Neg - Neg vs K Affs Supplement - Michigan 7 2023 CFMP

Neg v K Affs Supplement—CFMLP
Lots of work from lots of folks to give credit to, like half the lab contributed to this file in some way or another. Thanks to all who did!
Mostly neg stuff vs K affs, including some updates to go for various different off-case positions, as well as some specific case stuff versus some of the K lab affs. There are also some updates for the logistics aff and the queer desire K, because it made more sense to put those here than in the politics updates.
Misc Updates
Academy K
Link—Baudrillard
The 1AC’s politics that have been forwarded into academia derive from a strange sense of posthumous liberation – They reduce <their impact/theory> into a cinema – to watch and to comment on which turns case because their analysis of history through their lens fails - this is why the 1AC describes themselves as a(n) “<insert>” that merely creates a future futile possibility for change.
Baudrillard 81 (Jean Baudrillard, xx-xx-1981, Simulacra and Simulation: History: A Retro Scenario, pg. 43-44) //damien jiu
In a violent and contemporary period of history (let's say between the two world wars and the cold war), it is myth that invades cinema as imaginary content. It is the golden age of despotic and legendary resurrections. Myth, chased from the real by the violence of history, finds refuge in cinema. Today, it is history itself that invades the cinema according to the same scenario-the historical stake chased from our lives by this sort of immense neutralization, which is dubbed peaceful coexistence on a global level, and pacified monotony on the quotidian level-this history exorcised by a slowly or brutally congealing society celebrates its resurrection in force on the screen, according to the same process that used to make lost myths live again. History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth. It is by virtue of this fact that it takes the place of myths on the screen. The illusion would be to congratulate oneself on this "awareness of history on the part of cinema," as one congratulated oneself on the "entrance of politics into the university." Same misunderstanding, same mystification. The politics that enter the university are those that come from history, a retro politics, emptied of substance and legalized in their superficial exercise, with the air of a game and a field of adventure, this kind of politics is like sexuality or permanent education (or like social security in its time), that is, posthumous liberalization. The great event of this period, the great trauma, is this decline of strong referentials, these death pangs of the real and of the rational that open onto an age of simulation. Whereas so many generations , and particularly the last, lived in the march of history, in the euphoric or catastrophic expectation of a revolution-today one has the impression that history has retreated, leaving behind it an indifferent nebula, traversed by currents, but emptied of references. It is into this void that the phantasms of a past history recede, the panoply of events, ideologies, retro fashions-no longer so much because people believe in them or still place some hope in them, but simply to resurrect the period when at least there was history, at least there was violence (albeit fascist), when at least life and death were at stake. Anything serves to escape this void, this leukemia of history and of politics, this hemorrhage of values-it is in proportion to this distress that all content can be evoked pell-mell, that all previous history is resurrected in bulk-a controlling idea no longer selects, only nostalgia endlessly accumulates: war, fascism, the pageantry of the belle epoque, or the revolutionary struggles, everything is equivalent and is mixed indiscriminately in the same morose and funereal exaltation, in the same retro fascination. There is however a privileging of the immediately preceding era (fascism, war, the period immediately following the war-the innumerable films that play on these themes for us have a closer, more perverse, denser, more confused essence). One can explain it by evoking the Freudian theory of fetishism (perhaps also a retro hypothesis). This trauma (loss of referentials) is similar to the discovery of the difference between the sexes in children, as serious, as profound, as irreversible: the fetishization of an object intervenes to obscure this unbearable discovery, but precisely, says Freud, this object is not just any object, it is often the last object perceived before the traumatic discovery. Thus the fetishized history will preferably be the one immediately preceding our "irreferential" era. Whence the omnipresence of fascism and of war in retro-a coincidence, an affinity that is not at all political; it is naive to conclude that the evocation of fascism signals a current renewal of fascism (it is precisely because one is no longer there, because one is in something else, which is still less amusing, it is