Neg - Unconditional Hospitality UBI - Michigan 7 2023 BFHGR

NEG – Unconditionality Hospitality BI – BFGHR
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War Criminals PIC
1NC---War Criminals PIC
Only the cp is moral---unconditional hospitality’s openness is itself a gross violation of hospitality---we must must exclude war criminals
Naida Zukić 9, assistant professor in BMCC’s Department of Speech, Communications and Theater Arts, “My Neighbor’s Face and Similar Vulgarities,” http://liminalities.net/5-4/neighbor.pdf
Derrida’s examination of unconditional hospitality belongs to a discourse demanding that hospitality be extended—without anticipation, prejudice, or identification—to an unexpected visitor, foreigner, guest, immigrant, or stranger. This absolute openness to the newcomer on the principles of the heart, however, involves ethical risks and limitations inherent in the neighbor. Žižek locates the neighbor in its violent brutality over against Freud’s traumatic intruder (a thing that hystericizes us and disturbs the balance of our way of life). The presupposition to be resisted here, Žižek warns, is the ethical gentrification of the neighbor, “the reduction of the radically ambiguous monstrosity of the Neighbor-Thing into an Other as the abyssal point from which the call of ethical responsibility emanates” (“Neighbors” 163). That one must be radical in offering hospitality to the other stems from Derrida’s belief in overcoming violence and exclusion via pure openness and unconditional hospitality toward the Other. I am opposed to this Derridean notion of ethical hospitality. Crucial here, however, is an ideological shift from a neighbor in the simple sense, to the neighbor in its radical otherness. The neighbor in its radical otherness disturbs; the neighbor “remains an inert, impenetrable, enigmatic presence that hystericizes” (Žižek, “Neighbors” 140-1). Therefore, my meditation on the figure of the neighbor is a corrective move against unconditional hospitality that accentuates the limitation of ethical universality. This logic is implied in the critique of Derrida’s “opening without horizon,” and contextualized in representations of the Bosnian genocide in Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor. 1 Ethnic cleansing, neighbor-on-neighbor violence, and dehumanization of the Other read as the portrayal of humankind at its worst. Complicating Derrida’s notion of ethical hospitality are narratives of mass atrocities within which lurks the neighbor—the unfathomable abyss, the radical otherness in all its intensity and inaccessibility. Against the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality An act of hospitality can only be poetic. – Derrida2 Stories orbiting the questions of ethics, violence, and the Bosnian war have faded from our public consciousness. Today, Bosnian political developments and survivors’ accounts of the atrocities receive occasional press coverage, largely through reporting about war crimes trials at The Hague (i.e., Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić’s trials for war crimes during the wars in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia). At the most basic level such questions about war and religious conflict highlight a revived sense of urgency within the context of ethics and violence. Furthermore, breakdowns of economic and familial structures, systemic violence, and human rights violations reflect a distinct scene shift that characterizes modern wars; a politico/ideological move from inter to intra-national conflict. Chaos, violence, and death that ensued in Bosnia in 1992 add to the complexity of intra-national conflicts, and more specifically highlight the atrociously orchestrated neighbor-to-neighbor violence. These systemic implementations of violence are never ahistorical or abstract, but always already part of concrete intersubjective, political, and ideological contexts within which they are mobilized. It is in this light that I revisit Derrida’s notion of ethical hospitality—the ideology that teaches us not to objectify the Other—and the vulgarity of Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, the traumatic intruders, the neighbors. Derrida’s incalculable hospitality, the opening without horizon of expectation to the newcomer whoever that may be, is an aporia at best and an impossible demand at worst. Conditional hospitality is inscribed in the very possibility of unconditional hospitality and the opening to the “absolute arrivant,” the foreigner. He elaborates upon this newcomer who is not even a guest, who: surprises the host—who is not yet a host or an inviting power—enough to call into question, to the point of annihilating or rendering indeterminate, all the distinctive signs of a prior