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I will, in the following description, focus on the situation in the human sciences (rather than the hard sciences), where the explosion of publication creates an ever-expanding circle in which there is always too much to read—too many positions, too many arguments, too much contradictory evidence—so that scholars have to rely on either the author's stature or theoretical and/or political agreement. It has become almost impossible to read everything one must read, everything necessary to legitimate, at least in traditional terms, the claim of academic expertise or scholarship. In fact, given this situation (and its consequences as I will describe below), the most surprising thing is how much good work continues to be produced.

Grossberg, 15 - Morris Davis Distinguished Professor University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Lawrence, We All Want to Change the World THE PARADOX OF THE U.S. LEFT A POLEMIC, http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/ebooks/we_all_want_to_change_the_world.pdf)//DH

the explosion of publication creates an ever-expanding circle in which there is always too much to read too many positions, too many arguments, too much contradictory evidence It has become impossible to read everything one must read

Their interpretation unlimits debate to the point of meaninglessness – it makes engagement impossible and eliminates all educational value of the 1ac and foregoes a genuine conversation with difference

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

He opposes positions whose ‘exclusionist’ outlook rejects the normative approach to the political sphere on the grounds that “normative statements can never be subjected to a reasonable discussion” (ibid.: 2), because—he argues—the discussion of politics “is an area of vital interest to all of us and should clearly not be excluded from argumentative reasonableness” (ibid.: 3)—a view with which we are prone to agree. Nevertheless, he admits that in the present situation critical discussion is far from being systematically and successfully applied to that vital area: “In representative democracies, however, the out-comes of the political process tend to be predominantly the product of negotiations be-tween political leaders rather than the result of a universal and mutual process of deliberative disputation” (ibid.). Political debates, therefore, are ‘quasi-discussions’, i.e., “monologues calculated only to win the audience’s consent to one’s own views”, rather than ‘genuine discussions’, i.e., serious attempts to have an intellectual exchange, which is typical of critical discussions (ibid.). In order to overcome this situation, “democracy should always have promoted such a critical discussion of standpoints as a central aim. Only if this is the case can stimulating participation in political discourse enhance the quality of democracy" (ibid.). This can be achieved, however, only by following “the dialectical rules for argumentative discourse that make up a code of conduct for political discourse [and] are therefore of crucial importance to giving substance to the ideal of participatory democracy” (ibid.: 4); thereby fully acknowledging that “education in processing argumentation in a critical discussion is indispensable for a democratic society (van Eemeren 1995: 145-146).

Dascal and Knoll ’11 [Marcelo and Amnon; May 18th; former Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Sao Paulo; former Professor of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University; Argumentation: Cognition and Community, "'Cognitive systemic dichotomization' in public argumentation and controversies," p. 20-25]

in the present critical discussion is far from being systematically successfully applied debates are monologues calculated only to win the audience’s consent to one’s own views”, rather than ‘genuine discussions’ intellectual exchange This can be achieved only by following “the dialectical rules for argumentative discourse

FAIRNESS---post-facto revision of the topic unlimits and produces incentives to avoid due to lack of a stable agent or mechanism. Overstretch makes clash impossible and renders neg ground concessionary. Fairness is a precondition to actualize benefits.

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

There is no zone of complete neutrality in a world of role performances. Obedient performances in cumulative effect tend to support the existing regime as they insinuate its dictates into our collective habits of perception, judgment, and action. Unless a dissident group of workers meticulously “works according to rule” to disrupt production through excruciating obedience in a way that discloses how tangled formal rules can become. Or a group creatively improvises on the performance of Bartleby the Scrivener, posing endless questions about the orders given to it until the machine overflows itself or is jammed. These indeed are creative role experimentations. So was the practice in Eastern Europe during the late stages of Soviet rule to clap endlessly when a Soviet stooge spoke, until the bewildered speaker was moved to sit down amid the roar around him. I recently attended a faculty meeting with the president of my university at which the entire faculty remained silent after his Ceo-style talk ended and he departed slowly up the aisle. Sometimes silence sends a message to power.

Connolly 13. William E. Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism, Duke University Press, 2013, 186

There is no zone of complete neutrality in a world of role performances Obedient performances in cumulative effect tend to support the existing regime as they insinuate its dictates into our collective habits of perception, judgment, and action Unless a dissident group of workers meticulously “works according to rule” to disrupt production through excruciating obedience in a way that discloses how tangled formal rules can become These indeed are creative role experimentations So was the practice in Eastern Europe during the late stages of Soviet rule to clap endlessly when a Soviet stooge spoke until the bewildered speaker was moved to sit down amid the roar around him I recently attended a faculty meeting with the president of my university at which the entire faculty remained silent after his Ceo-style talk ended and he departed slowly up the aisle. Sometimes silence sends a message to power.

Role experimentation should orient our politics. the lens of a policymaker can alter our perception in ways that catalyze micro and macro political action. Investigating politics can expose faults in the system in order to foster broader forms of resistance

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

Conflict is experienced at all levels of human activity. Despite the diversity in level (from interpersonal to international) and intensity (from minor disagreements to major armed and violent wars), there are common insights and approaches to understanding the nature of conflict and managing it peacefully.

Woodhouse et al 8 [Professor Tom Woodhouse, Bradford University, UK. Dr. Tamara Duffey Bradford University, UK. PEACEKEEPING AND INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION. 2008. tigurl.org/images/tiged/docs/activities/1185.pdf]

Conflict is experienced at all levels of human activity Despite the diversity in level from interpersonal to international and intensity from minor disagreements to major wars there are common insights and approaches to understanding the nature of conflict and managing it peacefully

Interpersonal and international conflicts are analogous – they share structure and mechanisms for resolution because they are both defined by pursuit of incompatible goals – debate’s key to resolving those disputes

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

The term ‘security dilemma’ describes a familiar predicament experienced by decision-makers in a world already overflowing with dilemmas. Despite its ubiquity, our claim is that the concept has been invariably misconceived by academic theorists, yet - properly understood - it should be regarded as the most fundamental concept of all in security studies, and as such should be at the centre of a reformed agenda of this field.1 The security dilemma is a foundational concept because, above all, it engages with the existential condition of uncertainty that characterizes all human relations, not least those interactions on the biggest and most violent stage of all - international politics. That its significance has not been properly recognized has been the result of orthodox thinking failing to give due credit to the work and insights of its major early theorists (John H. Herz and Herbert Butterfield, and later Robert Jervis) and at the same time missing the opportunity (as a result of paradigm blinkers) to appreciate the extent of the theoretical and practical horizons it opens up. Our claim is that an understanding of the dynamics and potentialities involved in thinking about the security dilemma gets to the heart of the central questions of security studies more profoundly than do even the traditional canon of concepts such as ‘war’, ‘strategy’, ‘conflict’ and the rest.

Booth and Wheeler 8 [Ken Booth FBA is a British international relations theorist, and the former E H Carr Professor of the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. Nicholas J. Wheeler is professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham and co-editor of the Cambridge Studies in International Relations book series, published by Cambridge University Press and the British International Studies Association. Rethinking the Security Dilemma. 2008. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0505/37a6a9815cee8576c05fd83d13e77dcba32c.pdf]

The ‘security dilemma’ should be regarded as the most fundamental concept of all in security studies The security dilemma is a foundational concept because it engages with the existential condition of uncertainty that characterizes all human relations not least those interactions on the biggest and most violent stage of all - international politics

This is exemplified by the security dilemma, which is born out of the inevitable uncertainty in all human relations

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

In this article, I present an underappreciated mechanism of collective wisdom—by which cognitively average individuals can, taken as a group, make better decisions than even the smartest and most informed citizens, individually or in small groups1—based on issue specialization through deliberative enclaves called “issue publics.” Though this epistemic mechanism does not entirely answer the epistemic challenge, it responds to it in the same instrumental terms in which it is put and avoids appeals to democracy's intrinsic worth, which critics might view as evading the question. I hope that issue specialization enters the debate over the wisdom of democracy alongside promising epistemic mechanisms like diversity. I also aim to show that issue specialization is a promising subject for renewed empirical investigation since topics discussed here, such as the specialization of citizens’ political knowledge, need more study.2

Kevin J. Elliott 19, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Murray State University, 11/14/19, “Democracy's Pin Factory: Issue Specialization, the Division of Cognitive Labor, and Epistemic Performance,” American Journal of Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12486

In this article, I present an underappreciated mechanism of collective wisdom by which cognitively average individuals can, taken as a group, make better decisions than even the smartest and most informed citizens individually based on issue specialization through deliberative enclaves called “issue publics.” avoids appeals to democracy's intrinsic worth

Predictable limits are critical to issue specialization---opening discussion to every important issue simultaneously causes cognitive overstretch and undermines the educational potential of debate to loosen elites monopoly on expertise

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

The ‘common-sense’ view pervading recent discussions of epistemology, ontology and methodology in IR asserts that objectivity implies value-free neutrality. However, objective social inquiry has an inherent tendency to be critical, in various senses. To the extent that objective knowledge provides a better and more adequate account of reality than other ideas, such knowledge is inherently critical (implicitly or explicitly) of those ideas. 30 In other words critical social inquiry does not (or not only) manifest its ‘criticalness’ through self-claimed labels of being critical or siding with the oppressed, but through the substantive critique of prevailing ideas. Objective social knowledge constitutes a specific form of criticism: explanatory critique. The critique of dominant ideas or ideologies is elaborated through providing a more adequate explanation of aspects of the world, and in so doing exposing what is wrong with the dominant ideology. This may also entail revealing the social conditions which give rise to ideologies, thus exposing the necessary and causal relation between particular social relations and particular ideological conceptions.

Branwen Gruffydd Jones 04, Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy, Goldsmiths University of London, Ph.D. Development Studies, University of Sussex. August 2004. “From Eurocentrism to Epistemological Internationalism: power, knowledge and objectivity in International Relations.” paper presented at Theorising Ontology, Annual Conference of the International Association for Critical Realism, University of Cambridge. http://www.csog.group.cam.ac.uk/iacr/papers/Jones.pdf

The ‘common-sense’ view in IR asserts that objectivity implies value-free neutrality. objective social inquiry has an inherent tendency to be critical, in various senses. To the extent that objective knowledge provides a better and more adequate account of reality than other ideas, such knowledge is inherently critical ) of those ideas critical social inquiry does not manifest its ‘criticalness’ through self-claimed labels of being critical or siding with the oppressed, but through the substantive critique of prevailing ideas. social knowledge constitutes a specific form of criticism: explanatory critique The critique of dominant ideas or ideologies is elaborated through providing a more adequate explanation of aspects of the world, and in so doing exposing what is wrong with the dominant ideology

The terminal impact is objectivity---the value of critical social inquiry doesn’t come from flashy labels or superficial inclusion, but from the hard work of providing correct explanations of the world---reclaiming critical objectivity is crucial to undermine elite-driven ossification of social relations

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

History teaches us is that the ruling class, the state and non-state institutions it controls, as well as the right have learned the political judo whereby the left’s actions may be turned around and used to strengthen the right and weaken the left. Specifically, we should learn from the history of the agent provocateur, a specialist in manipulating conflict so as to benefit our enemies. Agents provocateurs are not merely enemy spies within the people’s movement. The provocateur has an even more sinister mission, which sometimes has deadly results. What the provocateur frequently provokes is actions that either discredit the left or the people’s movement in the eyes of large numbers of people, or which entrap the unwary into acts that will allow police to pounce, accuse activists of plotting violent or other anti-social acts, and then lock them up. Agents provocateurs have been known for well over a century, in many countries; the breed was especially rife in tsarist Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the United States, agents provocateurs often targeted labor union organizing efforts. Since the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, there are many accounts of the FBI, other police bodies, the military, and private right-wing vigilante groups sending agents provocateurs into people’s organizations with the purpose of dividing, disrupting, and discrediting them and then laying them open to arrest and prosecution, or worse.

Emily Schepers 17, Veteran civil and immigrant rights activist, doctorate in cultural anthropology from Northwestern University, September 18, 2017. “Agents provocateurs and the manipulation of the radical left.” https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/agents-provocateurs-and-the-manipulation-of-the-radical-left/

History teaches us is that the ruling class, the state and non-state institutions it controls, as well as the right have learned the political judo whereby the left’s actions may be turned around and used to strengthen the right and weaken the left. we should learn from the history of the agent provocateur s Agents provocateurs are not merely spies has an even more sinister mission What the provocateur frequently provokes is actions that either discredit the left or the people’s movement in the eyes of large numbers of people, or which entrap the unwary into acts that will allow police to pounce Agents provocateurs have been known for well over a century, in many countries

It turns case---the state intentionally creates seemingly radical, but politically bankrup leftist positions to discredit and undermine their positions---being able to effectively analyse policies is key to prevent it

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

Perhaps the biggest problem with this hopeful vision of specialization's epistemic power is that not every issue will receive the attention of an issue public (Somin 2013, 106). This is because issue publics are an emergent phenomenon in the mass public and are thus constituted through self‐selection. This could bias their composition due to inequalities in civic skills and motivation (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Self‐selection is exacerbated by the inclusion of associations and civil society groups within the issue public matrix, since such groups have a well‐known socioeconomic bias (Schattschneider 1960). Moreover, issue publics are endogenous to issue salience, or the public attention paid to an issue, since media coverage often plays a decisive role in directing public attention to certain issues. Media coverage can also be biased toward conflictual stories and insubstantial soft news (Shapiro 1998). This means not only that abstruse or technical issues may receive less attention in favor of the trivial yet telegenic, but also that those issues affecting marginalized groups might attract smaller issue publics than their objective importance11 demands. These biases create a serious problem for an epistemic account of issue specialization since it suggests there are pathologies of attention that can prevent issue publics from bringing their powers to bear on important issues.

Kevin J. Elliott 19, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Murray State University, 11/14/19, “Democracy's Pin Factory: Issue Specialization, the Division of Cognitive Labor, and Epistemic Performance,” American Journal of Political Science, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12486

the biggest problem with this vision of epistemic power is that not every issue will receive the attention of an issue public This is because issue publics are an emergent phenomenon and constituted through self‐selection. This could bias their composition due to inequalities issue publics are endogenous to issue salience, or the public attention paid to an issue, since media coverage often plays a decisive role in directing public attention to certain issues. biased toward conflictual stories and insubstantial soft news

Even though issue specialization means that not every issue will be discussed directly every year, the skills and habits inculcated by our model are broadly transferable to issues of structural exclusion

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

The idea of organizing collective deliberation as an adversarial debate, a debate for and against a position, is not new. It has its origins, or at least one of its early illustrations, in classical antiquity. Recent conceptions of deliberative democracy and the practices they have inspired (such as Deliberative Polls, citizens' juries, and consensus conferences) have led us to forget an older idea of political deliberation, formulated by Greek and Roman historians and theorists of rhetoric, from Herodotus to Quintilian via Thucydides, Aristotle, and Cicero. Today's conceptions of deliberative democracy put the emphasis on discussion, making it essential that the members of the deliberating group discuss among themselves, engage in dialogue, and exchange arguments with one another. The opposition of points of view, if mentioned, occupies a secondary place. It is viewed either as a precondition to deliberation proper or simply as a natural consequence of pluralistic societies in which the expression of opinions is free. Yet in the ancient idea of deliberation, the opposition of points of view occupied a central place. To simplify, in the ancient conception, orators advocating opposed policies each presented arguments in favor of their position and against their opponent's. These arguments were presented before an assembly that subsequently decided on the policy. It seems reasonable to assume that members of the assembly also discussed the arguments among themselves. But the opposition of points of view – not mutual discussion – constituted the motor and chief element of deliberation.

Manin, 17—Professor of Politics, NYU (Bernard, “Political Deliberation & the Adversarial Principle,” Daedalus, Volume 146, Issue 3, Summer 2017, p.39-50, dml)

The idea of organizing collective deliberation as an adversarial debate, a debate for and against a position, is not new Today's conceptions put the emphasis on discussion, making it essential that the members of the deliberating group discuss among themselves, engage in dialogue, and exchange arguments with one another. The opposition of points of view occupies a secondary place. It is viewed simply as a natural consequence Yet in the ancient idea the opposition of points of view occupied a central place orators advocating opposed policies each presented arguments in favor of their position and against their opponent's the opposition of points of view – not mutual discussion – constituted the motor and chief element of deliberation

Debate is distinct from discussion due to its adversarial nature—we control uniqueness and the internal link is linear, multiple factors predispose us to avoiding clash, so you should seek to guarantee it as much as possible—the mere presence of limits or concessionary ground lapse into confirmation bias at best and mutual ignorance at worst. Centering debate on the instrumental consequences of the 1AC’s proposal solves.

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

The results of the two case studies in this article suggest that deliberation does not fundamentally change individuals or inculcate a sense of moral duty. The particular values that prevailed in both issues were always present (and measurable), even if they were latent in expressed preferences. Before deliberation, most participants believed they were acting in the public interest,69 but good intentions alone are not sufficient to formulate civic-minded preferences. Predeliberative preferences were more strongly influenced by discourses associated with symbolic politics. Following deliberation, symbolic cues reduced the “cost” of arriving at a decision,70 but the cognitive shortcut resulted in positions that did not properly reflect participants’ overall subjectivity.

Niemeyer 11 [Simon Niemeyer, Centre for Deliberative Global Governance, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University. The Emancipatory Effect of Deliberation: Empirical Lessons from Mini-Publics. 2011. https://unige.ch/sciences-societe/socio/files/2114/0533/6108/002.pdf]

The results of two case studies in this article suggest that deliberation does not fundamentally change individuals or inculcate a sense of moral duty The particular values that prevailed in both issues were always present even if they were latent Predeliberative preferences were more strongly influenced by discourses associated with symbolic politics

1---Probability of solvency---debate does not change the fundamental values of its participants, but it does trend them away from over-reliance on their initial, unvetted gut reactions in favor of deeper understandings of issues

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

Researchers at four universities found two areas of the brain that appear to compete for control over behavior when a person attempts to balance near-term rewards with long-term goals. The research involved imaging people's brains as they made choices between small but immediate rewards or larger awards that they would receive later. The study grew out of the emerging discipline of neuroeconomics, which investigates the mental and neural processes that drive economic decision-making.

Princeton 4 [Princeton University Office of Communications. Study: Brain battles itself over short-term rewards, long-term goals. October 14, 2004. https://pr.princeton.edu/news/04/q4/1014-brain.htm]

Researchers at four universities found two areas of the brain that appear to compete for control over behavior when a person attempts to balance near-term rewards with long-term goals

2---Scope---We’re predisposed to weigh the immediate gratification of voting aff higher than the long-term benefits of better decision-making

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

Precisely because science is not a monolithic entity, however, condemning its oppressive moments hardly implies a wholesale rejection of its methods. After all, these methods have also given us particularly clear and systematic refutations of racist lies; refutations supported by troves of publicly available evidence (Marks, 2017). We should never invest science or scientists with unquestioned authority, therefore, and we should always look out for particular power formations which cast doubt on particular scientific results. This evaluation, however, must be made on a case-by-case basis. All scientific practice is structured by power, but as Foucault clearly acknowledged, not all scientific knowledge is therefore invalidated. Blanket skepticism is just as unwarranted as blanket trust.

Bagg 18 [Postdoctoral Fellow with the Research Group on Constitutional Studies and the Political Science Department at McGill University, Beyond the Search for the Subject: An Anti-Essentialist Ontology for Liberal Democracy, https://philpapers.org/archive/BAGBTS.pdf]

because science is not a monolithic entity condemning its oppressive moments hardly implies a wholesale rejection of its methods these methods have given us particularly clear and systematic refutations of racist lies; refutations supported by troves of publicly available evidence We should never invest science with unquestioned authority we should look out for particular power formations which cast doubt on particular results. This evaluation, must be made on a case-by-case basis

And it turns case---failure to effectively test the content of the aff undermines the depth of our understanding and makes us unable to determine whether it’s content is accurate, which also proves if we win our internal links, the 1AC should be viewed as presumptively false.

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

Human history is not only social history but also neurobiological history. Throughout most of the 20th century, social and biological explanations were widely viewed as incompatible. However, from the 1990s, the emergence of social neuroscience6 vindicates Aristotle’s pioneering deductions. The young science accepts that the brain is a single, pivotal component of an undeniably social species and that it is orderly in its complexity. It treats the human brain as a social organ, whose physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction. (To a mammal, being socially connected to caregivers is indispensable for survival: this, incidentally, suggests that Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs might need to be revised to ascribe more weight to social needs, e.g., love and belonging, and esteem, in relation to self-actualization.) Nondualistic and nonreductionistic, social neuroscience, through a multilevel and integrative approach, aims to understand the role of the central nervous system in the formation and maintenance of social behaviors and processes. Spanning the social and biological domains, e.g., molecular, cellular, system, person, relational, collective, and societal, it exploits biological concepts and neurobiological techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging7 —which measures patterns of blood oxygenation responses in the brain as a subject engages in a particular task, to inform and refine theories of social behavior. In short, it focuses on how the brain mediates social interaction.8 (Brain scans captured through functional magnetic resonance imaging show that the same areas are associated with distress, be that caused by social rejection or by physical pain.) Arguably, the potential benefits of social neuroscience are that it can inform debates in social psychology, provide tools for measuring brain–body activity directly and unobtrusively and provide information that would be impossible to assess using other techniques, and permit the examination of social processes by pointing to the importance of social variables (from context to culture) in altering processes within the brain and body.

Serrat 10 [Olivier Serrat, Doctoral Student at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology at Washington DC. A Primer on Social Neuroscience. August 2010. https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/27625/primer-social-neuroscience.pdf]

Human history is not only social history but also neurobiological history Throughout most of the 20th century, social and biological explanations were widely viewed as incompatible science accepts that the brain is a single, pivotal component of an undeniably social species and that it is orderly in its complexity It treats the human brain as a social organ whose physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction social neuroscience, through a multilevel and integrative approach, aims to understand the role of the central nervous system in the formation and maintenance of social behaviors and processes. Spanning the social and biological domains, e.g., molecular, cellular, system, person, relational, collective, and societal, it exploits biological concepts and neurobiological techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging to inform and refine theories of social behavior it focuses on how the brain mediates social interaction the benefits of social neuroscience are that it can inform debates in social psychology, provide tools for measuring brain–body activity directly and unobtrusively and provide information that would be impossible to assess using other techniques, and permit the examination of social processes by pointing to the importance of social variables in altering processes within the brain and body.

Prefer neuroscience---it refines social theories rather than rejecting them, but their dismissal forecloses causal analysis of biological variables

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Michigan (7-week)

Case Negatives

2022

The National Guard State Partnership Program (SPP) involves establishing a partnership between a State National Guard and other national armed forces of a sovereign country. Initially conceived as military-to-military engagement activities, several of these relationships have developed further and, nowadays include civilian-to-civilian initiatives. As a security assistance provider, it conducts activities and in so doing influences the perceptions and behavior of regional security actors. Due to the specific nature of the U.S. National Guard, the SPP initiatives have been used as dual assets – national and NATO6. In addition to laying the foundation of goodwill, trust, access and influence, they pave the way for allied/allied – allied/partners interactions that go beyond a simple relationship to help increase a partner’s ability to accomplish a particular task or mission7.

Samir Battiss, 13 (Samir Battiss, Lecturer at the University of Quebec in Montreal, May 2013, accessed on 6-30-2022, NORDIKA Programme, NATO Military Partnerships: The US National Guard State Partnership as the driving force for pre-accession and long-term cooperation,” https://www.frstrategie.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/notes/2013/201310.pdf, HBisevac)

National Guard State Partnership Program involves establishing a partnership between a State National Guard and other national armed forces of a sovereign country Initially conceived as military-to-military engagement activities relationships develope further and include civilian-to-civilian initiatives As a security assistance provider it conducts activities and influences the perceptions and behavior of regional security actors U.S. National Guard SPP initiatives have been used as dual assets national and NATO In addition to laying the foundation of goodwill trust access and influence they pave the way for allied/allied allied/partners interactions that help increase a partner’s ability to accomplish a particular mission

The 50 states, through the National Guard State Partnership Program [SPP], should increase their security cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the area of <AFF>.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

As the preceding case illustrates, states can play a significant role in implementing U.S. foreign policy. The National Guard’s State Partnership Program has given states a critical role in U.S. engagement programs. The networks of opportunity created by the number of SPP funding sources and potential programs have allowed entrepreneurial state actors to shape a unique course for each partnership. Some innovative state coordinators have, on their own initiative, tapped other funds, such as cooperative threat reduction programs or environmental programs to further the reach of their state partnership. The participating state National Guards are uniquely positioned in this respect—they are connected to both the state and federal governments through their dual mission and contain vast experience including military duties, support to civilians, and regular civilian jobs. This gives an enterprising state a chance to make a significant impact in the content of U.S. foreign policy. The meaning attached to that policy is created, in part, by the actions undertaken in the name of that policy. Through their implementation of the SPP, states have shaped the meaning of U.S. foreign policy of engaging the former communist states of Eastern Europe and NATO enlargement. This is not to say that all National Guards and Partnerships are equally forward-leaning, but some can be, and in a way not directed or anticipated by the federal government.

Peter Howard, 4 (Peter Howard is the economics director at Policy Integrity, and a former economic fellow, May 2004, accessed on 7-2-2022, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 2, “The Growing Role of States in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Case of the State Partnership Program”, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44218880?seq=1, HBisevac)

states can play a significant role in implementing U.S. foreign policy National Guard’s S P P given states a critical role in U.S. engagement innovative state coordinators have tapped other funds such as cooperative threat reduction programs or environmental programs state National Guards are uniquely positioned they are connected to both the state and federal governments through dual mission and contain vast experience including military duties and civilian This gives an enterprising state a chance to make a significant impact in U.S. foreign policy Through their implementation of the SPP states have shaped U.S. foreign policy

The counterplan linearly increases state involvement in foreign affairs.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

Power is a relative term, especially when referring to the amount of control and influence a nation wields in the global community. In analyzing nations’ sources of power, American political scientist Joseph Nye popularized the concepts of hard power, or “the ability to use carrots and sticks of economic and military might to make others follow your will,” and soft power, an influence which “co-opts [nations] rather than coerces them.”[1] Whereas nations mainly derive hard power from military forces, Nye asserts a nation’s soft power stems from “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral authority).”[2] Soft power grows through cultural diffusion, which often occurs more rapidly thanks to globalization, but there are also institutions which directly contribute to soft power projection. The United States Department of State (DoS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are chief among these institutions cultivating American soft power through initiatives and foreign presence.

Matthew Hughes, 20 (Matthew Hughes, MD, MPH, Occupational and Environmental Health Specialist, 2-14-2020, accessed on 7-2-2022, Small Wars Journal, “Projecting Soft Power Through the State Partnership Program”, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/projecting-soft-power-through-state-partnership-program, HBisevac) **edited for gendered language**

a nation’s soft power stems from its culture political values and its foreign policies

SPP expansion hedges losses in U.S soft power.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

The Biden administration has multiple competing priorities: COVID-19 and its economic impacts, long-ignored racial fissures, and a growing tenuous relationship with truth, reality, and trust among the populace, just to name a few. President Joseph Biden also has the challenge of representing the United States on the foreign stage. In that capacity, he is charged with crafting a new foreign policy—one that champions a balance of hard and soft power, tailored for the most efficient use of resources and the most effective results.

Margaret Seymour, 21 (Margaret Seymour, 2020 Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor USMC Veterans Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is Currently a Graduate Student at the University of Missouri Studying Journalism and Strategic Communications, 3-19-2021, accessed on 7-4-2022, Foreign Policy Research Institute, “Building Soft Power Back Better?”, https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/03/building-soft-power-back-better/, HBisevac)

Biden has multiple competing priorities COVID and its economic impacts racial fissures and a growing tenuous relationship with reality and trust among the populace Biden has the challenge of representing the U S on the foreign stage he is charged with crafting a new foreign policy one that champions a balance of hard and soft power tailored for the most effective results

That averts a laundry list of existential impacts.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

The biggest extinction event in planetary history was driven by the rapid acidification of our oceans, a new study concludes. So much carbon was released into the atmosphere, and the oceans absorbed so much of it so quickly, that marine life simply died off, from the bottom of the food chain up. That doesn’t bode well for the present, given the disturbingly similar rate that our seas are acidifying right now. Parts of the Pacific, for instance, are already so acidic that sea snails’ shells begin dissolving as soon as they’re born. The biggest die-off in history, the Permian Extinction event, aka the Great Dying, extinguished over 90 percent of the planet's species—and 96 percent of marine species. A lot of theories have been put forward about why and how, exactly, the vast majority of Earth life went belly up 252 million years ago, but the new study, published in Science, offers some compelling evidence acidification was a key driver. A team led by University of Edinburgh researchers collected rocks in the United Arab Emirates that were on the seafloor hundreds of millions of years ago, and used the boron isotopes found within to model the changing levels of acidification in our prehistoric oceans. Through this “combined geochemical, geological, and modeling approach,” the scientists say, they were able to accurately model the series of “perturbations” that unfolded in the era. They now believe that a series of gigantic volcanic eruptions in the Siberian Trap spewed a great fountain of carbon into the atmosphere over a period of tens of thousands of years. This was the first phase of the extinction event, in which terrestrial life began to die out. The study explains that the second phase of the event happened much more quickly. “During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota," the authors write. So does this study mean we should be especially worried about the phenomenon taking hold today? "Yes," said Dr. Rachel Wood, a professor of carbonate geoscience at the University of Edinburgh and one of the paper's authors. "We are concerned about modern ocean acidification," she told me in an email. "Although the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere that triggered the mass extinction was probably greater than today's fossil fuel reserves, the rate at which the carbon was released was at a rate similar to modern emissions." In other words, the Siberian Traps probably spewed out more carbon in total, but we're spewing out just as fast. And that's overwhelming the planetary equilibrium. "This fast rate of release was a critical factor driving ocean acidification," Wood said. Why? "The rate of release is critical because the oceans absorb a lot of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide released by humans," Wood said. "To achieve chemical equilibrium, some of this CO2 reacts with the water to form carbonic acid. Some of these molecules react with a water molecule to give a bicarbonate ion and a hydronium ion, thus increasing ocean 'acidity' (H+ ion concentration)." Marine animals whose skeletons are comprised of calcium carbonate—and that’s a lot of them (think snails, coral), which form a crucial part of the food chain—dissolved or couldn’t form in the first place. And that is what’s happening today. "Between 1751 and 1994, surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14, representing an increase of almost 30 percent in H+ ion concentration in the world's oceans," Wood said. That's a major uptick in ocean acidity in a relatively short amount of time, and it's happening because humans have burned fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas with reckless abandon since the Industrial Revolution. That's fueling climate change, of course, as well as its less-discussed, but potentially equally cataclysmic sibling, ocean acidification. "Scientists have long suspected that an ocean acidification event occurred during the greatest mass extinction of all time, but direct evidence has been lacking until now,” study coordinator Dr. Matthew Clarkson said in a statement. “This is a worrying finding, considering that we can already see an increase in ocean acidity today that is the result of human carbon emissions." Much of marine life is already in grave danger from acidification. It's contributing to the bleaching of coral reefs around the world, and, as mentioned before, it's killing sea snails in the Pacific. If it worsens, acidification could threaten the whole of the marine biosphere, and, obviously, the land-dwelling creatures that depend on it too. In 2013, marine scientists released a "State of the Oceans" report that found that the rate of current acidification was “unprecedented.” They noted that the seas were acidifying faster than any point in the last 300 million years. That study didn’t take into account the new data, of course, but that’s the timeline we’re dealing with: The last time the oceans were so acidic was in the midst of the greatest extinction in the history of the world.

Brian Merchant 15, Senior Editor at Motherboard at VICE Media, Inc., Appeared on CNN, MSNBC, BBC World News, and NPR, Vice, 4/9/2015, http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-last-time-our-oceans-got-this-acidic-it-drove-earths-greatest-extinction

The biggest extinction event in planetary history was driven by acidification of our oceans a new study concludes over 90 percent of the planet's species went belly up 252 million years ago acidification was a key driver So does this mean we should be worried ? Yes Dr Wood a professor of carbonate geoscience at the University of Edinburgh and one of the paper's authors the rate at which carbon was released was at a rate similar to modern emissions." In other words we're spewing out just as fast And that's overwhelming planetary equilibrium This fast rate of release driv ocean acidification oceans absorb a lot of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere around 30 percent released by humans To achieve chemical equilibrium some of this CO2 reacts with the water to form carbonic acid Some give a bicarbonate ion and a hydronium ion increasing ocean 'acidity' H+ ion concentration Marine animals skeletons comprised of calcium carbonate and that’s a lot snails coral a crucial part of the food chain dissolved or couldn’t form that happening today a major uptick in ocean acidity in a relatively short amount of time it's happening because humans burned fossil fuels with reckless abandon That's fueling climate change but equally cataclysmic ocean acidification Much of marine life is in grave danger from acidification It's bleaching of coral reefs and killing sea snails If it worsens, acidification threaten the marine biosphere and land-dwelling creatures The last time the oceans were so acidic was in the midst of extinction

Independently, CO2 causes ocean acidification---extinction

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

The United States has a low-key, low-cost tool to build relationships with friendly militaries around the world. But after 27 years of success, the State Partnership Program – originally created for post-Cold War Europe – needs a review to ensure it is optimized for Washington’s current national security needs. Why does SPP matter? With threats growing and budgets under pressure from COVID-19, the Pentagon needs a cost-efficient way to build stronger relationships and military capacity with partner nations in each combatant command. Ideally, this approach would not place additional burdens on the active duty U.S. military and would operate largely below the radar of America’s adversaries and competitors. That is where the SPP excels. But the program is overdue for a strategic assessment to ensure it is appropriately resourced and properly focused on the objectives of the National Defense Strategy, which refocuses the US military from counterinsurgency to strategic competition against Russia and China.

Bradley Bowman & Thomas Pledger, 20 (Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Maj. Thomas G. Pledger is a visiting military analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 8-10-2020, accessed on 6-30-2022, Breaking Defense, “Modernize The National Guard’s State Partnership Program”, https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/modernize-the-national-guards-state-partnership-program/, HBisevac)

U S has a low-key low-cost tool to build relationships with friendly militaries With budgets under pressure Pentagon needs a cost-efficient way to build stronger relationships and military capacity with partner nations Ideally this approach would not place additional burdens on the duty U.S. military and would operate largely below the radar of America’s adversaries That is where the SPP excels

It’s comparatively cheaper than the AFF.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

Escalating political violence that does not result in a failed or collapse state can still lead to tragic consequences that are less than civil war. This quasi-conflict condition of becoming a continuing simmering state with the potentially violent state action referred to as a “Frozen Conflict”. Examples of potential for unchecked political terror are the Frozen Conflicts in Moldova, Armenia, and NagornoKarabakh. In these nations, there are no massively scaled, centrally coordinated military operations ongoing, but nonetheless, repressive actions of government forces continue against an indigenous separatist population seeking autonomy. In addition, while there is no US commitment of active duty, military combat troop to any of these three nations, the US consistently shows its commitment to improving partner nation security and preventing political terror by running State Partnership Program engagement activities for two of these countries via the North Carolina and Kansas National Guards, respectively16.

Hightower 17, PhD in Public Policy and Management (Rudolph, “National Security Policy Complexity: An Analysis of U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Program Effects on Political Terror,” Proquest Dissertations)

while there is no US commitment of active duty, military combat troop to nations, the US shows its commitment by running State Partnership Program engagement activities via North Carolina and Kansas National Guards

The counterplan requires zero active-duty troops

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

The State Partnership Program links state National Guard units to the military reserve components of other countries through U.S. military engagement programs. This typically involves going through the U.S. Department of State, implying that at the national level diplomats have control over the program. Even though the yearly exchanges require federal ‘goaheads,’ the state-level National Guard has become, and remains, the primary agency for implementing U.S. military engagement programs within the reserve forces. From an institutional perspective, it is clear that the State Partnership Program provides states an increasingly growing role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Looking at the ‘second level’ of international politics, as discussed by Waltz, neither foreign policy nor federalism is able to address the growth of state policies because of the divided nature of the programs used. That is, implemented on a national level, while carried out on a provincial level.

Ahlness 14, Associate of Arts degree from Century College, Ahlness plans to continue her work as a graduate student in Political science upon graduation from MSU-Mankato. After earning her doctoral degree, she anticipates participating in an international volunteer organization, followed by teaching either International Relations or Scandinavian studies at the university level. (THE STATE PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM: STATES AS GLOBAL ACTORS THE IMPLICATIONS OF NONAGGRESSIVE NATIONAL FORCES, Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato, 14.1)

The State Partnership Program links state National Guard units to military reserve components of other countries through U.S. military engagement programs This typically involves the U.S. Department of State Even though exchanges require federal ‘goaheads,’ the state-level National Guard has become, and remains, the primary agency for implementing U.S. military engagement programs

If there is FG involvement, it’s The State Department rubber-stamping the initiative, but the states are the implementing agency

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

The SPP is administered by the National Guard Bureau (NGB) in accordance with Department of Defense (DOD) regulations and directives, guided by Department of State foreign policy goals, implemented by the geographic combatant commands (GCCs), and sourced by National Guard forces. The National Guard executes SPP activities to maintain enduring partnerships that ensure access and influence; enhance the capabilities of both the State; National Guard and the partner country’s defense and security forces build partner nation’s military capacity; increase interoperability; and to promote National Guard core competencies of civil support, humanitarian assistance/disaster assistance and joint force headquarters’ (JFHQ) institutional functions. Activities are identified, approved, and coordinated through the GCCs, U.S. Embassy country teams, and other agencies as required to ensure that SPP activities are tailored to meet U.S. and partner country objectives.

CALL 18 (The Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Security Cooperation and the State Partnership Program,” https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/publications/19-01%20State%20Partnership%20Program%20%28Lo%20Res%29.pdf)//BB

The SPP is administered by the National Guard in accordance with DOD directives guided by Department of State foreign policy goals implemented by geographic commands and sourced by National Guard forces The National Guard executes SPP activities to enhance the partner country’s defense and security forces increase interoperability and joint force functions

The counterplan is just the states. It has to follow DoS and DoD directives, but requires no federal action.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

Currently, the senior-most foreign military and civilian decision makers who have previously and are currently participating in the program view the State Partnership Program in glowing terms. The following illustrates the level of endorsement of the security cooperation program: "…Multiply that by 22 all around Europe and you can see the bang for the buck here is really quite significant.[SPP] is a very powerful tool. It is unmatched. They are, bang for the buck, one of the best things going. Anything that enhances state partnership is money in the bank for the regional combatant commanders.” - Admiral James Stavridis, Former USEUCOM Commander Retired US Navy Admiral Stavridis’ glowing praise of SPP is not unique. There is evidence of a significant quantitative knowledge gap between security cooperation stakeholders and government policy evaluators. National Guard leadership and foreign partners continually state these qualitative outcomes of SPP. Conversely, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) and Congressional Research Service (CRS) have concluded that SPP needs far more quantitative data collection and analysis to properly assess program efficiency and effectiveness. The measurable outcomes, not merely public budgeting line item outputs, on democratic consolidation principles such as reducing political terror in partner nations, are needed to assess SPP program effectiveness. Though the program is wildly popular, there remains a disconnection between leadership’s pronouncements and a testable, measurable program evaluation. Until most recently, SPP effectiveness as has been qualitatively evaluated and the results consistently associated with the value of trust-building and strengthening relationships with foreign partners (NGAUS, 2016). Evaluation metrics included outputs related to the number of foreign engagement missions, the numbers of individual troops participating in SPP events, and the dollars spent in implementing the SPP annually. The evaluation of program effectiveness has not broached the broader concept of the whether the program affects long-term outcomes on democratic consolidation and political terror. Countering the possibly biased qualitative assessment of stakeholders, the official US Government’s assessments of security cooperation programs in general, and of SPP, in particular, offer much more tempered endorsements of such programs: According to the private National Guard of the United States Association (NGUSA): The National Guard State Partnership Program (SPP) is one of the most innovative low-cost security cooperation tools available to the United States…In addition to military-to-military engagements; SPP leverages the whole-of-society relations and capabilities to facilitate broader interagency and whole-of-government engagements. Though policymaker support for DSC programs is strong and pronouncements of great success are common, there is a counter-argument to its success. There are obvious real-world events that challenge the efficaciousness of DSC programs in building stabilization and/or stemming the use of state security forces to violently suppress political dissent or for soldiers to attack the government. These counter arguments are usually in real world news headlines from around the world. 31

Hightower 17, PhD in Public Policy and Management (Rudolph, “National Security Policy Complexity: An Analysis of U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Program Effects on Political Terror,” Proquest Dissertations)

senior-most foreign military and civilian decision makers view the State Partnership Program in glowing terms SPP] is a very powerful tool. It is unmatched Stavridis Retired US Navy Admiral Stavridis’ glowing praise of SPP is not unique the program is wildly popular The National Guard State Partnership Program is low-cost security cooperation policymaker support is strong and pronouncements of great success are common

Even if the FG is tangentially involved, the SPP completely avoids politics

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

Any new directives, regulations or statutory authorities would be most effective with a “bottom-up” approach, using input from the National Guard to the greatest extent possible. Given the vastness and diversity of the programs requirements, the coordinators at the National Guard Bureau level should be the “trusted advisors” to ensure that language incorporated into evolving guidance ensure the flexibility required to administer the program effectively “where the rubber meets the road.”

James N. Williams, 12 (Lieutenant Colonel James N. Williams, Army National Guard, March 2012, accessed on 6-30-2022, United States Army War Project Strategy Research Project, “The National Guard State Partnership Program: Element of Smart Power”, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA562110.pdf, HBisevac)

new directives regulations or statutory authorities would be most effective with a bottom-up approach using input from the National Guard to the greatest extent possible coordinators at the National Guard should be the trusted advisors to ensure that language incorporated into evolving guidance ensure the flexibility required to administer the program effectively

The process makes it appealing.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

These state policies are surprising in many ways. For example, they are often driven by bipartisan coalitions, and, perhaps because of their lower visibility, they seem to have escaped the partisan wrangling that has limited national-level policy. Both George W. Bush and Christine Todd Whitman were pioneers of alternative energy policy at the state level, as governors of Texas and New Jersey respectively, before they went on to obstruct environmental policy at the federal level as president and head of the EPA (Rabe, 2004). Texas, a state that produces reliably conservative and anti-environmental contingents at the national level, is a leader in wind energy.

Monica Prasad 12 (Monica Prasad is a professor of sociology at Northwestern, June 2012, accessed 8/3/21, “State-level renewable electricity policies and reductions in carbon emissions”, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421512001413)AGabay

state policies are surprising in many ways. For example, they are often driven by bipartisan coalitions and lower visibility, they seem to have escaped the partisan wrangling that has limited national-level policy

States avoid partisan fights---lower visibility flies under the radar

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

This paper identifies the dependent and independent variables before moving into a brief history of the State Partnership Program and its precursor, the Norwegian Reciprocal Exchange Program. The focus will then be on the implications of using reserve forces in military exchange programs, looking specifically at Norway and Poland as examples of countries involved in partnership programs. The dependent variable of this case study is the level of perceived aggression the United States displays through involvement in military exchange programs. This variable can be measured in relative terms by examining the actions taken by opposing states to try and restore the balance of power, and thus their own security. The U.S.’s State Partnership Program, created during the time of the Soviet Union collapse, reached out to former Soviet countries as well as other countries that had been independent, yet still under the Russian sphere of influence. Several independent variables play into the level of perceived aggression. First is the geographical location of the state with whom the U.S. partnered. Soviet Russia would be less 4 concerned by a military partnership with Norway, which is further away from Russia and is more economically and culturally tied to Western Europe, than it would be with a partnership with Poland, which is adjacent to the Soviet Union and is of ideological importance to the union. Additionally, the kind of military force that is used in a military exchange can affect the perceived level of aggression. For example, active duty forces or Special Forces would be seen as extremely threatening by Russia, especially in the wake of the Cold War. Conversely, the use of National Guard or Reserve forces would be less threatening, since these are part-time military members.

Ahlness 14, Associate of Arts degree from Century College, Ahlness plans to continue her work as a graduate student in Political science upon graduation from MSU-Mankato. After earning her doctoral degree, she anticipates participating in an international volunteer organization, followed by teaching either International Relations or Scandinavian studies at the university level. (THE STATE PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM: STATES AS GLOBAL ACTORS THE IMPLICATIONS OF NONAGGRESSIVE NATIONAL FORCES, Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato, 14.1)

Several variables play into the level of perceived aggression the kind of military force that is used in a military exchange can affect the perceived level of aggression For example, active duty forces would be seen as extremely threatening by Russia Conversely, the use of National Guard or Reserve forces would be less threatening, since these are part-time military members

Counterplan avoids Russian blowback

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

Why does SPP matter? With threats growing and budgets under pressure from COVID-19, the Pentagon needs a cost-efficient way to build stronger relationships and military capacity with partner nations in each combatant command. Ideally, this approach would not place additional burdens on the active duty U.S. military and would operate largely below the radar of America’s adversaries and competitors. That is where the SPP excels. But the program is overdue for a strategic assessment to ensure it is appropriately resourced and properly focused on the objectives of the National Defense Strategy, which refocuses the US military from counterinsurgency to strategic competition against Russia and China.

Bradley Bowman & Thomas Pledger, 20 (Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Maj. Thomas G. Pledger is a visiting military analyst at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 8-10-2020, accessed on 6-30-2022, Breaking Defense, “Modernize The National Guard’s State Partnership Program”, https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/modernize-the-national-guards-state-partnership-program/, HBisevac)

Pentagon needs a cost-efficient way to build stronger relationships and military capacity with partner nations Ideally approach would not place burdens on the military and would operate below the radar of America’s adversaries and competitors That is where the SPP excels

The counterplan solves without initiating foreign blowback

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

Using the National Guard as a primary tool to develop relationships with potential allies is a diplomatic multiplier, and its utility across the various domains of diplomacy was recognized after only a few years of effort. In a 2002 article in the Washington Quarterly, former Colorado Governor Bill Owens touted the State Partnership Program as a proven approach for “strategic democracy building.” 23 Governor Owens was one of the first to document the SPP’s “quiet achievements” in facilitating the development of emerging democracies beyond the typical military-to-military exchanges. For perhaps the first time, under SPP state governments became involved in helping the federal government in achieving diplomatic goals abroad.

James N. Williams, 12 (Lieutenant Colonel James N. Williams, Army National Guard, March 2012, accessed on 6-30-2022, United States Army War Project Strategy Research Project, “The National Guard State Partnership Program: Element of Smart Power”, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA562110.pdf, HBisevac) **edited for gendered language**

Using the National Guard as a primary tool to develop relationships with allies is a diplomatic multiplier S P P proven approach for strategic democracy building SPP’s quiet achievements in facilitating the development of emerging democracies beyond the typical military-to-military exchanges under SPP state governments became involved in helping the federal government in achieving diplomatic goals abroad

State SPP security cooperation solves better than federal action.

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Michigan (7-week)

Counterplans

2022

SPP countries demonstrated success in reforming their defense sectors and enabling and facilitating enduring broad-spectrum security relationships. The outcomes have been dramatic, with partners supporting U.S. and international security objectives through training received and transformation performed through SPP. SPP partners made significant contributions to collective defense efforts in NATO by supporting peace and stability operations in the Balkans and uniting in a fight against violent extremism through support to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003. For example, Slovenia assisted the U.S. and NATO in its efforts to stabilize and bring peace 8 to the Balkans by providing troops in support of Stabilization Force (SFOR) in the 1990s. SPP countries’ support of the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan clearly demonstrated the ability of partners to provide military forces to operations. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, thirty-eight other countries joined this “coalition of the willing” to help depose Saddam Hussein and topple his regime.21 Twenty-five of the troopcontributing states were SPP partners, which made up 65.7% of the troop contributing countries to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). 22 For example, Thailand, partnered with the state of Washington, and the Philippines, partnered with Hawaii, provided military support for reconstruction efforts in Iraq while other SPP countries provided combat brigades. When the country of Georgia deployed one of its brigades to Iraq in 2007, several Soldiers from the Georgia Army National Guard deployed along with them and served with them throughout their deployment.23 This Georgian brigade’s capability to deploy and fight stemmed from a concerted SPP effort to develop their sustainment capabilities during the year prior. After returning from a deployment to Iraq in 2006, a fortuitous visit by the Brigade Commander of the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) of the Georgia Army National Guard on a training visit to Tbilisi, Georgia, in early 2007 led to the development of a four month training program from April through July 2007 to improve the combat service support capabilities of the Georgian Army. In conjunction with the Georgia Security and Stability Operations Program (GSSOP II), the 48th IBCT deployed teams of National Guardsmen to Georgia to train the Georgians in supply and maintenance operations.24 In addition to the country of Georgia, Poland also provided 9 combat units to support the war effort in Iraq. In both instances, the brigades from these countries deployed along with embedded Soldiers from their partnered states in the form of Bilateral Embedded Support Teams (BEST). In these two cases, Illinois and Georgia each deployed Soldiers alongside their partnered countries.25 In several instances, the troop-contributing SPP countries would only provide troops if their SPP partners from the U.S. accompanied them.26 Opportunities like this enabled the U.S. military to be reinforced with troops from an unexpected source, and these sources were even more heavily relied upon during the war in Afghanistan. As of 2012, fifty separate countries contributed combat forces to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan,27 and SPP countries made up a significant percentage of the overall troop contributing nations to ISAF – twenty-three out of the forty eight troop contributing nations.28 Collectively, SPP countries provided over 8,200 troops to ISAF.29 For example, Poland, partnered with Illinois, provided an entire Battle Group that served and fought as a battle space owner in Afghanistan. Other countries participating in the SPP, such as Jordan, Macedonia, and Mongolia, also provided troops in support of ISAF for purposes such as force protection.30 Several other SPP countries provided troop support to ISAF in the form of Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams (OMLTs), which made up a large percentage of these SPP country troop contributions. The OMLTs were responsible for embedding with and training and mentoring the Afghan National Army (ANA).31 Latvia, the very first SPP country, along with its partnered state, Michigan, deployed the first BEST OMLT to Afghanistan in support of OEF in 2008.32 In all, twenty-four separate countries provided OMLTs to Afghanistan in support of ISAF 10 efforts to develop and train the ANA, and of those twenty four OMLT providing countries, ten are countries participating in the SPP. The contemporary historical examples of partnership extended beyond the war fighting role and also included examples of supporting partner capacity to build and recover, developing professional forces, and facilitating enduring relationships. These contemporary examples of SPP partnership activities and outcomes are much more representative of civilian diplomacy and the whole of government approach to partnering. These examples include port security, humanitarian assistance, defense support to civil authorities (DSCA), government and economic development, and combating transnational criminal activities in support of the four SPP goals. “The unique civil-military nature of the National Guard allows the SPP to engage in a wide range of Security Cooperation activities, such as: Disaster Preparedness, Humanitarian Assistance, Defense Support of Civil Authorities, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear, Cyber, Reserve Component Reform, Counterdrug, Border/Port Security, and Public/Private Partnerships.”33 Serbia provides an example. In 1999, the United States and NATO conducted offensive air operations against Serbian forces as a part of Operation Allied Force in order to deter Serbian aggression in Kosovo.34 Over a decade later, the relationship between Serbia and the United States evolved into a much more peaceful one. Serbia has since entered into an SPP agreement with the National Guard in the state of Ohio. In 2010, non-commissioned officers (NCOs) from the Serbian Army graduated from the Ohio National Guard NCO academy, and these partners’ military–to-military engagements recently included humanitarian missions to rehabilitate several schools 11 damaged during a powerful 5.3 magnitude earthquake in November 2010.35 This partnership, which began in 2006, is more than just a military to military partnership. Their goals are also to further develop the cultural bonds between the United States and Serbia through enhanced engagements between universities and youth programs. In September 2010, Ambassador Mary Burce Warlick, U.S. Ambassador to Serbia, praised the SPP for playing a critical role in improving U.S. and Serbian relations.36 SPP also facilitated private organizations and business engagements as well as government to government engagements as it developed enduring relationships. The SPP effectively built relationships at the local level and linked local U.S. leaders with national leaders from other countries, such as Senegal. After expressing a desire to develop their country’s ability to conduct crisis management and search and rescue operations, as well as improve the professionalism of their NCO corps and develop family support programs, Senegalese leaders entered into a SPP agreement with the State of Vermont in 2009.37 In September 2010, President Abdoulaye Wade, President of Senegal, visited Burlington, Vermont, and remarked that he will take back to Senegal a better understanding of the state’s economic model as well as a better understanding of the relationship and interaction between business, services, and tourism and their contributions to quality of life.38 SPP built partner capacity to deter, prevent, and prepare for threats to trade and commerce. Thailand and its partner state, Washington, conducted several port security exercises between 2003 and 2012. These exercises focused on responding to hazard material and WMD incidents, crisis management, port security, and disaster planning and included participants from the Royal Thai Army, Navy, and Marine Department, as 12 well as the Thai National Security Council and other civilian agencies along with members of the Washington Air and Army National Guard and other U.S. civilian participants.39 This partnership improved port security operations at the Port of Tacoma in Tacoma, Washington, which handles a significant amount of cargo exported from port at Leam Chabang in Thailand every year.40 These examples clearly demonstrate the SPP’s ability to achieve success in the goal of building partnership capacity to deter, prevent, and prepare for natural/manmade disasters with emphasis on civil-military and interagency cooperation while also building partnership capacity to respond and recover from attack and man-made disasters. It also clearly develops the ability to support partners’ defense reform and professional development, as well as enabling and facilitating enduring broad-spectrum security relationships in support of the DoS and other lead agencies. While each of these examples provides far more concrete evidence of the SPP’s effectiveness, military and civilian leadership testimony provides additional support to the effectiveness of the program. During a speech delivered on July 17, 2012, at a National Guard Symposium on Mutual Security Cooperation, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, stressed the imperative for major powers to develop partnerships that work within a “competitive fiscal and security environment” in order to confront the decentralized threats of the 21st century. He went on to praise the SPP for its ability to provide continuity in relationships among the leaders of the partnered states and countries. He also remarked, “the State Partnership Program has reaped benefits far 13 beyond what was initially conceived” and added that it was “a modest investment for a pretty substantial return.”41 During recent testimony regarding their GCC Defense Posture Statements before the Senate Armed Services Committee, several GCC Commanders testified regarding the effectiveness of the program. They praised the value of the SPP within their respective GCCs, and requested additional SPP support. For example, in 2009, General Brantz Craddock, Commander, USEUCOM, testified that the SPP “continues to be one of our most effective [build partner capacity] programs…the unique civil-military nature of the National Guard allows it to participate actively in a wide range of security cooperation activities and help bridge the gap between DoD and DoS responsibilities…”42 His successor, Admiral James Stavradis, also testified in 2012 that the program is “one of European Command’s most unique, cost effective, and essential international engagement tools…that support key Theater Security Cooperation objectives and preserve and develop these important strategic partnerships...”43 The Commander of USAFRICOM, General Carter F. Hamm testified in 2012 that the SPP was an “important component” of USAFRICOM’s “efforts to strengthen defense capabilities of African partners”.44 He further added that he had asked NGB to add two additional partnerships and consider further expansion of the program.45 U.S. civilian leadership also provide testament to the success of the SPP. “In a 2010 survey of Ambassadors to USEUCOM SPP nations: 6 said SPP is their most significant program; 14 said SPP is a significant program that adequately supports their objectives; and 1 said SPP adequately supports their objectives, but would like to see increased engagements.”46

Dickerson 13, Lieutenant Colonel @ US National Guard (Jeffrey, “Shifting State Partnership Program Resources to the Asia-Pacific Region,” https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA589403.pdf)//BB

SPP countries demonstrated success in reforming their defense sectors and enabling and facilitating enduring broad-spectrum security relationships The outcomes have been dramatic with partners supporting U.S. and international security objectives through training received and transformation performed through SPP SPP partners made significant contributions to collective defense efforts in NATO contemporary historical examples of partnership extended beyond the war fighting role and also included examples of supporting partner capacity to build and recover, developing professional forces, and facilitating enduring relationships The unique civil-military nature of the National Guard allows the SPP to engage in a wide range of Security Cooperation activities such as Biological and Public/Private Partnerships the State Partnership Program has reaped benefits far beyond what was initially conceived” and added that it was “a modest investment for a pretty substantial return several GCC Commanders praised the value of the SPP SPP “continues to be one of our most effective [build partner capacity] programs…the unique civil-military nature of the National Guard allows it to participate actively in a wide range of security cooperation activities and help bridge the gap between DoD and DoS responsibilities the program is “one of European Command’s most unique, cost effective, and essential international engagement tools that support key Theater Security Cooperation objectives and preserve and develop these important strategic partnerships In a 2010 survey of Ambassadors 6 said SPP is their most significant program; 14 said SPP is a significant program that adequately supports their objectives

There’s an empirical record of complete and total success

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2022

As the nation confronts its current economic crisis, the Department of Defense faces budget reductions between four hundred billion and one trillion dollars over the next ten years. Yet in spite of constrained resources the United States must continue to meet National Security challenges in this “era of persistent conflict”. The strategy to meet these challenges and overcome diminished capacity will rely more heavily than ever on security cooperation, engagement and building partner capacities. Gaining security cooperation and aiding partner nations to develop their capabilities is a way to shape the environment, deter conflict and assure access and assistance in the event of conflict. For nearly two decades, the National Guard State Partnership Program has done all of this and more. Since long before the term “smart power” was coined, the State Partnership Program has evolved, almost imperceptibly, as a means to employ a “whole of society” approach to building partner capacity. This paper will demonstrate that the State Partnership Program is an effective and economical tool that facilitates a bridge between military engagement and civilian diplomacy in support of the National Security Policies of the United States.