for this reason that fascism can again become fascinating in its filtered cruelty, aestheticized by retro). History thus made its triumphal entry into cinema, posthumously (the term historical has undergone the same fate: a "historical'' moment, monument, congress, figure are in this way designated as fossils). Its reinjection has no value as conscious awareness but only as nostalgia for a lost referential. This does not signify that history has never appeared in cinema as a powerful moment, as a contemporary process, as insurrection and not as resurrection. In the "real" as in cinema, there was history but there isn't any anymore. Today, the history that is "given back" to us (precisely because it was taken from us) has no more of a relation to a "historical real'' than neofiguration in painting does to the classical figuration of the real. Neofiguration is an invocation of resemblance, but at the same time the flagrant proof of the disappearance of objects in their very representation: hyperreal. Therein objects shine in a sort of hyperresemblance (like history in contemporary cinema) that makes it so that fundamentally they no longer resemble anything, except the empty figure of resemblance, the empty form of representation. It is a question of life or death: these objects are no longer either living or deadly. That is why they are so exact, so minute, frozen in the state in which a brutal loss of the real would have seized them. All, but not only, those historical films whose very perfection is disquieting: Chinatown, Three Days of the Condor, Barry Lyndon, 1900, All the President's Men, etc. One has the impression of it being a question of perfect remakes, of extraordinary montages that emerge more from a combinatory culture (or Mcluhanesque mosaic), oflarge photo-, kino-, historicosynthesis machines, etc., rather than one of veritable films. Let's understand each other: their quality is not in question. The problem is rather that in some sense we are left completely indifferent. Take The Last Picture Show: like me, you would have had to be sufficiently distracted to have thought it to be an original production from the 1950s: a very good film about the customs in and the atmosphere of the American small town. Just a slight suspicion: it was a little too good, more in tune, better than the others, without the psychological, moral, and sentimental blotches of the films of that era. Stupefaction when one discovers that it is a 1970s film, perfect retro, purged, pure, the hyperrealist restitution of 1950s cinema. One talks of remaking silent films, those will also doubtlessly be better than those of the period. A whole generation of films is emerging that will be to those one knew what the android is to man: marvelous artifacts, without weakness, pleasing simulacra that lack only the imaginary, and the hallucination inherent to cinema. Most of what we see today (the best) is already of this order. Barry Lyndon is the best example: one never did better, one will never do better in ... in what? Not in evoking, not even in evoking, in simulating. All the toxic radiation has been filtered, all the ingredients are there, in precise doses, not a single error
The aff’s commitment to a pedagogical revolution operates in service of capital.
Kline 16 (Kip Kline, professor of education at Lewis University, Baudrillard, Youth, and American Film: Fatal Theory and Education, 2016, pp. 109-17, Rowman and Littlefield) rishabh
Policies and discourse in schools and the general rhetoric around education in the United States suggest that our society tends to value children and adolescents primarily for their economic potential. In itself, this amounts to a kind of violence toward young people. Further, as the previous chapters have argued, films about teenagers often feed on adult anxieties and moral panics about youth and, in turn, they reinforce the idea that youth need to be controlled and should be pushed into conformity. Movies in the third and fourth order of simulacra do this with hyperreal images, convincing simulations of youth as reckless and out-of- control, and Virtuality (e.g., found footage style cinematography). Films of the third and fourth order featuring teen characters have a relationship of reinforcement with the rhetoric and policies that result in violence toward young people and deepen the conflation of the systems of schooling and economics. Critical education scholars, critical pedagogues, and others are committed to highlighting and opposing the rhetorical violence and the more draconian school policies to which young people are subjected in schools. They also provide convincing arguments that demonstrate the ways in which the system operates in the service of capital. However, the responses to these phenomena that their work offers are, from a Baudrillardian view, inefficacious since they are rooted in an outmoded Marxist theory and lean on a commitment to emancipation and liberation through pedagogy. Here I argue, the critical