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Kirk, Flynn, et al

Sacrifcial Reudiation

The Pups o WarCerberus

Acephale

No head is better than one.

Acephale......................................................................................1

K Summary..................................................................................Strate!y Sheet...................................................................................."

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Strate!y Sheet....................................................................................#

Shells$ Pups o War and Cerberus.................................................%The Pups o War$ 1NC Shell &in' () K a*+.............................................,The Pups o War$ 1NC Shell &in' () K a*+...........................................1-Shell… Cerberus$ 1NC Shell &in' () Policy A*+......................................11

Cerberus$ 1NC Shell &in' () Policy A*+...............................................1Cerberus$ 1NC Shell &in' () Policy A*+...............................................1/Cerberus 0elpin! Pups$ 1NC Shell Alt02P3$......................................14Cerberus 0elpin! Pups 1NC Shell Alt02P3$........................................1Cerberus 0elpin! Pup 1NC Shell Alt02P3$..........................................1"Cerberus 0elpin! Pup 1NC Shell Alt02P3$..........................................1#

5ssential 6ual Purpose 7loc's.....................................................1%NC 89$ Pups o War........................................................................1%NC 89$ Cerberus.............................................................................1%Perm nc (7oth+.................................................................................1,Perm nc (7oth+.................................................................................-Perm nc (7oth+.................................................................................1Perm nc (7oth+.................................................................................Perm nc (7oth+................................................................................./A A* challen!es militarism (7oth+.....................................................4A A* challen!es militarism (7oth+.....................................................A Policy:2a'in!0;iat ;ramempact Calculus )ersus 5?tinction (7oth Kriti's+................................../"

Pups o War 5ssential 7loc's......................................................./#Pups o War$ &in' ) &in' Turn 6ebate................................................./#Pups o War$ &in' ) &in' Turn 6ebate................................................./%Pups o War$ &in' ) &in' Turn 6ebate................................................./,Pups o War Alternati)e NC...............................................................4-Pups o War Alternati)e NC...............................................................41

Pups o War Alternati)e NC...............................................................4Pups o War$ A Coalitional Politics0Strate!ic 5ssentialism =ood.........4/

Cerberus 5ssential 7loc's............................................................44Cerberus $ &in' )ersus Case 6ebate nc.............................................44Cerberus $ &in' )ersus Case 6ebate nc.............................................4Cerberus $ &in' )ersus Case 6ebate nc.............................................4"Cerberus Alternati)e NC...................................................................4#Cerberus Alternati)e NC...................................................................4%Cerberus$ Realism nc......................................................................4,



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Cerberus$ Realism nc......................................................................-Cerberus$ Realism nc......................................................................1Cerberus$ Realism nc......................................................................Cerberus$ Realism nc....................................................................../Cerberus… A 5?tinction Predictions =ood.............................................4

Cerberus$ A 5?tinction Predictions =ood..........................................

&in's.........................................................................................."(@uman+ Ri!hts &in's........................................................................."(@uman+ Ri!hts &in's.........................................................................#>nternational Stability &in'.................................................................%7iodi)ersity &in'................................................................................,5conomy &in'...................................................................................."-@e!emony0Ro!ue State &in'..............................................................."15thics &in'........................................................................................."5thics &in'........................................................................................."/9iolence is 7adB &in'........................................................................"49iolence is 7adB &in'........................................................................"

System =enocideB &in'..................................................................""8pposition to Torture &in'.................................................................."#8pposition to Torture &in'.................................................................."%8pposition to War on Terror &in'.........................................................",8pposition to War on Terror &in'.........................................................#-TNWs &in'.........................................................................................#1TNWs &in'.........................................................................................#&in'$ TNWs.......................................................................................#/Terrorism...........................................................................................#4&in'$ Respect05mpathy or 8ther.......................................................#&in'$ Schmitt....................................................................................#"&in'$ Theory (e.!.D Critical Theory+....................................................##

&in'$ Theory (e.!.D Critical Theory+...................................................#%A!amben &in'....................................................................................#,Psychoanalysis &in'...........................................................................%-&in'$ Anti:Capitalism........................................................................%1&in'$ Anti:Capitalism........................................................................%&in'$ Anti:Capitalism........................................................................%/&in'$ Anti:Capitalism........................................................................%4&in'$ Anti:Capitalism........................................................................%

Alternati)e Sol)es$....................................................................%"Alternati)e Sol)es$ 5?tincton............................................................%"Alternati)e Sol)es$ 5?tincton............................................................%#Alternati)es Sol)es$ 5thics................................................................%%Alternati)es Sol)es$ 5thics................................................................%,Alternati)es Sol)es$ 5thics................................................................,-Alternati)es Sol)es$ 8ntolo!y...........................................................,1Alternati)es Sol)es$ 8ntolo!y...........................................................,Alternati)es Sol)es$ 8ntolo!y...........................................................,/Alternati)es Sol)es$ 8ntolo!y...........................................................,4Alternati)e Sol)es$ Resistance..........................................................,Alternati)e Sol)es$ Resistance..........................................................,"Alternati)e Sol)es$ Resistance..........................................................,#



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A A.........................................................................................,%A$ 7ataille misunderstands ?B (e.!.D e?cess+...................................,%A$ Kriti' contradicts itsel because producti)e0achie)es !ood...........,,A Etil =ood....................................................................................1--A Etil =ood....................................................................................1-1A Etil =ood....................................................................................1-

A$ Cede Political to the Ri!ht02ilitarism.........................................1-/A$ Cede Political to the Ri!ht02ilitarism.........................................1-4A$ Cede Political to the Ri!ht02ilitarism.........................................1-A$ Sacrifce is )iolent....................................................................1-"A$ Sacrifce is )iolent....................................................................1-#A$ Alt ;ascism............................................................................1-%A$ Alt ;ascism............................................................................1-,A$ Alt Nihilism...........................................................................11-A$ K RomanticiFes Natural0Past......................................................111A$ Alt is patriarchal.......................................................................11

A* Ans


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K Summary

Thanks to all who labored exuberantly: Michael Barclay, Alex Dzeda, Aaaron einhandler, !osiah

"arnick, #te$hen %arb, &wen !ones, Tho'as (ruse, )yan Malone, Da*id +eustat, ilz illsbury- And o.course to 'y hel$ers lynn and !ake-

This .ile contains two kritiks that ha*e the sa'e alt/M0 and 'any o. the sa'e blocks- ou need to o

throuh the beinnin o. the .ile care.ully to .iure out which blocks o with which kritik- But i. not

otherwise 'arked, the block is assu'ed to be .or both-

The u$s o. ar5

This kritik is desined aainst kritik6y a..s, like (ritikal Turkey T+s or Bara'-

e kritik strateies that $ressure the state, atte'$t to inter*ene in the de'ocratic $ublic s$here, de$loy

rational discourse, a$$eal to ethical oods/nor's, a*oid *iolence/death, and *alue knowlede as

$roduction-

7nstead, we $re.er ecastic co''unication in the .or' o. theatrical sacri.ice- The alternati*e is #acri.ice

the 1A8- #e*ere its head, .lay its cor$se, and wear its skin-5

#acri.ice enacts useless ex$enditure, wastin oods rather than accu'ulatin the'- 7t thus exe'$li.ieshu'an .reedo', which Bataille calls so*ereinty-5 e cut o.. their head as a re9ection o. rational

knowlede and authority- e wear their skin to break down the boundaries se$aratin us .ro' others-

#acri.ice thus se*ers the bounds o. authority, ex$ends the accu'ulatin .orces dri*in us to war, and

shatter wholistic ontoloies-

8erberus5

This kritk is desined aainst $oliy a..s, $articularly ones that clai' ad*antaes based o.. the

international syste' like he or #/!a$an relations-

#tate so*ereinty is necessarily cri'inal, and e*en its su$$osed stability 'ani.ests 'onstrus *iolence as

insane excess- There is no balancin or stabilizin this syte', and the discourses that $ro'ise security

$a*e the way .or new wars in the na'e o. $eace-

The alternati*e is the sa'e at T5- e clai' to ex$end the excess su$$osedly stabilizin the syste',

wastin the .orces accu'ulatin to nuclear war- &n the role o. the ballot ;uestion we e'$hasize our own

so*ereinty in this debate-

6(irk

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Strategy Sheet

hat .ollows is Da*e=s notes on our ri$e discussion about the *arious a..s- #o'e o. the' are cry$tic, buti. you know the a.. and ne they should 'ostly 'ake sense- Thanks Da*e>

