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Answers to Kritikal-scream K-Tralmafador-Holy Communities

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1. The status quo is paranoiac even in its attempt at counter culture. S tatus quo methodology confines experimentation to only processes with set goals in mind, destroying these movements from the beginning. Movements become self-defeating. We must instead abandon these final goals and embrace free thought. (Deleuze and Guattari '72 [Anti-Oedipus, 370-1]) The codes and their signifiers , the axiomatic and their structures, the imaginary figures that come to occupy them as well as the purely symbolic relationships that gauge them, constitute properly aesthetic molar formations that are characterized by goals, schools, and periods. They relate these aesthetic formations to greater social aggregates, finding in them a field of application, and everywhere enslave ar t to a great castrating machine of sovereignty. There is a pole of reactionary investment for art as well, a somber paranoiac-Oedipal-narcissistic organization. A foul use of painting, centering around the dirty little secret, even in abstract painting where the axiomatic does without figures: a style of painting whose secret essence is scatological , an oedipalizing painting, even when it has broken with the Holy Trinity as the Oedipal image, a neurotic or neuroticizing painting that makes the process into a goal or an arrest, an interruption, or a continuation in the void. This style of painting flourishes today, under the usurped name of modern painting-a poisonous flower- and brought one of Lawrence's heroes to speak much like Henry Miller of the need to have done with pouring out one's merciful and pitiful guts, these "flows of corrugated iron.":" The productive breaks projected onto the enormous unproductive cleavage of castration  , the flows that have become flows of "corrugated iro n," the openings blocked on all sides. And perhaps this, as we have seen, is Where we find the commodity value of art and literature: a paranoiac form of expression that no longer even needs to "signify" its reactionary libidinal investments, since these investments function on the contrary as its signifier; an Oedipal form of content that no longer even needs to represent Oedipus , since the "structure" suffices. But on the other, the schizorevolutionary, pole, the value of art is no longer measured except in terms of the decoded and de- territorialized flows that it causes to circulate beneath a signifier reduced to silence, beneath the conditions of identity of the parameters, across a structure reduced to impotence; a writing wi th pneumatic, electronic, or gaseous indifferent supports, and that appears all the more difficult and intellectual to intellectuals as it is accessible to the infirm, the illiterate, and the schizos, embracing all that flows and counterflows, the gushings of mercy and pity knowing nothing of meanings and aims (the A rtaud experiment, the Burroughs experiment). It is here that art accedes to its authentic modernity, which simply consists in liberating what was present in art from its beginnings, but was hidden underneath aims an d objects, even if aesthetic, and underneath recodings or axiomatics: the pure process that fulfills itself, and that never ceases to reach fulfillment as it proceeds-art as "experimentation.' 2. Add cards specific to their K. 2nd, 1st Off  The Counterplan 1. The USFG should travel to Trafalmador. Even the politics of the aff is an instance of the full attracting the full as a symptom of dissuasion, gutting solvency and turning case by obscuring the revolutionary and progressive potential of our past. Instead of affirming an anti-text, we should affirm those actions that do not exist. Baudrillard ’92 [Jean, Rise Of The Void Towards The Periphery, [online] LH] Dissuasion is a rather particular form of action: it is that which causes something not to happen. This governs the period we presently live in, which is not so much interested in producing events as it is to ensure they do not take place, and all this performed with an air or under the auspices of an historical event. Or, it could be that certain things took place instead of others which did not. Dissuasion also touches on war, history, the real, the passions. It allows for (!) strange events which do not i n any way advance history, instead play it backwards by wedding an inverse, unintelligible curvature to our sense of history (i.e., that one cannot have any sense of history unless one falls in line with what is being forwarded as historical sense); one that no longer discloses any negative power (progressive, critical, revolutionary), consequently their only negativity would be the fact that they would not ha ve happened. Disturbing. The realm of dissuasion extends over the past as well. It can obliviate all certainty of facts and testimonies. It is able to destabilize memory just as well as it can destabilize all foresight. This is a diabolic power intent on burning passage to the real act o f the event or, if it is allowed to take place, if, in fact, it di d take place, would destroy its credibility. Maybe this curvatur e implying that things have neither meaning nor a linear end is nothing but a depression in the meterological sense of the term ? the void we feel may not be due to defection in meaning or memor y but would perhaps be retraceable to a strange attraction that had come upon us from somewhere. Could it be that this lifelessness or catatonia that we are
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1. The status quo is paranoiac even in its attempt at counter culture. Status quo methodology confinesexperimentation to only processes with set goals in mind, destroying these movements from thebeginning. Movements become self-defeating. We must instead abandon these final goals and embracefree thought.

