market is a psycho-semiotic space, where one can find signs and expectations for meaning,

desires, and projections. There is an energetic crisis that affects mental and psychic energies. Once thiscrisis exploded, a new effort was made to motivate the depressed Western psycology with apowerful amphetamine therapy: war. But only a sick person would take amphetamines as areaction to a depressive crisis. The most likely result will be deeper and deeper relapses.

The 1AC is a typical investment in the thought cycle of capital that breathes life

back into the system. This type of investment in academic spheres sustains the realm

of capital. We must not choose to breathe life into the system, but withdraw from it.

Bifo 2007 (Franco Berardi, Professor of Social History and Communication at the Academia di belle Arti in Milan and Founder ofA/Traverse Schizo-Economy Pg. 84-85 muse [NN])

Today psychopathology reveals itself more and more clearlyas a social and, more precisely, a socio-communicativeepidemic.If you want to survive you have to be competitive; if you want to be competitive you have to be connectedyou have to continually receive and process an immense and growing mass of data. This provokes constant attention stress and a reduction in the

time available for affectivity. These two closely linked tendencies spell devastation for the individual psyche. Depression, panic,anxiety, a sense of solitude, existential misery. But these individual symptoms cannot be isolatedindefinitely, as psychopathology has done until now, and as economic power wants them to be.Its not possible to say: Youre exhausted, go take a vacation at Club Med, take a pill, go on a cure, get off myballs, recover in the psychiatrichospital, kill yourself. Its no longer possible, for the simple reason that the issue is no longer a small minority of craz ies or a marginal number

of depressives. ts a question of a growingmass ofexistential misery threatening to explode in the center of thesocial system. Its also necessary to consider this decisive fact:as long as capital needed to suck physical energyfrom its exploited and from its slaves,psychopathology could remain relatively marginal. Yourpsychic sufferingdidnt matter much to capital when you only had to turn screws and handle a lathe. You could be as sad as a solitary fly in a bottle;

your productivity was hardly affected because your muscles still functioned. Today capital needs mental energies, psychicenergies. And theyre exactly whats going to hell. Thats why psychopathology is exploding at the center of the social scene.Theeconomic crisis results largely from the spread of sadness, depression, panic, lack of motivation.The crisis of the new economy was provoked in considerable part by a crisis of motivation, by a waning of the artificial euphoria of the 1990s. This has led to disinvestment and, in part, to a fall in consumption. In general, unhappinessfunctions as a stimulus to consumption; to purchase something is to suspend ones anxiety, tocounteract ones loneliness, but only up to a point. Beyond that point,suffering has a negative effect on

the desire to purchase. So conflicting strategies are developed.The masters of the world certainly dont wanthumanity to be happy, because a happy humanity would not let itself get caught up inproductivity, the discipline of work or hypermarkets. Nonetheless, techniques that can reduce happiness to a tolerablelevel are being studied, in order to postpone or prevent a suicidal explosion, in order to inducethe desire to consume. What strategies will the collective organism follow in order to escape this factory of unhappiness? Is a strategyof deceleration, of the reduction of complexity possible and conceivable? I dont believe so. In human society, potentiality cannot be definitivelycanceled out, even when it reveals itself to be lethal for the individual and, in all probability, for the species as well. Such potentiality is regulatedand kept under control for as long as possible, but in the end it is inevitably actualized, as happened (and will happen again) with the atomic

bomb. One possible strategy consists in the upgrading of the human organism, the mechanical adjustment of the human body and brain to a


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hyper-fast infosphere. This is the strategy commonly defined as post-human. Finally,a strategy of subtraction is possible, astrategy of distancing oneself from the vortexbut only small communities will be able tofollow it, constituting spheres of existential, economic, and informational autonomy from theworld economy

The alternative is to vote negative to reject the 1AC. The economy and global capitalare crumbling around us - we should use the collapse as a site for organizing

affective singularity outside of the realm of economics

Bifo 2011 (Franco Berardi, Professor of Social History and Communication at the Academia di belle Arti in Milan andFounder of A/Traverse, After the Future, ed. Genesko%26Thoburn, AKPress, p. 141-47)