1- Turkey T+=sa- +e

i- Taboo

1- Taboo de'onizes the sacred

2- Taboo $ro'otes *iolence and useii- )oot cause o. nuclear wea$ons is sur$lus $roduction

1- )e'o*in the wea$ons is .or the accu'ulation o. di$lo'acy and deterrence

2- This leads back to nukes

b- A.. i- +e dis'iss $ublic discourse, which is key to sol*ency

ii- ittner 2A8 card

1- ublic debate .rees us .ro' the so*erienty o. the state

iii- ittner ?1- Ad*ocatin chane ood

2- Anti6nuclear 'o*e'ents work

i*- 8hasudoski

1- ublic s$here ood

*- Massu'i6 $re6e'$tion is accu'ulation6 we attack the' to sa*e us6 leads to state

*iolence

1- 7'$act is "oh

2- ( needs to think about internal contradictions

a- Ballot

i- 7s the sacri.ice .or the utility o. the ballot@ b- Alt sol*ency

i- Does the ( de$loy rational discouse@ Does its alternati*e achie*e a ood@c- To answer Ballot

i- )e.ra'e 'eanin o. the ballot

1- The ballot is to create the theatre o. debate into a sacred thin

2- 7t needs a winner and a loser

3- The loser is the sacri.ice

ii- #acri.ice is a radical challene to utility, 'ore so then the $er' and the $lan

1- This o$ens u$ round .or the $er'utation, because you=re sayin so'e utility

is ok

iii- otin .or the text o. the alternati*e

1- That=s not utilitarian

2- *en i. the alt ends u$ sol*in .or oods, its accidental

3- The $lan is calculated

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Strategy Sheet

3- Bara' torture a..

a- +e

i- xce$tionalis' ( in case ne relates to second link card in this (

ii- etishis'6 rein.orce sacred attraction o. torture

iii- Ei.e isn=t $recarious FbutlerG its exuberant

1- recariousness is the uni*ersal condition, and is not a result o. state *iolence,

but should be e'braced as exuberant

b- A..

i- Torture is accu'ulation, we sacri.ice itii- Butler6 ex$ose dark cha'bers and win war

iii- (in ?6 De'ands e'$irically work6 "it'o

1- +e: "it'o=s not closed

i*- thics o. the a..ir'ati*e6 'ust re9ect torture6 *ulnerability

4- !ust ar theory Burke a..

a- +e

i- Always ;uestionin war bottles u$ the 'ilitary6 when it unleashes it will be bi and

de*astatin

ii- )e'o*e an ine..iciency Foccu$ation breakin 'ilitaryG, allowin 'ore accu'ulation

o. 'ilitaris'

iii- (ritik the ;uest .or knowlede o. why we o to war

1- This rational re.lection is .utile

2- iolence is a 'o'ent o. decision, an e*ent, re.lection does nothin when its

actually ti'e to decide

3- )ead the critical theory link

a- roducin syste's o. rationality

i*- 8riticize re9ection o. *iolence

*- 8riticize re9ection o. the war on terror *i- 8riticize totalizin ethics

1- %o'oenous syste' always ex$lainin when war is ok and not

b- A..

i- !ust war theory 'asks the *iolence o. the state

ii- A.. re9ects utilitarian sur*i*al

iii- +o link6 don=t see the state as rational

c- hen debatin an a..ir'ati*e like this say that they ha*e a lot o. ood ideas, but they wra$ it

u$ in state leiti'acy and rational oals- This nor'ati*ity .uels the state-

d- They re$eat the loic o. 9ust war theory with a new syste' o. leiti'acy in the international

syste'

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Shells !u"s of #ar and $er%erus

&a%or on, 'ercules(

)The li*ing organism recei*es more energy than is necessary for maintaining life+ the

ecess energy -.ealth/ can %e used for the gro.th of a system -eg, an organism/+ if the

system can no longer gro., or if the ecess cannot %e com"letely a%sor%ed in its gro.th, it

must necessairly %e lost .ithout "rofit+ it must %e s"ent, .illingly or not, gloriously or

catastro"hically for living matter in general , energy is al.ays in ecess+ the uestion is

al.ays "osed in terms of etra*agance The choice is limited to ho. the .ealth is to %e

suandered 34eorges 5ataille, The Accursed Share v. 1

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The !u"s of #ar 1N$ Shell &ink -* K aff/

#e offer this de%ate to ecastic communication, sacrificing certainty to social eu%erance

The 16$ models the "olitical "roducti*ity of the state 7ore "eace 7ore safety 7ore

reason 7ore .ork 7ore talk &ess communication

The status uo is tragedy The 16$ is farce

6ct 18 The 6nnointing

The "u"s of .ar are yel"ing, and the 16$ adds their %ark of "rotest to the chorus

9emands of restrint from the .ar machine mean nothing, for militarism thri*es on the

16$:s fascinated indignation

John Hutnyk 2003 [Goldsmith College at University of London; Critique of Anthropology v. 23]

Bataille was clearly a militant against the war, there is no doubting his engagement in this regard: ... we

can express the hope of avoiding a war that already threatens. But in order to do so we must divertthe surplus production, either into rational extension of a difficult industrial growth, or into

unproductive works that will dissipate an energy that cannot be accumulated in any case. (Bataille, 1949/1988: 25) Andeven after the war he maintained a theoretical interest in ways to escape restrictions. In the second volume of The Accursed Share, Bataille speculates on alcohol, war and holidays as the

choices for expenditure. He is not so naive as to think that a larger participation in erotic games would help avoid war (nice thought), but he does rethink the ways of avoiding war: ‘we will not

be able to decrease the risk of war before we have reduced, or begun to reduce, the general disparity in standards of living’ (Bataille, 1991: 188). This ‘banality’ is what Bataille sees as the only

chance for an alternative to war, and it is possible even in the midst of the Cold War. The trouble was, faced with war itself, Bataille retreated to the library. Bataille’s contempt for and

fascination with fascist ‘community’ must – Nancy says – be behind his withdrawal (Nancy, 1991: 17). Unlike Marx in the Brumaire, Bataille’s analysis fills him with unease and inevitable

failure in the face of ‘a paradox at which his thinking came to a halt’ (Nancy, 1991: 23). It is this interruption that left Bataille susceptible to the postmodern- ist revision which drained any

sense of a political programme – the fight against fascism – from his work.9He was confined to the library, resigned, introspective, and in the end left passing books on to others with a whis-

pered recommendation (the review Critiquewas the last publishing venture he started, and it continues today). Spiralling into the conflagration of the

sun, which gives energy without (obvious) return, he later wrote: The planet congested by death and

wealth a scream pierces the clouds Wealth and death close in. No-one hears this scream of a miserable waiting. And then: Knowing that

there is no response. (Bataille, 2001: 221) And, finally, from the ‘Notebook for Pure Happiness’ written towards the end of his life: The only escape is

failure. (Bataille, 2001: 223) Everything that we know is true, but on condition of disappearing in us (we know better in ceasing to know). (Bataille, 2001: 247) Part IV Have I not led my readers astray? (Bataille, 1991: 430) Bataille cannot be left to rot in the library. How useful an experiment would it be to try to ‘apply’ Bataille’s notion of expenditure to politics today? Klaus-Peter Köpping asks questions about ‘modernity’

which arise explicitly from his reading of Bataille as a theorist of transgression, addressing political examples such as Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Indonesia

(Köpping, 2002: 243). A more extravagant general economy framework for such questions might take up the

massive accumulation that is the excess of an arms trade promoting regional conflicts as integral to

sales figures on the one side, with the performative futility of massed anti-capitalism rallies and May

Day marches that fall on the nearest Sunday so as not to disrupt the city on the other. Expenditure and squan- dering today, inBataille’s sense, might be seen in both the planned obso- lescence of cars, computers and nearly all merchandise, as well as in the waste production and fast-food service industry cults and

fashionista style wars, tamogochi and Beckham haircuts that currently sweep the planet. No doubt it would be too mechanical to rest with such applications, too utilitarian, but the relevance is

clear. The use-value of Georges Bataille is somewhat eccentric and the deployment of pre-Second World War circumstances as a comparative register for today is of course merely speculative.