James N. Williams, 12 (Lieutenant Colonel James N. Williams, Army National Guard, March 2012, accessed on 6-30-2022, United States Army War Project Strategy Research Project, “The National Guard State Partnership Program: Element of Smart Power”, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA562110.pdf, HBisevac)

Gaining security cooperation to develop capabilities is a way to shape the environment deter conflict and assure access and assistance in the event of conflict the National Guard S P P has done all of this and more S P P has evolved as a means to employ a whole of society approach to building partner capacity S P P is an effective and economical tool that facilitates a bridge between military engagement and civilian diplomacy

The CPs whole of society approach solves better.

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Within these four goals, the SPP facilitates the development of a regional and global environment congruent with the U.S. national interests of security, prosperity, values, and international order. 21 In addition, these goals facilitate a stable global environment that influences U.S. partners and potentially adversaries away from negative and disruptive approaches.

William Spence, 13 (Lieutenant Colonel William Spence, Idaho Army National Guard, 2013, accessed on 7-2-2022, United States Army War College, “National Guard State Partnership Program: Building Partnership Capacity”, https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=815338, HBisevac)

SPP and international order goals facilitate a stable global environment that influences U.S. partners and adversaries away from uptive approaches

Solves security cooperation---includes defense management building AND innovation.

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“Stability makes the National Guard uniquely suited to conduct these partnership missions,” he said. “Guardsmen [soldiers] typically remain in their states during their entire term of service, unlike our active-duty brethren who move every few years. This constancy creates trust through long-term associations that last decades.”

Zach Sheely, 6-3 (Sgt. 1st Class Zach Sheely, National Guard Bureau, 6-3-2022, accessed on 7-1-2022, United States Army, “National Guard Leaders Emphasize Value of State Partnership Program”, https://www.army.mil/article/257248/national_guard_leaders_emphasize_value_of_state_partnership_program, HBisevac) **edited for gendered language**

Stability makes the National Guard uniquely suited to conduct partnership soldiers remain in their states during their entire term of service This constancy creates trust through long-term associations that last decades

National Guard provides credible commitments AND partnerships.

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2022

State and local governments are arguably seen as representing the U.S. government abroad in a more official capacity than U.S. non-state actors. The governments of these localities are democratically elected and so it is more likely that they will be seen as acting on behalf of the American people. Additionally, the federal government generally has a greater ability to control the actions of these localities than non-state actors. Therefore, there is a greater chance that nonintervention by the federal government to stop offensive activity will be seen as federal endorsement of such activity. Such logic though should caution against court intervention in these cases rather than encourage it. If localities' actions damage U.S. foreign policy interests, the federal government can easily preempt the state or local policies in question. Further, with the world's increased interconnectedness, it is more likely that if a foreign government takes offense to a locality's policy it can discriminate between the policy of the locality and the policy of the federal government. n155

Robinson 7 – JD @ Yale (Nick, “Citizens Not Subjects: U.S. Foreign Relations Law and the Decentralization of Foreign Policy,” Akron Law Review, Lexis)//BB

State and local governments are seen as representing the U.S. government abroad in a official capacity The governments of these localities are democratically elected and so it is more likely that they will be seen as acting on behalf of the American people nonintervention by the federal government to stop activity will be seen as federal endorsement

States are viewed as representatives of the federal government

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This year alone, the National Guard has assisted U.S. Southern Command in accomplishing theater campaign objectives by conducting 30 engagements in eight countries, with another 12 scheduled this fiscal year. These exchanges include small-unit security, maritime search and rescue, noncommissioned officer leadership development, public affairs, small-unit patrolling, logistics and sustainment, and cyber protection.

Zach Sheely, 6-3 (Sgt. 1st Class Zach Sheely, National Guard Bureau, 6-3-2022, accessed on 7-1-2022, United States Army, “National Guard Leaders Emphasize Value of State Partnership Program”, https://www.army.mil/article/257248/national_guard_leaders_emphasize_value_of_state_partnership_program, HBisevac)

the National Guard has assisted U.S. Southern Command in accomplishing theater campaign objectives exchanges include unit security maritime search and rescue public affairs unit patrolling logistics and sustainment and cyber protection

They have the experience.

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Another aspect of the SPP that distinguishes it from similar engagements by active component forces stems from the National Guard’s dual status as both a state and a federal organization. In its federal status, the National Guard is a reserve component of the Army and the Air Force and is trained, organized, and equipped to conduct a wide spectrum of military activities. However, the National Guard is also the organized militia of each state, and, in that capacity, routinely operates under the control of its state governor, typically to respond to disasters and civil disorders. National Guard personnel in a “Title 32 status” have also conducted counterdrug, border security, and airport security missions. The practical expertise the National Guard has acquired in these areas may be complemented by the skills that National Guard personnel develop in their civilian occupations. For example, a National Guard Soldier may serve as an infantryman in his Guard unit, but may be a state trooper, paramedic, or emergency dispatcher in his civilian job. The expertise that National Guard units have acquired in conducting these types of operations are often in demand among foreign militaries, which frequently play a major role in their nation’s disaster response plans, and may play significant roles in their nation’s border security, civil disorder, or counterdrug operations. Although active component forces have significant expertise in these areas, as evidenced, for example, by the role active component personnel played in responding to the earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Pakistan in 2010, it is typically not exercised with the frequency of National Guard forces and, in certain cases, is intentionally limited by law.

CALL 18 (The Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Security Cooperation and the State Partnership Program,” https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/publications/19-01%20State%20Partnership%20Program%20%28Lo%20Res%29.pdf)//BB

Another aspect of the SPP that distinguishes it from similar engagements by active component forces stems from the National Guard’s dual status as both a state and a federal organization National Guard personnel in a “Title 32 status” have also conducted counterdrug, border security, and airport security missions The practical expertise the National Guard has acquired in these areas may be complemented by the skills that National Guard personnel develop in their civilian occupations The expertise that National Guard units have acquired in conducting these types of operations are often in demand among foreign militaries

Partner nations say yes

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With its focus on decision making in Washington, foreign policy analysis has overlooked the important role state governments are now playing in U.S. foreign policy. Under the U.S. federal system, states have a significant policy role, but one largely limited to domestic and economic matters. Foreign and defense policy are assumed to remain the responsibility of the federal government. Yet, states are getting more and more involved in these matters, and their impact is growing. Aside from the now routine gubernatorial international trade mission, state governments have adopted outspoken positions on issues such as the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, human rights abuses in Nigeria and Burma, use of Holocaust-era bank accounts, and war with Iraq. State national guards have come to play an essential role in recent overseas military campaigns and homeland security operations. This growth of international activity by states remains underappreciated due to existing approaches to foreign policy analysis.

Peter Howard, 4 (Peter Howard is the economics director at Policy Integrity, and a former economic fellow, May 2004, accessed on 7-2-2022, International Studies Perspectives, Vol. 5, No. 2, “The Growing Role of States in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Case of the State Partnership Program”, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44218880?seq=1, HBisevac)

fo po analysis has overlooked the important role state governments play in U.S. foreign policy states have a significant policy role Foreign defense policy assumed to remain the responsibility of the federal government states are getting more and more involved in these matters State national guards have come to play an essential role in recent overseas military campaigns

SPP actions spill over.

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The mission of the State Partnership program is to “enhance combatant commander’s ability to establish enduring civil-military relationships that improve longterm international security while building partnership capacity across all levels of society.” 17 Essentially, the program pairs the militaries of partner nations with the National Guard of a particular U.S. state. The original intent of the program was to develop relationships and to assist in reforming the defense establishments of the former Soviet states, primarily through military-to-military engagements which also provide valuable training for the National Guard.18

James N. Williams, 12 (Lieutenant Colonel James N. Williams, Army National Guard, March 2012, accessed on 6-30-2022, United States Army War Project Strategy Research Project, “The National Guard State Partnership Program: Element of Smart Power”, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA562110.pdf, HBisevac)

mission of the S P p is to enhance combatant commander’s ability to establish enduring civil-military relationships that improve longterm international security while building partnership capacity

The CP achieves the same objectives as security cooperation.

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Expand the National Guard’s State Partnership Program in sub-Saharan Africa. The State Partnership Program involves partnerships between individual (U.S.) states and foreign nations through which states’ National Guard units conduct formal engagements and training with partner nations’ armed forces, law enforcement, emergency response personnel, and other organizations. The State Partnership Program contains only 13 partnerships among the 46 sub-Saharan countries in Africa, a region likely containing hotspots for fifth wave threats associated with New Tribalism and Jihadist groups.20 New partnerships with fragile states demonstrating institutional capacity can strengthen security cooperation efforts by establishing long-term relationships fostering professionalization of armed forces, partner capacity, and interoperability. Furthermore, upper echelons of National Guard units can enhance defense institution building at the operational defense sector level by providing partner nation counterparts with assistance and expertise in readiness, command and control, logistics, and operational planning.21

Matthew Hughes, 21 (Captain Matthew Hughes, is a U.S. Army foreign area officer and holds a master of arts in intelligence studies from American Military University and holds a bachelor of science degree from the U.S. Military Academy, March 2021, accessed on 7-1-2022, US Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, “Fifth Wave Terrorism: Threats, Implications, and Risk Management for U.S. Forces”, https://www.ikn.army.mil/apps/MIPBW/MIPB_Features/Hughes.pdf, HBisevac)

S P P involves partnerships between individual states and foreign nations through which states’ National Guard units conduct formal engagements and training with partner nations’ armed forces New partnerships strengthen security cooperation efforts by establishing long-term relationships fostering professionalization of armed forces partner capacity and interoperability National Guard units can enhance defense institution building at the operational defense sector level by providing assistance and expertise in readiness command and control logistics and operational planning

The counterplan accesses all of their solvency mechanisms.

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The SPP’s success centers on the National Guard’s ability to provide trained and professional Soldiers and Airmen who bring civilian and disaster/ emergency response skillsets to their engagement with partner nations. These capabilities, along with the authority to engage with security and disaster/emergency response organizations in addition to the partner nation’s military, provide a uniquely useful security cooperation tool for the geographic combatant commanders. As the SPP grows, it has become increasingly integrated in combatant commanders’ theater security cooperation strategies, as well as U.S. ambassadors’ integrated country plans. Multiple current and former combatant commanders and U.S. ambassadors have testified to the benefits of the program, as well as the access, influence, and insight it provides. The future vision of U.S. security cooperation that integrates multi-agency and multinational entities in a whole-of-society approach, where the American military engages partners and allies through civic, economic, and societal frameworks to help them participate in bolstering global security, lies within the SPP. The National Guard remains committed to providing effective, relevant security cooperation through the enduring relationships created by the SPP. The lessons learned captured by CALL are an essential step in that journey.

CALL 18 (The Center for Army Lessons Learned, “Security Cooperation and the State Partnership Program,” https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/publications/19-01%20State%20Partnership%20Program%20%28Lo%20Res%29.pdf)//BB

The SPP’s success centers on the National Guard’s ability to provide trained and professional Soldiers As the SPP grows, it has become increasingly integrated in combatant commanders’ theater security cooperation strategies, as well as U.S. ambassadors’ integrated country plans Multiple current and former combatant commanders and U.S. ambassadors have testified to the benefits of the program The future vision of U.S. security cooperation that integrates multi-agency and multinational entities in a whole-of-society approach, where the American military engages partners and allies through civic, economic, and societal frameworks to help them participate in bolstering global security, lies within the SPP

It is security cooperation

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The state partnership program has also proved a cost-effective, small-footprint tool for supporting security cooperation goals of the geographic combatant commands and our diplomatic community. Over the last 24 years, we have established 73 partnerships with 79 countries across all six geographic commands. These partnerships have brought diplomatic and military engagement via the national guard elements resulting in individual, professional, and institutional contacts and relationships, enhancing influence and trust on a worldwide basis.

Anderson 19, former Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (James, “Shifting the Burden Responsibly: Oversight and Accountability in U.S. Security Sector Assistance,” CSIS, https://www.csis.org/analysis/shifting-burden-responsibly-oversight-and-accountability-us-security-sector-assistance-0)//BB

The state partnership program has also proved a cost-effective tool for supporting security cooperation goals of the geographic combatant commands and our diplomatic community Over the last 24 years, we have established 73 partnerships with 79 countries across all six geographic commands These partnerships have brought diplomatic and military engagement via the national guard elements resulting in individual, professional, and institutional contacts and relationships, enhancing influence and trust worldwide

CP solves. It’s security cooperation that effectively solves any “US Key” argument

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Here there are echoes of Freud's (1916) idea of 'anticipatory mourning' and the associated attacks and spoiling that we will study below (see p. 72). However, for Searles the natural world is not just a space for externalizing our conflicts. Rather, a healthy relationship to the non-human environment is essential for human psychological well-being. Furthermore, one consequence of our alienation from nature is an omnipotent longing for fusion with our technology, and a powerful anxiety should this fully occur.

Dodds 12 [Joseph, MPhil, Psychoanalytic Studies, Sheffield University, UK, MA, Psychoanalytic Studies, Sheffield University, UK BSc, Psychology and Neuroscience, Manchester University, UK, Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) of the British Psychological Society (BPS), and a member of several other professional organizations such as the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos, p. 70]

, a healthy relationship to the non-human environment is essential for human psychological well-being. one consequence of our alienation from nature is an omnipotent longing for fusion with our technology

Emerging tech cooperation is an expression of the death drive – that causes projection of our fears onto the human and non-human world to justify their annihilation

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Kritiks

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On the level of common sense, this opposition is not symmetrical. What thinking person would not want to side with those who love life rather than death. 3 Everyone can readily understand how one might love life, but the love of death is a counterintuitive phenomenon. It seems as if it must be code language for some other desire, which is how Western leftists often view it. Interpreting terrorist attacks as an ultimately life-affirming response to imperialism and impoverishment, they implicitly reject the possibility of being in love with death. But this type of interpretation can't explain why so many suicide bombers are middle-class, educated subjects and not the most downtrodden victims of imperialist power.4 We must imagine that for subjects such as these there is an appeal in death itself. Those who emphasize the importance of death at the expense of life do so because death is the source of value. 5 The fact that life has an end, that we do not have an infinite amount of time to experience every possibility, means that we must value some things above others. Death creates hierarchies of value, and these hierarchies are not only vehicles for oppression but the pathways through which what we do matters at all. Without the value that death provides, neither love nor ice cream nor friendship nor anything that we enjoy would have any special worth whatsoever. Having an infinite amount of time, we would have no incentive to opt for these experiences rather than other ones. We would be left unable to enjoy what seems to make life most worth living. Even though enjoyment itself is an experience of the infinite, an experience of transcending the limits that regulate everyday activity, it nonetheless depends on the limits of finitude. When one enjoys, one accesses the infinite as a finite subject, and it is this contrast that renders enjoyment enjoyable. Without the limits of finitude, our experience of the infinite would become as tedious as our everyday lives (and in fact would become our everyday experience). Finitude provides the punctuation through which the infinite emerges as such. The struggle to assert the importance of death- the act of being in love with death, as bin Laden claims that the Muslim youths are - is a mode of avowing one's allegiance to the infinite enjoyment that death doesn't extinguish but instead spawns.• This is exactly why Martin Heidegger attacks what he sees as our modem inauthentic relationship to death. In Being and Time Heidegger sees our individual death as an absolute limit that has the effect of creating value for us. As he puts it, "With death, Dasein stands before itself in its own most potentiality-for-being. This is a possibility in which the issue is nothing less than Dasein's Being·in·the-world."" Without the anticipation of our own death, we flit through the world and fail to take up fully an attitude of care, the attitude most appropriate for our mode of being, according to Heidegger. Nothing really matters to those who have not recognized the approach of their own death. By depriving us of an authentic relationship to death, an ideology that proclaims life as the only value creates a valueless world where nothing matters to us. But of course the partisans of life are not actually eliminating death itself. They simply privilege life over death and see the world in terms of life rather than death, which would seem to leave the value-creating power of death intact. But this is not what happens. By privileging life and seeing death only in terms of life, we change the way we experience the world. Without the mediation that death provides, the system of pure life becomes a system utterly bereft of value.• We can see this in the two great systems of modernity- science and capitalism. Both modern science and capitalism are systems structured around pure life.• Neither recognizes any ontological limit but instead continually embarks on a project of constant change and expansion. The scientific quest for knowledge about the world moves forward without regard for humanitarian or ethical concerns, which is why ethicists incessantly try to reconcile scientific discoveries with morality after the fact. After scientists develop the ability to clone, for instance, we realize what cloning portends for our sense of identity and attempt to police the practice. After Oppenheimer helps to develop the atomic bomb, he addresses the world with pronouncements of its evil. But this rearguard action has nothing to do with science as such. Oppenheimer the humanist is not Oppenheimer the scientist.10 The same dynamic is visible with capitalism. As an economic system, it promotes constant evolution and change just as life itself does. Nothing can remain the same within the capitalist world because the production of value depends on the creation of the new commodity, and even the old commodities must be constantly given new forms or renewed in some way.11 Capitalism produces crises not because it can't produce enough- crises of scarcity dominate the history of the noncapitalist world, not the capitalist one - but because it produces too much. The crisis of capitalism is always a crisis of overproduction. The capitalist economy suffocates from too much life, from excess, not from scarcity or death. Both science and capitalism move forward without any acknowledged limit, which is why they are synonymous with modernity." Modernity emerges with the bracketing of death's finitude and the belief that there is no barrier to human possibility." The problem with the exclusive focus on life at the expense of death is that it never finds enough life and thus remains perpetually dissatisfied. The limit of this project is, paradoxically, its own infinitude. It evokes what Hegel calls the bad infinite - an infinite that is wrongly conceived as having no relation at all to the finite. We succumb to the bad infinite when we pursue an unattainable object and fail to see that the only possible satisfaction rests in the pursuit itself. The bad infinite - the infinite of modernity- depends on a fundamental misrecognition. We continue on this path only as long as we believe that we might attain the final piece of the puzzle, and yet this piece is constitutively denied us by the structure of the system itself. We seek the commodity that would finally bring us complete satisfaction, but dissatisfaction is built into the commodity structure, just as obsolescence is built into the very fabric of our cars and computers. Like capitalism, scientific inquiry cannot find a final answer: beneath atomic theory we find string theory, and beneath string theory we find something else. In both cases, the system prevents us from recognizing where our satisfaction lies; it diverts our focus away from our activity and onto the goal that we pursue. In this way, modernity produces the dissatisfaction that keeps it going. But it also produces another form of dissatisfaction that wants to arrest its forward movement. The further the project of modernity moves in the direction of life, the more forcefully the specter of fundamentalism will make its presence felt. The exclusive focus on life has the effect of producing eruptions of death. As the life-affirming logic of science and capitalism structures all societies to an increasing extent, the space for the creation of value disappears. Modernity attempts to construct a symbolic space where there is no place for death and the limit that death represents. As opposed to the closed world of traditional society, modernity opens up an infinite universe.14 But this infinite universe is established through the repression of finitude. Explosions of fundamentalist violence represent the return of what modernity's symbolic structure cannot accommodate. As Lacan puts it in his seminar on psychosis, "Whatever is refused in the symbolic order, in the sense of Verwerfung, reappears in the real." 15 Fundamentalist violence is blowback not simply in response to imperialist aggression, as the leftist common sense would have it. This violence marks the return of what modernity necessarily forecloses.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, Symploke, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE): 2013, p. 224-7]

What thinking person would not want to side with those who love life rather than death. 3 Everyone can readily understand how one might love life, but the love of death is a counterintuitive phenomenon But there is an appeal in death itself. Those who emphasize the importance of death at the expense of life do so because death is the source of value. 5 The fact that life has an end, that we do not have an infinite amount of time to experience every possibility, means that we must value some things above others. Death creates hierarchies of value, and these hierarchies are not only vehicles for oppression but the pathways through which what we do matters at all. Without the value that death provides, neither love nor ice cream nor friendship nor anything that we enjoy would have any special worth whatsoever. Having an infinite amount of time, we would have no incentive to opt for these experiences rather than other ones. We would be left unable to enjoy what seems to make life most worth living. Even though enjoyment itself is an experience of the infinite, an experience of transcending the limits that regulate everyday activity, it nonetheless depends on the limits of finitude. When one enjoys, one accesses the infinite as a finite subject, and it is this contrast that renders enjoyment enjoyable. Without the limits of finitude, our experience of the infinite would become as tedious as our everyday lives the act of being in love with death bin Laden claims that the Muslim youths are - is a mode of avowing one's allegiance to the infinite enjoyment that death doesn't extinguish but instead spawns Without the anticipation of our own death, we flit through the world and fail to take up fully an attitude of care, the attitude most appropriate for our mode of being Nothing really matters to those who have not recognized the approach of their own death. By depriving us of an authentic relationship to death, an ideology that proclaims life as the only value creates a valueless world where nothing matters to us. But of course the partisans of life are not actually eliminating death itself. By privileging life and seeing death only in terms of life, we change the way we experience the world. Without the mediation that death provides, the system of pure life becomes a system utterly bereft of value Modernity emerges with the bracketing of death's finitude and the belief that there is no barrier to human possibility." The problem with the exclusive focus on life at the expense of death is that it never finds enough life and thus remains perpetually dissatisfied. The limit of this project is, paradoxically, its own infinitude We succumb to the bad infinite when we pursue an unattainable object and fail to see that the only possible satisfaction rests in the pursuit itself. The bad infinite - the infinite of modernity- depends on a fundamental misrecognition. We continue on this path only as long as we believe that we might attain the final piece of the puzzle, and yet this piece is constitutively denied us by the structure of the system itself. dissatisfaction is built into the commodity structure, it also produces another form of dissatisfaction that wants to arrest its forward movement. The further the project of modernity moves in the direction of life, the more forcefully the specter of fundamentalism will make its presence felt. The exclusive focus on life has the effect of producing eruptions of death. As the life-affirming logic of science and capitalism structures all societies to an increasing extent, the space for the creation of value disappears. Modernity attempts to construct a symbolic space where there is no place for death and the limit that death represents. As opposed to the closed world of traditional society, modernity opens up an infinite universe.14 But this infinite universe is established through the repression of finitude. Explosions of fundamentalist violence represent the return of what modernity's symbolic structure cannot accommodate Fundamentalist violence is blowback not simply in response to imperialist aggression, as the leftist common sense would have it. This violence marks the return of what modernity necessarily forecloses

Their life-affirmation culminates in fundamentalist violence – only the death drive makes life worth living

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By inserting popular culture into his writing, and himself into popular culture, Zizek enacts the way enjoyment colors or stains all thinking and acting. What this means, as I set out in detail in Chapter Three, is that there is a deep nonrational and libidinal nugget in even the most rational, formal ways of thinking. Again, it is not simply that popular culture is at the core of the theoretical enterprise of his books—it is that enjoyment is. Enjoyment is an unavoidable component of any philosophical effort (though many try to deny it). Zizek thus emphasizes the inevitable stain on philosophy, on thought, as he tries to demonstrate a way of thinking that breaks with (Zizek often uses Lacan's term traverses) the fantasy of "pure reason."

Dean 6 [Jodi, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Zizek’s Politics, Taylor & Francis: London and New York, 2006, p. xvii-xx]

Zizek enacts the way enjoyment colors or stains all thinking and acting there is a deep nonrational and libidinal nugget in even the most rational, formal ways of thinking Enjoyment is an unavoidable component of any philosophical effor he tries to demonstrate a way of thinking that breaks with the fantasy of "pure reason."

We don’t need an alternative besides our framework of analysis – the fantasy will reveal itself as long as we continue asking questions to expose their concealment of the lack – in other words, it’s your job to confuse and frustrate them via a refusal to partake in their politics

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Kritiks

2022

Difference may be isolated from the racial body in this manner because it is ultimately jouissance that grounds difference, establishing this difference through its circumscription of the fantasy object Lacan calls the object a. Most precisely, jouissance designates the pleasure that would emerge from an impossible wholeness. Lacan explains, however, that in the face of such impossibility the signifier serves as "the cause of jouissance," producing pleasure through its articulation of the fantasies of wholeness, or being, that compensate for subjective lack.14 This being, lost to the subject, is defined as a psychic sense of unity, autonomy, and individuality that the subject can construct only through the signifier's isolation of the object a, the illusory lost object that promises to return the subject to a jouissance-filled state of wholeness. In American society, this fantasy object a, I argue, is often racial identity, supporting both difference and jouissance-inducing fantasies of being. Within the fantasies of the racialized subject, this object a of race, this "object that puts itself in the place of what cannot be glimpsed of the other" and the self, serves as the "basis of being," isolating an imaginary core self that "holds the image [of the racial body] together," granting it psychic and semantic significance for the subject.15 Race, as object a, functions as what I would call after Lacan the "para-being," the "being beside," which is "substitute[ed] . . . for the being that would take flight."16 More so than the physical body, it is racial identity as founded by this illusory core being, the racial essence distinct to each racial group, that provides structure and coherence to fantasies of difference. But where this a as racial core is both illusory and thus elusive, what racial fantasies ultimately isolate as proof of the other's alterity is the other's enjoyment, which is perceived as an index of this other's jouissance, a reification of the bliss experienced by this other through access to an illusory a.

George 16 [Sheldon, Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in English, Simmons College of Arts and Sciences, Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity, Baylor University Press: Waco, TX, February 1, 2016]

Difference may be isolated from the racial body in this manner because it is ultimately jouissance that grounds difference, establishing this difference through its circumscription of the fantasy object Lacan calls the object a jouissance designates the pleasure that would emerge from an impossible wholeness. Lacan explains that in the face of such impossibility the signifier serves as "the cause of jouissance," producing pleasure through its articulation of the fantasies of wholeness that compensate for subjective lack This being, lost to the subject, is defined as a psychic sense of unity, autonomy, and individuality that the subject can construct only through the signifier's isolation of the object a, the illusory lost object that promises to return the subject to a jouissance-filled state of wholeness In American society, this fantasy object a is often racial identity supporting both difference and jouissance-inducing fantasies of being. Within the fantasies of the racialized subject this "object that puts itself in the place of what cannot be glimpsed of the other" and the self, serves as the "basis of being," isolating an imaginary core self that "holds the image [of the racial body] together," granting it psychic and semantic significance for the subject Race, as object a, functions as what I would call after Lacan the "para-being," the "being beside," which is "substitute[ed] . . . for the being that would take flight."16 More so than the physical body, it is racial identity as founded by this illusory core being, the racial essence distinct to each racial group, that provides structure and coherence to fantasies of difference what racial fantasies ultimately isolate as proof of the other's alterity is the other's enjoyment, which is perceived as an index of this other's jouissance, a reification of the bliss experienced by this other through access to an illusory a

In contemporary American society, racial identity often functions as an object a. White racial identity structures its coherence through conjuring images of mythic enjoyment experienced by black people; consequently, they become the objects of the surveillance of white racial gaze, objects whose excessive enjoyment must be curtailed, with spectacular violence of necessary.

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The old politics of waiting is therefore gradually replaced by a new politics of impatience and, if necessary, of disruption. Brashness, disruption and a new anti-decorum ethos are meant to bring down the pretence of normality and the logics of normalization in this most “abnormal” society. Steve Biko, Frantz Fanon and a plethora of black feminist, queer, postcolonial, decolonial and critical race theorists are being reloaded in the service of a new form of militancy less accommodationist and more trenchant both in form and content. The age of impatience is an age when a lot is said – all sorts of things we had hardly heard about during the last twenty years; some ugly, outrageous, toxic things, including calls for murder, atrocious things that speak to everything except to the project of freedom, in this age of fantasy and hysteria, when the gap between psychic realities and actual material realities has never been so wide, and the digital world only serves as an amplifier of every single moment, event and accident. The age of urgency is also an age when new wounded bodies erupt and undertake to actually occupy spaces they used to simply haunt. They are now piling up, swearing and cursing, speaking with excrements, asking to be heard. They speak in allegories and analogies – the “colony”, the “plantation”, the “house Negro”, the “field Negro”, blurring all boundaries, embracing confusion, mixing times and spaces, at the risk of anachronism. They are claiming all kinds of rights – the right to violence; the right to disrupt and jam that which is parading as normal; the right to insult, intimidate and bully those who do not agree with them; the right to be angry, enraged; the right to go to war in the hope of recovering what was lost through conquest; the right to hate, to wreak vengeance, to smash something, it doesn’t matter what, as long as it looks “white”. All these new “rights” are supposed to achieve one thing we are told the 1994 “peaceful settlement” did not achieve – decolonization and retributive justice, the only way to restore a modicum of dignity to victims of the injuries of yesterday and today. Demythologizing whiteness And yet, some hard questions must be asked. Why are we invested in turning whiteness, pain and suffering into such erotogenic objects? Could it be that the concentration of our libido on whiteness, pain and suffering is after all typical of the narcissistic investments so privileged by this neoliberal age? To frame the issues in these terms does not mean embracing a position of moral relativism. How could it be? After all, in relation to our history, too many lives were destroyed in the name of whiteness. Furthermore, the structural repetition of past sufferings in the present is beyond any reasonable doubt. Whiteness as a necrophiliac power structure and a primary shaper of a global system of unequal redistribution of life chances will not die a natural death. But to properly engineer its death – and thus the end of the nightmare it has been for a large portion of the humanity – we urgently need to demythologize it. If we fail to properly demythologize whiteness, whiteness – as the machine in which a huge portion of the humanity has become entangled in spite of itself – will end up claiming us. As a result of whiteness having claimed us; as a result of having let ourselves be possessed by it in the manner of an evil spirit, we will inflict upon ourselves injuries of which whiteness, at its most ferocious, would scarcely have been capable. Indeed for whiteness to properly operate as the destructive force it is in the material sphere, it needs to capture its victim’s imagination and turn it into a poison well of hatred. For victims of white racism to hold on to the things that truly matter, they must incessantly fight against the kind of hatred which never fails to destroy, in the first instance, the man or woman who hates while leaving the structure of whiteness itself intact. As a poisonous fiction that passes for a fact, whiteness seeks to institutionalize itself as an event by any means necessary. This it does by colonizing the entire realms of desire and of the imagination. To demythologize whiteness, it will not be enough to force “bad whites” into silence or into confessing guilt and/or complicity. This is too cheap. To puncture and deflate the fictions of whiteness will require an entirely different regime of desire, new approaches in the constitution of material, aesthetic and symbolic capital, another discourse on value, on what matters and why.

Mbembe 15. Achille Mbembe, “Achille Mbembe on The State of South African Political Life,” September 19, 2015, http://africasacountry.com/2015/09/achille-mbembe-on-the-state-of-south-african-politics/

The old politics of waiting is therefore gradually replaced by a new politics of impatience and, if necessary, of disruption Brashness, disruption and a new anti-decorum ethos are meant to bring down the pretence of normality and the logics of normalization in this most “abnormal” society Steve Biko, Frantz Fanon and a plethora of black feminist, queer, postcolonial, decolonial and critical race theorists are being reloaded in the service of a new form of militancy less accommodationist and more trenchant both in form and content in this age of fantasy the gap between psychic realities and actual material realities has never been so wid the digital world only serves as an amplifier The age of urgency is an age when new wounded bodies erupt and undertake to actually occupy spaces they used to simply haunt They are now piling up, swearing and cursing, speaking with excrements, asking to be heard. They speak in allegories and analogies – the “colony”, the “plantation”, the “house Negro”, the “field Negro”, blurring all boundaries, embracing confusion, mixing times and spaces, at the risk of anachronism They are claiming all kinds of rights – the right to violence; the right to disrupt and jam that which is parading as normal; the right to insult, intimidate and bully those who do not agree with them; the right to be angry, enraged; the right to go to war in the hope of recovering what was lost through conquest; the right to hate, to wreak vengeance, to smash something, it doesn’t matter what, as long as it looks “white”. All these new “rights” are supposed to achieve one thing we are told the 1994 “peaceful settlement” did not achieve – decolonization and retributive justice, the only way to restore a modicum of dignity to victims of the injuries of yesterday and today. some hard questions must be asked Why are we invested in turning whiteness, pain and suffering into such erotogenic objects Could it be that the concentration of our libido on whiteness, pain and suffering is after all typical of the narcissistic investments so privileged by this neoliberal age? To frame the issues in these terms does not mean embracing a position of moral relativism in relation to our history, too many lives were destroyed in the name of whiteness the structural repetition of past sufferings in the present is beyond any reasonable doubt. Whiteness as a necrophiliac power structure and a primary shaper of a global system of unequal redistribution of life chances will not die a natural death But to properly engineer its death – and thus the end of the nightmare it has been for a large portion of the humanity – we urgently need to demythologize it If we fail to properly demythologize whiteness, whiteness – as the machine in which a huge portion of the humanity has become entangled in spite of itself – will end up claiming us As a result of whiteness having claimed us; as a result of having let ourselves be possessed by it in the manner of an evil spirit, we will inflict upon ourselves injuries of which whiteness, at its most ferocious, would scarcely have been capable for whiteness to properly operate as the destructive force it is in the material sphere, it needs to capture its victim’s imagination and turn it into a poison well of hatred For victims of white racism to hold on to the things that truly matter, they must incessantly fight against the kind of hatred which never fails to destroy the man or woman who hates while leaving the structure of whiteness itself intact. As a poisonous fiction that passes for a fact, whiteness seeks to institutionalize itself as an event by any means necessary. This it does by colonizing the entire realms of desire and of the imagination. To demythologize whiteness, it will not be enough to force “bad whites” into silence or into confessing guilt and/or complicity. This is too cheap To puncture and deflate the fictions of whiteness will require an entirely different regime of desire, new approaches in the constitution of material, aesthetic and symbolic capital, another discourse on value, on what matters and why

The 1ac’s resistance to whiteness is contrary to its intent. The aff participates in the very mythologization of that which it set out to confront. This is because the way the 1ac imagines achieving its goal is in fact structured by the very institutionalization of whiteness it claims to fight against. Any successful politics will require a new approach to the constitution of desire and symbolic capital.

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2022

What distinguishes these critical texts are the startling ways they struggle to encounter the Uncle Tom form without reproducing it, declining to pay the inheritance tax. The postsentimental does not involve an aesthetic disruption to the contract sentimentality makes between its texts and readers -that proper reading will lead to better feeling and therefore to a better self. What changes is the place of repetition in this contract, a crisis frequently thematized in formal aesthetic and generational terms. In its traditional and political modalities, the sentimental promises that in a just world a consensus will already exist about what constitutes uplift, amelioration, and emancipation, those horizons toward which empathy powerfully directs itself. Identification with suffering, the ethical response to the sentimental plot, leads to its repetition in the audience and thus to a generally held view about what transformations would bring the good life into being. This presumption, that the terms of consent are trans- historical once true feeling is shared, explains in part why emotions, especially painful ones, are so central to the world-building aspects of sentimental alliance. Postsentimental texts withdraw from the contract that presumes consent to the conventionally desired outcomes of identification and empathy. The desire for unconflictedness might very well motivate the sacrifice of surprising ideas to the norms of the world against which this rhetoric is being deployed. What, if anything, then, can be built from the very different knowledge/experience of subaltern pain? What can memory do to create conditions for freedom and justice without reconfirming the terms of ordinary subordination? More than a critique of feeling as such, the postsentimental modality also challenges what literature and storytelling have come to stand for in the creation of sentimental national subjects across an almost two-century span. Three moments in this genealogy, which differ as much from each other as from the credulous citation of Uncle Tom's Cabin we saw in The King and I and Dimples, will mark here some potential within the arsenal that counters the repetition compulsions of sentimentality. This essay began with a famous passage from James Baldwin's "Everybody's Protest Novel," a much-cited essay about Uncle Tom's Cabin that is rarely read in the strong sense because its powerful language of rageful truth-telling would shame in advance any desire to make claims for the tactical efficacy of suffering and mourning in the struggle to transform the United States into a postracist nation. I cited Baldwin's text to open this piece not to endorse its absolute truth but to figure its frustrated opposition to the sentimental optimism that equates the formal achievement of empathy on a mass scale with the general project of democracy. Baldwin's special contribution to what sentimentality can mean has been lost in the social-problem machinery of mass society, in which the production of tears where anger or nothing might have been became more urgent with the coming to cultural dominance of the Holocaust and trauma as models for having and remembering collective social experience.20 Currently, as in traditional sentimentality, the authenticity of overwhelming pain that can be textually performed and shared is disseminated as a prophylactic against the reproduction of a shocking and numbing mass violence. Baldwin asserts that the overvaluation of such redemptive feeling is precisely a condition of that violence. Baldwin's encounter with Stowe in this essay comes amidst a general wave of protest novels, social-problem films, and film noir in the U.S. after World War Two: Gentleman's Agreement, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Best Years of Our Lives. Films like these, he says, "emerge for what they are: a mirror of our confusion, dishonesty, panic, trapped and immobilized in the sunlit prison of the American dream." They cut the complexity of human motives and self-understanding "down to size" by preferring "a lie more palatable than the truth" about the social and material effects the liberal pedagogy of optimism has, or doesn't have, on "man's" capacity to produce a world of authentic truth, justice, and freedom.21 Indeed, "truth" is the keyword for Baldwin. He defines it as "a devotion to the human being, his freedom and fulfillment: freedom which cannot be legislated, fulfillment which cannot be charted."22 In contrast, Stowe's totalitarian religiosity, her insistence that subjects "bargain" for heavenly redemption with their own physical and spiritual mortification, merely and violently confirms the fundamental abjection of all persons, especially the black ones who wear the dark night of the soul out where all can see it. Additionally, Baldwin argues that Uncle Tom's Cabin instantiates a tradition of locating the destiny of the nation in a false model of the individual soul, one imagined as free of ambivalence, aggression, or contradiction. By "human being" Baldwin means to repudiate stock identities as such, arguing that their stark simplicity confirms the very fantasies and institutions against which the sentimental is ostensibly being mobilized. This national-liberal refusal of complexity is what he elsewhere calls "the price of the ticket" for membership in the American dream.23 As the Uncle Tom films suggest, whites need blacks to "dance" for them so that they might continue disavowing the costs or ghosts of whiteness, which involve religious traditions of self-loathing and cultural traditions confusing happiness with analgesia. The conventional reading of "Everybody's Protest Novel" sees it as a violent rejection of the sentimental.24 It is associated with the feminine (Little Women), with hollow and dishonest capacities of feeling, with an aversion to the real pain that real experience brings. "Causes, as we know, are notoriously bloodthirsty," he writes.25 The politico-sentimental novel uses suffering vampirically to simplify the subject, thereby making the injunction to empathy safe for the subject. Of course there is more to the story. Baldwin bewails the senti- mentality of Richard Wright's Native Son because Bigger Thomas is not the homeopathic Other to Uncle Tom after all, but one of his "children," the heir to his negative legacy.26 Both Tom and Thomas live in a simple relation to violence and die knowing only slightly more than they did before they were sacrificed to a white ideal of the soul's simple purity, its emptiness. This addiction to the formula of redemption through violent simplification persists with a "terrible power": it confirms that U.S. minorities are constituted as Others even to themselves through attachment to the most hateful, objectified, cartoon-like versions of their identities, and that the shamed subcultures of America really are, in some way, fully expressed by the overpresence of the stereotypical image.

Berlant 98. Lauren, George M. Pullman Professor, Department of English, University of Chicago, “Poor Eliza,” American Literature, Vol. 70, No. 3, No More Separate Spheres! (Sep., 1998), Duke University Press, pg. 635-668

In its traditional and political modalities, the sentimental promises that in a just world a consensus will already exist about what constitutes uplift, amelioration, and emancipation, those horizons toward which empathy powerfully directs itself. Identification with suffering, the ethical response to the sentimental plot, leads to its repetition in the audience and thus to a generally held view about what transformations would bring the good life into being. This presumption explains why emotions, especially painful ones, are so central to the world-building aspects of sentimental alliance. The desire for unconflictedness might very well motivate the sacrifice of surprising ideas to the norms of the world against which this rhetoric is being deployed. the postsentimental modality challenges what storytelling have come to stand for in the creation of sentimental national subjects the production of tears where anger or nothing might have been became more urgent with the coming to cultural dominance of the Holocaust and trauma as models for having and remembering collective social experience in traditional sentimentality, the authenticity of overwhelming pain that can be textually performed and shared is disseminated as a prophylactic against the reproduction of a shocking and numbing mass violence. the overvaluation of such redemptive feeling is precisely a condition of that violence They cut the complexity of human motives and self-understanding "down to size" by preferring "a lie more palatable than the truth" about the social and material effects the liberal pedagogy of optimism has, or doesn't have, on "man's" capacity to produce a world of authentic truth, justice, and freedom insistence that subjects "bargain" for redemption with their own mortification, merely and violently confirms the fundamental abjection of all persons, especially the black ones who wear the dark night of the soul out where all can see it. This national-liberal refusal of complexity is what he elsewhere calls "the price of the ticket" for membership in the American dream. whites need blacks to "dance" for them so that they might continue disavowing the costs or ghosts of whiteness, which involve religious traditions of self-loathing and cultural traditions confusing happiness with analgesia. The politico-sentimental uses suffering vampirically to simplify the subject, thereby making the injunction to empathy safe for the subject This addiction to the formula of redemption through violent simplification persists with a "terrible power": it confirms that U.S. minorities are constituted as Others even to themselves through attachment to the most hateful, objectified, cartoon-like versions of their identities, and that the shamed subcultures of America really are, in some way, fully expressed by the overpresence of the stereotypical image.

Uplift and emancipation are rhetorical tools deployed in the aff’s particular mode of storytelling to produce a redemptive feeling in the listener. This pedagogy of optimism on the level of the form is actually a simplification of individual stories and participates in a political vampirism, a draining of the vital force and complexity of life in the over-presencing of imagistic representations.

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2022

Radically altering one's psychic relation to the Other, the process of self-naming I here advocate both redirects the urge to grieve the ancestor and repudiates the racialized designations through which the Other seeks to confine the subject in the steel jug of the Symbolic. What is ultimately entailed in this self-naming is the subject recognizing his or her "own image" as "a mortal cause, and griev[ing] this object" as a loss, as an emptiness around which the subject's own personality must be built as an incrementally expansive structure to contain this internal absence.32 In establishing such personality, the goal is not to escape lack but rather to ground the self within it, to, more precisely, build the self around its sustained void. Lacanian theory shows that the only way "to found wisdom [is] on lack," which presents the single viable source of self-recognition afforded the subject.33 The absent image, as container, as personality, must be cultivated and built up "ex-nihilo," from nothingness, as psychic defense against the alluring phallus and objects a that act as the decoys for desire within the confining ambit of the Symbolic.34 By recognizing this absence as the true pathway to desire, and by coming to travel this discovered path, the subject of race may not only attain the means of expressing the multiplicity of an identity and desire unhinged from the fantasy a of race, but also potentially direct him- or herself toward a goal that centers the very practice of psychoanalysis: not just a transcendence of race but a transcendence of the fundamental fantasy of recoverable loss that drives subjective and racial desire. What Lacanian theory posits is the possibility that, after the experience of actively mapping one's own relation to the fantasy object is undertaken by the subject, this "experience of the fundamental phantasy" can become "the drive" by which desire is then "agitated"; unveiled by the theory is the potential that, in cynically questioning the fantasy of race, the subject may confront the very lack that fuels all fantasy and all desire, the lack that must be subjectified as the empty core of a newly adumbrated self.35 Lacan importantly cautions that the "loop" of the subject's fantasy often must be "run through several times" before the subject abandons it. I propose, however, that because of the cynicism already central to their relation to the Symbolic, African Americans are uniquely positioned to embrace this very daunting task of transcending both race and the fundamental fantasy it supports.36

George 16 [Sheldon, Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in English, Simmons College of Arts and Sciences, Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity, Baylor University Press: Waco, TX, February 1, 2016, p]

What is ultimately entailed in this self-naming is the subject recognizing his or her "own image" as "a mortal cause, and griev[ing] this object" as a loss, as an emptiness around which the subject's own personality must be built as an incrementally expansive structure to contain this internal absence.32 In establishing such personality, the goal is not to escape lack but rather to ground the self within it, to, more precisely, build the self around its sustained void. Lacanian theory shows that the only way "to found wisdom [is] on lack," which presents the single viable source of self-recognition afforded the subject.33 The absent image, as container, as personality, must be cultivated and built up "ex-nihilo," from nothingness, as psychic defense against the alluring phallus and objects a that act as the decoys for desire within the confining ambit of the Symbolic.34 By recognizing this absence as the true pathway to desire, and by coming to travel this discovered path, the subject of race may not only attain the means of expressing the multiplicity of an identity and desire unhinged from the fantasy a of race, but also potentially direct him- or herself toward a goal that centers the very practice of psychoanalysis: not just a transcendence of race but a transcendence of the fundamental fantasy of recoverable loss that drives subjective and racial desire. What Lacanian theory posits is the possibility that, after the experience of actively mapping one's own relation to the fantasy object is undertaken by the subject, this "experience of the fundamental phantasy" can become "the drive" by which desire is then "agitated"; unveiled by the theory is the potential that, in cynically questioning the fantasy of race, the subject may confront the very lack that fuels all fantasy and all desire, the lack that must be subjectified as the empty core of a newly adumbrated self

We should adopt a position of drive, rather than desire, when confronting race. Desire is when one thinks that there is an object which can fill their lack. Drive, by contrast, affirms lack itself as constitutive of the subject- founding identity on a void that can never be filled. Three impacts: 1) This is the condition for WISDOM, according to Lacan. 2) This is the only way to overcome the fantasy of a self that can be complete or full or satisfied. 3) This is the condition for overcoming racialized desire.

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There is no path leading from the death drive to utopia. The death drive undermines every attempt to construct a utopia; it is the enemy of the good society. It is thus not surprising that political thought from Plato onward has largely ignored this psychic force of repetition and negation. But this does not mean that psychoanalytic thought concerning the death drive has only a negative value for political theorizing. It is possible to conceive of a positive politics of the death drive.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, Symploke, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE): 2013, p. 283-86]

There is no path leading from the death drive to utopia. The death drive undermines every attempt to construct a utopia It is thus not surprising that political thought from Plato onward has largely ignored this psychic force of repetition and negation. But It is possible to conceive of a positive politics of the death drive.

Embracing the drive presents the most meaningful act that the judge can endorse --- the alternative’s negativity exposes the compulsion to repeat traumatic loss and confronts social violence at its foundations

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2022

The main analytical task of these scholars has been to highlight the contested and contingent ground upon which expertise is constructed and exercised. Leander (2014) offers an excellent example of the contestation and controversies over the production of expert knowledge in the case of the 2013 Sarin gas attack in Syria. And scholars such as Büger and Villumsen (2007) have shown repeatedly how ‘facts’ are produced through a web of practices. The production relates, for example, to the network of peace researchers, US policy-makers, NATO officials and bureaucrats that stabilised the ‘democratic peace thesis’, or to the practice of quantification, expert monitoring groups, and special advisors, which generate a specific form of knowledge on piracy (Bueger 2015). Similarly, a group of security scholars – the so-called Paris School – approaches security as a professional struggle between experts (the managers of unease), who, through their bureaucratic, everyday practices and routines, define what counts as insecurity (Bigo 2002; Huysmans 2006; Bigo and Tsoukala 2008). Whether drawing on the work of Bourdieu, Foucault or Actor-Network Theory, the existing contributions tend either to reduce security experts to the ‘scientific knowledge’ and tools for‘political interests’ or to treat security experts as passive deployers of security techniques. This tendency is particularly present in the many studies of security governance through risk. Here, the attention to technologies that represent the tools for generating ‘objective’ knowledge about risks has not only pushed the experts developing, proposing the use of, or applying the technologies to the background, but has also directed the analytical lens primarily towards the production of bionic subject-positions of those being ‘risk managed’. Amoore and de Goede (2008, 9–10) call the current usage of data-driven (surveillance) technologies to identify risky bodies and bodies at risk, the ‘techno-expert deployment of risk’. Biometric technologies are the prime example of the dominant mode of risk management, and they are used to illustrate how the technologies, rather than addressing the political subject, govern bodies with the aim of controlling the future through enforcing the (political) status-quo in the present (Bell 2006; Epstein 2008). But while experts are not the focus of these analyses, the literature on security-governance-through-risk contains an opening to ask new questions about security experts. Critical risk scholars such as Aradau and van Munster (2011) argue that governing through calculation and management of the future has fostered public concern about unknowable, future catastrophes, such as terrorism and natural disasters. This increasing focus on unknowable disasters and worst-case scenarios, some scholars have suggested, renders the subject neurotic and anxious (De Goede 2008; Walklate and Mythen 2010; Fournier 2014). The neurotic subject was first discussed in the context of risk by Isin, who draws on Freudian insights to account for citizens’ acceptance of the social effects of neoliberalism. Isin (2004, 225–6) argues that the subject called upon to adjust its conduct in times of emerging risks is not ‘a rational, calculating or competent subject’ but an affective subject that needs ‘soothing, appeasing and tranquillizing’ to manage anxieties. The neurotic subject-citizen speaks and makes demands: It wants the impossible (absolute security and safety) and is presented with new solutions to manage its affects (ibid: 232). The critical security contributions that find inspiration in Isin’s work all locate anxiety and neurosis at the level of the citizens who are being risk managed and in juxtaposition to the experts and government officials that mobilise these anxieties (Fournier 2014: 315–7; De Goede 2008; Eklundh, Zevnik, and Guittet 2017). Charlotte Heath-Kelly (2018) has taken an important initial step towards moving beyond the dichotomy between experts who mobilise anxiety and the anxious subject. She examines the role of anxiety among those experts and government officials who are in a position of securitising issues and who practice security towards various threat objects. With the change in focus, she has also switched the psychoanalytic starting point from Freud to Lacan. She introduces Lacan’s divided (or split) subject and related concepts such as drive, anxiety, enjoyment, and lack and applies them to the War on Terror to understand the continuous invention of new threat objects that occurs as soon as the old ones are destroyed (ibid.). Building on Heath-Kelly’s argument that the subject repeatedly invents insecurities to avoid confronting an ontological lack/insecurity, the next section proposes to situate the subject in Lacan’s most formalised methodological matrix, his ‘Four Discourses’. Lacan’s Discourses do no refer to specific content (e.g. legal, political, medical, etc.) but can be understood as structuring different social bonds between the subject and the social field, i.e. different modes of communication through which the subject identifies. The following section introduces the divided subject and develops an analytical strategy for approaching the neurotic expert-subject through a particular social bond, Lacan’s discourse of the hysteric.