Activism has generally conceived the process of subjectivation in terms of resistance. In his bookdedicated to Foucault, GillesDeleuze speaks about subjectivity, and identifies processes of subjectivationand resistance: Is not life this capacity to resist force?(Deleuze 1988: 77). I think that it is time to ask: what ifsociety can no more resist the destroying effects of unbounded capitalism? What if society can no more resist the devastating power of financialaccumulation? The identification of the subject with resistance is dangerous in a certain sense. Deleuze himself has written that when we escape

we are not only escaping, but also looking for a new weapon. We have to disentangle autonomy from resistance.And ifwe want to do it we have to disentangle desire from energy. The prevailing focus of modern capitalism has been energy, the ability to produce, tocompete, to dominate. A sort of Energolatria has dominated the cultural scene of the West since Faust to the Futurists. The ever growingavailability of energy has been its dogma. Now we know that energy is not boundless. In the social psyche of the West, energy is fading away. I

think thatwe should reframe the concept and the practice of autonomy from this point of view. Thesocial body has become unable to reaffirm its rights against the wild assertiveness of capital,

because the pursuit of rights can never be dissociated from the exercise of force. Whenworkers were strong in the 1960s and70sthey did not restrict themselves to asking for their rights, to peaceful demonstrations of their will.They acted in solidarity,refusing to work, redistributing wealth, sharing things, services and spaces. Capitalists, on their side, do not merely ask or demonstrate, they do

not simply declare their wish, they enact if.They make things happen, they invest, disinvest, displace, theydestroy and they build. Only force makes autonomy possible in the relation between capital andsociety. But what is force? What is force nowadays? The identification of desire with energy has produced the identification of force withviolence that turned out so badly for the Italian movement in the 1970s and 80s. We have to distinguish energy and desire. Energy is falling,

desire has to be saved nevertheless. Similarly, we have to distinguish force from violence. Fighting power with violence is suicidal or useless,nowadays. How can we think of activists going against professional organizations of killers in the mold of Blackwater, Haliburton, secretservices, mafias? Only suicide has proved to be efficient in the struggle against power. And actually suicide has become decisive in the history ofour time. The dark side of the multitude meets here the loneliness of death. Activist culture should avoid the danger of becoming a culture of

resentment.Acknowledging the irreversibility of the catastrophic trends that capitalism has inscribedin the history of society does not mean to renounce it. On the contrary, we have todaya new culturaltask: to live the inevitable with a relaxed soul.To call forth a big wave of withdrawal, of massive dissociation,of desertion from the scene of the economy, of non-participation in the fake show of politics. Thecrucial focus of social transformation is creative singularity. The existence of singularities is not to be conceived asa personal way to salvation, they may become a contagious force. Yes we can, the headline of the campaign of Barack Obama, the three wordsthat mobilized the hope and political energies of the American people in 2008, have a disturbing echo just one year after the victory of thedemocratic candidate. These words sound like an exorcism much more than like a promise. Yes we can may be read as a lapse i n the Freudiansense, a sign coming from the collective subconscious, a diversion from the hidden intuition that we can no more. The mantra of Barack Obamahas gathered the energies of the best part of the American people, and collected the best of the American cultural legacy. But what about the

results? So far Obama has been unable to deal with the global environmental threats, the effects of the geopolitical disaster produced by Cheney-Bush, the effects of the powerful lobbies imposing the interest of the corporations (for instance, of the private health insurers). When wethink of the ecological catastrophe, of geopolitical threats, of economic collapse provoked by thefinancial politics of neoliberalism, its hard to dispel the feeling that irreversible trends arealready at work inside the world machine. Political will seems paralyzed in the face of theeconomic power of the criminal class.The age of modern social civilization seems on the brink ofdissolution, and it is hard to imagine how society will be able to react. Modern civilization was based on the convergence and integration ofthe capitalist exploitation of labor force and the political regulation of social conflict. The regulator State, the heir of Enlightenment andSocialism has been the guarantor of human rights and the negotiator of social balance. When, at the end of a ferocious class struggle between