No return to the 1930s (colourize films now). Yet, taking account of a long list of circumstantial differences – no Hitler, no Moscow, no Trotskyite opposition, etc. – is also unnecessary since it

is only in the interests of thinking through the current conjuncture so as to understand it, and change it, that any return should ever be contemplated. The importance of French anthropology –

Mauss – as well as psychoanalysis and phenomenology, cannot be underestimated and all are crucial in Bataille’s comprehension of the rise of fascism. Can these matters help us to make

sense of political debates in the midst of a new world war today? That the intellectual currents which shaped Bataille’s analysis were post- Marxist did not, then, replace the importance of Marx.

Today

the comprehension of Bush’s planetary terror machine still requires such an analysis,but one that

can also be informed by the reading of Bataille’s thought as shaped by the intellectual currents mentioned above. In a period of capi- talist slump, crisis of credit,overextended market, defaulted debt and threatening collapse, the strategy of war looms large. Even before the events of 11 September 2001 in New York, Bush was

clearly on the warpath with missile defence systems, withdrawal from various international treaties and covenants, and massive appropriations for military and

surveillance systems. The imperial element is clear and sustained – the aggression against the Palestinians,

the adventure in Afghanistan and the war on Iraq (to defend papa Bush’s legacy) obviously have their

roots in the imperial- ist mercantile tradition – plunder and war in pursuit of resources, primarily oil,

secondarily armaments sales. If this is potlatch, it is of the destructive kind that Bataille feared. The possibility of a geo-political solution other than war should be evaluated. But it is a matter of record that, under the Bush family regime, the US–Europe alliance has not been interested

in pursuing any programme of reduction of disparity, a few suspensions of Third World debt and UN summits notwithstanding. When Bataille searches

for an alternative to war in some ‘vast economic competition’ through which costly sacrifices,

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comparable to war, would yet give the competitor with initiative the advantage Bataille, 1949/1988: 172), he holds outhope for a kind of gift without return. That he showed some enthusiasm for the Marshall Plan after the Second World War as a possible model for this might need to be ascribed to the

exhausted condition of post-war France, but he soon revised his assessment. The Marshall Plan was not as disinter- ested as Bataille implied; it facilitated circulation and recoupment of surplus

value as profit. The Cold War and nuclear proliferation turned out to be the preferred examples of reckless waste in actuality – as recognized in volume two of The Accursed Share (Bataille,

1991: 188).

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The !u"s of #ar 1N$ Shell &ink -* K aff/

(Today, redistribution is not considered an option, the threat of Asian capitalism – after the slaughter of millions – can be ignored, and the

war on Islam (known variously as the Gulf War, Zionism, and the War on Terror) appears as the

primary strategy (combined with a war on South America, mistakenly named as a war on drugs, and a war on immigration disguised as a security concern). The secondarystrategy is a newly hollowed out version of liberal welfare. In 1933 Bataille had written of the bourgeois tendency to declare ‘equality’ and make it their watchword, all the time showing they

do not share the lot of the workers (Bataille, 1997: 177). In the 21st century, Prime Minister Blair of England has made some gestures towards a similar pseudo- alternative. At a Labour Party

congress in the millennium year he spoke of the need to address poverty and famine in Africa, and no doubt still congratulates himself on his pursuit of this happy agenda; as I write a large

entourage of delegates and diplomats are flying to Johannesburg for another conference junket – the Earth Summit. The party accompanying Blair and Deputy Prescott includes multinational

mining corporation Rio Tinto Executive Director Sir Richard Wilson (The Guardian, 12 August 2002). Rio Tinto is hardly well known for its desire to redistribute the global share of surplus

expenditure for the welfare of all. If there are no gifts, only competitions of expenditure, what then of the effort of

Bataille to oppose fascism? It is not altruistic, and yet it is the most necessary and urgent aspect of his work that is given to us to read for today. Is fascisma charity-type trick? A deceit of double dealing which offers the illusion of more while giving less? Something like this psycho-social structure of fascism appears to be enacted in the potlatch

appeasements of the propaganda spinsters surrounding Blair. The New Labour and Third Way public offering is ostentatiously to be about more healthcare, more police, more schools, but Blair

spins and rules over a deception that demands allegiance to a privatization programme that cares only about reducing the costs (fixed capital costs) of providing healthy, orderly, trained

employees for industry, of short-term profit and arms sales to Israel, of racist scare-mongering and scapegoating of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants, of opportunist short-term gain head-

in-the-sand business-as-usual. Similarly, the gestures of multi-millionaires like George Soros and Bill Gates in establishing charity ‘foundations’ to ease their guilt is not just a matter of

philanthropy, it is a necessary gambit of containment (and these two in particular bringing their cyber-evangelism to the markets of Eastern Europe, South and South-East Asia). The

liberal rhetoric of charity and the militant drums of war are the two strategies of the same rampant

restrictive economy. Carrot and stick. Team A and team B of capi- talist hegemony – the critique of the gift is clear, a gift is nota gift but a debt of time – and this is not really generosity or hospitality. The same can be said perhaps of war – it is not war but profit, just as the gift reassures the giver of their superior status,the war on terror unleashes a terror of its own; war does not produce victories but rather defeat for all. Bataille shows us a world in ruins. September 11 has been made into the kind of event

that transforms an unpopular (even unelected) figure into a leader under whom the nation coheres in a new unity – much as Bataille saw Nuremburg achieve for the National Socialists. Of

course I am not suggesting Bush is a Nazi – he hasn’t got the dress sense – but people were betrayed by the trick of a ‘democracy’ that offers pseudo-participation once every four years, and this time in a way that has consequences leading inexorably to a massive fight. The kowtowing to big business with a rhetoric of social security has been

heard before – it was called the New Deal (or welfare state) and was a deception almost from the start. Where there was perhaps some contractual obli- gation of aid in the earlier forms, today

the trick of the buy-off bribery of service provision is contingent and calculated according only to corporate strategic gain. While we lurch towards endless war, governments reassure us with

the watchwords of security that really mean death and despair to those on the wrong side of the wire. The largest prisonpopulation ever (under democracy or any other form of government), mass confinement for minor offences (three strikes), colour overcoded death row (Mumia Abu-Jamal etc.), arrest and

detention without trial or charge, celebratory executionism, etc. The incarcerated souls in the concentration camps of Sangatte,10

Woomera,11 Kamunting12 or Guantanamo 13 are wired in and offered up as sacrificial gifts to the rule of new

judicial-administrative fascism. A new toothy-smiling Christian cult of death and technology, spun carefully via press conferences and TV sitcoms – television hasgiven up any pretence of journalism in favour of infotainment. Does the US adminis- tration dream of a new post-war era where, once again like Marshall, they could come with a plan to

rebuild upon ruins? This would indicate the exhaustion of the current mode of production, which, with ‘information’ promised renewal but quickly stalled. Whatever the case, the enclosure of

the US and Europe behind fortress walls does not – experience now shows – ensure prophylactic protection, and ruin may be visited upon all. It was Bataille who said that perhaps only the

‘methods of the USSR would ... be equal to a ruined immensity’ (Bataille, 1949/1988: 167–8). Polite critiques and protest have no purchase – orderly

rallies against the aggression in Afghanistan, against asylum and immigration law, against the destruction of Palestine, etc.,

get no ‘airtime’ (instead, ‘political’ soap opera like The West Wing, as the current equivalent in ideological terms to the Cold War’s Bomber Command). Everyleader that accedes to the ‘War on Terror’ programme and its excesses (civilian deaths, curtailment of civil liberty, global bombing) is an appeaser. This is like thedithering of Chamberlain, only this time the opposition activists are fighting in a ‘post-national’ arena and Stalin’s slumber will not be broken, the Red Army cannot

run inter- ference, there is no Churchill rumbling in the wings, the fascist empire will prevail without militant mobilization

across the board. This is the appeaser’s gift – betrayal into the ‘ranks assigned to us by generals and

industrial magnates’ (Bataille, 1985: 164). The unravelling of the tricks of social welfare, of ‘asylum’

and ‘aid’ programmes, of ‘interest’ even (the narrowing of news broadcasts to domestic affairs) or

respect, of the demon- ization of others, of tolerance, the hypocrisy of prejudice – all this prepares us

for a war manufactured elsewhere. After the breakdown of the gift’s tricks, fascism is the strategy, the

obverse side of capital’s coin. In this context, the geo-politics that enables, or demands, appeasement

of the imperious corporate/US power is the restricted destruction we should fear, and we should

fight in a struggle that goes beyond national defence, wage claims or solidarity . The discipline of the Soviets and of

