Their case

That’s kinda wack

 Overview
Give me 30 speaks. Three warrants.

1. I’m maving, so a) if you were giving me above 15 speaks, double it to 30 to account for my partner,
and b) it’s harder to mav so adjust speaks up to compensate.

2. Speaks are subjective, only straight 30s are universally objective

3. Reject a system that’s biased towards white male paradigms of what makes good speakers
 Case
I affirm “Resolved: put the public back in public forum.”
Contention 1 is the problem
I DISOBEY YOUR RULES – I CANNOT NEGOTIATE, AS AUTHORITY ON ANY LEVEL IS
PEACE THAT JUSTIFIES WAR
ANARCHIST LIBRARY 09 (5-10-2009, "Endless War: Anarchist antimilitarism and the “war on
terrorism”", doa 4-24-2020,
https://web.archive.org/web/20190808111254/https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-
endless-war-anarchist-antimilitarism-and-the-war-on-terrorism) NY

The illusion that capitalism and the democratic state could offer abundance and freedom for all has
proven to be the most blatant lie, and unrest is a worldwide reality. But the potential for revolution is
perpetually recuperated into ethnic and religious conflicts worldwide and into gang war and racial
hatred here. And all of this plays into the hands of those who rule us allowing them to advance their war against us — now through the so-called “war on terrorism” with its new laws and “security” measures — criminalizing more and more expressions of dissent,

Thus, real refusal of the current war effort must take the form of [be] insubordination, not of
resistance and revolt.

petition. Disobedience on all fronts, the refusal to negotiate in any way with the state, the refusal in
the full sense to fight their war. But the refusal of their war must also be the refusal of their peace,
because the two are one. Thus, the refusal of their war must also be the active struggle to destroy the
state and capital everywhere. When Peace Is War We are all aware that the United States is gearing up for an attack on Iraq. The formalities are still being worked out, but at this point, US military action seems almost certain. But

this war will not be without resistance. There have already been numerous protests against the war, and
the attack on the recruiting station in San Jose certainly seems to be a response to the call for war as
well. When the actual fighting begins, more resistance can be expected. But resistance to this war cannot simply rely on methods and concepts from the past. An “anti-war” movement that is not also an attempt to completely overturn the ruling order no longer makes any sense.

Therefore it is necessary for anarchists to make a serious analysis of the situation that is arising.
Anarchists have already put out a number of calls for non-compliance and insubordination toward the
war effort, and these are certainly worthy endeavors. But to understand what this would mean requires
careful examination of the situation. A ‘zine of “proletarian grumbling” out of London called The Whinger points out a few things we should consider in developing our resistance: Even if there was a general strike in the west
it would probably be too late to stop an attack. They no longer need the labour of the bulk of us in the “developed” world directly in their war effort. In the west they no longer need mass conscript armies or mass forced militarization of labour in specific industrial war production to
directly sustain the war effort. Most of the weapons are now produced beforehand under capitalist “peace-time” in dispersed commercial arms production which is not labour intensive. Much of the “fighting” by US or British or European forces can be done by privileged protected elite
professional technicians and officer-bureaucrats, leaving some shooting and mopping up and patrolling on the ground for regular soldiers. This sort of changes the role of regular soldiers from an attacking and war-fighting role to an occupying and heavy policing role. There are a number
of significant points that can be drawn from these observations. While a number of opponents of the war are seeking to play on the possibility of another Vietnam as a way of inspiring wider opposition, this is, in fact, very unlikely. For all practical intents and purposes, the US has been
carrying on a war against Iraq since 1991, with no use of ground troops since the end of Operation Desert Storm and only the occasional bombardment, relying instead on the UN-sanctioned embargo to impoverish and kill Iraqis. Unlike the war in Vietnam, this operation has not had any
visible effects on the daily lives of the American populace. The current effort to heat up this war is simply intended to get rid of a former ally who has become a liability to increase US control in the region. On this level, it has far more in common with the “humanitarian bombing” of
Yugoslavia than with the Vietnam war. And we can assume that this war will be fought in a similar fashion: intensive aerial bombing with high tech weapons causing a fair amount of “collateral damage” consisting of Iraqi civilian dead and wounded, but few if any American casualties,
followed by an occupation by an armed, military “peace-keeping” force. In fact, the Bush administration has been talking of setting up an interim American-run military government ruled by a US military officer, similar to that which was set up in Japan following World War II. The point is

Contrary to Orwell’s thinking,

that this specific war is likely to be very short. It is the military role of “peace-keeping” that will continue. In fact this war (like every war) is the product of capital’s peace-time policies on every level.

“war is peace” is not a totalitarian “big lie”. It is, in fact, an accurate description of the current
functioning of the ruling order we seek to build resistance to this war
, though it may be more precise to say, “Peace is war”. This is what we need to keep in mind as .

The problem is that the majority of us are not directly in

My grumbling proletarian friend goes on to say: “...the slogan ‘sabotage the war economy’ is actually strictly speaking mistaken.

a war economy at the moment, most of us are still very much in a ‘peace-time’ economy and that is
what we need to sabotage and socially subvert.” For the ruling order, peace-time is simply the time to
calmly prepare for the wars to come. With the current military technologies and methods, most of us in
the west will rarely experience any significant change in our daily routine due to a war such as the one
proposed. any effective resistance to this war must also be a
We will continue to experience capital’s “peace”, that fine civilized peace that so bores, yet pacifies, us. Therefore,

subversive attack against the peace of the ruling order . So it is not so much in terms of any immediate effect on the current war effort as on the level of the necessity to destroy current
social order in order to make wars of this sort impossible that the practice of non-compliance and insubordination becomes significant. But “peace is war” not only because the ruling class uses peace-time to prepare for future wars, but more significantly because their “peace” is itself
carried on as a war. Who are the peacekeepers in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Afghanistan? They are armed military personnel. And even on the streets of the cities here in the west, peace is maintained by armed people in uniform, often with military training. The police also constitute an arm of

Consider as well the obvious militarization

the state, and those who live in poor neighborhoods often know what it is like to be occupied and under the threat of death or capture if they make the wrong move.

of the police involved in crowd control during demonstrations and protests . Peacekeeping is really nothing other than war-making. Thus, it can be said that

There can be no
the entire world lives in a state of permanent war, the unending violence through which our rulers maintain their power. And so no call for peace makes sense any more. It would simply be a call to maintain the order that sustains war.
negotiation, no coming to terms with this civilized world. It requires war to suppress the desperation of those it has excluded that is breaking through its doors as everything falls apart.

All we can oppose to the bombs over Iraq, if we want our opposition to be more than symbolic, a
mere appeasing of our consciences, is class attack. We must liberate the smoldering hatred and hurl it against those who have stolen our lives and the lives of all the exploited of the earth.

Identifying the common enemy — the owners, the rulers, the technological and productive network, the
totality of a civilization based on domination and exploitation — is the primary form of solidarity
toward the bombed and the refugees. Attacking this enemy is the only real tool we have for
transforming the wars imposed by the social order — in which we end up killing each other in our real
enemy’s interests — into a fight for liberation from exploitation and domination, from every form of
rule .

REJECT THEIR BUREAUCRATIC THEORY WHICH HAS NO PLACE FOR DEBATE ITSELF
MARINUS OSSEWAARDE 10 of the University of Twente (2010, "The Tragic Turn in the Re-
Imagination of Publics", doa 4-24-2020, https://www2.grenfell.mun.ca/animus/Articles/Volume
%2014/Vol_14_Complete.pdf) NY

tragedy subsequently transforms this unbearable absurdity of life into an

For Nietzsche, the Heraclitean vision sees the truth about reality while

aesthetic public, without masking the horror itself . The Socratic dialectic and its Apollonian publics intellectually involve people who are incited to search for the good in the realm of ideas, in spite of
the phenomenological flux and absurdity of things. Dionysian publics do not try to check the becoming of reality, but instead, incite the participants to live it as art, by making them become part of the story itself. In Socratic dialogues, disputing friends critically question all established

The urge to control drives bureaucracies, which,

orders in their search for the rational or good order. Both the Dionysian and the Apollonian publics can disturb an established order and institutions.