Jacobsen 20 [Jeppe T. Jacobsen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His primary focus is U.S. cyber armament, its motivation and consequences to international security. Mr. Jacobsen worked as cyber coordinator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark where he coordinated Denmark’s cyber diplomacy.; “From neurotic citizen to hysteric security expert: a Lacanian reading of the perpetual demand for US cyber defence”; Critical Studies on Security; March 1, 2020; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21624887.2020.1735830]//eleanor

‘facts’ are produced through a web of practices. The production relates , to the network of peace researchers, US policy-makers, NATO officials and bureaucrats that stabilised the ‘democratic peace thesis’, or to the practice of quantification, expert monitoring groups, and special advisors, which generate a specific form of knowledge on piracy This tendency is particularly present in the many studies of security governance through risk. the attention to technologies that represent the tools for generating ‘objective’ knowledge about risks has not only pushed the experts developing, proposing the use of, or applying the technologies to the background, but has also directed the analytical lens primarily towards the production of bionic subject-positions of those being ‘risk managed’ usage of data-driven (surveillance) technologies identify risky bodies and bodies at risk the ‘techno-expert deployment of risk’ Biometric technologies are the dominant mode of risk management the technologies, rather than addressing the political subject, govern bodies with the aim of controlling the future through enforcing the (political) status-quo in the present governing through calculation and management of the future has fostered public concern about unknowable, future catastrophes, such as terrorism and natural disasters This increasing focus on unknowable disasters and worst-case scenarios, some scholars have suggested, renders the subject neurotic and anxious the subject called upon to adjust its conduct in times of emerging risks is not ‘a rational, calculating or competent subject’ but an affective subject that needs ‘soothing, appeasing and tranquillizing’ to manage anxieties. The neurotic subject-citizen speaks and makes demands: It wants the impossible (absolute security and safety) and is presented with new solutions to manage its affects the subject repeatedly invents insecurities to avoid confronting an ontological lack/insecurity

Risk management of NATO biotechnology creates is neurotic.

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Any investment in capitalism as a system demands an investment in the idea of constant expansion. Capitalism maintains its equilibrium not by sustaining a stable level of production but through increasing production, without any notion of an end to this increase. When the capitalist system confronts an obstacle (in the form, say, of a crisis), the answer is always increasing production. The future will necessarily be more productive than the present, just as the present is more productive than the past. Reversals can only be temporary.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 163-167, 20 September 2016, MG)

Any investment in capitalism demands an investment in the idea of constant expansion. Capitalism maintains its equilibrium not by sustaining a stable level of production but through increasing production When the capitalist system confronts a crisis), the answer is always increasing production

Speculation of a growth-laden future abandons the idea of an endpoint and cedes the psyche to greed – that culminates in a “bad infinite” which leaves the subject terminally dissatisfied

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Though within the capitalist universe we tend to think of scarcity as the natural condition of humanity, many societies have existed on the earth without this threat constantly hanging over them. The original form of human society—the hunting and gathering society—was a society of abundance that dealt with only occasional bouts of scarcity rather than the constant threat that haunts us today. 1 The ease of finding food and shelter often allowed for a degree of abundance absent among all but the extremely wealthy within capitalism. But once capitalism arises, the threat of scarcity becomes the background against which exchange takes place.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 222-224, 20 September 2016, MG)

Though within the capitalist universe we tend to think of scarcity as the natural condition of humanity, many societies have existed on the earth without this threat constantly hanging over them once capitalism arises, the threat of scarcity becomes the background against which exchange takes place.

Arguing on behalf of capitalism dooms them to inevitable dissatisfaction and trauma

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First, ‘China in cyberspace’ displaces the fact that there are more uncomfortable and disavowed ‘truths’ about the cyberspace politics in the United States, ‘truths’ that are pushed to the margins of the US cyber defence discourse. Prior to the Snowden revelations, this was, for example, the fact that American privacy online is under pressure, not only from Facebook but also from the intelligence agencies’ attempt to prevent terrorism. Similarly, one can detect a process of displacement in relation to the fact that the United States’ pursuit of military superiority in cyberspace involves exploiting vulnerabilities in IT systems used by Americans as well as allies, which ultimately reproduces an environment that is technically insecure. Pushed to the margins by the Chinese fantasy is also the fact that the US cyber defence community itself is riddled with tensions, for example, over funding or who should have authority over the US cyber capabilities – that is, whether to use software exploits (cyber weapons) for intelligence (NSA) or military (US Cyber Command) purposes. Thus, ‘China in cyberspace’ is a symptom of more fundamental tensions. It plays a role as the object that prevents the US cyber defence community from confronting the fact that it is neither defending cyberspace nor is a homogenous whole. In other words, China is not only our other, it is that which enable us to keep the illusion that we are a ‘whole’ American self, and that which allows us to identify with this self. It prevents the US cyber defence community from confronting the fact that the very social field it represents is structured around an impossibility – that fulfilling a fantasy does not deliver the enjoyment it promises.

Jacobson 20 (Jeppe T. Jacobson - Assistant Professor at the Institute for Military Technology, Royal Danish Defence College, “Lacan in the US cyber defence: Between public discourse and transgressive practice”, Review of International Studies, 20 March 2020, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-international-studies/article/abs/lacan-in-the-us-cyber-defence-between-public-discourse-and-transgressive-practice/38646AE140D77651862DCD1683BFBF35, MG)

First, ‘China in cyberspace’ displaces the fact that there are more uncomfortable and disavowed ‘truths’ about the cyberspace politics in the United States, ‘truths’ that are pushed to the margins of the US cyber defence discourse one can detect a process of displacement in relation to the fact that the United States’ pursuit of military superiority in cyberspace involves exploiting vulnerabilities in IT systems used by Americans as well as allies, which ultimately reproduces an environment that is technically insecure the US cyber defence community itself is riddled with tensions, for example, over funding or who should have authority over the US cyber capabilities – that is, whether to use software exploits (cyber weapons) for intelligence (NSA) or military (US Cyber Command) purposes. Thus, ‘China in cyberspace’ is a symptom of more fundamental tensions. It plays a role as the object that prevents the US cyber defence community from confronting the fact that it is neither defending cyberspace nor is a homogenous whole. In other words, China is not only our other, it is that which enable us to keep the illusion that we are a ‘whole’ American self, and that which allows us to identify with this self. It prevents the US cyber defence community from confronting the fact that the very social field it represents is structured around an impossibility – that fulfilling a fantasy does not deliver the enjoyment it promises.

Fantasizing about a China threat in cyberspace is a move towards an infinite and impossible fantasy rooted in the logic of transgression

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The goals of security policy experts – a term used collectively here to describe independent consultants and think tankers that produce policy recommendations and advise the US Administration – keep shifting. A case in point is the extensive policy discussion on cyber deterrence. Improving deterrence of cyberattacks against the US has been a recommendation put forward by task forces and commissions at regular intervals during the Obama Administration (National Research Council 2010; CSIS 2017; DSB 2013; DSB. 2017). The Administration’s attempts to accommodate these recommendations have invariably been met by new and different sets of proposals and demands, and a reluctance on the part of experts in the cyber community to stand by previous policy proposals. By way of a brief summary, elaborated further in the body of this article: Before 2010, policy experts called for more offensive cyber capabilities to ensure a cyber deterrence posture. Around the time that the Administration provided these capabilities, the cyber deterrence problem ceased to be attributed to a cyber capability problem and was now thought to result from a lack of signalling. Shortly thereafter, the Administration responded by signalling a willingness to respond strongly to cyberattacks, at which point the expert community began calling instead for resilience in both civilian and military US networks to achieve cyber deterrence. This demand for cyber resilience was put forward in such vague terms that it is impossible to determine when it is achieved. The dependency on increasingly complex socio-technical systems in contemporary society has rendered reliance on experts unavoidable. And with their rise to ubiquity in policy circles, expertise has also become a frequent object of study in social sciences. In critical security studies, the sociological approaches have been particularly attuned to the study of expertise. Within this field, security scholars have focused largely on how the everyday practices of professional experts play a role in categorising what constitutes an insecurity – and ultimately, in (re)producing particular ‘regimes of truth’ (Bigo 2002; Berling and Bueger 2015). In so doing, these contributions see experts as the embodiments of specific forms of knowledge that is practised or articulated as part of a dominant rationality of government (or dispositif or field). This article introduces a strategy for studying security policy experts that does not reduce the expert to the embodiment of a knowledge regime or a tool for political interests. It suggests that paying attention to how the expert subject identifies with and performs its role as an expert vis-à-vis the government that takes policy decisions, advances our understanding of the expert’s role in reproducing insecurities. The article takes its cue from the writings of those critical security scholars that show how today’s risk governance has led to increasing public awareness and general concerns in society about unpredictable and catastrophic events (Aradau and van Munster 2011; Aradau, Lobo-Guerrero, and van Munster 2008). Such concerns about uncertainty, the critical security scholars argue, have not only led to the government introducing precautionary and pre-emptive strategies for governing security but has also given rise to anxious and neurotic subjects (De Goede 2008; Walklate and Mythen 2010; Eklundh, Zevnik, and Guittet 2017). Scholarly contributions within this field have so far almost exclusively diagnosed the neurotic subject among citizens being governed. In fact, the neurotic subject is treated somewhat disconnected from or even juxtaposed to the experts that implement or propose the current security governing strategies and thus can be said to mobilise collective anxieties (Fournier 2014). Experts are, apparently, unaffected by anxieties about future uncertainties. This article extends the notion of the neurotic subject to the expert, and asks: How does a reading of the expert as a neurotic subject advance the way we study the reproduction of insecurities? For answering this question, the Freudian-inspired work on the neurotic citizen by Isin (2004), which is the main inspiration for the above-mentioned turn to anxiety and neurosis in the risk literature, is a useful stepping-stone. However, the article switches the theoretical point of departure from Freud to Jacques Lacan – the latter of which enjoys increasing attention in critical security studies recently (Mandelbaum 2016; Heath-Kelly 2018; Danil 2018; Eberle 2019). To date, the Lacanian contributions within this literature have generally introduced Lacan’s notion of the divided subject – and one or a few concepts related to it – to extend the analytical power of existing critical security and IR approaches (Epstein 2011). However, Lacan offers a – largely unexplored1 – systematic strategy for locating and studying the divided subject in different social relations, his matrix of the ‘Four Discourses’ (Lacan 1998, 2007). The article zooms in on one of the four discourses, Lacan’s discourse of the hysteric, introducing it as an analytical strategy for studying policy experts as neurotic subjects. Lacan defines the Four Discourses as abstract ways to structure our communication and identification. The Hysteric Discourse, one of the four discourses, is a social bond where a neurotic subject constantly protests and demands that an ‘other’, in the position of the master signifier, delivers what the subject desires (for example, absolute security) (Fink 1995, 129–37). The article focuses on US policy experts in the field of cyber defence.2 US cyber defence is as an apt case study not only because ‘cyber’ is officially considered the biggest threat to US national security, but also because cyberspace is articulated in the US as an uncertain, unpredictable and insecure domain where governments rely on assistance from outside experts to solve problems (Dunn Cavelty 2013; Hansen and Nissenbaum 2009). As the neurotic subject is likely to emerge from uncertainty and as experts hold a privileged position in the cyber policy debate, the social bond between the US cyber defence experts and the government is an ideal case for examining the expert as a neurotic subject that communicates through the Hysteric Discourse as well as what it means for the reproduction of insecurity. Through the case study of the US cyber policy experts, the article contributes to the emerging body of critical security studies on experts. It introduces a Lacanian-inspired hysteric strategy for advancing the analysis of security experts. First, the article locates the drifting of desire in the public expert documents on cyber deterrence and argues that the US cyber policy experts’ ever-evolving and ultimately elusive demands are illustrative of a desire for a desire unfulfilled, which reproduces cyber insecurity as a national defence priority. And second, the article shows that the social bond between the cyber policy expert subject and the US government is sustained – despite the former taking up employment in the executive branch – by the subject pushing the object of desire in front of it to the point of ultimately returning to the position as outside experts. Together, the two readings illustrate a critical security strategy for studying the reproduction of insecurity through the experts’ neurotic identification as experts.

Jacobsen 20 [Jeppe T. Jacobsen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His primary focus is U.S. cyber armament, its motivation and consequences to international security. Mr. Jacobsen worked as cyber coordinator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark where he coordinated Denmark’s cyber diplomacy.; “From neurotic citizen to hysteric security expert: a Lacanian reading of the perpetual demand for US cyber defence”; Critical Studies on Security; March 1, 2020; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21624887.2020.1735830]//eleanor

The goals of security policy experts keep shifting A case in point is the extensive policy discussion on cyber deterrence. Improving deterrence of cyberattacks against the US has been a recommendation put forward by task forces and commissions at regular intervals during the Obama Administration attempts to accommodate these recommendations have invariably been met by new and different sets of proposals and demands, and a reluctance on the part of experts in the cyber community to stand by previous policy proposals Before 2010, policy experts called for more offensive cyber capabilities to ensure a cyber deterrence posture. Around the time that the Administration provided these capabilities, the cyber deterrence problem ceased to be attributed to a cyber capability problem and was now thought to result from a lack of signalling Shortly thereafter, the Administration responded by signalling a willingness to respond strongly to cyberattacks, at which point the expert community began calling instead for resilience in both civilian and military US networks to achieve cyber deterrence. This demand for cyber resilience was put forward in such vague terms that it is impossible to determine when it is achieved. with their rise to ubiquity in policy circles, expertise has also become a frequent object of study in social sciences everyday practices of professional experts play a role in categorising what constitutes an insecurity – and ultimately, in (re)producing particular ‘regimes of truth’ these contributions see experts as the embodiments of specific forms of knowledge that is practised or articulated as part of a dominant rationality of government paying attention to how the expert subject identifies with and performs its role as an expert vis-à-vis the government that takes policy decisions, advances our understanding of the expert’s role in reproducing insecurities today’s risk governance has led to increasing public awareness and general concerns in society about unpredictable and catastrophic events concerns about uncertainty have led to the government introducing precautionary and pre-emptive strategies for governing security but has also given rise to anxious and neurotic subjects How does a reading of the expert as a neurotic subject advance the way we study the reproduction of insecurities? Lacanian contributions within this literature have generally introduced Lacan’s notion of the divided subject – and one or a few concepts related to it – to extend the analytical power of existing critical security and IR approaches US cyber defence is as an apt case study not only because ‘cyber’ is officially considered the biggest threat to US national security, but also because cyberspace is articulated in the US as an uncertain, unpredictable and insecure domain where governments rely on assistance from outside experts to solve problems As the neurotic subject is likely to emerge from uncertainty and as experts hold a privileged position in the cyber policy debate, the social bond between the US cyber defence experts and the government is an ideal case for examining the expert as a neurotic subject that communicates through the Hysteric Discourse as well as what it means for the reproduction of insecurity. the US cyber policy experts’ ever-evolving and ultimately elusive demands are illustrative of a desire for a desire unfulfilled, which reproduces cyber insecurity as a national defence priority. the social bond between the cyber policy expert subject and the US government is sustained – despite the former taking up employment in the executive branch – by the subject pushing the object of desire in front of it to the point of ultimately returning to the position as outside experts.

Their understanding of “cyber threats” produces neurotic subjects, to be sacrificed on the alter of the cult of policy expertise.

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Experts supposedly offer impartially and evidence-based knowledge and lay out possible ways forward. Experts are not enmeshed in normative partisan politics. At least, US think tanks emerged in the beginning of the 20th century on this foundation (Rich 2004, 34–41). Traces of this ideal still exist, although there are clear political divisions across US think tanks today (Abelson 2018). In the ongoing policy debates on how to defend the nation in cyberspace, non-partisan task forces and commissions put forward policy recommendations based on their ‘objective’ assessment of the nature of cyberspace and the actors acting within it. One of the most iterated recommendations revolves around how to achieve credible cyber deterrence. Yet, the next subsection reviews the policy recommendations related to cyber deterrence made by commissions and task forces during the Obama Administration and in doing so, challenges the idea of experts as nothing but the embodiments of a dominant knowledge regime. The first subsection reads the relationship between policy expert and government as a hysteric social bond where cyber deterrence is kept out of reach by constantly changing demands or demands that are articulated so vaguely that they are impossible for the government to meet. The second subsection analyses the US cyber policy experts’ entry into the government as a break with the hysteric social bond that risks forcing the neurotic subject to confront its own desire, but it shows that such a move is accompanied by a constant reinvention of excuses as to why the expert-turned-master is unable to provide the cyber defence it is responsible for, ultimately leading to a definition of the object of desire as that which the subject cannot currently do: criticise and make demands. In this way, the hysteric social bond between experts who reproduce insecurities through demands for policy change and a government that seeks to accommodate these demands is sustained. The desire for a desire unfulfilled At the end of 2008, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) brought together policy experts to develop cybersecurity recommendation for the incoming president. Under the headline ‘Military Doctrine and Deterrence’, the commission report emphasised the importance of ‘the need for a credible military presence in cyberspace to provide a deterrent against potential attackers’ (CSIS 2008, 24). The following quote from the report, however, calls in to question the commission’s own recommendation:

Jacobsen 20 [Jeppe T. Jacobsen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His primary focus is U.S. cyber armament, its motivation and consequences to international security. Mr. Jacobsen worked as cyber coordinator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark where he coordinated Denmark’s cyber diplomacy.; “From neurotic citizen to hysteric security expert: a Lacanian reading of the perpetual demand for US cyber defence”; Critical Studies on Security; March 1, 2020; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21624887.2020.1735830]//eleanor**modified for ableist language

Experts supposedly offer impartially and evidence-based knowledge and lay out possible ways forward In policy debates on how to defend the nation in cyberspace, non-partisan task forces and commissions put forward policy recommendations based on their ‘objective’ assessment of the nature of cyberspace and the actors acting within it. One of the most iterated recommendations revolves around how to achieve credible cyber deterrence. policy recommendations related to experts as nothing but the embodiments of a dominant knowledge regime the relationship between policy expert and government as a hysteric social bond where cyber deterrence is kept out of reach by constantly changing demands or demands that are articulated so vaguely that they are impossible for the government to meet US cyber policy experts’ entry into the government risks forcing the neurotic subject to confront its own desire, but it shows that such a move is accompanied by a constant reinvention of excuses as to why the expert-turned-master is unable to provide the cyber defence it is responsible for leading to a definition of the object of desire as that which the subject cannot currently do: criticise and make demands the hysteric social bond between experts who reproduce insecurities through demands for policy change and a government that seeks to accommodate these demands is sustained. the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) brought together policy experts to develop cybersecurity recommendation for the incoming president. Under the headline ‘Military Doctrine and Deterrence’, the commission report emphasised the importance of ‘the need for a credible military presence in cyberspace to provide a deterrent against potential attackers’ The following quote , calls in to question the commission’s own recommendation:

The affirmative’s demand for government cyber policies to strengthen cyber [deterrence/defense/resilience] is a neurotic relationship to both the government and cyberthreats, BUT, the object of desire is always out of reach – their inability to confront their desire makes their impacts inevitable by reproducing cyber as a security threat.

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Contrary to the expectations generated by Lacan’s hysteric social bond, the revolving door between the executive branch and the US think tanks suggests that the expert subject pursues its desire to become the master. To be master does not sit comfortably with Lacan’s divided, hysterical subject, who always recourses to another subject (master) to organise its desire (Žižek 2008, 212). The question then is how the expert subject avoids a confrontation with its own desire when it becomes the master. The following locates the different stages that enable the expert subject who takes up a role in the executive branch to avoid confronting the ontological lack at the heart of desire. First, the obligatory public speeches that senior officials and politicians tend to deliver when taking office usually follow a template of criticising predecessors’ policies before announcing a new set of policies. The previous government always failed to live up to its obligations and when in office, things are always worse than expected; or, as the then President Trump’s Homeland Security Advisor, former Atlantic Council fellow, Tom Bossert underlined in the context of the cyber threat: ‘I feel like I have reawoken from a long eight-year nap and I have found a world that is on fire’ (cited in CSIS 2017b). In other words, the expert-turned-master pre-empts his immediate failure to provide the promised enjoyment (a solid cyber defence): The object standing in for objet petit a remains out of reach, and the illusion of the master as a master (rather than divided subject) is able to continue. However, as time goes by, blaming the predecessor becomes an increasingly inadequate excuse and another reason for the lack of enjoyment must be invented. The commonly articulated object that prevents US cybersecurity is the nature of cyberspace: The fact that the domain is complex, and innovation moves fast means that the US ‘[cyber] vulnerability has continued to expand’, as President Obama’s cybersecurity coordinator, Michael Daniel explains (Marks 2017). Several interviews with former policy-experts-turned-government-employees suggest an additional reason. They suggest that the symbolisable lack that prevents the subject from confronting objet petit a is predominantly internal. On the one hand, the missing object takes its form as a cross-departmental disagreement, i.e. the fact that different departments cannot agree on one cyber issue and neither can the Department of Defense nor the members of National Security Council. Internal political disagreements as well as petty personal grudges and departmental power struggles are pointed to as obstacles to progress. On the other hand, the former policy experts face a large and rigid bureaucracy, slower and more frustrating than expected. Here, the symbolisable lack becomes the extensive lines of approval and countless processes that steal the time from a thorough and in-depth analysis that could have laid the proper foundation for a historic cyber policy initiative. Former CIA and NSA director, Michael Hayden (2016: xiii), captures this frustration from his position at the top of hierarchy: ‘[A director] can move (or get more) money, move boxes on an organizational chart, change out people, and exhort and inspire. That’s just about the whole toolbox.’ Rather than causing a confrontation with the void behind their desire, the desire of the expertturned-master continues to slide. Until, invariable, one day the new object of desire becomes the enjoyment that awaits when leaving office; the anticipation of not having to deliberate over and endlessly edit every sentence in a slow-moving bureaucracy with multiple and competing interests. It is the yearning to return to the role as an outside expert who is free to criticise. Thus, several government officials interviewed before they left the Obama Administration in favour of think tank or consultancy jobs emphasised how they were looking forward to speaking in public without scripted talking points and to travel the world to share their expertise in panels and debates aware that the things they said did not have to take bureaucratic hindrances and politics into account. Thus, after the detour in government, the expert subject returns: back to criticising and making demands, or as former Defense Secretary Ash Carter (2017) did shortly after he joined the Harvard Kennedy School, air the disappointment he had felt by the military’s cyber campaigns against ISIS during his time in office. Yet, once back in the role of expert outside government who reproduces insecurities through criticism and demands, the object of desire also takes another form – of that which is no longer there, i.e. the time when one made a sacrifice to make a difference for the country. Former CIA and NSA director, Michael Hayden recollects – with nostalgia – the mental stress of being constantly surrounded by security escorts after appearing in an Iraqi deck of cards identifying American targets (Hayden 2016, 62). And former Deputy Director of the NSA, Chris Inglis recalls with illconcealed pride how he fought to defend NSA’s reputation ‘in front of a madding crowd’ during the days of the Snowden revelations, and participated in 42 hearings in Congress even though he is a ‘raving introvert’ (Inglis 2015). In several of interviews that went into this study, current US cyber policy experts – without being asked about it – told me that their time in government had not only meant a sacrifice of a normal work-life balance but had also been the formative experience that they continue to draw on. Some even explained how the policies they authored laid the foundation for how we think about cybersecurity policy today. The articulations of such nostalgic recollection of ‘paying one’s dues’ and making a ‘real’ difference suggest that the expert subject continues to desire the master position despite its previous failure to produce full enjoyment. In conclusion, the expert subject who enters government postpones the confrontation with objet petit a by producing excuses for why cyber defence (full enjoyment) is not achieved. Even when the illusion about a master who can solve all insecurities risks becoming exposed as an illusion through the expert’s own experiences in the executive branch, the subject avoids confronting the void at the heart of its desire. And desire to return to the position as an expert remerges. Interestingly, when back in her previous position, the expert subject cannot escape the nostalgic recollection of the sacrifice made and hence a desire for ‘truly making a difference’ inside the government. Constantly postponing the fulfilment of desire ends up sustaining a social bond between policy expert and government that keeps cyber defence out of reach. Conclusion The article advances critical security studies on expertise by proposing a strategy for studying how the experts’ identification as experts contributes to the reproduction of insecurities. By studying the policy experts as neurotic subjects, the article – based on Lacan’s Hysteric Discourse – moves beyond the current distinction in the critical security literature between a neurotic, ‘risk managed’ citizen and an expert who is reduced to the embodiment of a particular knowledge regime, and thus mobilises anxieties without itself being influenced by them. The Lacanian strategy encourages the analyst to analyse the object of desire in the policy expert’s communication vis-à-vis the government, and the article turns to the US cyber defence experts and their production of policy recommendations as an illustrative case study. Through the case study, the article shows the drifting of desire in the policy documents on cyber deterrence and argues that the experts’ ever-evolving and ultimately elusive demands for new deterrence policies suggest a desire for a desire unfulfilled. The drifting of desire reproduces cyber insecurity as an ever-pertinent, still-unsolved national security issue. Furthermore, the article suggests that renewed analytical attention to the shifting object of desire also offers insights into how a hysteric social bond between policy experts and government is re-established and sustained when policy experts in think tanks take up a position in government. The expert-turned-master avoids confronting the void at the heart of desire by constantly reinventing excuses as to why s/he is unable to provide the cyber defence s/he is now responsible for. Ultimately, the drifting of desire leads to redefinition of the lost object as that which the subject cannot currently do in government, i.e. criticising and demand solutions from the master. Thus, after the stint in government, the expert subject returns, and subsequently looks upon its time in government with nostalgic recollection. Such a drift of desire, the article suggests, sustains a social bond where more cyber defence to overcome the eternal cyber threat, is always in demand. 10 J. T. JACOBSEN The introduction of Lacan’s Hysteric Discourse as a reading strategy and its application to the case study of the US cyber policy expert has hopefully served to inspire future critical security studies on expertise to bring additional analytical attention to the ways in which desire manifests itself in the subject’s identification as an expert and how such a perspective furthers our understanding of the reproduction of insecurity.

Jacobsen 20 [Jeppe T. Jacobsen is a Ph.D. candidate at the Danish Institute for International Studies and the Center for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His primary focus is U.S. cyber armament, its motivation and consequences to international security. Mr. Jacobsen worked as cyber coordinator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark where he coordinated Denmark’s cyber diplomacy.; “From neurotic citizen to hysteric security expert: a Lacanian reading of the perpetual demand for US cyber defence”; Critical Studies on Security; March 1, 2020; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21624887.2020.1735830]//eleanor**modified for ableist language

the revolving door between the executive branch and the US think tanks suggests that the expert subject pursues its desire to become the master. To be master does not sit comfortably with Lacan’s divided, hysterical subject, who always recourses to another subject (master) to organise its desire The following locates the different stages that enable the expert subject who takes up a role in the executive branch to avoid confronting the ontological lack at the heart of desire. the obligatory public speeches that senior officials and politicians tend to deliver when taking office usually follow a template of criticising predecessors’ policies before announcing a new set of policies. The previous government always failed to live up to its obligations and when in office, things are always worse than expected the expert-turned-master pre-empts his immediate failure to provide the promised enjoyment (a solid cyber defence): The object standing in for objet petit a remains out of reach, and the illusion of the master as a master (rather than divided subject) is able to continue. as time goes by, blaming the predecessor becomes an increasingly inadequate excuse and another reason for the lack of enjoyment must be invented The commonly articulated object that prevents US cybersecurity is the nature of cyberspace: The fact that the domain is complex, and innovation moves fast means that the US ‘[cyber] vulnerability has continued to expand’ the symbolisable lack that prevents the subject from confronting objet petit a is predominantly internal. On the one hand, the missing object takes its form as a cross-departmental disagreement, i.e. the fact that different departments cannot agree on one cyber issue and neither can the Department of Defense nor the members of National Security Council. Internal political disagreements as well as petty personal grudges and departmental power struggles are pointed to as obstacles to progress On the other hand, the former policy experts face a large and rigid bureaucracy, slower and more frustrating than expected. Rather than causing a confrontation with the void behind their desire, the desire of the expertturned-master continues to slide invariable, one day the new object of desire becomes the enjoyment that awaits when leaving office; after the detour in government, the expert subject returns: back to criticising and making demands once back in the role of expert outside government who reproduces insecurities through criticism and demands, the object of desire also takes another form – of that which is no longer there, i.e. the time when one made a sacrifice to make a difference for the country The articulations of such nostalgic recollection of ‘paying one’s dues’ and making a ‘real’ difference suggest that the expert subject continues to desire the master position despite its previous failure to produce full enjoyment. the expert subject who enters government postpones the confrontation with objet petit a by producing excuses for why cyber defence (full enjoyment) is not achieved Even when the illusion about a master who can solve all insecurities risks becoming exposed as an illusion through the expert’s own experiences in the executive branch, the subject avoids confronting the void at the heart of its desire. And desire to return to the position as an expert remerges , when back in her previous position, the expert subject cannot escape the nostalgic recollection of the sacrifice made and hence a desire for ‘truly making a difference’ inside the government postponing the fulfilment of desire ends up sustaining a social bond between policy expert and government that keeps cyber defence out of reach. the experts’ ever-evolving and ultimately elusive demands for new deterrence policies suggest a desire for a desire unfulfilled. The drifting of desire reproduces cyber insecurity as an ever-pertinent, still-unsolved national security issue a hysteric social bond between policy experts and government is re-established and sustained when policy experts in think tanks take up a position in government The expert-turned-master avoids confronting the void at the heart of desire by constantly reinventing excuses as to why s/he is unable to provide the cyber defence s/he is now responsible for. the drifting of desire leads to redefinition of the lost object as that which the subject cannot currently do in government, i.e. criticising and demand solutions from the master after the stint in government, the expert subject returns, and subsequently looks upon its time in government with nostalgic recollection. Such a drift of desire, the article suggests, sustains a social bond where more cyber defence to overcome the eternal cyber threat, is always in demand. desire manifests itself in the subject’s identification as an expert and furthers the reproduction of insecurity.

Their claim that debates over government cyber policy spill up to produce better policy making is yet another deferral of the confrontation with the object of their desire.

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2022

In this sense, moral philosophers like Sandel who insist on sustaining some terrain outside capitalist production are indispensible for the functioning of the capitalist system. This is not to say that Sandel is a capitalist stooge or a double agent planted by capitalist powers in the world of moral philosophy—though, given his involvement with MOOCs, one can’t be sure—but that the challenge to capitalism cannot occur through the attempt to limit the system. If capitalism requires a limit to transcend (which it does), every introduction of a new limit will be inherently self-defeating for the would-be limiter of the market’s reach. One must instead rethink the form that the limit takes.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 173-176, 20 September 2016, MG)

the challenge to capitalism cannot occur through the attempt to limit the system. If capitalism requires a limit to transcend (which it does), every introduction of a new limit will be inherently self-defeating for the would-be limiter of the market’s reach.

Promulgating an image of death to be avoided instills guilt and total despair onto bodies – unless we’re dying from twinkies, their project is an attempt to obfuscate trauma

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The prevalence of nostalgia has perhaps its most obvious impact in the shaping of contemporary political programs. The entirety of the contemporary right-wing social and cultural agenda has its basis in the nostalgia for a time of plenitude. Nostalgia fuels the demand for school prayer, the opposition to gay marriage, the effort to eliminate abortion, the support for the death penalty, and so on. According to contemporary American conservatism, the abandonment of school prayer, for instance, has helped to bring about many of the social ills (teen pregnancy, school violence, incivility, etc.) that plague contemporary American society. Champions of school prayer see the epoch when students prayed in school as time prior to loss.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 42-44, 1 July 2013, MG)

Nostalgia fuels the demand for school prayer, the opposition to gay marriage, the effort to eliminate abortion, the support for the death penalty, and so on. According to contemporary American conservatism, the abandonment of school prayer, for instance, has helped to bring about many of the social ills (teen pregnancy, school violence, incivility, etc.) that plague contemporary American society

Emancipatory politics work only in theory, not in practice – attaching desire to their politics works to retroactively create the global system and ensure loss

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Why psychoanalysis? On the face of it, it seems frankly irrelevant. Surely it is the basic sciences of geology, ecology, biology, and climatology that we need, combined with various hi-tech engineering? Yes and no. The science informing us of the risks and possible technical solutions has run far ahead of our psychological state. We are not yet at the point emotionally of being able to clearly grasp the threat, and act accordingly. We need to ask why this issue, despite its current prominence, fails to ignite people's motivation for the major changes science tells us is necessary. This concerns not only the 'public' but the academy and the psychoanalytic community. In spite of the fact that Harold Searles was already writing in 1960 that psychoanalysts need to acknowledge the psychological importance of the non-human environment, until very recently his colleagues have almost entirely ignored him.

Dodds 12 [Joseph, MPhil, Psychoanalytic Studies, Sheffield University, UK, MA, Psychoanalytic Studies, Sheffield University, UK BSc, Psychology and Neuroscience, Manchester University, UK, Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol) of the British Psychological Society (BPS), and a member of several other professional organizations such as the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society, Psychoanalysis and Ecology at the Edge of Chaos, p. 27]

Why psychoanalysis? On the face of it, it seems frankly irrelevant. Surely it is the basic sciences of geology, ecology, biology, and climatology that we need, combined with various hi-tech engineering The science informing us of the risks and technical solutions has run far ahead of our psychological state. We are not yet at the point emotionally of being able to clearly grasp the threat, and act accordingly We need to ask why this issue, despite its prominence, fails to ignite people's motivation for major changes science tells us is necessary This concerns not only the 'public' but the academy and the psychoanalytic community

Voting aff is a dangerous palliative that gives us the illusion of control by affirming our mastery over nature

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2022

One popular alternative in the ecological movement, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger’s Break Through, tries to counter the narrative of the acceptance of human finitude proffered by earlier environmentalists like Carson and James Lovelock (in The Revenge of Gaia). Against this narrative, which they label “tragic,” they call for an optimistic ecology. 26 At the end of their treatise, they ask those concerned about the current ecological crisis to have the courage to dream about large-scale transformative projects that would enable humanity to shatter the limits that have hitherto functioned as absolute boundaries for both thought and action.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 170-172, 20 September 2016, MG)

the ecological movement tries to counter the narrative of the acceptance of human finitude proffered by earlier environmentalists Against this narrative, which they label “tragic,” they call for an optimistic ecology. 26 At the end of their treatise, they ask those concerned about the current ecological crisis to have the courage to dream about large-scale transformative projects that would enable humanity to shatter the limits that have hitherto functioned as absolute boundaries for both thought and action

Optimistic calls for an environmental future fail to elude Scylla of Finitude and Charybdis of the Bad Infinite – that ensures their project is inevitably undermined as they retrench the system

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2022

The problem of capital as a unitary force is the substitute of faith for an understanding of the historical and geopolitical trajectory of societal relations. The concept of Europe is more than an issue of identity; it is a source of accumulation, profitability, and exclusion. It helps to define just practice, legality, and the terrain of political and social possibility. This stems from an equation of capital as a unitary object with sovereign order, a top-down perspective of control whereby the goal of all power and counterpower consists of people having a unitary identity. Indeed, this understanding of power is tainted by the issue of faith—that the ability to impose order itself is inevitably subjective. As Žižek explains, “Sovereignty always . . . involves the logic of the universal and its constitutive exception: the universal and unconditional rule of Law can be sustained only by a sovereign power which reserves for itself the right to proclaim a state of exception, that is, to suspend the rule of law(s) on behalf of the Law itself—if we deprive the Law of the excess that sustains it, we lose the (rule of) Law itself” (2006, 373).

Bousfield 18 (Dan Bousfield - professor in the Political Science department at Western University, “Psychoanalysis and the GlObal”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 38-40, 1 September 2018, MG)

The concept of Europe is more than an issue of identity; it is a source of accumulation, profitability, and exclusion. It helps to define just practice, legality, and the terrain of political and social possibility. This stems from an equation of capital as a unitary object with sovereign order, a top-down perspective of control whereby the goal of all power and counterpower consists of people having a unitary identity Sovereignty always . . . involves the logic of the universal and its constitutive exception: the universal and unconditional rule of Law can be sustained only by a sovereign power which reserves for itself the right to proclaim a state of exception, that is, to suspend the rule of law(s) on behalf of the Law itself—if we deprive the Law of the excess that sustains it, we lose the (rule of) Law itself

The fantasy of helping Europe impose “good governance” reflects and supplants racialized notions of responsibility onto ethnicized others

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2022

This is the central argument of this dissertation: the fascination and terror of nuclear destruction are essentially connected by their perceived reference to an unmediated Real. Because the Real cannot be perfectly represented, our efforts to mediate it necessarily fail to completely capture reality, but the investments that sustain our repeated efforts guarantee that they continue, for our very beings demand connection with the world and each other. That efforts to capture the Real do not succeed in that aim is not to say that they are not productive, that rich array of theoretical tools in communication studies should be abandoned, or that they are not important. Indeed, these efforts are quite literally our entire world. To square our existence as subjects marked off from the totality of the Real with our desire to experience it without mediation, we come to enjoy the illusion of control over the presence and absence of the world, as in Freud’s fort-da game. In the nuclear context, we repetitively simulate destruction and salvation, worlds without us and ones made present for our habitation. Nuclear imaginations persist after the Cold War and their various tropes have metastasized into new apocalyptic imaginations: environmental destruction, terrorism, pandemics, even zombies. While the Bomb did not inaugurate apocalyptic fear, the tropes and habits developed by its mediation in the intense crucible of the Cold War influence the way these other crises are mediated. More fundamentally, the economy of cathectic investment that animates these cultural assemblages is a product of the death drive—perhaps unfortunately named because it is not a wish for death but a wish for unmediated experience evident only in the constant attempts to mediate that same experience. As that drive has communication at its core, the tools of communication studies are the appropriate means to study it and the various discourses, material practices, and technological artifices that arise from its operation. To do so might reveal much about communication itself, along with the limits and possibilities of how we respond politically to the threat of human extinction. I do not intend to create a complete, self-contained system to schematize the Real. Such a thing is impossible because the Real is by definition that which escapes symbolic assimilation. In suggesting that the Real is the intrusion of the non-human world into the symbolic network of the social, I aim to explore how the perceived limits of communication inform what discourses develop to explain and order nuclear weapons.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

the fascination and terror of nuclear destruction are essentially connected by their perceived reference to an unmediated Real. Because the Real cannot be perfectly represented, our efforts to mediate it necessarily fail to completely capture reality, but the investments that sustain our repeated efforts guarantee that they continue, for our very beings demand connection with the world and each other. To square our existence as subjects marked off from the totality of the Real with our desire to experience it without mediation, we come to enjoy the illusion of control over the presence and absence of the world we repetitively simulate destruction and salvation, worlds without us and ones made present for our habitation. Nuclear imaginations and their various tropes have metastasized into new apocalyptic imaginations environmental destruction terrorism pandemics zombies , the economy of cathectic investment that animates these cultural assemblages is a product of the death drive—perhaps unfortunately named because it is not a wish for death but a wish for unmediated experience evident only in the constant attempts to mediate that same experience. the perceived limits of communication inform what discourses develop to explain and order nuclear weapons.

The 1AC’s invocation of apocalyptic imaginations is a product of the death drive – through their repetitive simulation of destruction and salvation from [x impact], we come to enjoy an illusion of control over the presence and absence of the world, a fort-da game with human kind.

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2022

This dissertation does not have an answer for Lenin’s most famous question. Nuclear warfare is still a possibility. Every few months a crisis occurs where the Bomb lurks in the shadows—the Korean DMZ, the Kashmir Line of Control, the Spratly Islands, the Kurile Islands, Iran, Israel, the Crimean Peninsula and Donbass. The major change from the Cold War might not be that nuclear war is less probable, or even less likely to wipe out humanity (if that was ever possible), but that it is no longer seen as the only likely threat capable of doing so. Climate change, itself identified and modeled with the help of simulations designed initially for modeling the effects of nuclear war, has become a more prominent issue. The term replaces “global warming” because it ostensibly reflects the Earth’s reality more accurately. It shares much with the Bomb: apocalyptic predictions, survivor and disaster fiction, and the sense of humanity destroying itself through advancements in technology. Both issues have inspired much spilled ink, many conflicts between politicians, news media, and public figures, solemn efforts for international cooperation, and very little effective change. The brief, euphoric atmosphere of global unity as the Warsaw Pact states dissolved did not result in a permanent communion between the Earth’s peoples. But to expect harmony is to believe in the impossibility of an eventual triumph of automaton against the caprice of tuché. The many pledges for global cooperation from Kellogg-Briand to BushGorbachev have all unraveled. Continuity and order in this sense appear to be impossible so far, and in their failures the contingency of the Real emerges. We still attempt to bridge these rifts, but we also seem to enjoy the vertigo that comes with staring into them. We are enjoined to stay on the bridge, to step back from the edge. After all, one single mistake could destroy everything, and the logic of infinite risk is part of the sign of survival that disciplines us when we drift too far towards the forbidden enjoyment of apocalyptic imagination. The command to survive pins the discourse of nuclear weapons together. Survival is such an overwhelmingly powerful site for cathectic investment that it can outshine all others, allowing any risk to be run along the way. The basic foundation of deterrence is the threat of nuclear retaliation, ultimately against cities. The United States, attacked by Russia, would detect incoming weapons and launch its own in return before they could be lost (“use it or lose it,” in Cold War parlance). Of course enemy military power would already be incoming; it would be pointless to destroy empty missile silos, so at least implicitly, the threat is against tens of millions of Russians who might not even know that the war had started. In other words, the basic national strategy of NATO, Russia, China, and other nuclear states relies on planning to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale against people that each of them argues are oppressed by their own government. The rational reason to threaten a nuclear war is to prevent a nuclear war. Thus, nuclear weapons threaten survival in the name of protecting it. Every atrocity and degradation of life that does not threaten human extinction is tolerable to prevent one that does, in a “tyranny of survival” (Callahan 92-100). This tolerance for risk applies equally to disarmament—after all, the chief argument made against it is that it weakens deterrence and allows the “other side” freedom to initiate a nuclear conflict without fear of reprisal. Nuclear strategists treated human survival like poker, but to seek a justification for this policy is closer to Three-card Monte. The investment in survival cannot be rational. Despite the immense importance we attach to it, at bottom, there is nothing but a void. Why survive at all? This might be one of the last truly forbidden questions to which we have failed to generate an answer. If there is some cosmic plan for humanity in the Real, it eludes us. Any assertion of value—that we are intelligent life, that death brings suffering, that we are obliged to future generations, and so forth—simply leads to another “why,” in the kind of game toddlers routinely play. Efforts to avoid nuclear war, both through deterrence and disarmament, rely on supposedly rational means to reach a goal that is fundamentally irrational. One reaction has been “virulent nihilism,” as in Nick Land’s book of that name, or Thomas Liggotti’s declaration that human existence is “malignantly useless” and consciousness a “long con.” Ray Brassier, who wrote an introduction to Ligotti’s book, expresses similar sentiments in Nihil Unbound. There is even a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT, pronounced “vehement”) and a Church of Euthanasia which councils suicide and cannibalism, amongst other solutions. If there is no reason for survival, why bother? Why keep looking for something we will never find? The insights of the death drive seem to lead to a very bleak conclusion: we cannot live in the Real, at least not in a way meaningful to others. We are condemned to seek after an object that we cannot have, endlessly falling short, endlessly cracking the artifice of the Symbolic walls that contain us, and, seeing the light filter through, repairing them rather than tearing them down.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

Every few months a crisis occurs where the Bomb lurks in the shadows—the Korean DMZ, the Kashmir Line of Control, the Spratly Islands, the Kurile Islands, Iran, Israel, the Crimean Peninsula and Donbass. The major change from the Cold War might not be that nuclear war is less probable, or even less likely to wipe out humanity (if that was ever possible), but that it is no longer seen as the only likely threat capable of doing so. Climate change, itself identified and modeled with the help of simulations designed initially for modeling the effects of nuclear war, has become a more prominent issue. The term replaces “global warming” because it ostensibly reflects the Earth’s reality more accurately. It shares much with the Bomb: apocalyptic predictions, survivor and disaster fiction, and the sense of humanity destroying itself through advancements in technology. Both issues have inspired much spilled ink, many conflicts between politicians, news media, and public figures, solemn efforts for international cooperation, and very little effective change to expect harmony is to believe in the impossibility of an eventual triumph of automaton against the caprice of tuché. The many pledges for global cooperation have all unraveled. Continuity and order in this sense appear to be impossible so far, and in their failures the contingency of the Real emerges. We still attempt to bridge these rifts, but we also seem to enjoy the vertigo that comes with staring into them. We are enjoined to stay on the bridge, to step back from the edge. After all, one single mistake could destroy everything, and the logic of infinite risk is part of the sign of survival that disciplines us when we drift too far towards the forbidden enjoyment of apocalyptic imagination. The command to survive pins the discourse of nuclear weapons together. Survival is such an overwhelmingly powerful site for cathectic investment that it can outshine all others, allowing any risk to be run along the way. The basic foundation of deterrence is the threat of nuclear retaliation against cities the basic national strategy of NATO, Russia, China, and other nuclear states relies on planning to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale against people that each of them argues are oppressed by their own government The rational reason to threaten a nuclear war is to prevent a nuclear war nuclear weapons threaten survival in the name of protecting it. Every atrocity and degradation of life that does not threaten human extinction is tolerable to prevent one that does, in a “tyranny of survival” ). This tolerance for risk applies equally to disarmament—after all, the chief argument made against it is that it weakens deterrence and allows the “other side” freedom to initiate a nuclear conflict without fear of reprisal Nuclear strategists treated human survival like poker, but to seek a justification for this policy is closer to Three-card Monte. The investment in survival cannot be rational. Despite the immense importance we attach to it, at bottom, there is nothing but a void. If there is some cosmic plan for humanity in the Real, it eludes us. Any assertion of value—that we are intelligent life, that death brings suffering, that we are obliged to future generations, and so forth—simply leads to another “why,” in the kind of game toddlers routinely play. Efforts to avoid nuclear war, both through deterrence and disarmament, rely on supposedly rational means to reach a goal that is fundamentally irrational.

Attempting to cooperate over existential risks is a failed project – their desire to impose continuity and order onto chaos is an illusion of mastery.

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2022

Seen in this light, the discourse of globalization is a kind of rebranding of imperialism (Halliday 2002, 77), attempting to obscure its many symptomatic ills (the Real), ranging from inequality and environmental destruction to “illegal” migration and cultural deracination (or, to riff on the “vulgar” sexual overtones of “hole,” globalization discourse is a bid to disavow capital’s unceasing penetration [invagination?] and buggery of the glObe). As Žižek (2008, 102) points out, increasingly we have greater mobility of capital but declining movement of people, with the construction of physical and politico-legal barriers to better and more strictly regulate the flow of people (e.g., “fortress Europe,” walls between Israel and Palestine and the United States and Mexico, gated communities, slum cities). The human dimension of globalization is thus greater immobility. To ensure its smooth functioning, global capitalism requires a logic of social apartheid, positioning people as either “inside” or “outside” the formal social economy. It is this other side of globalization—its fissures, gaps, and exclusions —that several chapters in this book make it a point to examine: the “disempowered” women of the global South (chapter 6); the favelas in Recife, Brazil (chapter 11); the dispossessed and unemployed in Egypt who rise up against authoritarianism and austerity (chapter 12); and the enraged white working classes that elect Trump or vote for Brexit (epilogue).

Kapoor 18 (Ilan Kapoor - professor of Critical Development Studies at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, “Psychoanalysis and the GlObal”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 20-22, 1 September 2018, MG)

Seen in this light, the discourse of globalization is a kind of rebranding of imperialism attempting to obscure its many symptomatic ills (the Real), ranging from inequality and environmental destruction to “illegal” migration and cultural deracination (or, to riff on the “vulgar” sexual overtones of “hole,” globalization discourse is a bid to disavow capital’s unceasing penetration [invagination?] and buggery of the glObe). ncreasingly we have greater mobility of capital but declining movement of people, with the construction of physical and politico-legal barriers to better and more strictly regulate the flow of people (e.g., “fortress Europe,” walls between Israel and Palestine and the United States and Mexico, gated communities, slum cities). global capitalism requires a logic of social apartheid, positioning people as either “inside” or “outside” the formal social economy

Discourses of globalization are an ideological fantasy that acts as cover for the logic of social apartheid that constructs anxiety, fear, and resentment towards the Other

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The image as it circulated incited an eruption of affective politics—that is, politics framed not by ideology but as a passage a l’acte riding on a surge of feeling. This event manifests what Brian Massumi calls the role of “images as the conveyers of forces of emergence, as vehicles for existential potentialization and transfer” (2002, 43). Massumi places the mass circulation of images within the context of an affective theory of late capitalist power, wherein they perform as relays for the transmission of potential that is then inhibited in its emergence as part of the cultural-political functioning of the media and connected apparatuses. This idea of the image as the bearer of affective power owes a debt to Walter Benjamin’s “dialectical image,” or the image that emerges in a flash to threaten the preservation of the status quo with the instantaneous irruption of the now (2002, 473, N9,7). As an event, the image of the dead child can be seen as just such a blast of now-time—though whether the measures taken in the wake of the explosion dislodge the “continuity of history” is a question to which I will return (Benjamin 2002, 474, N9a,6).