Bataille could be our tools. Bataille reads on in his library. We are left speculating with him, rashly charging in with ideas that are less excessive, less exuberant, that modera- tion mightwithhold. But there is no more important time to consider the efforts in the arts to fight militarism out of control, and, as Bush drags the world into permanent war, it is worth asking why

Bataille’s surrealistic opposition to Hitler was inadequate. Is it because there are no more thinkers in the Party? Is it that subversion is uninformed and its spirit quiet? Chained to the shelves, it

is not enough to know that appeasement of the military-industrial machine is the obverse side of liberal charity.Why are we still unable to acknowledge this is the path to war? What would be adequate to move away from appeasement to containment and more? What kind of

sovereign destruction would Bataille enact today? Against the ‘immense hypocrisy of the world of accumulation’ (Bataille,

1991: 424), the answer is clear: we should ‘condemn this mouldy society to revolutionary

destruction’ (Bataille, 1997: 175). The Bataille of La Critique Sociale might argue for a glorious

expenditure as that which connects people together in the social and recognizes their joint labour to

produce themselves, and this must be redeemed f rom the restricted economy that insists on expen-



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diture for the maintenance of hierarchy. If he were leaving the library today, the Bataille of anti-war

Surrealism might say it is time for a wake-up knock-down critique of the barking dogs. The

castrating lions of appeasement must be hounded out of town. Back in your kennels, yelping pups

of doom. Fair call, Georges Bataille.



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Shell… $er%erus 1N$ Shell &ink -* !olicy 6ff/

#e declare oursel*es so*ereign, and refuse identification .ith the ecess of the USF4 #e

offer this de%ate to ecastic communication, sacrificing certainty to social eu%erance

6ct 18 The 6nnointing

The attem"t to restore %alance to the internatonal system denies the ecessi*e *iolence at

the heart of state so*ereignty The aff re;enacts "olitical theater %uilt u"on the

etermination of others

Tho'as Blo' 'ansen and inn Ste""utat 200<[Thomas Blom Hansen is Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Senior Research Scientist at Yale

University, Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of

Amsterdam where he served as Dean of the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences. Recently, Hansen was

offered a position as full professor at Stanford University where he is to head a new research institute for the anthropological

study of South-East Asia.[1] Finn Stepputat is Senior Researcher at Danish Insitute International Studies,

Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Post-Colonial World

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7996.html]

The attack on the orld Trade 8enter in #e$te'ber 2JJ1 ai'ed at what Al6Kaeda saw as the heart o. A'ericaLs lobal e'$ire- The subse;uent reactions in A'erica

and the rest o. the world de'onstrated that so*ereinty and its ulti'ate ex$ression66the ability and the will to e'$loy o*erwhel'in *iolence and to decide on li.e and

death66ha*e been recon.iured in the last decades o. the twentieth century- The =.ar on terror= and the attacks on 6fghanistan and

Ira demonstrated that underneath the co'$lex structures o. $ower in 'odern, liberal societies,

territorial so*ereignty, and the .oundational *iolence that a*e birth to it, still remains the hard kernel

of modern states;;an intrinsically *iolent truth o. the 'odern nation6state that re'ains its raison d'être in $eriods o. crisis- Jus ad bellum, the $ossibilityo. wain war aainst those one declares as ene'ies re'ains a central di'ension o. how a state $er.or's its stateness- At the sa'e ti'e, these reactions also

*indicated %ardt and +eriLs assertion that i'$erial so*ereinty o. the twenty6.irst century di..ers .ro' earlier .or's o. i'$erial $ower F%ardt and +eri 2JJJ, 1C16

2J4G- As o$$osed to earlier eras, todayLs e'$ire o. lobal network6$ower has no outside- The enemies, or de*iants, within this s$ace o.

'oral6$olitical6econo'ic do'ination are all =.ithin,= and are often former allies of the US

go*ernment- 7n the si'$li.ied *iew o. the Bush ad'inistration, these constitute an axis o. e*il that

'ust be $unished and disci$lined in $ree'$ti*e 'ilitary strikes to secure internal $eace in the nited#tates and a'on its allies- The so*ereign "rerogati*e is to declare .ho is an internal enemy, and the

war on terror is a war on internal ene'ies66within nation6states now $oliced under new strinent

security acts, and .ithin the glo%al em"ire .here leality and rights ha*e %een sus"ended for those

declared illeal co'batants and incarcerated in 6fghan "risons, "uantana'o Bay, and other =s"aces

of ece"tion= The lobal trans.or'ations o. $olitics, econo'y, and culture ha*e been ex$lored in *arious ways by theorists o. lobalization andinternational relations-1 Their ob*ious 'erits notwithstandin, these works still 'aintain an unbroken link between s tate $ower, so*ereinty, and territory- #o*ereinty

resides in the state, or in institutions e'$owered by states, to exercise so*erein $ower in su$ra national institutions and within the nation6state de.ined by its terr itory

and the control o. its $o$ulations- The e'$hasis in this body o. literature re'ains on so*ereinty as a .or'al, de jure $ro$erty whose e..icacy to a lare extent is

deri*ed .ro' bein externally reconized by other states as both so*erein and leiti'ate- This takin e..ecti*e so*ereinty .or ranted is ;uestioned by #te$hen

(rasner F1???G in his in.luential work, #o*ereinty: &ranized %y$ocracy- (rasner shows how international so*ereinty and the $rinci$les o. noninter*ention are

bein breached in nu'erous ways by i'$osition as well as aree'ent, but in his account, so*ereinty re'ains inherently linked to territory and the state $ower o.

states- 7t see's that so*ereinty cannot be i'ained inde$endently o. the state- This *olu'e ;uestions the ob*iousness o. the state6territory6so*ereinty link- 7n tune

with a line o. constructi*ist scholarshi$ in 7nternational )elations theory Fe--, (ratochwill 1?ICN )uie 1??3N Biersteker and eber 1??CG we conce$tualize the

territorial state and so*ereinty as social constructions- urther'ore, we suest to shi.t the round .or our understandin o. so*ereinty .ro' issues o. territory and

external reconition by states, toward issues o. internal constitution o. so*erein $ower within states throuh the exercise o. *iolence o*er bodies and $o$ulations- 7n

the Philosophy of Right, %eel re'arks that durin the .eudal 'onarchy o. earlier ti'es, the state certainly had external so*ereinty, but internally, neither the'onarch nor the state was so*erein F%eel O1I21P 1??1, 31


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historically continent and $eculiar outco'e o. the e*olution o. the 'odern state syste' in uro$e since the est6$halian $eace in 1C4I- The disci"line of

International R elations has .or decades assumed states to %e both normal, that is, with de facto

leiti'ate control o. their $o$ulations and territory, and identical, that is, .ith similar interests,

strategies, and ex$ected $atterns o. action-2 To beco'e a nor'al so*erein state with nor'al citizens continues to be a $ower.ul ideal, releasin considerable

creati*e enery, and e*en 'ore re$ressi*e .orce, $recisely because its realization $resu$$osed the disci$linin and subordination o. other .or's o. authority e

suest that so*ereignty o. the state is an as"iration that seeks to create itself in the .ace o. internally

.ra'ented, une*enly distributed and un$redictable con.iurations o. $olitical authority that exercise

'ore or less leiti'ate *iolence in a territory So*ereign "o.er, whether exercised by a state, in the

na'e o. the nation, or by a local des$otic $ower or co''unity court, is al.ays a tentati*e and unsta%le"ro>ect .hose efficacy and leiti'acy de"end on re"eated $er.or'ances o. *iolence and a will to

rule- These "erformances can be s"ectacular and "u%lic, secret and menacing, and also can a$$ear asscienti.ic/technical rationalities o. 'anae'ent and $unish'ent o. bodies Althouh the 'eanins and .or's o. such $er.or'ances o. so*ereinty always are

historically s$eci.ic, they are, howe*er , always constructing their "u%lic authority through a ca"acity for *isitin*iolence on hu'an bodies-

continued

The secret o. so*ereinty see's, in other words, still to be de.ined in the tension between the will to arbitrary *iolence and the existence o. bodies that can be killed

but also can resist so*erein $ower, i. nothin else by the 'ere .act o. the si'$le li.e .orce they contain- 7. so*ereign "o.er originates in

ecessi*e and exce$tional *iolence that .ants nothing or sees nothin beyond its own bene.it or

$leasure, its ob9ect, %ut also its ultimate resistance, is .ound in the si'$le life of %odies that desires nothing %eyond itself and the si'$le 'o'ents o. $leasure o. e*eryday li.e- This .unda'ental

e'beddedness o. so*ereinty in the body was at the center o. "eores BatailleLs ex$loration o. the

conce$t and its 'eanin in the 'odern world- To Bataille, so*ereignty is not 'erely an archaic .or' o.

