SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 1: Welcome to Solaris

Lem 61 (Stanislaw Lem. Solaris. 1961.)

So much for the mathematicians. These hypotheses, according to some people, underestimated the resources of the human mind; they bowed to the unknown, proclaiming the ancient doctrine, arrogantly resurrected, of ignoramus et ignorabimus. Others regarded the

mathematician’s hypothesis as sterile and dangerous nonsense, contributing towards the creation of a modern mythology based on the notion of this giant brain – whether plasmic or electronic was immaterial – as the ultimate objective of existence, the very synthesis of life. Yet others… but the would-be experts were legion and each had his own theory. A comparison of

the “contact” school of thought with other branches of Solarist studies, in which specialization had rapidly developed, especially during the last quarter of a century, made it clear that a Solarist-cybernetician had difficulty in making himself understood to a Solarist-symmetriadologist. Veubeke,

director of the institute while I was studying there, had asked jokingly one day: “How do you expect to communicate with the ocean, when you can’t even understand one another?” The jest contained more than a grain of truth. The decision to categorize the ocean as a metaphor was not an arbitrary one. Its undulating surface was capable of generating extremely diverse formations which resembled nothing ever seen on Earth, and the function of these sudden eruptions of plasmic “Creativity,” whether adaptive, explorative, or what, remained an enigma. Lifting the

heavy volume with both hands, I replaced it on the shelf, and thought to myself that our scholarship, all the information accumulated in the libraries, amounted to a useless jumble of words, a sludge of statements and suppositions, and that we had not progressed an inch in the 78 years since researches had begun. The situation seemed much worse now than in the time of the pioneers, since the assiduous efforts of so many years had not resulted in a single indisputable conclusion. The sum total of known facts was strictly

negative. The ocean did not use machines, even though in certain circumstances it seemed capable of creating them. During the first two years of

exploratory work, it had reproduced elements of some of the submerged instruments. There-after, it simply ignored the experiments we went on pursuing, as though it had lost all interest in our instruments and our activities, as though, indeed, it was no longer interested in us. It did not possess a nervous system (to go on with this inventory of “negative knowledge”) or cells, and its structure was not proteiform. It did not always react even to the most powerful stimuli (it ignored completely, for example, the catastrophic accident which occurred during the second Giese expedition: an auxiliary rocket, falling from a height of 300,000 metres, crashed on the planet’s surface and the radioactive explosion of its nuclear reserves

destroyed the plasma within a radius of 2500 metres). Gradually in scientific circles, the “Solaris Affair” came to be regarded as a lost cause, notably among the administrators of the Institute, where voices had recently been raised suggesting that financial support should be withdrawn and research suspended. No one, until then, had dared to suggest the final liquidation of the Station; such a decision would have smacked too obviously of defeat. But in the course of semi-official discussions of a number of scientists recommended an

“honorable” withdrawal from Solaris. Many people in the world of science, however, especially among the young, had unconsciously come to regard the “affair” as a touchstone of individual values. All things considered, they claimed, it

was not simply a question of penetrating Solarist civilization, it was essentially a test of ourselves, of the limitations of human knowledge. For some time, there was a widely held notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the “thinking ocean” of Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advance of our own civilization, a sort of “cosmic yogi,” a sage, a symbol of omniscience, which had long ago understood the vanity of all action for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence. The notion was incorrect, for

the living ocean was active. Not, it is true, according to human ideas – it did not build cities or bridges, nor did it manufacture flying machines. It did not try to reduce distances, nor was it concerned with the conquest of Space (the

ultimate criterion, some people thought, of man’s superiority). But it was engaged in a never-ending process of transformation, an

“ontological autometamorphosis.” (There were any amount of scientific neologisms in accounts of Solarist activities.) Moreover, any scientist who devotes himself to the study of Solariana has the indelible impression that he can discern fragments of an intelligent structure, perhaps endowed with genius, haphazardly mingled with outlandish phenomena, apparently the product of an unhinged mind. Thus was born the conception of the “autistic ocean”

as opposed to the “ocean-yogi.” These hypotheses resurrected one of the most ancient of philosophical problems: the relation between matter and mind, and between mind and consciousness. Du Haart was the first to have the audacity to maintain that the ocean possessed a consciousness. The problem, which the methodologists hastened to dub metaphysical, provoked all kinds of arguments

and discussions. Was it possible for thought to exist without consciousness? Could one, in any case, apply the word thought to the

processes observed in the ocean? Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet only an enormous mountain? Whatever the terminology, the new scale of size introduced new norms and new phenomena.