education work that is rooted in the traditions of Marxism and critical theory, though it has been indispensable in terms of locating and critiquing violent discourse and practice with regard to education and youth, also promotes a cruel form of hope in educational institutions as central figures in the reversal of the lamentable current systemic trends. It argues that critical theory and pedagogy provide hope that systems, in particular, education, can be revolutionized. Critical theorists are right to see mainstream schooling as a generator of the affective liquidity leveraging neo-liberalism, but their suggestions for resistance and revolution are less than promising. Modernist projects of critical theory and pedagogy have proven to be mirages. In their place, I argue for a more viable, postmodern hope in the form of fatal theory, fatal strategies, and radical thought. These related ideas from the later portion of Baudrillard’s corpus are applied here to the troublesome discourse about youth that informs the systems in which they move, especially education, which again, is increasingly subservient to other systems (e.g., political, economic). To begin, it should be noted that referring to Baudrillardian concepts as contributing to forms of postmodern hope is a bit precarious given his rejection of the postmodern. Below I discuss, in some detail, Baudrillard’s complex relationship with postmodernity. I also specifically articulate why I have chosen to refer to my application of fatal theory and radical thought to youth and education as an effort toward postmodern hope. Before the full discussion of fatal theory in light of education and youth, I analyze the ways in which certain forms of resistance (which are often taken up by critical theorists in education) are inefficacious in the current state of the world, in late capitalism. Baudrillard’s ideas are central to that argument. Beyond this, I argue that there are two growing and particular kinds of critique in the age of ubiquitous social media that also fail to hit their mark. Snide remarks or “snark” as a reaction to offensive or anti-progressive rhetoric and policy has become an increasingly popular means of garnering online attention through displays of cleverness. Snark is, however, often associated with satire, which can be understood as having affiliation with fatal strategies. So, there is a complicated relationship between Baudrillard’s fatal theory and snark. I explore this relationship below and ultimately argue that snark falls into the category of a form of resistance or critique that gets absorbed into the code. Incredulity is another reaction by leftists and those associated with critical theory to right-wing bigotry, ignorance, and oppression. Again, examples of such reactions are not difficult to locate in social media. It has been an outlet for an accruing amount of ostensive shock, astonishment, and disbelief by progressives in the face of various expressions of anti-progressivism. Like snark, incredulity seems to be a preferred tool for responding to political and social rhetoric to which one is averse. And also like snark, the inherent critique in incredulous reactions is impotent in the late capitalist code. To be clear, when it comes to critical pedagogues and critical theorists with interests in youth and education, it is not the content of their concerns that I find wanting. This is also the case, as noted earlier, with regard to critical media literacy. Critical pedagogy, in general, and critical media literacy, specifically, locate and critique the same systemic violence as a Baudrillardian fatal theory of youth and education. Violent discourse and policies toward young people and their connection to institutions like schools is of deep concern to both critical and fatal theorists. But Baudrillard’s fatal theory focuses more on the level of form than critical theory. And, ultimately, radical thought provides possibilities for resistance that avoid being subsumed by the late capitalist code whereas, the responses of critical theory and critical pedagogy are vulnerable to being incorporated into the code and repackaged as a set of signs to be consumed. Fatal theory/strategies and radical thought are challenging notions within Baudrillard’s corpus and the intent in this chapter is to preserve their provocativeness in my analysis and application to matters of youth and education. In so doing, it is important to admit that this application work will not result in any policy or practice suggestions. Such is not the outcome of the pursuit of fatal strategies and its accompanying radical thought. Rather, their aim is well beyond the level of policy as they seek to push on the negative conditions of the system until it reverses course. Radical thought can be accompanied by what Baudrillard terms “theory fiction” as a way of rendering the world enigmatic, as a means of staying at the margins in order to anticipate the world and its events that he claimed critical thought was lagging behind. 