Aff - Speculative Fiction - Michigan 7 2023 KLAB

Speculative Fiction Aff
K Lab – 2023
This file was written by: Blanche & Sarea (Speculative Fiction Authors); Arjun, Aayush G., Junaid & Omar
1AC (Contention 1)
I turned over, not ready to leave the comfort of my bed just yet, and looked out to the sun peeking through the beige curtains, spilling out in different directions in my room. Strange, considering I always awoke around the time when the sun would peak above the horizon to <> . I turned over, stretching my arm out to check my band. It projected a dull light that faintly illuminated the space around me, the time and date reading <>. I shot up. Why didn’t I hear my alarm? Normally I was awoken by the loud ringing of the assistant drone. Looking at my time again and calculating how long it would take me to get ready before leaving. I rushed to throw some clothes on, and brush my teeth and hair, before grabbing an apple on my way out the door. Luckily, there wasn’t too much traffic on the Skyway so I was only 5 minutes late to my job. The many musicians were already tuning their instruments to begin our rehearsal for the Grande Symphony Exposition. It is the biggest musical event on Millenium Earth, and tomorrow night marks its 300th anniversary. The exposition started as a celebration of music in the new society after the transition, which is why it is so important that we perform well tonight.
The transition is how our society came to be. We are in the year 3138 on the Millennium Earth. In the past centuries, we have overcome many challenges and progressed a lot as a society because of our ancestor’s mistakes. They didn’t listen, ignoring the scientists, working them until our Earth couldn’t give any more. Millions died. A slow death for some as carbon dioxide poison entered the lungs and famine, others quickly from floods, forest fires, and global wars. By 2109 our numbers had dwindled to a couple thousand. The wealthy and powerful had moved off the Earth into space at the turn of the century and were never heard from again, so the only people left were the average civilians. Some of the people still on earth started to create coalitions to provide resources and safety to the many climate refugees. These coalitions created new technologies to live on the Earth without interfering with the environment, as they had learned that in order to protect the people, they must protect the Earth too. As time went on, these communities grew bigger until they eventually formed cities, and those cities eventually became what we have today. The coalitions shared resources across cities and ensured that everyone’s needs were met. They re-imagined and remade institutions, such as making healthcare free, implemented a job guarantee system, and demolished capitalism. The newfound society was called Millennium Earth and was founded on principles of equity, care work, and community. Now, we are able to take care of everyone and ensure their livelihoods.
As practice began, I waved my conducting baton to indicate what notes to play to the orchestra, but halfway through Origin Symphony No. 2, the sounds began to muffle. At first, I thought my brain was just overwhelmed with the pressure to perform but as practice went on, it only got worse. I had noticed that my ears were ringing recently, but I had just assumed that was normal with my job. But this was different, everything was muffled almost to complete silence. During the break, I went to a corner and looked up causes for my muffled hearing and ringing on my phone. I began to worry be the slow deterioration of my hearing so I began to investigate what it could possibly be. The web browser showed my symptoms were indicative of some type of hearing loss. I did try communicate with my co-workers, but despite the endless patience they gave me, I couldn’t hear anything aside from the constant ringing. I decided to notify my boss about my early leave and left to go to a clinic.
I couldn’t shake the incessant ringing, it had grown from almost unnoticeable to nearly distracting. I didn’t focus my attention on Skyway, missing the buzzing that signaled go. When I finally made it to the clinic, I noticed the progression of my hearing loss, the hearing in my right ear was almost completely gone. I entered, immediately scanned by the assistant medical drones for an initial report of superficial injuries or emergencies. As the drone finished the initial assessment, a nurse whose tag name read “Tina”, read the assessment that was projected into the open space of the clinic, then her eyes fell on me, and she smiled saying, “ H Ceran, I didn noce any immiae injuries and ailmns, wa an I hel u wih?”. At least that's what I heard, I furrowed my brows and asked her again, but even when she repeated I couldn’t understand anything she was saying and still she remained patient with me and led me to the back to do a more thorough examination of what was revealed to be noise-induced hearing loss.
So that’s how I got here. I’m now the director of the symphony since I can’t hear to conduct but I still wanted to work with all my friends here. I learned sign language and I have a personal translation bot to help me communicate with people who don’t understand sign language. The exposition went well, despite my absence, and I got lots of help from my community to adjust to my new life without hearing.