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 1: Welcome to Solaris

As the scientists attempted to quantify Solaris within the confines of anthropomorphic science, the resulting breakdown in reality was more revealing than their efforts. Only when they were able to rethink their blind reliance on rationality could they begin to understand the unintelligibility of extraterrestrial otherness.Kerslake 07 (Patricia Kerslake. Adjunct senior lecturer at Central Queensland University and a contributor to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Science Fiction and Empire. 2007.)The image and metaphor of the monster is prevalent in Solaris. As his primary protagonist unravels the mystery facing him upon reaching the distant planet,

Lem institutes a series of metaphorical questions that are focused not on the sentient ocean, as one might expect,

but rather on the perceptions of the scientists who are engaged in the study of the ocean. The questions are similar, in that they all

probe the behavior of the human scientists as they strive for knowledge under the incessant provocation of the unknowable. To be constantly aware that you are observing something totally outside the bounds of human familiarity, and to be equally aware that nothing you are able to do is likely to increase your knowledge, must place an incredible strain on intelligent, thinking beings. Such pressure is made clear when, shortly after arriving, Kelvin

considers that the scientific crew may have gone mad. Yet even here, the psychologist asks only the leading question “Could madness attain such a degree of reality?” Lem does not elaborate and neglects to offer us images of “typically” insane behavior. And he very carefully does not

provide an answer. Further, when Kelvin considers that human existence on the planet was not simply a question of penetrating Solarist civilization, it was essentially a test of ourselves, of the limitations of human knowledge, Lem holds the psychologist back from providing an exegesis. The text in turn does not attempt to “penetrate” the ocean (although the scientists do undertake some fairls invasive activities, such as bombardment of the ocean’s surface with dense x-rays) as much as it seems to validate the actions and reasoning of the main characters. That Lem considers madness a genuine threat to those deconstructing scientific mysteries is clear, as the text proceeds to encompass nightmarish dreams where individuals analyse their intrusion of Solaris through the metaphorical construct of conversations with the dead.

Despite being relegated to the margins, this form of madness represents a beacon of heterogeneity in the constricted world of scientific rationalism. The science of Solaristics devolved into dogma attempting to explain the extraterrestrial other but madness stands as the last chance to see what others cannot.Klapcsik 08 (Sandor Klapcsik. Professor at the University of Jvyaskala in Finnland. Solaris as Metacommentary: Meta-Science Fiction and Meta-Science-Fiction. Published in Extrapolation. Kent: Spring 2008. Vol. 49, Iss. 1)When Foucault underlines the significance of metaphors in the language of disciplines ("The Order" 60), he draws on medical science as an example, which

has been analyzing madness for centuries. The language of madness can be interpreted as an alternate language to that of reason, and is, therefore, forced to remain mute and unheard: "[t]his whole immense discourse of the madman was taken

for mere noise" ("The Order" 53). In Solaris, the messages of the planet are also unheard, "described as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears to hear it" (121). In His Master's Voice (1968), insanity and undecipherable noise are once more

interrelated, as the novel indicates that often a seemingly insane theory comes up with a revolutionary solution. In the novel, only a crackpot idea can assume that there is a message in the neutrino emission coming from space: a "stream of information--human speech, for example--does not always tell us that it is information and not a chaos of sounds. Often we receive a foreign language as complete babble" (40). Historically, the language of the madman has also been attributed with strange powers, with "the power of uttering a hidden truth, of telling the future, of seeing in all naivety

what the others cannot perceive" (Foucault, "The Order" 53). In Lem's Solaris, the speech of the Other implies mythical and religious discourses: "there was a widely held notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the 'thinking ocean' of

Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advance of our own civilization, a sort of 'cosmic yogi,' a

sage, a symbol of all action and for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence" (24). Silencing the other and enhancing it with a mythical omniscience and omnipotence are interrelated phenomena. Science and religion have a common origin and a

similar purpose when they intend to explain the alien: where science ends, religion begins. A theoretician in the novel points out that "Solaristics is the space era's equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science. Contact, the stated aim of Solaristics, is no less vague and obscure than the communion of the saints, or the second coming of Messiah. Exploration is a liturgy using the language of methodology"

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 1: Welcome to Solaris The knowledge of madness reveals the absurdity of scientific objectivity. The cryptic oceans of Solaris only become comprehensible when the blinders are taken off of rationality, showing how madness is more useful than dogma.Klapcsik 08 (Sandor Klapcsik. Professor at the University of Jvyaskala in Finnland. Solaris as Metacommentary: Meta-Science Fiction and Meta-Science-Fiction. Published in Extrapolation. Kent: Spring 2008. Vol. 49, Iss. 1)

A further similarity between the language of the madman and that of Solaris is evoked by the central character of the novel. The psychologist Kelvin is interested in astronomy, and becomes a member of Solaris-project due to Gibarian, the "proper" scientist who cannot deal with the "visitors" and so commits suicide at the beginning of the novel. Kelvin (whose name may be an allusion to the British physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin) is

only slightly more successful than Gibarian, perhaps because he "makes no effort to use his psychological knowledge. Not only does he not understand the behaviour of the ocean--his former aim--but he is not even able to help the collapsing mental condition of the crew"

(Yossef 57). The language of the alien is understood or translated neither by scientists nor by the slightly incompetent psychologist in the novel. (5) Kelvin eventually aspires to the role of the wise and psychologically educated narrator, who summarizes and "understands" the events, but his performance is hardly convincing. He gives a case study of Solaris, characterizing it as "a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a ... sick god, whose

ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first" (197). Nietzsche argues that the procedures we use to understand the universe gain their power via having been established for a long time, as "after long use [they] seem

firm, canonical, and obligatory to people" ("On Truth" 47). Foucault dates these procedures back to 16th century England (55). Since Solaristics is a relatively new discipline whose object resists any theories, it has not managed to establish prescribed and stable rules, language and methods. As Darko Suvin points out, the "[r]eliance on familiar imaginative frameworks is erroneous in radically new situations" (221). Consequently, no scientific theory can provide a stable discourse; as

Walker argues, "no paradigm can be established so that the work of normal science can begin. Thus, normal science comes off as absurd" (162). The novel demonstrates a special and overt example of Foucault's argument that "we must not imagine that the world turns towards us a legible face

which we would only have to decipher; the world is not the accomplice of our knowledge" ("The Order" 67). Solaris resists human attempts to render it familiar, "formidable and calculable for us" (Nietzsche, The Will 280).