identity, beginning with the very border that delineated a legitimate home and assured lineage, names and language, nations, families and genealogies. The absolute arrivant does not yet have a name or an identity. (Aporias 34) It is precisely Derrida’s unconditional hospitality which remains conditioned by the histories, languages, and “the conditional laws of the right to hospitality,” imposed on the newcomer (On Cosmopolitanism 22). The possibility of impossible hospitality is therefore, purely theoretical and conceptual; conditioned by political inequalities, economic exploitation, injustice, war, homophobia, xenophobia, racism, and so on. Accordingly, the absolute arrivant without a name or identity, the foreigner, can always violate and extinguish these laws of hospitality. Within the unconditional hospitality to otherness, inscribed in the element of the foreigner are the unpredictable violent “visitations” that demonstrate the limit to incalculable hospitality. Although unconditional hospitality and exposure to the other requires the suspension of all discrimination, there is always a possibility that the foreigner will be the enemy of the host. Because such possibility exists, unconditional hospitality remains merely conceptual; it is impossible to require that the host not decide who does or does not enter the house. Unconditional hospitality is, therefore, a self-contradictory concept; it deconstructs itself precisely by being put into practice (“Hospitality” 8). Unconditional hospitality requires a host to open the door to a foreigner who might bring harm. This aporia of hospitality is necessarily political. The laws of political (conditional and exclusive) hospitality refer to the cultural and ideological structures, which preexist the subject, and interrogate the event of the contact with the other, the foreigner, the stranger. The premise of unconditional hospitality, however, is that the neighbor, someone whom I know from within, cannot be my enemy. Nevertheless, gross violations of hospitality, including massive atrocities and human rights abuses are occurring not between strangers, but between neighbors.3 The neighbor is one such figure of the Other toward whom my relationship is that of familiarity, common language, and proximity. Underlying Derrida’s unconditional hospitality is fear of the Other—the fear of the unfathomable abyss of radical otherness that transgresses, compromises, and disturbs from within. The neighbor. Fear Thy Neighbor What’s the moral difference between slitting a man’s throat or slicing off his balls? – Maass 51 To recognize the Other is thus not primarily or ultimately to recognize the Other in a certain well-defined capacity (“I recognize you as...rational, good, lovable”), but to recognize you in the abyss of your very impenetrability and opacity. – Žižek, “Neighbors” 138-9
2NC---War Criminals PIC
Even a low risk of a net benefit means you should default neg – NO ethical system could sanction expanding benefits to butchers and executioners of innocent people. Humans are capable of extraordinary violence and evil---the aff justifies acceptance of horrifying acts in the name of openness – some things are just ethically unacceptable.
Naida Zukić 9, assistant professor in BMCC’s Department of Speech, Communications and Theater Arts, “My Neighbor’s Face and Similar Vulgarities,” http://liminalities.net/5-4/neighbor.pdf
In positioning the neighbor as the monstrous other, Žižek reads the neighbor against Lacanian structures of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and the Real. More specifically, Žižek distinguishes between Imaginary others, which are our mirror-like relationships of mutual recognition; The Symbolic Big Other, which is “the impersonal set of rules that coordinate our coexistence”, and finally, The Other qua Real, which is “the impossible Thing, the ‘inhuman partner,’ the Other with whom no symmetrical dialogue, mediated by the symbolic Order, is possible” (“Neighbors” 143). To understand the radical Otherness inscribed in the element of the neighbor it is crucial to understand how these three Lacanian dimensions are connected. For Žižek, the neighbor as the Thing means that, “beneath the neighbor as my semblant, my mirror image, there always lurks the unfathomable abyss of radical Otherness, of a monstrous Thing that cannot be gentrified”(ibid). Žižek designates the figure of the neighbor as the ultimate object of desire in its intensity and impenetrability—the neighbor that disturbs, tortures, and is always too close. Importantly, between the Imaginary Other and the Impenetrable Real Other must step in the Symbolic Other that gentrifies their chaotic dimensions: In order to render our coexistence with the Thing minimally bearable, the