Aff Decolonization

7/29/2019 Aff Decolonization

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MDAW 2013 Decolonial InternationalThornography/AK47 and the Grool kids

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Table of Contents

HOW TO THINK ABOUT THIS ARGUMENT .............................................................................................. 2Sample 1AC........................................................................................................................................................ 4Sample 1AC........................................................................................................................................................ 6The Fourth World War ....................................................................................................................................... 7

We Want Everything - Thisness ......................................................................................................................... 9Impacts - Neoliberalism ................................................................................................................................... 11Solvency - Decolonize ...................................................................................................................................... 12Solvency - War Machine / Become Minor ....................................................................................................... 13Perm .................................................................................................................................................................. 14Perm .................................................................................................................................................................. 15A/T: Rspec ........................................................................................................................................................ 16Framework - Geo-Epistemology ..................................................................................................................... 18Framework - Geo-Epistemology ...................................................................................................................... 19Framework - Silencing ..................................................................................................................................... 20Framework - A/T: democracy .......................................................................................................................... 21Other CampaignsOur Americas ................................................................................................................... 22Other CampaignsHuey Newton .................................................................................................................... 23Other CampaignsMargaret Walker ............................................................................................................... 24Other Campaigns - tawantinsuyu ..................................................................................................................... 25Other CampaignsMao Zedongs A/T: imperialism inevitable ..................................................................... 28Storytelling good .............................................................................................................................................. 29NEG ARGUMENTSNEGSpeaking for Others .............................................................................................................................. 322NC impact: epistemology/turns the aff ........................................................................................................... 34Neoliberalism good .......................................................................................................................................... 35


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HOW TO THINK ABOUT THIS ARGUMENT

The Affirmative argues that it is significant the topic asks us to consider our relation with (particular countries) in

Latin America. The topic asks us to take an international perspective with respect to our subject positions and relations withothers. This does not mean that we think we should just affirm the topic unquestioningly. In the topic is a set of normativeassumptions about who we and they are. Who is USFG? Who is Venezuela? Cuba? Mexico? What does it mean to engage

another? What does economic engagement mean when neoliberal policies have played such a large role in constructing US-LArelations, causing poverty and dispossession not only in Latin America, but also in the United States (think Katrina, or the PrisonIndustrial Complex, union busting, austerity measures, social policing, etc.)?

The topic seems to invoke our names. We are supposed to role play at being the USFG but we know that we are notreally the USFG. At the same time, it is not that simple, because as people in the United States we do have privileges that others inthe Southern Hemisphere and around the globe do not. While we are simultaneously messed over by the USFG, capitalism, andracism/sexism, we also benefit from some of those things from an internat ional perspective. Why say benefit in quotationmarks? Well, because it is not a question of whether or not the global capitalist system is good or bad (we on the AFF think it isbad, but again, not really the point). The global capitalist system is a part of a set of historical forces that lead to the fact that weare here right now, and they are over there, in Mexico, in Cuba, in Venezuela. And that means we are in some way responsibleeven if we are not the USFG, because the USFG speaks in our names even when it is messing us over too.

In one sense, we could say that what unites all of our strugglesthe struggles of protestors, freedom fighters, radicalintellectuals, etc. all around the globe, is that they are all in one way or another fighting against this system. They are fighting thissystem while simultaneously being within the system. Just like us.

And yet not like us, because it would be violent to say that we can know the struggle of the Venezuelan miner, or the

Mexican indigenous, etc. Because we are not them, and everything we can know about them is in some way mediated anddetermined by our faulty epistemologies. If we are all struggling, and we are different but also somehow struggling in common,how do we connect our struggles together? How do we think about the relationship we have to them? This is the purpose ofthe AFF.

The AFF asks all these questions and works with these kinds of realizations. There are many struggles happening,especially in Latin America. And there are struggles happening here too. They are connected even though they are unique. Butwe can learn from others and they can learn from us. We call that space of learning encounter. Encounter is the space in whichwe think about the relationship between the we over here and the we over there. It is where we build visions for what isbeyond this world and we practice how to get there. The AFF argues that this requires a linking of struggles. It is the linking up ofother struggles, in our minds and in our practice, that we exercise real power to transform the world. That is what the 1AC does,what it performs, what it affirms, and how it solves.

Here is a step by step way to think of the AFF:

A) Neoliberalism is messing us all up. It is the Fourth World Wara war in which instead of nation states fighting againstother nation states, wars are waged externally and internally. They are waged everywhere. The war is one ofthe logicand practice of capital versus everything that resists capital. That means that we are all potentially enemy. We are allpotentially dispossessed. We must be policed in order to keep the forces of discontent at bay so that capitalism can run itscourse. This is happening here and all over the world.

B) And yet there are people who fight and resist and struggle. In fact, we should be more correct and say that actually peopleare living their lives all the time. It is as the moment when they meet resistance or when the system says they cannot orshould not survive, they must be policed, they must be driven off the land, etc. that the system reveals itself. Resistance

Begets Power not the other way around. This means that it is not a matter of overturning something, or taking

control of the government if our goal is liberation. We have to make new connections, linkages, ways of being and

thinking and relating to each other. New epistemologies.C) The AFF performs this alternative process by connecting neoliberalism to the United States, to Veneuzuela, to Cuba, to

Mexico to other struggles (the Maoists, etc.), and to ourselves. All of these struggles paint a picturea world picture thatwe can intervene in. These connections show the history beneath the history, the history that is always happening, theconnections always being made. Each struggle is a repetition of another strugglewe carry the energy of thosestruggles even if our struggle has a different content.

D) THE AFF disidentifies with the resolution. Disidentification is a way of relating to norms that both recognizing howthose norms interpolate us (make us who we are, or make us intelligible) and also recognizes that those norms can neverfully capture our existence. In relation to Latin America it would be a lie to say that we are not the USFG, but it is alsocompletely a lie to say that we are the USFG since we are not Obama or politicians or any of that. That isdisidentification. It is not about being opposed it is about not buying in or cashing in on the logic of the state or

capitalism.E) The AFF argues that this process of making connections and making the struggle against capitalism/racism/sexism/etc.

powerful is a form ofdecolonization. Decolonization is about starting from today, the world that is only made possible


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by colonization, imperialism, genocide, theft of land and bodies, slaveryto start here and now in this world to make anew future by remembering our dead. We are all only here now because nameless others have died. They too are part ofour struggle. They teach us how to live and why. We cant ignore or forgive history, but we can learn from it and we canhonor our dead and each other.

F) The AFF says that the best way build a new future is to make the memories of the future by looking into the past andlooking horizontally across space to other struggles. This AFF is about creating alternativesalternative ways ofthinking about politics, and alternative ways of thinking about who we are and who they are. I am we. They are us.When we build linkages between our struggles we build an army, or what Deleuze and Guattari call a war machine.How many are we? Is the question that helps to us say Another world is possible or Ya Basta! (Enough!) or todo

para todos (Everything for Everyone!) or We Want Everything!


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Sample 1AC

At the Summit of the Americas the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez hands president Obama a book,The Open Veins of Latin Americaby the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano. Chavez pats Obama on theshoulder and insists on shaking his hand. Obama turns towards the camera and smiles for a photograph butthe look of confusion on his face is evident. This is not the broad foreign policy smile from earlier in thevideo. Later Obama told a reporter I thought it was one of Chavezs books. I was going to give him one of

mine.