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 1: Welcome to Solaris

Anthropocentric science necessitates ecological destruction and extinction.Ahkin, 10 – (Melanie Ahkin, Monash University, 2010, “Human Centrism, Animist Materialism, and the Critique of Rationalism in Val Plumwood’s Critical Ecological Feminism,” Emergent Australian Philosophers, a peer reviewed journal of philosophy,http://www.eap.philosophy-australia.com/archives.htmlThese five features provide the basis for hegemonic centrism insofar as they promote certain conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality which universalise and naturalise the standpoint of the superior relata as primary or centre, and deny and subordinate the standpoints of inferiorised others as

secondary or derivative. Using standpoint theory analysis, Plumwood's reconceptualisation of human chauvinist frameworks

locates and dissects these logical characteristics of dualism, and the conceptual and perceptual distortions of reality common to centric structures, as follows. Radical exclusion is found in the rationalist emphasis on differences between humans and non-human nature, its valourisation of a human rationality conceived as exclusionary of nature,

and its minimisation of similarities between the two realms. Homogenisation and stereotyping occur especially in the rationalist denial of consciousness to nature, and its denial of the diversity of mental characteristics found within its many different constituents, facilitating a perception of nature as homogeneous and of its members as interchangeable and replaceable resources. This definition of nature in terms of its lack of human rationality and consciousness means that its identity remains relative to that of the dominant human group, and its difference is marked as deficiency, permitting its inferiorisation. Backgrounding and denial may be observed in the conception of nature as extraneous and inessential background to the foreground of human culture, in the human denial of dependency on the natural environment, and denial of the ethical and political constraints which the unrecognised ends and needs of non-human nature might otherwise place on human behaviour.

These features together create an ethical discontinuity between humans and non-human nature which denies nature's value and agency, and thereby promote its instrumentalisation and exploitation for the benefit of humans.11 This dualistic logic helps to universalise the human centric standpoint, making invisible and seemingly inevitable the conceptual and perceptual

distortions of reality and oppression of non-human nature it enjoins. The alternative standpoints and perspectives of members of the inferiorised class of nature are denied legitimacy and subordinated to that of the class of humans, ultimately becoming invisible once this master standpoint becomes part of the very structure of thought.12 Such an anthropocentric framework creates a variety of serious injustices and prudential risks, making it highly ecologically irrational.13 The hierarchical value prescriptions and epistemic distortions responsible for its biased, reductive conceptualisation of nature strips the

non-human natural realm of non-instrumental value, and impedes the fair and impartial treatment of its members. Similarly, anthropocentrism creates distributive injustices by restricting ethical concern to humans, admitting partisan distributive relationships with non-human nature in the forms of commodification and instrumentalisation. The prudential risks and blindspots created by anthropocentrism are problematic for nature and humans alike and are of especial concern within our current context of radical human dependence on an irreplaceable and increasingly

degraded natural environment. These prudential risks are in large part consequences of the centric structure's promotion of illusory human disembeddedness, self-enclosure and insensitivity to the significance and survival needs of non-human nature: The logic of centrism naturalises an illusory order in which the centre appears to itself to be disembedded, and this is especially dangerous in contexts where there is real and radical dependency on an Other who is simultaneously weakened by the application of that logic.14 Within the context of human-nature relationships,

such a logic must inevitably lead to failure, either through the catastrophic extinction of our natural environment and the consequent collapse of our species, or more hopefully by the abandonment and transformation of the human centric framework.

4

SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – The Plan

Thus the plan: The United States federal government should increase its exploration for Solaris beyond the Earth’s mesosphere.

5

SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 2: The Triple Threat

Lem’s fiction reveals the insufficiency of anthropomorphized human science to explain the Otherness that is space beyond the Earth’s mesosphere. Solaris represents an intelligence that shatters the foundations of such an anthropocentric knowledge base.Klapcsik 08 (Sandor Klapcsik. Professor at the University of Jvyaskala in Finnland. Solaris as Metacommentary: Meta-Science Fiction and Meta-Science-Fiction. Published in Extrapolation. Kent: Spring 2008. Vol. 49, Iss. 1)

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay describes Stanislaw Lem's fiction as "metacommentary," indicating the significance of human cultural constructions such as science, myth, literature, religion, and so on, in his novels. These constructions, which intend to explain the universe, diffuse into various, contradictory theories and create a flux of ideas without final resolution or reconciliation. Csicsery-Ronay argues that "[s]ince neither Lem's protagonists nor his readers ever arrive at an Archimedean point outside the totality they are trying to understand, no one system of commentary is ever sufficient. It is the play of

commentary that creates Lem's universe" ("How not to" 387, emphasis in original). (1) In Foucaldian terms, the texts indicate the multiplicity of discourses, "discontinuous practices, which cross each other, are sometimes juxtaposed with one another, but can just as well exclude or be unaware of each other" ("The Order" 67). (2) Based on Csicsery-Ronay's analysis and utilizing Michel Foucault's and