$ower and subordination but articulated 'ore .unda'entally in attitudes, or acts, %eyond the realm of

utility and calculation- Ei.e beyond utility is the do'ain o. so*ereinty FBataille 1??1, 1?IG-I #o*erein

en9oy'ent is excessi*e and beyond the needs o. those en9oyin 6 so*ereign co''and does not

calculate minutely .hat it .ants, %ut inad*ertently re$roduces obedience qua its *ery esture o.

disregard of danger and death F22


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$er%erus 1N$ Shell &ink -* !olicy 6ff/u$hea*als .ollowin orld ar 7, #ch'ittLs work on the $olitical as an aonistic relation between .riends and .oes F#ch'itt O1?32P 1?HCG was dee$ly ske$tical o. $arlia'entary de'ocracy ando. rationalist or idealist notions o. 9ustice that in his *iew basically relied on only su$er.icially secularised 8hristian ideas o. 'ercy and sal*ation- 7nstead, #ch'itt $ro$osed the %obbesiandecisionist aru'ent that law does not re.lect the nor's o. a society but rather the will, the .ortitude and authority o. those who decide what is law- or a leal order to 'ake sense, a nor'alsituation 'ust exist, and he is so*erein who de.initely decides whether this nor'al situation actually exists F#ch'itt 1?Iects

that inad*ertently $resu$$ose and "roduce large num%ers of $oor , marginaliAed, or ethnic others as outsiders, $eo$le who are not yet ready to beco'e citizens or included in the true $olitical6cultural co''unity- The state .inds itsel. in constant co'$etition with other centers o.

so*ereinty that dis$ense *iolence as well as 9ustice with i'$unity66cri'inal ans, $olitical 'o*e'ents or ;uasi6autono'ous $olice .orces that each try to assert their

clai's to so*ereinty- 7n such situations, the state is not the natural and self;e*ident center and oriin o. so*ereinty,

%ut one a'on se*eral so*ereign %odies that tries to assert itself u"on the %odies of asylu' seekers,=terrorists, or 'ere cri'inals-



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Act 2. The Cutting.

)Sacrifice the 16$ Se*ere its head, flay its cor"se, and .ear its skin

Sacrificial theater offers a moment of transfiguration Risk this intimate encounter .ith

death to gi*e your life meaning %eyond mere eistence and duration

Liran Razinsky 2009 [The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009]

Thus we see that the stakes are high. What is at stake is the attempt of the subject to grasp itself in totality. This attempt necessitates bringing death into the account,

but death itself hampers this very attempt. One never dies in the first person. Returning to Bataille, why does he believe sacrifice to be a solution to Hegel’s

fundamental paradox? For him, it answers the requirements of the human, for Man meets death face to face in the sacrifice, he sojourns with it, and yet, at the same

time, he preserves his life. In sacrifice, says Bataille, man destroys the animal within him and establishes his human truth as a “being unto death” (he uses

Heidegger’s term). Sacrifice provides a clear manifestation of man’s fundamental negativity, in the form of death (Bataille, “Hegel” 335-36; 286). The

sacrificer both destroys and survives. Moreover, in the sacrifice, death is approached voluntarily by

Man. In this way the paradox is overcome, and yet remains open. We can approach death and yetremain alive, but, one might ask, is it really death that we encountered, or did we merely fabricate a

simulacrum? Bataille insists elsewhere, however, that sacrifice is not a simulacrum, not a mere

subterfuge. In the sacrificial ritual, a real impression of horror is cast upon the spectators. Sacrifice

burns like a sun, spreading radiation our eyes can hardly bear, and calls for the negation of

individuals as such (“The Festival” 313; 215). We did not fool death; we are burned in its fire.

Bataille’s idea of the sacrifice also addresses Freud’s paradox. It might be impossible to imagine our own death directly, but it is possible to imagine it with the aid of some mediator, to meet death through an other’s death. Yet on some level this other’s death must be our own as well

for it to be effective, and indeed this is the case, says Bataille. He stresses the element of identification: “In the sacrifice, the sacrificer identifies

himself with the animal that is struck down dead. And so he dies in seeing himself die” (“Hegel” 336; 287). “There is no sacrifice,”

writes Denis Hollier, “unless the one performing it identifies, in the end, with the victim” (166). Thus

it is through identification, through otherness that is partly sameness,that a solution is achieved. If it were us, we would die in the

act. If it were a complete other, it would not, in any way, be our death. Also noteworthy is Bataille’s stress on the involvement of sight: “and so he dies in seeing himself die” (“Hegel” 336;

287), which brings him close to Freud’s view of the nature of the problem, for Freud insists on the visual, recasting the problem as one of spectatorship, imagining, perceiving. Bataille’s

description recapitulates that of Freud, but renders it positive. Yes, we remain as a spectator, but it is essential that we do so. Without it, we cannot be said to have met death. Significantly,

meeting death is a need, not uncalled-for. We must meet death, and we must remain as spectators.

Thus it is through identification and through visual participation in the dying that a solution is achieved,

accompanied by the critical revaluation of values, which renders the meeting with death crucial for

“humanness.” Note that both possibilities of meeting death—in the sacrificial-ritual we have just

explored, and in theatre or art, to which we now turn—are social.

$ontinued

Thus Freud’s text, although it insists on the irrepresentability of death, actually offers, unintentionally perhaps, a possible way out of the paradox through turning to

the other. Death perhaps cannot be looked at directly, but it can be grasped sideways, indirectly,vicariously through a mirror, to use Perseus’s ancient trick against Medusa. The introduction of the

other, both similar to and different from oneself, into the equation of death helps break out of the

Cartesian circle with both its incontestable truth and its solipsism and affirmation of oneself. The safety

that theater provides, of essentially knowing that we will remain alive, emerges as a kind of

requirement for our ability to really identify with the other. In that, it paradoxically enables us to really

get a taste of death. Bataille radicalizes that possibility. Although Freud deems the estrangement of death from psychic life a problem, as we have seenand shall see, theater is not a solution for him. With Bataille however, theater emerges as a much more compelling alternative. Again, it is a matter of a delicate

nuance, but a nuance that makes all the difference. The idea common to both authors—that we can meet death through the other and yet remain alive—is ambiguous.

One can lay stress on that encounter or on the fact of remaining alive. 11 Freud SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009 75 Looking Death in the Eyes: Freud and

Bataille tends to opt for the second possibility, but his text can also be read as supporting the first. The benefit in bringing Freud and Bataille together is that it

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invites us to that second reading. An Encounter with Death Death in Freud is often the death of the other. Both the fear of death and the death wish are often focused

on the other as their object. But

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almost always it is as though through the discussion of the other Freud were trying to keep death at bay. But along with Bataille, we can take this other more

seriously. Imagining our own death might be impossible, yet we can still get a glimpse of death when it is an other that dies. In one passage in his text, the death ofthe other seems more explicitly a crucial point for Freud as well—one passage where death does not seem so distant. Freud comments on the attitude of primeval