Of all the insinuations of Chavezs cult of personality, it turns out that Obama is the real narcissist. All of

this talk of leaders and figureheads obscures the history that passes between the hands of the two presidents.Chavez gives Obama a gift that he cannot returnnot my book for your book, quid pro quo, tit for tatthegift can only be returned when the historical structures of economic violence that the book describes aredismantled. Lets read from Galeano:

Eduardo Galeano, 1973

The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret; every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode

over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth. This systematic violence is not apparent but is

real and constantly increasing: its holocausts are not made known in the sensational press but in Food and Agricultural

Organization statistics. Ball says that it is still possible to act with impunity because the poor cannot set off a world war, but theImperium is worried: unable to multiply the dinner, it does what it can to suppress the diners. "Fight poverty, kill a beggar!"

some genius of black humor scrawled on a wall in La Paz. What do the heirs to Malthus propose bur to kill all the beggars-to-bebefore they are born? Robert McNamara, the World Bank president who was chairman of Ford and then secretary of defense, hascalled the population explosion the greatest obstacle to progress in Latin America; the World Bank, he says, will give priority in

its loans to countries that implement birth control plans. McNamara notes with regret that the brains of the poor do 25 percent

less thinking, and the World Bank technocrats (who have already been born) set computers humming to produce labyrinthineabracadabras on the advantages of not being born : "If," one of the Bank's documents assures us, "a developing country with anaverage per capitaincome of $150 to $200 a year succeeds in reducing its fertility by 50 percent in a period of twenty-five years, atthe end of thirty years its per capita income will be higher by at least 40 percent than the level it would otherwise have achieved,and twice as high after sixty years." Lyndon B. Johnson's remark has become famous: "Let us act on the fact that less than $5invested in population control is worth $100 invested in economic growth."

Dwight D. Elsenhower prophesied that if the worlds

inhabitants continued multiplying at the same rate, not only would the danger of revolution be increased, but there would also be a

lowering of living standards for all peoples, including his own.The United States is more concerned than any other country with spreading and imposing family planning in the farthest outposts.Not only the government, but the Rockefeller and the Ford foundations as well, have nightmares about millions of childrenadvancing like locusts over the horizon from the third world. Plato and Aristotle considered the question before Malthus andMcNamara; in our day this global offensive plays a well-defined role. Its aim is to justify the very unequal income distributionbetween countries and social elates, to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don't avoid having, and todam the rebellious advance of the masses. While intrauterine devices compete with bombs and machine-gun salvos to arrest thegrowth of the Vietnamese population, in Latin America it is more hygienic and effective to kill guerrilleros in the womb than in

the mountains or the streets. Various U.S. missions have sterilized thousands of women in Amazonia, although this is the least

populated habitable zone on our planet. Most Latin American countries have no real surplus of people; on the contrary, they havetoo few. Brazil has thirty-eight times fewer inhabitants per square mile than Belgium, Paraguay has forty-nine times fewer thanEngland, Peru has thirty-two times fewer than Japan. Haiti and El Salvador, the human antheaps of Latin America, have lowerpopulation densities than Italy. The pretexts invoked are an insult to the intelligence; the real intentions anger us. No less than half

the territory of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Venezuela has no inhabitants at all. No Latin American populationgrows less than Uruguay'sa country of old folkyet no nation has taken such a bearing in recent years, with a crisis that wouldseem to drag it into the last circle of hell. Uruguay is empty, and its fertile lands could provide food for infinitely more people thanthose who now suffer in such penury.Over a century ago a Guatemalan foreign minister said prophetically: "It would be strange if the remedy should come from theUnited Stares, the same place which brings us the disease." Now that the Alliance for Progress is dead and


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Sample 1AC

buried the Imperium proposes, more in panic than in generosity, to solve Latin America's problems by eliminating LatinAmericans; Washington has reason to suspect that the poor peoples don't prefer to be poor. But it is impossible to desire the endwithout desiring the means. Those who deny liberation to Latin America also deny our only possible rebirth, and incidentallyabsolve the existing structures from blame. Our youth multiplies, rises, listens: what does the voice of the system offer? The system speaks a

surrealist language. In lands that are empty it proposes to avoid births; in countries where capital is plentiful but wasted it

suggests that capital is lacking; it describes as "aid" the deforming orthopedics of loans and the draining of wealth that results

from foreign investment; it calls upon big land-owners to carry out agrarian reforms and upon the oligarchy to practice socialjustice. The class struggle only exists, we are told, because foreign agents stir it up; but social classes do exist and the oppressionof one by the other is known as the Western way of life. The Marines undertake their criminal expeditions only to restore order andsocial peace; the dictatorships linked to Washington lay foundations in their jails for the law-abiding state, and ban strikes andsmash trade unions to protect the freedom to work.Is everything forbidden us except to fold our arms? Poverty is not written in the stars; under development is not one of God's

mysterious designs. Redemptive years of revolution pass; the ruling classes wait and meanwhile pronounce hellfire anathema oneverybody. In a sense the right wing is correct in identifying itself with tranquillity and order: it is an order of daily humiliationfor the majority, but an order nonetheless; it is a tranquillity in which injustice continues to be unjust and hunger to be hungry. Ifthe future turns out to be a Pandora's box, the conservative has reason to shout, "I have been betrayed." And the ideologists ofimpotence, the slaves who look at themselves with the master's eyes, are not slow to join in the outcry. The bronze eagle of theMaine, thrown down on the day the Cuban Revolution triumphed, now is abandoned. Its wings broken, in a doorway in the oldtown in Havana. Since that day in Cuba, other countries have set off on different roads on the experiment of change; perpetuation

of the existing order of things is perpetuation of the crime. Recovery of the resources that have always been usurped is recoveryof our destiny.

The ghosts of all the revolutions that have been strangled or betrayed through Latin America's tortured history emerge in the

new experiments, as if the present had been foreseen and begotten by the contradictions of the past. History is a prophet who looksback: because of what was, and against what was, it announces what will be. And so this book, which seeks to chronicle ourdespoliation and at the same time explain how the current mechanisms of plunder operate, will present in close proximity the

caravelled conquistadors and the jet-propelled technocrats; Hernan Cortes and the Marines; the agents of the Spanish Crown

and the International Monetary Fund missions; the dividends from the slave trade and the profits of General Motors. And, too,

the defeated heroes and revolutions of our time, the infamies and the dead and resurrected hopes: the fertile sacrifices. When

Alexander von Humboldt investigated the customs of the ancient inhabitants of the Bogota plateau, he found that the Indians

called the victims of ritual ceremonies quihica. Quihica meant "door"; the death of each chosen victim opened the door to a new

cycle of 185 moons.

The above was written in 1973, before Reganomics and the neoliberal consensus, the War on Terror and theWar on Drugs. But History cant be read as what happened but what repeatsit is not simply the dead andthe tortured of failed revolutions whom we must remember in order to face the day. Simon Bolivar, whoChavez evokes for the name of the Venezuelan revolution, Che Guevara, the Argentine who witnessed theHiroshimas inflicted on South America by the United States and capitalism, who joined the Cubanrevolution, went to Algeria and the Congo as consultants for revolutions before being assassinated by theCIA in Bolivia, Mao Zedong whose name is evoked by Castro and Chavez, not to mention Huey Newton andthe Naxalites in India. Or, in Assata Shakur, who calls cuba one of the largest most resistant and most

courageouspalenques [maroon campsfugitive slave colonies] that has ever existed on this planet.

The names of revolutionaries, and Ive missed a few, themselves are the signatures of something else, of

what happens when the people invoked in the Food and Agriculture Association statistics organizetheyname the nameless who are already inside the anger, the stubbornness and the hope we carry. But who arewe? How many are we?

We know why Obama could only shake Chavezs hand with an awkward smile, why he couldnt haveregained composure by pulling out his copy ofThe Audacity of Hope. International diplomacy is a realitywhere leaders exchange pleasantries and decide the fate of the world. In it, there are closed doors, diplomatic


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Sample 1AC

smiles backed up by military force that open the doors to the world market. The presumption of reciprocitybetween the U.S. and Venezuela within the existing order of things perpetuates the crime. When neoliberaleconomic policies call for Latin America to let the economy take its course, this is a naturalization of thecrime. The statistics of underdevelopment record the holocausts visited on the poor as if they were written inthe stars. How to recover these numbers as quihicaas a death which is also a door -, to cross through them

to the other side, to build another world against this one?

Which is why the real question of the resolution is how to return Chavezs gift that is, the demand toredeem everything that made it possible to read and understand the resolution in the first place.Obamas book wont do, nor will any amount of U.S. dollars. A book that is equal to Chavezs challenge

does not yet existit is the book of another world that is possible, which we must write in practice.