(Deleuze and Guattari '72 [Anti-Oedipus, 370-1])

The codes and their signifiers , the axiomatic and their structures, the imaginary figures that come tooccupy them as well as the purely symbolic relationships that gauge them, constitute properly aesthetic

molar formations that are characterized by goals, schools, and periods. They relate these aestheticformations to greater social aggregates, finding in them a field of application, and everywhere enslave artto a great castrating machine of sovereignty. There is a pole of reactionary investment for art as well, a

somber paranoiac-Oedipal-narcissistic organization. A foul use of painting, centering around the dirty little secret,even in abstract painting where the axiomatic does without figures: a style of painting whose secret essence isscatological, an oedipalizing painting, even when it has broken with the Holy Trinity as the Oedipal image, a neurotic

or neuroticizing painting that makes the process into a goal or an arrest, an interruption, or a continuationin the void. This style of painting flourishes today, under the usurped name of modern painting-a poisonous flower-and brought one of Lawrence's heroes to speak much like Henry Miller of the need to have done with pouring out one's

merciful and pitiful guts, these "flows of corrugated iron.":" The productive breaks projected onto the enormous unproductive cleavage of castration , the flows that have become flows of "corrugated iron," the openings

blocked on all sides. And perhaps this, as we have seen, is Where we find the commodity value of art andliterature: a paranoiac form of expression that no longer even needs to "signify" its reactionary libidinal

investments, since these investments function on the contrary as its signifier; an Oedipal form of contentthat no longer even needs to represent Oedipus, since the "structure" suffices. But on the other, theschizorevolutionary, pole, the value of art is no longer measured except in terms of the decoded and de-territorialized flows that it causes to circulate beneath a signifier reduced to silence, beneath theconditions of identity of the parameters, across a structure reduced to impotence; a writing with pneumatic,electronic, or gaseous indifferent supports, and that appears all the more difficult and intellectual to intellectuals as itis accessible to the infirm, the illiterate, and the schizos, embracing all that flows and counterflows, the gushings of mercyand pity knowing nothing of meanings and aims (the Artaud experiment, the Burroughs experiment). It is here that artaccedes to its authentic modernity, which simply consists in liberating what was present in art from itsbeginnings, but was hidden underneath aims and objects, even if aesthetic, and underneath recodings oraxiomatics: the pure process that fulfills itself, and that never ceases to reach fulfillment as it proceeds-artas "experimentation.'

2. Add cards specific to their K.

2nd, 1st Off  – The Counterplan

1. The USFG should travel to Trafalmador. Even the politics of the aff is an instance of the full attracting the full as asymptom of dissuasion, gutting solvency and turning case by obscuring the revolutionary and progressive potential of ourpast. Instead of affirming an anti-text, we should affirm those actions that do not exist.

Baudrillard ’92 [Jean, Rise Of The Void Towards The Periphery, [online] LH] 

Dissuasion is a rather particular form of action: it is that which causes something not to happen. This governs the periodwe presently live in, which is not so much interested in producing events as it is to ensure they do not take place, and all

this performed with an air or under the auspices of an historical event. Or, it could be that certain things took placeinstead of others which did not. Dissuasion also touches on war, history, the real, the passions. It allows for (!) strangeevents which do not in any way advance history, instead play it backwards by wedding an inverse, unintelligible curvatureto our sense of history (i.e., that one cannot have any sense of history unless one falls in line with what is beingforwarded as historical sense); one that no longer discloses any negative power (progressive, critical, revolutionary),

consequently their only negativity would be the fact that they would not have happened. Disturbing. The realm of dissuasion extends over the past as well. It can obliviate all certainty of facts and testimonies. It is able to destabilizememory just as well as it can destabilize all foresight. This is a diabolic power intent on burning passage to the real act of

the event or, if it is allowed to take place, if, in fact, it did take place, would destroy its credibility. Maybe this curvatureimplying that things have neither meaning nor a linear end is nothing but a depression in the meterological sense of the

term ? the void we feel may not be due to defection in meaning or memory but would perhaps be retraceable to astrange attraction that had come upon us from somewhere. Could it be that this lifelessness or catatonia that we are

