Daoism

No one knows what is good and bad. Reject the affs judgments, even if we lose all
life on earth
Kirkland, 98 [Russell Kirkland, Associate Professor of Religion (and Asian Studies), "Responsible Non-Action" In a Natural World:
Perspectives from the Nei-Yeh, Chuang-Tzu, and Tao-Te Ching, 1998, University of Georgia, http://kirkland.myweb.uga.edu/rk/pdf/pubs/ECO.pdf]
Why It Is Wrong to Resent Unexpected Changes In Chuang-tzu 18, we find two famous stories in which a man

experiences a sudden
and deeply personal transformation, a transformation that strikes others around him as deeply
troubling.5 In one, the philosopher Hui-tzu goes to offer his sympathies to Chuang-tzu upon the
event of the death of Chuang's wife. In the next story, a willow suddenly sprouts from the elbow
of a fictional character. In each story, a sympathetic friend is shocked and dismayed to find that
the first character in each story is not shocked and dismayed by the unexpected turn of events.
In each story, the first character patiently and rationally explains the nature of life, and counsels
his companion to accept the course of events that life brings to us, without imposing judgment
as to the value of those events. In each case, the reader learns that it is foolish and inappropriate
to feel emotional distress at such events, for a proper understanding of the real nature of life
leads us to accept all events with the same equanimity, even those events that might have once
sticken us as deeply distressing. 5 See Kuo Ching-fan's edition in Concordance to Chuang-tzu (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Yenching
Institute, 1956), p. 46; and Victor H. Mair, trans., Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang-tzu (New York: Bantam Books,
1994), p. 169. In the Taoist classic Huai-nan-tzu, one finds a famous story of a man who suddenly finds himself the unexpected owner of a new horse.

His neighbors congratulate him on his good fortune, until his son falls from the horse and
breaks his leg. The man's neighbors then act to console him on his bad fortune, until army
conscriptors arrive and carry off all the able-bodied young men, leaving the injured young man
behind as worthless. The lesson of the story is that when an event occurs, we are quick to judge
it as fortunate or unfortunate, but our judgments are often mistaken, as later events often prove.6 And one of the
most heavily stressed lessons of the Chuang-tzu is that humans quickly judge events on the basis of what we accept
on the basis of simplistic assumptions e.g., that life is inherently better than death and that the wise person learns to
question and discard such assumptions, and forego such judgments regarding events. When Chuang-tzu's wife died, Chuangtzu does not argue that the world is a better place for her absence, or that his life is improved by
his sudden new freedom. In fact, there is no issue in the passage of whether the world is better
off with Chuang-tzu's wife alive or dead. The only issue in the passage is that people are born and that people later die, and to
ignore that basic fact would display culpable stupidity. The very same lesson is impressed upon the reader of the previous
passage, regarding the sudden transformation of a character's elbow. What we are taught in that
passage is that life is a process of ineluctable change and transformation, and that humans
would be profoundly wrong and clearly silly to object to such change . Another element of the lesson is that the
nature of human life is not separate from, or other than, the nature of nonhuman life. When one says that "life is ineluctable change, and we must
accept such change with serenity," one is speaking about "life" in such a way that it clearly involves the lives of individual humans just as fully as it
involves the events that occur in the broader world, and vice versa. Imagine the story of the death of Chuang-tzu's wife involving, instead, the death of
the species we call whooping cranes: Chuang-tzu

would, in that case, patiently point out to his deeply caring

but deeply shallow friend that he had indeed felt grief to see such beautiful birds come to their
end, but had gone on to engage in appropriate rational reflection upon the nature of life, and
had come to accept the transitory nature of all such creatures, just as in the present story
Chuang-tzu had come to accept the transitory nature of his own spouse. If one must learn to
accept with serenity the death of someone we love, someone without whose life our own life
would have never been what it is, wouldn't the author urge us to accept that the death of some 6

Huai-nan-tzu ???. Cf. Lieh-tzu 7: Graham, p. 168-69. birds, birds that have never played a role in our lives the way that one's deceased spouse had done,
is an event that we should accept with equanimity? If change catches up with us, even

to the extent that the planet that we live

on should become permanently devoid of all forms of life , the response of the author of these passages would logically
be that such is the nature of things, and that crying over such a sudden turn of events would be very silly indeed, like
a child crying over a spilt glass of milk, or the death of some easily replaceable goldfish. The only reason that a child cries over the

death of a goldfish is that he or she has become irrationally attached to that creature as it exists
in its present form, and has formed an immature sentimental bond to it. As adults, we appreciate the color and
motion of fish in our aquaria, but seldom cry over the death of one of its inmates: we know very well that to cry over the death of such a fish would be
silly and a sign of juvenile behavior. As our children grow, we teach them, likewise, never

to follow their raw emotional

responses, but rather to govern their emotions, and to learn to behave in a responsible manner,
according to principles that are morally correct, whether or not they are emotionally satisfying . If,
for instance, one were to see a driver accidentally run run over one's child or beloved, one's first instinct might be to attack the driver with a righteous
fury, falsely equating emotional intensity and violent action with the responsible exercise of moral judgment. In general, we

work to teach
ourselves and each other not to respond in that way, to take a course of self-restraint, curbing
emotion, lest it propel us into actions that will later, upon calm reflection, be revealed to have
been emotionally satisfying but morally wrong. If I saw my child run down by a car, it might give me great emotional

satisfaction to drag the driver from her car and beat her to death. But it might well turn out that she had in fact done nothing wrong, and had been
driving legally and quite responsibly when a careless child suddenly ran into her path, giving her no time to stop or to evade the child. Because we have
all learned

that the truth of events is often not apparent to the parties that are experiencing them,
we generally work to learn some degree of self-control, so that our immediate emotional
reaction to events does not mislead us into a foolish course of action. Now if we take these facts and transfer
them into our consideration of Chuang-tzu and Mencius on the riverbank, that episode should, logically, be read as follows. If Mencius feels an
emotional urge to jump into the river to save the baby, his emotional response to the baby's presence there must be seen as immature and irresponsible.
After all, one might muse, one never knows, any more than the man with the horse, when an event

that seems fortunate is actually

unfortunate, or vice versa. What if the baby in the water had been the ancient Chinese
equivalent of Adolf Hitler, and the saving of young Adolf though occasioned by the deepest
feelings of compassion, and a deep-felt veneration for "life" led to the systematic
extermination of millions of innocent men, women, and children? If one knew, in retrospect, that Hitler's
atrocities could have been totally prevented by the simple moral act of refraining from leaping to save an
endangered child, would one not conclude, by sound moral reasoning, that letting that particular baby drown would have represented a
supremely moral act? How, Chuang-tzu constantly challenges us, how can we possibly know what course of action is truly justfied? What if, just
for the sake of argument, a dreadful plague soon wipes out millions of innocent people, and the
pathogen involved is soon traced back to an organism that had once dwelt harmlessly in the system of

a certain species of bird, such as, for instance, the whooping crane? In retrospect, one can imagine, the afflicted people of the next century bereft of
their wives or husbands, parents or children might curse the day when simple-minded do-gooders of the twentieth-century had brazenly intervened
with the natural course of events and preserved the cursed specied of crane, thereby damning millions of innocents to suffering and death. We assume
that such could never happen, that all living things are somehow inherently good to have on the planet, that saving the earthly existence of any life-form

foolish as to
warrant no respect. If Mencius, or a sentimental modern lover of "life," were to leap into the river and save a floating
baby, he or she would doubtless exult in his or her selfless act of moral heroism , deriving a sense of
satisfaction from having done a good deed, and having prevented a terrible tragedy. But who can really know when a given event is truly
a tragedy, or perhaps, like the horse that breaks a boy's leg, really a blessing in disguise. Since human wisdom, Chuang-tzu suggests, is
inherently incapable of successfully comprehending the true meaning of events as they are
happening, when can we ever truly know that our emotional urge to save babies, pretty birds, and entertaining sea-mammals is really an urge
that is morally sound. The Taoist answer seems to be that we can never be sure, and even if the extinction of Chuangtzu's wife or of the whooping
crane really brought no actual blessing to the world, such events are natural and proper in the way of life itself, and to
bemoan such events is to show that one is no more insightful about life than a child who sentimentally cries
over the loss of a toy, a glass of milk, a beloved pet, or even her mommy, run over by a drunken driver. The Taoist lesson seems, in this
regard, to be the same in each case: things happen, and some things cause us distress because
we attach ourselves sentimentally to certain people, objects, and patterns of life; when those people,
objects, or patterns of life take a sudden or drastic turn into a very different direction, a mature and responsible person calms
his or her irrational emotions, and takes the morally responsible course of simply accepting the
new state of things.
is somehow inherently a virtuous action. But our motivations in such cases are clearly, from a Taoist point of view, so shallow and

The alternative is to forego all action to achieve desired ends.

Kirkland, 96 [Russell Kirkland, Associate Professor of Religion (and Asian Studies), The Book of the Way, 24-29,
http://kirkland.myweb.uga.edu/rk/pdf/pubs/DAODE.pdf]

The Teachings of the Daode jing The focus of the Daode jing is something called "the Tao (or Dao)," a term that cannot adequately be translated. The
text says that the

Tao is "vague and subtle," and it never provides definitions. Instead, it employs
metaphors to suggest the nature of the Tao, and to describe behaviors that are similar to its way

of working. Most basically, the term Tao seems to denote a natural force that runs through all things and
guides them through their natural course of development. It is an inexhaustible source of life
and power, and is constantly at work in the world in subtle and imperceptible ways. Both its reality
and its nature can be perceived by observing the world around us. However, most people have lost sight of
the Tao, and have given way to unnatural behaviors that go contrary to it. The goal of the Daode jing is to persuade the reader to
abandon those behaviors, and to learn once again how to live in accord with the true course of
life. One can achieve those goals by appreciating the true nature of life, and modifying one's behavior to be more like that of the
Tao. Specifically, the Tao is humble, yielding, and non-assertive. Like a mother, it benefits others selflessly: it
gives us all life and guides us safely through it, asking nothing in return. This altruistic emphasis of the Daode
jing has seldom been noticed, but it is one of the most important lessons that it draws from the observation of the natural
world. Water, for instance, is the gentlest and most yielding of all things, yet it can overcome the strongest
substances, and cannot itself be destroyed. More importantly, however, water lives for others: it
provides the basis of life for all things, and asks nothing in return. If we learn to live like water
does, we will be living in accord with the Tao, and its Power (De) will carry us safely through life .
Such a way of life is called wuwei, usually translated as "non-action." Wuwei means foregoing all activity
intended to effect desired ends . Instead, one should follow one's natural course and allow all
other things to do likewise, lest our willful interference disrupt things' proper flow. Few modern readers
have ever grasped the full radicality of the ideal of wuwei. Many of us today (like the ancient Chinese Confucians and
Mohists) look at the world and see things that we think need correcting. The Daode jing would actually have us
do nothing whatsoever about them. The repeated phrase " do nothing, and nothing will be undone " admonishes us to
trust the Tao -- the natural working of things -- and never to do anything about anything .
Actually, such is the most that anyone can do, because the Tao -- as imperceptible as it is -- is the
most powerful force in existence, and nothing can thwart its unceasing operation.
Suffering is inevitable. Confronted with this fact, any system of ethics will collapse
into crippling nihilism. Only the alternative allows a way out in line with the Tao,
we can appreciate existence. Even if they are right about their impacts, that only
gives the alt solvency.
Lin No Date (Derek, Taoist Columnist, The Salt,
http://www.taoism.net/living/index.htm)//BATMAN
Once upon a time in ancient China, there was a sage who taught a group of disciples at a remote monastery. They studied teachings
from many sources of wisdom, even some that originated from distant lands. One imporant topic they delved into was
human suffering. The disciples were taken by the concept and could not stop talking about it. Suffering is unavoidable, one of
them declared while others nodded in agreement. Birth, aging, sickness and death... we suffer through all of them, not to mention the setbacks,
heartaches, annoyances and so many other causes of misery. This talk had an effect on all of them. They no longer went about
their daily activities with good cheer. There was a sense of growing dissatisfaction, and some began to complain about
everything. The sage observed this and decided it was time for a Tao lesson. He gathered the disciples together and said: I see quite a few moody
expressions among you recently. Perhaps we can brighten the mood by taking a break. The nearby lake is particularly beautiful this time of the year. Let
us go there. The lake was indeed beautiful, filled with pure and pristine water from streams of melted snow. The