The resolution is a test of our resolve, but unlike the a long chain of U.S. presidents, bureaucrats, policyhacks, debaters, judges, & c who resolve to defend the we against the unpredictable, we take affirmation asa process of linking our performance in a chain of struggles, to affirm the resolution in the histories thatconstitute it. Decolonize the resolution.

Mignolo 5 (Walter, Literature @ Duke. The Idea of Latin America, pp. xviii-xx)

There is one proviso: at this point in time, the colonial difference must be kept in view , because Creoles in the Americas of

European descent (either Latin or Anglo), as well as Creoles of European descent around the world, may still see

civilization and barbarism as ontological categories, and therefore they may have trouble accepting Indian

(or Islamic, for that matter) civilizational processes and histories when entering into dialogue .There are no civilizationsoutside of Europe or, if there are, like those of Islam, China or Japan (to follow Huntingtons classification: see chapter 1), they remainin the past and have had to be brought into the present of Western civilization. That is the colonial difference that should be kept in mind. The future can no longer be thought of as the defense of Western civilization, constantly waiting for the

barbarians. As barbarians are ubiquitous (they could be in the plains or in the mountains as well as in global

cities), so are the civilized. There is no safe place to defend and, even worse, believing that there is a safe

place that must be defended is (and has been) the direct road to killing . Dialogue, properly speaking, cannot take

place until there are no more places to be defended and the power differential, consequently, can be redressed. Dialogue

today is a utopia, as we are witnessing in Iraq, and it should be reconceived as utopistic: a double movement composed of acritical take on the past in order to imagine and construct future possible worlds. The decolonial shift is of theessence if we would stop seeing modernity as a goal rather than seeing it as a European construction of history in Europes own

interests. Dialogue can only take place once modernity is decolonized and dispossessed of its my thical march

toward the future. I am not defending despotism of any kind, Oriental or Occidental. I am just saying that dialogue can

only take place when the monologue of one civilization (Western) is no longer enforced.This book can be read in two different, but complementary, ways. Readers not familiar with current academic debates can enter throughthe argument that America was not discovered but invented, and from there follow the path that made of Latin America an extensionof the initial imperial/colonial invention. Those who are familiar with conversations in the humanities could see the argument itself as anattempt to shift the geography, and the geo-politics of knowledge, ofcritical theory (as introduced by the Frankfurt School in the 1930s)to a new terrain ofdecoloniality. The first reading can still be performed within the paradigm of modernity that emphasizes the linearevolution of concepts and, above all, newness. The second reading, however, demands to be performed within the paradigm of(de)coloniality that implies modernity but emphasizes co-existence and simultaneity instead. I will introduce a concept ofhistorico-

structural heterogeneity at the end of chapter 1 to locate the argument in that paradigm of co-existence and to critique the paradigm of

newness and historical progression.fWithin the limits of European local histories, critical theory pushed humanists

and critical social scientists toward critical explorations of the

conditions that make events and ideas possible, instead of taking ideas for granted and seeing events ascarrying their own, essential, meaning. A critical theory beyond the history of Europe proper and within the

colonial history of America (or Asia or Africa; or even from the perspective of immigrants within Europe

and the US who have disrupted the homogeneity) becomes decolonial theory. That is, it is the theory arising

from the projects for decolonization of knowledge and being that will lead to the imagining of economy and

politics otherwise. By going to the very roots of modern coloniality the invention of America and of Latin America this bookis a contribution to that decolonization of knowledge and being; an attempt to rewrite history following an-other logic, an- otherlanguage, an-other thinking.


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The Fourth World War

We are in the Fourth World WarA war against the imposition of a logic and practice of capital. This is

a war with no fronts. Because humanity fights against capital we are all potentially enemies, we must all

be policed.

El Kilombo Intergalctico 2007 [A people of color collective made up of students, migrants, and othercommunity members in Durham, NC that has met with and connected their cause with that of theZapatistas and the global anti-capitalist movement, kilombo is a Kimbundu (a Bantu dialect) termthat has rhizomatically become the basis for the Brazillian term for encampment or communequilombo built and utilized by marooned communities of Afro-Brazillians as a form of resistancefrom slavery, translation would be intergalactic commune, such that it references the many layersof meanings of Afro-Futurism, Pan-Americanism and Anti-Globalization,Beyond Resistance:Everything: An Interview With Subcommandante Marcos, p. 2-3/AK47]

In presenting this premise, the first and most obvious question that arises is, what is wrong with the world today that the EZLN and

others might want to change it? According to the Zapatistas, our current global condition is characterizedby the fact that

today humanity suffers the consequences ofthe worlds first truly TOTAL war , what the EZLN has aptly named the Fourth

World War.5 The nature of this war is best understood by contrasting those World Wars that have preceded it. Taking for grantedthat the nature of the First and Second World Wars are well known (i.e. Allied Powers vs. Central Powers and Allied Powers vs. Axis

Powers), we will turn to the immediately preceding world warthough it is rarely understood as suchthe Third World War. The

Third World War (orthe Cold War) was characterized by the fact that nation-states faced down other nation-

states (most typically the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Union of Soviet Socialist

Republics and its allies in the Warsaw Pact) for the control of discrete territories around the globe (most specifically

Central Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America). At the height of this conflict, the guerrilla style tactics adopted byeach side made it appear, as General Nguyen Van Giap noted, tha t the front today is everywhere.6 And yet, most anyone would agreethat like the previous World Wars, the Third World War ended with the conquest of specific territories and the ultimate defeat of anexternally identifiable enemy (the U.S.S.R.).

In contrast, what the EZLN has identified as the Fourth World War is a war between what the EZLN has termed

the Empire of Money7 and humanity. The main objectives of this war are: first, the capture of territory

and labor for the expansion and construction of new markets; second, the extortion of profit; and third, the

globalization of exploitation. Significantly then, for the first time, we are in the midst of a World War that is

not fought between nations or even between a nation and an externally identifiable enemy. It is instead a

war for the imposition of a logic and a practice, the logic and practice of capital, and therefore everything that

is human and opposes capital is the enemy; we are all at all times potentially the enemy ,8 thus requiring an

omniscient and omnipotent social policing. As the EZLN explains, this qualifies the Fourth World War as the first truly

TOTAL war because, unlike even the Third World War, this is not a war on all fronts; it is the first world war with NO

front.


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The fourth world war

Global cap transforms politics. It is not that the politicians or the administrative state are of no use, but

that they are only of use to the expansion of the logic of capitalism. They are of no use to us. The AFF

must begin with the question of our own struggles. The nation is no longer the nation of the Cold War

today the nation, politicians and army are made to work for our dispossession.

El Kilombo Intergalctico 2007 [A people of color collective made up of students, migrants, and othercommunity members in Durham, NC that has met with and connected their cause with that of theZapatistas and the global anti-capitalist movement, kilombo is a Kimbundu (a Bantu dialect) termthat has rhizomatically become the basis for the Brazillian term for encampment or communequilombo built and utilized by marooned communities of Afro-Brazillians as a form of resistancefrom slavery, translation would be intergalactic commune, such that it references the many layers

of meanings of Afro-Futurism, Pan-Americanism and Anti-Globalization,Beyond Resistance:Everything: An Interview With Subcommandante Marcos, p. 3-4/AK47]

In the eyes of the EZLN, the Fourth World War has had three major society-wide consequences, each played out at

varying sites. First, States: the State in the Empire of Money, as mentioned above, is reorganized. It is now the downsized

state where any semblance of collective welfare is eliminated and replaced with the logic of individual safety,

with the most repressive apparatuses of the State, the police and the Army, unleashed to enforce this logic.This state is in no way smaller in the daily lives of its subjects; rather, it is guaranteed that the power of this institution (collective

spending) is directed purely toward new armaments and the increasing presence of the police in daily life. Second, Armies: the

Army in previous eras was assumed to exist for the protection of a national population from foreign invasion.