Secor 18 (Anna J. Secor PhD – Profesor of Cultural Geographies at Durham University , “Psychoanalysis and the GlObal”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 96-98, 1 September 2018, MG)

The image as it circulated incited an eruption of affective politics—that is, politics framed not by ideology but as a passage a l’acte riding on a surge of feeling. This event manifests what Brian Massumi calls the role of “images as the conveyers of forces of emergence, as vehicles for existential potentialization and transfer” (2002, 43). Massumi places the mass circulation of images within the context of an affective theory of late capitalist power, wherein they perform as relays for the transmission of potential that is then inhibited in its emergence as part of the cultural-political functioning of the media and connected apparatuses the image that emerges in a flash to threaten the preservation of the status quo with the instantaneous irruption of the now

Images do nothing but preserve the status quo – all the radical usage of it did was create anxiety of the Other

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It is tempting to answer this question as many disarmament advocates are wont to do by citing the folly of ignoring ongoing dangers of nuclear war. Indeed, some persistent nuclear threats which have the potential to kill millions, or perhaps billions, of people were a few things to go quite wrong. Russian-American nuclear tension is rising sharply after recent violence in Ukraine, and there is talk of a “new Cold War.” Nuclear weapons are still maintained in a state of readiness that increases the chance of an “accidental” nuclear war. While safeguards are supposedly in place to reduce the chance that such a catastrophe might occur, there are reasons to doubt their efficacy. It has come to light that the codes for U.S. Permissive Action Links (PALS) were set to a string of zeroes by the Strategic Air Command (SAC) to circumvent the safety measure, while personnel and safety problems continue to plague nuclear forces (Blair 2004; Hoff 2014). Meanwhile, tensions with North Korea, ongoing disputes in South Asia, and the increase in Chinese military might has some Pentagon analysts thinking again about just how fiery the Pacific Rim might become. The argument has been made that the public must be reminded of nuclear horror for only the immediacy of danger conveyed in lurid descriptions of societal destruction can turn us away from our impending doom and encourage us to demand democratic oversight. In communication studies, the peak of nuclear weapons scholarship occurred in the 1980s following Jacques Derrida’s call for “nuclear criticism” and the psychological work of Robert Jay Lifton (Derrida “No Apocalypse;” Lifton). Although not universally present, much of this work exhibits a concern with accountability and democratic responsibility, assuming that it is ultimately more deliberation that will curb the excesses of nuclear warfare. A number of rhetoricians participated in this debate by emphasizing their field’s traditional concern for public deliberation, although often in novel ways. David Cratis Williams attempted to combine Derrida’s approach with the insights of Kenneth Burke (Williams). Barry Brummett relied on Burke’s language of perfection and motives to explain several nuclear debates current in the decade (Brummett). Bryan C. Taylor is one of the few scholars of rhetoric who has continued to write about nuclear weapons (“‘A Hedge Against the Future;’” Nuclear Legacies; “Nuclear Weapons and Communication Studies;” “Our Bruised Arms;” “Radioactive History”). Outside the field of rhetoric, Carol Cohn’s work on the language of defense intellectuals has significant affinities with these pieces (Cohn). William Chaloupka’s book Knowing Nukes also treats the rhetoric of nuclear weapons from a poststructuralist standpoint (Chaloupka). These various works tend to focus on the rhetoric of nuclear weapons as an instrumental concern. They focus primarily on organization for political action, the formation of public attitudes, or the content of specific metaphors, as in Ron Hirschbein’s Massing the Tropes: The Metaphorical Construction of American Nuclear Strategy. More materially-oriented work has also been done to expose elements of the nuclear complex, even as the topic has increasingly been eclipsed by the study of newer technologies (drones, surveillance, and so forth). Jeremy Packer and Joshua Reeves’s work on the SAGE nuclear warning system, for example, compares it to increasingly automated drone warfare to locate a logic of anthropophobia (Packer and Reeves). Peter van Wyck has studied the attempt to communicate the danger of nuclear waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (Van Wyck). Rey Chow’s The Age of the World Target uses the atomic bomb to examine a larger epistemological shift in relation to visual mediation, an argument which I will expand in Chapter 3 to note the Bomb’s differential effect on the dynamics of race and class across space. Explicitly or subtly, the implication of much of this work is that criticism should aim at uncovering the logics, artefacts, and ongoing consequences of nuclear war preparations, if not as a solution, then at least as a necessary precursor to one, and therefore resembles the more rhetorically-oriented work of the 1980s and after. Although this work is important and helpful, I will argue that much of it downplays the very attributes that make nuclear war unique. It is unsurprising that scholarship in communication studies tends to focus on the potential for political awareness and change based on language or symbolic action. Rhetorical criticism has roots in the deliberative discourse of ancient Athens and emphasizes the important link between rhetoric and democratic change. To call for more public deliberation or transparency on nuclear war is to treat it like any other issue of national politics that can be studied, debated, and ultimately addressed as rhetoric motivates political action. Indeed, a great deal of media exists to make meaning out of the Bomb, organize its potential use, and describe its political significance. In the Bomb’s inaugural moment at Trinity, however, the immediate reaction was silence, followed by a conviction that language was an inadequate tool to convey the experience. The “unthinkable,” “unspeakable,” and “unsayable” qualities of nuclear war have since been repeatedly affirmed. The Bomb seems to escape symbolization, to gesture towards something beyond mediation. Many commentators struggle to speak at a limit where “language no longer acts as currency,” to borrow from Georges Bataille (Erotism 276). What happens when the crisis in which we must intervene is one defined in part by the failure of the symbolic efficiency of language? How can we communicate a political response when the advent of the Bomb is understood to sunder mediation itself? The awesome power of the Bomb reveals the fundamental inability of language to fully capture the universe beyond human reality, the precariousness of our existence, and the arbitrariness of our beliefs. But with all the horror of the unknown, there is also an unmistakable fascination with the promise of unmediated continuity with reality. My argument here is not that communication inevitably fails, although certainly it often does. Language is not too small for the task. Reality is too big. Sometimes, especially when we attempt to understand something that threatens human extinction, we are confronted with the fact that the universe far outstrips our capacity to understand, that the world we build for ourselves does not exhaust all chance and possibility but sometimes appears to teeter on the edge of the meaningless chaos intimated by a universe in which we are the center only for ourselves. There is an excess that is understood as beyond mediation, but our efforts to communicate continue. The awestruck silence of the Bomb still works on the language that we do produce as we attempt to find the means to describe it. For Bataille, there was continuity—the unmediated world without distinctions imposed by human classification, the world we seek in love and death (Bataille, Erotism 12-13). For Heidegger, what lurked in the shadow of human artifice was the “gigantic” (das Risige), an intimation of some incalculable greatness (135). For Longinus, the sublime was the force of “greatness” that made language overwhelm rather than persuade, the power beyond language that could only be partially intimated by its skillful use (4). These concepts all dovetail with Lacan’s Real, deliniated more completely in Chapter 1. The Real is not the world of non-human objects and forces but the eruption of that world into the mediated world of human society constructed and maintained by our communication with one another. Excess, whether approached through the language of the Real, the sublime, continuity, or Heidegger’s “gigantic,” shapes the field of language around it like the gravity well of a black hole observable by its distortions. These distortions guide our investments in some tropes over others and shape the economy of affects1 that animate meaning and create the durable constructs through which we attempt to connect with one another. We cannot respond to the Bomb by exposing its “reality” in writing, speeches, films, or any other media without implicitly playing its game by insisting that language can accurately convey the excess of the Real because the question is not one of greater precision in language but whether any medium is capable of assimilating the Real, a task which is impossible by definition. In acting as if this was not the case, we participate in the desire for unmediated access to reality that maintains the Bomb’s power in the first place. Too much debate over nuclear policy sidelines this sense of the Bomb as infinite, focusing on the techniques of organization and persuasion to the detriment of the ultimate questions that make the Bomb so powerful and creating a linguistic framework in which these questions are written off, or at best appended as “useful embellishment,” only “received into mainstream discourse when presented as appendages to currently debated political options” (Chernus, Nuclear Madness 59). The Real of the Bomb reveals the incompleteness of this world and motivates attempts to find what we imagine is concealed beneath it. Nuclear obliteration is to its devotees perhaps even a promise of divine Truth that offers transcendence of the fallen world of mediation in which reality is never complete. With such a contradictory set of attachments, it is hard to imagine that efforts to think about the Bomb can achieve their goals—while they might demonstrate their own consistent logic, the rationality of nuclear politics is warped by the intrusion of the Real and the desire to commune with it directly. Communication studies is full of cogent analyses of instances where language or other media worked very well indeed to organize political responses, persuade audiences, bind people together around texts, and change attitudes, but these accounts are incomplete without attention to the Real. The subject of nuclear war challenges how we think about communication itself and demands new thinking on the limits of mediation. The central question of this dissertation is not how should we talk about nuclear war, but what can nuclear war show us about how we attempt to mediate that which we understand to exceed the limits of mediation itself? For attempt we do. The vertiginous hole in the whole of reality is only the first part of the Bomb’s relationship to desire. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the symbolic order through which the human world is built. The Symbolic, as Jacques Lacan styles it, cannot tolerate the revelation of its inadequacy in the Real, the tears left in our map by the inhuman world. We endlessly attempt to heal the rifts of the Real, to feign unicity where it has failed (Lundberg 2-3). The response to chaos is control; order is imposed against contingency in an effort to re-impose coherence. This dynamic of automaton (order) scripted over tuché (contingency) is developed in Chapter 2. When these attempts fail—and because the Real by its nature cannot be assimilated, they must—we simply try again. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, this dynamic is the repetition compulsion, in which the subject tries again and again to control the conditions for presence and absence, enjoying not the outcome but the exercise of subjectivity itself in the capacity to act and to choose. Subjectivity requires the sacrifice of continuity through the formation of the alienating identity of the mirror phase, a process explained more in Chapters 1 and 2. Discontinuous subjects are organized in part around the lack—something that would make them whole again, represented in an object that is never more than a partial stand-in for this missing completion. Frustrated in the quest for something outside, we enjoy our own subjectivity.2 In the context of nuclear war, this meant ever more sophisticated simulations of a phenomenon about which we remained basically uncertain. This is the second movement of desire in (or for) the Bomb. The enjoyment of our reasserted control over the Bomb manifested in the repeated attempts to simulate its use and predict its aftermath. The fort-da game described by Freud and explained here in the first two chapters is an important tool for unpacking this dynamic because it posits a sense of control over presence and absence as the condition for a subject’s enjoyment. Fort-da refers to the game in which a child makes an object disappear and reappear in succession, simulating her or his mother’s coming and going and the possibility of her eventual disappearance. Enjoyment comes from the subject’s control over these states of presence and absence, a small example of imposing order in a world of seeming chaos (Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle 13-17). Understanding this is necessary to draw the common threads between the cold-blooded excesses of Pentagon nuclear plans, the compulsion that leads survivalists to stockpile rooms full of MREs, and the appeal that apocalyptic videogames hold for millions of players. In all of these pursuits, the world is made absent in the fantasy of destruction and present again in the myth of reconstruction, survival, and rebirth.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

It is tempting to answer this question as many disarmament advocates are by citing the folly of ignoring ongoing dangers of nuclear war. Indeed, some persistent nuclear threats which have the potential to kill millions, or perhaps billions, of people were a few things to go quite wrong. The argument has been made that the public must be reminded of nuclear horror for only the immediacy of danger conveyed in lurid descriptions of societal destruction can turn us away from our impending doom and encourage us to demand democratic oversight. much of this work exhibits a concern with accountability and democratic responsibility, assuming that it is ultimately more deliberation that will curb the excesses of nuclear warfare the implication of much of this work is that criticism should aim at uncovering the logics, artefacts, and ongoing consequences of nuclear war preparations, if not as a solution, then at least as a necessary precursor to one this work downplays the very attributes that make nuclear war unique To call for more public deliberation or transparency on nuclear war is to treat it like any other issue of national politics that can be studied, debated, and ultimately addressed as rhetoric motivates political action. In the Bomb’s inaugural moment at Trinity the immediate reaction was silence, followed by a conviction that language was an inadequate tool to convey the experience. The “unthinkable,” “unspeakable,” and “unsayable” qualities of nuclear war have since been repeatedly affirmed The Bomb seems to escape symbolization, to gesture towards something beyond mediation Many commentators struggle to speak at a limit where “language no longer acts as currency What happens when the crisis in which we must intervene is one defined in part by the failure of the symbolic efficiency of language? How can we communicate a political response when the advent of the Bomb is understood to sunder mediation itself? The awesome power of the Bomb reveals the fundamental inability of language to fully capture the universe beyond human reality, the precariousness of our existence, and the arbitrariness of our beliefs with all the horror of the unknown, there is also an unmistakable fascination with the promise of unmediated continuity with reality. Language is not too small for the task. Reality is too big. Sometimes, especially when we attempt to understand something that threatens human extinction, we are confronted with the fact that the universe far outstrips our capacity to understand, that the world we build for ourselves does not exhaust all chance and possibility but sometimes appears to teeter on the edge of the meaningless chaos intimated by a universe in which we are the center only for ourselves There is an excess that is understood as beyond mediation, but our efforts to communicate continue. The awestruck silence of the Bomb still works on the language that we do produce as we attempt to find the means to describe it. The Real is not the world of non-human objects and forces but the eruption of that world into the mediated world of human society constructed and maintained by our communication with one another. Excess shapes the field of language around it like the gravity well of a black hole observable by its distortions These distortions guide our investments in some tropes over others and shape the economy of affects1 that animate meaning and create the durable constructs through which we attempt to connect with one another We cannot respond to the Bomb by exposing its “reality” in writing, speeches, films, or any other media without implicitly playing its game by insisting that language can accurately convey the excess of the Real because the question is not one of greater precision in language but whether any medium is capable of assimilating the Real, a task which is impossible by definition In acting as if this was not the case, we participate in the desire for unmediated access to reality that maintains the Bomb’s power in the first place. Too much debate over nuclear policy sidelines this sense of the Bomb as infinite, focusing on the techniques of organization and persuasion to the detriment of the ultimate questions that make the Bomb so powerful and creating a linguistic framework in which these questions are written off, or at best appended as “useful embellishment,” only “received into mainstream discourse when presented as appendages to currently debated political options The Real of the Bomb reveals the incompleteness of this world and motivates attempts to find what we imagine is concealed beneath it. Nuclear obliteration is to its devotees perhaps even a promise of divine Truth that offers transcendence of the fallen world of mediation in which reality is never complete. With such a contradictory set of attachments, it is hard to imagine that efforts to think about the Bomb can achieve their goals—while they might demonstrate their own consistent logic, the rationality of nuclear politics is warped by the intrusion of the Real and the desire to commune with it directly The vertiginous hole in the whole of reality is only the first part of the Bomb’s relationship to desire. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the symbolic order through which the human world is built The Symbolic cannot tolerate the revelation of its inadequacy in the Real, the tears left in our map by the inhuman world We endlessly attempt to heal the rifts of the Real, to feign unicity where it has failed The response to chaos is control; order is imposed against contingency in an effort to re-impose coherence these attempts fail—and because the Real by its nature cannot be assimilated, they must—we simply try again this dynamic is the repetition compulsion, in which the subject tries again and again to control the conditions for presence and absence, enjoying not the outcome but the exercise of subjectivity itself in the capacity to act and to choose. Subjectivity requires the sacrifice of continuity through the formation of the alienating identity of the mirror phase Discontinuous subjects are organized in part around the lack—something that would make them whole again, represented in an object that is never more than a partial stand-in for this missing completion the context of nuclear war, this meant ever more sophisticated simulations of a phenomenon about which we remained basically uncertain. This is the second movement of desire in (or for) the Bomb. The enjoyment of our reasserted control over the Bomb manifested in the repeated attempts to simulate its use and predict its aftermath. Enjoyment comes from the subject’s control over these states of presence and absence, a small example of imposing order in a world of seeming chaos Understanding this is necessary to draw the common threads between the cold-blooded excesses of Pentagon nuclear plans, the compulsion that leads survivalists to stockpile rooms full of MREs, and the appeal that apocalyptic videogames hold for millions of players the world is made absent in the fantasy of destruction and present again in the myth of reconstruction, survival, and rebirth.

The aff sustains the ‘nuclear priesthood’ of debate – in an attempt to control the absolute contingency of the Real, we repetitively invest in a practice of control over nuclear weapons which becomes a form of violent repetition compulsion that turns the case.

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The disturbance of Symbolic order by the contingency of the Real is met with an attempt to restore order, to respond to chance with law. Lacan describes this dynamic as the interplay of tuché and automaton: Where do we meet this real? For what we have in the discovery of psycho-analysis is an encounter, an essential encounter—and appointment to which we are always called with a real that eludes us… First, the tuché, which we have borrowed…from Aristotle, who uses it in his search for cause. We have translated it as the encounter with the real. The real is beyond the automaton, the return, the coming-back, the insistence of the signs, by which we see ourselves governed by the pleasure principle. The real is that which always lies behind the automaton…it is this that is the object of [Freud’s] concern. (Lacan, Four Fundamental Concepts, 53-54, italics in original) This is the central element of the repetition compulsion. Driven to make our encounter with the Real, we are perpetually disappointed, but the Symbolic world of reality abhors a vacuum. Automaton describes the endless attempts to reach the Real which are doomed to failure but cannot be surrendered, so are repeated again and again. These repetitive behaviors thus develop an aspect of order, and are, paradoxically, orderly attempts to reach the chaos of contingency. They are also linked by Lacan gambling, death, and signification (“Purloined Letter” 28-29). Nuclear deterrence can be read in this frame as an attempt to secure the world against the contingency of the Real, the uncertainty of nuclear war. It is the STRATCOM automaton’s answer to the chaos of the Bomb’s tuché. But the attempt to restore order has at its heart a desire to encounter the Real. In a history of nuclear defense intellectuals, Fred Kaplan described them in the 1980s at the height of their power having come with the mission “to impose order,” but lacking any means to control the wild abandon of the Bomb in a hypothetical war for which there was no precedent, “in the end, chaos still prevailed” (Kaplan 391). Desire is the motive force, and that what we desire cannot be attained is what requires repetition. When the chaos of tuché reigns, automaton does not surrender, but comes to be an end in itself, a site of investment. Repetition itself becomes enjoyable. In repeatedly simulating nuclear war, defense intellectuals who could not experience the Real of nuclear violence could enjoy the illusion of mastery over the terror and fascination inspired by the Real by appearing to simulate the conditions of presence and absence—in this case, the presence of the world-for-us and its absence in the Bomb’s inferno. Langdon Winner distinguishes between risk (a term prevalent in both nuclear war and poker) and threat or hazard on these grounds: risk always has an implied benefit to it, an element of desire and an opportunity for control (145). There is little empirical basis for nuclear war simulations and the calculations of probability they rely on, so nuclear war plans always require a good deal of faith, and thus to adopt them is a risk—a calculation of both hazard and reward (Ghamari-Tabrizi 8). Their parameters are set arbitrarily by the personnel who design them. In other words, they are games of chance in which we also manipulate the rules. This is the obscene supplement of nuclear deterrence that Vice Admiral Giardina could not be allowed to reveal: we don’t just repeat nuclear simulations again and again because we think that they will someday be perfect. War games are fun, and we don’t always care about the rules. Poker, after all, was rumored to be the genesis of game theory at the RAND Corporation, prominent modelers of nuclear war, and was a favorite pastime of the defense intellectuals who sought to tame the world with human reason (Arbella 51-53). This chapter will begin with an exploration of war games as media for access to the Real of nuclear war and sites of cathexis that permit the subject to enjoy its discontinuity, using the videogame First Strike as an example of enjoyment even amongst those who claim to resist the nuclear status quo. War games were supposed to model the conduct of war, but they were also supposed to predict when and how it might occur. John von Neumann’s game theory and Kenneth Arrow’s resulting rational choice theory, both elaborated at the RAND Corporation, attempted to quantify human conduct to explain the world. The second part of this chapter will deal with a problem that arises from attempts to make decisions based on nuclear war predictions. Because the Bomb as a herald of the Real occupies a place beyond rational calculation, the mathematical language of nuclear war attempts to calculate the incalculable. The result is a theological impasse which provides argumentative resources equally to activists and their enemies, illustrating the unassimilable distortions worked by the contingency of the Real in the Symbolic attempts to contain it. War Games Herman Kahn and Bernard Brodie, perhaps the most prominent American strategists of the early Cold War, tried to make nuclear war “thinkable” in the sense that they tried to explain how such a war might start and what options would exist for national leaders. At the same time, both acknowledged that the outcome of a full-scale nuclear war was indescribable. In Brodie’s words, to “make an intellectual prediction of the likelihood of war is one thing, to project oneself imaginatively and seriously into an expected war situation is quite another” (Ghamari-Tabrizi 149). The unwillingness or inability to think “seriously” about a nuclear war—in other words, to understand it instrumentally rather than through dislocating language of the sublime—was met by organizations like the RAND Corporation with an attempt to systematize nuclear strategy and develop the intellectual and technical means to actually fight and control a nuclear war. Before RAND exercised its power through the “Whiz Kids” of the Kennedy Administration, the Strategic Air Command’s “Sunday punch” nuclear plan, enshrined in SIOP-62, was an all-out nuclear attack on the USSR, Eastern Europe, and the People’s Republic of China. It might have killed 285 million people in the initial attack (Kaplan 269). Despite its intricate planning and detailed execution strategies, SIOP was immensely inflexible. Asked whether the U.S. had any options to attack without striking China, which might not even be a combatant in the war, General Thomas Power replied “Well yeh [sic], we could do that, but I hope nobody thinks of it because it would really screw up the plan” (Kaplan 270, emphasis in original). Starting in the 1960s, a set of war games of various complexity was developed to test a broader range of nuclear theories and attack options at RAND and elsewhere (Arbella 35). Games like them continue to be used for strategic military planning today (Raatz). Most of these games—or at least their results—are classified, as they became the basis for US nuclear plans. In politicomilitary games, a number of military officers, civilians, and generally mid- to lowranking government officials would play various roles as US and/or foreign decisionmakers. Another group, “control,” would feed them information about the actions of countries or groups not played by the participants or about world events that might influence the context of their actions. In more limited military simulations, extant or proposed war plans would be evaluated by computer or human players to identify possible flaws and improvements. The games themselves never had a guarantee of accuracy and were often quite obviously flawed. In one Navy game, American aircraft carriers were declared to be unsinkable. In others, the Soviet Union was assumed to have no effective airpower. Because factors like air pressure, prevailing winds, defense effectiveness, early warning, and missile failure rate were largely random or incalculable, a “fudge factor” simply declared estimated success. Even their designers sometimes admitted that the games were inaccurate, unprovable, or simply wishful thinking (Ghamari-Tabrizi 8; Allen 78). Especially in the case of nuclear war, these games cannot possibly be understood as accurate simulations of a real-world system, because there is no empirical data on the compound effects of many near-simultaneous nuclear explosions and no data on what factors cause states to cross the nuclear threshold against other similarly-armed states, a fact that bedevils nuclear planning in general and always has (Kaplan 87). By the admission of many of those who create and play them, they are “social science fiction” with no tangible effect other than that they are entertaining (Ghamari-Tabrizi 160-1). Some contemporary social science work supports this claim especially in the context of extinction-level events. Human beings simply aren’t wired to think at such a scale, and they perform very poorly assessing probability and calculating magnitude (Yudkowsky). Others have suggested that warfare is a stochastic system that we could never identify laws for, no matter how diligent we might be, because its initial conditions are simply too complex to model and they do not conform to linear causality (Beyerchen; Buchanan 62). Indeed, military planners tended to be far less willing to predict the conduct and outcome of a conventional war—despite an enormous data set spanning thousands of years—than a nuclear war fought between two superpowers, an event that has never occurred in recorded history. Fred Iklé, former RAND strategists who was at times head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, criticized these semi-mathematical abstractions in harsh terms that deserve to be quoted at length: The prominence of the calculations continues because we know how to make them…we have tailored the problem to our capability to calculate. The seemingly rigorous models of nuclear deterrence are built on the rule: "What cannot be calculated, leave out’”…Such thoughts, especially those focusing on deterrence, lack real empirical referents or bases. No other field of human endeavor demands—absolutely compels—one to work out successful solutions without obtaining directly relevant experience, without experimenting. There can be no trial and error here, no real learning. Curiously, we are far more skeptical in accepting the calculations of traditional conventional military campaigns than the calculations of nuclear warfare. In fact, the more battle experience and information military analysts have, the more modest they become in predicting the course of conventional war. Such modesty is missing for nuclear war, where pretentious analyses and simplistic abstractions dominate and blot out the discrepancies existing between abstractions and possible reality—a reality that for so many reasons is hard even to imagine. (Iklé 246) Iklé is drawing attention to two unique aspects of nuclear war planning: first, that no empirical date (or at least very little) can be gathered for the species of war that planners concerned themselves with, and second, that unlike other military problems where little data exists, defense intellectuals were willing to display great confidence in untested (and untestable) theories. Despite this lack of empirical grounding, nuclear war simulations have been repeated again and again over the decades while nuclear doctrine has remained fundamentally the same (McKinzie et al. ix-xi).

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

The disturbance of Symbolic order by the contingency of the Real is met with an attempt to restore order, to respond to chance with law The real is beyond the automaton, the return, the coming-back, the insistence of the signs, by which we see ourselves governed by the pleasure principle. The real is that which always lies behind the automaton This is the central element of the repetition compulsion. Driven to make our encounter with the Real, we are perpetually disappointed, but the Symbolic world of reality abhors a vacuum. Automaton describes the endless attempts to reach the Real which are doomed to failure but cannot be surrendered, so are repeated again and again. These repetitive behaviors thus develop an aspect of order, and are, paradoxically, orderly attempts to reach the chaos of contingency They are also linked by gambling, death, and signification Nuclear deterrence can be read as an attempt to secure the world against the contingency of the Real the uncertainty of nuclear war But the attempt to restore order has at its heart a desire to encounter the Real nuclear defense intellectuals come with the mission “to impose order,” but lacking any means to control the wild abandon of the Bomb in a hypothetical war for which there was no precedent, “in the end, chaos still prevailed Desire is the motive force, and that what we desire cannot be attained is what requires repetition. When the chaos of tuché reigns, automaton does not surrender, but comes to be an end in itself, a site of investment Repetition itself becomes enjoyable. In repeatedly simulating nuclear war, defense intellectuals who could not experience the Real of nuclear violence could enjoy the illusion of mastery over the terror and fascination inspired by the Real by appearing to simulate the conditions of presence and absence—in this case, the presence of the world-for-us and its absence in the Bomb’s inferno. Winner distinguishes between risk (a term prevalent in both nuclear war and poker) and threat or hazard on these grounds risk always has an implied benefit to it, an element of desire and an opportunity for control There is little empirical basis for nuclear war simulations and the calculations of probability they rely on, so nuclear war plans always require a good deal of faith, and thus to adopt them is a risk—a calculation of both hazard and reward Their parameters are set arbitrarily by the personnel who design them. In other words, they are games of chance in which we also manipulate the rules. This is the obscene supplement of nuclear deterrence we don’t just repeat nuclear simulations again and again because we think that they will someday be perfect. War games are fun, and we don’t always care about the rules. Poker, after all, was rumored to be the genesis of game theory at the RAND Corporation, prominent modelers of nuclear war, and was a favorite pastime of the defense intellectuals who sought to tame the world with human reason War games were supposed to model the conduct of war, but they were also supposed to predict when and how it might occur. a problem that arises from attempts to make decisions based on nuclear war predictions. Because the Bomb as a herald of the Real occupies a place beyond rational calculation, the mathematical language of nuclear war attempts to calculate the incalculable. The result is a theological impasse which provides argumentative resources equally to activists and their enemies, illustrating the unassimilable distortions worked by the contingency of the Real in the Symbolic attempts to contain it. strategists , tried to make nuclear war “thinkable” in the sense that they tried to explain how such a war might start and what options would exist for national leaders. The unwillingness or inability to think “seriously” about a nuclear war—in other words, to understand it instrumentally rather than through dislocating language of the sublime—was met by organizations like the RAND Corporation with an attempt to systematize nuclear strategy and develop the intellectual and technical means to actually fight and control a nuclear war a set of war games of various complexity was developed to test a broader range of nuclear theories and attack options at RAND and elsewhere Games like them continue to be used for strategic military planning today these games became the basis for US nuclear plans In more limited military simulations, extant or proposed war plans would be evaluated by computer or human players to identify possible flaws and improvements. The games themselves never had a guarantee of accuracy and were often quite obviously flawed Because factors like air pressure, prevailing winds, defense effectiveness, early warning, and missile failure rate were largely random or incalculable, a “fudge factor” simply declared estimated success. Even their designers sometimes admitted that the games were inaccurate, unprovable, or simply wishful thinking Especially in the case of nuclear war, these games cannot possibly be understood as accurate simulations of a real-world system, because there is no empirical data on the compound effects of many near-simultaneous nuclear explosions and no data on what factors cause states to cross the nuclear threshold against other similarly-armed states, a fact that bedevils nuclear planning in general and always has , they are “social science fiction” with no tangible effect other than that they are entertaining Some contemporary social science work supports this claim especially in the context of extinction-level events. Human beings simply aren’t wired to think at such a scale, and they perform very poorly assessing probability and calculating magnitude military planners tended to be far less willing to predict the conduct and outcome of a conventional war—despite an enormous data set spanning thousands of years—than a nuclear war fought between two superpowers, an event that has never occurred in recorded history The seemingly rigorous models of nuclear deterrence are built on the rule: "What cannot be calculated, leave out’”…Such thoughts, especially those focusing on deterrence, lack real empirical referents or bases. Curiously, we are far more skeptical in accepting the calculations of traditional conventional military campaigns than the calculations of nuclear warfare the more battle experience and information military analysts have, the more modest they become in predicting the course of conventional war. Such modesty is missing for nuclear war, where pretentious analyses and simplistic abstractions dominate and blot out the discrepancies existing between abstractions and possible reality Despite this lack of empirical grounding, nuclear war simulations have been repeated again and again over the decades while nuclear doctrine has remained fundamentally the same

The aff’s repetitive process of imagining scenarios of nuclear deterrence failure and strategizing about how to improve deterrence is an illusion of mastery – but, this game of poker playing denies the Bomb’s symbolic place beyond rational calculation which means their project inevitably fails.

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This project should instill skepticism about the efficacy of current strategies meant to confront nuclear violence by challenging it discursively. A great deal of work about the Bomb, following Carol Cohn’s excellent article and the germinal work of Stephen Hilgartner, Richard C. Bell and Rory O'Connor in Nukespeak, has focused on the sanitizing effects of nuclear language. Barry Brummett, Daniel Zins, and Edward Schiappa have all published work in this vein. Schiappa criticizes terms like “Strategic Defense Initiative” and CORRTEX for “bureaucratizing” and “domesticating” nuclear issues. Through these verbal strategies, nuclear realities are “insulated from public inspection by acronyms or sanitized jargon” (253). Both Barry Brummett and Charles Kauffman use the work of Kenneth Burke to argue that naming practices constrain public knowledge and influence attitudes about nuclear weapons, either through perfecting “God terms” for Brummett or through reference appealing historical myths such as the American frontier for Kauffman (Brummett, 1989; Kauffman, 1990). Even David Cratis Williams, who combines a Derridean perspective to the more familiar Burke, emphasizes that a chief goal of nuclear criticism is a “publicly accessible” language (Williams 202). These are all advocates for what we might call the concealment thesis. The basic assumption for proponents of this idea is that nuclear terminology conceals the reality of nuclear warfare and thus makes it palatable. The nuclear thinking developed by RAND game theorists and others produced an arcane vocabulary for all aspects of nuclear conflict, much as academia has for its own concerns: “counterforce targeting,” “throw-weight,” “circular error probable,” “post-attack state,” and, of course, “countervalue” and “first strike.” These terms mystify and enchant the public, just as they did public intellectuals during the Cold War, the fictional narrator of End Zone, and legions of high school and college undergraduate debaters to this very day (myself included). The theories of language used in the concealment thesis draw from different sources (Burke, Derrida, and Aristotle, Orwell, just to name a few), but their least common denominator is a belief that nuclear metaphors and euphemism sustain the complex of nuclear destruction by concealing the horror of nuclear war. The implication of this idea is that providing a new vocabulary for public debate, such as the “devil terms” Brummett suggests, would enable democratic deliberation and therefore constrain the nuclear state. As Schiappa puts it, a “negative nukespeak would consist of linguistic strategies to portray nuclear weapons and war as dangerous and immoral” (268). Such a strategy might “salvage” debate over nuclear weapons in the public sphere (Schiappa 254). Even outside communication studies, there is a broad consensus amongst critics of nuclear weapons that democratic debate is the key method for resistance to nuclear weapons and that concealing language stands as a barrier to it. Nuclear critique of all kinds has dropped off considerably since the end of the Cold War such that the concealment thesis, although advanced most comprehensively in the 1980s, remains the chief contribution of communication studies to the politics of nuclear warfare. The central argument of this book suggests that this legacy needs revision. The economy of nuclear discourse since the day of Trinity has been driven by the attempt to get closer to the Real, to have the Bomb as it “really is.” Chapter 2 will suggest that nuclear simulations were presented as more real and more rational than the Doomsday imaginations of Curtis LeMay and the early Strategic Air Command. Jonathan Schell’s Fate of the Earth was another effort to bring Americans face-to-face with the reality of nuclear war, as were the more explicitly fictional novels churned out especially in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s. Underlying these efforts is the fact that nuclear war remains “fabulously textual” in Derrida’s terms (24-27). There have been atrocities related to nuclear weapons and their production—indigenous peoples subjected to uranium mining and nuclear testing, inner city populations confined and targeted in the name of the Bomb, “downwinders” exposed to radioactivity, U.S. soldiers made to witness tests with inadequate protection, and non-human animals subjected to cruelty in the name of understanding just what a nuclear war might be like. But there has never been a nuclear war in the sense that strategists, novelists, and survivalists imagined it. To imagine the graphic details of a possible nuclear war does not reveal the truth but instead relies on the same dynamic that makes the Bomb so fascinating in the first place: a sense of access to the Real. My overall aim is to establish the death drive as a problematic for communication studies. I argue that it is a desire for unmediated experience spurred on by the Real, but because communication is always mediated, this desire is frustrated as soon as it is expressed. The quest for the Real ends up mired in the Symbolic. Unable to enjoy the Real because its loss is the necessary condition for subjectivity in the first place, we invest in subjectivity instead, enjoying the perceived control over presence and absence demonstrated in the fort-da dynamic. In developing this argument, I hope to make a contribution to communication studies by showing that silence, omission, and lack do not just frustrate our effort to communicate, but partly determine the ways in which we do so. These unspeakable failures are not therefore purely negative—they are an excess beyond language, not a vacuum. Specific media artefacts, whether war games or literary texts, exist instead of others because they are animated by desire and the uncanny sense of the Real. Therefore, efforts to understand what we do communicate require attention to the larger economy of desire and that which we cannot mediate. For rhetoric, this means a new understanding of the sublime as an uncanny attribute of signifiers and media itself in relation to the Real, rather than simply a grand style of speech. For media and technology studies, it means acknowledging how the enjoyment of our power over presence and absence leads us to form attachments that sustain some particular technologies instead of others, making an account of desire necessary even for a truly materialist understanding of mediation. This also means rethinking the relationship between public discourse and political change since, as the example of nuclear weapons shows, horror and fascination are woven together such that exposing the potential for catastrophe does not translate into an effective response.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

This project should instill skepticism about the efficacy of current strategies meant to confront nuclear violence by challenging it discursively A great deal of work focused on the sanitizing effects of nuclear language terms like “Strategic Defense Initiative” and CORRTEX bureaucratiz and domesticat nuclear issues. Through these verbal strategies, nuclear realities are “insulated from public inspection by acronyms or sanitized jargon naming practices constrain public knowledge and influence attitudes about nuclear weapons, either through perfecting “God terms” or through reference appealing historical myths such as the American frontier a chief goal of nuclear criticism is a “publicly accessible” language nuclear terminology conceals the reality of nuclear warfare and thus makes it palatable The nuclear thinking developed by RAND game theorists and others produced an arcane vocabulary for all aspects of nuclear conflict, much as academia has for its own concerns: “counterforce targeting,” “throw-weight,” “circular error probable,” “post-attack state,” and, of course, “countervalue” and “first strike.” These terms mystify and enchant the public just as they did public intellectuals during the Cold War, the fictional narrator of End Zone, and legions of high school and college undergraduate debaters to this very day nuclear metaphors and euphemism sustain the complex of nuclear destruction by concealing the horror of nuclear war. The implication of this idea is that providing a new vocabulary for public debate, such as the “devil terms would enable democratic deliberation and therefore constrain the nuclear state. negative nukespeak would consist of linguistic strategies to portray nuclear weapons and war as dangerous and immoral Such a strategy might “salvage” debate over nuclear weapons in the public sphere Nuclear critique of all kinds has dropped off considerably since the end of the Cold War such that the concealment thesis remains the chief contribution of communication studies to the politics of nuclear warfare. The economy of nuclear discourse since the day of Trinity has been driven by the attempt to get closer to the Real, to have the Bomb as it “really is.” nuclear war remains “fabulously textual” There have been atrocities related to nuclear weapons and their production—indigenous peoples subjected to uranium mining and nuclear testing, inner city populations confined and targeted in the name of the Bomb, “downwinders” exposed to radioactivity, U.S. soldiers made to witness tests with inadequate protection, and non-human animals subjected to cruelty in the name of understanding just what a nuclear war might be like there has never been a nuclear war in the sense that strategists, novelists, and survivalists imagined it. To imagine a possible nuclear war does not reveal the truth but instead relies on the same dynamic that makes the Bomb so fascinating in the first place: a sense of access to the Real. the enjoyment of our power over presence and absence leads us to form attachments that sustain some particular technologies instead of others, making an account of desire necessary even for a truly materialist understanding of mediation. This also means rethinking the relationship between public discourse and political change since, as the example of nuclear weapons shows, horror and fascination are woven together such that exposing the potential for catastrophe does not translate into an effective response.

Even if they win that talking about nuclear war is good, the expert jargon the 1AC uses to describe nuclear threats is counterproductive – rather than mobilizing anti-nuclear activist, they mystify and enchant nuclear war, concealing its horror – specifically, this is true of debate.

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Two anecdotes about John von Neumann, famous mathematician who worked on the hydrogen bomb, serve to introduce the problems of risk associated with attemtps to calculate the incalculable. First, there is a story that von Neumann formulated the early precursors to game theory playing poker (Allen 142). RAND analysts played the game regularly, many with some passion. These players apparently thought of the game mathematically rather than an exercise in psychology, since RAND was “stumped” by human behavior. As RAND president Frank Collbohm said about an Air Force-ordered pilot reaction study, the one “machine” that remained a mystery “is called a ‘pilot’” (Arbella 25). The basic assumption in reducing war games to mathematical simulations was that the universe could be rendered in such a language, that “numbers could save the world” because life was ultimately a game of risk, calculable and controllable (Arbella 134). Later, diagnosed with terminal cancer, von Neumann supposedly converted to Catholicism on his deathbed, convinced by another, long dead, mathematician: Blaise Pascal (Jordan 1). Pascal’s wager, that one should believe in God even if He is very unlikely to exist because the consequences of eternal damnation are infinite (Pascal 67- 9), is the basic structure of the sign of survival that was inverted in the twentieth century to be an argument mandating care for the material world instead. Incubated in the warmth of the Bomb, this sign has metastasized to other areas of apocalyptic fantasy predictions. As its transmogrification from Jonathan Schell’s pacifist anti-nuclear stance to Dick Cheney’s defense of preemption will show, arguments based on the attempt to calculate the incalculable are indeterminate. The excess of tuché frustrates automaton, and this secular version of Pascal’s wager is the broken machinery it leaves behind. Jonathan Schell wrote perhaps the most famous book about nuclear war to be marketed as non-fiction. Fate of the Earth is an attempt to make nuclear war seem real through the unabashed use of sublime language. The first of its three parts is full of beautiful passages about the destruction that a nuclear war might produce before ending in a “republic of insects and grass.” Relying heavily on the assumption that a nuclear winter would follow a war between the USA and USSR and that such an event would cause humanity to go extinct,14 Schell contemplates what the end of the human species might mean and what its possibility suggests for defense policy. Schell, like Kristiakoswky at the Trinity test, thought of nuclear war as the end of humanity. Seeing the world apparently as one for us, he wrote that all value was human value, so a nuclear war would destroy everything meaningful in the known universe (95). Nuclear war must, therefore, be avoided at all costs. Schell wrote: [T]he mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than, that of any other risk, and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account…It represents not the defeat of some purpose, but an abyss in which all human purposes would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risks that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history…although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is…infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity…morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. (Schell 95) This passage serves as the end of the first part of Fate of the Earth and a transition to the middle section of the book, “The Second Death,” which is about future generations. Schell’s argument is a version of Pascal’s wager where “infinity” takes the place of a Christian God. “Infinity” as a concept is always an attempt to mediate the Real because it replaces something that by definition cannot be resolved in language or understood by human beings in its entirety into a single word, a placeholder to represent with finite bounds something that can never be represented. It is the ultimate license in metonymy since all associations are included within it; no proliferation of meaning is prohibited. Its symbolic function can be compared to the various names of God in negative theology, all of which stand in for something that is acknowledged to be inexpressible (Pseudo-Dionysius 52-53). Some version of Schell’s infinite risk argument was used by anti-nuclear activists in public rallies (Sorensen 141), and also used by others to think about a range of other “existential threats” (e.g., Matheny). A report by the Global Challenges Foundation explicitly focuses on “infinite risks” including nuclear war, describing itself as “the first science-based list of global risks with a potentially infinite impact” (Pamlin and Armstrong 31). Representatives of the Vatican recently used the argument too, signing on to a statement including this line: “as long as nuclear weapons exist, there remains the possibility of a nuclear explosion. Even if the probability is small, given the catastrophic consequences of a nuclear weapon detonating, the risk is unacceptable” (Gagliarducci). Even when the hazard is expressed as “catastrophic,” or quantified with some suitably huge number, it is effectively infinite: as Yudkowsky argues, human beings calculate scale poorly, and a sufficiently large number is not rationally understood. “Human emotions take place within an analog brain,” writes Yudkowsky. “The human brain cannot release enough neurotransmitters to feel emotion a thousand times as strong as the grief of one funeral. A prospective risk going from 10,000,000 deaths to 100,000,000 deaths does not multiply by ten the strength of our determination to stop it. It adds one more zero on paper for our eyes to glaze over, an effect so small that one must usually jump several orders of magnitude to detect the difference experimentally” (16). In the more elegant formulation attributed to Josef Stalin, one death is a tragedy. One million deaths is just a statistic. Our failure to grasp these magnitudes could be called the problem of hrair after the Lapine language of Watership Down. Rabbits in the novel can only count to four. Any larger number, be it five or one thousand, is simply hrair. The word means “a great many; an uncountable number; any number over four” (Adams 475). The language we employ attempts to master and reduce the incomprehensible vastness of time and space to mark difference where comprehension is impossible. Infinity is perhaps the best example, but any very large number serves the same structural function of expressing loss beyond practical measure. Thus, although the Global Challenges Foundation argues that “infinite risk” is not meant in a mathematical sense and that calculations are possible, they are in effect meaningless: the investments of “infinity” exceed our ability to calculate, as indeed the report acknowledges when it argues for a categorically different treatment of these risks (Pamlin and Armstrong 33). This quandary frustrates the attempt to make calculable values that seem to exceed calculation itself. A shadow always remains in the quantification of infinity and the attempt to master it technologically, a remainder that haunts the edges of supposedly perfect reason. This is Martin Heidegger’s concept of the gigantic, something much like the sense of the Real that shines through in the sublime: The gigantic is rather that through which the quantitative becomes a special quality and thus a remarkable kind of greatness... as soon as the gigantic in planning and calculating and adjusting and making secure shifts over out of the quantitative and becomes a special quality, then what is gigantic, and what can seemingly always be calculated completely, becomes, precisely through this, incalculable. This incalculable remains the invisible shadow that is cast around all things everywhere when man [sic] has been transformed into subiectum and the world into picture. (Heidegger 135) Through this shadow the modern world extends itself into “a space withdrawn from representation” and gestures towards something which we are denied to know (Heidegger 136). For Schell, the losses possible in a nuclear war are infinite because they threaten future generations beyond count. Preventing the birth of future individuals is immoral, by this logic, which has some bizarre (and apparently unintended) echoes in the Catholic view on abortion (Schell 116). As no future individuals are cotemporal with those assigning them worth, the value of future generations is symbolic, not unique to the individuals actually “prevented” (Kleinig 196-197). The reason we must not immolate ourselves in nuclear fire, then, is that we must continue to reproduce—the value of each individual lies in that person’s ability to create more individuals. There is no discussion of anything else that we are obligated to do for the future. For Schell, responsibility seems to be a finite obligation to an infinite number of people. This infinite future is frequently represented by the metaphor of the child. In Lyndon Johnson’s infamous “Daisy Girl” campaign ad, a child pulls petals off a daisy, accompanied by a mechanical countdown and interrupted by the familiar mushroom cloud of the Bomb. “These are the stakes,” a man’s voice intones. “To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die” (“Campaign Spot”). Lee Edelman’s words, bitterly describing the Child as a figure for “compulsory investment in the misrecognition of figure,” could have been about the Johnson ad. “And lo and behold,” he writes, “as viewed through the prism of the tears that it always calls forth, the figure of this Child seems to shimmer with the iridescent promise of Noah’s rainbow, serving like the rainbow as the pledge of a covenant that shields us against the persistent threat of apocalypse now—or later” (Edelman 18). Unfortunately for disarmament activists, nuclear strategists have children too, and some, like Jim Lipp, express the value of their own work in the same terms—as a matter of caring for “grandchildren’s grandchildren” through nuclear deterrence (Kaplan 78). The “fraction of infinity” argument has been used by those defending an aggressive defense posture. The George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq citing that country’s possible future development of weapons of mass destruction as a primary casus belli. It is only logical that no time ought to be wasted—every second that the decision for war is delayed increases the chance that a rogue regime could develop nuclear weapons. Any non-zero risk is equivalent to an infinite one. Vice President Dick Cheney went one further, however, establishing the “Cheney Doctrine” in response to nuclear terrorism. Told at a briefing with CIA director George Tenet that Pakistani scientists could potentially be assisting Al Qaeda in the development of nuclear weapons, Cheney responded that if “there’s a one percent chance…we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” The response must be immediate, regardless of proof: “It’s not about our analysis,” he said, “or finding a preponderance of evidence. It’s about our response” (Suskind 62). Members of the security community often assert that nuclear terrorism is an “existential risk,” a threat to American “civilization” or even the entire species despite the complete lack of evidence to this effect (Mueller 19-20). There is no mathematical way to distinguish between infinite risks. If any fraction of infinity is infinity, then every fractional risk is infinite—Heidegger’s unquantifiable “gigantic” casts its shadow over attempts to calculate. While the last part of Schell’s book is a passionate case for disarmament, the opposite is equally plausible: if there is any chance greater than zero that disarmament opponents are right and American nuclear weapons are deterring a nuclear war (and uncertainty in calculation alone ensures that there must be), then the risk is infinite. The future is compressed entirely into the present, since any action we take now could determine whether that future exists at all and what character it might have. We are enjoined to do everything, right now, as fast as we can, because any delay might cost trillions of deaths—an argument Nick Bostrom has made about space colonization using the same structure of Pascal’s wager used by Schell (Bostrom 3). At the same time, we must be in (literally) perfect stasis and do nothing at all, for any change might be the one that cascades into nuclear war. If we extend this infinite value to human extinction more generally, it might even be imperative that we deliberately cause a nuclear war as soon as possible to destroy industrial civilization and thus prevent the collapse of global ecosystems on which all life depends (Caldwell).15 The logic of infinite loss results in aporia. It is simultaneously true that no risk is worth taking and that every risk must be taken. At the same time, each individual is afforded some symbolic connection to the Real, because each action we take has effects on the unbounded infinity of future human beings. Each decision we make now is of limitless import, and thus we can enjoy the imagination of destroying future generations because it invests us with the power over existence and nonexistence on a cosmic scale. This quasi-secular iteration of Pascal’s wager shares its defect with nuclear war games. Both attempt to make rational calculations about nuclear war by quantifying variables that cannot be quantified. The Symbolic order can be analogized to a set of operations, like an equation, that provides the conditions of possibility for meaning, while the Imaginary describes the value of specific variables in that equation. If the Bomb is valued as infinity, then the rest of an operation is overshadowed: no probability assigned to that variable fundamentally changes the result. Like the sun outshining dimmer lights in Longinus’s treatment of metaphor, the threat of human extinction as an unquantifiable evil outshines the issues attached to it (preemption or pacifism, reproduction or culling, counterforce or countervalue, and so forth) such that many paths lead audiences to the same result: the poorly-healed scar in the Symbolic that results from automaton’s sutures over the wound of tuché. In fact, because nuclear war is a problem in which two or more agents are pitted against each other and the optimal solution for one party requires responding to the optimal solution of the others, rationality must necessarily collapse—the only way to frustrate enemy calculations of American plans is to ensure that they are irrational. Rationality thereby demands irrationality (Rose, ch. 5) Nuclear war games might incorporate data from nuclear testing or conventional bombing, but they still rely largely on guesswork. The “infinite risk” of Schell’s argument does the same, warping calculations by including a cipher for the incalculable. Both operations are sustained by enjoyment. As Cheney said, it’s not about our analysis—it’s about our response. In the case of war games, simulations allow players to enjoy their ability to enjoy—to attach to subjectivity itself. The appeal to infinite destruction is remarkably similar, only those who use it can enjoy the capacity to make the world present and absent in speech. Imagining the apocalypse is fun; doubly so if apparently sophisticated simulations allow us to alter the models of its occurrence. While this kind of scenario planning and simulation had its most important early developments in Cold War nuclear games, the cultural technology has become deeply ingrained and proliferated in a number of different discourses and practices. A cottage industry in extinction prediction has blossomed in the last few decades, concerned with everything from asteroid collisions and ice ages to magnetic pole shifts and whether the universe is a simulation that might be switched off (see for example Bostrom; Leslie; Posner; Matheny; Yudkowsky). The 2014 outbreaks of the Ebola virus in Africa are a recent example. Modelers quickly produced simulations of the spread of this disease. An article on the Infowars website discusses the most extreme of these disease models, asking if “you really want to wait until after infections have been identified in the United States to make your preparations?” (Slavo). An embedded Youtube link leads to a video entitled “Mathematical Model Shows How Ebola Will Spread: ‘Worse Case Scenario... An Extinction Event’” posted by TheDailySheeple. The graphical presentation of this video closely resembles the gameplay of Pandemic 2, a game with millions of online plays popular long before the outbreak. In Pandemic 2, the player controls the disease and the object is to kill everyone in the world (Crazy Monkey Games). The notorious difficulty of infecting Madagascar in the game has spawned its own Internet meme where players express frustration in sympathy with their fictional pandemic (interestingly, the aforementioned Ebola video leaves Madagascar untouched). The website for Northeastern University’s MoBS lab (Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-Technical Systems) shows efforts to model the spread of Ebola using graphical icons that also closely resemble Pandemic 2, right down to aircraft flight paths and a similar color-coding system for the incidence of infection (MoBS). It is no wonder that many people might share the feelings of journalist Abraham Riesman who recently wrote a self-reflective piece on his “amoral twinge of excitement” on reading Ebola news and imagining the end of the world (Riesman).

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

the problems of risk associated with attemtps to calculate the incalculable. von Neumann formulated the early precursors to game theory playing poker players apparently thought of the game mathematically rather than an exercise in psychology, since RAND was “stumped” by human behavior. The basic assumption in reducing war games to mathematical simulations was that the universe could be rendered in such a language, that “numbers could save the world” because life was ultimately a game of risk, calculable and controllable Pascal’s wager, that one should believe in God even if He is very unlikely to exist because the consequences of eternal damnation are infinite is the basic structure of the sign of survival that was inverted in the twentieth century to be an argument mandating care for the material world instead Incubated in the warmth of the Bomb, this sign has metastasized to other areas of apocalyptic fantasy predictions. The excess of tuché frustrates automaton, and this secular version of Pascal’s wager is the broken machinery it leaves behind. Schell’s argument is a version of Pascal’s wager where “infinity” takes the place of a Christian God. “Infinity” as a concept is always an attempt to mediate the Real because it replaces something that by definition cannot be resolved in language or understood by human beings in its entirety into a single word, a placeholder to represent with finite bounds something that can never be represented. It is the ultimate license in metonymy since all associations are included within it; no proliferation of meaning is prohibited. Its symbolic function can be compared to the various names of God in negative theology, all of which stand in for something that is acknowledged to be inexpressible Even when the hazard is expressed as “catastrophic,” or quantified with some suitably huge number, it is effectively infinite human beings calculate scale poorly, and a sufficiently large number is not rationally understood The human brain cannot release enough neurotransmitters to feel emotion a thousand times as strong as the grief of one funeral. A prospective risk going from 10,000,000 deaths to 100,000,000 deaths does not multiply by ten the strength of our determination to stop it. It adds one more zero on paper for our eyes to glaze over, an effect so small that one must usually jump several orders of magnitude to detect the difference experimentally The language we employ attempts to master and reduce the incomprehensible vastness of time and space to mark difference where comprehension is impossible. Infinity is perhaps the best example, but any very large number serves the same structural function of expressing loss beyond practical measure although “infinite risk” is not meant in a mathematical sense and that calculations are possible, they are in effect meaningless: the investments of “infinity” exceed our ability to calculate, This quandary frustrates the attempt to make calculable values that seem to exceed calculation itself. A shadow always remains in the quantification of infinity and the attempt to master it technologically, a remainder that haunts the edges of supposedly perfect reason. Through this shadow the modern world extends itself into “a space withdrawn from representation” and gestures towards something which we are denied to know the losses possible in a nuclear war are infinite because they threaten future generations beyond count. Preventing the birth of future individuals is immoral, by this logic, which has some bizarre echoes in the Catholic view on abortion The reason we must not immolate ourselves in nuclear fire, then, is that we must continue to reproduce—the value of each individual lies in that person’s ability to create more individuals. There is no discussion of anything else that we are obligated to do for the future. This infinite future is frequently represented by the metaphor of the child. as viewed through the prism of the tears that it always calls forth, the figure of this Child seems to shimmer with the iridescent promise of Noah’s rainbow, serving like the rainbow as the pledge of a covenant that shields us against the persistent threat of apocalypse now—or later The “fraction of infinity” argument has been used by those defending an aggressive defense posture. Bush invaded Iraq citing that country’s possible future development of weapons of mass destruction as a primary casus belli. It is only logical that no time ought to be wasted—every second that the decision for war is delayed increases the chance that a rogue regime could develop nuclear weapons. Any non-zero risk is equivalent to an infinite one. Cheney responded that if “there’s a one percent chance…we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” Members of the security community often assert that nuclear terrorism is an “existential risk,” a threat to American “civilization” or even the entire species despite the complete lack of evidence to this effect There is no mathematical way to distinguish between infinite risks. If any fraction of infinity is infinity, then every fractional risk is infinite The future is compressed entirely into the present, since any action we take now could determine whether that future exists at all and what character it might have. We are enjoined to do everything, right now, as fast as we can, because any delay might cost trillions of deaths At the same time, we must be in (literally) perfect stasis and do nothing at all, for any change might be the one that cascades into nuclear war If we extend this infinite value to human extinction more generally, it might even be imperative that we deliberately cause a nuclear war as soon as possible to destroy industrial civilization and thus prevent the collapse of global ecosystems on which all life depends The logic of infinite loss results in aporia. It is simultaneously true that no risk is worth taking and that every risk must be taken. each individual is afforded some symbolic connection to the Real, because each action we take has effects on the unbounded infinity of future human beings. Each decision we make now is of limitless import, and thus we can enjoy the imagination of destroying future generations because it invests us with the power over existence and nonexistence on a cosmic scale. This quasi-secular iteration of Pascal’s wager shares its defect with nuclear war games. Both attempt to make rational calculations about nuclear war by quantifying variables that cannot be quantified If the Bomb is valued as infinity, then the rest of an operation is overshadowed: no probability assigned to that variable fundamentally changes the result. the threat of human extinction as an unquantifiable evil outshines the issues attached to it (preemption or pacifism, reproduction or culling, counterforce or countervalue, and so forth) such that many paths lead audiences to the same result: the poorly-healed scar in the Symbolic that results from automaton’s sutures over the wound of tuché nuclear war is a problem in which two or more agents are pitted against each other and the optimal solution for one party requires responding to the optimal solution of the others, rationality must necessarily collapse the only way to frustrate enemy calculations of American plans is to ensure that they are irrational. Rationality thereby demands irrationality Nuclear war games might incorporate data from nuclear testing or conventional bombing, but they still rely largely on guesswork. The “infinite risk” argument does the same, warping calculations by including a cipher for the incalculable. Both operations are sustained by enjoyment. the cultural technology has become deeply ingrained and proliferated in a number of different discourses and practices. A cottage industry in extinction prediction has blossomed in the last few decades, concerned with everything from asteroid collisions and ice ages to magnetic pole shifts and whether the universe is a simulation that might be switched off It is no wonder that many people might share the feelings amoral twinge of excitement” on reading news and imagining the end of the world

Reject their framing of “extinction first” – any fraction of infinity is infinity – their attempt to calculate the incalculable results in violence.