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signs.We have abandoned the ground of dialectics in favour of the plural grounds of the dynamicof singularization and the multilayered co-evolution of singularities. Capitalism is over, but it isnot going to disappear. The creation of Non-Temporary Autonomous Zones is not going to give birth to any totalization. We are notgoing to witness a cathartic event of revolution, well not see the sudden breakdown of state power.In the following years wellwitness a sort of revolution without a subject. In order to subjectivate this revolution we have to

proliferate singularities. This, in my humble opinion, is our cultural and political task. After abandoning the field ofthe dialectics of abolition and totalization, we are now trying to build a theory of the dynamics ofrecombination and singularization, a concept that is clearly drawn from the works of FlixGuattari, particularly from his last book, Chaosmosis.By the word singularity I mean the expression of a neverseen before concatenation. The actor of this expression can be an individual, a collective but alsoan event. We call it singularity if this actor recombines the multiple flows traversing its field of existence following a principle that is notrepetitive and referring to any preexisting form of subjected subjectivity. By the worldsingularity, I mean an agency thatdoes not follow any rule of conformity and repetition, and is not framed in any historicalnecessity. Singularity is a process that is not necessary, because it is not implied in the consequentiality of history neither logically normaterially.It is the emerging of a self-creative process. Rather than a swift change in the sociallandscape, we should expect the slow surfacing of new trends: communities abandoning the field

the crumbling ruling economies, more and more individuals giving up their search for a job andcreating their own networks of services. The dismantling of industry is unstoppable for the simple reason that social life doesnot need industrial labor anymore. The myth of growth is going to be abandoned and people will look for new modes of wealth distribution.Singular communities will transform the very perception of wellbeing and wealth in the sense of frugality and freedom. The cultural revolutionthat we need in this transition leads from the perception of wealth as the private ownership of a growing amount of goods that we cannot enjoy

because we are too busy purchasing the money needed for acquisition, to the perception of wealth as the enjoyment of an essential amount ofthings that we can share with other people. The de-privatization of services and goods will be made possible by this much needed culturalrevolution. This will not happen in a planned and uniformed way, this will rather be the effect of the withdrawal of singular individuals andcommunities, and the result of the creation of an economy of shared use of common goods and services and the liberation of time for culture,

pleasure and affection. While this process expands at the margins of society, the criminal class will hang on to its power and enforce more andmore repressive legislation, the majority of people will be increasingly aggressive and desperate. Ethnic civil war will spread all over Europe,wrecking the very fabric of civil life. The proliferation of singularities (the withdrawal and building of NonTemporary Autonomous Zones) will

be a pacific process, but the conformist majority will react violently, and this is already happening. The conformist majority is frightened by thefleeing away of intelligent energy and simultaneously is attacking the expression of intelligent activity. The situation can be described as a fight

between the mass ignorance produced by mediatotalitarianism and the shared intelligence of the general intellect. We cannot predict what theoutcome of this process will be. Our task is to extend and protect the field of autonomy, and to avoid as much as possible any violent contact withthe field of aggressive mass ignorance. This strategy of non-confrontational withdrawal will not always succeed. Sometimes confrontation will bemade inevitable by racism and fascism. It is impossible to predict what has to be done in the case of unwanted conflict. Non-violent reaction isobviously the best choice, but it will not always be possible. The identification of wellbeing with private property is so deeply rooted that a

barbarization of the human environment cannot be completely ruled out. But the task of the general intellect is exactly this: fleeing from paranoia,creating zones of human resistance, experimenting autonomous forms of production based on high-tech-low-energy productionwhilst avoidingconfrontation with the criminal class and the conformist population. Politics and therapy will be one and the same activity in the coming time.People will feel hopeless and depressed and panicking, because they are unable to deal with the post-growth economy, and because they will missthe dissolving modern identity. Our cultural task will be attending to those people and taking care of their insanity, showing them the way of a

happy adaptation at hand. Our task will be the creation of social zones of human resistance that act likezones of therapeutic contagion. The process of autonomization has not to be seen as Aufhebung, but as therapy. In thissense it is not totalizing and intended to destroy and abolish the past. Like psychoanalytic therapyit is rather to beconsidered as an unending process.