in order to effectively fix one type of reality, have to destroy all forms of publics that have the
potential to upset order. In modern societies, bureaucracies impose an enlightenment model of rational
order devoid of mythical content and uncertain self-knowledge, upon a reality that is thereby made fully
intelligible, controllable and correctible. The Nietzsche considers the European enlightenment as the modern successor to the Socratic myth-annihilation, which characterizes the Apollonian publics.8

enlightenment movement’s confidence in the capacity of reason and its belief in the rational order of
reality are Socratic in origin. However, Nietzsche suggests that the enlightenment goes steps further than Socrates in its annihilation of myth. Although Socrates ridicules and destroys the legendary tales of the tragedians, his dialogues are
premised upon the myth of the Delphic oracle (which revealed that there was no one wiser than Socrates). And, although Socrates maintains that reason rather than myth is the foundation of European culture, reason, the nous, is itself a mythical entity (Nietzsche 2000: 72): the ‘voice of
reason’ is the ‘divine voice’ of Socrates’ daimonion, which makes itself be heard in the dialogues (Nietzsche 2000: 75). In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, inspired by Nietzsche (c.f., Wellmer 1991: 3), maintain that the enlightenment movement
postulates a vision of reason that is devoid of mythical content. Enlightenment reason, in its origin, seeks to make people think for themselves and to liberate them from their fears and superstitions, but, in the modernization process, it becomes an instrument that serves bureaucratic

enlightenment reason
objectives, such as enforcing laws effectively, fixing a machine, or making a business run more efficiently.9 Horkheimer and Adorno (2007: 57) emphasize that Nietzsche, like Hegel before him, had grasped this pathology of

that turns into a bureaucratic instrument . The reduction of the Socratic nous to an instrumental reason
has far-reached political and cultural implications. Enlightenment reason provides the static concepts,
mummified categories, classifications and catalogues that are required to construct bureaucratic limits
and boundaries, which in turn rationally order reality Dialogical or democratic practices have no (Honneth 2007: 70).

place in such a technical organization of reality. Bureaucracies, whose function is to implement the
enlightenment or any other theoretical [models] model of reality, have no need for the Socratic
publics and consider dialogues and the need for intellectual justification rather troublesome and
disorderly The (potential) participants of Socratic dialogues are turned into bureaucratic
(Gouldner 1973: 76; Gardiner 2004: 35).

subjects, like workers, consumers and clients, that is, into ‘spectators without influence’, whose lives are
governed by the enlightened power elites and civil servants The identity of bureaucratic subjects (Honneth 2007: 33).

is determined by typically large and powerful organizations, such as government agencies and
enterprises the enlightenment
(Mills 1956: 355). The Enlightenment movement is, in Nietzsche’s words (2000: 85), ‘the most illustrious opponent of the tragic world-view.’ Horkheimer and Adorno stress that

movement, or perhaps more exactly, some kind of process deriving from it, eventually comes to
substitute the plebeian entertainment of mass culture industries for the tragic art of the aesthetic
publics. According to Nietzsche, bureaucratic subjects who live in a disenchanted world in which myths
are annihilated by Apollonian reason cannot bear the horrific and absurd truth about their own
existence. 10 The subjects of the culture industries no longer have the opportunity to participate in enchanting tragic myths that cultivate powerful passions and the Dionysian will to live, which characterize Nietzsche’s ‘good European’. The entertainment provided by

Being thoroughly
manufactured images and commodity forms, like music productions, films, television programmes and glossy magazines, ensures that the absurdity of life and the Dionysian abyss are forgotten (Horkheimer and Adorno 2007: 159).11
rationalized, such subjects cannot develop the mythical imagination or a certain sensitivity that would
have allowed them to ‘live the tragedy’ in and through the aesthetic publics. In a bureaucratic culture, subjects cannot experience, feel or live the tragic

Bureaucracies expect and demand passive

fate of the Dionysian hero, because, as Nietzsche (2000: 45) insists, shielded by bureaucracies, they are not ‘equipped for the most delicate and intense suffering.’

obedience from their subjects, which makes cultural movement nearly impossible. Such passive spectators or so-called ‘consumers of art’
(Shrum 1991: 349; 371), are, Horkheimer and Adorno (2007: 155; 166) point out, deluded en masse, governed to take refuge in comfortable, boring and mindless bureaucratic forms of entertainment. Culture industries provide ready-made experiences to a passive public that is willing to

The experience
buy them to fill the emptiness of a disenchanted world and appease the cowardly fear of living in the flux, which they explicitly experience in temporary relationships and the continuous flow of new products and changed consumption patterns.

of the flux can also be more implicit or unconscious, resulting in a sort of malaise, feeling of insecurity or
restlessness. However, the escape from life into a manufactured dream-world of cultural productions does not really quench the thirst, as the Socratic dialogue and the Dionysian festival do, which, therefore, allows the culture industry to carry on with its provision
of manufactured dream-worlds, to fill an emptiness that never decreases.

THE POWER IS EVERYWHERE, WE MUST REFUSE TO DOMINATE BY UNMASKING THE

MASTERS WITHIN US
WILLIAM PAWLETT 14 of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (5-2014,
"Society at War with Itself", doa 4-24-2020, https://baudrillardstudies.ubishops.ca/society-at-war-with-
itself/) NY

It all depends on the ground we choose to fight on … most often … we choose to fight on ground where
we are beaten before we begin (Baudrillard 2001: 119). This paper examines Baudrillard’s assertion, made in later works including Impossible Exchange (2001), The Intelligence of Evil (2005) and Pyres of Autumn (2006), that

individuals, society and indeed the global system, are internally and irreconcilably divided, that
modernity is ‘at odds with itself’ (Baudrillard 2006: 1). In his view dissent, rejection and insurrection emerge from within, not from external challenges such as alternative ideologies or competing worldviews, but from within bodies,

much of the violence, hatred and discomfort visible around the globe can be
within borders, inside programmes. For Baudrillard

understood as [is] a latent but fundamental ‘silent insurrection’ against the global integrating system
and its many pressures, demands and humiliations (2001: 106). This is an endogenic or intra-genic rejection, it emanates from within the system, from within individuals, even from within
language, electronic systems and bodily cells, erupting as abreaction, metastasis and sudden reversal.1 For Baudrillard then, despite the many simulations of external threat and enmity – radical Islam currently being the best example – the most dangerous threat lies within: ‘society faces
a far harder test than any external threat: that of its own absence, its loss of reality’ (2006: 1). The global order, conventionally labelled “capitalist”, is neutralising its values and structures, its ideologies disappear, its principles are sacrificed. Even the sense of “reality” produced by the
abstract sign and by simulation models begin to disappear (2005: 67-73; 2009: 10-15). The goal is ‘integral reality’, a limitless operational project geared towards the total transcription of the world into virtuality: ‘everything is realised and technically materialised without reference to any
principle or final purpose’ (2005: 18). Yet there is an internal war or “backlash” taking place between integralist violence which seeks ultimate control by eliminating all otherness, and duality. Duality, for Baudrillard, is “indestructible” and is manifest as the inevitable or destined re-

It is the global violence

emergence of otherness: of death, Evil, ambivalence, the ghosts of symbolic exchange, the accursed share within the system. The integrating system then suffers a ‘dissent working away at it from inside.

immanent in the world-system itself which, from within, sets the purest form of symbolic challenge
against it’ (2005: 22). This is a war or conflict that does not end, the outcome of which cannot be predicted or programmed. It is a war that is quite different from the disappearance of war into simulated non-events, such as occurred with the Gulf wars (Baudrillard 1995).

the deterrence of world wars, and of nuclear wars, does not result in peace, but in a viral
Indeed, Baudrillard suggests,

proliferation of conflicts, a fractalisation of war and conflict into everyday, local, and ubiquitous terror
examine Baudrillard’s position on internal rejection through two closely related themes:
(1993b: 27). This paper will

complicity and duality. Complicity, and the closely related term collusion, are themselves dual in Baudrillard’s sense. That is, complicity or collusion express an internal division or ‘duality’ which is not a simple opposition of terms. As is so often the

the dominance of the abstract sign and of

case, Baudrillard’s position builds on his much earlier studies: Requiem For the Media (orig. 1972, in Baudrillard 1981: 164-184) had already argued that

simulation models meant that any critique of the system made through the channels of semiotic
abstraction were automatically re-absorbed into the system . Any meaningful challenge must invent its own, alternative medium – such as the silk-screen printings, hand-painted
notices and graffiti of May 1968 – or it will lapse into an ineffectual complicity with the system it seeks to challenge (Baudrillard 1981: 176). In his later work, Baudrillard’s emphasis on duality and complicity is extended much further, taking on global, anthropological and even
cosmological dimensions, and increasingly complicity and collusion are seen as dual, as encompassing both acceptance and a subtle defiance. This paper examines the dual nature of complicity and collusion. It considers the influence of La Boetie’s notorious Essay on Voluntary Servitude
on Baudrillard, seeking to draw out what is distinctive in Baudrillard’s position. The second section turns to the notion of duality, examining Good and Evil and Baudrillard’s assertion that attempts to eliminate duality merely revive or re-active it. Complicity implies a complexity of
relations, and, specifically, the condition of being an accomplice to those in power. To be an accomplice is to assist in the committing of a crime. If the crime is murder, the term accomplice implies one who plans, reflects, calculates – but does not strike the lethal blow. The crime which is
of particular interest to Baudrillard is, of course, the perfect crime: the elimination of otherness, of ambivalence, of duality, even of “reality” and of the abstract representational sign which enables a sense of “reality” (Baudrillard 1996). The global, integral, carnivalising and cannibalising
system, which might loosely still be called capitalist, is at war against radical otherness or duality; yet, for Baudrillard, as duality lies at its heart, locked within its foundations, it is indestructible and emerges through attempts to eliminate it. If the system has been largely successful at

Complicity is a particularly slippery term. In the 1980s

eliminating external threats, it finds itself in an even worse situation: it is at war with itself. II. Complicity.