disciples paid little

attention to this natural beauty, for their minds were still preoccupied. The sage knew this would be the case, so he was
not surprised when one them finally broke the silence: Master, what is the Tao perspective on suffering? The sage brought out a cup he had prepared,
and showed it to all the disciples. They could see that it was half filled with salt. He handed it to the disciple who asked the question and said: Fill this
cup with water from the lake, and stir it well to dissolve all the salt. The disciple did as the sage ordered. It took a while, but eventually he was able to
get all the salt dissolved. Good, the sage approved. Now take a sip and tell us how it tastes. The disciple took a sip and immediately spit it out.
Master, it is much too salty. It tastes horrible! Of course, the sage smiled. The salt is just like the suffering we experience in life. It can be extremely

difficult to swallow. Even a little sip is horrible. So that is the Tao perspective, Master? That suffering is horrible? The disciple was puzzled. Instead
of answering, the sage brought out another cup. The disciple looked at it and was startled. The second cup was filled to the brim with salt. As bad as the
first cup was, this could only be worse. Would he have to drink it too? He did not know what to think. Pour the salt in this cup into the lake, the sage
instructed. Then use the empty cup to scoop up water from the lake and drink. Drink it all. The disciple did as he was told while the other disciples
watched him. When he was done, everyone wanted to know: Well? How was it? Refreshing! The disciple smiled. I was a bit thirsty from sipping the

to get it.
ordinary mind is like the first cup. To such a mind, suffering can be almost unbearable. Even a sip of it is
horrible, just like you saw for yourselves. This is why the natural response to suffering, for most people, is moodiness and
first cup. Now my thirst is completely quenched and I feel great! Do you see the difference? The sage could tell the disciples were beginning
The

complaints. The

Tao mind is like this beautiful lake, the sage waved his arms at everything around them. If you can

expand your mind into the great dimensions of the Tao, then suffering for you
will be like salt poured into the lake. The salt is still the same, but your experience
of it will be quite different . Even if you end up with more suffering in your life than other people, it will have no
power over you, just as more salt has no effect on the lake. The water remains as pure, pristine and refreshing as ever. Now that
is the Tao perspective on suffering! The Tao The concept of suffering plays a central role in Buddhism, but not as much in the Tao. This is one of
the notable differences in these two traditions. The Buddha focused on dukkha, the lack of satisfaction that created stress in life, while the ancient
Tao sages focused on living life with a graceful flow and effortless actions. As the disciples discovered, the Buddhas reasoning
could be quite compelling. Suffering seems to be the basic condition of existence . As soon as we are born,
we begin the march toward death. As we move through life, we experience countless cravings.
Many of them cannot be satisfied, and whatever satisfaction we manage to obtain will not last.
This continues until we grow old and die. The teachings of the Tao do not deny any of this. They acknowledge and confirm the
reality of suffering. This is why the sage chose salt to illustrate his meaning. His choice was quite deliberate, because salt was a natural substance,
just as suffering was a natural element in life. We know that there always was and will always be salt in the
world. In the same way, we know suffering will always be present to some extent in all our lives, so attempting to
eliminate it would make no sense . It would be like someone trying to get rid of all the salt in the world. The ordinary mind,
like the sages first cup, is what we all start with. Without spiritual understanding, this cup never expands in size.
This unexpanded cup manifests as a petty heart. The small-minded person, no matter how
intelligent he may be, cannot escape suffering. His life consists of frequent sips of the salty
water, each sip bringing him ever more dissatisfaction, unhappiness and misery. The Tao mind, like the
lake, is the aspiration when we emulate the Tao and begin to take on its infinite characteristic. A mind that expands cannot be
contained in a cup or even a barrel. Its vastness manifests as openness and generosity . The big-hearted
person, no matter what situation he finds himself, will be able to find something in it that is illuminating and inspiring. His life is full of pure and
pristine water, each sip refreshing and energizing him.

The expansion of the mind begins with the

recognition that suffering is not necessarily a bad thing. Just as a moderate amount of salt brings out
the flavor in food, a moderate amount of suffering brings out the flavor in life . For instance, when we undergo physical training,

there is always the exertion and exhaustion, but if we stick with the discipline, we begin to experience improvements in strength, agility, and health as
the suffering transitions to joy. A

Tao cultivator uses this principle not just for the body but also the mind
and spirit, just like the skillful chef using the right amount of salt to create a culinary
masterpiece. Ultimately, the best way to expand your mind into the great dimensions of the Tao is to create a goal greater than yourself. The

small cup is meant to be used by one person, so it represents a self-serving goal. The lake nurtures all the plants and animals around it and in it, so it
represents a goal that serves many. The more passionate you are about this grand goal of yours, the larger the lake you become.

Mann
The very nature of intellectual warfare is useless. Regardless of the affs
intentions, they will never succeed and are a form of systems-maintenance, and a
mask of the status-quo tricked out with beautiful illusory truths.
Mann 1996 [Dept. of English, Pomona College, The Nine Grounds of Intellectual Warfare,
Postmodern Culture ARON]
As the economy in general and technological development in particular come to be seen in
logistical terms, so the critical industry too will be taken as a logistical system, and war discourse
as pure war carried out by other means. But it is all too easy to conflate military, technological,
and intellectual production. It might be that the forces of deterrence or nuclear war really do extend into criticism, into
the study of texts, into the colloquium and critical journal, but even if there is some economic coordination between them, it would
be a mistake to elide their differences. There is no question that military success is increasingly determined

by access to technical knowledge and that logistical development is a laboratory for new
technologies, but to recognize this is not to prove that all fields of knowledge are connected to
military research in the same ways. Such claims will certainly be made, with fantastic effects,
just as the critical truisms that fictions are informed by political realities and that politics is
dependent upon fictive forms are turned around, without careful examination of the
reversability of these propositions, into the quite dubious but productive thesis that therefore
criticism of these fictions constitutes political action. What pure war indicates, however, is that
intellectual warfare is not oppositional: it is a form of systems-maintenance, and a feature of the
status quo of capital. Hence war discourse will cast intellectuals as agents of a general logistical
economy and at the same time offer them an array of quite useful and quite delusional critical
fantasies about their combat for and against the warfare state. But let me suggest another
economics here, another fantasy, one not restricted to the familiar terms of use- and exchangevalue for the military-industrial-knowledge complex, but based as it were on waste-value: a
general economy, in Bataille's sense: an economy like that of the sun, which gives life but is
utterly indifferent to it, burns itself out as fast as it can, expends most of its energy into the void.
Bataille's image of war-economics is the ritual practice of the potlatch, a form of symbolic combat most likely associated with
funerary observances, but which he sees as a solar means of purging the superabundance of natural and cultural energy. The
purpose of art and thought is the purest expenditure, waste, dpense.11 Intellectual warfare can be seen in this light, as ritualized
combat whose value is that it has no value: a means of squandering useless wealth. Intellectual production is the

production of superfluities tricked out with beautiful illusory truth s, and we meet to exchange
ideas only in order to destroy thought itself with these ludicrous gifts.

And, constantly demanding that we become critical warriors is the nature of

rhetorical criticism. The duty to fight the good fight only exists in our heads,
because the post-modern borders that we speak of exist only on the pages of books,
the K becomes a method of entrapment and an END to politics.
Mann, 1996, [Dept. of English, Pomona College, The Nine Grounds of Intellectual Warfare,
Postmodern Culture ARON]
It would be a mistake to assume that this metamorphosis of discourse as war into discourse on war has occurred because criticism
has become more political. On the contrary, criticism has never been more than a political effect -- "policy"

carried out, and in our case dissipated, by other means. The long process of seizing politics as
the proper object of criticism is one more tardy phenomenalization of the device. What we witness -and what difference would it make even if I were right? -- is not proof of the politicization of criticism but an after-image of its quite

peripheral integration with forms of geopolitical conflict that are, in fact, already being dismantled and remodeled in war rooms,
defense institutes, and multinational corporate headquarters. War talk, like politics talk, like ethics talk, like all

critical talk, is nostalgic from the start. While we babble about territories and borders, really still
caught up in nothing more than a habitual attachment to disciplinary "space" and anxious
dreams of "agency," the technocrats of warfare are developing strategies that no longer depend
on any such topography, strategies far more sophisticated than anything we have imagined. And
we congratulate ourselves for condemning them, and for our facile analogies between video
games and smart bombs. I would propose two distinct diagnoses of the rise of war talk . On one hand, war talk is
merely another exercise in rhetorical inflation, intended to shore up the fading value of a
dubious product, another symptom of the imaginary politics one witnesses everywhere in
critical discourse, another appearance of a structural device at the very moment it ceases to
operate. On the other hand, war talk might still indicate the possibility of actually becoming a
war machine, of pursuing a military equivalent of thought beyond all these petty contentions, of realizing the truth of discourse
as warfare and finally beginning to fight. It will be crucial here not to choose between these diagnoses . In the domain of
criticism they function simultaneously, in a perpetual mutual interference; there is no hope of
extricating one from the other, no hope of either becoming critical warriors or being relieved of
the demand that we do so.
And, acting as a singularity and attempting to reject all formalized identiy in favor
of its own being separate from the state is identifiable, and becoming of the
principle enemy of the state. Our opponents valorize this position as the one of
moral resistance, yet they fail to realize that calling us to join in their
demonstration will inevitably result in state-sponsored violence.
Agamben 1993, Giorgio, The Coming Community, Translated by Michael Hardt, 83-5 ARON
WHAT COULD be the politics of whatever singularity, that is: of a being whose community is
mediated not' by any condition of belonging (being' red, being Italian, being Communist) nor by
the simple absence of conditions (a negative community, such as that recently proposed in France by Maurice
Blanchet), but by belonging itself? A herald from Beijing carries the elements of a response. What was most striking about
the demonstrations of the Chinese May was the relative absence of determinate contents in their demands (democracy and
freedom are notions too generic and broadly defined to constitute the real object of a conflict,
and the only concrete demand, the rehabilitation of Hu Yao-Bang, was immediately granted).
This makes the violence of the State's reaction seem even more inexplicable. It is likely, however, that
the disproportionn is only apparent and that the Chinese leaders 'acted, from their point of view, with greater lucidity than
the Western observers who were exclusively concerned with advancing increasingly less plausible
arguments about the opposition between democracy and communism, The novelty of the
coming politics is that it will no longer be a Struggle for the conquest or control of the State, but
a struggle between the State and the non-State (humanity)," an insurmountable disjunction
between whatever: singularity and the States organization. This has nothing to do with the simple
affirmation of the social in opposition to the State that has often found expression in the protest
movements of recent years. Whatever singularities cannot form a societas because they do not possess any identity to
vindicate nor any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition . In the final instance the State can recognize any
claim for identity-even that of a State identity within the State (the recent history of relations between the
State and terrorism is an eloquent confirmation of this fact). What the State cannot tolerate in any way, however,
is that the singularities form a community without affirming an identity, that humans co-belong
without any representable condition of belonging (even in the form of a simple presupposition). The State, as
Alain Badiou has shown, is not founded on a social bond, of which it would be the expression, but
rather on the dissolution, the unbinding it prohibits. For the State, therefore, what is important is
never the singularity as such, but only its inclusion in some identity, whatever identity (but the possibility
of the whatever itself being taken up without an identity is a threat the State cannot come to terms with). A being radically
devoid of any representable identity would be absolutely irrelevant to the State. This is what, in