Today,in the structural absence of

such a threat, the army is redirected to respond with violence to manage(and yet never solve) a series of never-ending local conflicts (Atenco, Oaxaca, New Orleans) that potentially

threaten the overall stability of international markets. In other words, as the EZLN points out, these armies can no

longer be considered national in any meaningful sense; they are instead various precinct divisions of a

global police forceunder the direction of the Empire of Money. Third, Politics: the politics of the politicians (i.e. the actions

of the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches) has been completely eliminated as a site for public deliberation, or

for the construction of the previously existing nation-state. The politics of the politicians has been redirected and its new

function is that of the implementation and administration of the local influence of transnational

corporations. What was previously national politicshas been replaced with what the EZLN refers to as

megapoliticsthe readjustment of local policy to global financial interests. Thus the sites that once

actually mediated among local actors are now additionally charged with the mission of creating the image

that such mediation continues to take place. It is best to be careful then and not believe that the politicians and their

parties(be they right wing or progressive) are of no use; rather, it is important to note that today their very purpose is the outright

simulation of social dialogue (that is, they are of no use TO US!).


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We Want Everything - Thisness

We Want Everything! We think the resistance is everywhere, all around us. The resistance is in the

international. We want another world and we must believe that another world is possible.

Subcommandante Marcos 2007 [A Spokesperson of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and theIndigenous movement of Chiapas,Beyond Resistance: Everything: An Interview With SubcommandanteMarcos, p. 20-21/AK47]

It has to do with the parameter in which things are valued. In reality, what is the criteria p eople are using when they say there isnt a

universal sentiment of discontent with regards to neoliberalism? Why? Because the governments are neoliberalgovernments, because leftist parties do not arise. So these are considered indicators to say that the people are

not discontent, that if they were they would demonstrate their discontent. No. We say that the people are discontent, but

we donthave paths [for change], or we dont have satisfactory paths. If, in Mexico or the North American Union, to be a rebelis to be part of the Democratic Party, well a lot of people are going to say, Hmm, no. I think Ill just stay where I am. If in Mexico thatmeans being part of the Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD), a lot of people are going to say no. [The choice is] youre either aDemocrat or a terrorist, or in favor of armed struggle. And in the face of this farce of a dichotomy, many people say, No, Im not a

Democrat and Im not for armed struggle or violent action, or even direct action. So then they say, Well that means these people are

very conservative, conformist, or they are not being affected by neoliberalism. When really what is happening is that we need anotherway that has nothing to do with the radical Left of armed struggle, or with the reformist left of the electoral realm. We think that this

discontent and inconformity exists across the world, and that you have to find it. It doesnt have one channel of

expression, or the channels of expression that exist do not satisfy it. And in the case of young people, who are the

majority of the world population, this is exactly what is happening. Not even the parameters of fashion, or musical style,

or artistic forms can encompass this.Thats why new movements, new musical generations arise, because people dontidentify with one or the other, so they create another and then another, and this one is co-opted, and so they make another and yet

another, and thats how it goes. So we think that if this path of inconformity isnt constructed, well everyone will go about constructingtheir own ways of manifesting it, but we will continue to lack the place of encounter. That is why we say, this isnt about

constructing a world rebellion. That already exists. Its about constructing the space where this rebellion

encounters itself, shows itself, begins to know itself. To those that say there isnt discontent in the American Union, thething is there is, but we cant see it. Or we cant see it because it doesnt show itself. And it doesnt show itself because it has no place to

do so. In this situation, we think that in this we want everything, there is above all a valorization, how do I put it, not

of personal capacity, but of a willingness to take risks.In 1994 in the dialogues in the cathedral, the government

representatives told us, The thing is, youre asking a lot. And we said, Those who are willing to die for their

demands have the right to ask for everything. That is when one begins to ask, how much is life worth?

What life do I want? And this is what its about, right? We said resistance is not enough. Resistance may be sufficient to detain theenthusiasm of neoliberal destruction, but we would need a global resistance, an effort of such force that you have to ask, If we alreadyhave this much strength, plus excess, why am I going to settle for stopping here? Because this is the problem, right? Because betweensomething and we want everything... Yes, we want not to die, agreed. But in order not to die, we need a force of such strength that

we arrive at the question, the place of not dying is the desire to live like this. How? I dont know. However each person

determines. And the answer is different from one place to the next. We think that this movement has to encompass the

international network of resistances, but even with this strength of force we must ask, is it only about this,

that the army stays away from me, that Im not harassed as a woman, that Im not criminalized as a young

person, that Im not attacked as an indigenous person? Or is it about, now with this strength, I can conquer

and create my own identity as a woman? Because the problem with a woman saying, Its enough if they just leave mealone, is that another woman may say, That isnt enough! I have other aspirations. And that theyre supposed to be praised because

they arent raping or beating me, well no. I want more. Its the same with indigenous people. Young people, too. So when this is put on

the table, one begins to ask, What am I capable of ? How far can I go? Because the politician is always going

to tell you, Up to here, no further, or, Okay, there, thats sufficient, or, This is progress, and if you dont accept this,youre going to lose everything. Because one thing is that its not armed struggle, and another thing is that its not non-violent. Oneexample is the APPO. In Oaxaca, there was not armed struggle, but there was violence, on both sides. And this popular violenc e, I dontcondemn it. On the contrary, I salute how they confronted the Federal Preventative Police and defeated them numerous times. And manyhave advised and are advising them [the Oaxacan resistance], and this is the dispute over the movement in Oaxaca, that they should stopwhere theyre at, that they have made significant progress, they achieved some things, and that now they should try to get a few

prisoners out and leave it at that. But the kids, the young people, men and women, the ones who maintained the movement, they aresaying, Why? And here lies the issue. Why am I going to settle for Ulises Ruiz stepping down and someone else the same steps in?

Why dont I ask at this point, who do we want to be the government? Or why dont I ask if were going to have a government?Somebody said, I think it was a drawing that said, They are trying to obligate us to govern. We wont fall into the trap! That is, they

want us to be like them. And when this is what is put on the table, imagine this at the national and global level: why are we

going to settle with saying, well okay, good enough that the capitalists just dont destroy nature completely.

Were going to make laws so they cant contaminate the rivers, destroy the beaches, the air, and all of this. But, why

do we have to settle for there being capitalists at all? That is the next question.We could demand that they

give us good salaries, or that prices not be so high, or that they dont manufacture such trash. But why does there have to be

someone that does this?Why dont we do it ourselves? Even the most radical leftist sectors in Mexico, the non-electoralLeft, said, the truth is we hadnt even asked these questions. We were talking about the taking of power, the dictatorship of the

proletariat, but we never put on the table that everything just belongs to the people. This is what we are doing here in Zapatista territory.

We didnt rise up in arms to say, Okay, lets ask for better salaries from the plantation owners. No! We

said, We are not going to die anymore and we are going to run off the plantation owners and keep the land


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ourselves.Are we going to ask that they give us a good municipal president? No! The municipal president has to go and were goingto make our own government. It is this force, not personal strength, not Im strong because I do exercise, but I am strongbecause I amwilling to offer this, risk this, in the struggle. We think that in the Other Campaign, the Zapatistas are strong because we riskedeverything. And we challenge everyone else: and you, what will you risk? And well see the size of the risks, and thus the size of thedemands, and the [size of the] fear, of each person. So this is what we say: if it is great movements that have recently turned overgovernments and opened the possibility for change in a place, even if that [change] hasnt been concretized, those movements in the lastfew decades have not been armed struggles. But neither have they been non-violent. In the cases of Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, thesewerent armed struggles but neither were they struggles of flower power. There were confrontations, there were clashes, fighting thatresulted in injured and dead on both sides. And we think this is what must be done. But this is the problem, the problem of, for what?There are some that say, In order to create a party, and others that say, No, in order to change society. This is the great difference.

And this is what those who are lobbying for the Other Campaign to join forces with Lopez Obradors movement dont understand.Its

not the same thing! They want to change presidents, to switch governments. We dont want the government. We wantanother country, another world.


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Impacts - Neoliberalism

[also see Santos card in the Brazil CP net benefit]

Neoliberalism destroys global governance, collective security, and free trade. This is caused by the

aftermath of genocidal global politics which leads to collapse of the working class that are key to

maintaining global societies.