Friedrich Nietzsche's theories, I interpret Lem's Solaris (1961) as meta-science fiction and meta-science-fiction. (3) The validity and "truth" of scientific explanations depend on the discipline or paradigm that created them. Foucault's disciplines open the discourse, but also confine it with a prescribed "set of methods, a corpus of propositions considered to be true, a play of rules and definitions of techniques and instruments" ("The Order" 59). Thomas S. Kuhn's paradigms follow and contradict each other, providing theories with certain freedom, but also constraining the scientific perspective: "one of the things a scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have solutions. To a great extent these are the only problems that the community will admit as scientific or encourage

its members to undertake" (Kuhn 37). Strict conditions given by paradigms prove to the postmodern reader that "scientific revolutions," the substitution or succession of paradigms do not necessarily mean progress, but draw attention to problems in the history of science. As Kuhn argues, "[w]hen it repudiates a past paradigm, a scientific community simultaneously renounces, as a fit subject for professional scrutiny, most of the books and articles in which that paradigm has been embodied ... the member of a mature scientific community is,

[therefore], like the typical character of Orwell's 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that be" (166). The planet Solaris with its unapproachable, giant alien life form demonstrates that earthly and anthropomorphic human science cannot provide accurate descriptions of an alien phenomenon (see Csicsery-Ronay, "The Book is" 7 and Freedman 108). Solaris resembles The Science of Discworld (1999), which illustrates that the sciences (or at least our notions of them) and the narrative logic ("narrative

imperative") of stories are not entirely different. "When you live in a complex world, you have to simplify it in order to understand it" (Pratchett 42)--it may be fruitful to analyze these simplifications, explanatory stories and lies-to-children both in the sciences and in the humanities.

In the face of an inexplicable Otherness, the state uses science to dismiss it with stigmatization.Wendt and Duvall 08 (Alex Wendt and Raymond Duvall. Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Sovereignty and the UFO. Political Theory 2008 36: 607.http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/607.)

On March 30-31, 1990, two Belgian F-16s were scrambled to intercept a large, unidentified object in the night

sky over Brussels, which had been observed by a policeman and ground-based radars. The pilots confirmed the target on their radars (never visually) and

achieved radar lock three times, but each time it responded with violent turns and altitude changes, later estimated to have imposed

gravitational forces of 40gs. In a rare public statement the Belgian defense minister said he could not explain the incident, which remains unexplained today. 8 One might expect unexplained incidents in NATO airspace to concern the authorities, particularly given that since 1947

over 100,000 UFOs have been reported worldwide, many by militaries. 9 However, neither the scientific community nor states have made serious efforts to identify them, the vast majority remaining completely uninvestigated. The science of UFOs is minuscule and deeply marginalized. Although many scientists think privately that UFOs deserve study, 10 there are no opportunities or incentives to do it. With almost no meaningful variation, states—all 190+ of them—have been notably uninterested as well. 11 A few have gone through the motions of studying individual cases, but with even fewer exceptions these inquiries have been neither objective nor systematic, and no state has actually

looked for UFOs to discover larger patterns. 12 For both science and the state, it seems, the UFO is not an “object” at all, but a non-object, something not just unidentified but unseen and thus ignored. 13 The authoritative disregard of UFOs

goes further, however, to active denial of their object status. Ufology is decried as a pseudo-science that threatens the foundations of

scientific authority, 14 and the few scientists who have taken a public interest in UFOs have done so at considerable cost. For their part, states have

actively dismissed “belief” in UFOs as irrational (as in, “do you believe in UFOs?”), while maintaining considerable secrecy about their own reports. 15 This leading role of the state distinguishes UFOs from other anomalies, scientific resistance to which is typically explained sociologically. 16 UFO denial appears to be as much political as sociological— more like Galileo’s ideas were political for the Catholic Church than like the once ridiculed theory of continental drift. In short, considerable work goes into ignoring UFOs, constituting them as objects only of ridicule and scorn. To that extent one may speak of a “UFO taboo,” a prohibition in the authoritative public sphere on taking UFOs seriously, or “thou shalt not try very hard to find out what UFOs are.”not try very hard to find out what UFOs are.”

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 2: The Triple Threat

Scientific objectivity and the state define the conditions of life to create specialized discourses that make threats knowable and controllable. Knowledge of the extraterrestrial is instantly marginalized in an attempt to sustain the taboo.Wendt and Duvall 08 (Alex Wendt and Raymond Duvall. Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Sovereignty and the UFO. Political Theory 2008 36: 607.http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/607.)