Man to death, as described above—namely that he wishes it in others but ignores it in himself. “But there was for him one case in which the two opposite attitudes

towards death collided,” he continues. It occurred when primeval man saw someone who belonged to him die—his wife, his child, his friend […]. Then, in his pain,

he was forced to learn that one can die, too, oneself, and his whole being revolted against the admission. (“Thoughts” 293) Freud goes on to explain that the loved

one was at once part of himself, and a stranger whose death pleased primeval man. It is from this point, Freud continues, that philosophy, psychology and religion

sprang. 12 I have described elsewhere (Razinsky, “A Struggle”) how Freud’s reluctance to admit the importance of death quickly undermines this juncture of the

existential encounter with death by focusing on the emotional ambivalence of primeval man rather than on death itself. However, the description is there and is very

telling. Primeval man witnessed death, and “his whole being revolted against the admission.” ”Man could no longer keep death at a distance, for he had tasted it in

his pain about the dead” (Freud, “Thoughts” 294). Once again, it is through the death of the other that man comes to grasp death. Once again, we have that special

admixture of the other being both an other and oneself that facilitates the encounter with death. Something of myself must be in the other in order for me to see his

death as relevant to myself. Yet his or her otherness, which means my reassurance of my survival, is no less crucial, for if it were not present, there would be no

acknowledgement of death, one’s own death always being, says Freud, one’s blind spot. 13 Liran Razinsky SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009 76 I

mentioned before Heidegger’s grappling with a problem similar to Bataille’s paradox. It is part of Heidegger’s claim, which he shares with Freud, that one’s death is

unimaginable. In a famous section Heidegger mentions the possibility of coming to grasp death through the death of the other but dismisses it, essentially since the

other in that case would retain its otherness: the other’s death is necessarily the other’s and not mine (47:221-24). Thus we return to the problem we started with—

that of the necessary subject-object duality in the process of the representation of death. Watching the dead object will no more satisfy me than imagining myself as

an object, for the radical difference of both from me as a subject will remain intact. But the possibility that seems to emerge from the discussion of Freud and Bataille

is that in-between position of the person both close and distant, both self and other, which renders true apprehension of death possible, through real identification. 14 As Bataille says, regarding the Irish Wake custom where the relatives drink and dance before the body of the deceased: “It is the death of an other, but in such

instances, the death of the other is always the image of one’s own death” (“Hegel” 341; 291). Bataille speaks of the dissolution of the subject-object boundaries in

sacrifice, of the “fusion of beings” in these moments of intensity (“The Festival” 307-11; 210-13; La Littérature 215; 70). Possibly, that is what happens to primeval

man when the loved one dies and why his “whole being” is affected. He himself is no longer sure of his identity. Before, it was clear—there is the other, the object,

whom one wants dead, and there is oneself, a subject. The show and the spectators. Possibly what man realized before the cadaver of his loved one was that he

himself is also an object, taking part in the world of objects, and not only a subject. When he understood this, it seems to me, he understood death. For in a sense a

subject subjectively never dies. Psychologically nothing limits him, 15 while an object implies limited existence: limited by other objects that interact with it,

limited in space, limited in being the thought-content of someone else. Moreover, primeval man understood that he is the same for other subjects as other subjects are

for him—that is, they can wish him dead or, which is pretty much the same, be indifferent to his existence. The encounter made primeval man step out of the

psychological position of a center, transparent to itself, and understand that he is not only a spirit but also a thing, an object, not only a spectator; this is what really

shakes him. 16 The Highest Stake in the Game of Living Thus far we have mainly discussed our first two questions: the limitation in imagining death and the

possible solution through a form SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009 77 Looking Death in the Eyes: Freud and Bataille of praxis, in either a channeled, ritualized

or a spontaneous encounter with the death of an other, overcoming the paradox of the impossibility of representation by involving oneself through deep

identification. We shall now turn to our third question, of the value of integrating death into our thoughts. We have seen that Bataille’s perspective continuously

brings up the issue of the value of approaching death. The questions of whether we can grasp death and, if we can, how, are not merely abstract or neutral ones. The

encounter with death, that we now see is possible, seems more and more to emerge as possessing a positive value, indeed as fundamental. What we shall now

examine is Freud’s attempt to address that positive aspect directly, an attempt that betrays, however, a deep ambivalence. As mentioned, Freud’s text is very

confused, due to true hesitation between worldviews (see Razinsky, “A Struggle”). One manifestation of this confusion is Freud’s position regarding this cultural-

conventional attitude: on the one hand he condemns it, yet on the other hand he accepts it as natural and inevitable. For him, it results to some extent from death’s

exclusion from unconscious thought (“Thoughts” 289, 296-97). Death cannot be represented and is therefore destined to remain foreign to our life. 17 But then

Freud suddenly recognizes an opposite necessity: not to reject death but to insert it into life. Not to distance ourselves from it, but to familiarize ourselves with it:

But this attitude [the cultural-conventional one] of ours towards death has a powerful effect on our lives.Life is impoverished, it loses in interest, when the highest stake in the game of living, life itself, may

not be risked. It becomes as shallow and empty as, let us say, an American flirtation, in which it is

understood from the first that nothing is to happen, as contrasted with a Continental love-affair in which

both partners must constantly bear its serious consequences in mind. Our emotional ties, the unbearable

intensity of our grief, make us disinclined to court danger for ourselves and for those who belong to us.

We dare not contemplate a great many undertakings which are dangerous but in fact

indispensable, such as attempts at artificial flight, expeditions to distant countries or experiments with

explosive substances. We are paralyzed by the thought of who is to take the son’s place with his

mother, the husband’s with his wife, the father’s with his children, if a disaster should occur. Thus the

tendency to exclude death from our calculations in life brings in its train many other renunciations

and exclusions. Yet the motto of the Hanseatic League ran: ‘Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse.’(“It is necessary to sail the seas, it is not necessary to live.”) (“Thoughts” 290-91) Readers unfamiliar with Freud’s paper areprobably shaking their heads in disbelief. Is it Freud who utters these words? Indeed, the oddity of this citation cannot be over-estimated. It seems not to belong to

Freud’s Liran Razinsky SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009 78 thought. One can hardly find any other places where he speaks of such an intensification of

life and fascination with death, and praises uncompromising risk-taking and the neglect of realistic considerations. In addition to being unusual, the passage itself is

somewhat unclear. 18 The examples—not experimenting with explosive substances—seem irrelevant and unconvincing. The meaning seems to slide. It is not quite

clear if the problem is that we do not bring death into our calculations, as the beginning seems to imply, or that, rather, we actually bring it into our calculations too

much, as is suggested at the end But what I wish to stress here is that the passage actually opposes what Freud says in the preceding passages, where he describes the

cultural-conventional attitude and speaks of our inability to make death part of our thoughts. In both the current passage and later passages he advocates including

death in life, but insists, elsewhere in the text, that embracing death is impossible. In a way, he is telling us that we cannot accept the situation where death is

constantly evaded. Here again Bataille can be useful in rendering Freud’s position more intelligible. He seems to articulate better than Freud the delicate balance,

concerning the place of death in psychic life, between the need to walk on the edge, and the flight into normalcy and safety. As I asserted above, where in Freud there

are contradictory elements, in Bataille there is a dialectic. Bataille, as we have seen, presents the following picture: It might be that, guided by our instincts, we tend

to avoid death. But we also seem to have a need to intersperse this flight with occasional peeps into the domain of death. When we invest all of our effort in

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surviving, something of the true nature of life evades us. It is only when the finite human being goes beyond the limitations “necessary for his preservation,” that he

“asserts the nature of his being” (La Littérature 214; 68). The approaches of both Bataille and Freud are descriptive as well as normative. Bataille describes a

tendency to distance ourselves from death and a tendency to get

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close to it. But he also describes Man’s need to approach death from a normative point of view, in order to establish his humanity: a life that is only fleeing death has

less value. Freud carefully describes our tendency to evade death and, in the paragraph under discussion, calls for the contrary approach. This is stressed at the end of

the article, where he encourages us to “give death the place in reality and in our thoughts which is its due” (“Thoughts” 299). Paradoxically, it might be what will

make life “more tolerable for us once again” (299). But since Freud also insists not only on a tendency within us to evade death, but also on the impossibility of

doing otherwise, and on how death simply cannot be the content of our thought, his sayings in favor of bringing death close are confusing and confused. Freud does

not give us a reason for the need to approach death. He says that life loses in interest, but surely this cannot be the result of abstaining from carrying out “experiments

with explosive substances.” In addition, his ideas on the shallowness of a life without death do not seem to evolve from anything in his approach. It is along the lines

offered by Bataille’s worldview that I wish to interpret them here. Sacrifice, Bataille says, brings together life in its fullness

and the annihilation of life. We are not mere spectators in the sacrificial ritual. Our participation is

much more involved. Sacrificial ritual creates a temporary, exceptionally heightened state of living. “The

sacred horror,” he calls the emotion experienced in sacrifice: “the richest and most agonizing

experience.” It “opens itself , like a theater curtain, on to a realm beyond this world” and every limited

meaning is transfigured in it (“Hegel” 338; 288). Bataille lays stress on vitality. Death is not

humanizing only on the philosophical level, as it is for Hegel or Kojève. Bataille gives it an emotional

twist. The presence of death, which he interprets in a more earthly manner, is stimulating, vivifying,

intense. Death and other related elements (violence) bring life closer to a state where individuality

melts, the mediation of the intellect between us and the world lessens, and life is felt at its fullest.