symbolic order qua Third, the pacifying mediator, has to intervene: the “gentrification” of the Other-Thing into a “normal human fellow” cannot occur through our direct interaction, but presupposes the third agency to which we both submit ourselves—there is no intersubjectivity (no symmetrical, shared, relation between humans) without the impersonal symbolic Order (“Neighbors” 143-4). The neighbor is fittingly given a more unsettling dimension as the impenetrable Other, the enemy whose radical ambiguity and traumatic character do not prepare the ground for a possibility of an authentic encounter. Consequently, the impossibility of such encounters brings about the alienation of social life, which is woven into the practices, rituals, and social texture of everyday life: Even if I live side by side with others, in my normal state I ignore them. I am allowed not to get too close to others. I move in a social space where I interact with others obeying certain external “mechanical” rules, without sharing their inner world (Žižek, Violence 59). “Sometimes alienation is not a problem, but a solution,” indispensable for peaceful coexistence (ibid). Brutality feels at home in Višegrad, and the ethnic cleansing of this city was an ordinary affair, writes Maass. “Bosnia makes you question basic assumptions about humanity, and one of the questions concerns torture. Why after all should there be any limit?” (51). At the beginning of the war, paramilitary Serb forces came to town, rounded up unarmed Muslim men, and loaded them into refrigerated meat trucks. An older Muslim man who was forced to push the corpses into the river managed to escape, and later gave his testimony. The Serbs took these men to the railing of the Višegrad bridge, the man confessed, forcing them to lean forward, at which point they would either slit their throats or shoot them. They threw them all into the river. ... They ordered me and a man who was even older than me to walk toward the bridge. We came across the body of an old man with a mutilated head. They ordered us to drag him toward the bridge. As we were dragging the old one, his skull was falling open and the brain came out. We dragged the body to the bridge and they ordered us to throw it into Drina. There were two more bodies on the bridge. They had their throats cut. We were ordered to throw them into the river as well. On one of the bodies, four fingers on the left hand were freshly cut off (9). This is the neighbor When confronted with neighbor-on-neighbor violence whom do I save? The neighbor? Myself? Who do I attack? If I attack, am I just another neighbor? As a journalist, Peter Maass is not supposed to get involved in the events he covers, so he stands aside and watches a man on the verge of execution because it is a prudent thing to do. Is this much different from the “Serbs who prudently kept quiet as their Bosnian neighbors were shot or packed off to prison camps?” (21). A tragically misplaced ethical conviction? Perhaps. What about brutal acts of torture about which we know but choose to ignore? The atrocious reality of the death camps, tortures, and mass executions does not reside in the immediate reality of the violence, but in Maass’s blindness to this accumulated atrocity—the fetishist disavowal (i.e., how this violent event appears to him, not the violent event itself). In an act that suspends symbolic efficiency of witnessing torture and suffering, the watcher relies on a gesture of fetishist disavowal: “I know, but I don’t want to know that I know, so I don’t know. I know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I can continue acting as if I don’t know it” (Žižek, Violence 53). This disavowal involves a violation of his spontaneous ethical proclivity, brutal repression, and self-denial. For Levinas, what would make this event ethical, is precisely Maass’s proximity to the Other, for his proximity makes him answer for his responsibility to the neighbor. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas takes into account the self-referential face of the neighbor. To encounter the face and claim that a face can “guarantee itself,” is to acknowledge the face as the nonlinguistic point of reference between the ‘big Other’ of the symbolic order and the neighbor-as-Other (202). For Žižek, however, the human face is always already caught up in the symbolic order, engaged as that which gentrifies the reality of the neighbor (“Neighbors” 146). The neighbor is therefore never revealed in the face of the Other, but in his/her defacement: “Far from displaying ‘a quality of God’s image carried with it,’ the face is the ultimate ethical lure…The neighbor is not displayed through a face; it is in his or her fundamental dimension a faceless monster” (ibid 185).