Baudrillard’s thought, mistakenly assumed to be “Postmodernist”, was argued to be complicit with

capitalism, largely because it questioned the ability of dominant strands of Marxism and feminism to
significantly challenge the capitalist system (Callinicos 1989; Norris 1992). At the same time, Baudrillard was alleging that the work of supposedly radical theorists such as Deleuze and Guattari (1984 orig. 1972)
and Lyotard (1993 orig. 1974) was, with their emphasis on desire as productive and liberatory force, complicit with the mechanisms of advanced consumer capitalism (Baudrillard 1987: 17-20). So which branch of contemporary theory is most complicit with capitalism? Liberals, humanists
and environmentalists who see their clothes stolen by mainstream politicians? Marxists and Communists who by refusing to update their thinking provide a slow moving target for right-wing snipers? Post- Modernists and Post-Structuralists who attack Enlightenment thought but refuse

The list could go on

to speak of the human subject and so have “thrown the baby out with the bath water”? Network and complexity theory which flattens all phenomena and experience to a position on a grid, producing a very complex simplification?

but it is a question that cannot be answered because all critical theories are complicit with the system
they critique. They fight on a terrain already demarcated by their opponents, a terrain on which they
are beaten before they begin, one where the most compelling argument can always be dismissed as
doom-mongering or irresponsible intellectualism. This includes Baudrillard’s own critical thinking, as he
readily acknowledges even more damaging to the project of critique, in a hegemonic or
(Baudrillard 2009a: 39). Further, and

integral order the system solicits critique and it criticises itself, so displacing and making redundant the
laborious attempts at academic critique. The latter continue, even proliferate, but with decreasing impact. So, what does Baudrillard mean by complicity with the global order? Baudrillard’s concern is primarily with
complicity at the level of the form of the (capitalist) system, not at the level of belief, consent or allegiance to particular contents of capitalist life (consumer products, plurality of ‘lifestyles’, a degree of ‘tolerance’ etc.). Complicity is often seen, by critics of capitalism, as acceptance of

. By complicity or collusion Baudrillard means, on the one

consumerism and its myriad choices and lifestyles, but this is a reductive level of analysis from Baudrillard’s perspective

hand, the very widespread willingness to surrender or give up beliefs, passions and “symbolic defences”
and on the other – as the dual form – an equally widespread ability to find a space of defiance
(2010: 24),

through the play of complicity, collusion, hyperconformity and indifference (1983: 41-8). That is, while many of us (in the relatively affluent West) share in
the profanating, denigrating and “carnivalising” of all values, embracing indifference, shrugging “whatever”, we do so with very little commitment to the system, rejoicing inwardly when it suffers reversals: we operate in a dual mode. While such attitudes of indifference may seem to
accept that there is no meaningful alternative to capitalism: an attitude that has been called ‘capitalist nihilism’ (Davis in Milbank and Zizek, 2009) and ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2008), Baudrillard’s notions of “integral reality”, duality and complicity may have significant advantages over
those approaches. Unlike thinkers who remain anchored to critical thinking defined by determinate negation, Baudrillard’s approach emphasises ambivalence, reversal and both personal and collective modes of rejection more subtle than those envisioned by the increasingly exhausted

The critique of consumer capitalism – the consumption of junk food, junk entertainment and
mechanisms of critique.

junk information – is now integral to the system; the critique of finance capitalism – banker’s bonuses,
corporate tax avoidance – is integral to the system, yet it fails to bring about meaningful or determinate
social transformation. provide the system with a fleeting sense of “reality” – real issues,
Indeed, such critiques may do no more than

real problems to deal with – around which the system can reproduce its simulacra, perhaps to reassure
us that “something is being done”, “measures are being put into place” etc. “Reality” cannot be dialectically negated by critical concepts when both ‘reality’
and the critical concept disappear together, their fates clearly tied to each other (Baudrillard 2009b: 10-12). There is a sense then in which the production of critique is in complicity with the system, the unravel-able proliferation and excess of critical accounts of the system has the effect
of protecting the system. Complicity consists in a sharing of the denigration of all values, all institutions, all ideas, all beliefs: so long as we believe in nothing – at least not passionately – then the system has us, at least superficially. For example, in recent decades we have seen the
denigration of religious faiths – or their reduction to ‘cultural identity’ and ‘world heritage’ objects; the denigration of public services and welfare provision accompanied by their marketisation; the denigration of the poor, the young, immigrants and the unemployed. Yet this is not only
the denigration of the powerless or disenfranchised, there is also the widespread denigration of those seen as powerful: politicians, corporations, celebrities. For Baudrillard, it is quite inadequate to focus only on the power of global neo-liberal policies such as marketisation in these

Global power has deliberately sacrificed its

processes of denigration. This is where Baudrillard’s position departs decisively from anti-globalists and from neo-Communists such as Negri, Zizek, and Badiou.

values and ideologies, it presents no position, it takes no stand, it undermines even the illusion that
“free markets” function and has made “capital” virtual ; become orbital it is removed from a terrestrial, geo-political or subjective space. These are protective measures enabling power to

the fragility and the vulnerability to reversal of the “powerful”

become (almost) hegemonic (Baudrillard 2009a: 33-56; 2010: 35-40). Baudrillard often emphasises and the

So what is this global power? Where is it? The answer, of course, is that it
distinction between powerful and powerless is radically questioned in his work.

is everywhere and it is in everyone . We have not liberated ourselves from slavery, but, Baudrillard
contends, internalised the masters: ‘[e]verthing changes with the emancipation of the slave and the
internalisation of the master by the emancipated slave’ We tyrannise ourselves, for example by (2009a: 33).

demanding that we maximise our opportunities , fulfil our potential. This is a deeper level of slavery –
and complicity – than any previous historical system could inflict (Baudrillard 1975; 2009a: 33). Yet duality always re-emerges, Baudrillard insists: indifference is dual,

Carnivalisation and cannibalisation are themselves dual: the global system absorbs all otherness
complicity is dual.

in a ‘forced conversion to modernity’ (2010: 5), reproducing otherness within the carnival of marketable “difference”, yet cannibalisation emerges as a reversion and derailing of this process. The world adopts Western
models: economic, cultural, religious – or it appears to. Hidden within this complicity with the West, there is, Baudrillard suggests, a deeper sense of derision and rejection. The allegiance to Western models is superficial; it is a form of mimicry or hyperconformity that involves a ritual-like
exorcism of the hegemonic system. Further, such mimicry reveals the superficiality of Western cultural and economic models: this is not only a superficial acceptance, but an acceptance of superficiality. Western values are already parodic, and, in being accepted, they are subject to
further parody as they circulate around the globe (2010: 4-11). The West has deregulated and devalued itself and demands that the rest of the world follows: “It is everything by which a human being retains some value in his own eyes that we (the West) are deliberately sacrificing … [o]ur

Western desacrilisation amounts

truth is always to be sought in unveiling, de-sublimation, reductive analysis …[n]othing is true if it is not desacralised, objectivised, shorn of its aura, dragged on to the stage” (Baudrillard 2010: 23).

to a powerful challenge to the rest of the world, a potlatch: desacralise in return or perish! But who has
the power? Who is the victor? There isn’t one, according to Baudrillard. Of the global order, Baudrillard
writes: ‘We are its hostages – victims and accomplices at one and the same time – immersed in the
same global monopoly of the networks. A monopoly which, moreover – and this is the supreme ruse of
hegemony – no one holds any longer’ There is no Master, no sovereign because all the structures (2010: 40).

and dictates of power have been internalised, this is the complicity we all share with global order , yet it is a dual

The
complicity: an over-eager acceptance goes hand-in-hand with a deep and growing rejection. Baudrillard’s discussions of power, servitude and complicity make frequent reference to Estienne La Boetie’s essay on voluntary servitude, completed around 1554.

fundamental political question for La Boetie is: ‘how can it happen that a vast number of individuals, of
towns, cities and nations can allow one man to tyrannise them, a man who has no power except the
power they themselves give him, who could do them no harm were they not willing to suffer harm’ (La Boetie

‘it is the people who enslave themselves’