In thinking about the problem of rule, political scientists have traditionally focused on either individual agents or institutional structures, in

both cases treating government as a given object. In contrast, Foucault’s concept of governmentality is focused on the “art of governing,” understood as the biopolitical “conduct of conduct” for a population of subjects. 45 Thus,

governmentality concerns the specific regime of practices through which the population is constituted and (self-)regularized. “Modern” governmentality marks a shift in discourses of rule away from the state’s sovereign power— its ability to take life

and/or render it bare—and toward its fostering and regularizing of life in biopolitics. The object of government is no longer simply

obedience to the king, but regulating the conditions of life for subjects. To this end biopolitics requires that the conditions of life of the population be made visible and assayed, and practical knowledge be made available to improve them. As a result, with

modern governmentality we see the emergence of both panoptic surveillance and numerous specialized discourses—

of education, political economy, demography, health, morality, and others—the effect of which is to make populations knowable and subject to the regularization that will make for the “happy life.” A constitutive feature of modern governmentality is that its

discourses are scientific, which means that science and the state are today deeply intermeshed. Through science the state makes its subjects and objects known, lending them a facticity that facilitates their regularization, and through the

state science acquires institutional support and prestige. Despite this symbiosis, however, there is also an important epistemological difference between the two. Science seeks, but knows it can never fully achieve, “the” truth, defined as an apolitical, objective representation of the world. To this end it relies on norms and practices that produce an evolving, always potentially contested body of

knowledge. The state, in contrast, seeks a regime of truth to which its population will reliably adhere. Standards for knowledge in that context privilege stability and normalization over the uncertain path of scientific truth. Although science and the state are allied in the

modern UFO regime, we suggest in conclusion that this difference opens space for critical theory and resistance. Modern governmentality directs attention away from sovereign power and toward the socially diffuse practices by which it is sustained. Yet as Agamben reminds us, sovereignty remains important, because every regime of governmentality has outsides, even while exceeding the capacity for regularization. This outside is both external, in the form of actors not subject to normalization, and internal, in the form of people’s capacity to o otherwise (hence their need to be “governed”).

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 2: The Triple Threat Blind agnosticism becomes a tool of state denialism unless tempered with the power of a realist moment – we must act as if the extraterrestrial other is knowable, while being open to the possibility that is entirely outside of human cognition.Wendt and Duvall 08 (Alex Wendt and Raymond Duvall. Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Sovereignty and the UFO. Political Theory 2008 36: 607.http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/607.)

First the argument. Adapting ideas from Giorgio Agamben, supplemented by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, we argue that the UFOtaboo is functionally necessitated by the anthropocentric metaphysics of modern sovereignty. Modern rule typically works less

through sovereign coercion than through biopolitics, governing the conditions of life itself. 22 In this liberal apparatus of security, power flows primarily from the deployment of specialized knowledges for the regularization of populations, rather than from the ability to kill. But when such regimes of governmentality are threatened, the traditional face of the state, 23 its sovereign power, comes to the fore: the ability to determine when norms and law should be suspended—in Carl Schmitt’s terms, to “decide the exception.” 24 The UFO compels decision

because it exceeds modern governmentality, but we argue that the decision cannot be made. The reason is that modern decision presupposes anthropocentrism, which is threatened metaphysically by the possibility that UFOs might be ETs. As such,

genuine UFO ignorance cannot be acknowledged without calling modern sovereignty itself into question. This puts the problem of normalizing the UFO back onto governmentality, where it can be “known” only without trying to find out what it is—

through a taboo. The UFO, in short, is a previously unacknowledged site of contestation in an ongoing historical project

to constitute sovereignty in anthropocentric terms. Importantly, our argument here is structural rather than agentic. 25 We are not saying the authorities are hiding The Truth about UFOs, much less that it is ET. We are saying they cannot ask the question. Although we draw on theorists not associated with epistemic realism, a key premise of our argument is that a critical theorization of the UFO taboo in relation to modern rule is possible only if it includes a realist moment, which grants to things-in-themselves (here the UFO) the power to affect rational belief. To see why, consider Jodi Dean’s otherwise excellent Aliens in America, one of the few social scientific works to treat UFOs as anything more than figments of over-active imaginations. 26

Like us, Dean emphasizes that it is not known what UFOs are, leaving open the ET possibility. But for her the significance of this ignorance is to

exemplify the postmodern breakdown of all modern certainties, such that scientific truth is now everywhere a “fugitive”—not that it might be overcome by considering, scientifically, the reality of UFOs. In the UFO context such anti-realism is problematic, since its political effect is ironically to reinforce the skeptical orthodoxy: if UFOs cannot be known scientifically then why bother study them? As realist institutions, science and the modern state do not concern themselves with what cannot be known scientifically. For example, whatever their religious beliefs, social scientists always study religion as “methodological atheists,” assuming thatGod plays no causal role in the material world. Anything else would be considered irrational today; as Jürgen Habermas puts it, “a philosophy that oversteps the bounds of methodological atheism loses its philosophical seriousness.” 27 By not allowing that UFOs might be knowable scientifically,

therefore, Dean implicitly embraces a kind of methodological atheism about UFOs, which as with God shifts attention to human representations of the UFO, not its reality. Yet UFOs are different than God in one key respect: many leave physical traces on radar and film, which suggests they are natural rather than supernatural phenomena and thus amenable in principle to scientific investigation. Since authoritative discourse in effect denies this by treating UFOs as an irrational belief, a realist moment is necessary to call this discourse fully into question. Interestingly, therefore, in contrast to their usual antagonism, in the UFO context science would be critical theory. In this light Dean’s