our culture, the hypocritical dogma of the sacredness of human life and the vacuous declarations
of human rights are meant to hide. Sacred here can only mean what the term meant in Roman law:
Sacer was the one who had been excluded from the human world and who, eve~ though she or he could
not be sacrificed, could be killed without committing homicide ("neque fas est eum immolari, sed qui
occidit parricidio non damnatur"). (It is significant from this perspective that the extermination of

the Jews was not conceived as homicide, neither by the executioners nor by the judges; rather,
the judges presented it as a crime against humanity. The victorious powers tried to compensate
for this lack of identity with the concession of a State identity , which itself became the source of new
massacres.) Whatever singularity, which wants to appropriate belonging itself, its own being-in-language,
and thus rejects all identity and every condition of belonging , is the principal enemy of the State.

Wherever these singularities peacefully demonstrate their being in common there will be a
Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear.

Embrace the tactical usage of fog. Rather than self-congratulate for the strength
we have mobilized through our criticism, we must appear weak yet be tactical- we
must not let the enemy see what we truly think of them if we are ever to be
victorious.
Mann, 1996, [Dept. of English, Pomona College, The Nine Grounds of Intellectual Warfare,
Postmodern Culture ARON]
Consider what Clausewitz calls the fog of war -- its untheorizable turmoil, error, accidents,
chance, the sheer disorientation of combat terror. The fog of war is quite literally noise, war's
resistance to language, to objectification, to the code: both its problematic and its seductiveness,
the limit of its intelligibility and the depth of its sublimity. There are two approaches to this fog.
One can try to burn it off with the bright intensity of analysis, as if it were only a surface effect,
even though everything would lead one to believe that fog is an irreducible element of war,
something that must be taken into account, that cannot simply be withdrawn. Then perhaps one
ought instead to attempt to map this fog, not in order to eliminate it but to put it to use. The fog
of war might be more than an enemy of reason: it might be a tactical advantage. But how to map
the fog of war? I anticipate an increase in references to chaos theory, discourse analyses
deploying language like the following: military interest in turbulent phenomena revolves around
the question of its negative effects in the performance of weapons systems or the effects of air
drag on projectiles or water drag on submarines. But for our purposes, we want an image not of
the external effects of turbulent flows, but of their internal structure. We are not concerned here
with the destructive effects that a hurricane, for instance, may produce, but with the intricate
patterns of eddies and vortices that define its inner structure. . . . In order to better understand
turbulence, we must first rid ourselves of the idea that turbulent behavior represents a form of
chaos. For a long time turbulence was identified with disorder or noise. Today we know that this
is not the case. Indeed, while turbulent motion appears as irregular or chaotic on the
macroscopic scale, it is, on the contrary, highly organized on the microscopic scale. The multiple
space and time scales involved in turbulence correspond to the coherent behavior of millions
and millions of molecules. Viewed in this way, the transition from laminar flow to turbulence is
a process of self-organization.33 It remains to be seen whether and to what extent the turbulence of intellectual warfare
obeys the theoretical laws of chaos. Perhaps it will become possible to map the way epistemic breakthroughs stabilize themselves as
singularities and fractal "eddies within eddies" (De Landa), increasingly dense, detailed, and localized skirmishes in entropic
disciplinary subfields. I imagine that the effect would be at one and the same time to deepen the breakthrough, by intensifying
subconflictual areas within the field, and to dissipate it. Again: resistance, subversion, opposition, etc., stabilize quite as much as
they destabilize. The deepening specificity of gender criticism, for instance, might represent the regulation of gender conflict as
much as its disruptive potential: its increasing density becomes the paradoxical mark of its dissipating force. It is just as likely,
however, that attempts to apply chaos physics within analyses of discursive warfare will constitute nothing more than another set of
tropes, another pipe dream of a scientific humanities, another mathematical sublime: the same contradictory desire for the rational

conquest of phenomena that seem to escape reason and the autodestruction of reason in the process that one finds in Clausewitz .

Even if fog cannot be reduced to a science without being caught up in the mechanics of critical
sublimity, one might still pursue its tactical uses. There is no question that the military is
committed to deploying the fog of war. The importance of disinformation, propaganda,
jamming, covert operations, "PsyOps," and so on increases as warfare becomes more dependent
on technical and tactical knowledge. As the power of reconnaissance and surveillance grows, so
does the tactical importance of stealth technology. Virilio remarks that, in the hunt, the speed of
perception annuls the distance between the hunter and the quarry. Survival depends on
distance: "once you can see the target, you can destroy it" (WC 19, 4). Thus, from now on,
"power is in disappearance: under the sea with nuclear submarines, in the air with U2s,
spyplanes, or still higher with satellites and the space shuttle" (PW 146). "If what is perceived is
already lost, it becomes necessary to invest in concealment what used to be invested in simple
exploitation of one's available forces -- hence the spontaneous generation of new Stealth
weapons. . . . The inversion of the deterrence principle is quite clear: unlike weapons which have
to be publicized if they are to have a real deterrence effect, Stealth equipment can only function
if its existence is clouded with uncertainty" (WC 4). For Virilio, stealth is not a matter of radarimmune bombers alone: it involves a vast "aesthetics of disappearance" that reaches an order of
perfection in state terrorism: Until the Second World War -- until the concentration camps -societies were societies of
incarceration, of imprisonment in the Foucauldian sense. The great transparency of the world, whether through satellites or simply
tourists, brought about an overexposure of these places to observation, to the press and public opinion which now ban concentration
camps. You can't isolate anything in this world of ubiquity and instantaneousness. Even if some camps still exist, this overexposure
of the world led to the need to surpass enclosure and imprisonment. This required another kind of repression, which is
disappearance. . . . Bodies must disappear. People don't exist. There is a big fortune in this technology because it's so similar to what
happened in the history of war. In war, we've seen how important disappearance, camouflage,

dissimulation are -- every war is a war of cunning.34 The methods of strategic disappearance developed
by terrorist states are the most insidious form of secrecy. That is why Virilio, the antitechnologist, believes that the technology of secrecy must be exposed. Every order of stealth
weaponry is purely and simply a threat. The aesthetics of disappearance must be reappeared. For
Virilio, as well as for the reconnaissance cameras whose history he records, success depends on the logistics of perception, on closing
the distance between the critic and his quarry. But what if critics are not only hunters; what if they are the quarry as well? Michel de
Certeau points out that, for Clausewitz, the distinction between strategy and tactics is determined not only by scales of conflict (war
vs. battle) but by relative magnitudes of power. Strategy is for the strong, and it is deployed in known, visible, mapped spaces; tactics
is "an art of the weak," of those who must operate inside territory controlled by a greater power; it takes place on the ground of the
"other," inside alien space.35 It must therefore deploy deception in the face of a power "bound by its very visibility." De Certeau
suggests that even in cases where the weak force has already been sighted, it might use deception to great advantage. This is another
lesson from Clausewitz: "trickery is possible for the weak, and often it is his only possibility, as a 'last

resort': The weaker the forces at the disposition of the strategist, the more the strategist will be
able to use deception." In the "practice of daily life," in spaces of signification, in the contests of
critical argument, such a tactics of the weak would also apply: Lacking its own place, lacking a view of the
whole, limited by the blindness (which may lead to perspicacity) resulting from combat at close quarters, limited by the possibilities
of the moment, a tactic is determined by the absence of power just as a strategy is organized by the postulation of power. From this
point of view, the dialectic of a tactic may be illuminated by the ancient art of sophistic. As the author of a great "strategic" system,
Aristotle was also very interested in the procedures of this enemy which perverted, as he saw it, the order of truth. He quotes a
formula of this protean, quick, and surprising adversary that, by making explicit the basis of sophistic, can also serve finally to define
a tactic as I understand it here: it is a matter, Corax said, of "making the worse argument seem the better." In its paradoxical
concision, this formula delineates the relationship of forces that is the starting point for an intellectual creativity that is subtle,
tireless, ready for every opportunity, scattered over the terrain of the dominant order and foreign to the rules laid down and imposed
by a rationality founded on established rights and property. (38) And yet it is rare that any of this ever occurs to

critics, who seem to believe that "subversion" consists of vicarious identification with
subversives, and of telling everything one knows to one's enemies. It is nonetheless already the
case that, in critical discourse, behind all the humanistic myths of communication,
understanding, and interpretive fidelity, one finds the tactical value of misinterpretations. In an
argument it is often crucial for combatants not to know their enemy, to project instead a paper
figure, a distortion, against which they can conceive and reinforce their own positions.
Intelligence, here, is not only knowledge of one's enemies but the tactical lies one tells about
them, even to oneself. This is so regular a phenomenon of discursive conflict that it cannot be
dismissed as an aberration that might be remedied through better communication, better

listening skills, more disinterested criticism. One identifies one's own signal in part by jamming
everyone else's, setting it off from the noise one generates around it. There is, in other words,
already plenty of fog in discursive warfare, and yet we tend to remain passive in the face of it,
and for the most part completely and uncritically committed to exposing ourselves to attack.
Imagine what might be possible for a writing that is not insistently positional, not devoted to
shoring itself up, to fixing itself in place, to laying out all its plans under the eyes of its
opponents. Nothing, after all, has been more fatal for the avant-gardes than the form of the
manifesto. If only surrealism had been more willing to lie, to dissimulate, to abandon the petty
narcissism of the position and the desire to explain itself to anyone who would listen, and
instead explored the potential offered it by the model of the secret society it also hoped to be.
Intellectual warfare must therefore investigate the tactical advantages of deception and
clandestinity over the habitual, quasi-ethical demands of clarity and forthrightness, let alone the
narcissistic demands of self-promotion and mental exhibitionism, from however fortified a
position. If to be seen by the enemy is to be destroyed, then intellectual warfare must pursue its
own stealth technology. Self-styled intellectual warriors will explore computer networks not only
as more rapid means of communication and publishing but as means for circumventing
publication, as semi-clandestine lines of circulation, encoded correspondence, and semiotic
speed. There will be no entirely secure secrecy, just as there are no impregnable positions -- that
too is Virilio's argument -- but a shrouded nomadism is already spreading in and around major
discursive conflicts. There are many more than nine grounds, but the rest are secret.

