Pessimism K 2 - Michigan 2024 KLAB

K---Pessimism---K Lab 2024
Notes
Thanks to lab leader Marquis Ard. Original card cutters - Meryem, Davis, Max, Elizabeth, Paloma, Owen. Organized by Max.
This file has two distinct K’s - the Afropessimsm K and the Queer Pessimism K.
1NC---Top Shelf
Afropessimism---1NC
ToP---Black Double Bind---1NC
Blackness constitutes the site of a paradoxical double-bind within the social order – it is both the organizing principle that makes possible the coherence of the world and the object of that world’s gratuitous violence – as such, the aff’s wedding to affirmative potentiality accedes to a form of communicative capitalism which is only capable of modulatively reproducing the anti-black grammar of civil society
Barber 16 (Daniel Colucciello Barber, researcher at the Humboldt University of Berlin, PhD from Duke University, 2016, “The Creation of Non-Being,” Rhizomes Issue 29, footnotes 1, 2, and 7 included in curly braces, modified) gz
[1] Anti-blackness operates axiomatically. This is the case, at least, insofar as we speak of what Frank B. Wilderson, III, has called "the world" (Wilderson 2003: 234).[1] {1. "World" here refers not to reality as such, but more precisely to the paradigmatic operations by which reality is structured, positioned, and rendered sensible. Yet this does not mean that one can directly express or pose reality as distinct from the world, for the world governs the very conditions of possibility for expression or position. Even purportedly universal terms, such as humanity, social life, and—to invoke the concern of this essay—being itself, are operations of the world. The Afro-Pessimist thesis, following Wilderson, is that this world constitutes itself and maintains its coherence, at essence, through anti-blackness: the world has being insofar as blackness does not. Since the grammar of this world, or the logic of the aforementioned operations, is so naturalized—enacted and assumed by/from power—that it generally has no need to appear (much less defend itself), the articulation of reality without the anti-black world must begin as an articulation against this world.} The aim of this essay is to address the consequences of this axiomatic operation for some rather classical terms of reference within continental philosophy, such as being, analogy,[2] communication, possibility, and knowledge. {2. Both the reading of Lazzarato I provide below and my general argument, which revolves around the question of negativity and analogy, are deeply shaped by—and only conceivable thanks to—the writings of Wilderson, whose claim about analogy is summarized in the following remark, made in conversation with Hartman: "In my own work, obviously I'm not saying that in this space of negation, which is blackness, there is no life. We have tremendous life. But this life is not analogous to those touchstones of cohesion that hold civil society together. In fact, the trajectory of our life (within our terrain of civil death) is bound up in claiming—sometimes individually, sometimes collectively—the violence which Fanon writes about in The Wretched of the Earth, that trajectory which, as he says, is 'a splinter to the heart of the world' and 'puts the settler out of the picture.' So, it doesn't help us politically or psychologically to try to find ways in which how we live is analogous to how white positionality lives, because, as I think your book suggests, whites gain their coherence by knowing what they are not" (Hartman and Wilderson 2003: 187).} Such terms are the means by which the world claims to grant itself coherence; they form the grammatical ground, the structuring condition, of the world. If the "gratuitous violence" of anti-blackness extends into the very "grammar" of the world (Wilderson 2010: 38, 131),[3] then the aforementioned terms—far from providing retreat into a "metaphysical" domain unaffected by the historical and material—serve as points for the articulation of antagonism toward anti-blackness. In fact, the gratuity of such violence—its irreducibility to purposive meaning—entails a refusal of the coherent ground that these very terms claim to supply. This is to say that being—or the possibility thereof—grounds itself not through its own coherence, but through an enactment of power that is staged by anti-black violence. Power precedes grammatical ground.