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living is to be interpreted inversely, not in the sense of a void abandoned by the ebb of past events, but as a void owingits effect to aspiration, to the suctional pull of a future event, to the proximity of a factual mass which, throughanticipation draws to itself all the oxygen that we breathe, brutally depressurizing thereby the social, political, cultural andmental sphere? Pataphysic hypothesis, that of anti-gravity, of anti-density, of a science of imaginary solutions that arisebeyond physics and metaphysics. In Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, Jarry had already described the profile of this strange attraction that stems from the reversal of the principles of physics: "Science today founds itself on theprinciple of induction: most people have most often seen this phenomenon preceded or followed by that one, andconclude that that's the way it will be forever ... But instead of declaring the law of falling bodies towards a centre whywouldn't one prefer that of the rise of the void towards the periphery, the void conceived of as unity of non-density, a

hypothesis much less arbitrary than the one that opts for a concrete unity of positive density". An inverse attraction of thevoid, instead of the full attracting the full. This is perhaps what would give our events this particular colour, this taste or,rather, this vapidity. At the moment of their arrival they have already become vanishing events with little meaning, if any,

as they already come to align themselves with the void. In opposition to the old physics of meaning: a new gravitation,the true and only attraction of the void ? undoubtedly the most fundamental natural law. This would certainly explain theanomalies, including the mental universe and the field of "psychology". Our forms of action therefore, instead of being

bearers of positive pulsion, are much more conveyors of expulsion and repulsion, i.e., the centrifugal mobility of particlesthat seek their liberation from density ? to rejoin what? A mysterious periphery of space, an anti-gravity. Would this bethe way to escape the heavy form, the gravity of "desire" conceived of as positive attraction, i.e., through a much more

subtle eccentricity of seduction which would be, to take up the old cosmogonies that never lacked in charm, elusivebeauty, out-of-body, much lighter molecules that only know of one way out, that of the void (like poetic language where

every particle finds its resolution in anagrammatic resonance). As for the new events, one could say that they plough avoid in front of themselves as they go along, wherein they also get swallowed up. It seems that everything jostles ahead

in a haste to be forgotten. These events leave no place for interpretation, if not for all interpretations simultaneously, andwhere they skirt all the intent of meaning and the heavy/weighty attraction of a continued history as they enter on thelight orbit of a discontinued history. They arrive faster than their shadow ? unforeseen for the most part ? however, donot have any consequences. Meteoric events that bank on the same chaotic inconsequence as do the formation of clouds.With respect to the events of Eastern Europe therefore, one gets the impression of a long and sustained negativeaccumulation accompanied by a sudden resolution as the obvious and instantaneous conclusion of operations that arebeyond our grasp. Under these conditions and with respect to events that are nevertheless significant, there is a strangetaste left in the mouth of a deja- arrive, a retrospective development where one cannot see anything worthwhile withrespect to its future. Our only astonishment is not to have foreseen it; our only regret ? the inability to drawconsequences from it. The screen of history changes with the same excessive and untimely rhythm as do naturalphenomena. One gets the impression that events are hurled headlong in isolation, all on their own as they abruptly andunforeseen get diverted to the point of their flight, i.e., to the peripheral void of the media. Just like physicists are no

longer in the possession of the particle except for a vision of its trajectory on a screen, neither are we any longer inpossession of pulsating events, except for a cardiogram, nor of representation or memory, except for an (unimaginative)encephalogram, nor of desire or jouissance, except for psychodrama and a cathodic vision. This is somewhat likeprocreation in vitro: the embryo of a real event is transported into the artificial uterus of information where many orphan,fatherless and motherless, foetuses are delivered. The event is entitled to the same procreative practices as birth, to the

same euthanasic practices as death. We are unquestionably indebted to this physically pleasing sensation: the sentimentthat collective or individual events are plunged into a hole of memory. This debility, no doubt, is due to a movement inreverse, to this parabolic curve interjected into the space of history. For the past cannot represent itself, it cannot be

reflected upon unless it prods us in another sense, i.e., with respect to some sort of future or other. Retrospective issolidary with prospective that allows for something to be depicted as surpassed, as stolen and therefore as having takenplace. If, by way of a strange revolution, we set out on the course of inverted meaning and get involuted in thisdimension of the past, we will no longer be able to represent ourselves. The extension of memory would curve or bendand make a black hole out of every event. We live through this subjectively in the sudden loss of our memories, through