Kappeler
The affirmatives concept of violence as external from their own lives allows
individuals to abdicate their responsibility. Denial of our individual culpability
with violence forecloses the possibility of meaningful change; in the process,
violence becomes more likely.
KAPPELER IN 1995 [Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, pg 1-4]
What is striking is that the violence which is talked about is always the violence committed by someone else: women
talk about the violence of men, adults about the violence of young people; the left, liberals and the centre about the violence of right extremists; the

political activists talk about structural violence , police and

all together about the violence in our society. Similarly, Westerners talk about
violence in the Balkans, Western citizens together with their generals about the violence of the Serbian army. Violence is recognized and
measured by its visible effects, the spectacular blood of wounded bodies, the material
destruction of objects, the visible damage left in the world of `objects'. In its measurable damage
we see the proof that violence has taken place, the violence being reduced to this damage. The
violation as such, or invisible forms of violence - the non-physical violence of threat and terror, of insult and humiliation, the
violation of human dignity - are hardly ever the issue except to some extent in feminist and anti-racist analyses, or under the name of
right, centre and liberals about the violence of leftist extremists;
politicians about violence in the `street', and

psychological violence. Here violence is recognized by the victims and defined from their perspective - an important step away from the catalogue of
violent acts and the exclusive evidence of material traces in the object. Yet even here the focus tends to be on the effects and experience of violence,

Violence is
perceived as a phenomenon for science to research and for politics to get a grip on. But violence
is not a phenomenon: it is the behaviour of people, human action which may be analysed. What
is missing is an analysis of violence as action - not just as acts of violence, or the cause of its
effects, but as the actions of people in relation to other people and beings or things. Feminist critique, as
either the objective and scientific measure of psychological damage, or the increasingly subjective definition of violence as experience.

well as other political critiques, has analysed the preconditions of violence, the unequal power relations which enable it to take place. However, under
the pressure of mainstream science and a sociological perspective which increasingly dominates our thinking, it is becoming standard to argue as if it
were these power relations which cause the violence. Underlying

is a behaviourist model which prefers to see human

action as the exclusive product of circumstances, ignoring the personal decision of the agent to
act, implying in turn that circumstances virtually dictate certain forms of behaviour. Even
though we would probably not underwrite these propositions in their crass form, there is
nevertheless a growing tendency, not just in social science, to explain violent behaviour by its
circumstances. (Compare the question, `Does pornography cause violence?') The circumstances identified may differ according to the politics

of the explainers, but the method of explanation remains the same. While consideration of mitigating circumstances has its rightful place in a court of
law trying (and defending) an offender, this does not automatically make it an adequate or sufficient practice for political analysis. It begs the question,
in particular, `What is considered to be part of the circumstances (and by whom)?' Thus in the case of sexual offenders, there is a routine search - on
the part of the tabloid press or professionals of violence - for experiences of violence in the offender's own past, an understanding which is rapidly
solidifying in scientific model of a `cycle of violence'. That is, the relevant factors are sought in the distant past and in other contexts of action, e a
crucial factor in the present context is ignored, namely the agent's decision to act as he did. Even politically oppositional groups are not immune to this
mainstream sociologizing. Some left groups have tried to explain men's sexual violence as the result of class oppression, while some Black theoreticians
have explained the violence of Black men as the result of racist oppression. The

ostensible aim of these arguments may be to

draw attention to the pervasive and structural violence of classism and racism, yet they not only fail to
combat such inequality, they actively contribute to it. Although such oppression is a very real part of an
agent's life context, these `explanations' ignore the fact that not everyone experiencing the same
oppression uses violence, that is, that these circumstances do not `cause' violent behaviour.
They overlook, in other words, that the perpetrator has decided to violate, even if this decision
was made in circumstances of limited choice. To overlook this decision, however, is itself a
political decision, serving particular interests. In the first instance it serves to exonerate the perpetrators, whose
responsibility is thus transferred to circumstances and a history for which other people (who remain
beyond reach) are responsible. Moreover, it helps to stigmatize all those living in poverty and oppression;
because they are obvious victims of violence and oppression, they are held to be potential
perpetrators themselves.' This slanders all the women who have experienced sexual violence, yet do not
use violence against others, and libels those experiencing racist and class oppression, yet do not necessarily act out violence. Far from
supporting those oppressed by classist, racist or sexist oppression, it sells out these entire groups in the interest of exonerating individual members. It

is a version of collective victim-blaming, of stigmatizing entire social strata as potential hotbeds of violence, which rests on and perpetuates the
mainstream division of society into so-called marginal groups - the classic clienteles of social work and care politics (and of police repression) - and an
implied `centre' to which all the speakers, explainers, researchers and careers themselves belong, and which we are to assume to be a zone of non-

Explaining people's violent behaviour by their circumstances also has the advantage of
implying that the `solution' lies in a change to circumstances. Thus it has become fashionable among socially
violence.

minded politicians and intellectuals in Germany to argue that the rising neo-Nazi violence of young people (men), especially in former East Germany,
needs to be countered by combating poverty and unemployment in these areas. Likewise anti-racist groups like the Anti. Racist Alliance or the AntiNazi League in Britain argue that `the causes of racism, like poverty and unemployment, should be tackled and that it is `problems like unemployment
and bad housing which lead to racism'.' Besides being no explanation at all of why (white poverty and unemployment should lead specifically to racist
violence (and what would explain middle- and upper-class racism), it is more than questionable to combat poverty only (but
precisely) when and where violence is exercised. It not only legitimates the violence (by `explaining' it), but constitutes an incentive to violence,
confirming that social

problems will be taken seriously when and where `they attract attention by means of
violence - just as the most unruly children in schools (mostly boys) tend to get more attention from teachers than well-behaved and quiet children
(mostly girls). Thus if German neo-Nazi youths and youth groups, since their murderous assaults on refugees and migrants in Hoyerswerda, Rostock,
Dresden etc., are treated to special youth projects and social care measures (to the tune of DM 20 million per year), including `educative' trips to
Morocco and Israel,' this is am unmistakable signal to society that racist violence does indeed 'pay off'.

Political violence is sustained by organized thinking that looks at violence through

meta-analysis. We need to have deeper insight that realizes that each of us are
culpable for violence. This is integral to ending the cycle of violence.
KAPPELER IN 1995 [Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, pg 8-11]
Moreover, personal behaviour is no alternative to `political' action; there is no question of either/or. My concern, on the contrary, is the connection
between these recognized forms of violence and the forms of everyday behaviour which we consider `normal' but which betray our own will to violence
- the connection, in other words, between our own actions and those acts of violence which are normally the focus of our political critiques. Precisely

because there is no choice between dedicating oneself either to `political issues' or to `personal
behaviour', the question of the politics of personal behaviour has (also) to be moved into the
centre of our politics and our critique. Violence - what we usually recognize as such - is no exception to the
rules, no deviation from the normal and nothing out of the ordinary, in a society in which exploitation and oppression
are the norm, the ordinary and the rule. It is no misbehaviour of a minority amid good behaviour by the majority, nor the deeds
of inhuman monsters amid humane humans, in a society in which there is no equality, in which people divide others according to race, class, sex and
many other factors in order to rule, exploit, use, objectify, enslave, sell, torture and kill them, in which millions of animals are tortured, genetically
manipulated, enslaved and slaughtered daily for `harmless' consumption by humans. It is no error of judgement, no moral lapse and no transgression

Violence
as we usually perceive it is `simply' a specific - and to us still visible - form of violence, the
consistent and logical application of the principles of our culture and everyday life. War does not
against the customs of a culture which is thoroughly steeped in the values of profit and desire, of self-realization, expansion and progress.

suddenly break out in a peaceful society; sexual violence is not the disturbance of otherwise equal gender relations. Racist attacks do not shoot like
lightning out of a non-racist sky, and the sexual exploitation of children is no solitary problem in a world otherwise just to children. The

violence
of our most commonsense everyday thinking, and especially our personal will to violence,
constitute the conceptual preparation, the ideological armament and the intellectual
mobilization which make the `outbreak' of war, of sexual violence, of racist attacks, of murder and destruction possible at
all. 'We are the war', writes Slavenka Drakulic at the end of her existential analysis of the question, `what is war?': I do not know what
war is, I want to tell [my friend], but I see it everywhere. It is in the blood-soaked street in Sarajevo, after 20 people have been killed while they queued
for bread. But it is also in your non-comprehension, in my unconscious cruelty towards you, in the fact that you have a yellow form [for refugees] and I
don't, in the way in which it grows inside ourselves and changes our feelings, relationships, values - in short: us. We are the war ... And I am afraid that

we cannot hold anyone else responsible. We make this war possible, we permit it to happen. ' `We are the war' and we also `are' the sexual violence, the racist violence, the exploitation and the will to violence in all its manifestations in a society in so-called
`peacetime', for we

make them possible and we permit them to happen. `We are the war' does not
mean that the responsibility for a war is shared collectively and diffusely by an entire society -

which would be equivalent to exonerating warlords and politicians and profiteers or, as Ulrich Beck says, upholding the notion of `collective
irresponsibility', where people are no longer held responsible for their actions, and where the conception of universal responsibility becomes the
equivalent of a universal acquittal.' On the contrary, the object is precisely to analyse the specific and differential responsibility of everyone in their
diverse situations. Decisions

to unleash a war are indeed taken at particular levels of power by those in

a position to make them and to command such collective action. We need to hold them clearly
responsible for their decisions and actions without lessening theirs by any collective
`assumption' of responsibility. Yet our habit of focusing on the stage where the major dramas of
power take place tends to obscure our sight in relation to our own sphere of competence, our
own power and our own responsibility - leading to the well-known illusion of our apparent
`powerlessness' and its accompanying phenomenon, our so-called political disillusionment. Single
citizens - even more so those of other nations - have come to feel secure in their obvious non-responsibility for such large-scale political events as, say,
the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina or Somalia - since the decisions for such events are always made elsewhere. Yet our

insight that

indeed we are not responsible for the decisions of a Serbian general or a Croatian president tends to mislead us
into thinking that therefore we have no responsibility at all, not even for forming our own
judgement, and thus into underrating the responsibility we do have within our own sphere of
action. In particular, it seems to absolve us from having to try to see any relation between our
own actions and those events, or to recognize the connections between those political decisions
and our own personal decisions. It not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls `organized
irresponsibility', upholding the apparent lack of connection between bureaucratically,
institutionally, nationally and also individually organized separate competences. It also proves
the phenomenal and unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking with the thinking of the
major powermongers. For we tend to think that we cannot `do' anything, say, about a war,
because we deem ourselves to be in the wrong situation ; because we are not where the major
decisions are made. Which is why many of those not yet entirely disillusioned with politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy
politics, in the style of `What would I do if I were the general, the prime minister, the president, the foreign minister or the minister of defence?' Since
we seem to regard their mega spheres of action as the only worthwhile and truly effective ones, and since our political analyses tend to dwell there first
of all, any question of what I would do if I were indeed myself tends to peter out in the comparative insignificance of having what is perceived as
`virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems petty and futile. For my own action I obviously desire the range of action of a general, a prime
minister, or a General Secretary of the UN - finding expression in ever more prevalent formulations like `I want to stop this war', `I want military
intervention', `I want to stop this backlash', or `I want a moral revolution.' 7 , We are this war', however, even if we do not command the troops or
participate in so-called peace talks, namely as Drakulic says, in our 'non-comprehension': our willed refusal to feel responsible for our own thinking and
for working out our own understanding, preferring innocently to drift along the ideological current of prefabricated arguments or less than innocently
taking advantage of the advantages these offer. And we `are' the war in our `unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance of the `fact that you have a
yellow form for refugees and I don't' - our readiness, in other words, to build identities, one for ourselves and one for refugees, one of our own and one
for the `others'. We

share in the responsibility for this war and its violence in the way we let them grow
inside us, that is, in the way we shape `our feelings, our relationships, our values' according to
the structures and the values of war and violence. So if we move beyond the usual frame of
violence, towards the structures of thought employed in decisions to act, this also means making
an analysis of action. This seems all the more urgent as action seems barely to be perceived any
longer. There is talk of the government doing `nothing', of its `inaction', of the need for action,
the time for action, the need for strategies, our inability to act as well as our desire to become
`active' again. We seem to deem ourselves in a kind of action vacuum which, like the cosmic
black hole, tends to consume any renewed effort only to increase its size. Hence this is also an
attempt to shift the focus again to the fact that we are continually acting and doing, and that
there is no such thing as not acting or doing nothing.