[2] Maurizio Lazzarato's analysis of contemporary capitalism approaches the anti-blackness analyzed by Wilderson. Lazzarato argues that capitalism is not grounded in any coherent science of economy, but is an enactment of the power to make indebted beings. It is by way of this emphasis on power that he links a purportedly secular capitalism to the theological structure of Christianity—that is, to a being that acts gratuitously, or without ground. Yet Lazzarato, I argue, ultimately wards off an encounter with anti-blackness through reliance on a coherence implicit in "the indebted man" (Lazzarato 2012: 8). I elaborate this argument by drawing on Gilles Deleuze's concept of "difference in itself" (Deleuze 1994: 36-89). This concept, on my reading, ungrounds the purported coherence of being by way of a logically prior differentiality, which is expressed as non-being. Essential to this argument is the task of articulating such non-being without conversion to an affirmation of the world.
Non-Being: Deleuze Against Affirmation
[3] Deleuze's philosophy has come to be associated with habits of affirmation, where "habits" indicate the practices or operations by which reality is experientially and experimentally enacted.[4] This association could be attributed to Deleuze's invocation of concepts such as the rhizome, which appears to advocate teeming, emergent, multiplicitous movement in excess of all boundaries. In such a landscape of fluidity and flux, Deleuze's notion of creation then becomes associated with the affirmation of alternative possibilities. This association may also be attributed to Deleuze's rigorous refusal of the being of negativity. He contends that negative being plays no role in the determination of reality, that it is in fact an illusion that conceals the force of differential immanence. Given the centrality of this contention, any association of Deleuze's thought with habits of affirmation would have to depend on the following claim: the refusal of negative being entails the refusal of habits of negativity, in favor of habits of affirmation.[5]
[4] Yet it is fundamentally mistaken to conflate the refusal of negative being with the refusal of negative habits. The call for habits of affirmation is theoretically illegitimate: if all habits are real, and if reality has no negative being, then all habits—precisely because they are real—do not involve negative being; the reality that is habituated—regardless of whether this habituation is characterized as affirmative or negative—has no negative being. If the call for habits of affirmation is therefore not entailed by Deleuze's refusal of negative being, then from where does this call arise? If habits of affirmation are imperative, then from where does this imperativity draw its mandate? To begin to answer these questions, one must address the ways in which habits of affirmation are logically consistent—and ultimately politically complicit—with the contemporary conjuncture of capitalism.
[5] This conjuncture, which has been variously described in terms of "late capitalism," "postfordism," or "communicative capitalism," is marked by an affirmation of mobility, innovation, fluidity, possibility, and creativity. Deleuze analyzed this conjuncture in terms of control societies, which he distinguished from disciplinary societies. Control establishes domination not by setting up in advance strict boundaries, but rather by a kind of unending encouragement, or motivated permissiveness: control establishes and expands itself by establishing and expanding possibilities of communication. Domination "no longer operate[s] by confining people but through continuous control and instant communication" (Deleuze 1997: 174). Whereas discipline names the prohibition of excessive mobility and innovation, control names the "modulation" of the possibilities implied in such mobility and innovation (Deleuze 1997: 179).[6]
[6] With control, domination remains not despite, nor in opposition to, but precisely as possibility, which is modulated through a communicability that is ever more fluid and receptive in its listening in order to be ever more innovative in its surveilling.[7] {7. The fundamental insidiousness of control is that it permits and encourages the fluidity, mobility, and possibility implied by the sheer capacity to narrate. Communicative capitalism does not work by mandating what can and cannot be narrated, rather it calls for any-narration-whatever, as long as the possibility of narration is affirmed.} Following Deleuze's analysis of control, habits of affirmation—of multiplicitous possibilities, or of the possibility of being-otherwise—are not resistant to, but actually constitutive of, control's modulation. Control is marked by "endless postponement" (Deleuze 1997: 179), meaning that the future—as that which breaks with the present—never takes place. The present is extended into the future, and so the future becomes a modulation of the present; an essential incommensurability between present and future remains unthinkable.[8] Given Deleuze's analysis, it is not by accident that he increasingly experimented with habits of negativity. In his last book, What is Philosophy? – co-written with Félix Guattari, and published one year after his analysis of control—one can observe, for instance, his attentiveness to "shame" (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 107), which was motivated by his reading of Primo Levi, or his indication of agreement with the negative dialectic of Theodor Adorno.[9]
[7] One finds, in the same book, a polemic against communication and a concomitant positioning of creation as distinct from and incommensurable with the communicative.[10] Simply put, Deleuze's increased attention to control, or communication, directly corresponds to his increased attention to the negative—not as being but as experience and experiment, as habit. Thus it is not only that Deleuze's refusal of negative being cannot be conflated with habits of affirmation, it is also that Deleuze, when attending to control, attempts to articulate habits of negativity. What is Philosophy? concludes with an articulation of the No of chaos, the non of thought that enables creation: philosophy must attain "an essential relationship with the No that concerns it"; philosophy does "not need the No as beginning, or as the end in which [it] would be called upon to disappear by being realized, but at every moment of [its] becoming or [its] development" (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 218).