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

In my last year of college debate the national topic involved nuclear arms control. I would sometimes stay amongst the “U” call numbers in the basement of the Michigan State University Library all night reading books that hadn’t been checked out since the 1980s and walking home in the early morning. Every day I would pass the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the half light of dawn, which, long after the Cold War ended, had a prominent yellow “Fallout Shelter” sign bolted to its masonry, the old-fashioned triangular Civil Defense kind made of metal. Today that sign is gone. In its place is the deep-set rust stain that the sign left, indelibly marking its old place in that triangular shape, an enthymeme of death and hope for anyone who remembers its old message. The sign is literally absent, but its distortion remains. The Bomb is still with us. It’s the shelters that have disappeared. This dissertation has explored the distorting influence of the Bomb as a means to understand the desire to experience the Real beyond mediation and the paradoxical refraction of that desire into fixation on various forms of mediation that come to stand in for the unspeakable. This is an issue raised by symbols in any form, as they must necessarily stand in for something that is absent. The connection between any particular signifier and what it represents may be arbitrary, but it is held together by our investment in the tie, a kind of implicit collective agreement necessary for language to convey meaning, to provide the resources for one speaking subject to address another. These agreements accrete into broader myths, sustained and shaped to create cultural formations by specific ideologies that are themselves products of durable investments. I have argued that desire finds its point of attachment in the sense of the Real that a symbol conveys. Essentially, language works through a habitual confusion in which artifice is concealed by its own action and we mistake the Symbolic for the Real, attaching ourselves in those uncanny moments when it seems that the Real “shines through.” Even if the revelation of the Real cannot be transmitted in its full force from one subject to another, language can be the spark that refers one to one’s own memory of other witnessed eruptions. Nuclear weapons are an extreme case chosen to make these connections clearer, but they are by no means unique in this regard. The uncanny is never a complete substitute for the Real, so the effort to reach it is frustrated and then repeated. Any object of desire understood as distinct from the subject must necessarily elude total incorporation. Were it to be attained, the motion of the drive would not stop because each object stands in for the return to continuity itself, a goal that the subject cannot attain and remain extant. Perhaps such a thing is possible, but if so, language cannot convey it. It is a currency that only serves up to a point. This basic dynamic is the first part of the death drive. The next phase is the enjoyment of our efforts to control presence and absence, not because we enjoy either state (although we likely enjoy them both), but because the subject can attach to the one thing truly available to it: itself, and specifically its capacity to enjoy. This is still a mediated path, as the subject is a product of identification with the Symbolic order. We are again grasping at shadows. This formulation situates the death drive as a problematic for communication studies. I have argued here that the death drive is not reducible to the desire, biological or otherwise, for death. Rather, it is the union of Eros and Thanatos: both are a desire for unmediated experience, for connection to all that the subject surrenders as the cost of its own coming into being. This current of desire is a product of the necessary conditions for the Symbolic, not the Real, even though it is a desire animated by the latter. The death drive is not a hidden structure that organizes the Real, but a dynamic observable in the Symbolic as it attempts to repair the rips and threadbare patches worn into it by the unimaginably vast world that exists outside our ken. The death drive itself might be silent and invisible, as Derrida argued in Archive Fever, but its passage leaves a wake of distortions in language. The attempts to mediate what is beyond mediation comprise the only evidence available for the motion of the drive, and thus the proper tools to analyze it are found in communication studies. Things that seem inexpressible, and the desire to encounter them, have a powerful effect on the human world. To neglect this is to miss one important factor that shapes our communication, and, in the uncanny sense of the Real, an attribute of signs that helps to explain why some might have traction and some might not. The tradition most applicable to this understanding of the drive is the rhetorical tradition of the sublime.30 Edmund Burke, writing a century and a half before Freud, identified the sublime as the interplay of two drives, one for pleasure and one for pain, but both present in the sublime in some measure, the latter more powerful because it is an “emissary” for that “king of terrors,” death (36). Burke borrowed from the tradition of Longinus which understood the sublime as an aspect of language, generally metaphor. It is to this understanding we should return with a difference: communication is more than language, and the sublime is an aspect of communication. The advent of the atomic bomb and its yet more terrible progeny, the hydrogen bomb, elevated human expression to a qualitatively new degree. It became possible to communicate through fission and fusion, through nations destroyed in minutes, through genetic and environmental legacies marked on a millennial scale. Cold War nuclear deterrence is a dialogue expressed primarily in enthymeme, and game theory is little but a guide for making and decoding its messages, now a conversation involving several more participants. The latent threat of total destruction is now promised by synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, asteroid collisions, and host of modern technological anxieties along with nuclear warfare. These still create deep metonymic channels through which association might flow between obscure signifiers covering the ultimate void of metaphysical groundlessness, expressed not in the question “why is there something instead of nothing,” but “why does it matter?” In the case of world-ending weapons themselves, the medium is the message. The rhetorical tradition of the sublime exposes the intoxicating power of horror mixed with desire and the counterattack of language after the breakthrough of silence, as witnessed by the Trinity observers. The analysis of ensuing myths, such as the myth of survival and rebirth after Doomsday, is also facilitated by rhetorical tradition. These are excellent tools, but insufficient without an understanding of media that stretches beyond the spoken or written word. Nuclear war games in their various iterations draw us in and change us through form and function that exceeds text and persuasion. Cities are built with the Bomb in mind, or justified by appeals to necessity and the lurking possibility of destruction. In the case of the sublime, the need is to revisit a venerable and powerful tradition by bringing to bear more contemporary understandings of communication. The examples I have chosen are efforts to do this by showing how practices like survivalism and games attempt to mediate the tears of the Real along with texts like post-apocalyptic novels and oral histories. This approach was deliberately taken to illustrate the ubiquity of the sublime by identifying many far-flung iterations and uncanny resemblances.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

In my last year of college debate the national topic involved nuclear arms control. I would sometimes stay amongst the “U” call numbers in the basement of the Michigan State University Library all night reading books that hadn’t been checked out since the 1980s Every day I would pass the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the half light of dawn, which, long after the Cold War ended, had a prominent yellow “Fallout Shelter” sign bolted to its masonry, the old-fashioned triangular Civil Defense kind made of metal. Today that sign is gone. In its place is the deep-set rust stain that the sign left, indelibly marking its old place in that triangular shape, an enthymeme of death and hope for anyone who remembers its old message. The sign is literally absent, but its distortion remains. The Bomb is still with us. It’s the shelters that have disappeared. the distorting influence of the Bomb as a means to understand the desire to experience the Real beyond mediation and the paradoxical refraction of that desire into fixation on various forms of mediation that come to stand in for the unspeakable. This is an issue raised by symbols in any form, as they must necessarily stand in for something that is absent. The connection between any particular signifier and what it represents may be arbitrary, but it is held together by our investment These agreements accrete into broader myths, sustained and shaped to create cultural formations by specific ideologies that are themselves products of durable investments language works through a habitual confusion in which artifice is concealed by its own action and we mistake the Symbolic for the Real, attaching ourselves in those uncanny moments when it seems that the Real “shines through.” Nuclear weapons are an extreme case chosen to make these connections clearer, but they are by no means unique in this regard language cannot convey it It is a currency that only serves up to a point. This basic dynamic is the first part of the death drive. The next phase is the enjoyment of our efforts to control presence and absence, the subject is a product of identification with the Symbolic order. We are again grasping at shadows The tradition most applicable to this understanding of the drive is the rhetorical tradition of the sublime communication is more than language, and the sublime is an aspect of communication. The advent of the atomic bomb and its yet more terrible progeny, the hydrogen bomb, elevated human expression to a qualitatively new degree. It became possible to communicate through fission and fusion, through nations destroyed in minutes, through genetic and environmental legacies marked on a millennial scale Cold War nuclear deterrence is a dialogue expressed primarily in enthymeme, and game theory is little but a guide for making and decoding its messages, now a conversation involving several more participants. The latent threat of total destruction is now promised by synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, asteroid collisions, and host of modern technological anxieties along with nuclear warfare. These still create deep metonymic channels through which association might flow between obscure signifiers covering the ultimate void of metaphysical groundlessness, expressed not in the question “why is there something instead of nothing,” but “why does it matter?” The rhetorical tradition of the sublime exposes the intoxicating power of horror mixed with desire and the counterattack of language after the breakthrough of silence, as witnessed by the Trinity observers. These are insufficient without an understanding of media that stretches beyond the spoken or written word. Nuclear war games in their various iterations draw us in and change us through form and function that exceeds text and persuasion. Cities are built with the Bomb in mind, or justified by appeals to necessity and the lurking possibility of destruction. practices like games attempt to mediate the tears of the Real This approach was deliberately taken to illustrate the ubiquity of the sublime by identifying many far-flung iterations and uncanny resemblances.

While the Civil Defense “Fallout shelter” sign is gone, policy debate continues to be haunted by the ghosts of the Cold War, living on the precipice of annihilation through the rust stain of the sign.

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

I attended my first debate tournament as a sophomore in high school. For two days, I argued with other kids, uncomfortable like me in ill-fitting formal clothes, our resolution pertaining to juvenile crime in the United States. When not discussing it, we performed it in clumsily conspicuous smoke breaks outside the suburban Grand Rapids public school where our competition was hosted. I had been trained to negate this resolution by highlighting its negative consequences for states’ rights and the economy. These things mattered, I was told, because the instability attending to a breakdown in federalism or dip in the economy might cause a nuclear war. A nuclear war would be so awful that it should never be risked, however improbable. I was given Jonathan Schell’s Fate of the Earth as a resource. I did as I was told and invoked the threat of atomic attack in every debate. After one round, a young debater from Detroit approached me in the cafeteria. “Are you the nuclear war guy?” he asked. I supposed that I might be. “I heard about you. You’re crazy, man. That’s awesome.”

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

I attended my first debate tournament as a sophomore in high school For two days, I argued with other kids, uncomfortable like me in ill-fitting formal clothes, our resolution pertaining to juvenile crime in the United States I had been trained to negate this resolution by highlighting its negative consequences for states’ rights and the economy. These things mattered, because the instability attending to a breakdown in federalism or dip in the economy might cause a nuclear war A nuclear war would be so awful that it should never be risked, however improbable. . I did as I was told and invoked the threat of atomic attack in every debate After one round, a young debater from Detroit approached me in the cafeteria. “Are you the nuclear war guy?” he asked. I supposed that I might be. “I heard about you. You’re crazy, man. That’s awesome.”

Prefer evidence specific to policy debate.

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Just as metaphors are made meaningful by the repeated investments that tie signifier to signified, war games are made meaningful by the investments that tie them to nuclear war. The simulations are enjoyable because of their link to the power of the Bomb. Lacan explains the enjoyment of subjectivity in the Symbolic by analogizing it to a game. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud recounts a game played by a young boy of his acquaintance (13-17). The boy had a wooden reel attached to a string which he would throw over his curtained cot, making it “gone” (fort). Then he would pull the spool back into view, rejoicing that it was “there” (da). He would repeat these actions again and again. The game can be read as the child inuring himself against the potential absence of his mother, but a more productive reading would locate enjoyment not in the conditions of “gone” or “here” but in the exercise of control over the conditions of presence and absence, essentially a simulation that permits agency over a situation in which the child must be passive (Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle 16-17). Games are particularly powerful media for this control if they differ from representation based on the player’s ability to affect the outcome of each repetition within the procedures created by the game. This sense of control, that the outcome is dependent on the player’s actions, is a key feature that distinguishes games (and, in principle, other simulations) from traditional linear texts in which the reader’s choice is more limited, as is exposure to “risk” (Aarseth 4). This is a challenge for work that understands gaming simply as a metaphor where one term replaces and conceals another, as Barry Brummett argues, without acknowledging that gaming is both a linguistic choice and a material practice of substitution and connection (Brummett 91-92). Norbert Weiner speculated that games would be used to “determine the policies for pressing the Great Push Button and burning the earth clean for a new and less humanly undependable order of things” (24-25). Noting that there is not enough experience to establish criteria for nuclear war games, Weiner emphasized the importance of accuracy: The chief criterion as to whether a line of human effort can be embodied in a game is whether there is some objectively recognizable criterion of the merit of the performance of this effort. Otherwise the game assumes the formlessness of the croquet game in Alice in Wonderland, where…the Queen of Hearts, who kept changing the rules and sending the players to the Headsman to be beheaded. Under these circumstances, to win has no meaning, and a successful policy cannot be learned, because there is no criterion of success.” (26-27 This argument may well be correct, but it misses the most important trait that sustains nuclear war games: they are enjoyable even when they aren’t accurate, hence people ponder the nuclear war even though its consequences are imponderable (Rose, ch. 5). They serve as a site for cathectic attachment and solidify the subject’s sense of itself. Nuclear deterrence resembles gambling, just like the poker games favored by Vice Admiral Giardina. In the exchange for one set of risks for another, nothing is produced— counters are merely moved around, made meaningful by their assigned values, but ultimately traded and expended by the players with no real increase in value during the process, a useless exchange that serves the subject’s enjoyment by creating a space for play separate from work and art (Caillois 5). Fudging the numbers in a nuclear simulation, just like forging fake chips in a casino, is a kind of cheating, but not a threat to the game itself—breaking the rules maintains a certain fidelity to them, recognizing them as existing constraints to be manipulated, and reinforcing the logic of the game even if the cheater is dishonorable. The cheat only sustains the game. The only threat comes from one willing to say that the game is arbitrary and therefore completely worthless, to “break the spell” (Caillois 8-9). It is significant, therefore, that critics of wargames largely continued to play them. More important than the games themselves therefore is their role in organizing the subject vis-à-vis the Symbolic, understood as reality for the subject. Lundberg describes this relationship as one of “useless subjectivity:” Enjoyment is useless in a very specific sense: although the effect of the habitual capture of affect in the form of enjoyment purchases a sense of unity for the subject, enjoyment is useless in regard to the specific site of its exercise. When a subject enjoys a relationship to an object, or a specific habituated practice, it is tempting to read the subject’s investment in the object or practice as a validation of the fact that the subject values the thing in and of itself. But, if Lacan’s account of enjoyment is correct, enjoyment in an object or practice is less about the dignity of the thing invested in than the ways that the object or practice serves the subject in negotiating a relationship to the general economy of exchange. Thus, the exercise of enjoyment is often somewhat counterfactual: the subject invests in objects or practices for the sake of something that is beyond the object or practice and for the sake of accommodating to failed unicity. (Lacan in Public 114) The subject, permanently frustrated in the desire for continuity by the state of discontinuity that is the condition for its own existence, enjoys instead its capacity to enjoy because there is nothing else that it can do. Thus the death drive works in two stages in response to the eruption of the Real: first, the desire to touch the Real, mistakenly manifested as the desire for a mediated sense of the Real as it inheres in some symbols, and second, the enjoyment of the very conditions of the subject’s alienation from the Real: its subjectivity and attendant capacity to enjoy. In the context of nuclear war games, players could enjoy not just the sense of control, but also what Lundberg calls “habituated practices” and we might just as easily name rituals. Thus computerized nuclear models “take on quasi-religious overtones. Offerings are put into the black box by acolytes who are never sure what is going to come out; those who come to worship are often not sure what has happened either…With large simulations, unfortunately, unlike large cathedrals…the whole structure may collapse or become meaningless without anyone’s realizing it” (Brewer and Shubik 25). In some sense, the outcome hardly matters. Only the game does. Excitement is also generated by risk. There is always some uncertainty in how the story will end, what results the player’s actions might have. Nuclear war simulations create a hypertrophied sense of control over presence and absence: the simulated stakes are usually the presence and absence of human civilization and perhaps all life on Earth. Lacan wrote about the significance of our ability to be the agents of our own downfall and the contradiction between agency and responsibility: [Scientists] have begun to get the idea that they could create bacteria that would be resistant to everything, that would be unstoppable. That would clear the surface of the globe of all the shitty things, human in particular, that inhabit it. And then they suddenly felt overcome with pangs of responsibility…What a sublime relief it would be nonetheless if we suddenly had to deal with a true blight…That would be a true triumph. It would mean that humanity would truly have achieved something—its own destruction. It would be a true sign of the superiority of one being over all the others. Not only its own destruction, but the destruction of the entire living world. That would truly be the sign that man is capable of something. (Triumph of Religion 60) For these reasons, the use of nuclear war games as anti-nuclear tools presents a paradox. Anti-nuclear games do not reveal the horrors of nuclear war any more than Pentagon simulations provide scientifically accurate strategic plans. A number of ostensibly anti-war games have been developed to expose nuclear strategy. Balance of Power was described by its creator Chris Crawford in the early 1980s as “a grand, idealistic, make-my-contribution-for-peace crusade,” intended to show the irrationality and danger of nuclear war (Aaron 2). Players who started a nuclear war were shown only a black screen admonishing them, refusing to display images of nuclear war, and stating “we don’t reward failure.” After the Cold War ended, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) created its own simulation of nuclear targeting. Despite the demise of the Soviet Union, SIOP remains a closely-guarded secret. NRDC hoped to create a rough picture of current US nuclear war plans based on the theory that exposing the “grotesque results” of nuclear war would turn the public against it (McKinzie et al. xi). Lack of access to the tools of simulation undermines democratic debate, which the NRDC simulation set out to change (McKinzie et al. 1). The assumption shared by both Crawford and the NRDC is that nuclear war plans survive only due to secrecy and therefore that exposing the way things “really are” is an effective project for anti-nuclear politics. To examine this argument and further illustrate the common processes of enjoyment these games share with official war planning, the next section will analyze the popular 2014 nuclear war simulator First Strike, an ostensibly anti-nuclear videogame developed by the Swiss Blindflug studios.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

Just as metaphors are made meaningful by the repeated investments that tie signifier to signified, war games are made meaningful by the investments that tie them to nuclear war. The simulations are enjoyable because of their link to the power of the Bomb a young boy had a wooden reel attached to a string which he would throw over his curtained cot, making it “gone” (fort). Then he would pull the spool back into view, rejoicing that it was “there” (da). He would repeat these actions again and again. The game can be read as the child inuring himself against the potential absence of his mother, but a more productive reading would locate enjoyment not in the conditions of “gone” or “here” but in the exercise of control over the conditions of presence and absence, essentially a simulation that permits agency over a situation in which the child must be passive Games are particularly powerful media for this control if they differ from representation based on the player’s ability to affect the outcome of each repetition within the procedures created by the game. This sense of control, that the outcome is dependent on the player’s actions, is a key feature that distinguishes games (and, in principle, other simulations) from traditional linear texts in which the reader’s choice is more limited, as is exposure to “risk” games would be used to “determine the policies for pressing the Great Push Button and burning the earth clean for a new and less humanly undependable order of things to win has no meaning, and a successful policy cannot be learned, because there is no criterion of success the most important trait that sustains nuclear war games: they are enjoyable even when they aren’t accurate, hence people ponder the nuclear war even though its consequences are imponderable They serve as a site for cathectic attachment and solidify the subject’s sense of itself. Nuclear deterrence resembles gambling . In the exchange for one set of risks for another, nothing is produced— counters are merely moved around, made meaningful by their assigned values, but ultimately traded and expended by the players with no real increase in value during the process, a useless exchange that serves the subject’s enjoyment by creating a space for play separate from work and art Fudging the numbers in a nuclear simulation, just like forging fake chips in a casino, is a kind of cheating, but not a threat to the game itself—breaking the rules maintains a certain fidelity to them, recognizing them as existing constraints to be manipulated, and reinforcing the logic of the game even if the cheater is dishonorable. The cheat only sustains the game. The only threat comes from one willing to say that the game is arbitrary and therefore completely worthless, to “break the spell” More important than the games themselves therefore is their role in organizing the subject vis-à-vis the Symbolic, understood as reality for the subject When a subject enjoys a relationship to an object, or a specific habituated practice, it is tempting to read the subject’s investment in the object or practice as a validation of the fact that the subject values the thing in and of itself. But enjoyment in an object or practice is less about the dignity of the thing invested in than the ways that the object or practice serves the subject in negotiating a relationship to the general economy of exchange the exercise of enjoyment is often somewhat counterfactual: the subject invests in objects or practices for the sake of something that is beyond the object or practice and for the sake of accommodating to failed unicity The subject, permanently frustrated in the desire for continuity by the state of discontinuity that is the condition for its own existence, enjoys instead its capacity to enjoy because there is nothing else that it can do the desire to touch the Real, mistakenly manifested as the desire for a mediated sense of the Real as it inheres in some symbols, and the enjoyment of the very conditions of the subject’s alienation from the Real: its subjectivity and attendant capacity to enjoy. In the context of nuclear war games, players could enjoy not just the sense of control, but also what Lundberg calls “habituated practices” and we might just as easily name rituals computerized nuclear models “take on quasi-religious overtones. Offerings are put into the black box by acolytes who are never sure what is going to come out; those who come to worship are often not sure what has happened either…With large simulations, unfortunately, unlike large cathedrals…the whole structure may collapse or become meaningless without anyone’s realizing the outcome hardly matters. Only the game does. Excitement is also generated by risk. There is always some uncertainty in how the story will end, what results the player’s actions might have. Nuclear war simulations create a hypertrophied sense of control over presence and absence the simulated stakes are usually the presence and absence of human civilization and perhaps all life on Earth the use of nuclear war games as anti-nuclear tools presents a paradox. Anti-nuclear games do not reveal the horrors of nuclear war any more than Pentagon simulations provide scientifically accurate strategic plans. A number of ostensibly anti-war games have been developed to expose nuclear strategy

Nuclear games playing create an illusion of mastery over nuclear weapons – they perversely come to enjoy the signifier of the nuclear bomb which makes their use inevitable.

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

How is it possible to ground a literal reading of the rhetorical functionality of the demand to be recognized as dangerous in this case? This reading strategy involves identifying a supplemental split to the one between the universal and particular political content of a demand, between subjects who enjoy the mere fact of affinity with a group as a mode of (mis)identification and the set of identitarian equivalences inaugurated by entry into the particular. This strategy involves reading such utterances both as specific political demands, as containing a universal commitment that authorizes equivalential linkages, and simultaneously as practices of enjoyment, creating ritually repeated relationships to a hegemonic order. On this reading it is not the change that the demand anticipates that is significant, nor is in the political potential of forging equivalential links, but rather the role demand plays for the one who utters it, and the modes of interpassive political affinity entailed. Working through the complexity of demands requires reading the demand for recognition as a practice of enjoyment as an affectively invested call for sanction and love by the governing order. Framing demands as a practice of enjoyment opens a conversation with and point of political critique for Laclau’s conception of the demand by marking the affective complexity of the politics of demands demands also entail a perverse dialectic of political agency as resistance and simultaneous interpassive political constraint. Demands empower forms of political agency by generating an oppositional relationship to hegemonic structures, and by providing the equivalential preconditions for identity. As Slavoj Zˇizˇek might have it, there is always the risk that the demands of protestors are the supplement that authorizes the functioning of capital (Zˇizˇek 2000). Laclau and the politics of the demand Laclau’s On Populist Reason provides an elegant account of demand as the fundamental unit of the political, and by extension of politics as a field of antagonism. Laclau’s basic goal is to define the specificity of populist reason, or, to give an account of populism as ‘special emphasis on a political logic which, is a necessary ingredient of politics tout court’, of ‘Populism, quite simply, as a way of constructing the political’ (Laclau 2005, p. 18). Here, a focus on demands replaces a now prevalent approach focused on various taxonomies of populism (which Laclau diagnoses as hopelessly unsystematic) with a more formal account of the political based on the logic of demands, which in turn provides a way of thinking about the political as the space of demand and politics as a practice of working through specific demands. Demands serve a number of functions that derive from the split between the universal and the particular that Laclau relies upon. Demands articulate a specific political claim at the level of the particular, and also imply a more generalized relationship to hegemony in the register of the universal. On this logic, demands represent the hegemonic order, creating an implicit picture of how it functions and might change. Simultaneously, demands create possible lines of equivalential affinity between others also making demands on the hegemonic order. Thus, the demand is more fundamental than the group, in that the operation of the split demand inaugurates all ‘the various forms of articulation between a logic of difference and a logic of equivalence’ that animate the social affinities that give groups their coherence (Laclau 2005, p. 20). The logic of the demand is in turn the logic of equivalence, and equivalence is as important for how it animates a group identity, as it is in positing claims on a hegemonic order. Although Laclau owes a significant debt to Freud and Lacan, it is not clear that his theory of demand is explicitly crafted from psychoanalytic categories. For example, how central is enjoyment to Laclau’s relatively formal account of the demand? As Glynos and Stavrakakis have argued, there is a ‘complete and conspicuous absence in Laclau’s work of Lacanian categories such as fantasy, and, perhaps more importantly, jouissance’ (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2006, p. 202). Glynos and Stavrakakis claim that there is ‘to [their] knowledge no reference in Laclau’s work to the concept of jouissance’ (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2006, p. 209). On Populist Reason contains a brief discussion of the concept of jouissance as worked out by Copjec, which Laclau summarizes by saying: there is no achievable jouissance except through radical investment in an objet petit a. But the same discovery (not merely an analogous one) is made if we start from the angle of political theory. No social fullness except through hegemony; and hegemony is nothing more than the investment in a partial object, of a fullness which will always evade us. The logic of the objet petit a and the hegemonic logic are not just similar, they are simply identical. (Laclau 2005, p. 109) There is an elegance to Laclau’s point about enjoyment, provided that enjoyment is reducible to a set of logical forms. This presupposition makes the lack of talk about jouissance in Laclau’s work understandable. If jouissance and hegemony are identical, one does not need Lacan to say something that might be said more elegantly with Gramsci. Jouissance is simply hegemonic investment, an elevation of an object or identity to the level of a thing or a universal. Despite occasional caveats to the contrary, the greatest virtues of Laclau’s version of the political stem from his relentlessly persistent application of a formal, almost structural account of the political. And, as is the case with many well executed structuralist accounts, Laclau’s system can elegantly incorporate caveats, objections to and oversights in the original system by incorporating them into the functioning of the structure jouissance can easily be read as nothing more than hegemony in this account without changing the original coordinates of the system too drastically. Yet, enjoyment provides one particularly difficult stumbling block for a dedicated formal account. To start with, enjoyment is never quite as ‘achievable’ as the preceding quotation might suggest. Far from being the consummation of a logic of structure and investment, enjoyment is a supplement to a failing in a structure: for example, Lacan frames jouissance as a useless enjoyment of one’s own subjectivity that supplements the fundamental failings of a subject in either finding a grounding or consummating an authoritative account of its coherence. This ‘uselessness’ defines the operation of jouissance. Thus, for example, when Lacan suggests that ‘language is not the speaking subject’ in the Seminar on Feminine Sexuality, lodging a critique of structural linguistics as a law governing speech, jouissance is understood as something excessive that is born of the failure of structures of signification (Lacan 1977). Language is not the speaking subject precisely because what is passed through the grist mill of the speech is the result of a misfiring of structure as much as it is prefigured by logics of structure, meaning and utility. Therefore the interpretive difficulty for a structuralist account of enjoyment: the moment that the fact of enjoyment is recoded in the language of structure, the moment that it is made useful in a logic of subjectivization is precisely the moment where it stops being jouissance. Following Glynos and Stavrakakis’s suggestion, one might press the question of the relationship between the demand and jouissance as a way of highlighting the differences that a purely Lacanian reading of demand might make for Laclau’s understanding of politics. Framing enjoyment as equivalent with hegemony, Laclau identifies the fundamental ‘split’ in psychoanalytic theory between the universal and the particular demands of a group. Framing the split in this way, and as the privileged site of the political, Laclau occludes attention to another split: namely, the split within a subject, between the one who enters an equivalential relationship and the identitarian claim that sutures this subject into a set of linkages. This too is a site of enjoyment, where a subject identifies with an external image of itself for the sake of providing its practices of subjectivity with a kind of enjoyable retroactive coherence. The demand is relevant here, but not simply because it represents and anticipates a change in the social order or because it identifies a point of commonality. Here the demand is also a demand to be recognized as a subject among other subjects, and given the sanction and love of the symbolic order. The implication of this argument about the nature of enjoyment is that the perverse dialectic of misfirings, failure and surpluses in identity reveals something politically dangerous in not moving beyond demand. Put another way: not all equivalences are equally equivalent. Some equivalences become fetishes, becoming points of identification that eclipse the ostensible political goal of the demand. To extend the line of questioning to its logical conclusion, can we be bound to our equivalential chains? Freud, Lacan and the demand Demand plays a central role in Freud’s tripartite scheme for the human psyche specifically in the formation of the ego. Although this scheme does not exercise the same hold over psychoanalytic thinking that it once did, the question of the ego still functions as an important point of departure for psychoanalytic thinking as a representative case of the production of the subject and identity. Even for critics of ‘ego psychology’, the idea of the ego as a representation of the ‘I’ of the human subject is still significant the main question is what kind of analytical dispositions one takes towards the ego, the contingencies of its emergence and its continuing function. Despite the tendency of some commentators to naturalize Freud’s tripartite schema of the human psyche, Freud’s account of the ego does not characterize the ego as pre-existent or automatically given. Although present in virtually every human subject, the ego is not inevitably present: the ego is a compensatory formation that arises in the usual course of human development as a subject negotiates the articulation and refusal of its needs as filtered through demand. Hypothetically a ‘subject’ whose every need is fulfilled by another is never quite a subject: this entity would never find occasion to differentiate itself from the other who fulfils its every need. As a mode of individuation and subjectification, egos are economies of frustration and compensation. This economy relies on a split in the Freudian demand, which is both a demand to satiate a specific need and a demand for addressee to provide automatic fulfilment of need generally. The generative power of the demand relies on this split and on fact that some demands will be refused. This economy of need and frustration works because refusal of a specific need articulated as a demand on another is also a refusal of the idea that the addressee of the demand can fulfil all the subject’s needs, requiring a set of individuation compensatory economic functions to negotiate the refusal of specific demands. ‘Ego’ is nothing more than the name for the contingent economy of compensatory subjectification driven by the repetition and refusal of demands the nascent subject presents wants and needs in the form of the demand, but the role of the demand is not the simple fulfilment of these wants and needs. The demand and its refusal are the fulcrum on which the identity and insularity of the subject are produced: an unformed amalgam of needs and articulated demands is transformed into a subject that negotiates the vicissitudes of life with others. Put in the metaphor of developmental psychology, an infant lodges the instinctual demands of the id on others but these demands cannot be, and for the sake of development, must not be fulfilled. Thus the logic of the pop-psychology observation that the incessant demands of children for impermissible objects (‘may I have a fourth helping of dessert’) or meanings that culminate in ungroundable authoritative pronouncements (the game of asking a never-ending ‘whys’) are less about satisfaction of a request than the identity producing effects of the distanciating parental ‘no’. In ‘The Question of Lay Analysis’, Freud argues: If ... demands meet with no satisfaction, intolerable conditions arise ... At that point ... the ego begins to function. If all the driving force that sets the vehicle in motion is derived from the id, the ego ... undertakes the steering, without which no goal can be reached. The instincts in the id press for immediate satisfaction at all costs, and in that way they achieve nothing or even bring about appreciable damage. It is the task of the ego to guard against such mishaps, to mediate between the claims of the id and the objections of the external world. (Freud 1986, p. 22) Later works move this theory from the narrow bounds of the parent/child relationship to a broader social relationship which was continually constituting and shaping the function of the ego this is a theme of works such as Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, as well as Civilization and its Discontents. The latter repeats the same general dynamics of ego formation as ‘The Question of Lay Analysis’, but moves the question beyond individual development towards the entirety of social relations. For Freud, the inevitability of conflicts between an individual and the social whole is simply one of the facts of life among other people. Life with others inevitably produces blockages in the individual’s attempts to fulfil certain desires some demands for the fulfilment of desires must be frustrated. This blockage produces feelings of guilt, which in turn are sublimated as a general social morality. Here frustration of demand is both productive in that it authorizes social moral codes, and civilization as mode of functioning, though it does so at the cost of imposing a constitutively contested relationship with social mores (Freud 1989). Though there are many places to begin thinking the Freudian demand in Lacan, one of the best places to start is an almost accidental Lacanian rumination on demands. Confronted by student calls to join the movement of 1968 Lacan famously quipped: ‘as hysterics you demand a new master: you will get it!’ Framing the meaning of his response requires a treatment of Lacan’s theory of the demand and its relationship to hysteria as an enabling and constraining political subject position. Lacan’s theory of the demand picks up at Freud’s movement outward from the paradigmatic relationships between the parent/child and individual/ civilization towards a more general account of the subjects, sociality and signification. The infrastructure supporting this theoretical movement transposes Freud’s comparatively natural and genetic account of development to a set of metaphors for dealing with the subject’s entry into signification. Lacan’s goal is to rearticulate Freudian development processes as metaphors for a theory of the subject’s production within signification. In Lacanian terms, what is at stake in this transposition is a less naturalized account of the subject by privileging supplementary practices of enjoyment that give a subject coherence as an agent, not in the sense of an ultimate ontological grounding, but rather as a mode of enjoying the repetition of retroactive totalities that name and produce subjects. This process is most famously worked out in Lacan’s famous ‘Mirror Stage’ which details the trauma of the subject’s insertion into the symbolic order, and the way that this constitutive dislocation generates the jouissance that sustains the production of subjectivity (Lacan 1982a). Looking in the mirror, Lacan’s hypothetical infant does not yet have a concept of a unified self, puzzled by the fact that when it moves the image of the child in the mirror also moves. From the child in the mirror, Lacan infers the existence of two ‘I’s underwriting processes of subjectivization: an ‘ideal I’, a statuesque projection of what it means to be an ‘I’ (in this case the image of the child) and a phenomenological experience of ‘I-ness’. Lacan treats the dialectic of misidentification in the mirror as a constant and constitutive performance of subjectivity as opposed to a specific developmental stage (Wilden 1982). In this interpretation, the child in the mirror stage is a metaphor for the constant production of the subject as a performance of the self in relation to a constitutive gap between the Symbolic and the subject, and the articulation of subjectivity as a category serves to repress the trauma produced in the margin between a nascent subject, its alienation from a projected external identity, and within the structure of signification. The paradoxical effect of this mode of subject formation is that not only does the child ‘discover’ that she is the child in the mirror, it also experiences a disorienting distance between itself and its image. Despite this fact, the child requires the an external image such as the one in the mirror to impose a kind of unity on its experience the image of the other child provides an imaginary framing, a retroactive totality or a kind of narrative about what it means to be a self. The paradox of subjectivity lies in the simultaneity of identifying with an image of one’s self that is given by a specific location within the symbolic order and the simultaneous alienation produced by the image’s externality. Thus, the assumption of a frame for identity cannot ever completely effective, or, a subject is never completely comfortable inhabiting subjectivity there is always an impossible gap between an experience of alienated subjectivity, a prefigured given image of one’s subjectivity and the experience of being produced by the Symbolic. There is a famous Lacanian aphorism that holds that ‘the signifier represents a subject for another signifier’ (Lacan 1977, p. 142). This formulation of the subject’s relation to language inverts the conventional wisdom that ontologically pre-given subjects use language as an instrument to communicate their subjective intentions. Signifiers are constituted by their difference, and subjects come into being in negotiating their entry into this realm of difference. Instead of articulating subjective states through language, subjects are articulated through language, within the differential space of signification. The paradoxical implication of this reversal is that the subject is simultaneously produced and disfigured by its unavoidable insertion into the space of the Symbolic. The mirror stage marks the excess of the demand as a mode of subject formation. Subjects assume the identity as subjects as a way of accommodating to the demand placed on them by the symbolic, and as a node for producing demands on the symbolic, or, of being recognized as a subject (Lacan 1982a, p. 4). Here jouissance is nothing more than the useless enjoyment of one’s own subjectivity, surplus produced in negotiating a difficult gap between the phenomenological and ideal ‘I’s, produced by a failure in relation between Lacan’s phenomenological I and the Symbolic. Both the site of subject production and the site where this subject fills out an identity by investing in equivalential linkages and common demands are sites of enjoyment. In this sense, perhaps there is an excess of jouissance that remains even after the reduction of jouissance to hegemony. This remainder may even be logically prior to hegemony, in that it is a useless but ritually repeated retroactive act of naming the self that produces the conditions of possibility for investment, the defining point for Laclau’s reduction of jouissance to hegemony. This specific site of excess, where the subject negotiates the terms on a non-relationship with the symbolic is the primary site splitting need, demand and desire. Need approximates the position of the Freudian id, in that it is a precursor to demand. Demand is the filtering of the need through signification, but as Sheridan notes ‘there is no adequation between need and demand’ (Sheridan 1982). The same type of split that inheres in the Freudian demand inheres in the Lacanian demand, though in this case the split does not derive from the empirical impossibility of fulfilling demands as much as it stems from the impossibility of ever fully articulating needs to or receiving a satisfactory response from the Other. Since there is no adequation, the specificity of the demand becomes less relevant than the structural fact that demand presupposes the ability of the addressee to fulfil the demand. This impossibility points to the paradoxical nature of demand: namely that the demand is less a way of addressing need than a call for love and recognition by this other. ‘In this way’, writes Lacan, ‘demand annuls (aufheht) the particularity of everything that can be granted by transmuting it into a proof of love, and the very satisfactions that it obtains for need are reduced (sich erniedrigt) to the level of being no more than the crushing of the demand for love’ (Lacan 1982b, p. 286). The difficulty is that the Other cannot, by definition, ever give this gift: the starting presupposition of the mirror stage is the constitutive impossibility of comfortably inhabiting the symbolic the mirror stage marks the constitutive split between the subject and the Symbolic. This paradoxical split, namely the structural impossibility of fulfilling demands, resonates with the logic of the Freudian demand in that the frustration of demand produces the articulation of desire. Thus, Lacan argues that ‘desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second’ (Lacan 1982b, p. 287). How might this subtraction occur? The answer to this question requires an account of the Other as seemingly omnipotent, and as simultaneously unable to fulfil demands. This sentiment animates the crucial Lacanian claim for the impossibility of the other giving a gift which it does not have, namely the gift of love: It will seem odd, no doubt, that in opening up the immeasurable space that all demand implies, namely, that of being a request for love .... Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need: this margin being that which is opened up by demand, the appeal of which can be unconditional only in regards to the Other ... having no universal satisfaction ... It is this whim that introduces the phantom of omnipotence, not of the subject, but of the other in which his demand is installed. (Lacan 1982c, p. 311) Transposed to the realm of political demands, this framing of demand reverses the classically liberal presupposition regarding demand and agency. In the classical iteration and contemporary critical theories that inherit its spirit, there is a presupposition that a demand is a way of exerting agency, and that the more firmly that the demand is lodged, the greater the production of an agential effect. The Lacanian framing of the demand sees the relationship as exactly the opposite: the more firmly one lodges a demand the more desperately one clings to the legitimate ability of an institution to fulfil it. Thus, demands ought to reach a kind of breaking point where the inability of an institution or order to proffer a response should produce a re-evaluation of the economy of demand and desire. In analytic terms, this is the moment of subtraction, where the manifest content of the demand is stripped away and the desire that underwrites it is laid bare. The result of this ‘subtraction’ is that the subject is in a position to relate to its desire, not as a set of deferrals, avoidances or transposition, but rather as an owned political disposition. As Lacan frames it, this is a dialectical process, where at each moment the subject is either learning to reassert the centrality of its demands, or where it is coming to terms with the impotence of the other as a satisfier of demands: But it is in the dialectic of the demand for love and the test of desire that development is ordered .... Clinical experience has shown us that this test of the desire of the Other is decisive not in the sense that the subject learns by it whether or not he has a real phallus, but in the sense that he learns that the mother does not have it. (Lacan 1982b, p. 311) Thus, desire both has general status and a specific status for each subject. In other words, it is not just the mirror that produces the subject and its investments, but the desire and sets of proxy objects that cover over this original gap. As Easthope puts it: Lacan is sure that everyone’s desire is somehow different and their own lack is nevertheless my lack. How can this be if each of us is just lost in language ... passing through demand into desire, something from the real, from the individual’s being before language, is retained as a trace enough to determine that I desire here and there, not anywhere and everywhere. Lacan terms this objet petit a ... petit a is different for everyone; and it can never be in substitutes for it in which I try to refind it. (Easthope 2000, pp. 9495) The point of this disposition is to bring the subject to a point where they might ‘recognize and name’ their own desire, and as a result to become a political subject in the sense of being able to truly argue for something without being dependent on the other as a support for or organizing principle for political identity. This naming is not about discovering a latently held but hidden interiority, rather it is about naming a practice of political subjectivization that is not solely oriented towards or determined by the locus of the demand, determined by the contingent sets of coping strategies that orient a subject towards others and a political order. As Lacan argues, this is the point where a subject becomes a kind of new presence, or in the register of this essay, a new political possibility: ‘That the subject should come to recognize and to name his desire; that is the efficacious action of analysis. But it isn’t a question of recognizing something which would be entirely given .... In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world’ (Lacan 1988, pp. 228229). Alternatively, subjects can stay fixated on the demand, but in doing so they forfeit the possibility of desire, or as Fink argues: ‘later, however, Lacan comes to see that an analysis ... that ... does not go far enough in constituting the subject as desire leaves him or her stranded at the level of demand ... unable to truly desire’ (Fink 1996, p. 90). What does this have to do with hysteria? A politics defined by and exhausted in demands is definitionally a hysterical politics. The hysteric is defined by incessant demands on the other at the expense of ever articulating a desire which is theirs. In the Seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, for example, Lacan argues that the hysteric’s demand that the Other produce an object is the support of an aversion towards one’s desire: ‘the behavior of the hysteric, for example, has as its aim to recreate a state centred on the object, in so far as this object, das Ding, is, as Freud wrote somewhere, the support of an aversion’ (Lacan 1997, p. 53). This economy of aversion explains the ambivalent relationship between hysterics and their demands. On one hand, the hysteric asserts their agency, even authority over the Other. Yet, what appears as unfettered agency from the perspective of a discourse of authority is also simultaneously a surrender of desire by enjoying the act of figuring the other as the one with the exclusive capability to satisfy the demand. Thus the logic of ‘as hysterics you demand a new master: you will get it!’ At the register of manifest content, demands are claims for action and seemingly powerful, but at the level of the rhetorical form of the demand or in the register of enjoyment, demand is a kind of surrender. As a relation of address hysterical demand is more a demand for recognition and love from an ostensibly repressive order than a claim for change. The limitation of the students’ call on Lacan does not lie in the end they sought, but in the fact that the hysterical address never quite breaks free from its framing of the master. Here the fundamental problem of democracy is not in articulating resistance over and against hegemony, but rather the practices of enjoyment that sustain an addiction to mastery and a deferral of desire. The difficulty in thinking hysteria is that it is both a politically effective subject position in some ways, but that it is politically constraining from the perspective of organized political dissent. If not a unidirectional practice of resistance, hysteria is at least a politics of interruption: imagine a world where the state was the perfect and complete embodiment of a hegemonic order, without interruption or remainder, and the discursive system was hermetically closed. Politics would be an impossibility, with no site for contest or reappropriation and everything simply the working out of a structure. Hysteria is a site of interruption, in that hysteria represents a challenge to our hypothetical system, refusing straightforward incorporation by its symbolic logic. But, stepping outside this hypothetical non-polity, hysteria is net politically constraining because the form of the demand, as a way of organizing the field of political enjoyment requires that the system continue to act in certain ways to sustain its logic. Thus, though on the surface it is an act of symbolic dissent, hysteria represents an affective affirmation of a hegemonic order, and therefore a particularly fraught form of political subjectivization.

Lundberg 12 [Christian Lundberg is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His work has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and a number of edited volumes.; “ON BEING BOUND TO EQUIVALENTIAL CHAINS”; Cultural Studies; February 16, 2012; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09502386.2011.647641]//eleanor

specific political demands contain a universal commitment authorize equivalential linkages, and practices of enjoyment creating ritually repeated relationships to a hegemonic order. it is not the change that the demand anticipates that is significant, nor is in the political potential of forging equivalential links, but rather the role demand plays for the one who utters it, and the modes of interpassive political affinity entailed. Working through the complexity of demands requires reading the demand for recognition as a practice of enjoyment as an affectively invested call for sanction and love by the governing order. demands also entail a perverse dialectic of political agency as resistance and simultaneous interpassive political constraint the demands of protestors are the supplement that authorizes the functioning of capital Demands articulate a specific political claim at the level of the particular, and also imply a more generalized relationship to hegemony in the register of the universal demands represent the hegemonic order, creating an implicit picture of how it functions and might change enjoyment provides one particularly difficult stumbling block for a dedicated formal account. enjoyment is a supplement to a failing in a structure: f Lacan frames jouissance as a useless enjoyment of one’s own subjectivity that supplements the fundamental failings of a subject in either finding a grounding or consummating an authoritative account of its coherence the interpretive difficulty for a structuralist account of enjoyment: the moment that the fact of enjoyment is recoded in the language of structure, the moment that it is made useful in a logic of subjectivization is precisely the moment where it stops being jouissance Framing enjoyment as equivalent with hegemony, Laclau identifies the fundamental ‘split’ in psychoanalytic theory between the universal and the particular demands of a group demand is relevant here, but not simply because it represents and anticipates a change in the social order or because it identifies a point of commonality the demand is also a demand to be recognized as a subject among other subjects, and given the sanction and love of the symbolic order the perverse dialectic of misfirings, failure and surpluses in identity reveals something politically dangerous in not moving beyond demand. not all equivalences are equally equivalent Some equivalences become fetishes, becoming points of identification that eclipse the ostensible political goal of the demand As a mode of individuation and subjectification, egos are economies of frustration and compensation. This economy relies on a split in demand, which is both a demand to satiate a specific need and a demand for addressee to provide automatic fulfilment of need generally The generative power of the demand relies on this split and on fact that some demands will be refused. the nascent subject presents wants and needs in the form of the demand, but the role of the demand is not the simple fulfilment of these wants and needs. The demand and its refusal are the fulcrum on which the identity and insularity of the subject are produced: an unformed amalgam of needs and articulated demands is transformed into a subject that negotiates the vicissitudes of life with others If ... demands meet with no satisfaction, intolerable conditions arise ... At that point ... the ego begins to function Life with others inevitably produces blockages in the individual’s attempts to fulfil certain desires blockage produces feelings of guilt, which in turn are sublimated as a general social morality frustration of demand is both productive in that it authorizes social moral codes, and civilization as mode of functioning, though it does so at the cost of imposing a constitutively contested relationship with social mores Lacan famously quipped: ‘as hysterics you demand a new master: you will get it!’ The infrastructure supporting this theoretical movement transposes Freud’s comparatively natural and genetic account of development to a set of metaphors for dealing with the subject’s entry into signification. what is at stake in this transposition is a less naturalized account of the subject by privileging supplementary practices of enjoyment that give a subject coherence as an agent, not in the sense of an ultimate ontological grounding, but rather as a mode of enjoying the repetition of retroactive totalities that name and produce subjects. this constitutive dislocation generates the jouissance that sustains the production of subjectivity the articulation of subjectivity as a category serves to repress the trauma produced in the margin between a nascent subject, its alienation from a projected external identity, and within the structure of signification. The paradox of subjectivity lies in the simultaneity of identifying with an image of one’s self that is given by a specific location within the symbolic order and the simultaneous alienation produced by the image’s externality assumption of a frame for identity cannot ever completely effective subject is never completely comfortable inhabiting subjectivity there is always an impossible gap between an experience of alienated subjectivity, a prefigured given image of one’s subjectivity and the experience of being produced by the Symbolic. Signifiers are constituted by their difference, and subjects come into being in negotiating their entry into this realm of difference subjects are articulated through language within the differential space of signification. Subjects assume the identity as subjects as a way of accommodating to the demand placed on them by the symbolic, and as a node for producing demands on the symbolic, or, of being recognized as a subject the subject negotiates the terms on a non-relationship with the symbolic is the primary site splitting need, demand and desire. Demand is the filtering of the need through signification there is no adequation between need and demand’ the specificity of the demand becomes less relevant than the structural fact that demand presupposes the ability of the addressee to fulfil the demand. This impossibility points to the paradoxical nature of demand: namely that the demand is less a way of addressing need than a call for love and recognition by this other demand annuls the particularity of everything that can be granted by transmuting it into a proof of love, and the very satisfactions that it obtains for need are reduced to the level of being no more than the crushing of the demand for love’ the Other cannot, by definition, ever give this gift: the starting presupposition of the mirror stage is the constitutive impossibility of comfortably inhabiting the symbolic the mirror stage marks the constitutive split between the subject and the Symbolic in opening up the immeasurable space that all demand implies, namely, that of being a request for love Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from need: this margin being that which is opened up by demand, the appeal of which can be unconditional only in regards to the Other having no universal satisfaction It is this whim that introduces the phantom of omnipotence, not of the subject, but of the other in which his demand is installed. Transposed to the realm of political demands framing of demand reverses the classically liberal presupposition regarding demand and agency there is a presupposition that a demand is a way of exerting agency and that the more firmly that the demand is lodged, the greater the production of an agential effect. The Lacanian framing of the demand sees the relationship as exactly the opposite: the more firmly one lodges a demand the more desperately one clings to the legitimate ability of an institution to fulfil it. demands ought to reach a kind of breaking point where the inability of an institution or order to proffer a response should produce a re-evaluation of the economy of demand and desire the manifest content of the demand is stripped away and the desire that underwrites it is laid bare. The result of this ‘subtraction’ is that the subject is in a position to relate to its desire, not as a set of deferrals, avoidances or transposition, but rather as an owned political disposition. at each moment the subject is either learning to reassert the centrality of its demands, or coming to terms with the impotence of the other as a satisfier of demands: it is in the dialectic of the demand for love and the test of desire that development is ordered The point of this disposition is to bring the subject to a point where they might ‘recognize and name’ their own desire, and as a result to become a political subject in the sense of being able to truly argue for something without being dependent on the other as a support for or organizing principle for political identity This naming is not about discovering a latently held but hidden interiority, rather it is about naming a practice of political subjectivization that is not solely oriented towards or determined by the locus of the demand, determined by the contingent sets of coping strategies that orient a subject towards others and a political order the subject should come to recognize and to name his desire; that is the efficacious action of analysis. But it isn’t a question of recognizing something which would be entirely given .... In naming it, the subject creates, brings forth, a new presence in the world’ subjects can stay fixated on the demand, but in doing so they forfeit the possibility of desire, A politics defined by and exhausted in demands is definitionally a hysterical politics The hysteric is defined by incessant demands on the other at the expense of ever articulating a desire which is theirs. This economy of aversion explains the ambivalent relationship between hysterics and their demands. On one hand, the hysteric asserts their agency, even authority over the Other. Yet, what appears as unfettered agency from the perspective of a discourse of authority is also simultaneously a surrender of desire by enjoying the act of figuring the other as the one with the exclusive capability to satisfy the demand. At the register of manifest content, demands are claims for action and seemingly powerful, but at the level of the rhetorical form of the demand or in the register of enjoyment, demand is a kind of surrender. demand is more a demand for recognition and love from an ostensibly repressive order than a claim for change the address never quite breaks free from its framing of the master. the fundamental problem of democracy is not in articulating resistance over and against hegemony, but rather the practices of enjoyment that sustain an addiction to mastery and a deferral of desire. it is politically constraining from the perspective of organized political dissent imagine a world where the state was the perfect and complete embodiment of a hegemonic order, without interruption or remainder, and the discursive system was hermetically closed. Politics would be an impossibility, with no site for contest or reappropriation and everything simply the working out of a structure stepping outside this hypothetical non-polity, hysteria is net politically constraining because the form of the demand, as a way of organizing the field of political enjoyment requires that the system continue to act in certain ways to sustain its logic though on the surface it is an act of symbolic dissent, hysteria represents an affective affirmation of a hegemonic order, and therefore a particularly fraught form of political subjectivization.

Policy debates over demands on the government re-invest into the symbolic order by demanding to be recognized as a subject among subjects by the Symbolic Father, which breeds agentic incapacity – they perversely attach themselves to the re-production of the status quo because they rely on it to sustain their enjoyment.

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The victory of capitalism over traditional societies is a victory over the ideals of historical continuity and community. In order for capitalism to rule the world, markets and private property are not enough. It requires a new ideal to gain ascendency over the sedimented ideals of traditional societies. This new ideal is productivity and its maximization. As Joyce Appleby points out, capitalism became the ruling economic system at the moment when “the ideal of productivity finally became dominant.”1 Once this ideal takes hold, even capitalism’s detractors accept it as their starting point. A capitalist world is a world where productivity is implicitly— and often explicitly—the highest value.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 180-183, 20 September 2016, MG)

In order for capitalism to rule the world, markets and private property are not enough. It requires a new ideal to gain ascendency over the sedimented ideals of traditional societies. This new ideal is productivity and its maximization capitalism became the ruling economic system at the moment when “the ideal of productivity finally became dominant.”1 Once this ideal takes hold, even capitalism’s detractors accept it as their starting point. A capitalist world is a world where productivity is implicitly— and often explicitly—the highest value.