Their inter-subjective understanding of violence reduces the people they discuss to

instruments that can be pillaged.
KAPPELER IN 1995 [Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, pg 124-128]
The terms may indeed be troublesome if we wish them to mean the opposite of what they usually mean, but they are quite untroublesome in revealing
what is at issue, namely the subject's exploitation of the object. While `using' indeed does not as such mean `demeaning', it does mean
`instrumentalizing', since it is by no means the case that we instrumentalize only what we have already mentally demeaned: usually we instrumentalize
precisely what we recognize as being of value and use. Thus the subject, far from `demeaning' the object, precisely perceives it in its richness, from

it is demeaning for a person to be turned into an object and,

creatively or otherwise, to be used. And if the vital shift from `relating' to `using' in this transition of the infant's learning means to
which it wants to `creatively profit'. Rather,

separate `the object' out of its internal fantasy relation to itself and to comprehend it as existing in reality,54 this nevertheless does mean, in
Winnicott's representation, to regard ,the object' as an object in the object world, all the better to be able to use it: ` [The

subject] can only

"use" the object when he perceives it "as an external phenomenon, not as a projective entity" .'S5
And let us not forget that these `objects' principally are people. Benjamin further explains: 'Winnicott is saying that the object must be destroyed inside
in order that we know it to have survived outside; thus we can recognize it as not subject to our mental control."' Many indeed seem to manage this step
in early infancy, recognizing

that it takes more than mental control, namely active violence in

`external' reality, to keep the `object' under control. Hence Benjamin, too, recognizes that any `mutuality' and `sharing'
of equal subjects can be achieved only through a balanced struggle for power, a struggle in which neither achieves victory, and which hovers, so to
speak, in a draw: `The

paradox of recognition, the need for acknowledgement that turns us back to

dependence on the other, brings about a struggle for control."' The encounter is a meeting of adversaries, a match
between two approximately `equal' contestants: `To transcend the experience of duality [of subject and object], so that both partners are equal,
requires a notion of mutuality and sharing. In the intersubjective interaction both partners are active; it is not a reversible union of opposites (a doer
and a done-to)."' It almost looks as if Benjamin here is arguing against her own (earlier?) understanding of women as non-subjects and passive
recipients of what others do to them, trying to convince herself of women's subjectivity. Yet,

while a struggle is indeed an

encounter in which both partners are active, that is, both are `doers', this does not mean that

therefore the doing of the one is no longer doing anything to the other. Rather, it seems that
here the consequences of any doing (the done-to) disappear from view, are neutralized and
made to disappear in the `mutuality' of doing. The identification with the other person occurs
through the sharing of similar states, rather than through reversal. `Being with' breaks down the
opposition between powerful and helpless, active and passive; it counteracts the tendency to
objectify and deny recognition to those weaker or different - to the other. It forms the basis of
compassion, what Milan Kundera calls `co-feeling', the ability to share feelings and intentions without
demanding control, to experience sameness without obliterating difference. 59 We may ask from
whose perspective shared states are judged to be shared and similar, and whether the experience
of a state can be shared at all; whether to draw the fallacious inference that states are `shared' is
not precisely to obliterate difference, namely the difference that the other is indeed another and
not the `same' as me. Nor is it the case that we objectify only what is `weaker' and `different',
for objectification says nothing about the positive or negative quality of the `object'. It is no less an
objectification if we value a person highly, that is, as similar to or even the same as ourselves. Nor does it mean to deny `recognition' if I judge the other
to be weak and different: rather it is my `recognition' of the other as weak and different. As we have seen already elsewhere, the obligatory coupling into
`sharing' and `being with' only serves to obfuscate the real relations so as to prevent an analysis of the actions of the individual partners. `Sharing' and
`togetherness' not only linguistically overcome the oppositions `between powerful and helpless, active and passive', they force the experiences of two
people to be subsumed under a `shared' experience, their variedness as people to be subsumed under the sameness of shared states. And even if here it
is the eye of the theory and the theoretical discourse which construct this `sharing' from `above', it is no less a problem when it is the one or the other
partner or both who construct(s) it. In that case, it is not only a matter of the violence of a discourse of power, but of the violence of one partner towards
the other. Hence it is neither a surprise that this fictitious `sharing' produces no more than the old and notorious one-sided efforts of the subject,
`compassion' and `co-feeling' - good deeds towards the other. As

the conception of self and the other produces a

'humaneness' where `humans' are everybody apart from myself, so compassion is the classic
phenomenon of benevolence and charity. Not only are these forms of patronization and
condescension - and an insult to the reality of the suffering (or `passion') of another person - it is also a major selfdeception
if we believe that we really can co-feel the experience of others, and that this would in any way
be helping them. A virtue in the eyes of the compassionate and detested by those who become its
target, compassion satisfies the moral needs of the compassionate co-feelers rather than the
needs of those `with' whom they are feeling. Instead, it would suffice to understand the other's
suffering; there is no necessity to `feel' it. For understanding the suffering of others, what has
caused it and what the consequences are for them, would enable me to support them in their
struggle to deal with the consequences and to liberate themselves from their cause. If on the
other hand I am suffering and feeling `with' them, I usually suffer so much myself in the process
that no energy remains for any further, support. In particular, however , it is a form of violence
and an exploitation of the other's suffering and experience to reclaim it metaphorically as my
own. Thus it borders on cynicism, for instance, when Western European women claim that the rapes of women in former Yugoslavia
`are rapes of ourselves',60 that they constitute `an international crisis for Women - not only Muslim women victims ... but all women'.61 However, this
linguistically enforced `sharing' of experience and this rhetorical assertion of co-feeling are not the only forms of violence in Benjamin's scenario of
`mutuality'. For

a struggle between two opponents by definition is violence and counter-violence.

The `struggle for recognition'62 is not so much a struggle for this discursive object `recognition',
but a struggle to be recognized by the other; the struggle for love a struggle to be loved, the
struggle of relationship a struggle to get the other to relate to me. That is to say, it is a struggle to
determine another's actions towards me - not to leave it to the other to decide how to act. In this
struggle I am using all available means of coercion, manipulation and blackmail: `I was determined to make him love me back' '63 `I made him tell me
that he loved me, and I made him give me a hug ... It never would have happened if I hadn't forced him.' To

attempt to involve the

other in a `system of mutual dependency' means to instrumentalize the other's self-interest in
my own, to use the other's desire for my recognition to fulfil my own desire for their recognition .
It presupposes the self-interest of the other and imputes to the other the same political will to
`creatively profit' from others. This explains why even in its most explicitly negative form of a
quarrel and a fight the struggle fulfils its main purpose, namely to direct the other's actions
towards myself. It explains why the subject perceives even in violence against itself a form of
recognition, albeit a negative one: the other's recognition of the self as the other's opponent in
struggle, and thereby the recognition of a relationship. And so we arrive at the most astounding
revelation, namely that even an enemy is an adequate opponent, even an adversary a suitable
antagonist, that even hostility and enmity enable a struggle, that is, the competitive partnership

we call relationship. Whether the other's recognition of me is `negative' or `positive', it is a

recognition of me as the other's opposite in a (still) continuing and above all `shared' struggle.
Hence we also begin to understand why for the subject, the other's decision not to enter the
struggle and to refuse counter-violence constitutes the greatest catastrophe of all, and is
understood as the most deeply hurtful `attack'. For the other's refusal to recognize the subject as
an opponent means the rejection of relationship as struggle. And since the subject perceives a
relationship by definition as an antagonism, its own enterprise of establishing `togetherness', it
cannot recognize the other's refusal to fight as an action in the continuous process of interaction
between two people, understanding it instead as the `end of the relationship'. In fact, a relation
between two people can neither be ended nor dissolved, but merely changed; yet the subject
only knows `its relationship', and hence puts its own `end' to it.
The alternative is to interrogate our own will to violence; only by politicizing the
way we think about violence can we find ways to end the cycle of violence.
KAPPELER IN 1995 [Susanne Kappeler, The Will To Violence: The Politics of Personal Behavior, pg 4-5]
If we nevertheless continue to explain violence by its circumstances and attempt to counter it
by changing these circumstances, it is also because in this way we stay in command of the
problem. In particular, we do not complicate the problem by any suggestions that it might be people
who need to change. Instead, we turn the perpetrators of violence into the victims of circumstances, who as victims by definition, cannot act
sensibly (but in changed circumstances will behave differently. We, on the other hand, are the subjects able to take in hand the task of changing the
circumstances. Even

if changing the circumstance combating poverty, unemployment, injustice, etc. may not be easy,
it nevertheless remains within our scope at least theoretically and by means of state power .
Changing people, on the other hand, is neither within our power nor, it seems, ultimately in our interest: we prefer to keep certain people
under control, putting limits on their violent behavior, but we apparently have no interest in a politics that presupposes people's ability to

For changing (as opposed to restricting) other people's

behavior is beyond the range and influence of our own power; only they themselves can
change it. It requires their will to change , their will not to abuse power and not to use
violence. A politics aiming at a change in people's behavior would require political work that is very much more cumbersome and very much
change and aims at changing attitudes and behavior.

less promising of success than is the use of state power and social control. It would require political consciousness-raising politicizing the
way we think which cannot be imposed on others by force or compulsory educational meaures. It would require a view of people which takes

To take seriously the will of others

however would mean recognizing one's own, and putting people's will, including our own, at
the centre of political reflection . A political analysis of violence needs to recognize this will ,
the personal decision in favour of violence - not just to describe acts of violence, or the conditions which
enable them to take place, but also to capture the moment of decision which is the real
impetus for violent action . For without this decision there will be no violent act, not even
in circumstances which potentially permit it . It is the 3 decision to violate , not just the act itself,
which makes a person a perpetrator of violence - just as it is the decision not to do so which makes people not act
violently and not abuse their power in a situation which would nevertheless permit it. This moment of decision , therefore, is
also the locus of potential resistance to violence. To understand the structures of thinking and
the criteria, by which such decisions are reached, but above all to regard this decision as an act of choice, seems to me a necessary
precondition for any political struggle against violence and for a non-violent society .
seriously and reckons with their will, both their will to violence and their will to change.