1AC (Contention 2)
Speculative fiction structures economic theory and capitalism – we need new narratives to push against capitalist ideology
Beckert, J., & Bronk, R. (2022) [Jens Beckert is a Leibniz Prize winning German sociologist who specializes in economic sociology. His research focuses on the role of the economy, and he is a Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. He has numerous fellowships from leading universities. Richard Bronk has a degree from Oxford University. He specializes in political economy.] Fictional Expectations and Imagination in Economics. In P. Crosthwaite, P. Knight, & N. Marsh (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics (Cambridge Companions to Literature, pp. 277-292). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781009026550.021 //AG
This chapter demonstrates how economics can learn lessons and draw useful analogies from literature and literary theory. These lessons apply at two levels: they help illuminate the everyday behavior and belief systems of economic agents, and they also have implications for the nature of economics as an academic discipline. We argue that, to understand behavior and the formation of expectations in modern economies, it is necessary to examine the role of imagined states of the world in helping people construct and navigate the uncertain future. Modern capitalism is a quintessentially creative and imaginative system: it is driven as much by dreams, emotions, and dystopias as by calculation; it is structured by language and narratives; and it has novelty and radical uncertainty at its heart. This has implications at a meta level for the nature of economics: economists need to engage in metaphorical thinking – the imaginative transfer of concepts from one domain to another – to shine new light on the dynamism and innovation that are central to economic activity but poorly explained by current economic models. They must take seriously the role of imagined futures and other forms of fiction in guiding the expectations and behavior of economic actors. Indeed, we argue for a new form of “narrative economics” and the use of analytical imagination to help “read” and “interpret” the stories, imagined futures, social frames, and calculative practices that structure economic decision-making. Suggesting a central role for fiction and imagination jars with the conception that most economists have of their discipline as the most precise and empirically grounded of the social sciences: they focus on using mathematical models to analyze and predict the market behavior of economic agents. These models are frequently sophisticated and incorporate vast data sets of relevant factors. But at their core is a simple assumption that economic actors rationally optimize their utility within given constraints in the light of “rational expectations” (or informed predictions of the future) with the result that economic outcomes tend to a predictable equilibrium. Since markets are fiercely competitive, economists assume that anyone behaving irrationally would tend to lose out to those who internalize the correct model of how the economy works and have a firm grasp of objective probability functions. From their perspective, it would be retrograde to assume that market participants in practice imagine the future and attempt to convince others of their fictions. Why would it make sense to replace (or complement) the dominant “rational expectations” hypothesis with one of “fictional expectations?” Our theory of fictional expectations is founded on two pillars: firstly, empirical observation of actual economic decision-making; and secondly, epistemological theory about the problems of knowledge facing economic actors, especially in relation to the future. There is now a growing body of empirical studies demonstrating the large role played by narratives in structuring behavior and guiding expectations in the economy. Robert Boyer has detailed how successive phases of recent capitalist history characterized by increasing levels of uncertainty have been structured around a series of beguiling “grand narratives” (or overarching stories) – such as “Japan number one, the new economy, and the omniscience of financial markets” – each of which has served for a time to coordinate investment and increase confidence. David Tuckett has likewise shown that stock-market investors rely on investment stories to give them the necessary conviction to act. At a policy level, Douglas Holmes has demonstrated how far central banks rely on rhetoric and communication to achieve the goals of policy: a central bank’s public statements seek to persuade market participants to internalize policy goals as their own expectations. So, for example, when Mario Draghi said in that the European Central Bank would do “whatever it takes” to rescue the euro, these three words did more than anything else to calm market expectations and solve the euro crisis. At the level of consumption, we are frequently influenced by imaginaries of future pleasure that we project onto the next generation of new goods, under the influence of a constant stream of marketing images and narratives.
To understand why narratives and imagined futures seem to have such a significant effect in structuring expectations and behavior, we need to understand the problems that economic actors face in knowing enough to make the sort of rational calculations that economic models assume are possible. In all walks of life, human beings face barriers to knowledge and struggle to make sense of multifaceted reality. But economic actors face an additional problem: a large part of the economic activity typical of modern capitalism is geared to the future. People save for a retirement that may never happen; they invest in new products or processes that they expect will deliver useful service in the future; or they buy assets in the hope they will rise in value. But, crucially, the future envisaged is not – as is commonly assumed by economists – a straightforward statistical shadow of the past: it is neither predictable according to well-understood laws of motion like the future of planetary orbits; nor, for the most part, is it predictable in objective probability terms (like the incidence of road deaths) on the basis of past data and observed factors. To use Frank Knight’s terminology, the future is often a matter of radical uncertainty rather than calculable risk.
There are several reasons for this: first, global markets and financial networks have many of the classic properties of complex adaptive systems – with non-linear reactions and threshold effects – so that small changes in initial conditions can snowball into radically novel outcomes. Second, market capitalism is frequently subject to counter-movements of social and political protest and the unpredictable policy changes these imply. Most importantly of all, the economic future is to a significant extent the contingent creation of a dynamic series of collective and individual attempts to reimagine and refashion the economy. In other words, the economic future is not “out there” waiting to be discovered; rather, as James Buchanan and Viktor Vanberg put it, it is unknowable in advance because it has “yet to be created” by how we and others imagine, choose, and will it to be.
Corporate Capitalism fails to acknowledge communal existence, rendering life a race to effectiveness and efficiency.