claim that UFOs are unknowable appears anthropocentrically monological. It might be that We, talking among ourselves, cannot know what UFOs are, but any “They” probably have a good idea, and the only way to remain open to that dialogical potential is to consider the reality of the UFO itself. 28 Failure to do so merely reaffirms the UFO taboo. In foregrounding the realist moment in our analysis we mean not to foreclose a priori the possibility that UFOs can be known scientifically; however, we make no claim that they necessarily would be known if only they were studied. Upon close inspection many UFOs do turn out to have conventional explanations, but there is a hard core of cases, perhaps 25 to 30 percent,

that seem to resist such explanations, and their reality may indeed be humanly unknowable—although without systematic inquiry we cannot say. Thus, and importantly, our overarching position here is one of methodological agnosticism rather than realism, which mitigates the potential for epistemological conflict with the non-realist political theorists we draw upon below. 29 Nevertheless, in the context of natural phenomena like UFOs agnosticism can itself become dogma if not put to the test, which requires adopting a realist stance at least instrumentally or “strategically,” and seeing what happens. 30 This justifies acting as if the UFO is knowable, while recognizing that it might ultimately exceed human grasp.

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1AC – Part 2: The Triple Threat

Our stance of militant agnosticism successfully attacks anthropocentric sovereignty at its weakest points. The UFO taboo relies upon epistemic authority to validate it in judgment situations.Wendt and Duvall 08 (Alex Wendt and Raymond Duvall. Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Sovereignty and the UFO. Political Theory 2008 36: 607.http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/36/4/607.)\We have called ours a “critical” theory, in that it rests on a normative assumption that the limits of modern rule should be exposed. In the present context this

means that human beings should try to know the UFO. Although we believe the case for this presumption is over-determined and overwhelming, it is not a case we can make here. Nevertheless, it seems incumbent upon us to follow through on the practical logic of our theory, so taking

its desirability as given, in conclusion we address the question of resistance to the UFO tabooThe structuralism of our argument might suggest that resistance is futile. However, the structure of the UFO taboo also has aporias and fissures that make it—and the anthropocentric structure of rule that it sustains—potentially unstable. One is the UFO itself, which in its persistent recurrence generates an ongoing need for its normalization. Modern rule might not recognize the UFO, but in the face of continuing anomalies

maintaining such nonrecognition requires work. In that respect the UFO is part of the constitutive, unnormalized outside of modern sovereignty, which can be included in authoritative discourse only through its exclusion. Within the structure of modern rule there are also at least two fissures that complicate maintaining UFO ignorance. One is the different knowledge interests of science

and the state. While the two are aligned in authoritative UFO discourse, the state is ultimately interested in maintaining a certain regime of truth (particularly in the face of metaphysical insecurity), whereas science recognizes that its truths can only be tentative. Theory may be stubborn, but the presumption in science is that reality has the last word, which creates the possibility of scientific knowledge countering the state’s dogma. The other fissure is within liberalism, the

constitutive core of modern governmentality. Even as it produces normalized subjects who know that “belief” in UFOs is absurd, liberal governmentality justifies itself as a discourse that produces free-thinking subjects who might doubt it. 72 It is in this context that we would place the recent disclosure by the French government (and at press time the British too) of its long-secret UFO files (1,600 reports), including its investigations of selected cases, of which the French acknowledge 25 percent as unexplained. 73 Given that secrecy is only a contingent feature of the UFO taboo, and that even the French are still far from seeking systematic knowledge of UFOs, this disclosure is not in itself a serious challenge to our argument. However, the French action does illustrate a potential within liberalism to break with authoritative common sense, 74 even at the risk of exposing the foundations of modern sovereignty to insecurity. The kind of resistance that can best exploit these fissures might be called militant agnosticism. Resistance must be agnostic because by the realist standards of modernity, regarding the UFO/ET question neither atheism nor belief is epistemically justified; we simply do not know. Concretely, agnosticism means “seeing” rather than ignoring the UFO, taking it seriously as a truly

unidentified object. Since it is precisely such seeing that the UFO taboo forbids, in this context seeing is resistance. However, resistance must also be militant, by which we mean public and strategic, or else it willindeed be futile. The reproduction of UFO ignorance depends

crucially on those in positions of epistemic authority observing the UFO taboo. Thus, private agnosticism—of the kind moderns might have about

God, for example—is itself part of the problem. Only breaking the taboo in public constitutes genuine resistance. Even that is not enough, however, as attested by the long history of unsuccessful resistance to the UFO taboo to date. 75 The problem is that agnosticism

alone does not produce knowledge, and thus reduce the ignorance upon which modern sovereignty depends. For a critical theory of anthropocentric rule, therefore, a science of UFOs ironically is required, and not just a science of individual cases after the

fact, which can tell us only that some UFOs lack apparent conventional explanations. Rather, in this domain what is needed is paradoxically a systematic science, in which observations are actively sought in order to analyze patterns from which an intelligent presence might be inferred. 76 That would require money, infrastructure, and a long-term commitment of the kind that to date has been possible only for epistemic authorities, or precisely those actors most resistant to taking UFOs seriously. Still, given the potential disjunction of interest between science and the state, it is possible here for science to play a key role for critical theory. Whether such a science