the rupture in the continuity of names, faces and familiar forms. With respect to this kind of catastrophe of memory, weare not talking about natural forgetting nor of unconscious repression. Focus is on an inversion of this field of temporal

gravitation which no longer allows signs of the past to be bearers of a specific mass, of a nuclear mass necessary for theirretention, nor of a mirror of the present in which they could be reflected. The holes in memory are a bit like what hasbecome of the ozone layer, where our protective screen breaks down or disintegrates. Or maybe they are simply not bigenough to be engulfed in a way that it could start swirling to unfetter the light particles from the heavy ones, enlargingand deepening the black hole from where dead bodies would release or free up their aerial substance as in the case of Dante and Giordano Bruno. It is in an absolute void that the absolute event takes place. The void therefore can only berelative in view of the fact that death has remained virtual.

2. This imaginary strategy runs counter to the reactive form of politics that over-prescription of reality creates. We are the

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only ones who can develop a form of active and creative politics.

Baudrillard ‘96 [Jean, The Perfect Crime, p. 102-104]

It is not a question of defending radical thought. Every idea one defends is presumed guilty, and every idea that cannotdefend itself deserves to disappear. On the other hand, one must fight all charges of irresponsibility, nihilism or despair.Radical thought is never depressive. On this point, there is total misunderstanding. Ideological and moralistic critique,

obsessed with meaning and content, obsessed with the political finality of discourse, never takes into account writing, theact of writing, the poetic, ironic, allusive force language, of the juggling with meaning. It does not see that the resolution

of meaning is to be found there —in the form of itself, the formal materiality of expression. Meaning, for its part, is alwaysunhappy. Analysis is, by definition, unhappy, since it is born of critical disillusionment. But language, or its part, is happy,even when definition of a radical thinking: a happy form of an intelligence without hope. Critics, being unhappy by nature,

always choose ideas as their battleground. They do not see that if discourse always tends to produce meaning, languageand writing, for their part, always create illusion —they are the living illusion of meaning, the resolution of the infelicity of meaning by the felicity of language. And this is surely the only political —or transpolitical —act that can be accomplished bythe person who writes. As for ideas, everyone has them. More than they need. What counts is the poetic singularity of the analysis. That alone can justify writing, not the wretched critical objectivity of ideas. There never will be any resolvingthe contradictoriness of ideas, except in the energy and felicity of language. ‘I do not paint sadness and loneliness,’ saysHopper. ‘What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.’ At any rate, better a despairing analysis infelicitous language than an optimistic analysis in an infelicitous language that is maddeningly tedious and demoralizinglyplatitudiuous, as is most often the case. The absolute tediousness secreted by that idealistic, voluntaristic thought is thesecret sign of its despair —as regards both the world and its own discourse. That is where true depressive thought is to be

found, among those who speak only of the transcending and transforming of the world, when they are incapable of transfiguring their own language. Radical thought is a stranger to all resolving of the world in the direction of an objectivereality and its deciphering, It does not decipher. It anagrammatizes, it disperses concepts and ideas and, by its reversiblesequencing, takes account both of meaning and of the fundamental illusoriness of meaning. Language takes account of the very illusion of language as definitive stratagem and, through it, of the illusion of the world as infinite trap, asseduction of the mind, as spiriting away of all our mental faculties. While it is a vehicle of meaning, it is at the same time

a superconductor of illusion and non-meaning. Language is merely the involuntary accomplice of communication —by itsvery form it appeals to the spiritual and material imagination of sounds and rhythm, to the dispersal of meaning in theevent of language. This passion for artifice, for illusion, is the passion for undoing that too-beauteous constellation of 

meaning. And for letting the imposture of the world show through, which is its enigmatic function, and the mystificationof the world, which is its secret. While at the same time letting its own imposture show through —the impostor, not the

composteur [composing stick] of meaning. This passion has the upper hand in the free and witty use of language, in the

witty play of writing. Where that artifice is not taken into account, not only is its charm lost, but the meaning itself cannotbe resolved.

2nd Off, Line of Flight

1. We start with the alternative: [Partner screams here]

We offer our scream as the only thing we can do in the face of a mutilated world as well as a world only

seen as mutilated. Our visceral rejection of the world-as-is is the starting point for resistance from our ownsouls not from passive ivory towers. Change only comes from radical refusal and negativity, not rational

discourse. This is our scream of rage, of anger, of opposition to the horrors of our world!