Case
The fact that they propose a plan links back to Batailles theories of inaction- that
ruins all solvency
They dont nihilism but Batailles theories support nihilism- means they dont
embrace expenditure
The K is non-falsifiable
Olson, 94 professor of philosophy at Allegheny College, masters in theological studies from
the University of Dallas, (Carl, Eroticism, violence, and sacrifice: A postmodern theory of
religion and ritual, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, ProQuest)//JKahn
4. Eroticism and death Without giving any historical proof for his position, Bataille asserts
that the origin of eroticism can be traced prior to the division of humanity into those who were
free and those who were slaves. It's origins can be found m pre- historic signs of erotic life
embodied by figures with large breasts and erect penises, but its foundation is the sexual act
itself (Bataille 1989a: 66). The knowledge of death plays an important role m the origin of
eroticism. Al-though his claim cannot be refuted or proven, Bataille asserts that prehistoric
beings were aware of death, an awareness that gave nse to an awareness of eroticism. The knowledge of

death is essential because it gives rise to a sensibility that m turn stimulates eroticism, an extreme emotion that sepa- rates the sexuality of humans from that of animals (Bataille
1989a: 31-32, 23).5 The difference between humans and animals is more precisely defined when he states that "eroticism differs from the animal sexual impulse m that it is, m
principle, just as work is, the conscious searching for an end, for sensual pleasure." (Bataille 1989a: 44) There is also an anticipation by the participants m erotic play that it will
culminate with sensual pleasure. In the pleasure of erotic play one does not gain anything or become enriched, unlike [continues] 6. Bataille's theory and the Sun

Bataille failed to test his theory of sacrifice by applying it to actual examples of sacrifice m
the religions of the world.
Dance

Having defined the nature of sacnfice for Bataille, it is therefore necessary to compare it to an actual sacnfice. In order to demonstrate the shortcomings of Bataille's theory of sacrifice I have

chosen to apply it to the Sun Dance of the Sioux. Following this example, I suggest that, contrary to Bataille's theory, a more reasonable interpretation of the Sun Dance can be attained by concentratmg on its symbolism. This approach is suggested by the theoretical
work of Clifford Geertz (1971) and Victor Turner (1967; 1968; 1975), the latter of whom refers to a symbol as the smallest umt of ntual or as storage umts of dynamic entities. My account of the Sun Dance relies on the work James R. Walker (1980) because his
information was gathered from several different sources, and it represents the most authoritative account available to us of the rite in one period of its history My approach presupposes that the nte and its meaning have continued to change m response to new
circumstances for the Sioux. By selectmg this nte, I am bemg eminently fair to Bataille, from one perspective, because the erotic and violent features of the Sun Dance could be used to prove the validity of his theory The complexity of the Sun Dance makes it difficult
to interpret. Although he does not consider the Sun Dance of the Sioux, Jorgensen (1972: 206, 236) interprets, for mstance, the Ute and Shoshone nte as an acquisition of power that transforms the person and allows him to gain power, status, and autonomy From
another perspective, Melody (1976) interprets the Sun Dance of the Sioux as a commemoration of tribal virtues expressed m the dance, a celebration of the people, an acknowledgment of the generative power of the sun, and a celebration of renewal. The rejoicing
over renewal of the world is close to Hultkrantz's mterpretation (1981. 238) of the nte as a recreation of the cosmos. According to Hassnck (1967' 238, 248), the Sun Dance represents a socially umfymg activityactivity and a chance to resolve a conflict between an
individual ego and the adjustment to the physical and social forces. And Lewis (1972: 47) mterprets the Sun Dance in terms of its various functions: umfymg force; maintaining tribal traditions; insuring tribal well-bemg in huntmg and warfare; offering to the dancer
perpetual prestige. I propose offenng a different mterpretive approach for the Sun Dance that cntically reflects on Bataille's theory According to this interpretation, the Sun Dance of the Sioux exhibits a threefold significance: existential, social, and cosmic. In other
words, if one examines the many symbols associated with the nte, one will see that this sacnfice enables one to attain three levels of being. While the sacred pole was bemg pamted, mstructors and students sat m a circle around the black painted figures of a buffalo
and man, each de- picted with exaggerated gemtals, m order to impart to the man the potency of Iya, patron-god of libertmism, and to the buffalo the potency of Gnaski, the crazy buffalo and patron-god of licentiousness (Walker 1980: 107-108). According to Black
Elk's non-nsqu interpretation of the images, the buffalo represented all the four-legged animals on the earth, and the figure of the man signified all people (Brown 1979' 79). In contrast, Bataille would be quick to seize on the erotic connections of the patron gods of
libertinism and licentiousness. However, if the erotic is a quest for sensual pleasure, repre- sents a realm of play, and reveals a foretaste of continuity, it cannot be used to interpret the meaning of Iya and Gnaski because within the context of the Sun Dance they more
powerfully suggest the renewal and recreation motifs of the rite. Bataille's concept of eroticism also would not fit into an insightful interpretation of the Sun Dance as a dominant theme of the rite because of its anti-social character as a solitary activity accomplished
m secret. The heterological method of Bataille is intended to alleviate the contra- dictions of life and free the individual from the homogeneity of the world. In contrast to Bataille's insistence on a search for radical difference, the world- view of the Sioux, embodied m
the symbolic aspects of the Sun Dance con-ceived as an offering of body and soul to Wakan-Tanka (the Great Spmt), suggests a homogeneous view of the cosmos. The umverse, for mstance, is represented by the round form of the ceremomal drum, whose steady beat
is the throbbmg at the centre of the cosmos (Brown 1979' 69). Within the context of the Sun Dance, the cosmic pillar of the umverse is represented by the cottonwood tree, which further represents the enemy who is symbolically killed and transported back to the
centre of the campcamp by means of sticks because human hands are not allowed to touch the body The ntual partic- ipants consecrate the tree with the stem of the sacred pipe, another symbol of the earth, the buffalo, and everything that lives and grows on the
earth. Once the tree is trimmed of its branches and its sides and branch tips are painted red, the rawhide effigies of a man and a buffalo are suspended from the crosspiece of the sacred tree, which is then placed into a hole at the centre of the camp. The sacred tree
not only suggests a umversal pillar, but it also represents the wayway of the people (Brown 1979 69, 75-76). Other cosmic symbols are the sun and earth signified by a red circle, symbolic of all that is sacred. In the centre of the circle representing the sun is a blue
circle which suggests Wakan-Tanka, the centre of the cosmos and all existence (Brown 1979' 71-72). Moreover, the lodge of the Sun Dance is composed of twenty- eight poles, each signifying an object of creation, and staked m a circle that represents the entire
created world (Brown 1979' 80). It is difficult to find anything excessive or transgressme in these cosmic symbols of the Sioux that would support Bataille's position. Rather than achieving the differentiation that Bataille's theory advocates, the sun dancer
symbolically acquires the cosmos. According to the ethno- logical report of Walker (1980: 114), the candidate who dances the most excruciatingly painful form of the dance with the intention of becoming a shaman is given a small hoop by his mentor. This hoop is
symbolic of the sky, the four winds, time, all things that grow, and all circular thmgs made by the tribe. After his successful completion of the dance, the sun dancer is allowed to place this symbol on his tipi. This privilege suggests that he attams all that the hoop
symbolizes. Contrary to Bataille's theory, the highest aspiring sun dancer does not find that the cosmos becomes other for him, and he does not stand as an individual sovereign within the cosmos. He rather becomes part of the whole, and he acquires the cosmos.
Instead of perceiving the cosmic symbolism associated with the most painful performance of the rite, Bataille's writings suggest that he would stress its sadistic and masochistic aspects. Sadism, an excessive violation of modesty and a violent excretion, is not onlyonly
an eruption of excremental forces, but it also forms a limitation by subjugating whatever is opposed to such an eruption (Bataille 1970-1988: II, 56). If masochism is an enjoyment of pain, the violence exercised on the flesh of the sun dancers would be viewed by
Bataille as a transgression and violation of the participant's flesh, which also calls attention to the flesh itself and connects it to the erotic. Bataille also mamtams (1984: 91) that violence agamst the flesh is an external manifestation of the internal violence of the
sacnficial participant, which is perceived as a loss of blood and vanous forms of ejaculations. Moreover, for Bataille the cuttingcutting of the flesh would be suggestive of the discontinuity of the self. Unlike the solitary activity of eroticism for Bataille, the sun dancer
of the Sioux rite does not distinguish or divorce himself from his society because he represents the people and suffers on their behalf during the rite. After punfymg themselves, their clothing, and the equipment to be used m the nte, the participants crycry at the
centre of the campcamp and assume the suffering of the people, which enables other tribal members to gain understanding and strength (Brown 1979' 72, 78). If there is present the discontinuity charac-tenstic of Bataille's profane human society among the Sioux,
the Sun Dance bridges any social divisions by uniting the social bonds of a particular tribe and umtmg them with different Indian tribes. By means of an invitation from the tribe initiating the nte prior to its begmnng, other Indian tribes are invited to participate m
the nte, even though some of the visitors may be hereditary enemies (Dorsey 1894: 452). This scenano enhances the social solidarity of the Indian nation and builds a closer relationship with the things of the um- verse ; the sacred centre created by the dancers is
alleged always to be with them throughout the remainder of their existence. There is no evidence of transgressme or excessive social behaviour by the sun dancers m Bataille's sense. Moreover, the dancers have acquired a sacred power dunng the nte that they may
later share with other members of their societysociety According to Powers (1977' 100), the acquired power of the sun dancers may be mvested m those who are sick by the placement of the dancers' hands on the less fortunate. Thereby the sacred power is shared to
cure the sick, and enter into communion with others. In comparison to Bataille's theory, the sun dancers do not differentiate themselves from their society They share a sacred power that can benefit every member of the tribe. Bataille's heterological method and its
stress on finding radical difference prevents him from seeing the socially unifying possibilities of a rite such as the Sun Dance. According to Bataille, violence is inevitable because human beings can- not totally reject it. In contrast to Bataille's theory, the Sun Dance
represents a threefold sacrifice of which the initial two sacrificial actions are symbolic: cutting down the cottonwood tree which is symbolic of the enemy; shooting at the effigies of a man and buffalo suspended from the crosspiece of the sacred tree, and the final
action of the actual sacrifice of human flesh on the fourth day of the rite. The second symbolic killing of the effigies of a man and buffalo, amid much rejoicing by the participants, represents the hope for future success m hunting and victory in war (Powers 1977' 98).
These sym-bolic killings by the Sioux violates Bataille's assertion that violence cannot be controlled. Rather, the symbolic nature of the Sioux killings suggests a limiting and eventual termination of violence and not a promoting of any cycle of violence. Although
Bataille is right to emphasize the importance of violence m sacrifice, there does not appear to be any danger that the con- tagious violence of the sacred will overflow and overwhelm the Sioux and other tribes. There are certainly martial features to the Sun Dance, but
their symbolic nature suggests a containment of violence rather than any overflow- ing of it. Bataille's theory does make clear, however, that the Sioux accept violence, even though they try to reject or control it. Within the drama of the Sun Dance, there is a hint of an
inherent prestige associated with victims who choose to perform the sacrifice in the most painful and violent manner. The actual sacnficial victims, for instance, can choose to dance m any of four ways-ways: gazing at the sun from dawn to dusk; having wooden
skewers, tied to rawhide ropes secured about half wayway up the sacred pole, mserted into their breasts; having wooden skewers mserted mto the breasts and then being suspended about one foot off the ground; or having wooden skewers inserted which then are
attached with thongs to one or more buffalo skull(s) that must be dragged along the dance area (Powers 1977' 98-99). The Sun Dance is not completed until the flesh of the victim has been torn through, representing the death and rebirth of the victim. It is
permissible for others to assist by pulling on the ropes to end the victim,' agony As well, the multiple number of sun dancers contradicts Bataille's assertion (1988a: 59) that a victim represents a surplus of communal wealth and substitutes for other members of the
commumty Neither is the victim an accursed share destmed for violent destruction. Bataille is nght, however, to emphasize the importance of death m sacnfice, which possesses the power to return one to continuity by means of eroticism. What he fails to see is the
connection between death and spintual rebirth. And due to his notion of eroticism, which represents a disequilibrmm that stimulates a person consciously to call one's being into question, Bataille is not able to recogmze that the sun dancer is actually actually able to
find his identity Although Bataille's theory of sacrifice does not account for the Sun Dance in its entirety, the rite does adhere to his theory to some extent because it calls attention to the flesh and reveals external violence and the internal violence of the subject. The
violation and breaking of the sun dancer's flesh does suggest the usefulness of Bataille's observation about the intimate connection between human flesh and violence. However, by giving pieces of their flesh, the sun dancers impugn Bataille's claim that the violation

