The resolution’s call for political action in the topically designated areas engages in the same failure that the US continually commits—we claim to understand the status of democracy there, but fail to realize that the “revolution” takes place merely in assemblies and speeches—in reality, violence always continues.
Jean Baudrillard, professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School. Baudrillard Live – Selected interviews. Interviewed by Mike Gane. London: Routledge, 1993. p. 207.
“All this is part of the… say that I am very hopeful.”
Some debaters try to rouse the indifferent masses of the debate space into frenzied activity by invoking a panoply of survival issues—ecology, terrorism, and nuclear weapons—because they place value in an obsessive desire to survive.
Baudrillard 89 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at European Graduate School, America, p 42-44.
“Everywhere survival has… political fact of the utmost importance.”
The demarcation between life and death is constructed—the exclusion of death is the ultimate exclusion that takes life hostage and condemns it to degradation
Baudrillard 93 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, The Symbolic Exchange and Death, p 126-7shree)
“Foucault's analysis, amongst the masterpieces… more than a survival determined by death.”
Orienting ourselves as enlightened liberal subjects is the flip side of the same coin. Their metaphysical blackmail portrays the strategy of the object as Evil while glorifying the strategy of the subject of knowledge that tries to intervene in the politics surrounding democracy assistance. But, it isn’t the subject that wills the world into existence but rather the object that seduces it—privileging the subject fails and fuels self-hatred through repression.
Baudrillard 90 (Jean, Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School, Fatal Strategies, p. 111-13shree)
“Only the subject desires; only the… desire has become myth..”
Subjective illusions like agency and responsibility are invoked to persuade us to break free of spectatorship. But this turns liberation into a duty—when we are answerable only to ourselves we lose the symbolic freedom provided by the voluntary servitude of gaming.
Baudrillard 5 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Intelligence of Evil, p 50-5shree)
“Freedom? A Dream! Everyone aspires… free, everyone is both the master and slave of the game.”
The subjects’ drive to purify us of Evil by making us answerable only to ourselves breeds ressentiment because we confine ourselves to a victim economy and wallow in misfortune
Baudrillard ‘5 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Intelligence of Evil, p 151-4shree)
“A victim economy, a political economy… Never explain, never complain..”’
The liberal expectation that people should be answerable for every aspect of their current situation is one that mirrors the way in which the US makes countries answerable for “undemocratic” regimes. This forces the liquidation of radical alterity—this is self-servitude par excellance
Baudrillard 93 (Jean, Prof of Phil at EGS, The Transparency of Evil, p 165shree)
We live in a culture which strives… thought: a truly unheard of servitude.”
This replaces difference with images of the same and results in annihilation
Baudrillard 96 (Jean, Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School, The Perfect Crime, p. 112-4shree)
In German, there are two apparently synonymous… the finality of that mastery, have disappeared.”
We affirm—
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its democracy assistance for one or more of the following: Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen.
Instrumental affirmation is impossible—even if meaning is fixed in the short-term, in the long-term it is oversaturated with meanings and can’t have a particular trajectory
Baudrillard 81 (Jean, Professor of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at the European Graduate School, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 16-17)
“Watergate was thus nothing but… traverses all discourses without them wanting it to.”
The rule of symbolic exchange is to return the world and language as we received it: enigmatic and aphoristic. Instead of imposing truths upon the resolution as subjects, we affirm as objects seduced by the resolution. Our affirmation of the resolution is meaningless and participates in the very form and intelligence of evil
Baudrillard 5 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Intelligence of Evil, p 207-13shree)
“It is probable that we have… between the image and the gaze.”
Subjectivity and power relations aren’t inevitable—neither are real power until you concede to the truth claims that give them power
Baudrillard 90 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, Seduction, p 48-9shree)
“In the last instance, behind the… therefore, for reviving the illusion of power.”
Evaluate arguments by determining the mode of existence that serves as their principle for debaters in a discursive activity. Instead of falling back on transcendental values that attempt to resuscitate the political in the activity, endorse the strategy of the object as a joyous gesture.
Baudrillard 90 (Jean, Professor of Philosophy of Culture and Media Criticism at the EGS, Fatal Strategies, p. 98-99shree)
“The masses know that they know nothing… finally ironic, joyous and seductive.”
No risk of co-option—our discourse can’t be mobilized because we are de-linked from the social
Baudrillard 83 (Jean, Prof of Phil of Culture and Media Criticism at EGS, In the Shadow of Silent Majorities, p 26-8shree)
“Basically, what goes for commodities… fluctuating around this imperceptible nucleus.”
