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Cites

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1		-Identities are socially constructed through norms and values are precede and condition the subject. Black Identities have been constructed through society as antagonistic and decadent. Polizzi ’13. “Pursuing Trayvon Martin Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics” 2013 Edited by George Yancy and Janine Jones – Chapter 13: “Social Presence, Visibility, and the Eye of the Beholder A Phenomenology of Social Embodiment” by David Polizzi // LW-DD
2		-“In its most general sense, the social presenting of the body refers to the way in which the body flesh becomes viewed and constructed from a variety of social interactions and social contexts. At its most mundane, the body of the individual or the embodied subject retains what Merleau-Ponty has called an intervolvement with world that is experienced as a fluid and open shared possibility for embodied existence.2 However, in the absence of such openness, the possibility for embodied subjectivity is denied and the body is reduced to that of a shadow, or pathological artifact of social visibility. The recent killing of Trayvon Martin provides yet another tragic reminder as to how the black flesh body continues to be constructed as the manifestation of social threat and danger. As such, the contours of these constructed fears are not only present within the visibility of the physical body, but also come to represent a type of geographical demarcation or territorialization whereby the body may be "legitimately" pres- enced as a problematic body. Such a dynamic evokes the "invisible wall" described by Kenneth Clark: that cultural line of demarcation that separates the racially marginalized from those who wield social power. Trayvon Martin's killing represents not only the way in which his killer constructed the meaning of his presence, but the way in which the social context of that presencing was employed by him to further "justify" the legitimacy of this construction. In this chapter I explore the phenomenolbgy of the social presencing of the black body through the work of Merleau-Ponty and his notion of embodied subjectivity. I also include a description of Drew Leder's notion of the absent body relative to the way in which these theoretical constructs may help to better understand the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin. I will begin with a brief description of embodied subjectivity outlined by Merleau-Ponty in his classic text. Phenomenology of Perception. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE BODY AND ANTI-BLACK RACISM Merleau-Ponty and Embodied Subjectivity In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty formulates his theory of the body or what he describes as embodied subjectivity. From this vantage point, embodied subjectivity becomes a theory of human perception, and I would argue a theory of ethics as well, which encounters the world from a specific perspectival point of view, thereby allowing for a particular profile of an object or other embodied subjects to appear.4 Unlike empiricism (Behaviorism), which understands the body as an ob ject among other objects, or intellectualism (Idealism), which recognizes the body as an extension of consciousness, here the body is taken up as a lived-body, as incarnate-subjectivity, which is inseparable from the world. Shabot describes this process as follows: In perception, thus a deep ambiguity takes place regarding the rela tionship of subject-object: no apparent distance separates the subject from the object in perception, and the object is recognized only as the sum of multiple subject perspectives of it, from his/her concrete position. By theorizing flesh body and world in this manner, both becomes "intervolved" within a system of meaning that can never be viewed in isolation. Ultimately, then, this relationship between individual and world reveals the situated nature of our existence which both acts and is acted upon by the world. "The body is the vehicle of being in the world, and having a body means being united with a definite milieu, merging with certain projects, and being perpetually engaged therein." Merleau-Ponty's theory of the body becomes the description by which human existence is situated and its specific meanings experienced and lived. It becomes the point from which we take up the projects of our lived-experience. The intervolvement with world, according to Merleau- Ponty, becomes the ground from which existence rises up to embrace a world and by so doing gives birth to a contextualized constellation of meaning. These meanings are not independent of me, they inhabit me and I them. The context, in which I find myself, is one that also extends beyond me, taking in a world shared by others, and it is through this shared relationship with the world that the other becomes recognizable to me. But how does this recognition of the other come about?” (173-175)
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4		-Our epistemology and structure of recognition has been overtaken by white value. Dominant forms of knowledge production are antiblack. Warren ‘15 (Calvin Warren “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope” CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015, pp. 215–248 — KW)
5		-“The problem that confronts the black nihilist is one of epistemology, especially¶ when the dominant epistemology privileges metaphysical forms of antiblack¶ organizations of knowledge. The field of knowledge is uneven and¶ reflects the asymmetrical power relations that sustain anti-black violence in¶ modernity. The difficulty in expressing black nihilistic thought is that it is¶ situated in the tense space between hermeneutics and epistemology. If we¶ think of epistemology as an anti-black formation, then every appeal to it will¶ reproduce the very metaphysical violence that is the source of black suffering.¶ Nihilistic Hermeneutics allows us to fracture epistemology, to chip away at its¶ metaphysical science, and to enunciate from within this fissure. Vattimo¶ provides a cogent explanation of the distinction between epistemology and hermeneutics in his reading of Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of¶ Reflection (1981 ): ‘ Epistemology is founded on the presumption that all discourses are commensurate with and translatable among each other, and that the foundation of their truth consists precisely in this translation into a basic language, that is, the one which mirrors facts themselves. Hermeneutics instead admits that there is no such single unifying language, and tries to appropriate the language of the other rather than translate into its own tongue . . . Epistemology is the discourse of normal science, while hermeneutics is discourse about as yet incommensurable discourses. (Vattimo 1988, 149) Read through the register of anti-blackness, we can understand epistemology as the violent attempt at discursive and linguistic unification—the compulsion to establish a unifying ground of language. Because blackness is placed outside of the “customary lexis of life and culture,” as Hortense Spillers (2003 ) reminds us, blackness speaks an inassimilable language, an “anti-grammar” that resists linguistic/epistemological domination—what we call “translation” (221 ). Anti-black epistemology is somewhat schizophrenic in its aim: it at once posits blackness as an anti-grammatical entity—paradoxically, a nonfoundation-foundation that provides the condition of possibility for its own existence—and at the same time, and in stunning contradiction, it forces a translation of this anti-grammar into a system of understanding that is designed to exclude it. This tension between grammatical exclusion and compulsory inclusion is part of the violence of captivity. A hermeneutical practice that acknowledges the impossible translation of blackness without forcing its annihilation (through translation/domination) is the only way we can understand the nihilist. Put another way, black nihilism shatters the coherence of anti-black epistemology and cannot be “known,” or rendered legible, through traditional epistemology.”