Bataille's theory is problematic because it lacks consistent sense m the

context of the Sun Dance. Bataille's need to reintroduce eroticism blinds him to the facts or
drama of an actual sacrifice. The flesh of the sacrificial victim m the Sun Dance represents
ignorance (Brown 1979' 85) and not the dispossession of the self, an anti-social aspect of
eroticism for Bataille.From an existential perspective, to be freed from the ropes tied to the skewers symbolizes freedom from the bonds of the flesh and not
of the victim's flesh connotes a connection to a sexual act. At this point,

some erotic urge. The lack of an erotic emotion is evident m the symbolism of donning rabbit skins on the dancer's arms and legs. The rabbit is a symbol of humility, a virtue
with which one must approach Wakan-Tanka. The victim is also equated symbolically with the sacred pipe that stretches from heaven to earth (Brown 1979. 74). In this context,
the sacred pipe mdicates the transcending of earthlyearthly flesh. The dancer becomes the centre of the world m which the four directions meet when he is tied at the centre of
the four poles, so that the four directions converge m his body (Brown 1979' 95). Within the drama of the Sun Dance, elements of eroticism, violence, and death are evident. This
does not mean, however, that these features of sacrifice necessarily involve stressing separation, difference, transgression, and excess. Although it is possible to find these
features in the Sun Dance to some degree, the Sioux nte stresses finding one's identity within a religious and social tradition. By successfully completmg the nte, a sun dancer
does not separate himself from the group or become distinct from other things; rather, he often assumes a position of leadership within the tribe. And, as already noted, the sun
dancer is intimately related to his mentor, ntual assistant or second, and other members of the tribe who play various roles m the nte. All this suggests the socially unifying
nature of the nte. Moreover, within a tribal society such as the Sioux, the individual's identity is sociallysocially defined, even though one's visions and dreams help one to define
oneself and one's place within a wider social context. Besides being a form of human sacnfice, the Sun Dance also functions as an initiation rite. The dancer, having died to his
former ignorant condition, attains a totally new existential status of enlightenment and responsibility The ordeal that one endures is often accompanied by visions of the divine;
the successful completion of the nte is a prereqmsite if one aspires to become a shaman. Walker (1980: 182) notes that after the successful completion of the Sun Dance the
victim is eligible for leadership of a war party or for chieftamship. The candidate receives new meamng and status which is symbolized by the red design, drawn on his chest by
the shaman as a symbol of all that is sacred. Furthermore, the victim is equated throughout the nte with the moon, which waxes and wanes, lives and dies, like all things (Brown
1979- 71). 7 Concluding remarks The significance of the Sun Dance enables us to see that there is an alternative interpretation to Bataille's theory that is more faithful to the
actual evidence and is not simply imposed on the ritual activities by the creative imagination of a theorist. This interpretive analysis of the Sun Dance is suggested by the

. Bataille, however, includes a

personal agenda because he wants to re-introduce the erotic into religion . In other words, Bataille's theoretical
patterns exhibited by the nte itself and reflects more accurately the actual nte and its religious and symbolic context

speculation about eroticism shapes his theory of religion and sacnfice. Thus, his theoretical world-view takes precedence over the religious phenomena that he examines. With
his involvement in the Surrealist movement, his emphasis on em- bracing bodily waste, his anal and erotic obsessions, the role of the ambiguous pineal eye in his works, and
composition of excessively obscene novels, all suggest an explicit advocacy of decadence by Bataille. In his work entitled My Mother, the socially excessive theme is mcest. His
novel The Blue of Noon, for mstance, focuses on the nauseous and squalid aspects of human life where its characters are engaged m endless orgies, vomiting, and unnat- mg. The
erotic and death are contmually united in his Story of the Eye when, for example, the two leading libertmes of the novel have sexual mtercourse next to the cadaver of a young
girl they have driven to death. Two further dramatic examples are the rape of a priest by the female protagomst and his death by strangulation and simultaneous sexual orgasm,
and the death of the distracted matador gorged through his eye by the hom of a bull as he is distracted and blinded by the obscene antics of the female protagomst. Bataille's
hermeneutical method of heterology is designed to lead to ex- cess and decadence. Trymg to explain his mithode de meditataon used m his book on religious expenence, Bataille
wntes (1954: 216), "I think like a girl takes off her dress. At its most extreme pomt, thought is immodesty, obscen- ity itself." This kind of statement seems to suggest de Sade or
Mephistopheles becommg Faust. In his work on heterology, Pefams summarily states (1991. 41) that the works of Bataille are "a theater of the excremental m whose scenes one
may glimpse golden threads." Frednc Jameson (1991. 382), a self-admitted Amencan adherent of postmodern literary cnticism, affirms that decadence is a charactenstic of
postmodermsm: "'Decadence' is thus in some way the very premonition of the postmodern itself, but under condi- tions that make it impossible to predict that aftermath with
any sociological or cultural accuracy, thereby divertmg the vague sense of a future into more fantastic forms, all borrowed from the misfits and eccentrics, the perverts and the
Others, or aliens, of the present (modem) system." And if, as sug- gested by Rosen (1987' 142), this decadence originates in political despair, Bataille's hermeneutical program is
a political manifesto and not an apt tool for interpretmg religious phenomena. From a more positive perspective, Bataille's theory of religion does call attention to neglected
elements in the study of religion in the form of bodily waste: excrement, saliva, tears, unne, mucus, dirt, skin, and so forth. Al- though his distinction between the sacred and the
profane cannot be applied consistently as a useful hermeneutical device with the religious phenomena or world-view of Native Amencan Indians, his emphasis on the difference
within the sacred itself is suggestive. He is also nght to stress the violent aspects of sacrifice and their sexual implications. Although violence is certainly present m the Sun
Dance, the Sioux rite appears to move in the direction of nonviolence - by symbolically killing an enemy represented by a tree, for instance - that undermines Bataille's opinion
that violence cannot be contained. By offering his body and soul, the Sioux sun dancer points to a renewal and continuance of cosmic generative forces. The Sun Dance also joins
Indian societies together and provides for social continuity by allowing others to share m the sacred power engendered by the rituals. Moreover, the rite enables the sun dancer
to become ontologically transformed by being reborn and being set free of his mortal flesh. Although there is a sense in which the sun dancer is distinctive, the emphasis of the
nte is unity with society and social well-being rather than stressing the differences between the sacrificial victim and society .

Non-falsifiability disproves their methodology and causes extinction

Coyne, 06 Author and Writer for the Times (Jerry A., A plea for empiricism, FOLLIES OF THE
WISE, Dissenting essays, 405pp. Emeryville, CA: Shoemaker and Hoard, 1 59376 101 5)

Supernatural forces and events, essential aspects of most religions, play no role in science, not because we
exclude them deliberately, but because they have never been a useful way to understand nature . Scientific
truths are empirically supported observations agreed on by different observers . Religioustruths, on the
other hand, are personal, unverifiable and contested by those of different faiths. Science is nonsectarian: those who
disagree on scientific issues do not blow each other up. Science encourages doubt; most religions quash it. But
religion is not completely separable from science. Virtually all religions make improbable claims that are in principle
empirically testable, and thus within the domain of science: Mary, in Catholic teaching, was bodily taken to heaven, while
Muhammad rode up on a white horse; and Jesus (born of a virgin) came back from the dead. None of these claims has been corroborated, and while
science would never accept them as true without evidence, religion does. A mind that accepts both science and religion is thus a mind in conflict. Yet
scientists, especially beleaguered American evolutionists, need the support of the many faithful who respect science. It is not politically or tactically
useful to point out the fundamental and unbreachable gaps between science and theology. Indeed, scientists and philosophers have written many books
(equivalents of Leibnizian theodicy) desperately trying to show how these areas can happily cohabit. In his essay, Darwin goes to Sunday School,
Crews reviews several of these works, pointing out with brio the intellectual contortions and dishonesties involved in harmonizing religion and science.
Assessing work by the evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, the philosopher Michael Ruse, the theologian John Haught and others, Crews concludes, When
coldly examined . . . these productions invariably prove to have adulterated scientific doctrine or to have emptied religious dogma of its commonly
accepted meaning. Rather than suggesting any solution (indeed, there is none save adopting a form of religion that makes no untenable empirical

points out the dangers to the survival of our planet arising from a rejection of Darwinism.
Such rejection promotes apathy towards overpopulation, pollution, deforestation and other environmental
crimes: So long as we regard ourselves as creatures apart who need only repent of our personal sins to retain heavens blessing, we wont take the
full measure of our species-wise responsibility for these calamities. Crews includes three final essays on deconstruction and
other misguided movements in literary theory. These also show follies of the wise in that they involve
interpretations of texts that are unanchored by evidence. Fortunately, the harm inflicted by Lacan and his
epigones is limited to the good judgement of professors of literature. Follies of the Wise is one of the most refreshing and
claims), Crews

edifying collections of essays in recent years. Much like Christopher Hitchens in the UK, Crews serves a vital function as National Sceptic. He ends on a
ringing note: The

human race has produced only one successfully validated epistemology , characterizing all
scrupulous inquiry into the real world, from quarks to poems. It is, simply, empiricism, or the submitting of
propositions to the arbitration of evidence that is acknowledged to be such by all of the contending parties .
Ideas that claim immunity from such review,whether because of mystical faith or privileged clinical insight

or the say-so of eminent authorities, are not to be countenanced until they can pass the same skeptical ordeal to
which all other contenders are subjected. As science in America becomes ever more harried and debased by politics and religion, we
desperately need to heed Crewss plea for empiricism.