[8] The creation named by Deleuze's philosophy is thus in immanence with the No, and it is this No-creation immanence that begins to articulate antagonism toward communication: "Creating has always been something different from communicating" (Deleuze 1997: 175). This divergence between communication and the No of creation is utter, essential, and irredeemable. There is no possibility of emancipating communication, nor is there any affirmative basis for creation—for the base is communication. There is nothing to affirm, and so creation is immanent with the negativity of the non: "The key thing may be to create vacuoles of noncommunication" (Deleuze 1997: 175).
The Reality of Non-Being
[9] My argument, drawing on Deleuze, is that the logic of possibility actually serves to modulatively reproduce the anti-black grammar of the world. Creation, defined as a break with the presently given world, is not a possibility. It is rather immanent with an axiomatic No to such possibility, with habits of negativity.
[10] This thesis concerns a key problematic that stems from the Afro-Pessimist analysis of anti-blackness: if blackness stands [is] both within the habitus of modernity, as an organizing principle, and without this habitus, as a perpetually banished subjectivity, then the very articulation of blackness would seem to depend on and reproduce such a habitus. In other words, both being-within and being-without are possibilities governed by modernity's dominative positioning of blackness. The articulation of blackness is in fact bound by this problematic insofar as one remains within the ambit of habits of affirmation. In other words, the presumption of affirmation is co-extensive with the reproduction of the habitus of modernity: that which is presently available for affirmation is already governed by modernity and its articulation of blackness, and so habits of affirmation inevitably participate in and reproduce the double-bind in which modernity positions blackness.
[11] Against such reproduction, it is essential to insist on habits of negativity. Such insistence is total: since it is affirmation as such that entails participation in the being here indexed by modernity, even a modicum of affirmation mitigates the force enacted by negativity. The power of creation therefore resides entirely and essentially on the side of negativity—and not at all on the side of affirmation. Concomitantly, to invoke such power actually entails an unmitigated refusal of habits of affirmation; affirmation does not name or support, but on the contrary denies, the power of creation. Given the double-bind in which modernity positions blackness, this is to say that the negativity of the non, in virtue of its immanence with a force of creation, indexes blackness as a power of non-being, as that which is without need of—and in fact opposed to—reliance on the affirmative.
[12] It remains necessary to outline the articulation of this immanence of creation and non-being—that is, to theoretically express how an unmitigated insistence on habits of negativity can be both a refusal of affirmation and an enactment of power. This warrants a return to Deleuze's thought by way of some questions: How can habits of negativity, articulated via Deleuze's insistence on the non, gain theoretical consistency with his conceptual refusal of negative being? If negative being is refused, then in what sense can there be insistence on the non?
[13] Deleuze argues that "being is difference itself. Being is also non-being, but non-being is not the being of the negative . . . non-being is Difference" (Deleuze 1994: 76-77). This makes clear that negative being is refused in virtue of difference; what is essential is difference in itself. Hence difference is articulated not as the affirmation of affirmative being, nor even as the affirmation of being as such. On the contrary, difference is articulated as "non-being": negative being is refused, but it is refused in favor of non-being. Difference antecedes both positive being and negative being, thereby displacing their dialectical or conflictual relation. In other words, difference is not between opposed beings but in itself, autonomous from and antecedent to every being or thing; difference is real, but precisely as a matter of non-being. Its reality is not the being of a thing, it is no-thing.