Suman Gupta 2001 – (Suman Gupta. Educated at the Universities of Delhi and Oxford. Before joining the Open University in 2000, held appointments at Nottingham University and the University of Surrey Roehampton. “Corporate Capitalism and Political Philosophy” https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umichigan/reader.action?pq-origsite=primo&ppg=260&docID=3386293, jsr)
I call this a tentative definition because I would like to reserve the right to modify it and elaborate on it in any way that becomes necessary as this study progresses. As it stands now, without the support of illustration or explanation, it might seem like a bald collection of words – suggestive and coherent in several ways, yet not entirely transparent. I hope to give it more flesh, and substantiate it or elaborate on it in different ways, as this study touches upon specific issues. Even as it stands, however, it is probably coherent enough to indicate why the concerns of political philosophy and the nuances of corporate capitalism in our time meet awkwardly, if at all. Political philosophy begins and ends in its concern (or occasionally lack thereof) for human communal existence. The corporation which is devoted to the maximisation of capital, and the systems and institutions which are designed to allow this corporation more or less free play to do so (roughly what I mean by corporate capitalism), may need to take account of the nuances of human communal existence, but do not necessarily derive from or answer to any concern (or even lack thereof) for human communal existence. The means and ends here are no more than those which serve the abstract person of the capitalist corporation (such as a company, for example) itself, or the real persons who invest in some way in the capitalist corporation. There is indubitably a voluntaristic and optimistic energy about political philosophy – ‘if we consensually understand and conceptualise we can do what is necessary’ usually seems to be the underlying idea. The dynamism of corporate capitalism is of a quite different order. Corporate capitalism essentially presents the heroism and determination which can overcome (by collaborating with or forestalling) apparently uncontrollable or at best only semi-controllable forces – competition, market forces, consumer behaviour, labour constraints, technological constraints, etc. More often than not political philosophy is a celebration of intellectual and moral rationality; whereas generally corporate capitalism exalts the instinct, foresight, intuition, etc. of its participants (entrepreneurs, promoters, investors, managers, and so on). When political philosophy conceives of the happening of politics in the world it is in terms of rational action in some universalised sense; when corporate capitalism is involved in the happening of politics it is primarily in terms of effective or efficient action to serve certain limited and accountable ends – ultimately the maximisation of capital. Political philosophy and corporate capitalism are both involved in the happening of politics, but there is little other common discursive ground. It is therefore generally true to say that there is no political philosophy of corporate capitalism: there is either political philosophy after the fact of corporate capitalism (a poor second cousin, trying to do no more than justify what corporate capitalism does and/or achieves in terms which are of no interest to corporate capitalism as such), or more potently there is political philosophy against corporate capitalism. But there is something unsatisfying about this situation. Philosophy should be neither partial nor hostile without reason. At least to begin with, philosophy should be neutral. When I say that I will try to bring corporate capitalism under the gaze of political philosophy, make corporate capitalism subject to the concerns of political philosophy, I am making a rhetorical gesture. It is a rhetorical gesture that announces at the outset that I am on the side of political philosophy and that I wish to confront corporate capitalism without evasions and without any unnecessary partiality or hostility. I wish to scrutinise (whether I am able to or not is another matter) the condition and practice of corporate capitalism in our time dispassionately and see how these bear upon a philosophical concern with human communal existence and with political ends and means. I particularly attempt this because I suspect that the evasiveness of corporate capitalism to the approach of political philosophy is indicative of something deeper: that, in fact, the systems and processes of contemporary corporate capitalism are such that they undermine politics, subvert political philosophy, disable the political philosopher and political activist in some essential sense, even while appearing not to. By confronting corporate capitalism dispassionately and single-mindedly from the side of political philosophy I should be able either to confirm this or discount this.
Utopianism as a guiding principle for speculative imaginations is key to both envisioning and actualizing alternative modes of anti-capitalist societies.
Bina, Inch, and Pereira 20 (Abstract, xx-xx-xxxx, "Beyond techno-utopia and its discontents: On the role of utopianism and speculative fiction in shaping alternatives to the smart city imaginary," ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328719303374#sec0005. Accessed 16 July 2023) //OA
Drawing on Abensour and Bloch, Ruth Levitas (2010, p. 542) argues utopianism can be a potent form of speculative sociological thought, capable of enabling both critical analysis of social desires and the reconstruction of alternatives: ‘… by thinking about utopia as a method, and specifically in thinking about it as a method rather than a goal, we can think more effectively about alternative futures… a capacity for the education of desire that only utopia can offer.’ Levitas (2017) therefore considers the ‘Utopian approach’, core to the pursuit of radical and transformative change, ‘allow[ing] us not only to imagine what an alternative society could look like, but…to imagine what it might feel like to inhabit it, thus giving a greater potential depth to our judgments about the good’. Contemporary utopian theory therefore offers an analytical method for extending prevailing approaches to the analysis of urban imaginaries like the SCI, moving beyond common-sense anti-utopian critiques or denunciations of techno-dystopias, to explore the dialectics of utopia and dystopia, critique and construction. In the next section below, we introduce the value of speculative fiction to futures studies before going on to explore how fictional representations of future urban worlds, read through the lens of heuristic utopianism might inform and extend critical understanding of the SCI. 2.2. Fictional representations and the extension of social scientific critique As SCI illustrate, the ways we think about futures are capable of framing and shaping the development of societies and settlements in their names. Since, following Graham (2016), then ther

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