1988: 38). It seems people do not want to be free, do not want to wield power or determine their own fates: (La Boetie 1988: 41). People in general are the accomplices of
the powerful and the tyrannical, some profit directly through wealth, property, favour – ‘the little tyrants beneath the principal one’ (1988: 64), but many do not, why do they not rebel? Baudrillard takes up La Boetie’s emphasis on servitude being enforced and maintained from within,
rather than from without. Yet, there are also major divergences. La Boetie deplores the “common people” for accepting the narcotising pleasures of drinking, gambling and sexual promiscuity, while Baudrillard rejects such elitism and celebrates the masses abilities to strategically defy
those who would manipulate them through perverse but lethally effective practices such as silence, radical indifference, hyperconformity – dual modes of complicity and rejection (Baudrillard 1983: 1-61). Though La Boetie’s essay prefigures the development of the concept of hegemony,

Baudrillard, by contrast, examines

he never doubts that voluntary servitude is unnatural, a product of malign custom that is in contradiction with the true nature of human beings which is to enjoy a God-given freedom.

voluntary servitude as a strategy of the refusal of power, a refusal of the snares of self and identity, as
strategy of freedom from the tyranny of the will and the fiction of self-determination (Baudrillard 2001: 51-7). For Baudrillard the
“declination” or refusal of will disarms those who seek to exert power through influencing or guiding peoples’ choices and feelings towards particular ends. It also allows for a symbolic space, a space of vital distance or removal, a space in which to act, or even act-out (of) a character

modern
(Baudrillard 2001: 72-3). This is a space where radical otherness may be encountered, a sense of shared destiny which is a manifestation of the dual form at the level of individual existence (Baudrillard 2001: 79). It could certainly be argued that

subjects are confronted by a far more subtle and pervasive system of control than were the subjects
discussed in La Boetie’s analysis. In theorising the nature of modern controls Baudrillard develops
suggestive themes from La Boetie’s work. Speaking of slavery in the Assyrian empire, where, apparently,
kings would not appear in public, La Boetie argues, ‘ the fact that they did not know who their master
was, and hardly knew whether they had one at all, made them all the more willing to be slaves’ (1988: 60).

after the shift away from Fordist mass production it has become
Whatever its historical provenance, this strategy of power is, it seems, generalised in modernity; particularly

increasingly hard to detect who the masters actually are. While workers are persecuted by middle
managers, supervisors, team leaders, project co-ordinators who are the masters of this universe? Who
are the true beneficiaries? Rather than trying to identify a global neo-liberal elite, as do many
proponents of anti-capitalist theory, Baudrillard suggests that the situation we confront is so grave
because “we” (those in the West in relatively privileged positions) have usurped the position of masters;
we have become the slave masters of ourselves, tyrannising every detail of our own lives : trying to work harder, trying for

We are all tyrants: a billion tiny tyrants servicing a system

promotion or simply trying to avoid redundancy. We are all the accomplices of a trans-capitalist, trans-economic exploitation.

of elimination. But this is not to say that Baudrillard ignores power differentials altogether: ‘it is, indeed, those who submit themselves most mercilessly to their own decisions who fill the greater part of the authoritarian ranks, alleging sacrifice on their parts to

We all impose such violence on ourselves and on others as part of our daily routines,
impose even greater sacrifices on others’ (2001: 60-1).

hence Baudrillard’s injunction to refuse power: ‘Power itself must be abolished – and not solely
because of a refusal to be dominated, which is at the heart of all traditional struggles – but also, just
as violently, in the refusal to dominate ’ (2009a: 47).

TO ESCAPE THE GAME, I TAKE MY CRITICISM OUTSIDE THE RULES THAT DIRECT
CHALLENGES INWARD
MAXWELL SCHNURER 03 of CEDA (2003, "Gaming as Control: Will to Power, The Prison of Debate
and a Game Called Potlatch", doa 4-24-2020, https://debate.uvm.edu/CADForumGaming2003.pdf) NY

Snider’s new gaming advocacy is a laundry list of positive changes in the policy debate community . Snider positions

we must ask how

himself and his theoretical work in the arms of debaters using critical theory in debate arguments, Urban Debate Leagues, debate across the curriculum, and international debate. These are all wonderful changes in debate, but

much impact gaming has had on their development? The answer is that Snider has been central in most of these struggles, and gaming has been touted as part of these struggles, but

gaming itself has not created significant change . But let us not mistake Snider’s involvement with the value of his theory in leveraging change. Let us focus our attention explicitly on the importance of

The big question is: does gaming contribute to these revolutionary format changes? I will
gaming in these changes.

answer no. Rather, I would like to position gaming as a controlling force. Gaming is a challenging,
innovative, and adaptable theory but, fundamentally, a theory of control. Gaming works as an answer to
the question of what debates do. But while we can answer that we play a game (albeit a serious and
complex one), we also say something about the players and why we play the game. Gaming became a
tool for control – convincing debaters that energies of criticism should be reinvested into the debate
community . The very parameters of Snider’s goals, to encourage more participants in debate, belie a
rigged question. We are intended to succeed through gaming to bring a few other voices into debate.
But like the plus-one activist struggle that simply seeks representation, this approach is doomed to
failure. Gaming in fact operates to metastasize the crisis-
We should not be surprised that the traditional agents of social control have a brilliant new theory that encourages limited change.

politics of modern policy debate, covering over the rotting corpse with a sweet perfume. For example, gaming minimizes and

Gaming encourages such argument innovation not for the world

cripples the increasing tension over activist-oriented arguments in debate rounds.

community but for the debate community, teaching students to passionately plead for change to an
empty room. Debate as a
How can a theory understand the desire of debaters to crack open the debate methods and introduce something “outside” of debate as Snider points to in his most recent gaming essay? The answer is that it can’t.
model can only create more debate, and so long as our goal for debate is more debate, then we will
never emerge to challenge larger forces of control . approaching debate from the Worse than being satisfied with shouting at walls,

perspective of games encourages a god-complex that teaches debaters that saying something poignant
in a debate round translates into something larger in the world games . Christopher Douglas, a professor of English at Furman University, explores how

teach us to adore the replay: “This is the experience structured into the gaming process—the multiple
tries at the same space-time moment . Like Superman after Lois Lane dies, we can in a sense turn back the clock and replay the challenge, to a better end” (2002, p. 7). What kind of academic activity encourages students to

Douglas positions this impulse alongside the Sisyphean burden of

fantasize about making change without considering for the slightest bit how to bring that change about?

trying to make the world into a structured, controlled, sterile environment. Sisyphus and the reset button on a videogame console share a common ancestor

humans desperately attempting to construct

with the debate model that has thirty debate teams advocating different policies in separate rooms at exactly the same time. All of these examples showcase

meaning out of a confusing world, where the human will to power forces the world to fit a structure . Douglas
reminds us that games help to structure an oft-confusing world, imbuing the person imagining with god-like powers (McGuire, 1980; Nietzsche 1966): Games therefore do not threaten film’s status so much as they threaten religion, because they perform the same existentially soothing
task as religion. They proffer a world of meaning, in which we not only have a task to perform, but a world that is made with us in mind. And indeed, the game world is made with us, or at least our avatar in mind. (Douglas, 2002, p. 9) Gaming draws forth a natural impulse of humans – to
make the world in our image. But debate and videogames contain the same fantastic lure that encourages people to pore their energies into debate. Fiat and utopian flights of fancy are both seductions of our will to power, encouraging us to commit to becoming better debaters. This
process of self-important distraction has its model in the theories of the hyper-real posited by Jean Baudrillard. He argues that modern economies are geared to sell humans mass produced products, but whose advertising attempts to convince people that they have an authentic
experience with the product. Economic structures make products that are more-than real – hyperreal in order to sell their products. The hyperreal creates games and fantasylands that are far richer and pleasurable than real life. One example of the hyperreal is Epcott center at
Disneyland, which reduces foreign cultures to their most base natures – ensuring that everything is uniform, bland, and suitably “ethnic.” While one never need worry about eating food that is “too strange” in the Epcott lands, other negatives emerge in the world of the hyperreal.
Humans who desire order and structure to our worlds often come to prefer the hyperreal to the real. The hyperreal has a world with all of the attractions of our own, but with none of the depressing realities of our own world. The hyperreal doesn’t have credit card bills or racism. The

Describing Snider’s gaming as a dangerous

hyperreal is filled with beautiful people (who all want to have sex with you). The hyperreal is a hot seduction pulling our vision and hearing away form our own lives.

distraction that pulls us away from our communities and our lives is a bit simplistic. Rather, gaming
greases the wheels for powers of control to remain in control. Douglas articulates some of the specific
ways games solidify structures of power. In board games or computer games, however, players actually
do start out in relative equality whereas in real life, so many characteristic of
(although there are some chance elements as well, depending on the game),

one’s life are already determined before birth, including social and economic standing, political
freedom, skin color, gender, etc. What games accomplish is the instilling of the ideology of equality, which postulates that we are born equal and that differences emerge later on; the primary different to be explained away in this
way is that of economic disparity, and games help explain that difference as the result of, in America, hard work and effort vs. laziness. Thus gaming helps inculcate the ideology that covers over the fact that, with the exception of the information technology bubble, most of those who are
wealthy in the United States were born that way. Beyond this narrow ideological function, the game helps create subjects that accept the inevitability of rules as things that are given and must be “played” within— or else there is no game. This process is not total or ever complete, as the
current gaming discourse complaining about the rules shows; here, player critique a games rules in view of a conventionalized notion of how “reality” works, or, less often, how a game’s playability is compromised by rules that are too “realistic (Douglas, 2002, p. 24).