Regardless of whether we solve – shunning them is still a moral imperative
Beversluis, 89 (Eric H. April 1989. “On Shunning Undesirable Regimes: Ethics and Economic Sanctions.” Public Affairs Quarterly, April, vol. 3, no. 2)
Let us adopt Tiemstra's idea of calling this kind of sanction behavior "shunning." We find shunning most explicitly developed in the customs of certain Mennonite groups. The fundamental question of this paper will be whether there is indeed a moral duty to shun certain regimes because of their immorality. I begin with a formal definition of shunning: An individual or institution A shuns another individual br institution B when A, in part or totally, refuses to engage in social, economic or political interaction with B (avoids B) as a witness against flagrant, willful and persistent immoral behavior by B. Note that shunning is distinct from avoidance behavior motivated by considerations of self-interest. Thus a nation is not shunning when it bans the sale of strategic materials to an enemy, nor is an individual shunning if he refuses to associate with another out of fear that he will be "led astray" by the latter's vices.
Cap K
1NC---Anti-Universalism Link
The 1AC’s attack on universal theories breaks down anti-hegemonic vectors by fracturing a common understanding, precludes challenging capitalism.
Srnicek & Williams 15—Nick Srnicek is a Lecturer at City University London and a PhD from the London School of Economics; Alex Williams is a Lecturer at City University London [Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, Verso Books, p. 162-169]
SUBVERSIVE UNIVERSALS Any elaboration of an alternative image of progress must inevitably face up to the problem of universalism – the idea that certain values, ideas and goals may hold across all cultures.31 Capitalism, as we have argued, is an expansionary universal that weaves itself through multiple cultural fabrics, reworking them as it goes along. Anything less than a competing universal will end up being smothered by an all-embracing series of capitalist relations.32 Various particularisms – localised, specific forms of politics and culture – cohabitate with ease in the world of capitalism. The list of possibilities continues to grow as capitalism differentiates into Chinese capitalism, American capitalism, Brazilian capitalism, Indian capitalism, Nigerian capitalism, and so on. If defending a particularism is insufficient, it is because history shows us that the global space of universalism is a space of conflict, with each contender requiring the relative provincialisation of its competitors.33 If the left is to compete with global capitalism, it needs to rethink the project of universalism. But to invoke such an idea is to call forth a number of fundamental critiques directed against universalism in recent decades. While a universal politics must move beyond any local struggles, generalising itself at the global scale and across cultural variations, it is for these very reasons that it has been criticised.34 As a matter of historical record, European modernity was inseparable from its ‘dark side’ – a vast network of exploited colonial dominions, the genocide of indigenous peoples, the slave trade, and the plundering of colonised nations’ resources.35 In this conquest, Europe presented itself as embodying the universal way of life. All other peoples were simply residual particulars that would inevitably come to be subsumed under the European way – even if this required ruthless physical violence and cognitive assault to guarantee the outcome. Linked to this was a belief that the universal was equivalent to the homogeneous. Differences between cultures would therefore be erased in the process of particulars being subsumed under the universal, creating a culture modelled in the image of European civilisation. This was a universalism indistinguishable from pure chauvinism. Throughout this process, Europe dissimulated its own parochial position by deploying a series of mechanisms to efface the subjects who made these claims – white, heterosexual, property-owning males. Europe and its intellectuals abstracted away from their location and identity, presenting their claims as grounded in a ‘view from nowhere’.36 This perspective was taken to be untarnished by racial, sexual, national or any other particularities, providing the basis for both the alleged universality of Europe’s claims and the illegitimacy of other perspectives. While Europeans could speak and embody the universal, other cultures could only be represented as particular and parochial. Universalism has therefore been central to the worst aspects of modernity’s history. Given this heritage, it might seem that the simplest response would be to rescind the universal from our conceptual arsenal. But, for all the difficulties with the idea, it nevertheless remains necessary. The problem is partly that one cannot simply reject the concept of the universal without generating other significant problems. Most notably, giving up on the category leaves us with nothing but a series of diverse particulars. There appears no way to build meaningful solidarity in the absence of some common factor. The universal also operates as a transcendent ideal – never satisfied with any particular embodiment, and always open to striving for better.37 It contains the conceptual impulse to undo its own limits. Rejecting this category also risks Orientalising other cultures, transforming them into an exotic Other. If there are only particularisms, and provincial Europe is associated with reason, science, progress and freedom, then the unpleasant implication is that non-Western cultures must be devoid of these. The old Orienta

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