1 Relevant systems with respect to youth and education are already given over to the late capitalist code. The system of schooling, for example, is constantly subject to externally imposed policy changes at both the macro and micro levels. Anecdotes abound in local American schools regarding the rapidity with which new programs are implemented, ostensibly in order to address a wide range of problems including English language learners, the so-called achievement gap, bullying, perceived deficiencies in “social-emotional learning,” childhood obesity. While some of these issues seem to have clear educational components, all of the programs that schools adopt in order to address them fall under the category of what David Labaree has called “the educationalization of social problems.”2 Baudrillard’s radical thought and fatal theory, when translated into this context of the system of schooling in the United States, reject the notion that making headway with these social issues involves the constant adoption of new, “better” programs, replacing last year’s model for ameliorating the achievement gap or creating healthier school lunches with a new “research based” approach. Ultimately the radical thought and postmodern hope that I am arguing for here dismisses altogether the educationalizing of social issues, though not out of insouciance. Rather, the fatal theorist in education understands that the only available options are radical thought and theory fiction, which do offer the hope of potentially flipping the very conditions that allow for the current functioning of the late capitalist system. Baudrillard’s work has been misread as nihilistic. As we saw above, Kellner is convinced of its unequivocal pessimism. "Baudrillard’s nihi- lism is without joy, without energy, without hope for a better future.”3 But Baudrillard himself insisted that fatal theory and radical thought are, indeed, hopeful. ”[O]ne must fight all charges of irresponsibility, nihilism or despair. Radical thought is never depressive. On this point there is a total misunderstanding.”4 In the context of education, there is some amount of hope already in disabusing ourselves of the notion that dialec- tical critique has efficacy within the late capitalist code. But also, hope with regard to youth and education might lie in taking the opposite tack of the critical theorists who react with incredulity to the system working as it is designed to work. The fatal theorist, by contrast, seeks to destabilize through hyperconformity to the system’s expectations. To choose the path of fatal theory and postmodern hope, though, will mean abandoning our projects, even our favored progressive ones, of educationalizing of social problems. As mentioned above, connecting Baudrillard with the notion of "post- modern hope” requires explanation. His connection with postmodemity is complex. His critics, namely Kellner, understood him as unequivocally postmodernist. For those critics, this label meant that he was nihilistic, that he in some sense celebrated the world he was describing. Kellner, who was clearly no admirer of Baudrillard’s centralization of the semiot- ic, went so far as to call him a “sign-fetishist.”5 But Mike Gane and others have demonstrated clearly that Kellner had misread Baudrillard. Indeed, Baudrillard specifically resisted the label “postmodernist.” He once said, "I have nothing to do with postmodernism.”6 On Gane’s reading, it is ironic that during the 19805, the rise of the postmodern counter-move- ment targeted Baudrillard as “the high priest of postmodernism” since Baudrillard’s "position is one of great hostility to the whole phenome- non.”7 But Gane later admitted that Baudrillard’s rejection of the post- modern label was done "not entirely consistently, since occasionally he has been willing to play with the opposition between the modern and the postmodern.”8 It should be noted that Gane’s admission was not a change of position on his reading of Baudrillard, rather, in the time be- tween the two assertions, Baudrillard had made new statements regard- ing modernity/postmodernity. Throughout the late 19805 and well into the 19905, Gane and Kellner argued over Baudrillard’s relationship with postmodernity. Gane, on the one side, asserted that Baudrillard’s project was to combat the postmod- ern (as is the case in Rex Butler’s claim that Baudrillard’s work is "in' defence of the real”).9 Kellner, on the other, alleged Cane was wrong and that Baudrillard’s project was surely “connected in intricate ways to the problematic of the postmodern.” 10 For his part, Gane was convinced that Kellner had "ulterior objectives” in his reading of Baudrillard. “Kellner has attempted a critique of Baudrillard that first sets up the modernity- postmodernity model and then claims that Baudrillard underestimates the potential for a Marxist appraisal of this shift and resistance to it," according to Gane, who,

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