Paramano 2 Siswo Pramono, Journal of Economic and Social Research 4 (2), 115-138, The Genocidal Global Politicsand Neoliberalism,http://jesr.journal.fatih.edu.tr/Neoliberalism.pdf

The Genocidal Global Politics and Neoliberalism Siswo PramonoAbstract. Neoliberalism is the precursor of thecurrent genocidal global politics.The world should thus critically reassess neoliberal theoriey-as-practice. This paperwillinvestigate the fundamentalist and closed character of neoliberalism that destroys global democracy, global governance,

free trade, and collective security. Itwill also examine the neoliberal attacks on the working class, which have undermined themain pillar of global social structure. Finally, this paper will discuss the possible upsurge of upheavals that might lead to the creation ofgenocidalsocieties at the local and global levels.JEL Classification Codes: Z00.Keywords: global politics, neoliberalism, genocide.1. Introduction Global politics refer to "all forms of interaction between the members of separatesocieties, whether government-sponsored or not" (Holsti, 1992: 10) and the decision making that giveseffect to such interaction.Global politics are thus a form ofglobal social structure that shapes or is beingshaped by agents' behaviours. If genocide is defined as an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole orin part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group1, then genocidal global politics is a form of self-

destructive, if not suicidal, global social structure. But is it possible to identify the genocidalintent of a neoliberal policy? The point is that ifneoliberal policies cause, or are associatedwith, massive death or acute deprivation among the poor in particular regions, then such policiesmight qualify as either second or third degree genocide (Pramono, 2002). Everyone thus hasthe right to life, and hence to be free from such suicidal global structure The main argumentpresented is this: neoliberalism is the precursor, and hence the prime inspirational source,of genocidal global politics. To have a non-genocidal global politics, the world shouldcritically reassess and then decide whether or not to dismantle neoliberal theoriey-as-practice. As such, the purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it will investigate thefundamentalist and closed character ofneoliberalism that ironically destroys the very basic tenets the

liberals intend to attain, namely global democracy, good global governance, free trade, and collectivesecurity. Second, in order to reveal such genocidal nature, it will examine particularly thesustained attacks on the working class. The attacks are genocidal since they undermine themain pillar of global social structure. The collapse of the working class means the collapse of globalsocieties based on work. Thus, third, this paper will discuss the possible upsurge of upheavals

that might lead to the creation of genocidal societies at the local and global levels. It is nowtime to take the first step in the investigation of genocidal global politics by determiningthe linkage between neorealism and genocide. 2. Neoliberalism and genocide In globalpolitics, neoliberalism preoccupies itself with the promotion of four basic issues: (1) globaldemocracy, (2) free trade, (3) global governance through international organizations, and(4) collective security. Neoliberalism focuses on regime creation and institutional building .
http://jesr.journal.fatih.edu.tr/Neoliberalism.pdfhttp://jesr.journal.fatih.edu.tr/Neoliberalism.pdfhttp://jesr.journal.fatih.edu.tr/Neoliberalism.pdfhttp://jesr.journal.fatih.edu.tr/Neoliberalism.pdf


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Solvency - Decolonize

Decolonial thinking activates what the hegemony denies. It connects struggles across the colonial framework

without subscribing to the power of the latterit deactivates and delinks the institutions and knowledges of

imperialism and uses them for emancipation

Nicols Panotto, Walter Mignolo: Epistemic disobedience. Rhetoric of modernity, logic of coloniality and decolonial grammar

(Buenos Aires 2010), Culture, Plural Space, Politics,http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/ Tiana

This book summarizes the main aspects of the Research Project on Modernity/ Coloniality and the central theorical proposals of thefamous Argentine decolonization theorist, Walter Mignolo. The main thrust of this work is explained thus: if knowledge is an

instrument of imperial colonization, one of the urgent tasks ahead is the decolonization of knowledge. First,

the book attempts to broaden the definition of colonialism. This concept refers to a complex matrix in which

various spheres intertwine (economy, authority, nature, gender and sexuality, subjectivity and knowledge)

and is based on three main foundations: knowledge (epistemology), understanding or comprehention

(hermeneutics) and the ability to feel (aesthesis) . On the other hand, there also exists a relationship between

colonialism and modern rationality, where the latter is undestood as a construction of a Totality that overrides any difference orpossibility of constructing other totalities. Although there is a critique of these notions from postmodern writers (postcolonialism beingthe wellspring in this field of study), it is circumscribed to European history and the history of European ideas. Thus, this critique is

incapable of reaching deep into the colonial paradigm and imagination. This is why a decolonial project is ultimately

necessary in order to make possible a programmatic analysis of delinking categories (Anbal Quijano) of

colonial knowledge. The book also takes some of the contributions from the philosopher Erique Dussel as a proposal ofdecolonization of knowledge, as exemplified by the differentiation he makes between emancipation (as liberal framework that serves to

the pretensions of the bourgeoisie) and liberation (as a broader category that seeks ways of leaving the european emancipatory project).

But decolonization, for Mignolo, goes further than liberation: it involves both the colonizers and the colonized (using theideas of Franz Fanon), by including emancipation/liberation on a same level within its framework. But because

emancipation is a modern project linked to European liberal bourgeoisie, it is better to think in terms of liberation/decolonization,

which includes in itself the rational concept of emancipation. Mignolo proposes a delinking strategy, which

involves denaturalizing the concepts and fields of knowledge within coloniality . This does not mean ignoring

or denying what cannot be denied, but rather using imperial strategies for decolonial purposes. Delinking

also implies disbelieving that imperial reasoning can itself create a liberating reason (i.e. proposals ofdecolonization from a marxist enterprise, which do not involve a radical delinking but rather a radical emancipation; the reason beingmarxism offers a different content but not a different logic). Postmodern thought attempts to be a liberating discourse, but stillmaintains a European framework that is far from creating a delinked colonial logic . In this sense, Mignolo argues that while modernity isnot strictly a European phenomenon, its rhetoric -as Dussel argues- is formed by European philosophers, academics and politicians.

Hence, modernity involves colonization of time and space, defining a border in realtion to a self- determining Other and its own

European identity.The project of decolonization proposes a displacement of the theo- and ego- hegemonic logic

of empire into a geo-political and a body-logic of knowledge. This project arises from a de-clasification and

de-identification of imperially denied subjects, as a de-colonial policy and epistemology that affects both the

political and economic control of neoliberalism and capitalism, each frameworks of the imperialist project.

The decolonization process begins when these same agents or subjects, who inhabit the denied languages

and identities of the Empire, become aware of the effects of coloniality on being, body and knowledge. Thisprocess does not imply a call to an external element/actor/project but a movement towards an exteriority which make visible thedifference in the space of experience and the horizon of expectations registered in the colonial space. Is this a proposal of cultural

relativism? No. What Mignolo suggests is a questioning of the posture taken from divisive borders. In other

words, the borders that both unite and separate modernity/coloniality. Henceis the main proposal of the book:

border thinking. This epistemology evokes the pluri-versity and di-versity of the dynamics between the

spaces of experience and horizons of expectations found within the larger arena of coloniality/modernity .