Attempts to render their politics productive buy into the intrinsic value of labor which cements infinite capitalist dissatisfaction

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3. Hybrid warfare as anxiety geopolitics: learning from the Czech case We will now further develop our conceptual argument by discussing hybrid warfare as a case of anxiety geopolitics. Some have already shown that HW plays an ontological security role at the level of NATO and EU, as it ‘links the uncertainty emanating from the hybrid nature of the new threats to the known and routine relationship with its traditional antagonist’, that is Russia (Malksoo, ¨ 2018, p. 380). Following this argument, Russia’s aggression suddenly gave meaning to a range of hitherto unconnected, yet omnipresent, and, therefore, anxiety-inducing problems that NATO, EU and their member states were facing. Polarisation and the rise of populism, widespread distrust in institutions, erosion of international norms, cyberattacks, propaganda and disinformation campaigns suddenly all ‘made sense’, if they could be discursively linked to Moscow as instances of ‘Russian hybrid warfare’. HW thus provided NATO and EU, with the elusive ‘security’ of knowing one’s enemy (also Browning, 2018). Similarly, in Czechia, the HW discourse arrived at a time of intense social anxieties emerging from a range of different cultural, economic or geopolitical factors. For many in Czechia (and Central Europe more broadly), post-Cold War sense of ontological security had been provided through a civilisational geopolitical imagination of ‘the West’, which Central Europe supposedly (re)joined after 1989 (Cadier, 2019; Kuus, 2007; Todorova, 2009). Best captured by the slogan of a ‘return to Europe’, the vision of embracing liberal democracy, capitalism and Euro-Atlantic political structures was seen as a panacea that would resolve all big (geo)political questions once and for all. However, these very principles and structures arguably started crumbling precisely at the time that the Central Europeans were finally admitted in EU and NATO. The Iraq War laid bare the rifts within the West, calling in question its further relevance as a coherent geopolitical entity (Browning & Lehti, 2010; Jackson, 2006). Resurgent Russia challenged Western hegemony in Europe and led ‘an influential part of the Czech political and intellectual elite [to] succumb[…] to anxiety’ (Drulak, ´ 2012, p. 79). Central European countries were hit particularly hard by the economic crisis and further hurt themselves by the (foreign- or self-imposed) ‘Western’ medicine of austerity (Tooze, 2018, pp. 220–238). In the Czech case, this led to one of the longest periods of economic recovery in Europe, accompanied by a free-fall in public trust in institutions, with only one in ten Czechs expressing trust in the government (11%) and the Chamber of Deputies (10%) at the lowest point in 2012/2013 (CVVM, 2013). Add to this the rise of illiberalism at home and increasing divides between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU member states, laid bare especially during the so called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015–2016. As a consequence, you end up with a region that is not so sure about its feeling about and towards ‘the West’ any longer (Kazharski, 2018; Krastev & Holmes, 2019). Put differently, by mid-2010s, the Czech society was already in a state of anxiety and uncertainty about its own geopolitical identity and in search for ontological fixes.3 This is where the HW discourse clicks in following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. To the liberal voices that dominate security debates, hybrid warfare could be used to put a name on this anxiety and thereby attempt to suppress it by the construction of familiar geopolitical narratives. By invoking the prism of a conflict between a liberal-democratic West and an authoritarian Russia, all sorts of problems – spread of misinformation, return of nationalism, technological transformations or global power shifts – could be reduced to the logic of civilisational confrontation. This is the conventional ontological security part of the story, to which we add another step by showing how this promise of security is never actually fulfilled. Due to the supposed invisibility and omnipresence of hybrid threats and the insecure position the Czechs occupy in their own East/ West geopolitical imagination, there is a surplus of anxiety that cannot be successfully managed. The case study is structured according to the two ‘faces’ of the Janusfaced politics of anxiety. First, we show how hybrid warfare was used as a sense-making device promising to manage anxiety by providing a conceptual link between a broad range of social issues and anchoring them within the familiar East/West geopolitical imagination. This linking could simultaneously make hybrid warfare meaningful by geopoliticising it, and reinforce the crumbling East/West geopolitical imagination by showing its renewed relevance in facing hybrid warfare. Second, we show how the fleeting sense of ontological security achieved via this articulation gets undone by the recurring re-emergence of surplus anxiety and how HW ends up reproducing and perpetuating the sense of insecurity and anxiety it was supposed to resolve. The analysis is grounded in a range of empirical materials from 2014 to 2020, including official documents, media articles, popular books and parliamentary debates. Two caveats are in order. First, both Czech government and civil society have responded to the perceived threat of HW in many ways, including creating new official institutions and informal initiatives tailored to deal with it (Daniel & Eberle, 2018). In this article, we focus on the discourse that made these responses possible. Second, as shown elsewhere (Daniel & Eberle, 2021), the Czech HW discourse is not monolithic and includes different understandings of what exactly constitutes a threat to whom, ranging from military operations targeting public infrastructures all the way to individual citizen’s struggles with media literacy. In this article, though, we downplay these differences and instead focus on the commonalities that tie these different notions together as parts of ostensibly the same problem of Russia’s ‘hybrid warfare’. 3.1. Repressing anxiety: making sense of hybrid warfare through East/ West geopolitics Starting with the repression side of anxiety geopolitics, this can be observed inthe successive steps through which ontological security is sought by associating a range of issues with hybrid warfare and then pinning HW onto the familiar map of East/West geopolitical imagination. This consists of four interrelated discursive moves: identifying the supposed ‘origin’ of societal unease, putting a name of the problem, localising it in space, and endowing it with broader geopolitical meanings. In this particular case, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 serves as the supposed original moment and ‘cause’ of anxiety, hybrid warfare is the name presented to make sense of what is going on, Russia is constructed as the threat, and civilisational East/West geopolitics is used to give the situation broader meaning. Let us now discuss each of these steps in turn. First, a certain event needs to be constructed as a supposed point of origin of the perceived unease, a ‘crisis’ that dislocates the symbolic order (Nabers, 2015). This is the first move in the repression of anxiety, one in which an ‘actually existing’ empirical event is discursively presented as the apparent cause of the deeper ontological crisis that is affectively experienced as anxiety. In the HW discourse in Czechia, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine of 2014 is presented as such profoundly shocking and dislocating event. As the otherwise rather down-to-earth and matter-of-fact military intellectual, Karel Rehka, ˇ puts it: ‘the Russian Federation shocked the whole world. The unimaginable was broken into.’ (Rehka, ˇ 2017, p. 199) ‘Shock’ and ‘helplessness’ are words used also by a high-ranking Czech diplomat (personal interview, Prague, August 4, 2020). A leading Czech think-tanker then recalls how ‘surprised’ he was by Russia’s invasion and how ‘disorganised and fragmented’ the security debates were in the months that followed (Janda, 2017). The affective experience is captured well also in a widely cited and circulated popular book, which vividly describes how ‘we are walking on the edge of a cliff’ and ‘[u]ncertainty is the only thing that you can count on these days’ (Alvarov´ a, 2017, p. 20). Therefore, 2014 was constructed as a radical breakthrough into a much more insecure world. Yet, this move of identifying the supposed origin of these dizzying feelings of anxiety in one particular event was at the same time already the first step of seeking ontological security by making sense of it. A second step is putting the name on the problem. It is only the performative and affect-laden performance of naming that connects disparate phenomena together and creates a discursive ‘object’ that can be then dealt with politically (Laclau, 2005). In our case, this leads to the creative appropriation of the concepts of ‘hybrid warfare’ and ‘hybrid threats’, which were virtually non-existent in the Czech public discourse prior to 2014 (Daniel & Eberle, 2018), and using them as a linchpin that connects all sorts of societal problems. For an authoritative Czech security document, ‘hybrid threat’ is a ‘way to wage a confrontation or a conflict’, one that is characterised by an extraordinarily broad spectrum of measures: ‘a wide, complex, adaptable, and integrated combination of conventional and unconventional means, overt and covert activities, characterised primarily by coercion and subversion’ (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 127). The range of actors that can execute such methods is similarly broad, including ‘military, paramilitary, and various civilian actors’ (ibid.). Similarly, an overview of a ‘Russian hybrid strategy’ provided by the counterintelligence service includes ‘interpretation of modern history’, different ways of ‘information warfare’, ‘networking/infiltration’ across the fields of politics, economy, crime, espionage, culture and education, and military/guerrilla operations alike (Security Information Service, 2018, p. 7). In statements like these, hybrid warfare is stretched so as to incorporate almost anything that can be understood as a hostile activity. A such, it becomes an universal object of fear, broad enough to be used as a placeholder for all sorts of anxieties. In the third move, hybrid warfare is territorialised by pointing to Russia as its ultimate source. The ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination of hybrid warfare in terms of flows, clouds and infrastructures, is backgrounded in favour of the ‘modern’ territorial East/West geopolitics of a Russian threat. In certain cases, this means little more than merely pointing out that it is indeed Russia that ‘has executed hybrid operations [ …], including targeted disinformation activities and cyber-attacks’, as the Defence Strategy (Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, 2017, p. 7) puts it explicitly and other documents hint at implicitly (e.g. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, 2015). More interesting are the instances which present Russia not only as one source of threats, but as an orchestrator coordinating all possible means and actors. In such cases, the ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination of networks is used and reproduced, yet with a key twist: such networks are seen as hierarchical, with centre in Moscow. In this logic, different domestic actors – ‘alternative news’ websites spreading anti-Western narratives, right-wing populists, even contrarian intellectuals – can ultimately be tied to an overall Russia’s masterplan (for an example see Janda & Kundra, 2016). The counterintelligence agency reports are an example of this ‘puppet-master’ approach. One of them lists ‘covert infiltration of Czech media and the Internet’ and ‘foundation of puppet organizations, covert and open support of populist or extremist subjects’ among the key activities of Russia’s ‘information operations’ (Security Information Service, 2016, p. 9). Another outlines this logic in colourful detail, claiming that ‘Russia is creating a structure in Europe drawing on the concept of the Comintern (the Communist International; the Third International) founded by the Soviet Union’ (Security Information Service, 2015, p. 11), an organised network of all sorts of actors ‘with pro-Russian stances or fighting against the system’ (ibid., 12). However, different actors can be labelled as agents or instrument of HW and then geopoliticised and linked to Russia not only by direct association, but also because they are merely voicing opinions that can be somehow qualified as ‘pro-Russian’. As a more recent counterintelligence report puts it, actually an ‘overwhelming majority of disinformation websites in Czech are the work of Czech […] citizens, who are not supported by Russian entities.’ (Security Information Service, 2018, p. 8) Nevertheless, this still makes them a part of a broader geopolitical threat, as ‘these people and their internet projects are misused by Russia to spread propaganda or support other components of the hybrid strategy.’ (ibid., 8) It is this imagination of a Russian-orchestrated networked threat that enables a leading Czech journalist to blankly dismiss the prominent disinformation website, Aeronet. cz, as ‘writing for Putin’ (Kundra, 2016b), without any evidence of links to the Russian state known at that point and with his own subsequent investigations showing that this is most likely not the case. It also makes it possible to deal with anxieties by externalising the problem, such as when a popular book argues that ‘Furious hate […] is not Czech, it is something new, foreign. It came from the outside and ‘somehow’ entered into us.’ (Alvarov´ a, 2017, p. 88). In the fourth and final move, this ‘hybrid’ struggle with Russia is endowed with meaning by being inserted into the whole symbolic structure of East/West civilisational geopolitics, in which ‘[i]ssues of security and geopolitics are […] reframed in cultural terms. They become simultaneously geographical, cultural and strategic concepts, and they diffuse into ever more spheres of political life.’ (Kuus, 2007, p. x) The societal anxieties that are managed via the narrative of hybrid warfare emanating from Russia, are now also made part of an eternal struggle between the East and the West. This reactivates the ‘mental maps’, in which ‘the West’ functions as a desired point of identification and a promise of security and prosperity, whereas ‘the East’ is seen as ‘an abyss’, a notion ‘which in the Czech political discourse refers less to a geographical space than to ontological categories defining the alienated past of the Czech Republic.’ (Cadier, 2019, p. 84) As one member of parliament, Jan Bartoˇsek, put it, the Czechs are left with an unequivocal choice: ‘either we will be part of NATO as a firm ally of our pro-Western orientation, or we will be just one of Russia’s many colonies. There is no third way.’ (in Chamber of Deputies, 2018a). In statements like these, Russia is presented as a fundamentally different entity, a quintessentially Oriental actor, belonging to a different ‘universe’ that ‘until nowadays has not met’ with the European one (Alvarova, ´ 2017, p. 70). Echoing classical Orientalist tropes, Russians supposedly rely on ‘[m]ysticism, irrationality, associational instead of logical thinking – thus, a model of thinking that is of different civilisation, the one we know rather from the Orient’ (Alvarova, ´ 2017, p. 193). The potentially catastrophic consequences of allying with Russia are then often presented through references to the past, reinforcing the notion that what is at stake in HW is in fact yet another instance of a historical struggle between civilisations. ‘Many of us probably know our modern history, from 1945 through 1948, Russian advisers, death of [foreign minister] Jan Masaryk, occupation in 1968. The Russian influence, which simply broke us away from the West, ripped us from [our] democratic development, and has incalculable economic consequences stretching to this day.’ (Helena Langˇsadlov ´ a ´ in Chamber of Deputies, 2018b). This idea that issues like propaganda, misinformation or rise of populism are instances of a dramatic geopolitical confrontation, is finally driven home also by the notion that it is the West as a whole that is under attack, not just any individual country. According to a counterintelligence report, ‘the goal of the Russian hybrid campaign’ is ‘primarily to weaken NATO and the EU internally, e.g. by weakening individual member states’ (Security Information Service, 2018, p. 7). Therefore, should the Czechs fail to defend themselves, they are supposedly endangering something much bigger. According to a member of parliament, Jan Lipavský, what the Russians want is ‘to break European unity’ (Chamber of Deputies, 2018b). Such ideas connect hybrid warfare squarely to the Messianistic undertones of the East/West geopolitical imagination, in which the Central Europeans serve as guardians defending the West at its limit. To paraphrase Milan Kundera’s (1984) foundational essay on Central European civilisational geopolitics, by fighting hybrid warfare, the Czechs are risking ‘dying for Czechia and the West’, which indeed gives a sense of deep purpose and meaning to their cause and produces a strong anxiety-repressing narrative. To sum up this part, one important aspect of the anxiety geopolitics of hybrid warfare lies in the way how it allows channelling deeper anxieties by using the East/West geopolitical imagination to produce familiar storylines, identities and objects of fear. Despite being constructed as multifaceted, broad and difficult to detect, hybrid warfare is made legible by being projected on a familiar ‘mental map’, where it becomes merely the most recent instance of long-lasting struggle between the West and a fundamentally different, antagonist Russia. However, the relationship between the discourses of hybrid warfare and East/West geopolitics goes both ways: HW is not only territorialised by, but also gives broader meaning to and, in a way, promises to reinforce the East/West civilisational geopolitics. It is in and through HW that Russia is constructed as fundamentally different and the West presented as a coherent entity under attack, as well as something worth defending against the potentially tragic alternatives. Through the discourse of hybrid warfare, doubts about the relevance or resilience of a Westcentric geopolitical order are seemingly brushed away and old geopolitical identities are hardened. This is precisely the logic of ontological security that makes the ideas of a ‘return of geopolitics’ and the ‘new Cold War’ so appealing, as shown by Guzzini (2012, 2016) and Browning (2018). 3.2. Reproducing anxiety: danger is everywhere and the East is already within The HW discourse arguably succeeds on the level of meaning, that is in ‘making sense’ of the new threats by geopoliticising them in East/ West terms. In contrast, its success is only fleeting at best as an anxiety-repressing ontological fix. In this section, we focus on the other face of anxiety geopolitics, showing how the HW discourse also contributes to the reproduction of anxiety. The argument that security discourses end up perpetuating the very insecurity they promise to deal with is not new (e. g. Campbell, 1998). More recently, Heath-Kelly (2018) and Jacobsen (2020) have advanced it from an explicitly Lacanian perspective and shown how the discourses of terrorism and cybersecurity are inherently bound to disappoint the underlying desire for security. The endurance of these discourses is made possible by the way how they pre-emptively incorporate an explanation for their own failure. Terrorism and cyberthreats are constructed in such a broad, complex and omnipresent manner that no individual achievement can lead to the resolution of the problems presented by these discourses. There are always new risks and vulnerabilities, as the destruction or neutralisation of no actually existing objects of fear (e.g. Osama bin Laden) can ultimately satisfy the underlying ontological anxieties. There is always something else to worry about. Building on Heath-Kelly and Jacobsen, our final argument is that hybrid warfare works exactly like their examples, as HW, too, is a discourse that is simultaneously anxiety-repressing and anxiety-reproducing. In fact, we argue that the linking of HW and East/West geopolitics produces a particularly strongly anxiety-ridden discourse. While hybrid warfare presents threats as invisible and omnipresent due to their covert and networked nature, the East/West imagination further raises the stakes and salience of such threats by painting them as parts of a titanic civilisational struggle. The subjects produced by such discourse can never rest, as what may be going on right behind their noses is not just one particular cyber-attack, a single conspiracy theory that has gained traction on Facebook, or merely one instance of information stolen by a spy. Instead, it is a battle for the future of ‘the West’ and the Czech belonging to it, one where the alternative option is the most tragic one: a descent deep into the ‘abyss’ of ‘the East’ (Cadier, 2019). We will now illustrate these arguments by focusing on the unfathomability of HW, the shifting nature of the threats it produces, and the anxieties inherent in the East/West geopolitics that underpin it. First, the ‘failure to secure’ (Heath-Kelly, 2015) is pre-emptively incorporated in the HW discourse by its portrayal of the looming dangers as insidious, invisible and even impossible to detect. As a key security document states, ‘[t]he principal risk to which a subject attacked by a hybrid campaign is exposed lies in the fact that they will not be able to identify the hybrid campaign – in time, in its full scale, or at all’ (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 129). According to the deputy Helena Langˇsadlov ´ ´ a, what we are supposedly facing are highly dangerous, yet ‘creeping threats’, which we ‘cannot see on a day by day basis’ (in Chamber of Deputies, 2019). This leads some to claim that ‘at no point in history was it so extremely difficult to decide, if we are at war, or not’ (Taborský, ´ 2019, p. 164). While there may be little drama on the surface, no one can ever rest in this logic. An attack may be already underway, one that can even be approximated to war, literally at any minute. As the Special Forces general, Karel Rehka, ˇ put it at a conference organised in the Czech parliament: ‘In a way, we are already at war, we just do not realise it or are not able to admit it.’ (Lang, 2015) This is a mode of thinking that produces highly anxious subjects, in a constant sense of the ‘expectant dread’ that is anxiety (Hook, 2015, p. 117), one not yet having a clear referent and directed towards all possible yet still unknown dangers that may materialise at any time. It is in these notions that an unspecified existential threat may be hidden behind mundane events that the otherwise backgrounded ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination of HW suddenly kicks back in. If the ‘modern’ East/West geopolitical imagination ‘made sense’ and provided at least some fleeting ontological security by pointing to Russia, this is frustrated by the surplus anxiety produced via this ‘postmodern’ imagination of insidious, hidden networks operating in physical and cyberspace alike. In fact, as the discourse postulates, we may not even know that it really is Russia in the first place that is behind a particular incident, as hybrid attackers seek to create ‘an environment where responsibility for these activities cannot (at least formally) be attributed to them, or at least only speculatively and with great difficulty’ (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 127). We may ultimately never know if this or that mundane event is actually not a part of something much bigger, as it is the very aim of the attacker to ‘prevent a clear interpretation of events and the discovery of their interconnectedness’ (Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, 2016, p. 127). Therefore, while the prevalent ‘modern’ geopolitical reading of HW enables channelling anxiety by constructing Russia an object of fear, it still remains far from the manageable fear of ‘fight or flight’ (Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020, p. 241). This is because these supposedly known aspects of the danger are constantly being accompanied and disrupted by the surplus anxiety of the ‘unknown unknowns’ stemming from the partial inclusion of the ‘postmodern’ geopolitical reading. This effectively pre-empts the HW discourse from ever solving the problems it is supposedly designed to tackle, as it is wholly unclear how to act upon threats that we are not yet aware of or do not know how to make sense of. Second, this oscillation between the known and the unknown and between fear and anxiety manifests itself in the constantly shifting construction of what is supposed to be the exact nature of the threat coming from Russia. This is best illustrated in the wording of the annual reports of the Czech counterintelligence agency (SIS), which reinforce the notion that Russia is indeed a severe threat, yet the precise character and shape of this threat appears to be changing year after year. As already mentioned, in first annual public report reflecting on the situation after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the SIS warned that their assessment showed the formation of what was spectacularly labelled as the ‘New Reincarnation of the Comintern’ – a loose network of allied actors, similar to the Cold War Soviet-controlled network of ideologically affiliated political parties, agitators and agents. The danger was portrayed as a new version of this tried and tested strategy, which Russia supposedly employs to connect different groups dissatisfied with the Western liberal democracy (Security Information Service, 2015, pp. 11–12). However, the spectre of the Comintern was a one-off, never to appear again. Instead, SIS later concluded that the threat resided in a much looser combination of often uncoordinated actions of Russian intelligence, authentic Czech individuals not in any way linked to Moscow but ‘only’ spreading their own ‘pro-Russian’ worldviews, and finally, even in the lack of education about modern history in schools (Security Information Service, 2018, pp. 6–8). This trend of diffusing the danger from a Kremlin-coordinated network to seeing the threats in mere ideological resonances further continued. The most recent report notes that there is a ‘transition from state-controlled or directed activities to spontaneous actions’ of like-minded actors. ‘When Russian state officials express what they desire to happen (for instance by spreading manipulative information), proxy actors without any links to the Russian state proceed to action on their own initiative and based on what they think the officials might want’ (Security Information Service, 2020, p. 9). Through this move, the spectre of ‘Russian hybrid warfare’ can now encompass virtually anything that can be somehow interpreted as matching with the desires or interests of the Kremlin, without any need for proving direct links, as these are no longer considered necessary. The construction of ‘a threat’ now includes even situations when ‘a foreign power does not engage in any direct action and keeps its distance, while using various ways (PR, instigating statements, propaganda etc.) to inspire individual persons to take action’ (Security Information Service, 2020, p. 9). Put differently, Russian threat can be present even where there is no direct Russian hand whatsoever. Literally any individual with views somehow similar to those of the Russian state can be seen as part of it, which makes the idea that security can ever be achieved virtually impossible. Instead, this logic contributes to the reproduction of an anxious society, defined by ‘the constant presence of the possibility of that threat, and with it, the sense that government cannot fully protect the people and that danger resides in the everyday’ (Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020, p. 247). Third, this notion that the possibility that something ‘Russian’ may be insidiously present deep within the Czech society then revives also the old anxieties inherent in the ‘modern’ East/West geopolitical imagination itself. Central Europeans’ self-positioning in East/West geopolitics is highly ambivalent (Kuus, 2007; Todorova, 2009). On the one hand, being or becoming part of ‘the Western civilisation’ is a source of ontological security. On the other hand, this security is never quite complete or permanent. This is because Central Europeans locate themselves at the very limit of the West, as ‘European edge-men’ (Ma¨lksoo, 2010, p. 5), whose membership in the civilisation must constantly be proved as it can always be taken away – especially by the forces of the ‘East’. The ‘old shadow of Yalta’, the feeling that the region’s ‘freedom could yet again be expendable in times of crisis’ is constantly present (Ma¨lksoo, 2010, p. 75). Put differently, East/West geopolitics equips the Czech ‘pro-Western’ security intellectuals with a ‘mental map, where the country is depicted as being on the “edge” of Europe and constantly risking to “fall” into an abyss […] traditionally characterised as the “East”’ (Cadier, 2019, p. 84). While the East/West geopolitical imagination can succeed in spatialising the threat in the Russian ‘other’, the position it grants to the self is always potentially insecure. Therefore, it is also East/West geopolitics itself that produces subjects that are constantly on alert, facing the constant ‘possibility of loss of one’s soul’ (Balaska, 2019, p. 8) that defines the experience of anxiety. Such fragile geopolitical self-positioning further fuels the search for new and new sources of hybrid threats, as failing to uncover and face them may have existential consequences, especially given that ‘Easternness’ may have already infiltrated and compromised the Czech social body. This notion of ‘East within’ links to the above discussed unfathomability and invisibility of HW and manifests itself in multiple ways. For one counterintelligence report, it takes the form of smuggled ideas and narratives, presented ‘in a way leading Czech citizens to believe they are recipients of opinions held by fellow citizens not of Russian propaganda’ (Security Information Service, 2015, p. 11). Similarly, a popular book on ‘fake news’ geopoliticises social attitudes en bloc by identifying them along East/West axis, presenting the ‘disappointed’ part of society as ‘seeing a model in Russia, or perhaps China’ (Gregor, Mlejnkova´, & Zvolsi.info, 2018, p. 62). For others, the ‘East within’ takes the form in the physical presence of ‘Putin’s agents’ who supposedly ‘quite likely teach your children at universities, you meet them for a coffee in your favourite caf´e or work in normal jobs.’ (Kundra, 2016a, p. 88). The anxiety geopolitics of hybrid warfare is thus also about creating the normatively highly disturbing ‘“red under every bed” mentality’ (Fridman, 2018, p. 3) and applying ‘the ethics of total war […] even to the smallest skirmish’ (Galeotti, 2019, p. 8). Therefore, viewing security threats through the prism of hybrid warfare reproduces a highly anxious society and perpetuates the justification for those ‘intellectuals of statecraft’ (O ´ Tuathail & Agnew, 1992) that would not hesitate to provide the sort of geopolitical fixes that were discussed in the previous sections. Thereby, the discourse ends up reproducing itself, as the two faces of anxiety geopolitics not only disrupt, but also dialectically reinforce one another: geopolitical discourse emerges to repress anxiety and provide ontological security, yet the anxiety inherent in the discourse disrupts ontological security and, to come full circle, creates the need for geopolitical discourses. The result is a society oscillating between its desire to avoid anxiety and the repeated frustration thereof; an affective pulsation that has arguably been elevated to a dominant mode of politics of (in)security in our present time (Eklundh et al., 2017), of which hybrid warfare is a prime example. As similar patterns of anxious over-reaction and securitisation of broad areas of social life have been recognised by authors writing about HW in different empirical contexts (Fridman, 2018; Galeotti, 2019; M¨ alksoo, 2018; Ord ¨ ´en, 2019), we believe that the problem with ‘hybrid warfare’ is of a more general nature and the relevance of our analysis reaches beyond the Czech case. 4. Conclusion Introducing anxiety geopolitics as a conceptual linchpin between disparate arguments from debates on critical geopolitics, ontological security, and politics of anxiety, this article made two central contributions. First, we have theorised the relationship between geopolitics and anxiety, moving beyond the existing accounts above all by pointing out the Janus-faced character of anxiety geopolitics, in which anxiety is both repressed and reproduced. Second, using the case of Czechia, we have argued that hybrid warfare is a discourse that constantly oscillates between repressing anxiety by geopoliticising the source of danger in East/West terms, and subverting its own constructions by presenting the threats as insidious, invisible, and constantly shifting. Therefore, we contend that the HW discourse is structured in a way that cannot achieve its purported ambition to secure populations against ‘hybrid threats’ and instead ends up producing more insecurity and anxiety. Our argument has clear normative implications that expand the existing criticisms of HW by putting the underlying civilisational geopolitics in spotlight. This should help us challenge the technology-centred presentism of the HW discourse, showing that many of the ostensibly unprecedented concerns are in fact reheated versions of narratives that date back decades if not centuries. More importantly, it enables us to point to the presence of some of the highly problematic aspects of East/West thinking, especially those that have been rightly criticised as Orientalist, chauvinist or even racist (see e.g. Said, 1978; Todorova, 2009). Realising the presence of civilisational geopolitics makes it possible to ask whether certain portrayals of Russia in HW debates – e.g. as barbaric, irrational, irredeemable – may not represent narcissistic projections of the ‘Western’ self, rather than credible threat assessments (Chernobrov, 2019). Importantly, these are not scholastic matters of concern just for ivory-tower peaceniks, as the proponents of HW sometimes like to put it. Instead, these criticisms have clear implications for security policy. As recognised even among NATO’s own analysts and officials (Caliskan & Li´egeois, 2020; Rühle, 2019), adopting the prism of HW and labelling Russia as an inherently irrational enemy is detrimental to leading a productive debate on the exact nature of the challenges that Putin’s regime poses and formulating appropriate and efficient strategies to respond to it. We add to it by highlighting that the HW discourse not only ‘undermines strategic thinking’ (Caliskan & Li´egeois, 2020), but also never actually manages to provide security and creates highly concerning societal side-effects (perpetuation of anxiety, proliferation of Orientalist images).

Eberle and Daniel 22 [Jakub Eberle earned his Ph.D. in International Relations at University of Warwick. He is the research director at the Institute of International Relations Prague and a lecturer at the Prague University of Economics and Business. He is the author of Discourse and Affect in Foreign Policy: Germany and the Iraq War and co-editor of the forthcoming book International Theory and German Foreign Policy. Jan Daniel, obtained his PhD in International Relations from Charles University. He is a research at the Institute of International Relations Prague and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Studies, Charles University.; “Anxiety geopolitics: Hybrid warfare, civilisational geopolitics, and the Janus-faced politics of anxiety “; Political Geography; January 2022; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629821001621?casa_token=DD4IAglYpG8AAAAA:bHYXdLo10Dzh--y1SeCs9XDBiaLlarPViZQHwMg3HUi4opCziysgpXhZHhSJSJqXPPk4KTZ7M7jB]//eleanor

HW plays an ontological security role at the level of NATO and EU, as it ‘links the uncertainty emanating from the hybrid nature of the new threats to the known and routine relationship with its traditional antagonist’ Russia Russia’s aggression suddenly gave meaning to a range of hitherto unconnected, yet omnipresent, and anxiety-inducing problems that NATO and their member states were facing Polarisation populism distrust erosion of international norms, cyberattacks, propaganda and disinformation suddenly all ‘made sense’, if they could be discursively linked to Moscow as instances of ‘Russian hybrid warfare’. HW provided NATO h the elusive ‘security’ of knowing one’s enemy post-Cold War sense of ontological security had been provided through a civilisational geopolitical imagination of ‘the West’, which Central Europe supposedly (re)joined the vision of embracing liberal democracy, capitalism and Euro-Atlantic political structures was seen as a panacea that would resolve all big (geo)political questions once and for all these principles and structures started crumbling precisely at the time that the Central Europeans were finally admitted in EU and NATO Resurgent Russia challenged Western hegemony in Europe and led ‘an influential part of the political and intellectual elite [to] succumb[…] to anxiety’ Central European countries were hit particularly hard by the economic crisis and further hurt themselves by the (foreign- or self-imposed) ‘Western’ medicine of austerity HW discourse clicks in following Russia’s aggression against Ukraine To the liberal voices that dominate security debates, hybrid warfare could be used to put a name on this anxiety and thereby attempt to suppress it by the construction of familiar geopolitical narratives By invoking the prism of a conflict between a liberal-democratic West and an authoritarian Russia, all sorts of problems – spread of misinformation, return of nationalism, technological transformations or global power shifts – could be reduced to the logic of civilisational confrontation This is the conventional ontological security part of the story, this promise of security is never actually fulfilled there is a surplus of anxiety that cannot be successfully managed. hybrid warfare was used as a sense-making device promising to manage anxiety by providing a conceptual link between a broad range of social issues and anchoring them within the familiar East/West geopolitical imagination This linking could simultaneously make hybrid warfare meaningful by geopoliticising it, and reinforce the crumbling East/West geopolitical imagination by showing its renewed relevance in facing hybrid warfare. the fleeting sense of ontological security achieved via this articulation gets undone by the recurring re-emergence of surplus anxiety HW ends up reproducing and perpetuating the sense of insecurity and anxiety it was supposed to resolve the repression side of anxiety geopolitics observed inthe successive steps through which ontological security is sought by associating a range of issues with hybrid warfare and then pinning HW onto the familiar map of East/West geopolitical imagination identifying the supposed ‘origin’ of societal unease, putting a name of the problem, localising it in space, and endowing it with broader geopolitical meanings Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 serves as the supposed original moment and ‘cause’ of anxiety, hybrid warfare is the name presented to make sense of what is going on, Russia is constructed as the threat, and civilisational East/West geopolitics is used to give the situation broader meaning. This is the first move in the repression of anxiety, one in which an ‘actually existing’ empirical event is discursively presented as the apparent cause of the deeper ontological crisis that is affectively experienced as anxiety Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is presented as such profoundly shocking and dislocating event warfare is stretched so as to incorporate almost anything that can be understood as a hostile activity it becomes an universal object of fear, broad enough to be used as a placeholder for all sorts of anxieties. hybrid warfare is territorialised by pointing to Russia as its ultimate source The ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination of hybrid warfare in terms of flows, clouds and infrastructures, is backgrounded in favour of the ‘modern’ territorial East/West geopolitics of a Russian threat instances present Russia not only as one source of threats, but as an orchestrator coordinating all possible means and actors. the ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination of networks is used and reproduced, h networks are seen as hierarchical, with centre in Moscow. In this logic, different domestic actors – ‘alternative news’ websites spreading anti-Western narratives, right-wing populists, even contrarian intellectuals – can ultimately be tied to an overall Russia’s masterplan different actors can be labelled as agents or instrument of HW and then geopoliticised and linked to Russia because they are merely voicing opinions that can be somehow qualified as ‘pro-Russian’. this makes them a part of a broader geopolitical threat, as ‘these people and their internet projects are misused by Russia to spread propaganda or support other components of the hybrid strategy It also makes it possible to deal with anxieties by externalising the problem this ‘hybrid’ struggle with Russia is endowed with meaning by being inserted into the whole symbolic structure of East/West civilisational geopolitics, in which ‘[i]ssues of security and geopolitics are […] reframed in cultural terms They become simultaneously geographical, cultural and strategic concepts, and they diffuse into ever more spheres of political life.’ The societal anxieties that are managed via the narrative of hybrid warfare emanating from Russia, are now also made part of an eternal struggle between the East and the West This reactivates the ‘mental maps’, in which ‘the West’ functions as a desired point of identification and a promise of security and prosperity, whereas ‘the East’ is seen as ‘an abyss’, which refers less to a geographical space than to ontological categories Russia is presented as a fundamentally different entity, a quintessentially Oriental actor, belonging to a different ‘universe’ that ‘until nowadays has not met’ with the European one Echoing classical Orientalist tropes, Russians supposedly rely on ‘[m]ysticism, irrationality, associational instead of logical thinking – thus, a model of thinking that is of different civilisation, the one we know rather from the Orient’ Such ideas connect hybrid warfare squarely to the Messianistic undertones of the East/West geopolitical imagination, in which the Central Europeans serve as guardians defending the West at its limit. the anxiety geopolitics of hybrid warfare channel deeper anxieties by using the East/West geopolitical imagination to produce familiar storylines, identities and objects of fear hybrid warfare is made legible by being projected on a familiar ‘mental map’ HW is territorialised by, but also gives broader meaning to and, promises to reinforce the East/West civilisational geopolitic through HW Russia is constructed as fundamentally different and the West presented as a coherent entity under attack, as well as something worth defending against the potentially tragic alternatives Through the discourse of hybrid warfare, doubts about the relevance or resilience of a Westcentric geopolitical order are brushed away and old geopolitical identities are hardened This is precisely the logic of ontological security that makes the ideas of a ‘return of geopolitics’ and the ‘new Cold War’ so appealing The HW discourse succeeds on the level of meaning, that is in ‘making sense’ of the new threats by geopoliticising them in East/ West terms. its success is only fleeting at best as an anxiety-repressing ontological fix the HW discourse also contributes to the reproduction of anxiety security discourses end up perpetuating the very insecurity they promise to deal with the discourses of terrorism and cybersecurity are inherently bound to disappoint the underlying desire for security The endurance of these discourses is made possible by the way how they pre-emptively incorporate an explanation for their own failure. Terrorism and cyberthreats are constructed in such a broad, complex and omnipresent manner that no individual achievement can lead to the resolution of the problems presented by these discourses. There are always new risks and vulnerabilities, as the destruction or neutralisation of no actually existing objects of fear can ultimately satisfy the underlying ontological anxieties. There is always something else to worry about. hybrid warfare linking of HW and East/West geopolitics produces a particularly strongly anxiety-ridden discourse While hybrid warfare presents threats as invisible and omnipresent due to their covert and networked nature, the East/West imagination further raises the stakes and salience of such threats by painting them as parts of a titanic civilisational struggle The subjects produced by such discourse can never rest, as what may be going on right behind their noses is not just one particular cyber-attack, or merely one instance of information stolen by a spy it is a battle for the future of ‘the West’ the ‘failure to secure’ is pre-emptively incorporated in the HW discourse by its portrayal of the looming dangers as insidious, invisible and even impossible to detect. no one can ever rest in this logic An attack may be already underway, one that can even be approximated to war, literally at any minute. This is a mode of thinking that produces highly anxious subjects, in a constant sense of the ‘expectant dread’ that is anxiety one not yet having a clear referent and directed towards all possible yet still unknown dangers that may materialise at any time. an unspecified existential threat may be hidden behind mundane events that the otherwise backgrounded ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination of HW suddenly kicks back in this is the surplus anxiety produced via this ‘postmodern’ imagination of insidious, hidden networks operating in physical and cyberspace while the prevalent ‘modern’ geopolitical reading of HW enables channelling anxiety by constructing Russia an object of fear, it still remains far from the manageable fear of ‘fight or flight’ This is because these supposedly known aspects of the danger are constantly being accompanied and disrupted by the surplus anxiety of the ‘unknown unknowns’ stemming from the partial inclusion of the ‘postmodern’ geopolitical reading. This effectively pre-empts the HW discourse from ever solving the problems it is supposedly designed to tackle, as it is wholly unclear how to act upon threats that we are not yet aware of or do not know how to make sense of. this oscillation between the known and the unknown and between fear and anxiety manifests itself in the constantly shifting construction of what is supposed to be the exact nature of the threat coming from Russia the spectre of ‘Russian hybrid warfare’ can now encompass virtually anything that can be somehow interpreted as matching with the desires or interests of the Kremlin, without any need for proving direct links, Russian threat can be present even where there is no direct Russian hand whatsoever Literally any individual with views somehow similar to those of the Russian state can be seen as part of it, which makes the idea that security can ever be achieved virtually impossible this logic contributes to the reproduction of an anxious society, defined by ‘the constant presence of the possibility of that threat, and with it, the sense that government cannot fully protect the people and that danger resides in the everyday’ this notion that the possibility that something ‘Russian’ may be insidiously present revives also the old anxieties inherent in the ‘modern’ East/West geopolitical imagination itself security is never quite complete or permanent the East/West geopolitical imagination spatialis the threat in the Russian ‘other’ the position it grants to the self is always potentially insecure. it is also East/West geopolitics itself that produces subjects that are constantly on alert, facing the constant ‘possibility of loss of one’s soul’ that defines the experience of anxiety. Such fragile geopolitical self-positioning further fuels the search for new and new sources of hybrid threats, as failing to uncover and face them may have existential consequences, The anxiety geopolitics of hybrid warfare is thus also about creating the normatively highly disturbing ‘“red under every bed” mentality’ and applying ‘the ethics of total war viewing security threats through the prism of hybrid warfare reproduces a highly anxious society and perpetuates the justification for those ‘intellectuals of statecraft’ geopolitical discourse emerges to repress anxiety and provide ontological security the anxiety inherent in the discourse disrupts ontological security and creates the need for geopolitical discourses. The result is a society oscillating between its desire to avoid anxiety and the repeated frustration thereof; an affective pulsation that has arguably been elevated to a dominant mode of politics of (in)security in our present time hybrid warfare is a discourse that constantly oscillates between repressing anxiety by geopoliticising the source of danger in East/West terms, and subverting its own constructions by presenting the threats as insidious, invisible, and constantly shifting HW discourse is structured in a way that cannot achieve its purported ambition to secure populations against ‘hybrid threats’ and instead ends up producing more insecurity and anxiety. This should help us challenge the technology-centred presentism of the HW discourse, showing that many of the ostensibly unprecedented concerns are in fact reheated versions of narratives that date back decades if not centuries it enables us to point to the presence of some of the highly problematic aspects of East/West thinking, especially those that have been rightly criticised as Orientalist, chauvinist or even racist certain portrayals of Russia in HW debates as barbaric, irrational, irredeemable represent narcissistic projections of the ‘Western’ self rather than credible threat assessments these criticisms have clear implications for security policy adopting the prism of HW and labelling Russia as an inherently irrational enemy is detrimental to leading a productive debate on the exact nature of the challenges that Putin’s regime poses and formulating appropriate and efficient strategies to respond to it. HW discourse undermines strategic thinking’ also never actually manages to provide security and creates highly concerning societal side-effects perpetuation of anxiety, proliferation of Orientalist images).

Their fear of Russian cyberattacks links paranoid anxiety from cyberattacks to a familiar paradigm of securitization against the threat of Russia – cybersecurity discourse is not neutral but rather creates anxious subjects in a constant state of expectant dread and makes their impacts inevitable through misattribution and orientalist lash-out.

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Apart from being a highly relevant problem, HW also presents a particularly fitting case to be analysed as an instance of anxiety geopolitics. First, the close link between HW and anxiety has been explicitly recognised by Maria Malksoo, ¨ who shows how HW triggers ‘anxiety about the difficulties of concretising unknown and indeterminate threats’ (Malksoo, ¨ 2018, p. 378). Second, the relation between HW and geopolitics is at the same time strongly pronounced and marked by a profound tension. On the one hand, HW ostensibly departs from a ‘modern’ geopolitical imagination based on territorial states and borders (O ´ Tuathail, 1998). After all, it is about information operations in deterritorialised spaces of the globalised public sphere, unattributable cyberattacks carried out by non-state groups, or the incitement of horizontal protest movements discontent with the present political order. On the other hand, this ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination (ibid.) has been very often subdued to the much more traditional and ‘modern’ vision of a ‘new Cold War’ between Russia and ‘the West’ (for critical analyses of this discourse see Browning, 2018; Ciuta ˘ & Klinke, 2010; Toal, 2017). Thereby, HW has been incorporated into the civilisational mode of geopolitical thinking that divides the world along an East/West axis. Approaching HW as a case of anxiety geopolitics allows us to analyse this tension and unpack the underlying puzzle: Why is it that the ostensibly novel, networked and deterritorialised phenomena associated with hybrid warfare get so easily submerged under such an old, static and territorial geopolitical imagination? We argue that the allure of East/West geopolitics lies in its familiarity, as it provides a well-worn map that promises to ‘make sense’ of the anxiety-inducing manifestations of ‘hybrid warfare’. Yet, we also show that these attempts eventually fail and the HW discourse ends up perpetuating the insecurities and anxieties, which it was supposed to resolve. As such, it serves well to ‘a ‘hybrid-industrial complex’ of government agencies, think-tanks, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and pundits’ that emerged around it (Galeotti, 2019, p. 11). By pointing out to the role of anxiety geopolitics in this economy of power/knowledge that emerged around HW, this article provides both an analysis and a political intervention. The article proceeds as follows. First, we start by a theoretical discussion, crafting the notion of anxiety geopolitics by developing and connecting insights of the literatures on critical geopolitics, ontological security, and politics of anxiety. Second, we argue that the amalgamation of the hybrid warfare discourse and East/West geopolitics presents a particular case of anxiety geopolitics, which oscillates between the promise to repress anxiety and the repeated failures in doing so. This is illustrated by examples from Czechia, a country considered as playing a pioneering and outsized role in the European HW debate (Daniel & Eberle, 2021; Jankowicz, 2020), which offers plenty of empirical material for developing our theoretical argument and drawing some more general implications. By way of conclusion, we discuss the broader take-aways for critical geopolitics and IR, as well as for policy debates on how (not) to address the threat posed by Russia. 2. Anxiety geopolitics: space, affect, and ontological insecurity Our research is located in critical geopolitics, from which we borrow the understanding of geopolitics as discourses and practices through which people ‘‘spatialize’ international politics and represent it as a ‘world’ characterized by particular types of places, peoples and dramas’ (O ´ Tuathail & Agnew, 1992, p. 192). Critical geopolitics focuses on how political events are articulated as somehow related to or driven by geographic phenomena, or how issues are ‘geopoliticised’, that is constructed as geopolitical problems (Cadier, 2019, p. 71). These ideas are best captured by the concept of geopolitical imagination: ‘Geopolitical imaginations are the result of subjects’ attempt to make sense of the world by associating political values with various parts of that map. They can also be spoken of in the collective sense, in which a group can be said to have similar (if ultimately unique) visions of the world.’ (Dittmer & Dodds, 2008, p. 447) More recently, critical geopolitics has paid increased attention to affects and emotions (Go¨karıksel & Secor, 2020; Laketa, 2019; Müller, 2013; Pain, 2009).1 Such affective geopolitics explores how affects are an indivisible part of social construction of space, as they are intimately entangled with languages and images through which our ‘mental maps’ are produced and disseminated. Summarising this broader argument, Laketa argues that geopolitics should be understood ‘both as socially produced and intimately experienced’ and, consequently, ‘the emotional and the affective become the site of the geopolitical’ and vice versa (Laketa, 2019, pp. 156, 160). Therefore, international politics is spatialised also by engaging subjects at the affective level, which is an essential part of the production of geopolitical imaginations through which subjects view the world and their place within it. This links critical geopolitics to a range of literatures that deal with the relationship between identity, emotions and affects, including the scholarship on ontological security and anxiety in IR. The rapidly growing literature on ontological security is concerned with how subjects – individuals, groups, or states – deal with the uncertainty of modern life without losing the ‘security of the self, the subjective sense of who one is’ (Mitzen, 2006, p. 344) that defines ontological security and makes life bearable. Building mainly upon the work of Anthony Giddens (1991), classical contributions agree that ontological security is sought through an active process of constructing the self and anchoring it in the social world, which happens through the establishment of routines (Mitzen, 2006), creation of biographical narratives (Kinnvall, 2004; Steele, 2008; Suboti´c, 2016), or maintenance of relationships (Berenskoetter & Giegerich, 2010). The key underlying purpose of ontological security-seeking is to avoid anxiety, which Giddens, following Freud, understands as an elusive and paralysing ‘generalised state of […] emotions’ that is different from fear (Giddens, 1991, p. 44). Fear is ‘a basic emotion directed at a specific object that prompts an adaptive response: fight or flight.’ (Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020, p. 241). In contrast, ‘anxiety is diffuse, it is free-floating: lacking a specific object’, which makes it possible to ‘pin’ it to different things and concepts (Giddens, 1991, p. 44). Repressing the elusive anxiety by this ‘pinning’, which transforms it into the manageable fear of something, is then one of the key motives of human behaviour. As anxiety is considered overwhelming and paralysing; the ‘chaos’ that ‘threatens on the other side of the ordinariness of the everyday conventions’ (1991, p. 37), subjects often prefer to deal with it through the production of fear via the discursive construction of ‘specific objects and threats’ (Chernobrov, 2019, p. 39). This involves reaching to well-worn identity discourses, which serve as vehicles for ‘[t]ransforming the anxiety of the unknown into the security of the known (recognizable, even if illusory) [that] affirms the identity of the perceiving subject and enables it to confidently interact with the international other.’ (ibid.) These arguments have a direct purchase for critical geopolitics, as geopolitical imaginations are good examples of how such sense-making and anxiety-managing discourses can look like. Some have already recognised and developed this link. For Guzzini, the ‘revival of geopolitical thought’ in Europe is directly linked to ontological insecurity stemming from ‘the sense of disorientation and foreign policy identity crises which followed 1989.’ (Guzzini, 2016, pp. 14–15) Making a more explicit link between anxiety and fear, Browning develops a very similar argument: ‘The attraction of tropes of a new Cold War and a return of geopolitics is precisely that they solve anxiety about current events by fitting them into clearly established systems of meaning, though doing so entails reducing anxiety by emphasising a world of threats and fears’ (Browning, 2018, p. 113). Both Guzzini and Browning are critical of using geopolitics as a tool of anxiety management, citing its adverse effects both in normative terms (creation of enemy-images, building an exclusionary ‘Fortress Europe’), and in the consequential decrease in physical security (e.g. as a result of escalating tensions between antagonists locked-in in their hardened identities). However, both also appear to ground their argument in the assumption that anxiety ultimately can be managed (more or less) successfully, one that is shared by the Giddensian mainstream of ontological security studies. While scholars making such arguments would consider the price of anxiety-management via geopolitics as too steep, they still accept that such a trade-off can be made in the first place and that one’s ontological security can in fact be gained at the expense of physical security or the well-being of others. As some of the most recent debates in ontological security scholarship recognise (Browning, 2019; Cash, 2020; Gustafsson & Krickel-Choi, 2020; Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020; Rumelili, 2020), these issues stem from Giddens’ problematic conceptualisation of anxiety that is adopted by most ontological security work in critical geopolitics and IR. To sharpen the analysis of the role of anxiety in geopolitics and deepen the critique made by Guzzini and Browning, an additional theoretical step is needed. For this purpose, we reach to the literature on the politics of anxiety drawing mainly on the work of Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst whose ideas have been increasingly prolific in IR (for an authoritative overview see Zevnik & Mandelbaum, 2021), and, to a lesser extent, critical geopolitics (Klinke, 2016; Laketa, 2019; Müller, 2013). Our approach shares the Giddensian notion that anxiety is an inarticulable, traumatic and potentially paralysing affect that subjects attempt to avoid and repress. However, instead of seeing it as merely something that ‘lurks’ behind as the dark other of normal life, anxiety is understood as a durable affective condition interwoven in everyday experiences as well as social processes and political institutions. It doesn’t just lurk, it is always already there, as it is present in the key mechanisms that hold society together: in the production of social subjects and the creation of rules through which these are regulated and bound together. In this reading, anxiety is correlative to the very emergence and existence of the subject as such. It is ‘a type of expectant dread’ or ‘a crushing experience of ‘out of placeness’’ that arises ‘when the subject, unable to ground themselves in either a functional horizon of values or a reliable social or subjective identification, fears that they might be somehow swallowed up, devoured’ (Hook, 2015, pp. 117, 119). It is less about the disorientation and uncertainty caused by one particular crisis (e.g. Russia invading Ukraine, Covid-19 arriving) and more about being reminded of the ultimately irreducible fragility of all things, including human lives and social orders. In this sense, anxiety is an affect linked to experiencing the limit of one’s own existence as a subject, something that signifies the encounter with ‘the real’, to use the Lacanian term for the internal limit of social order and/or the biological limit of human existence. Anxiety can never be fully managed or repressed, as it is a reaction to being confronted with what is for Lacan the ultimate reality of human existence: the fundamental ‘groundlessness of meaning’ (Balaska, 2019, p. 25) and, therefore, the impossibility of ever achieving a coherent and stable identity. In this sense, anxiety is the affect that ‘does not deceive’ (Lacan, 2014, p. 160), as it does not cover over the void at the heart of every social identity, but rather confronts us with it at the level of bodily sensation. To put it differently, subjects are always ultimately ontologically insecure, as no narratives, routines or relationships – personal or geopolitical – can ever fully deal with the omnipresent possibility that things may not make sense and everything can break down any minute. Anxiety emerges as the affect that signifies ‘the need for the stabilisation of the subject’ (Burgess, 2017, p. 29), yet this stabilisation is doomed to fail in the longer term. Therefore, in contrast to readings that see it as an aberration, anxiety is omnipresent, even though it clearly varies in its intensity across time and space. Sometimes it is experienced more often and more strongly, while there may be other, less anxious times (Solomon, 2012 makes this argument with respect to affects in general). The current social condition is arguably one when anxiety is on the high; leading some authors to argue that we are now living in an ‘anxious society’, ‘a society on constant alert, despite having no identifiable existential threat. Instead, there is the constant presence of the possibility of that threat, and with it, the sense that government cannot fully protect the people and that danger resides in the everyday’ (Kinnvall & Mitzen, 2020, p. 247, emph. added; Eklundh et al., 2017). Such (highly) anxious society was created by the congruence of a range of factors. Some point to the effects of neoliberalism and austerity that produce the widespread feelings of powerlessness and loss of control (Hirvonen, 2017). Others focus on the social media economy that requires users who are constantly obsessively checking for news updates, notifications and the affective gratification coming from ‘retweets’ and ‘likes’ (Davies, 2019). For yet others, the proliferation of anxiety is connected to the societal changes linked to gender, race and immigration (Ali & Whitham, 2018; Klinke, 2016; Zevnik, 2017b), or the ‘security creep’ perpetuated by discourses and practices of counterterrorism and cybersecurity (Heath-Kelly, 2018; Jacobsen, 2020). This extended understanding of anxiety as ontologically conditioned and socially circulated ‘nervous states’ (Davies, 2019) without a clear and concrete referent object opens the possibility to think (geo)politics of anxiety in broader and arguably more critical terms than in conventional ontological security literature. On the one hand, the Lacanian approach broadly agrees with the Giddensian ontological security framework with respect to how subjects try to deal with anxiety: by ‘pinning’ it onto an object and transforming it into a more tangible fear of something. In this manner, ‘fear becomes a way of easing anxiety; of attaching a signifier (an object of fear) to what is otherwise an unfounded experience of unease’ (Zevnik, 2017a, p. 237). Such ‘politics of fear’ then transforms the crushing and paralysing experience of anxiety into the management of ‘concrete objects that we have invented’ (Hirvonen, 2017, p. 261), such as the geopolitically coded ‘Muslim terrorists’ or ‘Russians hackers’. In this step, anxiety is ostensibly eased or repressed by the production of (geopolitical) narratives that ‘make sense’ of the unpleasant experience by giving it a name and placing it on a map.2 On the other hand, however, the Lacanian take allows us to account also for the politics that is imminent in the failure of these anxiety-managing attempts. As we have argued, all narratives built around particular objects of fear, including geopolitical ones, are eventually failing, as these objects are ultimately ‘false targets’. They are merely temporary discursive vessels functioning as placeholders for expressing deeper ontological anxiety, which is bound to strike back. Consequently, attempts to make societies (feel) more secure, habitually end up making them (feel) equally, or even more, insecure and anxious, regardless of how much effort is invested into fighting this or that particular threat. As Heath-Kelly (2015, 2018) and Jacobsen (2020) have shown, successful security discourses like counter-terrorism or cybersecurity have actually managed to internalise this ‘failure to secure’ (Heath-Kelly, 2015) by incorporating it into their very structure. According to them, counter-terrorism and cybersecurity are constructed as dangers so slippery and multifaceted that once we resolve one problem (by killing Osama bin Laden, resolving a particular cyberthreat), a whole new range of terrorist groups or cyber issues emerges to occupy their place. Consequently, and in contrast to conventional ontological security literature, politics of anxiety is not only about managing and repressing it through narratives, routines and relationships. It is also about other ways of manipulating anxiety for political purposes, including reproducing, nurturing and spreading it via the construction of threats so opaque and widespread that they cannot be possibly resolved, like terrorism, cybersecurity – or hybrid warfare. By its repeated failure to secure, such discourses hold societies in the anxious ‘state of constant and heightened alertness’ (Davies, 2019, p. xii), making them ready to accept a range of pre-emptive security measures across all possible areas of social life. Bringing the argument together, by the notion of anxiety geopolitics we conceptualise the politics of dealing with anxiety by linking it to objects and issues spatialised through the means of geopolitical imaginations. By references to geographical categories, such as states, regions, continents or civilisations, this type of affective geopolitics promises to transform the amorphous and ambiguous anxiety stemming from range of different issues into tangible and manageable objects of fear taking the form of geopolitical threats. Yet, as all such narratives and images are ultimately bound to fail to resolve the underlying anxiety, the analytical focus must be extended also to how these failures are accounted for and how anxiety is being further reproduced with the help of geopolitical imaginations. Therefore, anxiety geopolitics is ultimately about the oscillation between repressing anxiety through the geopoliticisation of both the ‘threat’ and the self, as much as it is about dealing with the recurring failures to secure the subjects produced by such geopoliticisation, which result in reproduction of social anxiety.