would actually overcome UFO ignorance is unknowable today, but it is only through it that We might move beyond the essentially theological discourse of belief and denial to a truly critical posture. Modern rule and its metaphysics are extraordinarily resilient, so the difficulties of such resistance cannot be overstated. Those who attempt it will have difficulty funding and publishing their work, and their reputations will suffer. UFO resistance might not be futile but it is certainly dangerous, because it is resistance to modern sovereignty itself. In this respect militant UFO agnosticism is akin to other forms of resistance to governmentality; however, whereas sovereignty has found ways of dealing

with them, the UFO may reveal an Achilles heel. Like Achilles, the modern sovereign is a warrior whose function is to protect—in this case,

from threats to the norm. Unlike conventional threats, however, the UFO threatens humans’ capacity to decide those threats, and so cannot be acknowledged without calling modern sovereignty itself into question. To what extent that would be desirable is a large normative question which we have bracketed here. 77 But taking UFOs seriously would certainly embody the spirit of self-criticism that infuses liberal governmentality and academia in particular, and it would, thereby, foster critical theory. And indeed, if academics’ first responsibility is to tell the truth, then the truth is that after sixty years of modern UFOs, human beings still have no idea what they are, and are not even trying to find out. That should surprise and disturb us all, and cast doubt on the structure of rule that requires and sustains it.

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 2: The Triple Threat

When the legitimacy and existence of an entire population is in question, politics become murderous—the entirety of the world is reduced to bare life in an attempt to rid the public sphere of all difference. The only option becomes the extermination of all life.Duarte 05 (Duarte, professor of Philosophy at Universidade Federal do Paraná, 05 André,” Biopolitics and the dissemination of violence: the Arendtian critique of the present.” http://hannaharendt.net/research/biopolitics.html)

These historic transformations have not only brought more violence to the core of the political but have also redefined its character by giving rise to biopolitical violence. As stated, what characterizes biopolitics is a dynamic of both protecting and abandoning life through its inclusion and exclusion from the political and economic community. In Arendtian terms, the biopolitical danger is best described as the risk of converting animal laborans into Agamben’s homo sacer, the human being who can be put to death by anyone and whose killing does not imply any crime whatsoever 13). When politics is conceived of as biopolitics, as the task of increasing the life and happiness of the nationalanimal laborans, the nation-state becomes ever more violent and murderous. If we link Arendt’s thesis from The Human Condition to those of The Origins of

Totalitarianism, we can see the Nazi and Stalinist extermination camps as the most refined experiments in annihilating the “bare life” of animal laborans (although these are by no means the only instances in which the modern state has devoted itself to

human slaughter). Arendt is not concerned only with the process of the extermination itself, but also the historical situation in which large-scale exterminations were made possible – above all, the emergence of ‘uprooted’ and ‘superfluous’ modern masses, what we might describe as animal laborans balanced on the knife-edge of ‘bare life.’ Compare her words in ‘Ideology and Terror’ (1953), which became the

conclusion of later editions of The Origins of Totalitarianism: Isolation is that impasse into which men are driven when the political sphere of their lives… is destroyed… Isolated man who lost his place in the political realm of action is deserted by the world of things as well, if he is no longer recognized as homo faber but treated as an animal laborans whose necessary ‘metabolism with nature’ is of concern to no one.

Isolation then become loneliness… Loneliness, the common ground for terror, the essence of totalitarian government, and for ideology or logicality, the preparation of its executioners and victims, is closely connected with uprootedness and superfluousness which have been the curse of modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution and have become acute with the rise of imperialism at the end of the last century and the break-down of political

institutions and social traditions in our own time. To be uprooted means to have no place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others; to be

superfluous means not to belong to the world at all 14). The conversion of homo faber, the human being as creator of durable objects and institutions, into animal laborans and, later on, into homo sacer, can be traced in Arendt’s account of nineteenth century imperialism. As argued in the

second volume of The Origins of Totalitarianism, European colonialism combined racism and bureaucracy to perpetrate the “most terrible massacres in recent history, the Boers’ extermination of Hottentot tribes, the wild murdering by Carl Peters in German Southeast Africa, the decimation of the peaceful Congo population – from 20 to 40 million reduced to 8 million people; and finally, perhaps worst of all, it resulted in the

triumphant introduction of such means of pacification into ordinary, respectable foreign policies.” 15) This simultaneous protection and destruction of life was also at the core of the two World Wars, as well as in many other more local conflicts, during which whole populations have become stateless or deprived of a public realm. In spite of all their political differences, the United States of Roosevelt, the Soviet Russia of Stalin, the Nazi Germany of Hitler and the Fascist Italy of Mussolini were all conceived of as states devoted to the needs of the national animal laborans. According to Agamben, since our contemporary politics recognizes no other value than life, Nazism and fascism, that is, regimes which have taken bare life as their supreme political criterion are bound to remain standing temptations 16). Finally, it

is obvious that this same logic of promoting and annihilating life persists both in post-industrial and in underdeveloped countries, inasmuch as economic growth depends on the increase of unemployment and on many forms of political exclusion.