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7		-The State survives and reproduces itself and its white norms through the politics of hope. False hope traps black individuals into a continuous cycle of evolving antiblack violence. Warren ‘15 (Calvin Warren “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope” CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015, pp. 215–248 — KW)
8		-“Within this piece, we get a sense that black fidelity to the Political is tantamount to the Lacanian notion of drive —one perpetuates a system designed to annihilate—participation, then, follows another logic. The act of voting, according to Farred, is legitimate in and of itself; it is a means as an end (or a means without an end, if we follow Agamben’s logic 2000 ). The means, the praxis of voting, is all there is without an end in sight. African American political participation is an interminable cycle of reproduction, a continuous practice of reproducing the means of reproduction itself. This irrational fidelity to a means without an end gives rise to “the politics of despair” representation for its own sake and the apotheosis of singular figures—and a politics without hope: ‘ African American fidelity, however, takes its distance from Pauline “hope”—like faith, hope is predicated upon a complex admixture of expectations and difference. In this respect, the African American vote is not, as in the colloquial sense, hopeful: it has not expectations of a shining city appearing upon an ever distant, ever retreating, hill in the unnamed-able future. Fidelity represents the anti-Pauline politics in that its truth, its only truth, resides in praxis. (223)‘ This brilliant analysis compels us to rethink political rationality and the value in “means”—as a structuring agent by itself. What I would like to think through, however, is the distinction between “hope” and “despair” and “expectations” and “object.” Whereas Farred understands political participation as an act without a political object, or recognizable outcome—without an “end,” if we think of “end” and “object” as synonyms—I would suggest that the Politics of Hope reconfigures despair and expectation so that black political action pursues an impossible object .We can describe this contradictory object as the lure of metaphysical political activity: every act brings one closer to a “not-yet-social order.” What one achieves, then, and expects is “closer.” The political object that black participation encircles endlessly, like the Laconian drive and its object, is the idea of linear proximity—we can call this “progress,” “betterment,” or “more perfect.” This idea of achieving the impossible allows one to disregard the historicity of anti-blackness and its continued legacy and conceive of political engagement as bringing one incrementally closer to that which does not exist—one’s impossible object. In this way, the Politics of hope recasts despair as possibility, struggle as triumph, and lack as propinquity. This impossible object is not tethered to real history, so it is unassailable and irrefutable because it is the object of political fantasy. The politics of hope, then, constitutes what Lauren Berlant would call “cruel optimism” for blacks (Berlant 2011 ). It bundles certain promises about redress, equality, freedom, justice, and progress into a political object that always lies beyond reach. The objective of the Political is to keep blacks in a relation to this political object—in an unending pursuit of it. This pursuit, however, is detrimental because it strengthens the very anti-black system that would pulverize black being. The pursuit of the object certainly has an “irrational” aspect to it, as Farred details, but it is not mere means without expectation; instead, it is a means that undermines the attainment of the impossible object desired. In other words, the pursuit marks a cruel attachment to the means of subjugation and the continued widening of the gap between historical reality and fantastical ideal. Black nihilism is a “demythifying” practice, in the Nietzschean vein, that uncovers the subjugating strategies of political hope and de-idealizes its fantastical object. Once we denude political hope of its axiological and ethical veneer, we see that it operates through certain strategies: 1 ) positing itself as the only alternative to the problem of anti-blackness, 2 ) shielding this alter native from rigorous historical/philosophical critique by placing it in an unknown future, 3 ) delimiting the field of action to include only activity recognized and legitimated by the Political, and 4 ) demonizing critiques or different philosophical perspectives.”
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11		-The only possibility of liberation starts with a strong nihilism that self excommunicates from the state in order to find new meaning and values outside of the values constructed by the state- the alt is to cede the political entirely. Warren ‘15 (Calvin Warren “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope” CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2015, pp. 215–248 — KW)
12		-“The black nihilist recognizes that relying on the Political and its grammar¶ offers nothing more than a ruse of transformation and an exploited hope.¶ Instead of atheism, the black nihilist would embrace political apostasy : it is the¶ act of abandoning or renouncing a situation of unethicality and immorality— in this sense, the Political itself. The apostate is a figure that “self excommunicates” him-/herself from a body that is contrary to its fundamental belief system. As political apostate, the black nihilist renounces the idol of anti-blackness but refuses to participate in the ruse of replacing one idol with another. The Political and God—the just and true God in Carter’s analysis— are incommensurate and inimical. This is not to suggest that we can exclude God, but that any recourse to the Political results in an immorality not in alignment with Godly principles (a performative contradiction). The project to align God with the Political (political theology) will inevitably fail. If anti blackness is contrary to our beliefs, self-excommunication, in other words “black nihilism,” is the only position that seems consistent

EntryDate

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1		-2016-11-29 17:20:15.0

Judge

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1		-Abbey Chapman

Opponent

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1		-Byram Hills RP

ParentRound

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1		-26

Round

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1		-5

Team

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1		-Strake Jesuit Chen Neg

Title

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1		-2 - Black Nihilism K

Tournament

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1		-Apple Valley