No Apocalypse? We should still go up the river...
Firstly, I'm at Dowling judging and coaching for a High School. So hopefully I'll see some of y'all this weekend.
So let's say you're running an environmental advantage. Something big, like Global Warming. Or biodiversity with an extinction impact. You've got good ev on how the world is going to be facing some catastrophic times in the near future and we really need to change our act.
But the neg (or sometimes the Aff) gets up there and responds that while that's all well and good the rhetoric you're using to talk about these issues is bad, leads to biopolitical control over life, and justifies any possible state action on the flimsiest of apocalyptic scenarios. And that's no good. You feel stymied because while your impact scenario may true they're going to win that the rhetoric you use in an oral activity probably comes before anything else.
Well, my friends, this is the card for you. It's almost like someone imagined a debate round when they were writing their article, and this section in particular (though who could possibly imagine someone doing that?). It talks about how A. popular rhetoric about the environment is already controlled by hegemonic power structures, B. avoiding action is just as biopolitical as engaging in action, and C. theorizing and/or taking action to save the environment from apocalyptic concerns offers a route to break down biopolitical control.
Not only is this a useful card, but the article is full of other useful cards. It's well worth a read.
Not acting is just as much an act of biopolitical control as acting, and there is only a risk that an Aff ballot gives us the ability to redefine the debate space and apocalyptic rhetoric in a way that breaks down biopolitical control of populaces and the Earth.
Schatz 12 (JL Schatz, Director of Debate and Professor of Feminist Evolutionary Philosophy at Binghamton University. “The Importance of Apocalypse: The Value of End-of-the-World Politics While Advancing Ecocriticism” http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/joe/article/view/394) // UDC
Luke and Darier’s Foucauldian approach to ecocriticism is not without value. They demonstrate how “discourse delineate[s] … the terms of intelligibility whereby a particular ‘reality’ can be known and acted upon. When we speak of a discourse we may be referring to a specific group of texts, but also importantly to the social practices to which those texts are inextricably linked” (Doty, 1996: 6). Power continuously operates in both hegemonic and resistant ways regardless if we are monkey-wrenching, speaking at a political press conference, or using the written language of the academic. No matter the form, the way we articulate our discourse must construct reality in a precise way in order to render it intelligible for others to understand. Judith Butler notes that “the media’s evacuation of the human through the image has to be understood … in terms of the broader problem that normative schemes of intelligibility establish what will and will not be human” (146). Once other animals and the environment are understood as less than human their lives become inconsequential compared to the short-term benefit of human civilization. To this ends—despite Luke and Darier’s fear of being co-opted—apocalyptic imagery can help in two regards. First, it helps people recognize the interconnection of the global ecology in order to appreciate the similarity between humans and other species. Second, it provides a self-motivating reason for people to change their behavior to avert extinction even when confronting those who refuse to recognize the intrinsic value of non-human animals. In either case omnicidal images change both the mindset and the actions of those we encounter, thereby fostering new directions for humanity to evolve.
Any hesitancy to deploy images of apocalypse out of the risk of acting in a biopolitical manner ignores how any particular metaphor—apocalyptic or not—always risks getting co-opted. It does not excuse inaction. Clearly hegemonic forces have already assumed control of determining environmental practices when one looks at the debates surrounding off-shore drilling, climate change, and biodiversity within the halls of Congress. “As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems … will go unsolved … only to fester more ominously into the future. … [E]cological crisis … cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context … of internationalized markets, finance, and communications” (Boggs 774). If it weren’t for people such as Watson connecting things like whaling to the end of the world it wouldn’t get the needed coverage to enter into public discourse. It takes big news to make headlines and hold attention spans in the electronic age. Sometimes it even takes a reality TV show on Animal Planet. As Luke reminds us, “Those who dominate the world exploit their positions to their advantage by defining how the world is known. Unless they also face resistance, questioning, and challenge from those who are dominated, they certainly will remain the dominant forces” (2003: 413). Merely sitting back and theorizing over metaphorical deployments does a grave injustice to the gains activists are making on the ground. It also allows hegemonic institutions to continually define the debate over the environment by framing out any attempt for significant change, whether it be radical or reformist.
Only by jumping on every opportunity for resistance can ecocriticism have the hopes of combatting the current ecological reality. This means we must recognize that we cannot fully escape the master’s house since the surrounding environment always shapes any form of resistance. Therefore, we ought to act even if we may get co-opted. As Foucault himself reminds us, “instead of radial ruptures more often one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that shift about[.] … And it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relationships. It is in this sphere of force relations that we must try to analyze the mechanisms of power” (96-97).