Border thinking implies that decolonization will not come from the conflicts over the imperial difference but

from the spaces of experience and horizons of expectations generated by the colonial difference. Decolonial

critical thinking connects the pluri-versity of experiences enclosed within the colonial framework with the

delinking uni-versal project that is in constant tension within imperial horizons. It builds a proposal that

goes beyond the implementation of a model constructed within modern categories (right, center, left) and

onto reflecting on the subversive spaces inscribed among the actions of colonized agents through the fissuresand cracks of the imperial system.The concept of decolonization offered in Mignolos work is a major

contribution towards creating a theoretical framework outside the standards of modern Western

philosophy. What must also be recognized, however, is that this theoretical proposal and its development is still influenced by thosesame theories and epistemologies that it intends to criticize. It could be said that the book itself is a decolonization proposal in how itsubversively re-orients traditional theoretical frameworks into a deep questioning of themselves.
http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/http://postcolonialnetworks.com/2011/07/27/walter-mignolo-epistemic-disobedience-rhetoric-of-modernity-logic-of-coloniality-and-decolonial-grammar/


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Solvency - War Machine / Become Minor

How many are we? Becoming minor is the innumerable that becomes the war machine.Deleuze & Guattari 1987 [Giles & Felix, nomads of the universe, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Shizophrenia, 469-71]

6. Minorities. Ours is becoming the age of minorities. We have seen several times that minorities are not necessarily defined by

the smallness of their numbers but rather by becoming or a line of fluctuation, in other words, by the gap that separates them

from this or that axiom constituting a redundant majority ("Ulysses, ortoday's average, urban European"; or as YannMoulier says, "the national Worker, qualified, male and over thirty-five"). A minority can be small in number; but it can

also be the largest in number, constitute an absolute, indefinite majority.That is the situation when authors, even those

supposedly on the Left, repeat the great capitalist warning cry: in twenty years, "whites" will form only 12 percent of the

world population. . . Thus they are not content to say that the majority will change, or has already changed, but say that it is

impinged upon by a nondenumerable and proliferating minority that threatens to destroy the very concept of majority, in otherwords, the majority as an axiom. And the curious concept of nonwhite does not in fact constitute a denumerable set. What defines a minority, then, is not the number but the relations internal to the number. A minority

can be numerous, or even infinite; so can a majority.What distinguishes them is that in the case of a majority the relation internal to the number

constitutes a set that may be finite or infinite, but is always denumerable, whereas the minority is defined as a nondenumerable

set, however many elements it may have. What characterizes the nondenumerable is neither the set nor its elements ; rather,

it is the connection, the "and" produced between elements , between sets, and which belongs to neither, which

eludes them and constitutes a line of flight. The axiomatic manipulates only denumerable sets, even infinite ones, whereas the

minorities constitute "fuzzy," nondenumerable, nonaxiomizable sets, in short, "masses," multiplicities of escape and flux.

Whether it be the infinite set of the nonwhites of the periphery, or the restricted set of the Basques, Corsicans, etc.,

everywhere we look we see the conditions for a worldwide movement: the minorities recreate "nationalitarian" phenomena that the nation-states had been chargedwith controlling and quashing. The bureaucratic socialist sector is certainly not spared by these movements, and as Amalrik said, the dissidents are nothing, or serve only as pawns in international politics, if they are

abstracted from the minorities working the USSR. It matters little that the minorities are incapable of constituting viable States from the point

of view of the axiomatic and the market, since in the long run they promote compositions that do not pass by way of the

capitalist economy any more than they do the State-form. The response of the States, or of t he axiomatic, may obviously be to accord the minorities regional or federal orstatutory autonomy, in short, to add axioms. But this is not the pr oblem: this operation consists only in translating the minorities into denumerable sets or subsets, which would enter as elements into the majority, whichcould be counted among the majority. The same applies for a status accorded to women, young people, erratic workers, etc. One could even imagine, in blood and crisis, a more radical reversal that would make the white

world the periphery of a yellow world; there would doubtless be an entirely different axiomatic. But what we are talking about is something else, something even that would not resolve: women, nonmen,as a minority, as a nondenumerable flow or set, would receive no adequate expression by becoming elements of the

majority, in other words, by becoming a denumerable finite set. Nonwhites would receive no adequate expression by becominga new yellow or black majority, an infinite denumerable set. What is proper to the minority is to assert a power of thenondenumerable, even if that minority is composed of a single member. That is the formula for multiplicities.Minority as a

universal figure, or becoming-everybody/everything (devenir tout le monde). Woman: we all have to become that,

whether we are male or female. Non-white: we all have to become that, whether we are white, yellow, or

black.

Once again, this is not to say that the struggle on the level of the axioms is without importance; on the contrary, it is

determining (at the most diverse levels: women's struggle for the vote, for abortion, for jobs; the struggle of the regions for autonomy;

the struggle of the Third World; the struggle of the oppressed masses and minorities in the East or West...). But there is also always a

sign to indicate that these struggles are the index of another, coexistent combat. However modest the demand, it always

constitutes a point that the axiomatic cannot tolerate: when people demand to formulate their problems themselves , andto determine at least the particular conditions under which they can receive a more general solution (hold to the Particular as an

innovative form). It is always astounding to see the same story repeated: the modesty of the minorities' initial demands,

coupled with the impotence of the axiomatic to resolve the slightest corresponding problem. In short, the struggle around

axioms is most important when it manifests, itself opens, the gap between two types of propositions, propositions of flow and

propositions of axioms. The power of the minorities is not measured by their capacity to enter and make themselves felt

within the majority system , nor even to reverse the necessarily tautological criterion of the majority, but to bring to bear

the force of the non-denumerable sets, however small they may be, against the denumerable sets, even if they are infinite,reversed, or changed, even they if imply new axioms or, beyond that, a new axiomatic. The issue is not at all anarchy versus

organization, nor even centralism versus decentralization, but a calculus or conception of the problems of

nondenumerable sets, against the axiomatic of denumerable sets. Such a calculus may have its own compositions, organizations, even

centralizations; nevertheless, it proceeds not via the States or the axiomatic process but via a pure becoming of minorities.


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Perm

The decolonial is the pluriversality of intersecting political horizonspluriversality involves coordinating

multiple struggles for the other world that is possible even when they may not agree with each otherMignolo 11(Walter, Literature @ Duke, Epistemic Disobedience and the Decolonial Option: A Manifestoin Transmodernity: A Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production in the Luso-Hispanic World, pp. 45-6)

One of the reasons for the failure of the decolonization movements is that, as in socialism/communism, they changed the

content but not the terms of the conversation, and maintained the very idea of the state within a globalcapitalist economy. The appropriation of the state by native elites in Asia and in Africa (as before in the Americas, Haiti being a

particular case, which we cannot analyze here, the construction of the colonial states by Creole elites of Iberian descendents in the southand British in the north), remained linked to and dependent from global imperial politics and economy. So much so that in certain cases,the decolonial states followed the same rules of the liberal game, as in India; in other cases, they attempted an approximation towardsMarxism, as in the case of Patrice Lumumba (Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The enormous contribution ofdecolonization (or independence), as much in the first wave from 1776 to 1830 in the Americas as in the second in Asia and Africa, has

been to plant the flag of decolonial pluri-versality against the flag and the tanks of imperial uni-versality. The limits of all these

movements were those of not having found an opening and a freedom of an other thinking: that is, of a

decolonization that would carry them, in the Zapat istas terms, towards a world that would fit many worlds

(e.g., pluri-versality), that would reaffirm the conviction that another world is possible in the World Social Forum.

This includes not only the Zapatistas and the World Social Forum, but also Hugo Chvez. The epistemic-

political platform of Hugo Chvez (metaphorically, the Bolivarian revolution) is not the same platform as

that used by Fidel Castro (metaphorically, the Socialist revolution). The rules of the game that are being proposed by

Chvez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia are different from those of past movements. By 2010, it is clear also that Lula da

Silva went engaged in the route of dewesternization, joining East Asian countries that, while maintainingcapitalist economy, reject to be told by the IMF or by the European Union what is the correct course of

action. If China had followed the IMF instructions, we can be sure that it would not be what it is now. It was

their epistemic disobedience in economic theory first and political theory now that made possible the

miracle.What I wish to say is that that other world that we begin to imagine cannot merely be liberal, Christian, or Marxist or a mix of thethree, which would assure that the modern/colonial bubble, capitalistic and imperial, would triumph and that this triumph would assurewhat Francis Fukuyama celebrated as the end of history.