Bataille calls this state, or aspect of the world, immanence or intimacy: “immanence between man andthe world, between the subject and the object” (“The Festival” 307-311; 210-213). Moments of intensity

are moments of excess and of fusion of beings (La Littérature 215; 70). They are a demand of life itself, even though they sometimes

seem to contradict it. Death is problematic for us, but it opens up for us something in life. This line of thought seems to accord very well with the passage in Freud’stext with which we are dealing here, and to extend it. Life without death is life lacking in intensity, an impoverished, shallow and empty life. Moreover, the

repression of death is generalized and extended: “the tendency to exclude death from our calculations in life brings in its train many other renunciations and

exclusions.” Freud simply does not seem to have the conceptual tools to discuss these ideas. The intuition is even stronger in the passage that follows, where Freud

discusses war (note that the paper is written in 1915): When war breaks out, he says, this cowardly, conservative, risk-rejecting attitude is broken at once. War

eliminates this conventional attitude to death. “Death could no longer be Liran Razinsky SubStance #119, Vol. 38, no. 2, 2009 80 denied. We are forced to

believe in it. People really die. . . . Life has, indeed, become interesting again; it has recovered its full content” (“Thoughts” 291). Thus what is needed is more than

the mere accounting of consequences, taking death into consideration as a future possibility. What is needed is exposure to death, a sanguineous imprinting of death

directly on our minds, through the “accumulation of deaths” of others. Life can only become vivid, fresh, and interesting when death is witnessed directly. Both

authors speak of a valorization of death, and in both there is a certain snobbery around it. While the masses follow the natural human tendency to avoid death, like

the American couple or those who are busy with the thought of “who is to take our place,” the individualists do not go with the herd, and by allowing themselves to

approach death, achieve a fuller sense of life, neither shallow nor empty. 19 Yet again, Freud’s claims hover in the air, lacking any theoretical background. Bataille

supplies us with such background. He contests, as we have seen, the sole focus on survival. Survival, he tells us, has a price. It limitsour life. As if there were an inherent tension between preserving life and living it. Freud poses the same tension here. Either we are totally absorbed by the wishto survive, to keep life intact, and therefore limit our existence to the bare minimum, or else we are willing to risk it to some extent in order to make it more

interesting, more vital and valuable. Our usual world, according to Bataille, is characterized by the duration of things, by the “future” function, rather than by the

present. Things are constituted as separate objects in view of future time. This is one reason for the threat of death: it ruins value where

value is only assured through duration. It also exposes the intimate order of life that is continuously hidden from us in the order of thingswhere life runs its normal course. Man “is afraid of death as soon as he enters the system of projects that is the order of things” (“The Festival” 312; 214).

Sacrifice is the opposite of production and accumulation. Death is not so much a negation of life, as

it is an affirmation of the intimate order of life, which is opposed to the normal order of things and is

therefore rejected. “The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life […]. Death reveals life in itsplenitude” (309; 212). Bataille’s “neutral image of life” is the equivalent of Freud’s “shallow and empty” life. What Freud denounces is a life

trapped within the cowardly economical system of considerations. It is precisely the economy of value and future-oriented

calculations that stand in opposition to the insertion of death into life. “Who is to take the son’s place with his mother,the husband’s with his wife, the father’s with his children.” Of course there is an emotional side to the story, but it is this insistence on replacement that leaves us on

the side of survival and stops us sometimes from living the present. “The need for duration,” in the words of Bataille, “conceals

life from us” (“The Festival” 309; 212). For both authors, when death is left out, life “as it is” is false

and superficial. Another Look at Speculation Both authors, then, maintain that if elements associated

with death invade our life anyway, we might as well succumb and give them an ordered place in our

thoughts. The necessity to meet death is not due to the fact that we do not have a choice. Rather,

familiarization with death is necessary if life is to have its full value, and is part of what makes us

human. But the tension between the tendencies—to flee death or to embrace it—is not easily resolved, and the evasive tendency alwaystries to assert itself. As seen above, Bataille maintains that in sacrifice, we are exposed through death to other dimensions of life. But the

‘Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse.’-motto of Hanseatic League 2J


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exposure, he adds, is limited, for next comes another phase, performed post-hoc, after the event: the ensuing horror and the intensity are too high

to maintain, and must be countered. Bataille speaks of the justifications of the sacrifice given by cultures, which inscribe it in the general order

of things.



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$er%erus BCel"ing !u" 1N$ Shell 6ltB7!D

6ct E The Feast

Sacrificing the goods of the 16$ enacts li%eration, challenging the utilitarian logic that

culminates in etinction

Jesse Goldhammer 2005 [Lecturer/Instructor, Institute of Government Studies, U.C. Berkeley, The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought p. 10-14]In chapter 4,1 examine how the renegade surrealist Georges Bataille used the sacrificial ideas developed by his predecessors to challenge the basic premise of the French discourse on sacrificial violence. Although Bataille

agrees with Maistre, Sor,el, and the French revolutionaries t hat sacrificial violence can be adapted to modern political settings, Bataille disputes the hi storical association of sacrifice with political

foundation and authority. Maistre, Sorel, and the French revolutionaries sought to place sacrifice in the service of moral revolutions in order to ground new forms of polit ics and legitimate power.

For Bataille, however, human liberation requires not better politics, achieved through violent political foundation, but

rather the sacrificial dismantling of the constitutive elements of modern political activity. Taking aim at liberalism

and utilitarianism in particular, Bataille pursues an idea of revolutionary sacrifice that liberates human beings

from all forms of servility, including morality authority, identity, community-the whole modern political enterprise. Bataille argues that revolutionary liberation requires the

retrieval of sacrificial activities that subver t rational, useful, and productive modes of thought and action-anything that

transforms human beings into things. Rather than producing something that the sacrificer can use, such as

power rendered sacred, Bataillian sacrifice generates an ecstatic experience of self-loss. In Bataille's vie sacrificemust free humanity from politics, not support, establish, or reestablish it. Bataffle thus envisions that unproductive sacrificial activities will give birth to ametapoitical community paradoxically defined by its permanent lack of foundation. In this way Bataille uses the works of Maistre and Sorel to repudiate the basic assumptions of the French

discourse on sacrificial violence. Batalile's radical reformulating of political sacrifice reveals what is at stake in using sacrificial violence to found politics. During the t93os, Bataille increasingly

distanced sacrificial practices from the realm of politics because he was fearful that founding violence would generate fascism rather than freedom. On the eve of World War II, Bataille extended

this logic as far as it would go, imagining that sacrificial violence woul d achieve ecstatic liberation if it were practiced in the bedroom or on and through the text. Although Bataille never evinces

any reticence about violence or cruelty I argue that he ultimately realized that sacrifice practiced in either a French revolutionary, Maistrian, or Sorelian fashion led to tyranny. Batallle's

contribution to the French discourse on sacrificial violence is thus ironical. On one hand, he pushes the id ea of sacrificial violence to its logical conclusion by arguing that the sacrifice of another

being for the sake of political change cannot generate anything useful or productive. On the other hand, the legendary sacrificial crime -to borrow again from Machiavelli-permanently alters the

sacrificers as well as the basis upon which they can form a community with others. Thus, Bataille recognized that seeking political change through sacrifice permanently destabilizes the basic

elements of modern Western politics. Although Bataille lays bare the risk of using sacrificial violence to found politics, he also succumbs to the same temptation as his predecessors who

condemned the use of sacrifice by others, but wished to harness it for t hemselves. Bataille criticizes the French revolutionaries, Maistre, and Sorel for placing sacrifice in the service of

authoritarian structures of power. Like the other members of the discourse on sacrificial violence, however, Bataille never abandons t he idea that sacrificial violence is a sacred, spectacular form

of bloodshed that plays a vital role in the formation of human communality. During the Cold War, Bataille uncharacteristically developed this position into a quasi-scientific, general theory of

political economy Representing a systematic critique of utilitarianism, this postwar theoretical work illustrates Bataille's effort to find contemporary examples of sacrificial loss that

will save the modern world from the dangers of political sclerosis and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. Insetting sacrifice to work, Bataille contradicts his prewar claims about the absolute uselessness of sacrifice. At the same time, he also demonstrates the sublime appeal-the attraction and danger-of

adapting ancient ideas about violence and loss to modern political conditions. It was precisely this particular quality of sacrificial violence that originally attracted the French

revolutionaries,.leading them to inaugurate the discourse on sacrificial violence. Defining sacrifice is difficult because of the ambiguity inherent in violence. Vi olence is generally defined interms of physical injury or harm to subjects and objects. Violence directed against h umans involves injury to or constraint of the body and mind. Against objects, violence entails damage or

destruction. Metaphoric violence, the broadest aspect of the definition, includes innumerable symbolic, culturally specific notions of harm. The modern meaning of violence is limited and,

unfortunately, confused by the fact that it is distinguished from "force," which today is often used to mean legiti mate violence. Because there are various, irreconcilable concepts of right, there is

also irresolvable debate about the difference between force and violence. In the ancient world, however, the concept of violence retained the ambiguity eschewed by the modern world, Vi