Eberle and Daniel 22 [Jakub Eberle earned his Ph.D. in International Relations at University of Warwick. He is the research director at the Institute of International Relations Prague and a lecturer at the Prague University of Economics and Business. He is the author of Discourse and Affect in Foreign Policy: Germany and the Iraq War and co-editor of the forthcoming book International Theory and German Foreign Policy. Jan Daniel, obtained his PhD in International Relations from Charles University. He is a research at the Institute of International Relations Prague and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Political Studies, Charles University.; “Anxiety geopolitics: Hybrid warfare, civilisational geopolitics, and the Janus-faced politics of anxiety “; Political Geography; January 2022; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629821001621?casa_token=DD4IAglYpG8AAAAA:bHYXdLo10Dzh--y1SeCs9XDBiaLlarPViZQHwMg3HUi4opCziysgpXhZHhSJSJqXPPk4KTZ7M7jB]//eleanor

HW presents an instance of anxiety geopolitics the close link between HW and anxiety has been explicitly recognised HW triggers ‘anxiety about the difficulties of concretising unknown and indeterminate threats’ the relation between HW and geopolitics is at the same time strongly pronounced and marked by a profound tension. it is about information operations in deterritorialised spaces of the globalised public sphere, unattributable cyberattacks or the incitement of horizontal protest movements this ‘postmodern’ geopolitical imagination has been very often subdued to the much more traditional and ‘modern’ vision of a ‘new Cold War’ between Russia and ‘the West’ HW has been incorporated into the civilisational mode of geopolitical thinking that divides the world along an East/West axis. Approaching HW as a case of anxiety geopolitics allows us to analyse this tension and unpack the underlying puzzle: Why is it that the ostensibly novel, networked and deterritorialised phenomena associated with hybrid warfare get so easily submerged under such an old, static and territorial geopolitical imagination? the allure of East/West geopolitics lies in its familiarity, as it provides a well-worn map that promises to ‘make sense’ of the anxiety-inducing manifestations of ‘hybrid warfare’ these attempts eventually fail and the HW discourse ends up perpetuating the insecurities and anxieties it serves well to ‘a ‘hybrid-industrial complex’ of government agencies, think-tanks, nongovernmental organizations and pundits’ pointing out to the role of anxiety geopolitics in this economy of power/knowledge that emerged around HW provides both an analysis and a political intervention the amalgamation of the hybrid warfare discourse and East/West geopolitics presents a particular case of anxiety geopolitics, which oscillates between the promise to repress anxiety and the repeated failures in doing so we discuss the broader take-aways for critical geopolitics and IR, as well as for policy debates on how (not) to address the threat posed by Russia. people ‘‘spatialize’ international politics and represent it as a ‘world’ characterized by particular types of places, peoples and dramas’ Geopolitical imaginations are the result of subjects’ attempt to make sense of the world by associating political values with various parts of that map. They can also be spoken of in the collective sense, in which a group can be said to have similar visions of the world affects are an indivisible part of social construction of space, as they are intimately entangled with languages and images through which our ‘mental maps’ are produced and disseminated. geopolitics should be understood ‘both as socially produced and intimately experienced’ and, consequently, ‘the emotional and the affective become the site of the geopolitical’ and vice versa international politics is spatialised also by engaging subjects at the affective level, which is an essential part of the production of geopolitical imaginations through which subjects view the world and their place within it. This links critical geopolitics to identity, emotions and affects, including scholarship on ontological security and anxiety in IR. subjects individuals, groups, or states deal with the uncertainty of modern life without losing the ‘security of the self, the subjective sense of who one is’ ontological security is sought through an active process of constructing the self and anchoring it in the social world, which happens through the establishment of routines creation of biographical narratives or maintenance of relationships The key underlying purpose of ontological security-seeking is to avoid anxiety anxiety is diffuse, it is free-floating: lacking a specific object’, which makes it possible to ‘pin’ it to different things and concepts Repressing anxiety by this ‘pinning’, which transforms it into manageable fear is then one of the key motives of human behaviour anxiety is the ‘chaos’ that ‘threatens on the other side of the ordinariness of the everyday conventions’ subjects often prefer to deal with it through the production of fear via the discursive construction of ‘specific objects and threats’ identity discourses serve as vehicles for ‘[t]ransforming the anxiety of the unknown into the security of the known even if illusory that affirms the identity of the perceiving subject and enables it to confidently interact with the international other. geopolitical imaginations are good examples of how such sense-making and anxiety-managing discourses can look revival of geopolitical thought’ is directly linked to ontological insecurity stemming from ‘the sense of disorientation and foreign policy identity crises tropes of a new Cold War and a return of geopolitics solve anxiety about current events by fitting them into clearly established systems of meaning, though doing so entails reducing anxiety by emphasising a world of threats and fears’ geopolitics as a tool of anxiety management, effects creation of enemy-images, building an exclusionary ‘Fortress Europe’ and decrease physical security as a result of escalating tensions anxiety is correlative to the very emergence and existence of the subject It is ‘a type of expectant dread’ or ‘a crushing experience of ‘out of placeness’’ that arises ‘when the subject, unable to ground themselves in either a functional horizon of values or a reliable social or subjective identification, fears that they might be somehow swallowed up, devoured’ It is less about the disorientation and uncertainty caused by one particular crisis e.g. Russia invading Ukraine, Covid and more about being reminded of the ultimately irreducible fragility of all things subjects are always ultimately ontologically insecure, as no narratives, routines or relationships – personal or geopolitical – can ever fully deal with the omnipresent possibility that things may not make sense and everything can break down any minute. Anxiety emerges as the affect that signifies ‘the need for the stabilisation of the subject’ stabilisation is doomed to fail in the longer term. subjects try to deal with anxiety by ‘pinning’ it onto an object and transforming it into a more tangible fear of something attaching a signifier (an object of fear) to what is otherwise an unfounded experience of unease’ Such ‘politics of fear’ then transforms the crushing and paralysing experience of anxiety into the management of ‘concrete objects that we have invented’ such as the geopolitically coded ‘Muslim terrorists’ or ‘Russians hackers’. anxiety is repressed by the production of (geopolitical) narratives that ‘make sense’ of the unpleasant experience by giving it a name and placing it on a map all narratives built around particular objects of fear, including geopolitical ones, are eventually failing, as these objects are ultimately ‘false targets’ They are merely temporary discursive vessels functioning as placeholders for expressing deeper ontological anxiety, which is bound to strike back attempts to make societies (feel) more secure, habitually end up making them more, insecure and anxious regardless of how much effort is invested into fighting this or that particular threat security discourses like counter-terrorism or cybersecurity have actually managed to internalise this ‘failure to secure’ by incorporating it into their very structure. counter-terrorism and cybersecurity are constructed as dangers so slippery and multifaceted that once we resolve one problem resolving a particular cyberthreat a whole new range of cyber issues emerges to occupy their place. politics of anxiety reproduc it via the construction of threats so opaque and widespread that they cannot be possibly resolved, like terrorism, cybersecurity – or hybrid warfare. By its repeated failure to secure, such discourses hold societies in the anxious ‘state of constant and heightened alertness’ making them ready to accept a range of pre-emptive security measures across all possible areas of social life. this type of affective geopolitics promises to transform the amorphous and ambiguous anxiety stemming from range of different issues into tangible and manageable objects of fear taking the form of geopolitical threats such narratives and images are ultimately bound to fail to resolve the underlying anxiety anxiety is being further reproduced with the help of geopolitical imaginations anxiety geopolitics is ultimately about the oscillation between repressing anxiety through the geopoliticisation of both the ‘threat’ and the self, as much as it is about dealing with the recurring failures to secure the subjects produced by such geopoliticisation, which result in reproduction of social anxiety

Policy debate’s paranoia towards Russian cyberattacks is informed by anxiety geopolitics – in order for the West to create a sense of ontological security and stabilize it’s self-image, despite new domains of threats, we map the modern world over a familiar symbolic structure of an East/West divide – rather than providing security, the discourses of hybrid warfare oscillate between a move to repress anxiety and repeated failure in doing so.

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Just as the sacrifice of what the subject doesn’t have constitutes the subject as such, the shared sacrifice of an impossible pleasure gives birth to social living. The sacrifice that subjects make in order to enter society repeats the earlier sacrifice, but what occurs is repetition with a difference. While the initial sacrifice of the privileged object installs the death drive in the subject and thereby constitutes the individual as a subject, the repetition of this sacrifice marks an attempt to domesticate the death drive at the same time as it follows the death drive’s logic. That is, the death drive leads us to this repetition, but the repetition attempts to solve the impossible bind that the death drive creates for us. Society is an attempt to solve the problem of subjectivity itself.6

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 146-148, 1 July 2013, MG)

The sacrifice that subjects make in order to enter society repeats the earlier sacrifice, but what occurs is repetition with a difference. While the initial sacrifice of the privileged object installs the death drive in the subject and thereby constitutes the individual as a subject, the repetition of this sacrifice marks an attempt to domesticate the death drive at the same time as it follows the death drive’s logic. That is, the death drive leads us to this repetition, but the repetition attempts to solve the impossible bind that the death drive creates for us. Society is an attempt to solve the problem of subjectivity itself.6

The toll for societal acceptance is sacrifice of the object of your desire – that installs the death drive into the subject and endlessly repeats the process until the subject’s death drive has been domesticated

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In this sense, totalitarianism is not the reverse side of liberalism’s insistence on sustaining the private world at all costs, but instead the ultimate end point of this insistence. The more one seeks to safeguard privacy and clear the path for capitalist relations of production, the more one also leaves space for the rise of totalitarianism. The totalitarian leader might eliminate privacy but is able to do so because a commitment to privacy predominates. One cannot imagine the rise of totalitarianism without capitalism’s destruction of the public world.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 83-85, 20 September 2016, MG)

totalitarianism is not the reverse side of liberalism’s insistence on sustaining the private world at all costs, but instead the ultimate end point of this insistence. The more one seeks to safeguard privacy and clear the path for capitalist relations of production, the more one also leaves space for the rise of totalitarianism

Their desire and attitudes towards surveillance premise their subjectivities only in terms of privacy which is a capitalist trick to privatize the conscious

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While most contemporary subjects don’t smash rocks over the heads of those who provoke anxiety in them, the conclusion of Short Cuts is nonetheless revelatory. Much (physical and psychic) violence today occurs in response to the anxiety of the encounter with the enjoying other. Both the violence of the fundamentalist suicide bomber and the violence of the War on Terror have their origins in the experience of anxiety. Suicide bombers target sites of decadent Western enjoyment — bars, clubs, discos, the World Trade Center, and so on — in order to create a world where this enjoyment would return to the shadows and thereby cease to provoke anxiety. The true fundamentalist dreams about being able to desire once again with some respite from the proximate object and the anxiety it creates. But the actions of the suicide bomber, for their part, produce anxiety in the Western subject that leads directly to the phenomenon of the War on Terror.19

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 108-111, 1 July 2013, MG)

Much (physical and psychic) violence today occurs in response to the anxiety of the encounter with the enjoying other. Both the violence of the fundamentalist suicide bomber and the violence of the War on Terror have their origins in the experience of anxiety. Suicide bombers target sites of decadent Western enjoyment — bars, clubs, discos, the World Trade Center, and so on — in order to create a world where this enjoyment would return to the shadows and thereby cease to provoke anxiety But the actions of the suicide bomber, for their part, produce anxiety in the Western subject that leads directly to the phenomenon of the War on Terror.19

The specter of terrorism the affirmative attempts to destroy is rooted in the belief of ceasing anxiety – that solely begets more violence and disappointment

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Like religion, war continues in modernity, even though we understand and declaim its wastefulness. The typical modern subject can watch an antiwar film like Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1961) and feel convinced that war is hell and completely unnecessary. After leaving the theater, however, this same subject can come to believe that there is no alternative but to send troops to Vietnam to stop the potential spread of Communist aggression.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 150-151, 1 July 2013, MG)

Like religion, war continues in modernity, even though we understand and declaim its wastefulness. The typical modern subject can watch an antiwar film and feel convinced that war is hell and completely unnecessary. After leaving the theater, however, this same subject can come to believe that there is no alternative but to send troops to Vietnam to stop the potential spread of Communist aggression.

The desire to restrict the worst instances of war is part and parcel of the unconscious’ enjoyment of sacrifice – they introduced it into this space because they secretly enjoy its trauma

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How we comport ourselves in relation to the other’s enjoyment indicates our relationship to our own. What bothers us about the other — the disturbance that the other’s enjoyment creates in our existence — is our own mode of enjoying. If we did not derive enjoyment from the other’s enjoyment, witnessing it would not bother us psychically. We would simply be indifferent to it and focused on our own concerns. Of course, we might ask an offending car radio listener to turn the radio down so that we wouldn’t have to hear the unwanted music, but we would not experience the mere exhibition of alien enjoyment through the playing of that music as an affront. The very fact that the other’s enjoyment captures our attention demonstrates our intimate — or extimate — relation to it.30

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 117-119, 1 July 2013, MG)

How we comport ourselves in relation to the other’s enjoyment indicates our relationship to our own. What bothers us about the other — the disturbance that the other’s enjoyment creates in our existence — is our own mode of enjoying. If we did not derive enjoyment from the other’s enjoyment, witnessing it would not bother us psychically The very fact that the other’s enjoyment captures our attention demonstrates our intimate — or extimate — relation to it.30

Their mode of isolating enjoyment through fantasy scenarios is a tool out of the Fascist pocket – it’s an explicit attempt to eliminate the Other which destroys our relation to it

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Therein also lies the paradox of public policy-making: the significance of choice’s imaginary foundations. The origins of the ‘choice for all’ fantasy, and every other fantasy, are to be found in the need of the subject to be ‘recognized’ in the symbolic Other in order to exist. Let us not forget that the motivation and impetus for the Lacanian subject is always the desire to retrieve the illusory unity that has been sacrificed upon entry into the symbolic order via language. Language operates by signifying the object in its absence and this is why desire always contains loss within it. Without this loss of the sense of a unified identity and the fantasy it gives rise to, there would be no signification and no symbolic life. In other words, social reality is structured by our imaginary misperceptions, as well as our unsymbolizable unconscious longings, which have been given up (repressed) into the unconscious in the socialization process. Such is, for example, the fantasy of effective policy, of purposeful organization and of harmonious society—all stemming from an impossible desire for unity. The Lacanian perspective unveils the imaginary nature of such strivings which underpins various social and political projects, including idealistic and idealized public policies and dismisses them as vain attempts to counteract our ontological and temporal finitude as human beings. It also reveals why these unacknowledged imaginary and symbolic functions are indispensable for bringing policies to life, even if they cannot be achieved. Such is the example of pursuing ‘Choice for All’ (see Milburn, 2003; Reid, 2003) in a public health system with finite resources and tangible opportunity costs. It offers a stark testimony of the impossibility of realizing the policy objectives it proclaims, despite or perhaps because of its universalistic (and omnipotent) aspirations. Satisfac- tion of all individual wants will not be possible without limiting someone else’s access to resources and therefore options. This contravenes the founding collectivist principles of the NHS of offering equal access to all according to need. The attempt to attain the fantasy of the impossible can also explain policy recycling and repetition of the same ideas, despite many documented failures.However, the desire to attain the lost part of the self, which is the Lacanian objet petit á, and which in the case of (freedom of) patient choice stands in for freedom from the bounds of the human predicament, instigates the articulation of such and other improbable policies, only if and when the opportune moment arrives. Political expediency, a shift in dominant societal discourses and other massive social changes can all prompt such a move. Once policy makers are implicitly entrusted with formulating aspirational rather than realizable policies, their unworkable aspects are then further reinforced by psychological processes such as organizational defences in health set- tings. These involve separating off and denying unwanted reality (Heginbotham, 1999; Obholzer and Zagier-Roberts, 1994; Vince and Broussine, 1996).The illusory nature of many public health policies is evidenced whenever they are being for- mulated in denial of their contextual reality. An idealistic policy such as Choice for All must not be tested against reality and must therefore remain exterior to the organizations that will imple- ment it. Socially sanctioned defensive reactions such as splitting between the idealized policy and its imperfect implementation, and the projection of blame onto various organizational members, are hence employed to protect against discarding this illusion. Object relations theorists came up with various elaborate theories on how social institutions enact psychodynamic mechanisms to defend individuals and groups from existential anxieties (see De Board, 1978; Obholzer, 1994).6 I have also suggested, that health policy must be idealistic to fulfil the impossible goal of the health care system, namely to defend us against the anxiety about disease and dying, a defence it can never fully accomplish (Fotaki, 2006). Although such defences might be necessary to keep destructive fears of annihilation at bay, at the same time they act as a dysfunctional barrier against attaining awareness of our own constructs and ultimately against our attempts to acknowledge fantasy and to survive its failure. To sum up, Kleinian analysis suggests how splits between policy design and organizational real- ity operate to ‘protect’ us from coming to terms with unrealistic policies, but the Lacanian concep- tion of subjectivity explains why policies are designed in such way and why the splits are there in the first place. In a Lacanian perspective, while the policy tool can be seen to act as a defence against societal anxieties, these anxieties are not simply generated by the health risks themselves, but are sites in which the already existing (subjective) anxiety is expressed collectively. Put differ- ently, we are all anxious anyway as, for Lacan, anxiety is the fear ‘of the lack of lack’ and this is why these symbolic manifestations of extant general anxiety float from one public issue to another, as was helpfully put by one reviewer.7This leads me now to the central claim I make in this article, namely, that the imaginary construction of policy-making, if unacknowledged, leads to multiple splits and ultimately underscores its failure. The example of patient choice is so evidently suffused with unrealizable promises, as is chosen to highlight the undesirable effects of unrecognized fantasies in the policy-making process and the difficulty of translating value driven statements into organizational realities. The use of abstract economic models simplifying human decisions and devoiding them of real life messiness, and the Labour government’s belated enchantment with the market and competition (Le Grand, 2006; Le Grand and Dixon, 2006) to solve the insoluble efficiency/equity dilemma, ensures that policy formulation is distanced from organizational reality. When such realization of an intrinsic conflict between fantasy and reality and the potential for failure is absent from policy making, defensive mechanisms (projection and splitting) cascade down into health care organizations. These are necessary in order to maintain the splits between a good policy and the flawed imple- mentation should the policy fail, as it must, and for apportioning the blame towards those who must be held responsible for policy failure. Politicians blame health professionals for not meeting their impossible ideals, insisting that more managers are required in order to police their choices. Vari- ous groups of health professionals are pitted against each other (doctors versus managers or doc- tors versus nurses for example) as they are simultaneously idealized and denigrated, offering protection against the inevitability of failure of the unworkable policies while better policies are awaited in the future. Clearly, the process of articulating impossible policies and the difficulties involved in implementing them are all underscored by the idealization and defences around work- ing in health care, as the seminal work of Menzies (1960) has illustrated.The alleged beneficiaries of policies are subject to idealization too: patient choice is after all introduced in the name of empowering the deserving users of services against the dominance of all-powerful professionals who do not always have their patents’ best interest in mind.8 Yet those who do not accept responsibilities for their health related choices are exempted from the category of deserving users as they are stigmatized and refused treatment (see the example of obese patients and smokers turned down by some health authorities in England—BBC, 2005). Inherent in New Labour’s project of modernization is the assumption that the modern citizen should be both mana- gerial and entrepreneurial (Scourfield, 2007). The price of greater autonomy and involvement is that users must assume active responsibility for these activities, both for carrying them out and for their outcomes. This new form of ‘responsibilization’ corresponds to the new ways in which the governed are encouraged to act freely and rationally while conducting themselves in accor- dance with the appropriate (or approved) model of action (Burchell, 1993: 276, cited in Scourfield, 2007). Their subordinated citizenship then becomes doubly underlined by their ‘choice’ to have services arranged for them, while they are required to acquire the flexibility of ‘the person’ (Scourf- ield, 2007). Choice and independence are powerful concepts but dependency and interdependency are part of all our lives, for some of us more than others. It is clear that such policies invariably ignore the reality of non-uniform patients, who are themselves fragmented and divided subjects; more so in times of dislocation and stress Scourfield (2007) reminds us.But the Lacanian analysis of policy making does not simply suggest that the glorification of choice would not have been possible in the absence of an underlying fantasy. It gives us conceptual tools to explore how the inherent idealization involved in articulating aspirational policy objectives such as Choice for All, for example, might enable policy capture by powerful political groups and/ or organized interests for their own ideological and political ends. This is because various (conscious and less conscious) forms of political exploitation are more likely to occur when policy content coheres with the imaginary longings of the psyche.

Fotaki 10 (Marianna, Organization Studies Group @ Manchester Business School, Why do public policies fail so often? Exploring health policy-making as an imaginary and symbolic construction, Organization 2010 17: 703, Sage, 713-716)

the motivation and impetus for the Lacanian subject is always the desire to retrieve the illusory unity that has been sacrificed upon entry into the symbolic order via language for example, the fantasy of effective policy, of purposeful organization and of harmonious society—all stemming from an impossible desire for unity. The Lacanian perspective unveils the imaginary nature of such strivings which underpins various social and political projects, the desire to attain the lost part of the self instigates the articulation of improbable policies, only if and when the opportune moment arrives. Political expediency, a shift in dominant societal discourses and other massive social changes can all prompt such a move. the imaginary construction of policy-making, if unacknowledged, leads to multiple splits and ultimately underscores its failure The use of abstract economic models simplifying human decisions and devoiding them of real life messiness ensures that policy formulation is distanced from organizational reality. Lacanian analysis of policy making gives us conceptual tools to explore how the inherent idealization involved in articulating aspirational policy objectives might enable policy capture by powerful political groups and/ or organized interests for their own ideological and political ends. forms of political exploitation are more likely to occur when policy content coheres with the imaginary longings of the psyche.

Rigid plan focus skirts analyzing the constitutive failure of modern politics---any other standard causes serial policy failure.

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If psychoanalysis emerges out of the suffering that integration into the social order causes, it also reveals how the subject's satisfaction depends on the public world that appears to thwart this satisfaction. This idea, as much as any other, forms the basis for psychoanalytic practice. Unlike philosophers like Descartes or Kant, Freud doesn't believe that one can arrive at the truth of one's being through private introspection. It is only when one is in public and talking to others that one reveals this truth. This is why others know us better than we know ourselves. As Freud points out in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, "It can in fact be said quite generally that everyone is continually practising psychical analysis on his neighbours and consequently learns to know them better than they know themselves."16 No amount of introspection can replace public interaction for the revelation of truth.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, “Driven into the Public: The Psychic Constitution of Space,” Architecture Post Mortem: Ashgate Studies in Architecture Series, ed. Donald Kunze, David Bertolin, and Simone Brott, Ashgate: Burlington, VT (2013), p. 19-20]

If psychoanalysis emerges out of the suffering that integration into the social order causes, it also reveals how the subject's satisfaction depends on the public world that appears to thwart this satisfaction. Freud doesn't believe that one can arrive at the truth of one's being through private introspection It is only when one is in public and talking to others that one reveals this truth. This is why others know us better than we know ourselves everyone is continually practising psychical analysis on his neighbours and consequently learns to know them better than they know themselves No amount of introspection can replace public interaction for the revelation of truth.

The role of the judge is to be an analyst --- we have the only coherent justification for why our argument requires a public space

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Such rituals appear explicitly in premodern societies, which consistently make public sacrifices of animals (or people) to please their gods. While sacrifices have the expressed intent of gaining good favor or warding off bad, their unconscious function consists solely in enacting the sacrifice itself. Any pleasure that follows from the sacrifice — such as abundant rainfall that produces good crops — is strictly secondary to the enjoyment of the sacrifice itself. Societies sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, not for the end that it produces. This sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice doesn't end with the onset of modernity but instead continues primarily in a disguised form. What defines modernity isn't so much a degree of enlightenment and rationality as a fundamental refusal to avow the primacy of sacrifice.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, Symploke, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE): 2013, p. 146-51]

While sacrifices have the expressed intent of gaining good favor or warding off bad, their unconscious function consists solely in enacting the sacrifice itself. Any pleasure that follows from the sacrifice such as abundant rainfall that produces is strictly secondary to the enjoyment of the sacrifice itself. Societies sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, not for the end that it produces. sacrifice continues primarily in a disguised form What defines modernity isn't so much a degree of enlightenment and rationality as a fundamental refusal to avow the primacy of sacrifice

The aff’s attempt to disavow suffering through presenting it backfires --- the modern demand for utility falls prey to the subject’s constitutive lack and compulsive repetition in pursuit of enjoyment

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If psychoanalysis emerges out of the suffering that integration into the social order causes, it also reveals how the subject’s satisfaction depends on the public world that appears to thwart this satisfaction. This idea, as much as any other, forms the basis for psychoanalytic practice. Unlike philosophers like Descartes or Kant, Freud doesn’t believe that one can arrive at the truth of one’s being through private introspection. It is only when one is in public and talking to others that one reveals this truth. This is why others know us better than we know ourselves, even when we try to maintain a hidden inwardness that we reveal to no one. In order to interact with others, we must constantly pay attention not to what they say explicitly but to the desire that their words express in the act of concealing.20 We constantly read the unconscious truth of those with whom we interact. No amount of introspection can replace public interaction for the revelation of truth.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 77-80, 20 September 2016, MG)

If psychoanalysis emerges out of the suffering that integration into the social order causes, it also reveals how the subject’s satisfaction depends on the public world that appears to thwart this satisfaction It is only when one is in public and talking to others that one reveals this truth. This is why others know us better than we know ourselves, even when we try to maintain a hidden inwardness that we reveal to no one. In order to interact with others, we must constantly pay attention not to what they say explicitly but to the desire that their words express in the act of concealing.20 We constantly read the unconscious truth of those with whom we interact

The role of the judge is to be an analyst – their intep locks them into self-analysis which is narcissistic and fails, but having the judge act as the public evaluating the desires of the plan solves

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Since the desire of the Other can provide no concrete guidance for the subject in its search for what to desire, it must have recourse to fantasy. Here capitalism again comes to the subject’s aid by providing innumerable fantasies that direct the subject’s desire both toward the proper work and toward the proper commodity. Fantasy provides the subject guidance about what the Other desires and thus constitutes this desire as knowable. Without this guidance, there would be no way of approaching this desire or beginning to make sense of it. In some sense, the subject fantasizes this desire into existence: the fantasy gives coherence to the Other’s desire by creating an imaginary scenario surrounding the Other. Lacan offers an enigmatic definition of fantasy in his seminar on The Logic of Fantasy. He says, “in the final accounting the fantasy is a sentence with a grammatical structure.”26 That is to say, fantasy gives the desire of the Other a concrete form that it otherwise lacks. Even if fantasy imagines a traumatic desire—the Other wants to destroy us —it nonetheless provides the security of an existing Other that can guide our desire.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 58-60, 20 September 2016, MG)

Since the desire of the Other can provide no concrete guidance for the subject in its search for what to desire, it must have recourse to fantasy. Here capitalism again comes to the subject’s aid by providing innumerable fantasies that direct the subject’s desire both toward the proper work and toward the proper commodity the fantasy gives coherence to the Other’s desire by creating an imaginary scenario surrounding the Other “in the final accounting the fantasy is a sentence with a grammatical structure.”26 Even if fantasy imagines a traumatic desire—the Other wants to destroy us —it nonetheless provides the security of an existing Other that can guide our desire.

The affirmative’s investment in fantasy scenarios is a ruse for the system to gain a psychic foothold and create trauma

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Fantasy defines a subject’s subjectivity by providing it with a private narrative that explains the public loss of the privileged object.29 This loss, as we have seen, gives birth to the subject: the subject and the object don’t exist prior to the experience of loss but emerge through it. But when fantasy places the loss of the privileged object into a narrative structure — when it tells a story about how the loss occurred and what caused it — fantasy creates the illusion that the lost object had some substantial status prior to being lost. It is in this precise sense that fantasy functions as the primordial lie that the subject tells itself. Because fantasy imagines the lost object as substantial, it also envisions the possibility of recovering the lost object and recovering a lost satisfaction. Subjectivity is unthinkable without the fantasmatic lie. This lie gives the subject a reason for its suffering and permits the subject to endure its lack with the possibility of the restoration of fullness. Even psychoanalytic treatment doesn’t enable the subject to overcome its inherent proclivity toward and reliance on fantasy (though psychoanalysis does permit the subject to become reoriented relative to its fantasy life). Without some recourse to fantasy, no subject could go on. Fantasy gives the subject a direction for its desire, a center around which to organize its enjoyment, and it always has an obscene quality to it.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 132-134, 1 July 2013, MG)

Fantasy defines a subject’s subjectivity by providing it with a private narrative that explains the public loss of the privileged object. when fantasy places the loss of the privileged object into a narrative structure — when it tells a story about how the loss occurred and what caused it — fantasy creates the illusion that the lost object had some substantial status prior to being lost. It is in this precise sense that fantasy functions as the primordial lie that the subject tells itself Subjectivity is unthinkable without the fantasmatic lie. This lie gives the subject a reason for its suffering and permits the subject to endure its lack with the possibility of the restoration of fullness. Even psychoanalytic treatment doesn’t enable the subject to overcome its inherent proclivity toward and reliance on Without some recourse to fantasy, no subject could go on. Fantasy gives the subject a direction for its desire, a center around which to organize its enjoyment, and it always has an obscene quality to it.

The attempt to fantasize over imaginary scenarios is a form of traumatizing that shocks subjectivities with the endurance of the lack

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On the face of it, this claim appears counterintuitive: one can imagine, for instance, a psychoanalytic understanding of the nature of desire aiding political theorists in their attempts to free desire from ideology, which is the recurring difficulty of leftist politics. There are even historical examples of this theoretical assistance at work. Louis Althusser develops his theory of ideological interpellation through his acquaintance with Jacques Lacan’s conception of the subject’s entrance into language, and Juliet Mitchell elaborates her critique of the structural effects of patriarchy through her experience with Freudian conceptions of masculinity and femininity. In each case, psychoanalysis allows the theorist to understand how a prevailing social structure operates, and this provides a foundation for imagining a way to challenge this structure. As Mitchell claims, “Psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society, but an analysis of one. If we are interested in understanding and challenging the oppression of women, we cannot afford to neglect it.”4 Precisely because she sees psychoanalysis as a useful tool for political struggle, Mitchell here dismisses feminism’s longstanding quarrel with psychoanalysis for its complicity with patriarchy.5

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 3-6, 1 July 2013, MG)

psychoanalysis allows the theorist to understand how a prevailing social structure operates, and this provides a foundation for imagining a way to challenge this structure. As Mitchell claims, “Psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a patriarchal society, but an analysis of one

The aff’s approach to the world is constituted under a veil of ignorance – for every step they take towards the good in their imaginative politics, they take a corresponding step towards the bad

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It is impossible to divorce the question of subjectivity from the question of the structure of the social order. How one understands the relationship between the individual subject and society definitively marks one’s theoretical position. This is true for psychoanalytic thought no less than for other theories. The understanding of this relationship almost inevitably exists as a theoretical presupposition or as a starting point for whatever theory one espouses. The two predominant positions on the interaction between individual and society see the isolated individual as the starting point on the one hand or the social organization as the starting point on the other. In modernity, the former derives from the tradition of British liberal philosophy, and the latter derives from the tradition of German dialectical thought.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 143-146, 1 July 2013, MG)

It is impossible to divorce the question of subjectivity from the question of the structure of the social order. How one understands the relationship between the individual subject and society definitively marks one’s theoretical position. This is true for psychoanalytic thought no less than for other theories. The understanding of this relationship almost inevitably exists as a theoretical presupposition or as a starting point for whatever theory one espouses. The two predominant positions on the interaction between individual and society see the isolated individual as the starting point on the one hand or the social organization as the starting point on the other

Only psychoanalysis can explain the relationship between the social order and subjectivity

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Let me tackle the problem in two ways. First, I want to suggest that, for all intents and purposes, the Western symbolic order has become the de facto global symbolic order. As suggested earlier, through processes of globalization and (neo)colonialism, the West’s dominant representational and knowledge systems are all-pervasive (although not unchallenged). Ashis Nandy (1983, xi) contends in this regard that “colonialism colonizes minds in addition to bodies and it releases forces within the colonized societies to alter their cultural priorities once and for all. . . . The West is now everywhere, within the West and outside; in structures and in minds.” Psychoanalysis is thus applicable in non-Western cultures, not because of universal categories of mind but because of the history of globalization/colonialism, which has ended up imposing a Western(ized), and increasingly capitalistic, symbolic order.

Kapoor 18 (Ilan Kapoor - professor of Critical Development Studies at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, “Psychoanalysis and the GlObal”, University of Nebraska Press, Page 23, 1 September 2018, MG)

for all intents and purposes, the Western symbolic order has become the de facto global symbolic order through processes of globalization and (neo)colonialism, the West’s dominant representational and knowledge systems are all-pervasive (although not unchallenged). in this regard that “colonialism colonizes minds in addition to bodies and it releases forces within the colonized societies to alter their cultural priorities once and for all. . . . The West is now everywhere, within the West and outside; in structures and in minds.” Psychoanalysis is thus applicable in non-Western cultures, not because of universal categories of mind but because of the history of globalization/colonialism, which has ended up imposing a Western(ized), and increasingly capitalistic, symbolic order.

The Western order has become the de facto global symbolic order – that means not only are structures constituted by the West, but so are their minds

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I argue that these three Lacanian orders relate to the basic areas of neural anatomy: the left and right neocortex, plus the subcortical areas (from limbic system to brainstem).21 Humans share with all pre-existing animals, at least as far back as reptiles, a core brainstem that regulates internal functions and processes instinctual responses to outside stimuli, such as the body's instant, unconscious reaction to danger. We share with mammals a limbic system (including the temporal lobes at the sides of the head) that evolved around the brainstem to process more complex emotions and learned behaviors.22 Like other primates, we also have an expanded neocortex as the outermost layer of our brain (with occipital lobes in the back of the head, parietal lobes at the top rear, and frontal lobes).23 However, humans evolved distinct functional areas on each side of the neocortex. The left neocortex has audioverbal, linear, causal, executive, prosocial, routine functions, in contrast to the right hemisphere's visuospatial, holistic, intuitive, devil's advocate, anxiety- biased, novelty-detecting processes.25 Distinctive language systems (syntax and semantics) are in the left hemisphere, in Broca's and Wernicke's areas,2' in nearly all right-handed people and most left-handed.2. The right brain has further ties to the emotional limbic system and instinctual brainstem, but the left tends to operate separately (especially in men28), expressing or inhibiting limbic emotions and right-cortical intuitions, through its rational language and executive controls. Specifically regarding theatrical mimesis, the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) is used for recognizing "pantomimes executed by others" because it stores the "complex digrams" or schemas used in the "higher level intentional planning" of actions, while the right IPL is used for interpreting spatial orientation (Jacob and Jeannerod 253). Thus, certain left-cortical functions correlate with Lacan's Symbolic order of language, rules, and social codes, the right with the Imaginary, and the limbic system and brain- stem areas with the Real. Yet these three orders arc "inmixed" dimensions (Ragland-Sullivan 190), as are the corresponding areas of our brains. The Symbolic order resides primarily, but not solely within and between left brains, like the Imaginary in and between right hemispheres, and the Real in limbic systems and brainstems.2- I say "primarily" because there are also aspects of Symbolic language, involving imagery and emotions, in certain right-brain functions: making and interpreting metaphors, contextual meanings, puns, prosody, and non- verbal gestures (Ornstcin 103-08; Cozolino, Neuroscience of Psychotherapy 109). Thus, the right brain is used more for language, along with the left, by "expert" readers (Wolf 162). While the right brains Imaginary order is crucial for "sell-image" (Ornstein 132, 175-76), the spatial sense of ego also depends upon the left brain's "orientation area," as I will consider in the first chapter The general correspondence of Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic orders to the brainstem/limbic system, right hemisphere, and left hemisphere is confirmed by research on developmental growth spurts in the neocortex during childhood. As in Lacan's theory of the mirror stage, with the infant's Imaginary ego initially developing through preverbal communication with the (m)Other, neuroscience shows that right-brain to right-brain "attunement" between the mother and child, during its first two years of life, profoundly shapes its emotional and perceptual pathways, especially its sense of self in relation to others (Cozolino, Neuroscience of Human 38, 66-75, 84-85; Neuroscience of Psychotherapy 191-92). The "prosocial self then shifts, through language development, into the left brain, with its growth in subsequent years (118; Wolf 185-88). This relates to the Lacanian Symbolic order of words and laws shaping the child more directly after the initial mirror stage, at 6-18 months. According to neuroscience, the self as a "distributed neural network that encompasses shared self-other representations" continues to be "right- hemisphere based" (Deccty and Sommerville 527). Recognition of one's own face can be lost when the right hemisphere is anesthetized (529)—demon- strating that the Imaginary perception of ego (or the Freudian "imago"), and its possible fading or Lacanian "aphanisis," is based in the right cortex.31 Regarding our potential for therapeutic and theatrical catharsis, there appears to be a crucial filter between Symbolic/Imaginary and Real orders (or superego /ego and id) in the prefrontal area of the neocortex, at the edge of the limbic system.3 Neurologists locate a "stimulus barrier" between the Freudian superego and id in the "ventromesial [or ventromedial regions of the prefrontal lobe [where it] merges into the limbic system" and protects the ego "from the incessant demands of instinctual life" (Kaplan-Solms and Solms 275-76).34 Here, cathartic changes may occur in how remnant natural instincts are expressed (or transformed through greater awareness), from mostly unconscious, limbic, Real emotions, through right-brain, Imaginary perceptions and fundamental fantasies, to the Symbolic order of language, rules, and self identity in relation to the social Other. Neurologists have also found four layers of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) with distinctive, nested, hierarchical functions (Koechlin et al.; Murphy and Brown 133-35). The premotor cortex, at the rear of the PFC, exerts sensory control, selecting specific motor (bodily action) responses to stimuli. The caudal lateral PFC, the next layer moving forward, adds contextual control regarding the current situation when stimuli are received. The rostral lateral PFC, a further anterior layer, then exerts episodic control over the other two, by tracking present and past information regarding general behavior, thus allowing for changing contingencies. (Murphy and Brown give the examples of answering the phone when it rings, not answering it at a friend s house, or answering it there because the friend IS in the shower and asks you to, as illustrating these three levels of stimulus response.) A fourth area is posited in the frontopolar cortex, used for cognitive branching and controlling the shifts between different episodes of behavior, while exerting control over the other three layers. Likewise, the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) determines "reward value" choices, including the selection of "stimuli on the basis of familiarity and [selection of] responses on the basis of a feeling of Vightness" (Elliott et al. 308). The lateral regions of the OFC arc involved with "the suppression of previously rewarded responses." Brain imaging studies find that these areas are "fundamental" in behavioral choices, especially in "unpredictable situations." One might argue that the Lacanian Symbolic and Imaginary orders of cultural rules and personal perceptions connect with the Real of stimuli and actions through these areas of the PFC (just behind and above the ventrome- dial). The brain responds to familiar or unpredictable stimuli with inner theatrical representations and outer performances, through shifting, time-bound, contextual, sensory controls. Such controls are shaped in each human brain through learned cultural experiences of the social Other, which create further top-down constraints utilized by the PFC's layered functions, in relation to bottom-up stimuli. And yet, theatrical performances are ways that the Other, as well as the individual, may change. A culture can explore extended possibilities of Symbolic and Imaginary shifts in situation, context, and sensation, using a collective dreamlike space. This may also involve divine and demonic characterizations of top-down or bottom-up forces, experienced in nature, in the body and brain, or in social networks. Lacan's three orders relate not only to the brain's anatomy, but also to cognitive psychologist Merlin Donald's theory about the evolutionary stages of cultural development in our hominid ancestors. About two million years ago, early hominids evolved beyond the "episodic" experience of other animals (and prior australopithecines)— with the "mimetic" stage of human evolution.3 Donald cites the evidence of increasing brain size in our hominid ancestors,-' the first stone tools, big game hunting, a more group-oriented way of life, and thus "a cultural strategy for remembering and problem solving" (Mind 261).' Instead of being "immersed in a stream of raw episodic experience, from which they ... [could not] gain any distance," early hominids developed a new cognitive capacity, "mimetic skill, which was an extension of conscious control into the domain of action. It enabled playacting, body language, precise imitation, and gesture" (120, 261). This also included prosody, which is processed today in the brain's right hemisphere: "deliberately raising and lowering the voice, and producing imitations of emotional sounds. About a half million years ago, archaic Homo sapiens gradually evolved a "mythic" stage of culture and brain development, culminating with the emergence of our own subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens, about 125,000 years ago (Donald, Mind 261). The mythic stage is evidenced by a much higher rate of innovation than in prior hominids: sophisticated tools, "beautifully crafted objects, improved shelters and hearths, and elaborate graves" (261-62). This stage included oral traditions of language and narrative thought — beyond the gesture, mime, and imitation of prior mimetic hominids, or the basic awareness and event sensitivity of episodic primates (260)." It thus involved a fundamental change in the human brain (and vocal tract): an "invasion" of the left parietal lobe by language, replacing spatial perception and movement, which then became a more distinctive function of the right parietal lobe (LcDoux, Synaptic 303, 318).40 Donald's mythic stage shows the evolution of the Symbolic order of mind and society, as well as our current left hemisphere functions. The mimetic stage correlates to right brain processing and the Lacanian Imaginary. Today's human brains also bear the remnant animal emotions and drives of primal episodic awareness in the limbic system and brainstem, as a lost yet disruptive Real or chora*1 Indeed, each child moves through similar developmental stages, recapitulating hominid phylogeny: from primal episodic awareness to the mimetic "interlinking of the infant's attentional system with those of other people" and then to narrative speech (Donald, Mind 255). Or, in Lacanian terms, a child moves from the Real of natural being to the Imaginary order of mirrored illusions of ego in the (m)Others desires and then, through verbal language, to the Symbolic order of superego incorporation, with the Others discourse and social rules, via the Name and No of the Father. This basic outline of Lacanian orders, brain anatomy, and hominid evolution shows that "theatre" (and dance) in the most primal sense — as Imaginary, mimetic performance —began about two million years ago. At that time, our ancestors developed a new skill that eventually became specialized in the visuospatial, prosodic, Imaginary functions of the right hemisphere, with ties to the emotional/instinctual Real of the limbic system and brain- stem. Later hominids developed oral language and myth-making, as further Symbolic orders, through distinct areas of the left brain about a half million years ago. As with the modern child's development from primary to higher- order consciousness, through the Real and Imaginary dimensions of the mirror stage and the later Symbolic acquisition of language and rules, these layers of the brain and of hominid culture continue to interact today — with each human being transformed by a particular family and society. As Donald points out, primal mimesis in early hominids relates not only to the current playacting of children (Mind 266), but also to the "many institutionalized versions of pretend play in theater and him, and [to the] imaginative role playing [that] is integral to adult social life" (263). A crucial aspect of this evolutionary skill is emotional regulation, which involves the germ of self-consciousness, through a "mimetic controller" in the brain, "a whole-body mapping capacity ... under unified command" (269). Thus, early hominids developed larger frontal lobes, setting the stage for the later evolution of a distinctive left hemisphere (271).'15 Like children today (starting with the Imaginary dimension of the Lacanian mirror stage), our hominid ancestors developed a "kinematic imagination" with the physical "image of self" becoming an anchor to experience and awareness (273). This involved rhythmic body movements, expressing temporal relations, through the intersubjective medium of performance, as a "public theatre of convention" (272-74). However, the full emergence of theatre as narrative performance began with oral storytelling during the hominid "mythic" stage, starting about a half million years ago. Then, about forty thousand years ago, humans evolved a further, "theoretic" stage, through the "externalization of memory ... [using] symbolic devices to store and retrieve cultural knowledge" (Donald, Mind2G2). During this current stage of hominid evolution, the tradition of recorded theatre and drama developed, along with other artistic technologies,44 a "Symptom" of being human that has vastly expanded in recent centuries.45 Thus, theatre in the theoretic sense may have started with Paleolithic cave art (as considered in the first chapter). Eventually, the theoretic technologies of theatre, externalizing and interconnecting the performance elements of the human brain, developed in various ways through different cultures — culminating in the current globalism 01 virtual media screens, often dominated by Western paradigms. Our theoretic stage with its evolving technologies continues to reshape the skills of prior stages and "liberate consciousness from the limitations of the brains biological memory systems" (305). However, such an external memory field can also be a "Trojan Horse," Donald warns, "a device that invades the innermost personal spaces of the mind. It can play our cognitive instrument, directing our minds toward predetermined end states along a set course" (316). Such a Trojan Horse potential, with good and evil effects, becomes even more significant through divine characters and godlike ideals, at various points in Western history, from stage to screen performances, as explored throughout this book. Donald's stages of cognitive psychology match with Stephen Mithens archeological theories and research.4fl According to Mithen, the early hominid social intelligence of Homo erectus> 1.6 million years ago, involved the communication of "contentment, anger or desire" through a "wide range of sounds (Prehistory 144) —as with the mimetic prosody theorized by Donald. Human verbal language with "a vast lexicon and a set of grammatical rules" began 500,000 to 200,000 years ago, with Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens, as evidenced by brain and throat structure, indicated in fossils of their bones (140-42, 208). This corresponds to Donald's mythic stage of hominid evolution. Mithen also cites archeological evidence that a dramatic shift occurred 40,000 years ago. Early humans in the Upper Paleolithic period changed from having separate types of intelligence—natural history intelligence (such as interpreting animal hoofprints), social intelligence (with intentional communication), and technical intelligence (producing artifacts from mental templates) — to a new cognitive fluidity between them, creating artifacts with "symbolic meanings ... i.e. art" (163-65).47 This shows the begin- ning of Donald's theoretic stage and relates to the possible shamanic visions and performances evidenced by Paleolithic cave art.48 The evolutionary stages, neurological layers, and psychoanalytic orders of self and Other awareness, developing through shared cultural performances, reflect what might be called an "inner theatre" of the brain.49 By this, I do not mean a "Cartesian theatre" with the mind inside the brain as a single ghostly spectator watching the machinery of inner scenes, or as a play-wright-homunculus inhabiting a central control area (the pineal gland, according to Descartes. 400 years ago). This theory has been fully critiqued by cognitive philosophers, from Gilbert Rylc to Daniel Dennett, as well as by current neurological evidence. However, cognitive scientist Bernard Baars uses theatrical terms in other ways to explain the global workspace of human consciousness. Less than 10 percent of brain activity is conscious, like a "spot- light" on the visible actors and scenery (Theater 46-47).5 The rest involves unconscious agents, like a legislative "audience," competing and collaborating to focus attention on particular perceptions and ideas onstage. There are Deep Goal and Conceptual Contexts, like "backstage" workers, as well as immediate expectations and intentions, forming an unconscious sense of self as "director" of the brains inner theatre (144-45).52

Pizzato 10 [Mark, Researches Affective Neuroscience and Lacanian psychoanalysis as professor @ UNC-Charlette Film Studies, published 4 studies of Lacan and neuroscience. 4“Inner Theatres of Good and Evil: The Mind's Staging of Gods, Angels and Devils,” 2010]

these three Lacanian orders relate to the basic areas of neural anatomy: the left and right neocortex, plus the subcortical areas (from limbic system to brainstem). Humans share with all pre-existing animals, at least as far back as reptiles, a core brainstem that regulates internal functions and processes instinctual responses to outside stimuli, such as the body's instant, unconscious reaction to danger. We share with mammals a limbic system (including the temporal lobes at the sides of the head) that evolved around the brainstem to process more complex emotions and learned behaviors we also have an expanded neocortex as the outermost layer of our brain However, humans evolved distinct functional areas on each side of the neocortex. The left neocortex has audioverbal, linear, causal, executive, prosocial, routine functions, in contrast to the right hemisphere's visuospatial, holistic, intuitive, devil's advocate, anxiety- biased, novelty-detecting processes Distinctive language systems (syntax and semantics) are in the left hemisphere, in Broca's and Wernicke's areas The right brain has further ties to the emotional limbic system and instinctual brainstem, but the left tends to operate separately expressing or inhibiting limbic emotions and right-cortical intuitions, through its rational language and executive controls Thus, certain left-cortical functions correlate with Lacan's Symbolic order of language, rules, and social codes, the right with the Imaginary, and the limbic system and brain- stem areas with the Real. these three orders arc "inmixed" dimensions The Symbolic order resides primarily, but not solely within and between left brains, like the Imaginary in and between right hemispheres, and the Real in limbic systems and brainstems The general correspondence of Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic orders to the brainstem/limbic system, right hemisphere, and left hemisphere is confirmed by research on developmental growth spurts in the neocortex during childhood. As in Lacan's theory of the mirror stage, with the infant's Imaginary ego initially developing through preverbal communication with the (m)Other, neuroscience shows that right-brain to right-brain "attunement" between the mother and child, during its first two years of life, profoundly shapes its emotional and perceptual pathways, especially its sense of self in relation to others The "prosocial self then shifts, through language development, into the left brain, with its growth in subsequent years This relates to the Lacanian Symbolic order of words and laws shaping the child more directly after the initial mirror stage, at 6-18 months. According to neuroscience, the self as a "distributed neural network that encompasses shared self-other representations" continues to be "right- hemisphere based Neurologists locate a "stimulus barrier" between the Freudian superego and id in the "ventromesial [or ventromedial regions of the prefrontal lobe [where it] merges into the limbic system" and protects the ego "from the incessant demands of instinctual life" Here, cathartic changes may occur in how remnant natural instincts are expressed (or transformed through greater awareness), from mostly unconscious, limbic, Real emotions, through right-brain, Imaginary perceptions and fundamental fantasies, to the Symbolic order of language, rules, and self identity in relation to the social Other. Neurologists have also found four layers of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) with distinctive, nested, hierarchical functions ). The premotor cortex, at the rear of the PFC, exerts sensory control, selecting specific motor responses to stimuli the next layer adds contextual control a further anterior layer, then exerts episodic control over the other two, by tracking present and past information regarding general behavior Brain imaging studies find that these areas are "fundamental" in behavioral choices, especially in "unpredictable situations." One might argue that the Lacanian Symbolic and Imaginary orders of cultural rules and personal perceptions connect with the Real of stimuli and actions through these areas of the PFC The brain responds to familiar or unpredictable stimuli with inner contextual, sensory controls. Such controls are shaped in each human brain through learned cultural experiences of the social Other, Lacan's three orders relate not only to the brain's anatomy, but also to cognitive psychologist Merlin Donald's theory about the evolutionary stages of cultural development in our hominid ancestors. About two million years ago, early hominids evolved beyond the "episodic" experience of other animals with the "mimetic" stage of human evolution Donald cites the evidence of increasing brain size in our hominid ancestors ' the first stone tools, big game hunting, a more group-oriented way of life, and thus "a cultural strategy for remembering and problem solving" Instead of being "immersed in a stream of raw episodic experience, ," early hominids developed a new cognitive capacity, "mimetic skill, which was an extension of conscious control into the domain of action. About a half million years ago, archaic Homo sapiens gradually evolved a "mythic" stage of culture and brain development The mythic stage is evidenced by a much higher rate of innovation than in prior hominids: sophisticated tools, "beautifully crafted objects, improved shelters and hearths, and elaborate graves" This stage included oral traditions of language and narrative thought — beyond the gesture, mime, and imitation of prior mimetic hominids, or the basic awareness and event sensitivity of episodic primates It thus involved a fundamental change in the human brain (and vocal tract): an "invasion" of the left parietal lobe by language, Donald's mythic stage shows the evolution of the Symbolic order of mind and society, Today's human brains also bear the remnant animal emotions and drives of primal episodic awareness in the limbic system and brainstem, as a lost yet disruptive Real each child moves through similar developmental stages, recapitulating hominid phylogeny: from primal episodic awareness to the mimetic "interlinking of the infant's attentional system with those of other people" in Lacanian terms, a child moves from the Real of natural being to the Imaginary order of mirrored illusions of ego in the (m)Others desires and then, through verbal language, to the Symbolic order of superego incorporation, with the Others discourse and social rules, Less than 10 percent of brain activity is conscious, like a "spot- light" on the visible actors and scenery The rest involves unconscious agents, like a legislative "audience," competing and collaborating to focus attention on particular perceptions and ideas onstage.

Best studies prove our theory

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Grunbaum, in 1984, published a book which took issue with the positivist attack upon the un-falsifiablity of psychoanalysis Grunbaum " argues that, although perhaps more difficult to study than in the physical sciences, cause-effect principles apply just as strongly in psychology as in physics. He also shows that many psychoanalytical postulates are falsifiable ..." A, Bateman, & J, Holmes claim that repression, unconscious awareness, identification and internalization are scientifically proven. Now despite Grunbaum's apparent demonstration of the falsifablity of psychoanalysis some theorists claim that the external validation of psychoanalysis is doomed to fail. These theorists follow Ricoeur in claiming a hermeneutic understanding of psychoanalysis. They claim that instead of a correspondence with reality, as being the criteria upon which to assess psychoanalysis, they claim that ". internal coherence and narrative plausibility as the basis for settling disputes." Thus we see there are those, like Grunbaum, who argue that psychoanalysis can be tested against the facts of reality and potentially its postulates can be falsified by reality. On the other hand there are those, like Ricoeur, who advocate a hermenutical approach where it is not a correspondence with reality that matters but whether the psychoanalytic theory is internally consistent and its interpretations or narratives satisfying or not. A theory is falsifiable, in the correspondence theory of 'truth' if it does not agree with reality. In the coherence theory of 'truth' a theory is falsifiable ifit is inconsistent in terms of the system. I will argue that both criteria are flawed and lack epistemological support. In this regard we see that the debate on the falsifiablity of psychoanalysis is a debate between correspondence and coherence theorists. Now the correspondence and coherence theories of 'truth' are philosophically flawed. I will show how they are flawed and lack epistemological support. What I will draw from this is my claim that it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable or not either in terms of the correspondence or coherence theories of 'truth' because both lack epistemological support. A way of looking at a theory is to see at as a set of statements which say something about a state of affair about reality. Under this viewpoint the issue is what is the relation between the statement and reality that makes it 'true' or 'false'. O'Hear notes 'true' statements correspond or picture reality . But the problem with this is that " how can a statement- something linguistic - correspond to a fact or state of affairs. Certainly it cannot be a replica of a state of affairs , nor does it fit with it in the way a nut might be said to correspond with a nut. Further, even if we could make some sense of a simple affirmative factual statement .... There are considerable problems with knowing just what it is other statements are supposed to correspond to." What about negative statements that say something is not or does not exist? What aboutcounterfactural statements? Do mathematical and moral statements correspond to something in reality? Are there universal statements that correspond to reality? The correspondence theory of 'truth' that sees statements as corresponding to reality is thus problematic. The problems are such that, as O'Hear notes " ... the correspondence relation are simply shadowy reflections of statements we regard as true for other reasons rather than as generally mind-independent realities." When we realize that there is no non-conceptual view about reality we realize that even 'reality' is a value-laden conceptual laden term. As some argue all theory is value laden there are no facts uncontaminated by epistemological, metaphysical, other theories, and ontological views. The result of all this is to undermine the claims of the correspondence theory such that "... there is something futile in thinking that what we know is achieved by direct access to a mind-independent reality, which would suggest that a naive correspondence view of truth, at least, is likely to be able to give us little guidance in our actual inquiries and researches." We shall see that the coherence theory of 'truth' fares no better in guiding our research or acessing our actual statements about 'truth' or falsidity. In the coherence theory of 'truth' the criteria of 'truth' is that a statement does not contradict other statements. O'Hear notes that "systems here are regarded as being governed by nothing more mysterious than normal relations of implication and contradiction." But as has been pointed out it is quite easy to avoid contradiction by dropping inconsistent statements . If a statement is inconsistent with theory or observation we can just drop either the theory or observational statement. Also many scientific theory suffer from empirical counter-evidence which we nevertheless still accept. What happens when two or more theories i.e. Kleinian, Lacanian, Freudian, ego-psychology etc, are lets say coherent but contain mutually contradictory statements in regard to each other. In other words what about the situation when theories are coherent but contradict each other. O'Hear points out " that many would regard this as a conclusive objection to the coherence theory of truth, for surely whether a statement is true or not depends on the facts and not on the systems we are using to interpret the facts." But here is the big problem. We showed above that facts are themselves value conceptual laden. The correspondence theory of 'truth' in fact is not epistemologically or metaphysically etc neutral- we see the facts through other theories. But we have just seen that in seeing the facts through other theories assumes that the theories are coherence, but coherence theories of 'truth' as we have seen are epistemologically flawed. Thus we see that epistemologically both the correspondence and coherence theories of 'truth' are flawed. This to my mind say that it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable. Whether it is, or is not is based upon a particular theory of 'truth' that has no epistemological support. Now regardless of these philosophical investigations I will show that in terms of each theory there is evidence that even though their criteria are not met for some theories these theories are still used with ongoing validity. This evidence will also lend weight to my claim that it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable or not, it can still have validity. There are examples from physics where correspondence with reality has not resulted in the abandonment of the theory. A theory has been falsified yet nevertheless it is still used. A classic example is that of Newtonian physics. Newtonian prediction of black-body radiation failed -this was left to quantum physics to do. Also Newtonian physics failed to predict the motion of three bodies in combined gravitational motion i.e. planets . Kuhn points out that no one denied that Newtonian physic was not as science because it could not predict the speed of sound, or Newton's laws of gravitation failed to predict and account for the perigee of the moon or the motion of the moon; as he states " no one seriously questioned Newtonian theory because of the long recognized discrepancies between predictions from the theory and both the speed the speed of sound and the motion of Mercury." Thus we see that even if psychoanalysis is falsified in terms of the correspondence theory of 'truth ,the case of Newtonian physics shows us that it need not matter in the least. In this regard there is truth in Freud's provocative idea, when he states, " even if psychoanalysis showed itself as unsuccessful in every other form of nervous and psychical disease as it does in delusions, it would still remain completely justified as an irreplacable instrument of scientific research. It is true that in that case we should not be in a position to practice it." Now even in science and mathematics there are un-falsifiable entities but this does not stop them being used in those disciplines. At the very core of science and mathematics there are un-falsifiable entities. Such things as matter, the mathematical point, anti-matter force etc. are unfalsifiable. Freud notes the presence of un-falsiable objects in psychoanalysis when he states " too it will be entirely in accord with our expectations if the basic concepts and principles of the new science (instincts, nervous energy, etc) remain for a considerable time no less indeterminate than those of the older sciences (force, mass, attraction, etc)." Thus we see that even if psychoanalysis is not falsifiable, in terms of the correspondence theory of 'truth'. just like in mathematics and science, it does not matter for a theories validity. The coherence theory of 'truth's says that if a theory or statement is inconsistent then it is false. But there are examples where this is the state of affairs but nevertheless the theories are still used.