Thus, I imagine what Fukuyama would think: that the entire population of

China, the entire Islamic population from the Middle East to Central Asia and from Central Asia to Indonesia; all the Indigenous peoplesof the Americas from Chile to Canada to Australia and New Zealand; the entire African population from south of the Sahara, andincluding the Diaspora in the Americas; all the Latino/as and other minorities in the USA; alas, that all those millions of peoples thatquadruple or quintuple the population of the European Atlantic and North America, would yield at their masters feet and to a way of lifethat is a paradise on earth that Western capitalism and the Democratic liberal statemaintained by a television and music industrywithout comparison; mummified by a technology that creates a new trick of fascination and jubilee each minuteis projected as asuccess without limits, an excellence without borders and as techno-industrial-genetic growth that assures paradise for all mortals. In this

panorama, Marxism would continue as the opposition necessary in order to maintain the system. The end of history would thus be thetriumph of liberalism, seconded by conservative Christianity against the constant protest of the Marxist Left and the Philosophy ofLiberation. Thus it would be, until the end of time. Whether we like it or not, after the end of history came: Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina,

and France 2005. Literally, an-other history is coming to the forefront in which planetary and pluri-versal

decolonial thinking, growing since the foundational momentsixteenth centurywould lead the way toward a non-

capitalist and imperial/colonial future.


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Perm

We must risk encounter with others even at the risk of losing and becoming ourselves. The ethic of

encounter proliferates the network of global resistance.El Kilombo Intergalctico 2007[A people of color collective made up of students, migrants, and other community members in Durham, NCthat has met with and connected their cause with that of the Zapatistas and the global anti- capitalist movement, kilombo is a Kimbundu (a Bantudialect) term that has rhizomatically become the basis for the Brazillian term for encampment or commune quilombo built and utilized by maroonedcommunities of Afro-Brazillians as a form of resistance from slavery, translation would be intergalactic commune, such that it references the manylayers of meanings of Afro-Futurism, Pan-Americanism and Anti-Globalization,Beyond Resistance: Everything: An Interview With Subcommandante

Marcos, p. 7/AK47]The Zapatistas have used this practice in order to look beyond themselves and buildan archipelago of islands, or

a massive network of global resistance.According to the Zapatistas, the first such encounter that occurred was within theEZLN itself, and it took place between the guerrilla members of the Frente de Liberacin Na cional (National Liberation Front) and themembers of the indigenous communities of Chiapas. As the EZLN tells this history, it was here that the communities forced theseguerrilla fighters to listen and dialogue, to, in effect, learn to encounter others even when the deafening noise of weapons and

vanguardist ideals would have it otherwise. Thus, encounter is first and foremost an ethic, an ethic of opening oneself

to others even, or perhaps especially, at the risk of losing oneself. Although these lessons were painful for the

guerrilla fighters of the EZLN and their community counterparts, they became deeply ingrained within the

ethos of the EZLN, and they have led to the organization of encounters as a central practical activity

between the EZLN and innumerable others. Even a rather incomplete selection of the encounters proposed and hosted by theZapatistas in the last 13 years is overwhelming in its diversity and innovation. The First National Democratic Convention was held inAugust of 1994, the First Continental Encounter in April of 1996, and the First Intercontinental Encounter for Humanity and Against

Neoliberalism, also known as the Intergalactic, in July of 1996, all attended by thousands of people flooding into Zapatista territory to

meet not only the Zapatistas, but each other. Any surface investigation ofthese encounters will show that they were absolutely

crucial to the formation of the alter globalization movement and the subsequent events that were to take place in Seattle,Prague, and Genoa. Then, in spectacular disregard for the containment the Mexican military claimed to have on Chiapas, the Zapatistasbegan to come out of their territory to create additional encounters with Mexican society: 1,111 civilian Zapatistas in September 1997attended the founding of the National Indigenous Congress in Mexico City; 5,000 Zapatistas in March of 1999 hosted a national andinternational referendum on the EZLNs demands; and in February of 2001, 24 Zapatista commanders took the issue ofconstitutionalrights for indigenous people to Mexico City in The March of the Color of the Earth. Back in rebel territory, in July 2003, fiveCaracoles were inaugurated as bastions of Zapatista cultural resistance, portals from Zapatista territory to the world, and spaces ofencounter for global resistance. With the release of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandn Jungle in 2005, the Zapatistas proposedanother series of encounters: the Other Campaign, which included the visit of an EZLN commission to every state of the MexicanRepublic in 2006, and another Intergalactic. That Intergalactic is now pending, preceded by a series of Encounters between ZapatistaPeoples and Peoples of the World in December 2006, July 2007, and December 2007, which has been specified as the first Encounter

Between Zapatista Women and Women of the World. Yet, no matter how many encounters are actualized, the Zapatista ethic of

encounter cannot be exhausted. Rather, as the Zapatistas insist on reminding us, any ethic of encounter worthy of the

name must necessarily be based on the premise that what is missing, is yet to come (falta lo que falta).

Depolarization is the keydifferences have to be articulatedrather than opposed to each otherSantos 8 (Bonaventura de Sousa, Depolarise pluralities. A Left with a Future in The New Latin American

Left. 259-60)

Is a synthesis between the extreme positions within the contemporary Latin American left possible? I do not think so, and even if it werepossible, it would not be desirable. The search for a synthesis requires a conception of totality that reduces diversity to unity. In my

opinion, no totality can contain the limitless diversity of practices and theories within todays Latin American

left. Rather than synthesis, I believe it is necessary to search for depolarised pluralities . This amounts to inverting

a tradition firmly rooted in the left that asserts that politicising differences is equivalent to polarising them. On the contrary, I propose

that politicisation occurs by way of depolarisation. It consists of giving meta-theoretical priority to the

construction of coalitions and articulations around concrete collective practices, debating the theoretical

differences in the exclusive sphere of that construction. The objective is to transform the recognition of

differences into a factor of aggregation and inclusion, eliminating the possibility of rendering collective action impossibleas a result of those differences, and thus creating a context of collective political debate in which the recognition of differences occurs on

a par with the recognition of similarities. In other words, it is a matter of creating contexts of debate in which the drive

toward unity and similarity has the same intensity as the drive toward separation and difference. Collective

actions orchestrated via depolarised pluralities give rise to a new conception of unity of action, insofar as

the unity ceases to be the expression of a monolithic will and instead becomes the more or less broad and

enduring point of encounter for a plurality of wills.


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A/T: Rspec

Proliferate IdentitiesIdentity requires no referentLinking identities to each other, the border crosses

us, we dont cross the border We dont cross the border. The border crosses us.

Subcommandante Marcos 2007 [A Spokesperson of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and theIndigenous movement of Chiapas,Beyond Resistance: Everything: An Interview WithSubcommandante Marcos, p. 14-6/AK47]

El Kilombo Intergalctico:In the United States, we have a concept of people of color, people that for economic reasons have beenforced, or their ancestors have been forced, to live in the United States. But even though these people have been marginalized and

discriminated against, they do not consider themselves ex-nationalsthey are not simply ex-Mexicans, or ex-Colombians, or ex-Africansbut neither do they consider themselves (US) Americans. That is, while they may have deep memories of their lands, many

havent seen those lands for 400 years; but neither do they identify with a national project in the United States. In our own personal

experiences, we recognize a growing population of de-nationalized people that could never recognize the reconstruction of a nation as

their project, because they have never belonged to a nation. Currently, we see in the marginalized communities of the United States andEurope that this subjectivity is growing, and we think that this subjectivity may have an important role to play in the construction of

resistance against global capitalism/neoliberalism. In your experiences in the encounters with the Other Side and along the border in

general, how have you seen this experience and its possible role in the construction of the Other and the Sixth?

The problem is identity. This, what you are saying, is exactly what an indigenous compaera from Oaxaca in New

Yorksaid. She said, The thing is that Im here now. And whats more, she said it by video from New York

because she couldnt cross [the border], so she said, Im here now, and here Im going to be something else.