Viewing debate as a game may have the opposite effect that Snider desires. Gaming teaches
participants to play by the rules and even when challenging the game, to do that within the game’s
structures. Debaters who are moved by poetry are encouraged to bring that poetry back to the debate
realm – not to become poets. There are certainly debate-activists who bring their debate skills to bear
on the political community. Most
These debaters seamlessly slide between academic hyperbole in the First Affirmative Constructive and talking to homeless folks at a Food Not Bombs meal. But these folks are few and far between.

who hear the call to conscience turn their backs on the call and justify their (in) actions by valorizing
debate. 3 Let me be clear that the desire of individuals to make the world is not the enemy. It is a positive drive that encourages debaters to fiat worlds into existence or hypothesizes that the world would be good if George Bush were before the International Criminal Court

This drive to create a better world is the will to power.

on charges of crimes against humanity. The big question is, what we do with that will to power? Recognizing that there are many complex

Debate can be an
problems in the world that require smart articulate people to solve them, we can appreciate the potential value of will to power (McGuire). In the debate context, will to power becomes reified in a hyper-real role-playing exercise.

amazing experience where students learn about complex ideas and then take those ideas into their own
lives and communities. Debate can be a method for learning that people have their own voices in a
world drowning with mediated/televised slime-balls. Debate [and] can encourage intellectual growth
and cause epiphanies. Debate encourages solidarity and teaches people to struggle together. Debate is
primed to be a blast furnace for the will to power and take it to the furthest level of revolutionary
potential. The only limitation is our own. If we frame debate to limit the revolutionary potential of the
participants, then we do a disservice not only to our students, but also to the world. Nietzschean will to
power is a drive for self-overcoming, transforming fuel for personal and collective change.4 Will to
power exists in all of us as a lunging to escape our current world and create another beyond the moral
structure and hierarchy of this world. This desire to create a better world is admirable and is at the root
of social change. My criticism of gaming is that this energy is sublimated into a fantasy world rather
than being brought to the larger world. But perhaps there is a kind of game that might elicit something of what I desire . . . from within debate.
Contention B is the method
WHAT’S THE ROLE OF THE BALLOT? RULES, SHMULES
JOHN SCOGGIN 15 of Premier Debate (9-10-2015, "In Defense of Inclusion", doa 4-23-2020,
https://www.premierdebate.com/theory/in-defense-of-inclusion-by-john-scoggin-and-bob-overing/) NY

III. Changing the Rules In Round. One thought is that rejecting truth-testing is the wrong solution. Instead, we should create a better topic-selection process or an NSDA-approved topic change when the resolution is particularly bad.

Good role of the ballot arguments are

These solutions, however, are not exclusive of a rejection of truth-testing. An offensive topic might be reason to reform the selection process and to stop debating it immediately.

the best solution because they pinpoint exactly why a debater finds the resolution inadequate. They
highlight the problems of the proposed topic of discussion, and outline reasons why a different
approach is preferable. debate rounds are an excellent location for
While Branse believes these examples of in-round rule-making are problematic, we think

discussing what debate should be. The first reason is the failure of consensus. Because there are a wide
variety of supported methods to go about debating, we should be cautious about paradigmatic
exclusion. there is significant disagreement that our theories must
While we don’t defend the relativist conclusion that all styles of debate are equally valuable,

account for. the internalization of valuable principles.

Truth-testing denies a number of ways to debate that many find valuable. The second reason is Even people who do not think kritiks are the

NDT champion Elijah Smith (2013) identified hateful arguments

right way to debate have taken important steps like removing gendered language from their positions.

and comments “you expect to hear at a Klan rally” as commonplace in LD rounds and the community (para. 2).

the much-maligned “you must prove why oppression is bad”

We’d like to think those instances are at least reduced by the argumentation he’s encouraged. For instance,

argument now sees little play in high-level circuit rounds Roles of the ballot and . Truth-testing forecloses this kind of learning from the opposition.

theory interpretations are examples of how in-round argumentation creates new rules of
engagement. We welcome these strategies, and debaters should be prepared to justify their proposed rules against procedural challenges. The arguments we have made thus far are objections to truth-testing as a top-down worldview used to exclude from the
get-go, not in-round means of redress against certain practices. There is a major difference between a topicality argument in a high school debate round and a prominent debate coach and camp director’s glib dismissal of non-topical argument as follows: [Y]ou can talk about whatever
you want, but if it doesn’t support or deny the resolution, then the judge shouldn’t vote on it (Nebel 2015, 1.2, para. 4) Branse is equally ideological: Within the debate, the judge is bound by the established rules. If the rules are failing their function, that can be a reason to change the
rules outside of the round. However, in round acts are out of the judge’s jurisdiction (2, para. 12) We take issue with debate theorists’ attempts to define away arguments that they don’t like. At one point, Jason Baldwin (2009) actually defended truth-testing for its openness, praising the
values of the free market of ideas: That’s how the marketplace of ideas is supposed to work. But it is supposed to be a free marketplace where buyers (judges) examine whatever sellers (debaters) offer them with an open mind, not an exclusive marketplace where only the sellers of some
officially approved theories are welcome (p. 26) Unfortunately for the truth-tester, debate has changed, and it will change again. What was once a model that allowed all the arguments debaters wanted to make – a prioris, frameworks, and meta-ethics – is now outdated in the context of
discursive kritiks, performance, and alternative roles of the ballot. IV. Constitutivism, Authority, and the Nature of Debate Branse’s goal is to derive substantive rules for debate from the ‘constitutive features’ of debate itself and the roles of competitors and judges. We’ll quote him at
length here to get a full view of the argument: [P]ragmatic benefits are constrained by the rules of the activity….education should not be promoted at the expense of the rules since the rules are what define the activity. LD is only LD because of the rules governing it – if we changed the
activity to promoting practical values, then it would cease to be what it is (2, para. 7) Internal rules of an activity are absolute. From the perspective of the players, the authority of the rules are non-optional. (2, para. 12) The resolution, in fact, offers one of the only constitutive guidelines
for debate. Most tournament invitations put a sentence in the rules along the lines of, “we will be using [X Resolution].” Thus, discussion confined to the resolution is non-optional (3, para. 5) [T]he delineation of an “affirmative” and a “negative” establishes a compelling case for a truth
testing model…two debaters constrained by the rules of their assignment – to uphold or deny the truth of the resolution…[J]udging the quality of the debaters requires a reference to their roles. The better aff is the debater who is better at proving the resolution true. The better neg is the
debater who is better at denying the truth of the resolution. The ballot requests an answer to “who did a comparatively better job fulfilling their role”, and since debaters’ roles dictate a truth-testing model, the judge ought to adjudicate the round under a truth testing model of debate.
The judge does not have the jurisdiction to vote on education rather than truth testing (3, para. 7-8) Once a judge commits to a round in accordance with a set of rules…the rules are absolute and non-optional (4, para. 4) Similarly, Nebel uses contractual logic – appealing to the
tournament invitation as binding agreement – to justify truth-testing: “The “social contract” argument holds that accepting a tournament invitation constitutes implicit consent to debate the specified topic….given that some proposition must be debated in each round and that the
tournament has specified a resolution, no one can reasonably reject a principle that requires everyone to debate the announced resolution as worded. This appeals to Scanlon’s contractualism (1.1, para. 2) This approach is attractive because it seeks to start from principles we all seem to
agree on and some very simple definitions. The primary problem is that the starting point is very thin, but the end point includes very robust conclusions. The terms “affirmative” and “negative” are insufficient to produce universal rules for debate, and certainly do not imply truth-testing
(Section I, paragraph 3.) Branse does some legwork in footnoting several definitions of “affirm” and “negate,” but does little in the way of linguistic analysis. We won’t defend a particular definition but point out that there are many definitions that vary and do not all lend themselves to
truth-testing. On a ballot the words “speaker points” are as prominently displayed as the words “affirmative” or “negative,” but neither Branse nor Nebel attempt to make any constitutive inference from their existence. Further, to find the constitutive role of a thing, one needs to look at
what the thing actually is, rather than a few specific words on a ballot. Looking at debates now, we see that they rarely conform to the truth-testing model. It is simply absurd to observe an activity full of plans, counterplans, kritiks, non-topical performances, theory arguments, etc. and
claim that its ‘constitutive nature’ is to exclude these arguments. Not only that, but the truth-testing family has been heavily criticized in both the policy and LD communities (Hynes Jr., 1979; Lichtman & Rohrer, 1982; Mangus, 2008; Nelson, 2008; O’Donnell, 2003; O’Krent, 2014; Palmer,
2008; Rowland, 1981; Simon, 1984; Snider, 1994; Ulrich, 1983). The empirical evidence also points toward argumentative inclusion in three important ways. The first is argument trends. The popularity of kritiks, a prioris, meta-ethics, etc. confirm that at different times the community at
large has very different views of what constitutes not only a good argument but also a good mode of affirming or negating. The second is argument cycles. An alternate view would suggest that debate evolves and leaves bad arguments by the wayside. Nevertheless, we see lots of
arguments pop in and out of the meta-game, suggesting that we have not made a definitive verdict on the best way to debate. The third is judge deference. While people’s views on proper modes of debate shift, we retain a strong deference to a judge’s decision. Judges have different
views of debate; if there were some overarching principle that all judges should follow, we would expect tournament directors to enforce such a rule. In sum, there is no way to view debate as a whole and see truth-testing as the general principle underlying our practices. The existence of