Dean 5 COLIN LESLIE DEAN, BSC, BA, B.LITT(HON) ,MA, B.LITT(HON), MA, MA(PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES), "THE IRRATIONAL AND ILLOGICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE DEMARCATIONOF SCIENCE AND NON-SCIENCE IS A PSEUDO PROBLEM" gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/books/psychoanalysis/THE_IRRATIONAL_AND_ILLOGICAL_NATURE_OF_SCIENCE_AND_PSYCHOANA.pdf

although perhaps more difficult to study than in the physical sciences, cause-effect principles apply just as strongly in psychology as in physics psychoanalytical postulates are falsifiable repression, unconscious awareness, identification and internalization are scientifically proven there are those, like Grunbaum, who argue that psychoanalysis can be tested against the facts of reality and its postulates can be falsified by reality. On the other hand there are those, like Ricoeur, who advocate a hermenutical approach where it is not a correspondence with reality that matters but whether the psychoanalytic theory is internally consistent and its interpretations or narratives satisfying or not. A theory is falsifiable the debate on the falsifiablity of psychoanalysis is a debate between correspondence and coherence theorists the theories of 'truth' are philosophically flawed and lack epistemological support What I will draw from this is that it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable the issue is what is the relation between the statement and reality that makes it 'true' or 'false' O'Hear notes 'true' statements correspond or picture reality . But the problem with this is that " how can a statement- something linguistic - correspond to a fact What about negative statements that say something is not or does not exist? What aboutcounterfactural statements? Do mathematical and moral statements correspond to reality? Are there universal statements that correspond to reality? even 'reality' is a value-laden conceptual laden term there is something futile in thinking that what we know is achieved by direct access to a mind-independent reality, which would suggest that a naive correspondence view of truth is likely to be able to give us little guidance in our actual inquiries and researches." it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable. Whether it is, or is not is based upon a particular theory of 'truth' that has no epistemological support regardless of these philosophical investigations I will show that in terms of each theory there is evidence that even though their criteria are not met for some theories these theories are still used with ongoing validity. This evidence will also lend weight to my claim that it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable or not, it can still have validity. There are examples from physics where correspondence with reality has not resulted in abandonment A theory has been falsified yet nevertheless it is still used. A classic example is that of Newtonian physics Thus we see that even if psychoanalysis is falsified in terms of the correspondence theory of 'truth ,the case of Newtonian physics shows us that it need not matter In this regard there is truth in Freud's provocative idea, when he states, " even if psychoanalysis showed itself as unsuccessful it would still remain completely justified as an irreplacable instrument of scientific research even in science and mathematics there are un-falsifiable entities but this does not stop them being used in those disciplines. At the very core of science and mathematics there are un-falsifiable entities. Such things as matter, the mathematical point, anti-matter force are unfalsifiable

The aff’s theory of desire is scientifically correct and their standard proves that math and physics are also wrong

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Psychoanalytic thought provides a way of understanding the role that enjoyment plays in structuring individual subjectivity and the social order. But it also allows us to see how enjoyment shapes the field of political contestation, which has undergone a fundamental historical shift in parallel with a similar shift in the location of authority. The onset of capitalism inaugurates a significant change not just in the structure of the economy and of social relations but also in the nature of social authority. As Michel Foucault and many others have documented, power relocates at the time of capitalism’s emergence: diffuse networks of power replace a central social authority. The point is not simply that rule by royalty gives way to representative government, in which power is shared among a wider spectrum of people, but that the location and foundation of authority in society undergoes a revolution. Even when monarchs or despots persist in the capitalist epoch, they become fundamentally changed figures, no longer embodying the position of ultimate authority, which instead multiplies throughout the social fabric. A unified law becomes a hodgepodge of rules and recommendations. Or one might say that the master controlling social relations from a transcendent position gives way to a variety of experts caught up within the very relations of power in which they exert their influence. In the absence of a central law uniting the social field, these experts provide rules to live by and guidance for the variegations of life. According to Anthony Giddens, what emerges is a universe ruled by “expert systems,” which are “systems of technical accomplishment or professional expertise that organise large areas of the material and social environments in which we live today.” Knowledge, not mastery, becomes the source of social authority.The reign of expert systems is the denouement of the process that originates when, at the dawn of the capitalist epoch, “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” This famous description of bourgeois society from the Communist Manifesto attempts metaphorically to chronicle the radical social leveling process that a capitalist economy entails. An economy based on exchange, like that of capitalism, demands that the objects exchanged have an equivalent value. If the exchange did not involve equivalents or, to say the same thing, involved cheating on one side, the system could not sustain itself. A system of unequal exchange is not a viable system of exchange. The equivalence of all objects under the rubric of the commodity implies the equivalence of all subjects as well: if one entity is excepted from universal equivalence, the entire system would cease to function because its logic would no longer hold true. One of Marx’s great insights consists in recognizing the transformative effect of the dominance of universal equivalence that capitalist society necessarily institutes. But ironically, this process, as Marx and Engels describe it, ends up ultimately undermining the project that Marx and Engels themselves undertook to topple it. Marx composed the three volumes of Capital and a multitude of other writings in order to supply knowledge about capitalist relations of production that leftist militants could use to change those relations. He fought capitalism with knowledge, with expertise, even as he hoped that it would not remain merely theoretical but become practical. Early on in his career, Marx tried to theorize in a practical way, to create a mode of thinking that actively engages in the world rather than reflecting on it (which is the position that knowledge, he claims, has historically occupied). This is apparent throughout The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and in the “Theses on Feuerbach.” In the former, Marx claims: “The resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of men. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of understanding, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one.” Marx orients his theory toward praxis not because he is wary of knowledge’s complicity with power (as Foucault is) but because he worries about its historical fecklessness. As the final thesis on Feuerbach indicates, Marx wants to intervene and change the world rather than comment on it after history has already been made. But the problem of knowledge in the epoch in which Marx wrote lies elsewhere. The danger isn’t that knowledge will be powerless but that it will be too powerful and act as a form of social authority. As a purveyor of knowledge concerning how the capitalist system actually works, Marx cannot escape being an expert. And yet, within the process that capitalism unleashes, the expert functions as a figure of authority. In this sense, the transmutation of Marxism into Stalinism, though it is not inevitable, follows from the change in the structure of authority that capitalism triggers. Stalin is the ultimate figure of expert knowledge, tightly controlling Soviet society in order to develop its productivity to the maximum potential. Stalin is the bureaucratic counterpart to Henry Ford, the expert of the free market. By establishing his doctrine as a system of expertise, Marx inadvertently succumbs to the logic that he aims to contest and makes someone like Stalin possible, though it is not clear that there is an alternate solution. Marx is an Enlightenment thinker. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, knowledge was a force for liberation and revolution. Someone like Galileo represents a danger to the authority of the Catholic Church because this authority rests on the power of the master signifier rather than on the power of knowledge. In Bertolt Brecht’s play depicting Galileo’s recantation, the church’s philosopher upbraids Galileo for seeking knowledge that might bring upheaval to the established order, but Galileo himself insists that the true scientist seeks knowledge without considering where it will lead. His advice to those thinkers who fear shaking the foundations of the church’s authority is emphatic: “Why defend shaken teachings? You should be doing the shaking.”7 The position of the scientist or knowledge seeker, as Galileo sees it here, is unequivocal. The pursuit of knowledge involves one in a combat against the power of authority, and it represents a power that authorities fear, which is why the Inquisition targeted Galileo. In actual history and in Brecht’s play, Galileo’s courage to defy authority wanes. He recants and capitulates to the power of the church, which deals a temporary blow to the Enlightenment project and its liberating potential. Descartes, for one, withheld the publication of his treatise The World out of fear that he might become a target of the Inquisition, as Galileo did. But the power of the Enlightenment and knowledge wins its historical struggle with the authority of the master signifier. When this occurs and knowledge becomes a source of social authority, knowledge loses its connection to the Enlightenment project of universal emancipation. Knowledge becomes a force for subjugation rather than freedom, and the Enlightenment is transformed into its opposite. When experts become the voice of authority, the political landscape undergoes a dramatic change, the ramifications of which have become increasingly visible in the last few decades. The transformation of authority that began in the seventeenth century realized itself at the conclusion of the twentieth, and the result has been a reversal of traditional political alignments. This social revolution strips the forces of social change of their favorite weapon — knowledge — because use of this weapon has the effect of turning subjects against social change, despite the fact that that change is clearly in their best interests. In today’s world, expert knowledge necessarily confronts the subject as an external imperative laced with the power of prohibition. The rise of the expert corresponds to the increasing complexity and treacherousness of everyday life; contemporary existence seems to demand expert analysis to render it navigable. In his account of the emergence of what he calls a “risk society,” Ulrich Beck notices the politics of expert knowledge changing sides. He points out: “The non-acceptance of the scientific definition of risks is not something to be reproached as ‘irrationality’ in the population; but quite to the contrary, it indicates that the cultural premises of acceptability contained in scientific and technical statements on risks are wrong. The technical risk experts are mistaken in the empirical accuracyof their implicit value premises, specifically in their assumptions of what appears acceptable to the population.” Experts provide guidelines that allow subjects to navigate the contours of contemporary society, in which risk confronts us everywhere, but the experts perform this function with no proper sense of what the population desires. In this process, experts inevitably assume the role of authority figures. As Beck’s statement above indicates, from the perspective of the general population itself, the relationship between the expert and the population is adversarial. Through psychoanalytic thought, we can gain insight into the ramifications of the rise of the expert authority and the decline of the master. The emergence of the expert as the figure of authority fundamentally changes the political terrain, and our political thinking must adjust to this transformation. Psychoanalytic thought represents a privileged vehicle for making the adjustment. Combating the expert is much more difficult than combating the master: the knowledge that would subvert mastery becomes part of the power that the expert wields and thus loses its subversive power. A different political program — one that focuses on enjoyment rather than knowledge — becomes necessary because the master and the expert take up radically different positions relative to enjoyment. Unlike the master, the earlier form of social authority, the expert not only prohibits enjoyment but also appears to embody this enjoyment through the act of laying down regulations. The expert enjoys informing subjects about the dangers they face or the ways they should alter their behavior, and it is this enjoyment that subjects rebel against. The enjoyment that the expert derives from providing counsel is the explicit focus of Peter Segal’s Anger Management (2003), which finds comedy in the abuse that an anger management therapist heaps on his client. The film recounts the travails of a timid businessman, Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler), who is sentenced to anger management therapy after a misunderstanding occurs between a flight attendant and him while he is traveling. His therapist, Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson), practices an aggressive treatment that involves intimidating Buznik, screaming at him, and even invading his personal life. At the end of the film, rather than helping Buznik, Rydell appears to have wooed Buznik’s girlfriend away from him and basically destroyed his life. Here we see all the ways that the expert enjoys deploying knowledge, and this enjoyment occurs at the expense of the subject receiving the advice. But in the last instance Anger Management remains fully ensconced in the regime of the expert, despite the comedy it tries to create at the expense of this regime. The film’s ending reveals that Rydell has set up the entire experience — including the incident with the flight attendant and the sentencing by the judge — in order to impel Buznik to express himself, especially to his girlfriend. Rather than a course in anger management, Rydell has actually been offering a course in self-expression. This denouement transforms the film’s (and the viewer’s) relationship to the expert: rather than impugning the rule of expertise and knowledge, the film becomes an affirmation of it. The ending of the fi lm doesn’t simply spoil an otherwise trenchant critique of expert rule but infects the critique throughout the fi lm. The critique — and the comedy, unfortunately — never go far enough because the idea that the expert really knows and really has the best interests of the client at heart informs the entirety of the film. The film’s investment in the expert that it appears to critique portends the film’s failure as both comedy and critique. The rule of the expert has such a degree of hegemony today that it is difficult to think of any films, novels, and other artworks that attempt to contest it or expose the expert’s enjoyment without ultimately partaking of it. On the other hand, the works that allow audiences to enjoy along with the expert multiply throughout the culture. Television shows such as csi: Crime Scene Investigations and House M.D. display this dynamic in its most open form: the shows present a problem that appears utterly unsolvable to the viewer, and then they reveal the expert’s genius at finding a solution. Expert knowledge — a knowledge not accessible to the ordinary subject — has all the answers and thus becomes the undisputable locus of authority. The popularity of these shows derives from their ability to allow audiences to share in the expert’s enjoyment, an enjoyment that typically is the site of trauma for the subject. Contact with expert authority has a traumatic effect on the subjectbecause of the proximity of the expert. While the old master remained at a distance, the expert is always in the subject’s face, like Dr. Buddy Rydell in Anger Management, never allowing the subject room to breathe. As Anger Management shows, this proximity has the effect of stimulating the subject. Under the rule of the expert, subjects experience what Eric Santner calls “a sustained traumatization induced by exposure to, as it were, fathers who [know] too much about living human beings.” Exposure to this type of authority, to “this excess of knowledge,” produces “an intensification of the body [that] is first and foremost a sexualization.” Instead of emancipating the subject, knowledge traumatizes and plays the central role in the subjection of the subject to the order of social regulation.

McGowan 13 (Todd, Ph.D. professor of English at UVM, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, 2013)

enjoyment shapes the field of political contestation, which has undergone a fundamental historical shift in parallel with a similar shift in the location of authority. The onset of capitalism inaugurates a significant change not just in the structure of the economy and of social relations but also in the nature of social authority. power relocates at the time of capitalism’s emergence: diffuse networks of power replace a central social authority. The point is not simply that rule by royalty gives way to representative government, in which power is shared among a wider spectrum of people, but that the location and foundation of authority in society undergoes a revolution. Even when monarchs or despots persist in the capitalist epoch, they become fundamentally changed figures, no longer embodying the position of ultimate authority, which instead multiplies throughout the social fabric. A unified law becomes a hodgepodge of rules and recommendations. the master controlling social relations from a transcendent position gives way to a variety of experts caught up within the very relations of power in which they exert their influence. In the absence of a central law uniting the social field, these experts provide rules to live by and guidance for the variegations of life. what emerges is a universe ruled by “expert systems,” which are “systems of technical accomplishment or professional expertise that organise large areas of the material and social environments in which we live today.” Knowledge, not mastery, becomes the source of social authority.The reign of expert systems is the denouement of the process that originates when, at the dawn of the capitalist epoch, “all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” This famous description of bourgeois society from the Communist Manifesto attempts metaphorically to chronicle the radical social leveling process that a capitalist economy entails. An economy based on exchange, like that of capitalism, demands that the objects exchanged have an equivalent value. If the exchange did not involve equivalents or, to say the same thing, involved cheating on one side, the system could not sustain itself. A system of unequal exchange is not a viable system of exchange. The equivalence of all objects under the rubric of the commodity implies the equivalence of all subjects as well: if one entity is excepted from universal equivalence, the entire system would cease to function because its logic would no longer hold true. One of Marx’s great insights consists in recognizing the transformative effect of the dominance of universal equivalence that capitalist society necessarily institutes. But ironically, this process, as Marx and Engels describe it, ends up ultimately undermining the project that Marx and Engels themselves undertook to topple it. Marx composed the three volumes of Capital and a multitude of other writings in order to supply knowledge about capitalist relations of production that leftist militants could use to change those relations. He fought capitalism with knowledge, with expertise, even as he hoped that it would not remain merely theoretical but become practical. Early on in his career, Marx tried to theorize in a practical way, to create a mode of thinking that actively engages in the world rather than reflecting on it (which is the position that knowledge, he claims, has historically occupied). “The resolution of the theoretical antitheses is only possible in a practical way, by virtue of the practical energy of men. Their resolution is therefore by no means merely a problem of understanding, but a real problem of life, which philosophy could not solve precisely because it conceived this problem as merely a theoretical one.” Marx orients his theory toward praxis not because he is wary of knowledge’s complicity with power (as Foucault is) but because he worries about its historical fecklessness. Marx wants to intervene and change the world rather than comment on it after history has already been made. But the problem of knowledge in the epoch in which Marx wrote lies elsewhere. The danger isn’t that knowledge will be powerless but that it will be too powerful and act as a form of social authority. As a purveyor of knowledge concerning how the capitalist system actually works, Marx cannot escape being an expert. And yet, within the process that capitalism unleashes, the expert functions as a figure of authority. In this sense, the transmutation of Marxism into Stalinism, though it is not inevitable, follows from the change in the structure of authority that capitalism triggers. Stalin is the ultimate figure of expert knowledge, tightly controlling Soviet society in order to develop its productivity to the maximum potential. Stalin is the bureaucratic counterpart to Henry Ford, the expert of the free market. By establishing his doctrine as a system of expertise, Marx inadvertently succumbs to the logic that he aims to contest and makes someone like Stalin possible, though it is not clear that there is an alternate solution. Marx is an Enlightenment thinker. At the beginning of the Enlightenment, knowledge was a force for liberation and revolution. Someone like Galileo represents a danger to the authority of the Catholic Church because this authority rests on the power of the master signifier rather than on the power of knowledge. But the power of the Enlightenment and knowledge wins its historical struggle with the authority of the master signifier. When this occurs and knowledge becomes a source of social authority, knowledge loses its connection to the Enlightenment project of universal emancipation. Knowledge becomes a force for subjugation rather than freedom, and the Enlightenment is transformed into its opposite. When experts become the voice of authority, the political landscape undergoes a dramatic change, the ramifications of which have become increasingly visible in the last few decades. The transformation of authority that began in the seventeenth century realized itself at the conclusion of the twentieth, and the result has been a reversal of traditional political alignments. This social revolution strips the forces of social change of their favorite weapon — knowledge — because use of this weapon has the effect of turning subjects against social change, despite the fact that that change is clearly in their best interests. In today’s world, expert knowledge necessarily confronts the subject as an external imperative laced with the power of prohibition. The rise of the expert corresponds to the increasing complexity and treacherousness of everyday life; contemporary existence seems to demand expert analysis to render it navigable. In a “risk society,” “The non-acceptance of the scientific definition of risks is not something to be reproached as ‘irrationality’ in the population; but quite to the contrary, it indicates that the cultural premises of acceptability contained in scientific and technical statements on risks are wrong. The technical risk experts are mistaken in the empirical accuracyof their implicit value premises, specifically in their assumptions of what appears acceptable to the population.” Experts provide guidelines that allow subjects to navigate the contours of contemporary society, in which risk confronts us everywhere, but the experts perform this function with no proper sense of what the population desires. In this process, experts inevitably assume the role of authority figures. from the perspective of the general population itself, the relationship between the expert and the population is adversarial. Combating the expert is much more difficult than combating the master: the knowledge that would subvert mastery becomes part of the power that the expert wields and thus loses its subversive power. A different political program — one that focuses on enjoyment rather than knowledge — becomes necessary because the master and the expert take up radically different positions relative to enjoyment. Unlike the master, the earlier form of social authority, the expert not only prohibits enjoyment but also appears to embody this enjoyment through the act of laying down regulations. The expert enjoys informing subjects about the dangers they face or the ways they should alter their behavior, and it is this enjoyment that subjects rebel against. The rule of the expert has such a degree of hegemony today that it is difficult to think of any films, novels, and other artworks that attempt to contest it or expose the expert’s enjoyment without ultimately partaking of it. On the other hand, the works that allow audiences to enjoy along with the expert multiply throughout the culture. Television shows such as csi: Crime Scene Investigations and House M.D. display this dynamic in its most open form: the shows present a problem that appears utterly unsolvable to the viewer, and then they reveal the expert’s genius at finding a solution. Expert knowledge — a knowledge not accessible to the ordinary subject — has all the answers and thus becomes the undisputable locus of authority. The popularity of these shows derives from their ability to allow audiences to share in the expert’s enjoyment, an enjoyment that typically is the site of trauma for the subject. Contact with expert authority has a traumatic effect on the subjectbecause of the proximity of the expert. While the old master remained at a distance, the expert is always in the subject’s face never allowing the subject room to breathe. this proximity has the effect of stimulating the subject. Under the rule of the expert, subjects experience “a sustained traumatization induced by exposure to, as it were, fathers who [know] too much about living human beings.” Exposure to this type of authority, to “this excess of knowledge,” produces “an intensification of the body [that] is first and foremost a sexualization.” Instead of emancipating the subject, knowledge traumatizes and plays the central role in the subjection of the subject to the order of social regulation.

Reject their appeal to expertise. 

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Attacks on psychoanalysis and the long-term therapies derived from it, have enjoyed a long history and much publicity [1-4]. Yet, the justification for such attacks has been challenged on many grounds, including their methodology [5] and the empirically demonstrable validity of core psychoanalytic concepts [6,7]. Also, burgeoning neuroscience research, some of which is summarized below, indicates likely neurological correlates for many key clinically derived psychoanalytic concepts such as self-coherence [8], repression [9] and projective identification [10].

Grant & Harari ‘5 (Don and Edwin, psychiatrists, “Psychoanalysis, science and the seductive theory of Karl Popper,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 39)

burgeoning neuroscience research indicates likely neurological correlates for many key clinically derived psychoanalytic concepts such as self-coherence repression and projective identification

Psychoanalysis is both falsifiable and accurate.

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

But a funny thing happened to Freud on the way to becoming a trivia question: as researchers looked deeper into the physical structure of the brain, they began to find support for some of his theories. Now a small but influential group of researchers are using his insights as a guide to future research; they even have a journal, Neuropsychoanalysis, founded three years ago. “Freud’s insights on the nature of consciousness are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience views,” wrote Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. Note that Damasio did not refer to psychoanalysis or the Oedipus complex. Instead the work is going on at the fundamental level where emotions are born and primitive passions lurk in the shadows of dreams.

Guterl ‘2 (Fred, “What Freud Got Right,” Newsweek, Nov 11, http://www.neuropsa.org.uk/what-freud-got-right)

as researchers looked deeper into the physical structure of the brain, they began to find support researchers are using his insights as a guide to future research; Freud’s insights on the nature of consciousness are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience views,” wrote Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine the work is going on at the fundamental level where emotions are born and primitive passions lurk in the shadows of dreams

Drives are verified too.

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Until recently most, but by no means all, philosophical work in connection with Freud has been concerned with the question whether Freud’s work was scientific- whether it was testable, verifiable, or falsifiable, in accordance with accepted scientific procedure. Grünbaum (1984; 1993); Erwin (1996; 1993); Macmillan (1997); Cioffi (1988; 1985); and others (cf. Robinson, 1993) have been far less concerned with the significance and wide-ranging philosophical implications of psychoanalytic theory, or even with the truth of such theory, than with the nature and methods of science. (4) But arguably the scientific status of psychoanalysis has always been a problem for the philosophy of science in general, rather than having any intrinsic connection to psychoanalysis. What constitutes a scientific theory (cf. Lear 1990: 216ff)? What are appropriate scientific inductivist canons? (5) Furthermore, even if psychoanalysis is not a “science” given some agreed upon scientific inductivist canons, it may nevertheless be more or less true. Since a theory can be true without being scientific it is a mistake to see psychoanalysis as false if not scientific. Its support may come from various sources and considerations- both theoretical and empirical. Grünbaum’s account of Freud’s “Tally Argument” shows that Freud himself was responsible for focusing so much attention on the scientific status of his theories. Freud says that, “After all, his [the patient’s] conflicts will only be successfully solved and his resistances overcome if the anticipatory ideas [i.e., psychoanalytic interpretations] he is given tally with what is real in him. Whatever in the doctor’s conjectures is inaccurate drops out in the course of analysis. .it has to be withdrawn and replaced by something more correct” (1917, XVI: 452). Grünbaum interprets this “as a conjunction of the following two causally necessary conditions. (p. 1) Only the psychoanalytic method of interpretation and treatment can yield or mediate for the patient the correct insight into the unconscious causes of his neuroses. (p. 2) The patient’s correct insight into the conflictual cause of his condition and into the unconscious dynamics of his character is in turn causally necessary for the durable cure of his neuroses” (1988:14). He refers to the conjunction of these claims as the Necessary Condition Thesis. (6) Such claims appear subject to inductive assessment in accordance with scientific (inductivist) canons, and Freud’s apparent adherence to the Necessary Condition Thesis suggests that he agrees. (7) No doubt Freud believed his theories to be scientific and testable to a degree. However, it should not be overlooked that, whether or not he had sound and/or ulterior motives in claiming scientific status for psychoanalysis, it was probably a good thing for psychoanalysis that he did. It is unlikely that psychoanalysis would have received the attention it did had it not associated itself early on with the mystique of science in a scientistic age. At any rate, even a cursory reading of Freud suggests that his theories were not based solely on clinical data and “evidence,” but also, and perhaps even more so, on his observations of everyday life. He understood only too well the presence of mitigating factors, and the difficulty of achieving a psychoanalytic cure. Textual evidence notwithstanding, he never strictly adhered to the Necessary Condition Thesis. Freud carried his couch around with him. In psychoanalysis, like anything else, too selective a reading-or too close a reading-can at times be as misleading as the alternatives. What then is the evidence for the validity of psychoanalytic theory? According to Hopkins, psychoanalytic explanation is an extension of common sense or folk psychology. (8) The relevance of thematic affinity (e.g., dreaming of drinking water when one is thirsty)-how it supports Freud’s theory-is crucial to Hopkins’ defense of psychoanalysis. He says that Grünbaum objects to the idea that claims as to a causal connection between mental items can be cogently supported by a connection in content-a “thematic affinity”-between them. He speaks of “what might be dubbed ‘the thematic affinity fallacy’,” and appears to reject the basing of causal claims on connection in content “no matter how strong the thematic affinity.” For, he stresses, “thematic affinity alone does not vouch for etiologic linkage in the absence of further evidence” [34 ].(9) Grünbaum has made no case against the view.that much of Freud’s reasoning can be regarded as cogently extending commonsense psychology. If Grünbaum has missed something about connection between content and wish-fulfilment [i.e., the significance of thematic affinity], and if what he has missed constitutes reason to accept Freudian claims, then his conclusions systematically understates the support for Freudian theory. (1988: 59) In addition and related to instances of thematic affinity found in dreams and neurotic symptoms, ordinary experience of the kinds Freud relied upon should not be discounted in support of psychoanalysis. Thus, the view that our strongest denials are often affirmations; that slips of the tongue are (often) meaningful; that individuals regularly deploy a variety of ego defence mechanisms at their disposal- all are Freudian insights that have now become commonplace. They can jointly be taken as part of the evidence for the truth of psychoanalytic theory. Together, they allegedly support the inference that psychoanalytic explanations of these phenomena are often the most plausible ones (see Freud 1901). When judged against alternative explanations, psychoanalytic explanations of phenomena like racism and sexism can also allegedly support fundamental psychoanalytic truths. (10) Whether or not Woody Allen’s psychoanalysis reaches a successful conclusion is-except for Woody- relatively unimportant. Prince states that “the primary and to my mind insurmountable problem with basing general theories of spectatorship on psychoanalysis is that such theories must remain unsupported because psychoanalysis is a discipline without reliable data” (1996: 72-73). However, just as the hard science’s notion of falsifiablity is too narrow as applied to psychoanalysis), so too is Prince’s notion of “reliable data.” They are too narrow given the kind of “science” psychoanalysis is. Prince endorses Colby and Stroller, who claim that “psychoanalytic evidence is hearsay, first when the patient reports his or her version of an experience and second when the analyst reports it to an audience. Reports on clinical findings are mixtures of facts, fabulations, and fictives so intermingled that one cannot tell where one begins and the other leaves off” (1988: 3, 29). This charge of unreliable data is just another way of systematically rejecting the kinds of support for psychoanalysis that are in fact available. The criticism falsely assumes that what constitutes reliable and accurate psychoanalytic data and interpretation is up for grabs- that there are no criteria for judging what is and is not correct in psychoanalysis. Of course there is going to be disagreement amongst theorists as to what those criteria are, both generally and in specific cases. And of course those criteria are going to be very different than the criteria for theoretical adequacy in, say, the physical sciences. But the idea that psychoanalytic practice and theory necessarily employ “unreliable data” is a roundabout way of failing to recognize what does constitute psychoanalytical data and why. (11) Far from regarding his work as final, Freud frequently reiterated that psychoanalysis has a bright future regarding “further discoveries” about the individual, civilization, and the connections between them. Freud constantly revised his theories in view of theoretical concerns and new data. Perhaps the most notorious example (recently notorious) is his revision of the seduction theory. Freud first claimed that actual childhood seductions were the cause of various neuroses. He later claimed that imagined seductions could suffice in terms of the aetiology of neuroses- given all the other conditions of susceptibility, instinctual endowment, etc. Wishful phantasies of various sorts came to be considered important, including phantasies of seductions (e.g., phantasies of parental intercourse). Both the original and altered positions were heavily and vehemently criticized, though for different reasons. Another example is Freud’s introduction of the death instinct in 1920 to supplement the sexual (libidinous) instinct. The conflict between libido and ego-instincts becomes a conflict between eros and the death instinct. There is also his revision of the account of anxiety in 1926: first he thought that anxiety was transformed libido; then he realized that (signal) anxiety was a reaction to threat from the external world, the superego, and instinctual forces. And then there is Freud’s change in topography from Uc.-Pcs.-Cs. to id, ego and superego in 1923. Such revision-and the extent to which he revised truly is striking-goes hand in hand with the falsification of earlier theory and interpretation. So aspects of Freud’s theory were (and are) not only falsifiable, but were indeed falsified, and recognized by Freud as such. Subsequent developments in psychoanalysis build on aspects of Freud’s views without regarding those earlier views as sacrosanct. The work of Melanie Klein, for example, and David Winnicott, accept as well as revise aspects of Freud. The ongoing development of psychoanalysis is indicative of the fact that it continues to be revised, refined, and in many cases corrected. By its own light, aspects of psychoanalysis-even key aspects-are falsifiable. The standards or criteria for falsification are different for psychoanalytic theory than they are, e.g., for physics. But even those in psychoanalysis who claim that it is science have never claimed the standards to be the same- or if they did, they were confused and mistaken. If the demand for criteria of falsification is a demand for criteria of the falsification of psychoanalysis in its entirety, then this is different kind of demand and standard. It is more akin to asking for criteria of falsification not just for a theory or aspect of physics, but for physics per se. And it would seem that there is no more readily acceptable standard of falsification for physics per se than there is for psychoanalysis as such.

Levine ‘1 [Michael Levine, lectures in the Department of Philosophy, University of Western Australia, July 2001, “A Fun Night Out: Horror and Other Pleasures of the Cinema” Freud's Worst Nightmares - Psychoanalysis and the Horror FilmIssue 15 https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2001/freuds-worst-nightmares-psychoanalysis-and-the-horror-film/horror_fun/ // K. 9/17/21]

Until recently most, but by no means all, philosophical work in connection with Freud has been concerned with the question whether Freud’s work was scientific- whether it was testable, verifiable, or falsifiable, in accordance with accepted scientific procedure But arguably the scientific status of psychoanalysis has always been a problem for the philosophy of science in general, rather than having any intrinsic connection to psychoanalysis What constitutes a scientific theory even if psychoanalysis is not a “science” given some agreed upon scientific inductivist canons, it may nevertheless be more or less true. Since a theory can be true without being scientific it is a mistake to see psychoanalysis as false if not scientific Grünbaum’s account of Freud’s “Tally Argument” shows that Freud himself was responsible for focusing so much attention on the scientific status of his theories. Freud says that, “After all, his [the patient’s] conflicts will only be successfully solved and his resistances overcome if the anticipatory ideas [i.e., psychoanalytic interpretations] he is given tally with what is real in him. Whatever in the doctor’s conjectures is inaccurate drops out in the course of analysis. .it has to be withdrawn and replaced by something more correct” (1917, XVI: 452). Grünbaum interprets this “as a conjunction of the following two causally necessary conditions. (p. 1) Only the psychoanalytic method of interpretation and treatment can yield or mediate for the patient the correct insight into the unconscious causes of his neuroses. (p. 2) The patient’s correct insight into the conflictual cause of his condition and into the unconscious dynamics of his character is in turn causally necessary for the durable cure of his neuroses” (1988:14). He refers to the conjunction of these claims as the Necessary Condition Thesis. (6) Such claims appear subject to inductive assessment in accordance with scientific (inductivist) canons, and Freud’s apparent adherence to the Necessary Condition Thesis suggests that he agrees. (7) At any rate, even a cursory reading of Freud suggests that his theories were not based solely on clinical data and “evidence,” but also, and perhaps even more so, on his observations of everyday life Thus, the view that our strongest denials are often affirmations; that slips of the tongue are (often) meaningful; that individuals regularly deploy a variety of ego defence mechanisms at their disposal- all are Freudian insights that have now become commonplace They can be taken as part of the evidence for the truth of psychoanalytic theory Together, they allegedly support the inference that psychoanalytic explanations of these phenomena are the most plausible ones just as the hard science’s notion of falsifiablity is too narrow as applied to psychoanalysis), so too is Prince’s notion of “reliable data.” They are too narrow given the kind of “science” psychoanalysis is This charge of unreliable data is just another way of systematically rejecting the kinds of support for psychoanalysis that are in fact available. The criticism falsely assumes that what constitutes reliable and accurate psychoanalytic data and interpretation is up for grabs- that there are no criteria for judging what is and is not correct in psychoanalysis. Of course there is going to be disagreement amongst theorists as to what those criteria are, both generally and in specific cases. And of course those criteria are going to be very different than the criteria for theoretical adequacy in, say, the physical sciences. But the idea that psychoanalytic practice and theory necessarily employ “unreliable data” is a roundabout way of failing to recognize what does constitute psychoanalytical data and why Far from regarding his work as final, Freud frequently reiterated that psychoanalysis has a bright future regarding “further discoveries” about the individual, civilization, and the connections between them. Freud constantly revised his theories in view of theoretical concerns and new data. Perhaps the most notorious example (recently notorious) is his revision of the seduction theory. Freud first claimed that actual childhood seductions were the cause of various neuroses Freud’s introduction of the death instinct in 1920 to supplement the sexual (libidinous) instinct And then there is Freud’s change in topography from Uc.-Pcs.-Cs. to id, ego and superego in 1923. Such revision-and the extent to which he revised truly is striking-goes hand in hand with the falsification of earlier theory and interpretation. So aspects of Freud’s theory were (and are) not only falsifiable, but were indeed falsified, and recognized by Freud as such. Subsequent developments in psychoanalysis build on aspects of Freud’s views without regarding those earlier views as sacrosanct. The work of Melanie Klein, for example, and David Winnicott, accept as well as revise aspects of Freud. The ongoing development of psychoanalysis is indicative of the fact that it continues to be revised, refined, and in many cases corrected. By its own light, aspects of psychoanalysis-even key aspects-are falsifiable. The standards or criteria for falsification are different for psychoanalytic theory than they are, e.g., for physics. But even those in psychoanalysis who claim that it is science have never claimed the standards to be the same- or if they did, they were confused and mistaken. If the demand for criteria of falsification is a demand for criteria of the falsification of psychoanalysis in its entirety, then this is different kind of demand and standard. It is more akin to asking for criteria of falsification not just for a theory or aspect of physics, but for physics per se. And it would seem that there is no more readily acceptable standard of falsification for physics per se than there is for psychoanalysis as such.

They have placed an emphasis on the final status of truth – real science proceeds not through a pursuit of truth but through a sense of incompleteness which it relies on to test itself. Their writing out of psychoanalysis makes them the unscientific ones.

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2022

Psychoanalysis has developed greatly since Freud’s time, producing substantial research and productive connections to other branches of science. Many basic psychoanalytic propositions have been widely accepted, such as the formative impact of early childhood relationships on adult personality. Some of Freud’s specific propositions have been eclipsed by later formulations – as you would expect for bodies of knowledge evolving for more than a century, and certainly for any science. The basic idea of a dynamic unconscious that actively shapes conscious experience and relations with others has made productive connections with disciplines such as neuroscience. Psychoanalysts have been testing the outcomes of psychoanalytic therapies for decades, using randomised controlled trials and systematic follow-up studies, as called for by Bunge in his article. Most trials have found good evidence of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapies, when tested in the same way as other approaches. Contrary to Bunge’s assertion, studies included in Jonathan Shedler’s review of meta-analyses of therapeutic outcomes of psychoanalytic therapy did, of course, have control groups (American Psychologist, vol 65, p 98). The 54 signatories to this letter include distinguished researchers in psychoanalysis in the science faculties of leading world universities, who have acquired major public grants and have published papers in high-impact, peer-reviewed scientific journals. This level of scientific contribution compares very well with that in other clinical professions.

Target 10 [“On Psychoanalysis” is an open letter with 54 signatories who are distinguished researchers at leading world universities; Mary Target PhD is Professor of Psychoanalysis at University College London, and Professional Director of the Anna Freud Centre, London. She is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Yale University School of Medicine. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, and maintains a half-time adult psychoanalytic practice; Peter Fonagy, Anthony Bateman, Peter Hobson, University College London, UK; Falk Leichsenring, University of Giessen, Germany; Sidney Blatt, Linda Mayes, Yale University, New Haven Connecticut, US; Robert Michels, Barbara Milrod, Steven Roose, David Olds, Frank Yeomans, Columbia University, New York City, US; Joseph Schachter; Mark Solms, University of Cape Town, South Africa; Jonathan Shedler, University of Colorado, Denver, US; Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Sigmund Freud Institute and University of Kassel, Germany; Mardi Horowitz, George Silberschatz, University of California, San Francisco, US; Diana Diamond, Eric A. Fertuck, Elliot Jurist, City University of New York, US; Helmut Thomä, Horst Kächele, University of Ulm, Germany; Raymond Levy, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, US; Stephan Hau, Andrzej Werbart, Stockholm University, Sweden;; Anna Buchheim, University of Innsbruck, Austria Jeremy Safran, The New School for Social Research, New York City, US; Stijn Vanheule, Ghent University, Belgium; Geoff Goodman, Long Island University, Brookville, New York, US; Lewis Aron, New York University, US; Joel Weinberger, Adelphi University, Garden City, New York, US; Nancy McWilliams, Rutgers University, New Jersey, US; Allan Abbass, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada; Joseph Masling, State University of New York at Buffalo, US; Kenneth N. Levy, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, US;; Golan Shahar, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva. Israel John Auerbach, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, US; Henning Schauenburg, University of Heidelberg, Germany; Dorothea Huber, Technical University of Munich, Germany; Stephen Soldz, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, US; Bethany Brand, Towson University, Maryland, US; Karin Ensink, Laval University, Quebec City, Canada; Clara López Moreno; Alessandra Lemma, University of Essex, Colchester, UK; Saskia de Maat, Mentrum Institute for Mental Health, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Patrick Luyten, Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), Belgium; Margaret R. Zellner, The Rockefeller University and The Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation, New York City, US; Mary Beth Cresci, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association, Washington DC, US; William H. Gottdiener, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City, US; David Taylor, Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK; Sherwood Waldron, Psychoanalytic Research Consortium, New York City, US; Paolo Migone, Editor, Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane, Parma, Italy; Henriette Löffler-Stastka, Medical University of Vienna, Austria; “On Psychoanalysis”; New Scientist; October 27, 2010; https://www.newscientist.com/letter/dn19567-on-psychoanalysis/]//eleanor

Psychoanalysis has developed greatly since Freud’s time, producing substantial research and productive connections to other branches of science Many basic psychoanalytic propositions have been widely accepted, such as the formative impact of early childhood relationships on adult personality. Some of Freud’s specific propositions have been eclipsed by later formulations The basic idea of a dynamic unconscious that actively shapes conscious experience and relations with others has made productive connections with disciplines such as neuroscience. Psychoanalysts have been testing the outcomes of psychoanalytic therapies for decades, using randomised controlled trials and systematic follow-up studies Most trials have found good evidence of the effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapies, when tested in the same way as other approaches. 54 signatories to this letter include distinguished researchers in psychoanalysis in the science faculties of leading world universities, who have acquired major public grants and have published papers in high-impact, peer-reviewed scientific journals. This level of scientific contribution compares very well with that in other clinical professions.

Scientific consensus supports psychoanalysis – just look at all these scientists that agree with us!

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2022

Today the key signifier of this syrup is “empathy.” Even in everyday life, we no longer say of someone that they’re “rotten,” but that they “lack empathy.” I think that deep in the background, the success of “empathy” is the proof of a powerful return of a certain type of philosophical phenomenology, also relaunched by a particular variety of neuroscientific research (Francisco Varela, mirror neurons, and so on). This is often a vulgarized phenomenology, summarized, for the benefit of psychotherapists, as follows: the analyst, like anyone who offers herself as helper, must be empathic towards patients, in the sense of trying to “step into their shoes.” The analyst must “understand” the other in the plain sense of the term, like when we say “I understand why you want a divorce,” meaning by this: “if I were in your shoes, I’d want to send that whoremonger of a husband of yours to hell too!” If we focus entirely on “stepping into the patient’s shoes,” practically nothing distinguishes analysis from a good friendship, and it just becomes something like an occasional get-together between two friends at the pub to chat about their woes. In fact, we tend to prefer talking to “empathic” people, who somehow respond to our joys and pains. Today the most successful psychoanalysis is a “pub get-together” psychoanalysis.

Benvenuto 19 (Sergio Benvenuto - researcher for the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council in Rome and Professor Emeritus in Psychoanalysis at the International Institute of Depth Psychology in Kiev, “CONVERSATIONS WITH LACAN Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan”, Routledge, 6 December 2019, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780429053757/conversations-lacan-sergio-benvenuto, MG)

Today the key signifier of this syrup is “empathy This is often a vulgarized phenomenology, summarized, for the benefit of psychotherapists, as follows: the analyst, like anyone who offers herself as helper, must be empathic towards patients, in the sense of trying to “step into their shoes.” The analyst must “understand” the other in the plain sense of the term, like when we say “I understand why you want a divorce,” meaning by this: “if I were in your shoes, I’d want to send that whoremonger of a husband of yours to hell too!” In fact, we tend to prefer talking to “empathic” people, who somehow respond to our joys and pains. Today the most successful psychoanalysis is a “pub get-together” psychoanalysis.

Even if we’re unfalsifiable, who cares – as long as we can develop some empathy or there’s any possibility we can help each other, it’s a reason why our method solves and is good

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Michigan (7-week)

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2022

Conclusion What have we gained in our assessment of the Lacanian idea of racism as enjoyment? Well, we have been able to offer a series of responses to the four basic critiques highlighted in the opening sections of this paper. In respect of the first critique (of psychological reductionism), we have, I hope, taken a series of decisive steps away from thinking jouissance within the domain of the psychological. I have asserted that in its varying social formations jouissance is—paradoxically enough—more a sociological than a psychological concept. Once we grasp that enjoyment does not float free of the socio-historical context and that it is necessarily grounded in a particular socio-Symbolic matrix of laws and social ideals, then we have to reject the idea that enjoyment is reducible to a psychological dynamic of resentment. Any viable analytical reference to the notion of jouissance should then of necessity be tied to the Symbolic domain from within which it has arisen. It is however true that the “racism as theft of enjoyment” thesis is often deployed in ways (this is typical of Žižek’s work) that are glaringly inattentive to socio-economic and historical detail. This much I concede: such illustrative descriptions of the concept should entail more by way of nuance and empirical texture. Analytical application should particularize these concepts, investigate how they might appear in highly distinctive fields of analysis, rather than summarily generalize across empirical contexts. That being said, I have nevertheless suggested that the “formalist” quality of this Lacanian thesis may in fact be viewed an analytical asset. After all, as a variable of a social analysis, enjoyment must surely remain empty of essential contents precisely because of the malleability of jouissance in differing historical and cultural contexts? Indeed, this was one of the responses to the second of the critiques offered above (enjoyment as conceptually under-differentiated, over-inclusive): yes, jouissance can refer to virtually any object or activity, so long as it has taken on libidinal value. We can argue that this apparent over-inclusiveness proves a crucial anti-essentialist dimension of the concept of jouissance. The racism as (theft of) enjoyment thesis should, accordingly, be used as an empty thesis that must of necessity be anchored in empirical detail. So, rather than operating as an all-subsuming, “one size fits all” trans-historical formula, the idea of racism as (the theft of) enjoyment should be treated precisely as hypothetical, as an exploratory device that focuses our attentions on specific facets of the analytical field. One prospective use of the thesis is precisely as a heuristic device, a provisional analytical frame that challenges the analyst of racism to identify the various interconnected components of a prospective libidinal economy (the superegoic functioning of law, the narrative frame of ideological fantasy, various instantiations of object petit a such as the threatened libidinal treasure, the presumed “thief of jouissance,” etc.). Moving on to the third of my critiques, I have distinguished between different modes of enjoyment (jouissance as bodily intensity, libidinal treasure, and surplus vitality of the other) and explained, via the concept of object petit a, how jouissance can at once refer to presumed narcissistic (and, indeed, phallic) possession and to a fantasy of dispossession by a thieving other. Responding to the fourth critique noted above (that jouissance is often used in a conceptually decontextualized manner) I have linked the idea of jouissance to a set of related psychoanalytic concepts (the drive, fantasy, castration, the phallus, object a), placing it thus on a conceptual horizon that allows us to apply the term in a way that is more rigorous—and arguably more nuanced—than is often the case. A number of associated qualifications (such as that enjoyment must be conceived in relation to the law/superego, that jouissance arises from the signifier) have, furthermore, lent definition2 to the concept of jouissance as an analytical tool. For many of course, analytical problems persist. Some would claim that even such an empty and ostensibly “de-essentialized” exploratory thesis presumes too much. We can anticipate the argument: the pattern of libidinal dynamics implied by this thesis (the resented thief of jouissance, the precious stolen object, the robbed subject, etc.) inevitably impedes the work of a more textured sociological analysis. Such is the position of Engelken-Jorge (2010) who argues that Lacanian theories of enjoyment involve a recurring “psychologistic bias that impoverishes the sociological imagination” (69). While I have tried to show that this need not necessarily be the case, I nonetheless appreciate Engelken-Jorge’s point. This line of critiques suggest that Lacanian theorizations of enjoyment may not suffice without additional methodological and theoretical resources, without greater sociohistorical and empirical contextualization. True enough. Let me add just this: if it is the case that libidinal enjoyment is what most powerfully binds subjects to a given ideology (Dean 2006; Stavrakakis, 2007; Žižek 2002)—then to neglect this variable in favor of apparently more detailed and contextualized historical or socio-economic analyses is to make a serious error of omission. More bluntly put, to omit analytical attentions to jouissance is to risk not having understood the psychical and historical tenacity of racism.

Hook 21 [Derek Hook is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Duquesne University and an Extraordinary Professor in Psychology at the University of Pretoria. A former lecturer at the London School of Economics and Birkbeck College, he is the author of A Critical Psychology of the Postcolonial and (Post)apartheid Conditions.; “Pilfered pleasure: on racism as “the theft of enjoyment”,” Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory; Routledge; June 2021]//eleanor

Conclusion we have been able to offer a series of responses to the four basic critiques highlighted in the opening sections of this paper In respect of the first critique (of psychological reductionism), we have taken a series of decisive steps away from thinking jouissance within the domain of the psychological. jouissance is more a sociological than a psychological concept. Once we grasp that enjoyment does not float free of the socio-historical context and that it is necessarily grounded in a particular socio-Symbolic matrix of laws and social ideals, then we have to reject the idea that enjoyment is reducible to a psychological dynamic of resentment Any viable analytical reference to the notion of jouissance should then of necessity be tied to the Symbolic domain from within which it has arisen. illustrative descriptions of the concept should entail more by way of nuance and empirical texture the “formalist” quality of this Lacanian thesis may in fact be viewed an analytical asset as a variable of a social analysis, enjoyment must surely remain empty of essential contents precisely because of the malleability of jouissance in differing historical and cultural contexts? this was one of the responses to the second of the critiques offered above (enjoyment as conceptually under-differentiated, over-inclusive apparent over-inclusiveness proves a crucial anti-essentialist dimension of the concept of jouissance the idea of racism as (the theft of) enjoyment should be treated as an exploratory device that focuses our attentions on specific facets of the analytical field One prospective use of the thesis is precisely as a heuristic device, a provisional analytical frame that challenges the analyst of racism to identify the various interconnected components of a prospective libidinal economy Moving on to the third of my critiques, I have distinguished between different modes of enjoyment (jouissance as bodily intensity, libidinal treasure, and surplus vitality of the other) and explained how jouissance can at once refer to presumed narcissistic possession and to a fantasy of dispossession by a thieving other Responding to the fourth critique that jouissance is often used in a conceptually decontextualized manner I have linked the idea of jouissance to a set of related psychoanalytic concepts ), placing it thus on a conceptual horizon that allows us to apply the term in a way that is rigorous A number of associated qualifications (such as that enjoyment must be conceived in relation to the law/superego, that jouissance arises from the signifier) have lent definition2 to the concept of jouissance as an analytical tool. Some would claim that even such an empty and ostensibly “de-essentialized” exploratory thesis presumes too much. We can anticipate the argument: the pattern of libidinal dynamics implied by this thesis ( impedes the work of a more textured sociological analysis. Lacanian theories of enjoyment involve a recurring “psychologistic bias that impoverishes the sociological imagination” if it is the case that libidinal enjoyment is what most powerfully binds subjects to a given ideology then to neglect this variable in favor of apparently more detailed and contextualized historical or socio-economic analyses is to make a serious error of omission , to omit analytical attentions to jouissance is to risk not having understood the psychical and historical tenacity of racism.

They’ve cut the strawman part of the article – Derek Hook is a Lacanian psychoanalyst who agrees with racism as theft of enjoyment and literally line by lines their card – we’ve cut the conclusion.

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2022

A non-essentialist social theory of identity that accounts for the role of agency How, then, is Lacan’s understanding of identity non-essentialist? The key distinction here is between ‘structuralism’ and ‘essentialism’. Lacan’s thought is structuralist, insofar as he develops an understanding of the human psyche as a dynamic, symbolic structure.6 It is not, however, grounded in some quest for the true human essence or nature. In the words of Yannis Stavrakakis (1999: 36) ‘the object of Lacanian psychoanalysis is not the individual, it is not man [sic]. It is what he is lacking.’ Consequently, Lacan also avoids the ‘essentialist reductionism of the social to the individual level’ (Stavrakakis, 1999: 3). In other words, Lacan steers clear of the methodological individualism that characterizes most attempts at developing social theories that are premised on the possibility of a cohesive, pre-social self, including that of Alexander Wendt (see also Wight, 2004). Notwithstanding Wendt’s (1999: 227) claim that his recourse to role identities, in particular, allows him to ‘take the dependency on culture and thus Others one step further’, his insistence on a core self underlying the different social roles thus taken (professor, student) places important limits on being able to capture the centrality of self–other relations to the making of identities. Lacan’s analysis, by contrast, goes the full length towards showing how the dependence on the Other, that is, on the social or symbolic order, is central to the making of the self.

Epstein 10 [Charlotte Epstein, Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, NSW, Australia, “Who speaks? Discourse, the subject and the study of identity in international politics,” International Relations: 17(2), p. 327–350, 2010]

How is Lacan’s understanding of identity non-essentialist? The key distinction here is between ‘structuralism’ and ‘essentialism’. Lacan’s thought is structuralist, insofar as he develops an understanding of the human psyche as a dynamic, symbolic structure It is not, however, grounded in some quest for the true human essence or nature the object of Lacanian psychoanalysis is not the individual, it is not man It is what he is lacking Consequently Lacan also avoids the ‘essentialist reductionism of the social to the individual level’ Lacan steers clear of the methodological individualism that characterizes most attempts at developing social theories that are premised on the possibility of a cohesive, pre-social self, including that of Wendt

There’s difference between structuralism and essentialism --- realism and positivist theories of IR reduce the social to the individual level far more than psychoanalysis

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022