Holloway '02 [John, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, London, Pluto Press]

In the beginning is the scream. We scream. When we write or when we read, it is easy to forget that the beginningis not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, ascream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection isopposition, negativity, struggle. It is from rage that thought is born, not from the pose of reason, not fromthe reasoned-sitting-back-and-reflecting-on-the-mysteries-of-existence that is the conventional image of 

 „the thinker‟. We start from negation, from dissonance. The dissonance can take many shapes. An inarticulatemumble of discontent, tears of frustration, a scream of rage, a confident roar. An unease, a confusion, a longing, a criticavibration. Our dissonance comes from our experience, but that experience varies. Sometimes it is the direct

experience of exploitation in the factory, or of oppression in the home, of stress in the office, of hunger

and poverty, or of state violence or discrimination. Sometimes it is the less direct experience through television,newspapers or books that moves us to rage. Millions of children live on the streets of the world. In some cities, street

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children are systematically murdered as the only way of enforcing respect for private property. In 1998 theassets of the 358 richest people were worth more than the total annual income of 45 per cent of the world’s people (over2.5 billion). The gap between rich and poor is growing, not just between countries but within countries. The stock marketrises every time there is an increase in unemployment. Students are imprisoned for struggling for free education whilethose who are actively responsible for the misery of millions are heaped with honours and given titles of distinction:General, Secretary of Defence, President. The list goes on and on. It is impossible to read a newspaper withoutfeeling rage, without feeling pain. You can think of your own examples. Our anger changes with each day, asoutrage piles upon outrage. Dimly perhaps, we feel that these things that anger us are not isolated phenomena, thatthere is a connection between them, that they are all part of a world that is flawed, a world that is wrong in

some fundamental way. We see more and more people begging on the street while the stock marketsbreak new records and company directors‟ salaries rise to ever dizzier heights, and we feel that the wrongsof the world are not chance injustices but part of a system that is profoundly wrong. Even Hollywood films

(surprisingly, perhaps) almost always start from the portrayal of a fundamentally unjust world —before going on toreassure us (less surprisingly) that justice for the individual can be won through individual effort. Our anger is directednot just against particular happenings but against a more general wrongness, a feeling that the world is

askew, that the world is in some way untrue. When we experience something particularly horrific, we hold up ourhands in horror and say ‘that cannot be! it cannot be true!’ We know that it is true, but feel that it is the truth of anuntrue world.2 What would a true world look like? We may have a vague idea: it would be a world of justice,

a world in which people could relate to each other as people and not as things, a world in which peoplewould shape their own lives. But we do not need to have a picture of what a true world would be like in

order to feel that there is something radically wrong with the world that exists. Feeling that the world iswrong does not necessarily mean that we have a picture of a utopia to put its place. Nor does it necessarily

mean a romantic, some-day-my-prince-will-come idea that, although things are wrong now, one day we shall come toa true world, a promised land, a happy ending. We need no promise of a happy ending to justify our rejection of a world we feel to be wrong. That is our starting point: rejection of a world that we feel to be wrong,negation of a world we feel to be negative. This is what we must cling to.

2. And our scream isn‟t part of any bigger picture; rather it is just our affirmation of rejection. Social

analysis and critical theory only serve to exclude or dilute or rage into mediated discourse. This gutssolvency and turns case because our screams begin to be consumed into the system we fight to oppose.Before all else we have to reserve our ability to rage and scream in the midst of academia. Instead of 

opting for (studying on the oppression of others) we should focus on our own massive frustration with thesystem. 

Holloway '02 [John, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today, London, Pluto Press]

 ‘Cling to’, indeed, for there is so much to stifle our negativity, to smother our scream. Our anger is constantlyfired by experience, but any attempt to express that anger is met by a wall of absorbent cotton wool. We aremet with so many arguments that seem quite reasonable. There are so many ways of  bouncing our screamback against us, of looking at us and asking why we scream. It is because of our age, our socialbackground, or just some psychological maladjustment that we are so negative? Are we hungry, did wesleep badly or is it just pre-menstrual tension? Do we not understand the complexity of the world, the practicaldifficulties of implementing radical change? Do we not know that it is unscientific to scream? And so they urge us (andwe feel the need) to study society, and to study social and political theory. And a strange thing happens. Themore we study society, the more our negativity is dissipated or sidelined as being irrelevant. There is noroom for the scream in academic discourse. More than that: academic study provides us with a languageand a way of thinking that makes it very difficult for us to express our scream. The scream, if it appears at