Branse thinks “[t]he ballot requests an answer to ‘who did a comparatively

a judge and a ballot are also insufficient to produce universal rules for debate.

better job fulfilling their role .’” The absence of any sort of
While that may be a valid concern, it is dependent on what the judge views the roles of debaters to be.

instruction other than determining the ‘better debating’ or the ‘winner’ most naturally lends itself to a
presumption of openness. me counterplans (PICs, PCCs, topical CPs and
In fact, many practices very explicitly deviate from the constitutive roles Branse lays out. So

the like) may do more to prove the resolution than disprove it, yet are generally accepted negative
arguments. David Enoch’s “agency shmagency” argument. Enoch (2011)
Another type of objection to Branse’s view is an application of

summarizes in his paper “Shmagency revisited”: [E]ven if you find yourself engaging in a kind of an
activity…inescapably…and even if that activity is constitutively governed by some norm or…aim, this
does not suffice for you to have a reason to obey that norm or aim at that aim. Rather, what is also
needed is that you have a reason to engage in that activity…Even if you somehow find yourself playing
chess, and even if checkmating your opponent is a constitutive aim of playing chess, still you may not
have a reason to (try to) checkmate your opponent. You may lack such a reason if you lack a reason to
play chess. The analogy is clear enough: Even if you find yourself playing the agency game, and even if
agency has a constitutive aim, still you may not have a reason to be an agent (for instance, rather than a shmagent) (p. 5-6) The application to chess

Truth-testing may be the constitutive aim of doing debate, but it does not follow that our
helps us see the application to debate.

best reasons tell us to test the truth of the resolution. In fact, you may have no reasons to be a truth-
testing debater in the first place. If “affirmative” means “the one who proves the resolution true,”
we’ve demonstrated times when it’s better to be “shmaffirmative” than “affirmative.” one of Finally, we think

the most important (perhaps constitutive) features of debate is its unique capacity to change the
rules while playing within the rules Education-based arguments and non-topical arguments are just .

arguments – they’re pieces on the chess board to be manipulated by the players. Branse concedes that in APDA debate, the resolution is

there is no way to kick a

“contestable through a formal, in-round mechanism (3, para. 9). LD and policy debate also have this mechanism through theory arguments, kritiks, and alternative roles of the ballot. Branse is right that in soccer and chess,

ball or move a chess piece that would legitimately change the rules of the game. Debate is different.
While soccer and chess have incontrovertible empirical conditions for victory (checkmates, more goals
at fulltime), debate does not. In fact, discussing the win conditions is debating! Whenever a debater reads a case, they assume or justify certain win

debate about the rules does not create a “free-for-all” — it creates a

conditions and not others. This deals with Branse’s “self-defeatingness” objection because

debate The truth-testing judge does not get to pick and choose what makes a good debate; to do
(6, para. 1).

so is necessarily interventionist To be truly non-

. This demonstrates truth-testing is more arbitrary and subjective [2] than the education position Branse criticizes (4, para. 4; 5, para. 2, 5).

interventionist, we should accept them as permissible arguments until proven otherwise in round. Of course, not all
rules are up for debate. There is a distinction between rules like speech times (call these procedural rules) and rules like truth-testing (call these substantive rules). The former are not up for the debate in the sense that the tournament director could intervene if a debater refused to stop
talking. The latter are debate-able and have been for some time. No tournament director enforces their pet paradigm. Because the tournament director, not the judge, has ultimate authority, we liken her to the referee in soccer. On this view, the judge is not the referee tasked with

Tournaments are not subject to any form of higher authority and are
enforcing “the rules”; she should decide only on the basis of arguments presented in the debate.

not obligated to follow NSDA rules, TOC guidelines, or anything else to determine a winner. Something
is only a procedural rule if it is enforced by the tournament, and truth-testing has not and shouldn’t
be enforced in this manner. To our knowledge, no bid tournament director has ever imposed a truth-testing burden on all competitors. If anything is a binding contract, it is the judge paradigm. Judge philosophies or paradigms are
explicitly agreed to in writing because each judge establishes their own, and there is no coercion at play. Most tournaments mandate or strongly encourage written paradigms, have time to review them, and accept judge services instead of payment for hiring a judge. These norms

We have tested the constitutive and contractual arguments by

establish a clearer contractual agreement in favor of judge deferral than universal truth-testing.

considering how truth-testing is not a procedural rule like speech times. As such, it cannot accrue the
benefits of bindingness, authority, and non-arbitrariness. We can also test the argument in the opposite direction. There are some rules that seem even more “constitutive” of debate
than the resolution but are not examples of procedural rules. For instance, every judge and debate theorist would likely reject completely new arguments in the 2AR, but there is nothing within Branse’s constitutive rules (speech times, the resolution, the aff and neg) to justify the norm.
The no-new-arguments rule does not need to be written in a rulebook to have a lot of force.

YOUR RULES CAN’T CHANGE THEMSELVES, ONLY A GIFT OF SYMBOLS THAT TAKES
YOU HOSTAGE WILL REFLECT THE ABSURDITY OF THE SYSTEM AND CANNOT BE
ANSWERED OR NEGOTIATED
JEAN BAUDRILLARD 93 (1993, "Symbolic Exchange and Death", doa 4-24-2020,
file:///C:/Users/ndy15/Desktop/PLASTIC%20TOC/(Theory%20culture%20&%20society_%20Social
%20Theory)%20Jean%20Baudrillard%20-%20Symbolic%20Exchange%20and%20Death-Sage
%20Publications%20(1993).pdf) NY

We will not destroy the system by a direct,

That is why the only acts that accompany capital’s real domination are situated in the field of this radical indeterminacy and break with this dissuasive economic strategy.

dialectical revolution of the economic or political infrastructure. Everything produced by contradiction,

by the relation of forces, or by energy in general, will only feed back into the mechanism and give it
impetus We will never defeat it by following its own logic of energy, calculation,
, following a circular distortion similar to a Moebius strip.

reason and revolution, history and power, or some finality or counter-finality. violence at this level The worst

has no purchase We will never defeat the system on the plane of the real: the worst error
, and will only backfire against itself.

of all our revolutionary strategies is to believe that we will put an end to the system on the plane of the
real This is where they
: this is their imaginary, imposed on them by the system itself, living or surviving only by always leading those who attack the system to fight amongst each other on the terrain of reality, which is always the reality of the system.

throw all their energies, their imaginary violence, where an implacable logic constantly turns back into
the system . We have only to do it violence or counter-violence since it thrives on symbolic violence not in the degraded sense in which this formula has found fortune, as a violence ‘of signs’, from which the system draws strength, or with which it ‘masks’ its material

We must
violence: symbolic violence is deduced from a logic of the symbolic (which has nothing to do with the sign or with energy): reversal, the incessant reversibility of the counter-gift and, conversely, the seizing of power by the unilateral exercise of the gift.

therefore displace everything into the sphere of the symbolic, where challenge, reversal and
overbidding are the law, so that we can respond to death only by an equal or superior death. There is no question here of
real violence or force, the only question concerns the challenge and the logic of the symbolic. If domination comes from the system’s retention of the exclusivity of the gift without counter-gift the gift of work which can only be responded to by destruction or sacrifice, if not in
 therefore a spiral of surplus-domination; a gift of media and messages
consumption, which is only a spiral of the system of surplus-gratification without result,

to which, due to the monopoly of the code, nothing is allowed to retort ; the gift, everywhere and at
every instant, of the social, of the protection agency, security, gratification and the solicitation of the
social from which nothing is any longer permitted to escape then the only solution is to turn the
principle of its power back against the system itself: the impossibility of responding or retorting. To
defy the system with a gift to which it cannot respond save by its own collapse and death. Nothing,
not even the system, can avoid the symbolic obligation, and it is in this trap that the only chance of a
catastrophe for capital remains. The system turns on itself, as a scorpion does when encircled by the
challenge of death. So hostages are
For it is summoned to answer, if it is not to lose face, to what can only be death. The system must itself commit suicide in response to the multiplied challenge of death and suicide.