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CASE

Extinction comes first

Bok, professor of philosophy, 1988(Sissela, Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis, AppliedEthics and Ethical Theory, Rosenthal and Shehadi, Ed.)

The same argument can be made for Kants other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: So act as to use humanity, both i n your own person and in the person of

every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means; and So act as if you were always through your acti ons a law-making member in a universal

Kingdom of Ends. No one with a concern for humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity

in the person of himself and every other o r to risk the death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice. To risk

their collective death for the sake of following ones conscience would be, as Rawls said, irrational,

crazy. And to say that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop other persons from

bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world was at stake. For although it is true thatwe cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where we would have to take such responsibility seriously

perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even killing an innocent person, in order that the world not perish. To avoid self-contradiction, the Categorical Imperativewould, therefore, have to rule against the Latin maxim on account of its cavalier attitude toward the survival of mankind. But the ruling would then produce a rift inthe application of the Categorical Imperative. Most often the Imperative would ask us to disregard all unintended but foreseeable consequences, such as the death of

innocent persons, whenever concern for such consequences conflicts with concern for acting according to duty. But, in the extreme case, we

might have to go against even the strictest moral duty precisely because of the

consequences. Acknowledging such a rift would post a strong challenge to the unity and simplicity o f Kants moral theory.

Zapatistas refuse your aid without consultationeven the affirmatives discourse in

a neoliberal context is abhorred.

Evans 08Doctor Brad Evans is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Bristol. He is also the Founder andDirector of the Histories of Violence project.In addition, he is a serving board member for the Centre for Scholarship in the Public Interest(McMaster University, Ontario); an founding member of the Society for the Study of Bio-Political Futures (Syracuse University, NY); andhonorary associate of the Zygmunt Bauman Institute (The University of Leeds) [New Political Science. Dec2008, Vol. 30 Issue 4, p497-520.The Zapatista Insurgency: Bringing the Political Back into Conflict Analysis, December 2008, EbscoHost] ADoan

The political dimensions to the Zapatistas autonomy can, in certain senses,be evidenced bythe fact that their refusal of aid has required some selfdeprivation.40 As Duncan Earle and Jean Simonelli argue,their system ofautonomy is strengthened by a commitment to resist, political, economic, andsocial entrapment that comes with participation in specific government programsandpractices.41 Thus, in a direct challenge to Liberal rationality, this version ofautonomy proceeds by rejecting the notion that scarcitynecessarily requires thebreakdown of the collective forms of political organisation; that bigger isnecessarily better; that in times of povertyeconomic considerations trump all; orthat life itself is simply a rational, calculating, and maximising economic agent.Indeed, from personal

encounters with the Zapatistas, it is clear that theirpoliticalintuitions work to altogether differentrationality:Yes, of course not accepting government aid is sometimes difficultverydifficult. But what aid has meant for us is forothers to tell us what our problemsare, for others to impose their model for development upon us, for others to tell ushow we should live. Thisoften has meant re-locating us off the land and into moreurban areas, orinto places where we can simply be forgotten. The developmentagenda if thats what you call it has never been for us, otherwise the mal gobinero[bad government] would listen to what we want.42Whilst itis important to emphasise that the Zapatistas attitude to State aid hasbecome a significant if not defining feature of their quest for autonomy,

what isperhaps more revealing (especially of the global nature of their politicalpredicament) is that these concerns havegradually come to inform their entirerelationships with all non-governmental organisations. By2001, the Zapatistaswere already of the opinion that we dont want handouts but the chance to makea differentreality of ourselves.43 These sentiments wer

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