[14] Such theorization enables the delinking of creation (as force of non-being, or no-thing) from affirmation (as possibility of being). Difference, or non-being, marks a real force of creation that is without, and incommensurable with, being. In virtue of this unanalogizability of non-being with being, creation is articulated as a force stemming from negativity, and not at all from affirmation: affirmation is said of being and its possibilization, whereas creation is said of non-being. Habits of negativity, which antagonize every (positively or negatively described) being, or being as such, are thus coeval with an insistence on the real force of non-being.
[15] This argument can be used to negotiate a tension between the Afro-Pessimist emphasis on irresolvable negativity and the concern of Black Optimism to emphasize a power named by blackness: while the former's emphasis on negativity extends to habits of affirmation as such, this negativity immanently involves—and thus does not abandon—an insistence on the power of creation. Consequently, the Black Op concern to speak of the power of blackness may be satisfied entirely within the space of negativity, or social death, on which Afro-Pessimism insists. Such satisfaction does not then require recourse to qualifications that would mitigate the negativity of this space, On the contrary, power is immanent to a redoubled negativity, or a negativity toward both being and the affirmation of the possibility of being-otherwise.
[16] Yet even as Deleuze's philosophical efforts may be deployed by and for the articulation of Afro-Pessimist claims, these claims vertiginously intensify Deleuze's theorization of non-being: Deleuze theorizes non-being in terms of a "vertigo" of immanence (Deleuze and Guattari 1996: 48), yet blackness is the historical, material experience of such vertigo. Drawing on a distinction made by Wilderson, this is to say that for Deleuze non-being is a "subjective vertigo," or a vertigo into which Deleuze's thought makes an entrance, while blackness is experienced as "objective vertigo," meaning that vertigo is—historically or materially—always already there (Wilderson 2011: 3). Immanence, or the vertigo of non-being, remains an object for the thought of Deleuze; blackness is historically or materially the objective reality of non-being—the very reality of the vertigo of immanence. Consequently, to think non-being according to blackness entails the reading of Deleuze's theoretical articulation in terms of the operations by which historical, material power is enacted.
ToP---White Education---1NC
Whiteness within education is parasitic upon Blackness for its own survival. Absent confronting this relationship, any attempt at progressivity is doomed to fail.
Henry ’23 [Kevin Lawrence Henry Jr., Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; “Feasting on Blackness: educational parasitism, necropolicy, and Black thought”; 08-23-2023; International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education; doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2248089, accessed via University of Michigan libraries, 07-17-2024] dliang
It is February 2021. I am writing this article while my mother is without electricity or water. She lives in Houston, TX, one of the most technologically advanced and diverse cities in the world. Her case is not singular; she is fortunate. I am grateful. Reports have documented the numerous individuals who have died over the course of several days due to the “winter storms” and infra- structural collapse that has been underwritten by capitalist greed. No water. No heat. No electricity. Limited food. Bone-chilling temperatures. People are suffering due to deregulation, privatization of the energy sector, and what could be understood as general legislative malprac- tice or a cavern of ethical emptiness. Black low- and no-income folks will most assuredly feel the brunt of this disaster, as have they with the environmental and political disasters in the United States that preceded (and continually haunt) this moment: COVID-19, police brutality, The Flint Water Crisis, Hurricane Katrina, the “War” on Drugs, Jim and Jane Crow segregation, kitchenettes, Rosewood, Tulsa, lynching, sharecropping, capture and enslavement, the spectacular and mundane forms of anti-Blackness. These examples index the ways Black people are terrorized and extracted from for the maintenance of racial capitalism and white supremacy. To say that Black people in the United States—and globally—are structurally vulnerable and experience suffering and premature state sanctioned death would be to utter an understatement (Dumas, 2014; Jones,
2001; Warren, 2018). Although the aforementioned examples are reflec

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