taken. On the symbolic or sacrificial plane, from which every moral consideration of the innocence of
the victims is ruled out, the hostage is the substitute, the alter-ego of the ‘terrorist’ the hostage’s death
for the terrorist’s. Hostage and terrorist may thereafter become confused in the same sacrificial act.
The stakes are death without any possibility of negotiation, and therefore return to an inevitable
overbidding. Of course, they attempt to deploy the whole system of negotiation, and the terrorists
themselves often enter into this exchange scenario in terms of this calculated equivalence (the hostages’ lives against some

It is a
ransom or liberation, or indeed for the prestige of the operation alone). From this perspective, taking hostages is not original at all, it simply creates an unforeseen and selective relation of forces which can be resolved either by traditional violence or by negotiation.

tactical action. There is something else at stake, however, as we dearly saw at The Hague over the
course of ten days of incredible negotiations: no-one knew what could be negotiated, nor could they
agree on terms, nor on the possible equivalences of the exchange. the ‘terrorists’ Or again, even if they were formulated,

demands’ amounted to a radical denial of negotiation . It is precisely here that everything is played out,
for with the impossibility of all negotiation we pass into the symbolic order, which is ignorant of this
type of calculation and exchange (the system itself lives solely by negotiation, even if this takes place in
the equilibrium of violence). The system can only respond to this irruption of the symbolic (the most serious thing to befall it, basically the only ‘revolution’) by the real, physical death of the terrorists. This, however, is its defeat, since their
death was their stake, so that by bringing about their deaths the system has merely impaled itself on its own violence without really responding to the challenge that was thrown to it. Because the system can easily compute every death, even war atrocities, but cannot compute the
death-challenge or symbolic death, since this death has no calculable equivalent, it opens up an inexpiable overbidding by other means than a death in exchange. Nothing corresponds to death except death. Which is precisely what happens in this case: the system itself is driven to suicide

The police
in return, which suicide is manifest in its disarray and defeat. However infinitesimal in terms of relations of forces it might be, the colossal apparatus of power is eliminated in this situation where (the very excess of its) derision is turned back against itself.

and the army, all the institutions and mobilised violence of power whether individually or massed
together, can do nothing against this lowly but symbolic death. For this death draws it onto a plane where there is no longer any response possible for it (hence the sudden
structural liquefaction of power in ’68, not because it was less strong, but because of the simple symbolic displacement operated by the students’ practices). The system can only die in exchange, defeat itself to lift the challenge. Its death at this instant is a symbolic response, but a death

The challenge has the efficiency of a murderer. Every society apart from ours knows that, or used
which wears it out.

to know it. Ours is in the process of rediscovering it. The routes of symbolic effectiveness are those of an alternative politics. Thus the dying ascetic challenges God ever to give him the equivalent of
this death. God does all he can to give him this equivalent ‘a hundred times over’, in the form of prestige, of spiritual power, indeed of global hegemony. But the ascetic’s secret dream is to attain such an extent of mortification that even God would be unable either to take up the
challenge, or to absorb the debt. He will then have triumphed over God, and become God himself. That is why the ascetic is always close to heresy and sacrilege, and as such condemned by the Church, whose function it is merely to preserve God from this symbolic face-to-face, to protect
Him from this mortal challenge where He is summoned to die, to sacrifice Himself in order to take up the challenge of the mortified ascetic. The Church will have had this role for all time, avoiding this type of catastrophic confrontation (catastrophic primarily for the Church) and

All these institutions, all these

substituting a rule-bound exchange of penitences and gratifications, the impressario of a system of equivalences between God and men. The same situation exists in our relation to the system of power.

social, economic, political and psychological mediations, are there so that no-one ever has the
opportunity to issue this symbolic challenge, this challenge to the death, the irreversible gift which, like
the absolute mortification of the ascetic, brings about a victory over all power, however powerful its
authority may be This is why taking hostages and
. It is no longer necessary that the possibility of this direct symbolic confrontation ever takes place. And this is the source of our profound boredom.

other similar acts rekindle some fascination: they [is] are at once an exorbitant mirror for the system of
its own repressive violence, and the model of a symbolic violence which is always forbidden it, the
only violence it cannot exert: its own death.
GIVING ME 30 SPEAKS IS DOUBLING SINCE I’M MAVING, AND AN UNREALISTIC
REFLECTION OF THE POINT SYSTEM THEIR MODEL RESTS ON. THEORY ABOUT DEBATE
STRUCTURE AS A PRECONDITION TO ENGAGEMENT HAS REGRESSED TO DEBATE
ABOUT NOTHING, AND THUS:
[WHAT ARE THE RULES? WHAT ARE THE
RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULES?]
THIS IS MY GIFT, AND YOU ARE HOSTAGE TO IT. I DEMAND A WIN AND 30, ACCEPT IF
YOU WILL
ADLAI STEVENSON 52 (1952, "A quote by Adlai E. Stevenson II", doa 4-24-2020,
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/287462-i-offer-my-opponents-a-bargain-if-they-will-stop) NY

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about
them.

MY METHOD EXPOSES YOUR CONTRADICTORY RULES

MARGARET RICHARDSON 06 OF WESTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY (2006, "Sociology of
Humor and a Critical Dramaturgy", doa 4-24-2020, https://sci-hub.tw/10.1525/si.2006.29.3.331) NY

If “meaning is the marrow of institutions” (Zijderveld 1983:17), then humor’s critical capacity lies in its
ability to scrutinize such meanings. In reflecting “realities of time and place,” humor can be “an index to
the development of a national character” Humor can help in (Mintz 1977:17) and a way of “understanding popular culture” (Hall, Keeter, and Williamson 1993:1).

“decoding implicit information or consciously shared knowledge or ‘sets of meanings’ about . . . social
situations, role-types, beliefs, social and individual behaviour” “People learn to think, feel, and (Paton 1988:212).

act according to . . . institutions,” Zijderveld explains. By playing with the “Humour can thus be defined as playing with institutionalized meanings. . . .

meanings that structure our daily lives, the humorist is able to disturb our definition of reality, causing
the emergence of doubt as to the value of daily routines and giving rise to some confusion as to the
very foundations of reality By ordering circumstances so that a normal definition of the
” (Zijderveld 1983:6–9).

situation changes humor can play with social meanings, as well as expose topics that are
(Hall, Keeter, and Williamson 1993:2),

often considered inappropriate (Fine 1984), such as “all forms of hypocrisy and prejudice or double-standards” (Paton 1988:207). Flaherty (1984) calls the manipulation of meanings to reveal insights about social life a “reality play.”

A reality play extends from the idea of “reality work,” which “entails evidencing that which is expected
on the part of others with whom one is interacting in order to accomplish that which one desires” (p. 76). By “trifling

a reality play reveals new ways of seeing the world and thus can
with background expectancies rather than negating them outright, or ratifying them as literal conduct,”

present a “radical challenge to the background experiences of common sense” A reality play that (pp. 75–76).

exposes the contradictions of institutional rules is similar to satire, where “daily reality is confronted
with an ideal, about which people love to talk but according to which they rarely live” (Zijderveld 1983:18–19). By playing with meaning,

it can function “as a de-ideologizing and

humor allows “the professional comedian to expose and play on double-standards in official morality or legitimated moral codes and actual behavior” (Paton 1988:207), and thus

disillusioning force” (Zijderveld 1983:18, 58). Rather than discomfort, humor may produce pleasure by “driving a wedge of capriciousness between [individuals] and the tedium that would result from fastidious compliance with role obligations” (Flaherty

Humor’s critical role thus lies in poking a hole through often undiscussed but official versions of
1984:78).

everyday reality, exposing their contradictions and the arbitrary basis of their social power . The humor of Jerry Seinfeld
often does just this.
Contention 4 is the new status quo
I HAVE LEFT THE SERIOUS MODE, AND NOW CONTRADICTION ABOUNDS
MAJKEN SORENSEN 08 OF COVENTRY UNIVERSITY (2-24-2008, "Humor as a Serious Strategy
of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression", doa 4-24-2020,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0130.2008.00488.x) NY
The case of Otpor (which means “resistance” in Serbian) was selected for this exploratory research on humor and nonviolence because it is a special and unusual case, both when it comes to the amount of humor, the importance it played in Otpor's success and the strategic way it was
used.15 This makes the case rich in information and useful for this exploration. In the terminology of sampling strategies for qualitative research, Otpor is an extreme or deviant case16 which is selected purposefully because it is outstanding and special. Looking more closely at the
unusual, we can often get more information about the less unusual.17 To better understand the dynamic of humor as nonviolent resistance, we need to investigate where somebody has gathered some experience and learn from them, and on the topic of humor as resistance, Otpor can
provide us with indications of which functions humor can serve, and what the special dynamics of humor are. In most other cases of nonviolent resistance to oppression, humor is used so little that it becomes invisible and “disappears” among all the other factors that play a role in
resistance. Because Otpor is an unusual single case, it cannot be used to draw conclusions on the prevalence of humor in nonviolent resistance. What it can do is provide new data about how humor can be used as part of a strategy for nonviolent resistance and why this strategy works.
This means that the case study has provided new information, which I have combined with existing theory on humor, nonviolence, and resistance, to construct the sketch for a new theory of nonviolent resistance to oppression, which in the future can be tested on other cases. Before we