Im not going to be gringo, Im not going to be an indigenous Oaxacan because Im not in Oaxaca though I

have my roots there, and Im not going to be Mexican. Im going to be something else. But she wasnt

comfortable with this, and she asked, So if thats how it is, that Im not anything, do I have a place in the

Other Campaign or not? We thinkthis is the problem of identity, when one says, Who am I? And they

skim the yellow pages thinking, lets see, my referent should be here somewhere. Yet it doesnt occur to

them that this referent doesnt exist, that it must be constructed. The problem is not if someone is African or

North American or Mexican, but rather that one is constructing their own identity and that they define

themselves: I am this! The basic element of the notion of indigenous peoples determined by the National Indigenous Congress

(CNI) in the San Andres Accords, is that indigenous are those who self-proclaim themselves indigenous, who self-

identify as indigenous. Theres no DNA test, no blood test, no test of cultural roots; to be indigenous it is

enough to say so. And thats how we recognize ourselves , the CNI says. There is no referent in these realities, above all inmarginalized sectors, which have been stripped of everything, or have been offered cultural options that dont satisfy thembecause this

happens a lot to young people, no? Because one says, If the option of rebellion is what the mass media offers, between

Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, then Ill make my own rebellion.Or, Is this the only way to be rebellious or unruly?Or can I create my own way? And they start to construct an identity, and they form small collectives, and they say, Who are we? Weare... whatever they call themselves. [And when someone asks] But you guys, what are you, anarchists, communists, Zapatistas?

[They answer] No, were such and such collective. We think that with regard to communities and collectives, this is going to arise.

The world that we are going to construct has no reason to use former national identities or the construction

of a nation as a referent.If some group in a North American city constructs its own identity and says, I am whatever-they-call-

it, maybe not even a recognized name, then a community in Southeast Mexico can do the same thing, to say were not indigenousTzeltales or Tzotziles, were indigenous Zapatistas. We constructed that identity. Now [that identity] is not something

that we grant, nor something that we belong to. It is a new identity, though there may be elements of, I am a

woman, I am a youngperson, I am indigenous, and I am a soldier, in the case of an insurgenta ,for example.

Its the same for the indigenous woman in New York. Her husband hits her and she cant even report it

because the police can deport her instead of protecting her. She says, I have this reality and here I am going

to construct my identity, and it has to do with the fact that I am indigenous, that I come from Oaxaca, with

the reality that I suffer as a woman, that I am undocumented, that I work in a restaurant. And her children

are going to have an identity that has to do with all this but is different still. In all of the groups that are on

the North American border, the southern border with Mexico, there are some that say, Were Chicanos,

others that say, Were Mexicans, others that say, Were not Mexicans or Chicanos or North Americans,

were.... And they give themselves a name. And this is our identity, and these are our cultural forms, and

we dress like this and we talk like this, and this is our music and our art. And they begin to construct their

own civilization, and just like a civilization their existence doesnt depend on history books with references

to the Roman civilization or the Aztec or whatever, but rather that there is a relationship in a community, aself-identity, a cultural, artistic, economic development. So we say that in this reality that you mention and

explain, where you all live and work, the surest thing is that these people create their own identity, and that

theres no reason for us to pressure them to define themselves: Are you Mexican or arent you? There

remains this problem of, Am I in the Sixth International or am I in the Other Campaign? Well, wherever

you want to be!And they say, Well the thing is, Im from the Other Side. Well yes but no, this doesnt matter. We think what hasto be done in these cases is not so much talk to the people, but listen to them. And with questions and everything, they start to draw their

profile. And [they begin] to say, Well, I dont identify as Mexican. I dont identify as African. I dont identify as North American. Ihave these characteristics of all of them, but I also have these oth ers, so Im going to call myself... And they give themselves a name,like the Chicanos gave themselves a name. The problem isnt existence; its identity. Because theyre going to exist whetheror not theyare named. The problem is how this identity relates within itself, between those that identify as such, and how this identity relates toothers. This is the relation that we want to construct, the new world, where these identities have a place, not just that they are there, butthe way in which we relate to them.


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Framework - Geo-Epistemology

Epistemic location matterswe cant escape where we come from. Decolonial thinking is a matter of

interrogating and advancing a geo-politics of knowledge based on our own link to subalternitythis is

what their framework arguments forclose by definition

Grosfoguel, Ramn, University of California, Berkeley, Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political-Economy:

Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality 2011 TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Productionof the Luso-Hispanic World, School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, UC Mercedhttp://escholarship.org/uc/item/21k6t3fq

TianaThe first point to discuss is the contribution of racial/ethnic and feminist subaltern perspectives to

epistemological questions. The hegemonic Eurocentric paradigms that have informed western philosophy

and sciences in the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system (Grosfoguel 2005; 2006b) for the last 500

hundred years assume a universalistic, neutral, objective point of view . Chicana and black feminist scholars (Moraga andAnzalda 1983; Collins 1990) as well as Third World scholars inside and outside the United States (Dussel 1977) reminded us that we

always speak from a particular location in the power structures. Nobody escapes the class, sexual, gender, spiritual,

linguistic, geographical, and racial hierarchies of the modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-

system. As feminist scholar Donna Haraway (1988) states, our knowledges are always situated. Black feminist scholars called thisperspective afro-centric epistemology (Collins 1990) (which is not equivalent to the afrocentrist perspective) while Latin AmericanPhilosopher of Liberation Enrique Dussel called it geopolitics of knowledge (Dussel 1977) and, following Fanon (1967) and

Anzalda (1987), I will use the term bodypolitics of knowledge. This is not only a question about social values in knowledge

production or the fact that our knowledge is always partial. The main point here is the locus of enunciation, that is, the

geo-political and body-political location of the subject that speaks. In Western philosophy and sciences the

subject that speaks is always hidden, concealed, erased from the analysis. The ego-politics of knowledge

of Western philosophy has always privilege the myth of a non-situated Ego. Ethnic/racial/gender/sexualepistemic location and the subject that speaks are always decoupled. By delinking ethnic/racial/gender/sexualepistemic location from the subject that speaks, Western philosophy and sciences are able to produce a myth about a Truthful universalknowledge that covers up, that is, conceals who is speaking as well as the geo-political and body-political epistemic location in the

structures of colonial power/knowledge from which the subject speaks. It is important here to distinguish the epistemic

location from the social location. The fact that one is socially located in the oppressed side of power

relations does not automatically mean that he/she is epistemically thinking from a subaltern epistemic

location. Precisely, the success of the modern/colonial worldsystem consists in making subjects that are socially located in theoppressed side of the colonial difference, to think epistemically like the ones on the dominant positions. Subaltern epistemic

perspectives are knowledge coming from below that produces a critical perspective of hegemonic knowledge in the power relationsinvolved. I am not claiming an epistemic populism where knowledge produced from below is automatically an epistemic subaltern

knowledge. What I am claiming is that all knowledges are epistemically located in the dominant or the subaltern

side of the power relations and that this is related to the geo- and body-politics of knowledge. The

disembodied and unlocated neutrality and objectivity of the ego-politics of knowledge is a Western myth.Ren Descartes, the founder of Modern Western Philosophy, inaugurates a new moment in the history of Western thought. He replaces

God, as the foundation of knowledge in the Theo-politics of knowledge of the European Middle Ages, with (Western) Man as thefoundation of knowledge in European Modern times. All the attributes of God are now extrapolated to (Western) Man. Universal Truth

beyond time and space privileges access to the laws of the Universe, and the capacity to produce scientific knowledge and theory isnow placed in the mind of Western Man. The Cartesian Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am) is the foundation of modernWestern sciences. By producing a dualism between mind and body and between mind and nature, Descartes was able to claim non-situated, universal, Godeyed view knowledge. This is what the Colombian philosopher Santiago CastroGmez called the point zero

perspective of Eurocentric philosophies (Castro-Gmez 2003). The point zero is the point of view that hides and conceals itself asbeing beyond a particular point of view, that is, the point of view that represents itself as being without a point of view. It is this god-

eye view that always hides its local and particular perspective under an abstract universalism. Western philosophy privileges

ego politics of knowledge over the geopolitics of knowledge and the body -politics of knowledge.

Historically, this has allowed Western man (the gendered term is intentionally used here) to represent his

knowledge as the only one capable of achieving a universal consciousness, and to dismiss non-Western

knowledge as particularistic and, thus, unable to achieve universality. This epistemic strategy has been crucial for

Western global designs. By hiding the location of the subject of enunciation, European/Euro-American colonial expansion

and domination was able to construct a hierarchy of superior and inferior knowledge and, thus, of superio

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