"force," is the root of the Latin vi/coda, "violence," collapsing the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate bloodshed. I/jo lentus denotes "acting with (unreasonable) force towards others,

violent, savage, aggressive."' In this case, "unreasonable" describes not the illicitness or illegality of a violent act, but rather its disproportionate, extraordinary; or distinctive quality: This

definition of plo/cows is negative and thus departs from the more ambiguous meaning of vLs, which retains a positive quality. In addition to signifying the use of physical strength to compel or

constrain vigorously as well as the unlawful use of force, pbs also implies binding force or authority.' J/ls thus encompasses the essential uncertainty of violence, the fact that it can be "good" or

"bad," depending on the context. A subcategory of violence, sacrifice is etymologically an act that renders holy or sacred. If rendering sacred entails a process of setting apart from the quotidian

or profane, then sacrificial violence is a paradoxical p ractice: it is a form of violence capable of b reaking and forming distinctions or erasing and drawing boundaries. This definition i s

counterintuitive because the modern view of violence exclusively associates it with the breaking down of social distinctions, chaos, mayhem, disruption, anarchy, loss of control, and the like. In

contrast, sacrificial violence involves a double movement; it transgresses limits in order to inscribe or reinscribe them. 'What is more, this is not necessarily a conservative operation. The

purpose of sacrifice is not limited to the restoration of a particular order, limit, boundary, or status quo. The functionof sacrifice is contingent upon how it "makes sacred." Some sacred things are pure, elevated, divine, majestic, and absolute; others are impure, debased, demonic, abject, and inassimilable. When

violentia denotes the capacity to transgress, pollute, or profane things that are pure or sacred, it captures only the negative aspect of the violent dou-ble movement of sacrifice.Viewed from the

standpoint of force or legitimate violence, sacrifice holds the potential to generate a positive sacredness, which mimics the

legitimacy of political power. In this respect, sacrifice describes a variety of practices that transform the negativity of violence into something socioculturallyacceptable. Like any other social phenomenon, violence has normal and exceptional manifestations. Socially acceptable violence does not call attention to itself or to its author; it is woven into

the fabric of everyday life. Exceptional, spectacular; or transgressive violence creates a tear in that fabric and, in so doing, sets its authors and their victims apart from their fellow humanbeings.This separation by dint of violence is the essence of the sacrificial mechanism and the reason why such bloodshed is considered sacred. A process of collective destruction, sacrificial

violence is often ritualized or culturally prefigured. Although this book is concerned with the meanings of human sacrifice in a modern political context, sacrifice has, more often than not,

involved animal, vegetable, and inanimate objects. Ritual sacrificial practices and their meanings are typically inherited from the past and are usually invoked only in particular circumstances. As

the very term implies, ritual sacrifice is anticipated, orchestrated, and socially acceptable; like Mass or p otlatch, it is a symbolic form of violence that conforms to a regularized set of

expectations. The participants in the ritual know what kind of violence will take place; they know how that violence will be conducted, and by whom; most important, they know whit category of

victim (pridner ofwar, woman, racial or religious minority, etc.) will be selected. Although the actual function ofritual sacrifice may remain a mystery to those who practice it, its total meaning is

predetermined. Thus, ritual sacrifice can be compared to a game of chance: the rules may not be written down, bu t they are fixed. These rules govern the selection ofthe victim, even though the

specific victim and the actual outcome remain unknown. Finajly, like games of chance, sacrificial rites can have various outcomes, a reflection of their "success" or "failure?' Sacrifice is not

always ritually prescribed. Two factors separate spontaneous sacrificial violence from its ritual cousin: the absence of agreement about sacrificial legitimacy and procedure. Without ritual

prescription-knowing whom, when, and how to kill-communities that spontaneously sacrifice inevitably find themselves deeply divided about the reasons for and methods of killing. Indeed, in

such cases, sacrifice may simply heighten communal conflict. Whifr ritual sacrifice expresses the rigidity and hierarchy of the soci al order that it serves, spontaneous sacrifice has no specific

allegiance to any set of cultural symbol s or social distinctions. Spontaneous sacrificial violence is potentially revolutionary when it symbolically manifests' ociocuIrural meanings and symbols

that compete with dominant, traditional ones. Disconnected from an orchestrated and authorized set of practices, spontaneous sacrifice can, through violence, open a

space of contestation that serves to challenge status quo views and practices. It is a telltale sign that a



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community in crisis is pregnant with a new political order.



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@ssential 9ual !ur"ose 5locks

2N$ ? !u"s of #ar

The 6ff is all %ark and no no %ite, chasing militarism like a dog running after a car They

ha*e "rouced a terri%le yel"ing, %ut e*en if they caught the state it is dou%tful they .ould

no .hat to do The 16$:s acti*ism mirrors the "roducti*ity the state, and its indignation

at militarism reinforces its a.ful fascination

Re>ect the role of the %allot as aligning yourself .ith the "ro"er "olitical discourse, and

instead *ote negati*e to theatrically dismem%er the aff ?ffer this de%ate to useless

sacrifice rather than "olitical "roduct*ity, gi*ing u" the false security "ro*ided %y the

li%eral discoruses of a""easement 'omo sacer is not here to %e sa*ed in this de%ate, %ut

*oting negati*e allo.s a moment of the sacred communication that is the "rereuisite to the

*alue of %oth life and de%ate

2N$ ? $er%erus

The affirmati*e "romises "eace and security through reigning in the desta%iliAing ecesses

of 6merican "o.er 5ut the state is *iolent ecess, and the guarantee of sta%ility is >ust

another form of "ermanent .ar The affirmati*e role;"lays the state, simulating its

so*ereignty and e*en "romises you sur*i*al as the cost of >oining in their ser*ility5ut you are so*ereign in this de%ate, and you should use your %allot to theatrically

dismem%er the aff This sacrifice releases us from utilitarian logic of good accumulation

,and cutting off the head of the 16$ fractures the lines of authority %inding us in terror to

the state ote negati*e as an act of so*ereign eu%erance, em%raced the sacred

communication that is the "rereuisite to the *alue of %oth life and de%ate



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!erm 2nc -5oth/

$ross a""ly the link de%ate, .hich "ro*es .hy their ser*ility to the state means they can:t

sol*e our alt

?ur alternati*e se*eres the head of the 16$, .hich makes the "erm se*erance The

alternat*e:s sacrificing of the goods of the 16$ is mutually eclusi*e .ith em%racing the

aff This is a *oting issue %ecause it ske.s the sacrificial game de%ate %y making all

criticism of the aff im"ossi%le

The aff can:t se*ere discourse, that is crucial to kritik ground

The aff claims to guarante sur*i*al, .hich means the "erm is still tra""ed in utility

@tend 4oldhammer and RaAinski

@*en if the "erm is legitimate, it %ecomes >ust another rational discourse of the good

Sacrifice reuires an intimate encounter .ith death, and the "erm renounces the dangerous

"assions of eistence .hich are necessary for the alt to sol*e



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!erm 2nc -5oth/

The "erm links to all of their offense and doesn:t sol*e our alt

Sacrifice com%ined .ith the "rogram of the 16$ is the .orst of %oth .orlds, "roducing a

"olitics of mass murder and annihilaton

Jesse Goldhammer 2005[Lecturer/Instructor, Institute of Government Studies, U.C. Berkeley, The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence

in Modern French Thought p. 189-191]

It is true that The Accursed Share revisits eroticism and sovereignty, topics that led Bataille away from politics in the 193os. After the war, however, Bataille treated

these concepts politically. For instance, in the epilogue of The History of Eroticism, Batail le speculates that human beings will be driven to a

"catastrophic war" unless they find outlets, such as eroticism, for their excess energy. Similarly, in

"Sovereignty" Bataille argues that "sovereignty is no longer alive except in the perspectives of

communism."" In the case of both eroticism and sovereignty Bataille is expressly looking for instances of

unproductive expenditure or sacrifice, which may save human beings from their dangerously

compulsive,

Strange Bataille K

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