Resistance is a response to power that challenges oppression and

turn to the analysis, it will be necessary to clarify how I define the central concepts in this article:

domination. Oppression can take many forms, and what is considered oppression changes across time
and space. Humor here means everything that
For the purpose of this article it is not necessary to set criteria for “oppression” as long as those concerned regard themselves as oppressed and use humor.

causes amusement, from a joke, story, play, skit, movie or book, to a way of acting or a slogan in a
demonstration. It can be based on irony, satire, parody, or ridicule. The humor investigated here is political, directed against oppression, and encourages critical reflection about how society is and how we want it to be. However, humor can indeed be

By strategy I mean a consistent and thought through way of behaving in

oppressive and cruel, for example when it is used to ridicule ethnic minorities or women.

a conflict situation. A good strategy includes an accurate estimate of this conflict, including the strengths
and weaknesses of all parties. A strategy focuses on the long‐term goals and how to stir the conflict toward these desired outcomes, whereas the tactics and methods determine the short‐ term reactions to a certain situation.18 Among
researchers of nonviolence it is common to separate the practitioners of nonviolence into two categories: Those who use it as a pragmatic tool and a technique that can be used effectively against oppression without being pacifists or finding violence morally wrong, and those who

Although I write about nonviolent strategies and how humor can be a

consider nonviolence to be a way of life and reject violence for principled reasons.19

strategy, I do not intend to contribute to this debate. Strategies as defined above are used both by “principled” and “pragmatic” groups to work toward their objectives. THE CONTRAST BETWEEN
INNOCENT HUMOR AND A SERIOUS MESSAGE Almost all humor is based on contradictions and incongruity, and to understand it, we have to be able to think of humor in more than one dimension.20 Generally, what causes amusement is when things are turned upside down or when

Almost all humor is based on contradictions and incongruity, and to understand it, we
things are no longer as we usually perceive them.

have to be able to think of humor in more than one dimension. 20 Generally, what causes amusement is when things are turned upside down or when things are no longer as we

Michael Mulkay, a sociologist of humor, distinguishes between the serious mode and the
usually perceive them.

humorous mode, and what characterizes these two modes. In the serious mode, we all assume that we
share the same world, and take for granted that other people perceive the world the same way as we
do. When we are in the serious mode, there has to be a clear boundary between what is real and
what is unreal. This is the world based on reason and logic , and contradictions are considered
problematic, where something cannot “be” and “not be” at the same time. Contradictions are treated
as failure to communicate properly, and assumed to be based on misunderstandings. In this mode, they
have to be treated as problematic, otherwise they threaten to undermine the perception that we share
the same world. In the humorous mode, on the contrary, there have to be contradictions , because
that is the basic principle of humor. Contradictions are not problematic, but a necessary feature of the
humorous mode. Here we play with the misunderstandings, incongruity, and duality. In order for something to be amusing, it usually

The contrast between innocence and seriousness is especially useful in

has to turn things upside down or present itself in more than one frame at the same time.21

humor used against oppression, because oppression is something very serious. Oppression should be fought, it should not be laughed at, and it is by

Just the idea and attempt of using humor in such a situation changes what is going on, no
definition not funny!

matter whether the humor succeeds in making people laugh or not. The reformulation in a humorous
mode shows in itself that something has changed, and creates the expectation of further changes. Humor, even the

Humor changes the situation because however serious the message is,
most aggressive examples, signals innocence, although there is a serious intention behind it.

it has a hint of “Don't take me seriously,” and “I'm not dangerous.” Here is an example: In Norway in 1983, a small group of total objectors organized in the group KMV
(Kampanjen Mot Verneplikt), which means “Campaign against Conscription,” refusing both military and alternative service. KMV members wanted to create public debate and change the law that gave them 16 months in prison, but refused to call it “prison” and instead, labeled it:
“serv[ing] their service in an institution under the administration of the prison authorities.”22 To avoid having political prisoners, there were officially no trials, no prisoners, and no punishment. The cases of the total objectors went through the courts only to identify and establish the
name of the objector, but it was not a court case in the sense that there were anything to argue about—the result was always the same, 16 months in prison. Often the prosecutor never showed up because the result was clear anyway, so KMV exploited this in one of their actions: One of
the activists dressed up as the prosecutor and overplayed his role and demanded that the total objector get even longer time in prison because of his profession (he was a lawyer). As “the prosecutor” writes several years later: We wanted to show the country the illusion of justice in
these cases. We planned to “wake” the people by laughter and make them think about what they saw. We hoped to get a balance of spectacular play and political arguments in order to, via headlines, put the whole question of conscription on the political agenda.23 During the procedure

in the court, nobody noticed anything wrong in spite of the “prosecutor's” exaggerations, and one week later KMV sent their secret video recording of the case to the media and the result was that most of the country was laughing. This is indeed a case
of turning things upside down to cause amusement. a parody
A friend of the accused playing the prosecutor, and demanding a stronger punishment than what the law can give, is

of the court. In this action, KMV activists satirized the absurdity of having a court case when there is nothing to discuss and succeeded in getting attention for their cause. A case against the activist playing the prosecutor was dismissed “for lack of evidence,” although
 In addition to turning the roles upside down, the parody of the court also exposed the
KMV gladly sent the police the video as evidence.

incongruity between what the Norwegian state said and what it did. If the politicians call Norway a democracy, and claim that it doesn't have any political prisoners,

This is an absurd situation, and

then why are people sent to prison for their beliefs? And why is it that imprisonment is not even called a prison sentence, but rather an administrative term for serving their alternative service?

through dramatizing it in a humorous frame, KMV could cut through all rational explanations and make
people understand that this did not make sense. through absurdity, The lack of congruity is what made the Norwegian population laugh. Stephen Brigham suggests that

we can gain new insights that we cannot reach, or at least are more difficult to reach, with reason and
logic. He writes mainly about personal transformation through psychotherapy, but examples like the Norwegian one and subsequent examples from Otpor will illustrate that this can also be true for changes at the societal level.24

THIS IS MY GAME AND IT’S INTOLERABLE TO DICTATORSHIP

MAJKEN SORENSON 08 OF COVENTRY UNIVERSITY (2-24-2008, "Humor as a Serious Strategy
of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression", doa 4-24-2020,
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0130.2008.00488.x) NY

The case of Otpor is unusual precisely because humor was used to such a large extent. Most nonviolent movements working against

humor has
oppression do not use much or any humor, and it would be easy to find examples of cases where the questions asked here would be irrelevant. However, through the case study of Otpor and examples from the literature, I have documented that

been used successfully to resist oppression. Because humor works in more than one dimension at the
same time it can combine innocence with seriousness in a way that can alter relationships and [to]
transcend rationality. The importance of humor as a way of resisting oppression should not be
exaggerated, but humor does have a powerful potential in facilitating outreach and mobilization, a
culture of resistance and turning oppression upside down. How this power is exercised depends on the
situation, but humor's main source of power is its ability to turn things upside down and present them in
a new frame. Examples of the unexpected are to jump into the prison or not to accept arrest as defeat.
Because of its irrationality, humor has an ability to affect relationships in surprising and unpredictable
ways and undermine traditional sources of power, such as the police and the military, which are firmly
based in rationality. by presenting
Because the serious mode is the common mode of interaction and communication, dictators generally expect to be taken seriously. When a group like Otpor ignores this general rule

things in a humorous frame instead, they are suddenly the ones in charge because here they are much
more familiar with “the rules of the game” than the dictatorship that still thinks in the serious mode.
Symbolic actions, including the use of humor, can have a profound influence if they manage to change
people's perception of a situation. Fear is not
A demonstration, a street theatre, or hanging up of a poster has a very different impact in a dictatorial society, where fear dominates, than in a democratic society.

something one can touch and feel, but it still has a dramatic impact. When someone ceases being afraid
or is less afraid than before, the situation has changed as long as he or she starts to act differently based
on the changed perception of the situation. In Serbia, the actions of Otpor made people far outside of Otpor's own circles think that maybe things could become different. In spite of their experiences with years
of deterioration and expectations of election fraud, people did go out to vote in the hope that maybe it would be different this time. And when the election fraud did happen, fear and apathy instead turned into anger and persistence. Otpor was not successful and powerful in the sense
that they physically removed Milošević, but they played a crucial role in setting a different agenda and challenging fear and apathy.