all, appears as something to be explained, not as something to be articulated. The scream, from being thesubject of our questions about society, becomes the object of analysis. Why is it that we scream? Or rather,since we are now social scientists, why is it that they scream? How do we explain social revolt, social discontent? Thescream is systematically disqualified by dissolving it into its context. It is because of infantile experiences thatthey scream, because of their modernist conception of the subject, because of their unhealthy diet, because of the

weakening of family structures: all of these explanations are backed up by statistically supported research. The scream isnot entirely denied, but it is robbed of all validity. By being torn from ‘us’ and projected on to a ‘they’, the scream isexcluded from the scientific method. When we become social scientists, we learn that the way to understand is to pursue

objectivity, to put our own feelings on one side. It is not so much what we learn as how we learn that seems tosmother our scream. It is a whole structure of thought that disarms us. And yet none of the things which

made us so angry to start off with have disappeared. We have learnt, perhaps, how they fit together as parts of asystem of social domination, but somehow our negativity has been erased from the picture. The horrors of the world

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continue. That is why it is necessary to do what is considered scientifically taboo: to scream like a child, tolift the scream from all its structural explanations, to say „We don‟t care what the psychiatrist says, wedon‟t care if our subjectivity is a social construct: this is our scream, this is our pain, these are our tears.We will not let our rage be diluted into reality: it is reality rather that must yield to our scream. Call us

childish or adolescent if you like, but this is our starting point: we scream. 

3rd Off, Fasching

1. The sacred order permeates all thought, even in our attempt at counterculture. In the course of 

revolution into a new culture or thought we prop up an ideology that becomes all consuming in ourthought. We begin to do anything to achieve this ideal. It becomes a “final solution” that seeks toexterminate all Others that threaten the final goal. What is produced is an exacerbated status quo, guttingand turning solvency.

Fasching 1993 [Darrell J., Professor of Religious Studies at University of South Florida, The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitz

and Hiroshima, JCOOK, Pp. 73]

Even our most desperate attempts at revolution find themselves integrated into the sacred order. Theprofanation of the sacred, Ellul argued, is itself inherent in the dialectic of the sacred. Like the ancientBabylonian new year festival, every revolution that seeks to profane the sacred order is only one more rituallypermitted plunge into disorder, an orgiastic regression to chaos whose purpose is returning to the primal

sources of life and power in order to recreate sacred order a sacral renewal of the cosmos. Whereas thesacred defines the sociocosmic order within which human action can occur (i.e., sacred space), the profane manifestsitself as "the sacred time inserted into the sacred order as a period of legitimate disorder, of transgression included inorder," 51 whose real purpose is renewing sacred order. Thus Ellul observed that every revolution since 1789 has

only succeeded in reinstituting the nation-state.52 The names may change with the revolution but thesacral order of society remains essentially unchanged. The success of every revolution requires that the"revolutionary" give way to the "manager" and the reestablishment of an even more rigid sacralized

society.

2. Single critiques fail by propping their thought above the rest. This creates a contradiction that replicatesall harms; a sort of social dogma. We must embrace all social critiques and not focus on one narrative toaffirm.

Fasching 1993 [Darrell J., Professor of Religious Studies at University of South Florida, The Ethical Challenge of Auschwitzand Hiroshima, JCOOK, Pp. 193-194]

 A universal human rights ethic expressed in a single story would be a contradiction in terms. That is, suchan anthropological ethic would be transformed by its very universality into the cosmological ethic of asacred society an ethic that has no place for the stranger. The fear of cultural and religious imperialism is alegitimate one. The answer lies in the development of a complex, pluralistic, global social ecology in whichdiverse holy communities, by virtue of their critical separateness, keep an ethic of human rights centeredin self-transcendence. By virtue of a focus on welcoming the stranger or the outcast, the center of eachholy community lies beyond itself in the person and community of the other. Holy communities (Jewish,

Christian and Buddhist, for example) play a special role in this ecology because their alternate myths and ritualtraditions enable them to sustain their sense of separateness (although clearly they have not always been faithfuto this call to holiness). This is much more difficult for secular proponents of human rights. The philosopher and secularhumanist, lacking communities structured around an alternate myth and ritual, are much more vulnerable to integrationinto the stories and rituals of the larger political- social-cosmic order. On the other hand, secular philosophers and

humanists, by virtue of their surrender to the questions and by virtue of being aliens or strangers who stand outside allholy communities, are in a position to perform a prophetic function, forcing holy communities to face their owninconsistencies and self-contradictions honestly. Paul Tillich was right to see critical secular reason (e.g., critical

philosophical humanism), radical mystical consciousness (e.g., Buddhism), and prophetic consciousness (e.g.,Judaism) as parallel and dialectically related phenomenon. All three are expressions of the holy (i.e., modes

of openness to the infinite) that break with the sacramental imagination which sacralizes the finite.