Their use of the state corrupts their Dadaist epistemology turns the aff
Schmidt 9 (Saint, Post-Anarchist writer, Accursed Anarchism: Five Post-Anarchist
Meditations on Bataille, http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/saint-schmidt-accursedanarchism-five-post-anarchist-meditations-on-bataille#toc1)[rkezios]
Nevertheless, one detects a peculiar omission in the writings of Georges Bataille which no doubt stem from his desire to mythologize
the discourse of scarcity and endless productivity pervasive in the work of the political economists of the time; while it was no doubt
important to explore the notion of a general economy founded on the metaphysical principles of excess and limitless consumption,
Batailles work does not outline (at least not explicitly) the metaphysical principles regulating this economy. At the restrictive level,
this problem has the analogy best exhibited by the traditional anarchist critique against the political logic of the Marxists. The oftcited nineteenth century anarchists (here, I will restrict my focus of Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Kropotkin) set out to discover a
fundamentally new form of political logic which was to be distinguished from the Marxist logic of class inherent in the
base/superstructure synthetic pair.[6] What they found was that the Marxist analysis of political oppression neglected the selfperpetuating and independent logic of the State and that, according to Bakunin (and echoed by countless other anarchists to this
day), the Marxists do not know that despotism resides not so much in the form of the State but in the very principle of the State and
political power (1984: 220). For the traditional anarchists, the State as the fundamental apparatus of power in society
represented the barbarity of the transfer of power from the people to the tyrannical group; however, these anarchists held a
particularly narrow analysis of what precisely constituted this tyrannical group and an even narrower understanding of the nature of
this influence on the multitude of workers and peasants. Todd May, the post-anarchist, put the matter nicely: It is a mistake

to view the anarchist diatribes against the state as the foundation for its critique of
representation. The state is the object of critique because it is the ultimate form of political
representation, not because it is founding for it (emphasis are mine; 1994: 47). If I may be permitted the minor

inconvenience of this reduction, as all writers inevitably are, then I may say that it appears to me that the traditional anarchists
ultimately believed that the State emerged as a foreign body and imposed itself entirely against the will of the people (ignoring, for
the moment, the role of ideology as one of the vehicles for its self-perpetuation), therefore logically precluding the possibility for
free, spontaneous, action on the part of the people in all instances thereafter: They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship
their dictatorship, of course can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim
but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that
is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up (emphasis are
mine; Bakunin, 1873 [1953]: 288). While the anarchists pressed for the means of political revolution to

match their ends (in other words, for political revolution to cease to use the State/power), the probability of life free
from the contaminating effects of the State (the point of departure for spontaneous political revolution) does not
appear to be present and this renders the prospects for revolution highly unlikely without the
sacrifice of means (this is the hegemonic logic of reform/revolution; c.f. Day, 2005). Despite this, the
incompatibility between the means of political revolution and the ends (ends: in the traditional
anarchist conception is a world free from power; a universal brotherhood) therefore marked
the harshest critique leveled against the Marxists, but it also signaled an implicit, if only unconscious, solidarity

between the anarchists and the Marxists which remains apparent in the nave discourses of traditionalists until this day: precisely,
what the traditional anarchists have been unable to put to proper disposal is, as the post-anarchist Saul Newman rightfully contends,
the crude Manichean separation between the good people (understood to be the embodiment of the essentially human identity)
and the bad State (understood to be the sole possessor of power and the central location from which it emanated, in a
unidirectional flow);[7][8][9] Has [anarchism] not merely replaced the economy with the state as the

essential evil in society, from which other evils are derived? (Newman, 2001: 47). We have therefore

discovered the ability to understand to some degree the questions which continue to plague the minds of subjects becomingsovereign today: we ask the following questions to all ranges of political actors: What is your understanding of the nature of power
and what is the nature of resistance?, Where can each of these precise energy-flows be found to reside and how might they be
described to function and in which direction(s)?, What possibilities are offered and precluded by these conceptions? My criticism
begins with the assumption that traditionalists continue to invoke the problematic assumption that power derives primarily from the
(political) State[10], flowing outward/downward to repress an otherwise creative and good human essence;[11] my concern has
been that this theory, positioned as it is within the hopelessly restrictive economy of utility and

form, does not offer the reflective surface required for properly philosophical meditations which,
in turn, may actually lead one to become a sovereign subject capable of the type of spontaneous
action called for within traditional anarchist doctrine . I must bring this discussion back on point. The
transformation of the traditional anarchist discourse (re-writing it, as we all have done in our own way) invites the occasion for an
interesting second reading, beginning with the following simple metaphor: if, for the traditional Marxists, the domain of class

referred also to the domain of utility[12] then, for the anarchists, we may properly deduce that the

domain of the State referred also to the domain of routine (utility set in time) whereby our
gestures are reduced to the least traumatic movements (whereby our bodily motions are rendered docile)
associated with what has already been; indeed, after playing guitar for most of his life, my father now confesses it to
be more challenging to make a mistake than to actually play on key![13] With this interpretation we might understand anew the
connection Kropotkin envisioned between capitalism and the State when he proclaimed that the State [..] and

Capitalism are facts and conceptions which we cannot separate from each other [..] [i]n the
course of history these institutions have developed, supporting and reinforcing each other
(Kropotkin, [2005]: 159). And, as Alexander Berkman more concisely put it: [the capitalists are in] need [of] the
state to legalise their methods [..] to protect the capitalist system ([2003]: 16). The State
therefore instituted into logical time what was previously cast to the instant, outside of the
authority of time: the instant or movement as the means without end; thus we have found that it
is not the general economy that poses the greatest threat to sovereignty, but the general State:
what is sovereign in fact is to enjoy [enjoyment being what play is to work at the level of the
economy] the present time without having anything else in view but this present time [time
being the regulation of successive intervals of production] (Bataille, 1993: 199). It is therefore a
matter of separating, analytically, what manifests itself mutually in the restrictive economy and
State, where the logic of each occur or are the seeds for the other. This will be point of departure for a
ferociously religious post-anarchist meditation with Bataille as its benefactor. However, this study invites the consideration of a
growing body of literature in nihilist anarchism that no post-anarchist can do without studying.

The alt cant solve

a) it goes too far causes fascism
Shaviro, 90 (Steven, PhD from Yale, professor at Wayne State University, former professor at
University of Washington, Passion and Excess, The Florida State University Press, pg. 40-41,
Tashma)
The extremism of Benjamin's and Batailles formulations makes it difficult tosee how they can be
applied to concrete situations of social struggle. It is easy to point out the absurdity of Acphales projects of
voluntary self-sacrifice and communal ecstasy. But this is an "absurdity on which Bataille himself was the Hrst to insist.
Absurdity, for Bataille, is not the negative condition it is regarded as by telcological thinkers and existentialists. It is an affirmation
that opposes the capitalist logic ofputring all productive forces to work. [Lhomme] est libre de ressembler E1 tout ce qui nest pas
lui dans l`univers. ll peut carter la pense que cest lui ou Dieu qui empche le reste des choses dtre absurde [(Man) is free to
resemble everything that is not himself in the universe. He can set aside the thought that it is he or God who keeps the rest of things
from being absurd]" (OC, 1:445; VE, 180). The problem, then, is not how to give meaning and force to otherwise absurd and
inefficacious acts. It is rather how to
new grounds of power or signification.

prevent sacrifice and expenditure from becoming (as is the case in fascism )

b) Bataille's theories are outdated and no longer apply

Piel, 95 (Jean, French philosopher and critic, editor of Critique, a French Journal, On Bataille:
Critical Essays, State University of New York Press, pg. 105-106, Tashma)
Up to this point, Bataille's reflexions, applied to the contemporary era , and to the experiences of the
use of riches that take shape there, nolonger delight in the passionate reactions and rages that
animate certain passages of "The Notion of Expenditure." Rather, Bataille's reflexions are those of a man whose maturity has
brought him a taste for more serene judgments; at times they have even brought him the ambitionperhaps "crazy"?of
envisaging solutions that are certainly not positive in any lasting way , but at the very least, entailed moments of
equilibrium capable of bringing men some respite. How different is the tone of the chapter in The Accursed Share devoted to luxury and poverty, from the pages
where, in the article from La Critique sociale, the conditions governing the class struggle were described! The opinion formulated upon the Sovietthat is to say Stalinist
experience in the 1949 book contrasts with the apparently disapproving silence, with which it was surrounded in the 1933 article: not only is the judgment made that "there was
no choice left," which, in sum, justifies the adopted rhythm of accumulation, corresponding to a stage in history that has simply opened a new space for growth through other
ways, just as capitalism had once done, but still "communist dissidence itself" (that which contested the paths chosen by Soviet power) is accused of sharing "the general sterility
of the democracies" and the "collusion between the opposition and the bourgeois" is denounced. As for the most powerful capitalist society, if the fact is strongly stressed that all
of its earlier behavior engaged it in an impasse, Bataille admits that it is perhaps itself on the way to glimpsing a solution by getting rid of the excess in the form of a gift, pure
and simple. Thus, in The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille, a precursor of the theory of gift in modern economic life and of "generalized economy," was alsomore than ten
years before his timethe prophet of "peaceful coexistence" and of unexpected developments of the competition for expansion between the two blocs. This is a great
accomplishment for a single book, and it is a legacy unexpected at the very least from a man who had for a long time forbidden himself any claim to provide a lesson. But it is

nothing when compared to the development that could be impliedfor the interpretation of phenomena that, in our
contemporary experience, still

require an explanation by the exploitation of ideas that abound, or that begin to arise in

economists and sociologists should use as a point of departure in

their thinking at this midpoint of the twentieth century .
this book, so rich and yet still so unknown, which

c) can't overcome economic systems

Plontisky, 95 (Arkady, Professor of English and Theory and Cultural Studies, Purdue
University, On Bataille: Critical Essays, State University of New York Press, pg. 111, Tashma)
Indeed, as Bataille's discourse shows with extraordinary power, it is the economic insistence on consumption at the
multiple and often interacting levels of theoretical economieseconomic, political, conceptualthat is most problematic . The
theoretical problem is a metaphoric loss of the economy of loss and thus of the general economy . It
is not that consumption and the pleasure of consumption are not important or theoretically and otherwise pleasurable. To
reverse the configuration absolutely and to privilege expenditure unconditionally would be just as
untenable . As I indicated earlier, Bataille's heavy insistence on waste and expenditure must be seen as
problematic in this respect, and is "saved" only by the enormous labyrinthine complexity of Bataille's inscription of these
concepts.

The alternative causes decision paralysis dooms humanity

Shaviro, 90 (Steven, PhD from Yale, professor at Wayne State University, former professor at
University of Washington, Passion and Excess, The Florida State University Press, pg. 37-39,
Tashma)
Yet if the intensity of Batailles involvement is clear, the details of its expression are not. Does the
passage which I have just quoted function as description or as exhortation? On what sort of threshold are we standing, and what is
the nature of the "void which lies beyond it? At such a point, what kind of " alternative is at stake? What further
disaster could be entailed by a retreat? And is it even possible to retreat? Since the foundations have already crumbled, is not a fall
inevitable? But what sort of courage is available in such a situation? What kind of "conquest" is it which is no longer played out
according to the dialectic of master and slave, with the risk of heroic death as ultimate stake? What experience of time is realized by
this leap into die void? The only way to answer such questions may be to alter the way in which they are posed. For the peculiar
effect of Batailles

work is that it offers no satisfying conclusions , no points of repose. Not even the
satisfaction of absolute destruction . His obsessive meditations concerna.nd participate ina catastrophe all the more
obscure and unsettling in that it refuses apocalyptic closure. "Ce qui seul demeure est lagitation circulairequi ne spuise pas dans
l`extase et recommence ai partir delle [What alone remains is circular agitationwhich does not exhaust itself in ecstasy and begins
again from it]" (OC, 5:130; IE, lll). The "yertiginous fall takes place in a bottomless void, and consequently never hits bottom. The
privileged act of sacrifice serves no end, leads

to no appeasement . And despite Batailles frequent sexual stereotyping

experience " does not culminate in any display of phallic mastery .
Pure loss, expenditure without recompense , it issues only in an absurd compulsion to repeat,
to approach the threshold of disaster again and again . The summit" of ecstasy cannot be extricated
and invocations of virility, his " interior

from a concomitant "decline": "De mme que le S0mKIlCt nest a la fin que linacecssible, le dclin des labord est Pinvitable [Iust

exuberant
violence of Batailles texts is matched only by the pointless dissipation of the energies they invoke.

as the summit is finally only the inaccessible, so the decline, from the very first, is inevitable] (OC, 6:57). The