Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[38]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[74]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[38]

EntryDate

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1		-2017-01-15 07:01:27.575
	1	+2017-01-15 07:01:27.0

Caselist.CitesClass[74]

Cites

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	1	+The 1AC's endorsing of "democracy to come" relies on metaphysical constructs that depend on the continuance of anti-black violence.
	2	+Warren 15
	3	+Warren, Calvin. Assistant Professor at George Washington University, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope”: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015, pp. 215–248
	4	+For the black nihilist, anti-blackness is metaphysics. It is the system of thought and organization of existence that structures the relationship between object/subject, human/animal, rational/irrational, and free/enslaved—essentially, the categories that constitute the field of Ontology. Thus, the social rationalization, loss of individuality, economic expansionism, and technocratic domination that both Vattimo and Heidegger analyze actually depend on anti-blackness.5 Metaphysics, then, is unthinkable without anti-blackness. Neither Heidegger nor Vattimo explores this aspect of Being’s oblivion—it is the literal destruction of black bodies that provide the psychic, economic, and philosophical resources for modernity to objectify, forget, and ultimately obliterate Being (nonmetaphysical Being). We might then consider black captivity in the modern world as the “perfection” of metaphysics, its shameful triumph, because through the violent technology of slavery Being itself was so thoroughly devastated. Personality became property, as Hortense Spillers would describe it, and with this transubstantiation, Being was objectified, infused with exchange value, and rendered malleable within a sociopolitical order. In short, Being lost its integrity with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; at that moment in history, it finally became possible for an aggressive metaphysics to exercise obscene power—the ability to turn a “human” into a “thing.” The captive is fractured on both the Ontological and ontic levels. This violent transubstantiation leaves little room for the hopeful escape from metaphysics t
	5	+
	6	+hat Heidegger envisions. Can the black-as-object lay claim to DaSein? And if so, how exactly does hermeneutic nihilism restore Being to that which is an object? If we perform a “philosophy of history,” as Vattimo would advise, we understand that metaphysicians, and even those we now consider “post- metaphysicians,” constructed the rational subject against the nonreasoning black, who, according to Hegel, Kant, Hume, and even Nietzsche was situated outside of history, moral law, and consciousness (Bernasconi 2003; Judy 1993; and Mills 1998). It is not enough, then, to suggest that metaphysics engenders forms of violence as a necessity, as a byproduct; thinking itself is structured by anti-blackness from the very start. Any postmetaphysical project that does not take this into account will inevitably reproduce the very structures of thought that it would dismantle. Hermeneutic nihilism provides a discursive frame to understand the intransigence of metaphysics as the residue of anti-blackness in the contemporary moment. The black nihilist, however, must part ways with Vattimo concerning the question of emancipation. For Vattimo, hermeneutic nihilism avoids “passive nihilism.” Passive nihilism is characterized by strands of fatalism or by melancholic nostalgia for lost foundations. To avoid this situation, Vattimo introduces hermeneutics as an alternative to passive nihilism and conceives of hermeneutics as the natural result of an accomplished nihilism—namely, after the weakening of metaphysical Being, hermeneutics replaces metaphysics as a self-consuming “foundation.” He attempts to move beyond the metaphysical remnants found in the theories of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Wittgenstein and think of hermeneutics as competing interpretations that reduce the violence of secure foundations. This of course provides the possibility for a radical democracy and a reconfiguration of Ethics, Law, and the Political. Ultimately, this weakening of metaphysical Being allows the human to project him-/ herself in the world, what Vattimo calls “projectionality,” and engage in the unique project that constitutes existence. This is the crux of emancipation for Vattimo. We, ironically, find ourselves back in the province of “progress,” “hope,” “betterment,” all the metaphysical instruments that constrain the very life that he would emancipate. This, of course, is unavoidable, for he can only twist these concepts and reclaim them as part of a postmetaphysical agenda. Vattimo’s hermeneutic nihilism is not very much different than political theology and democratic liberalism. It is a discourse of hope, a politics of hope that advances the belief that we can weaken metaphysics and reduce suffering, violence, and pain. When it comes to black suffering, however, we are compelled to hold up the mirror of historicity and inquire about the possibilities of emancipation for the black-as-object. Anti-blackness is the residue that remains, the intransigent substance that makes it impossible to destroy metaphysics completely. The black nihilist must confront this residue, but with the understanding that the eradication of this residue would truly end the world itself. Black emancipation is world destructive; it is not an aperture or an opening for future possibilities and political reconfigurations (Wilderson 2010). The “end of the world” that Vattimo envisions does not take into account that pulverized black bodies sustain the world—its institutions, economic systems, environment, theologies, philosophies, and so forth. Be- cause anti-blackness infuses itself into every fabric of social existence, it is impossible to emancipate blacks without literally destroying the world. More- over, this means that black emancipation will not yield a new world or possibilities for reorganization—black emancipation is the nihilistic “solution” that would destroy the field of all possible solutions. In this sense, black emancipation becomes something like death for the world—with all its Heideggerian valences. Black bodies and black suffering, then, pose a problem for emancipatory logic. If literal black bodies sustain modernity and metaphysics—through various forms of captivity, terror, and subjection—then what would emancipation entail for blacks?

EntryDate

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	1	+2017-01-15 07:01:30.146

Judge

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	1	+Varad Agarwala

Opponent

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	1	+PCDS PW

ParentRound

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	1	+38

Round

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	1	+3

Team

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	1	+Strake Jesuit Chen Neg

Title

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	1	+2 - Black Nihilism K Radical Democracy Link

Tournament

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	1	+Harvard Westlake