3. Thus the alternative text: We must reject the sacred order of the Aff and affirm instead an order of Holy

Communities. The creation of Holy Communities which are open to the Other and alienated from the self isthe only way to avoid the dehumanization that is the root of all discrimination and violence. Vote

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affirmative to create the possibility of transcendence of the sacred order of the majority.

FASCHING AND DECHANT '01 [Darrell J Fasching and Dell Dechant Senior Dudes of stuff @ University of South Florida,Comparative Religion Ethics: A Narrative Approach, 2001]

The experience of being open to the infinite separates or alienates the human self from the way things are.This experience of the holy is what separated Socrates from the society around him. It made him astranger within his own society, setting him apart from it and giving him an alternate perspective and analternate understanding of the good rooted in a divine compulsion that disclosed itself as the Unseen

Measure, which touched his soul, providing an infinite measure for his humanity. To be human, to be aperson of virtue, was to reflect this Unseen Measure and prod one's community into living up to its highestrequirements. Such experiences of the holy create not only alienated individuals but holy communities. In ancient

Greece these communities were, for a brief time, the philosophical schools.  A holy community is made upof members who share the experience of the wholly other dimension of normative meaning that sets themapart from the larger community around them, even as it binds them to each other. These communities

function as alternate communities or countercultures within the larger society. Their task is not to eliminatesacred order but to modify it so as to ensure that society is not only the cosmos writ small (reflecting sacred order) butalso the human writ large (reflecting the Unseen Measure). Without the presence of holy communities constantly

questioning and acting as gadflies in relation to the larger society, society no longer remains open to theinfinite, justice disappears, and life becomes "dehumanized." The sacred order of every society must be

questioned in the name of human justice, a justice that respects the indefinable mystery of being human, namely, thatthe human is in the image of the unseen measure and exceeds all measure. Therefore, any society that treats those who

are different as less than human is guilty of placing a measure on what cannot and must not be measured. To define thehumanity of someone and confine him/her to that definition is to dehumanize him/her. Today we call it"stereotyping" another person. Putting it in contemporary terms, we would say that the crime of all racism,all sexism, and all religious and ethnic prejudice is to define those who are different, strange or alien to usas "by nature" less than human, and force them to occupy some diminished place within the sacred cosmicorder of things. To do this is to replace the Unseen Measure with our own biased measure for defining thehuman while pretending that we are not prejudiced because not we, but (the sacred order of) "nature," created us all aswe are. Therefore, women come to be viewed as "by nature" inferior to men, or blacks "by nature" inferior to whites, andso on. It is well known that the philosophical schools that derived from Socrates through Plato and Aristotle did not vieweveryone in terms of the Unseen Measure, most notably women and slaves were not accorded their full humanity. Andyet, to the degree that it can be shown (as it certainly can) that all classes of people are capable of openness tothe infinite (of doubt and questioning), the implications of the Socratic experience of the Unseen Measure

contribute to the development of the modern notion of human dignity. Such a conclusion is inevitablebecause the Socratic compulsion to question knows no bounds (which is why we say it is an experience of the infinite) and eventually leads to a questioning of the limitations in vision of even the most venerable(sacred) questioners. In this sense, Socrates' accusers were right. His questions, when pursued to their logicalconclusion, will subvert every sacred order. Because ethics is rooted in a form of religious experience, namely "the

holy" (the experience of the infinite or wholly other), which separates us from the world around us, ethics is rooted inthe individual experience of alienation. To be alienated is to experience oneself as a stranger in one's ownworld, much as Socrates did. That is exactly what has to happen in order for the criticism of the sacred

order of society to occur. As long as persons experience themselves as at home in their world they will notquestion its customs. 

4th, Framework 

1. All of our off-case fits under your framework because we turn case on each.


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