When politics is reduced to the tasks of administering, preserving and promoting the life and happiness of animal laborans it ceases to matter that those objectives require increasingly violent acts, both in national and international arenas. Therefore, we should not be surprised that the legality of state violence has become a secondary aspect in political discussions, since what really matters is to protect and stimulate the life of the national (or, as the case may be, Western) animal laborans. In order to maintain sacrosanct ideals of increased mass production and mass consumerism, developed countries ignore the finite character of natural reserves and refuse to sign International Protocols regarding natural resource

conservation or pollution reduction, thereby jeopardising future humanity. They also launch preventive attacks and wars, disregard basic human rights, for instance in extra-legal detention camps such as Guantánamo,27) and multiply refugee camps. Some countries have even imprisoned whole populations, physically isolating them from other communities, in a new form of social, political and economic

apartheid. In short, states permit themselves to impose physical and structural violence against individuals and regimes (‘rogue states’ 18) ) that supposedly interfere with the security and growth of their national ‘life process.’ If, according to Arendt, the common world consists of an institutional in-between meant to outlast both human natality and mortality, in modern mass societies we find the progressive abolition of the institutional artifice that separates and protects our world from the forces of nature 19). This explains the contemporary feeling of disorientation and unhappiness, likewise the political impossibility we find in combining stability and novelty 20). In the context of a “waste economy, in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appeared in the world, if the process itself is not to come to a sudden

catastrophic end,” 21) it is not only possible, but also necessary, that people themselves become raw material to be consumed, discarded, annihilated. In other words, when Arendt announces the “grave danger that eventually no object of the world will be

safe from consumption and annihilation through consumption,” 22) we should also remember that human annihilation, once elevated to the status of an ‘end-in-itself’ in totalitarian regimes, still continues to occur – albeit in different degrees

and by different methods, in contemporary ‘holes of oblivion’ such as miserably poor Third World neighbourhoods

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SPaCe Cadets <Solaris>

1AC – Part 2: The Triple Threat

Duarte continues… 23) and penitentiaries, underpaid and slave labour camps, in the name of protecting the vital interests of animal laborans. To talk about a process of human consumption is not to speak metaphorically but literally. Heidegger had realized this in his notes written during the late thirties, later published under the title of Overcoming Metaphysics. He claimed that the difference between war and peace had already been blurred in a society in which “metaphysical man, the animal rationale, gets fixed as the labouring animal,” so that “labour is now reaching the metaphysical rank of the unconditional objectification of everything present.” 24) Heidegger argued that once the world becomes fully determined by the “circularity of consumption for the sake of consumption” it is at the brink of becoming an ‘unworld’ (Unwelt), since ‘man, who no longer conceals his character of being the most important raw material, is also drawn into the process. Man is “the most important raw material” because he remains the subject of all consumption.’ 25) After the Second World War and the release of detailed information concerning the death factories Heidegger took his critique even further, acknowledging that to understand man as both subject and object of the consumption process would still not comprehend the process of deliberate mass extermination. He saw this, instead, in terms of the conversion of man into no more than an “item of the reserve fund for the fabrication of corpses” (Bestandestücke eines Bestandes der Fabrikation von Leichen).

According to Heidegger, what happened in the extermination camps was that death became meaningless, and the existential importance of our anxiety in the face of death was lost; instead, people were robbed of the essential possibility of dying, so that they merely “passed away” in the process of being “inconspicuously liquidated” (unauffällig liquidiert). 26) The human being as animal laborans (Arendt), as homo sacer (Agamben), as an ‘item of the reserve fund’ (Heidegger) – all describe the same process of dehumanisation whereby humankind is reduced to the bare fact of being alive, with no further qualifications. As argued by Agamben, when it becomes impossible to differentiate between biós and zóe, that is, when bare life is transformed into a qualified or specific ‘form of life,’ we face the emergence of a biopolitical epoch 27). When states promote the animalisation of man by policies that aim at both protecting and destroying human life, we can interpret this in terms of the widespread presence of the homo sacer in our world: “If it is true that the figure proposed by our age is that of an unsacrificeable life that has nevertheless become capable of being killed to an unprecedented degree, then the bare life of homo sacer concerns us in a special way… If today there is no longer any one clear figure of the sacred man, it is perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.” 28) Investigating changes in the way power was conceived of and exercised at the turn of the nineteenth century, Foucault realized that when life turned out to be a constitutive political element, managed, calculated, and normalized by means of biopolitics, political strategies soon became murderous. Paradoxically, when the Sovereign’s prerogative ceased to be simply that of imposing violent death, and became a matter of promoting the growth of life, wars became more and more bloody, mass killing more frequent. Political conflicts now aimed at preserving and intensifying the life of the winners, so that enmity ceased to be political and came to be seen biologically: it is not enough to defeat the enemy; it must be exterminated as a danger to the health of the race, people or community. Thus Foucault on the formation of the modern biopolitical paradigm at the end of the nineteenth century: …death that was based on the right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain or develop its life. Yet wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal, never before did regimes visit such holocausts on their own populations. But this formidable power of death… now presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life that endeavours to administer, optimise, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to wage so many wars, causing so many men to be killed. And through a turn that closes the circle, as the technology of wars have caused them to tend increasingly toward all-out destruction, the decision that initiates

them and the one that terminates them are in fact increasingly informed by the naked question of survival. The atomic situation is now at the end of point of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an individual’s continued existence. The principle underlying the tactics of battle – that one has to be capable of killing in order to go on living – has become the principle that defines the strategy of states. But the existence in question is no longer the juridical existence of sovereignty; at stake is the biological existence of a population. If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.

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