Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Scholars Nuclear K’s

Nuclear Reps Good

Imagery of nuclear extinction motivates political activism toward peace

Pittock 84 (Barrie, Atmospheric Research Scientist, published over 200 articles, Climate Impact Group Chair, CSIRO Senior Scientist, Australian Public Service Medal Winner, http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/84sanap.pdf AD: 7/1/10) jl

It is difficult to assess the motivation behind Brian's consistent bias towards dismissing the possibility of extinction, but perhaps there is a hint at it in his protest that believing in such a possibility fosters resignation. In my experience most people already feel rather helpless to influence the political process - what they need in order to act politically is the motivation of feeling personally threatened or outraged to the point of anger, plus a sense of hope which we in the peace movement must provide. The key political impact of nuclear winter and the possibility of extinction, however, lies in the way it forces proponents of reliance on nuclear weapons back on deterrence as the only possible rationalisation, and at the same time makes the risks inherent in nuclear deterrence unacceptable to rational human beings. There can in my view be no more radicalising realisation than that the logic of reliance on nuclear weapons leads to extinction, if not now, then some time in the foreseeable future. The possibility of extinction makes a qualitative difference to how we view nuclear weapons.
Depicting nuclear catastrophe is good – it enables us to express our anxieties about dangers
Seed 0 (Professor of English literature at the University of Liverpool, 2000 David, “Imagining the Worst: Science Fiction and Nuclear War,” Journal of American Studies of Turkey, Vol. 11, pp. 39-49 http://ake.ege.edu.tr/new/jast/Number11/Seed.htm TBC 7/1/10)

A number of recurring features emerge from these narratives. In virtually every case the USA plays a reactive role, never attacking first. Secondly, the nation’s capacity to cope with such an attack becomes a test of its morale and for that reason the nuclear aftermath, in the short and long term, occasions an interrogation of cherished national values. Thirdly, because nuclear attack can only be mounted with the latest technology, these novels explore anxieties about problems of control. Finally this fiction expresses a collective horror of ultimate endings. Some human presence persists however tenuous or displaced. Cherished human values like reason might be transposed on to extraterrestrial beings; or reader might play out the role of a survivor through the very act of reading a narrative whose deliverer has died. Ultimately there is an unusual circularity to such narratives. By deploying a whole range of strategies to imagine a dreaded future, they function as warnings against such imminent developments[33]. The more the future fails to develop along these imagined lines, the more necessary is the reconfirmation of these narratives as mere imaginary extrapolations.

Kurasawa – Predictions

Predictions are necessary for pragmatic political change – ignoring humanities ability to make predictions keeps us in a state of political dead-lock

Kurasawa 4 (Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology – York University of Toronto, Constellations, 11(4)) jl

As we float in a mood of post-millennial angst, the future appears to be out of favor. Mere mention of the idea of farsightedness – of trying to analyze what may occur in our wake in order to better understand how to live in the here and now – conjures up images of fortune-telling crystal balls and doomsday prophets, or of eccentric pundits equipped with data-crunching supercomputers spewing forth fanciful prognostications. The future, then, has seemingly become the province of mystics and scientists, a realm into which the rest of us rarely venture. This curious situation goes back to a founding paradox of early modernity, which sought to replace pagan divination and Judeo-Christian eschatology with its own rational system of apprehending time. Thus came into being the philosophy of history, according to which human destiny unfolds teleologically by following a knowable and meaningful set of chronological laws leading to a final state of perfection; Condorcet, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, to name but a few, are the children of this kind of historicism that expresses an unwavering faith in the Enlightenment’s credo of inherent progress over time. Yet in our post-metaphysical age, where the idea of discovering universal and stable temporal laws has become untenable, the philosophy of history lies in ruins. What has stepped into the breach is a variety of sciences of governance of the future, ranging from social futurism to risk management. By developing sophisticated modeling techniques, prognosticators aim to convert the future into a series of predictable outcomes extrapolated from present-day trends, or a set of possibilities to be assessed and managed according to their comparative degrees of risk and reward.1 Although commendable in their advocacy of farsightedness, these scientistic forms of knowledge are hampered by the fact that their longing for surefire predictive models have inevitably come up short. If historicism and scientistic governance offer rather unappealing paradigms for contemplating the future, a turn to the conventional political forecasts of the post-Cold War world order hardly offers more succor. Entering the fray, one is rapidly submerged by Fukuyama’s “end of history,” Huntington’s “clash of civilizations,” Kaplan’s “coming anarchy,” or perhaps most distressing of all, the so-called ‘Bush Doctrine’ of unilateral pre-emption. For the Left, this array of unpalatable scenarios merely prolongs the sense of hope betrayed and utopias crushed that followed the collapse of the socialist experiment. Under such circumstances, is it any wonder that many progressive thinkers dread an unwelcomed future, preferring to avert their gazes from it while eyeing foresight with equal doses of suspicion and contempt? But neither evasion nor fatalism will do. Some authors have grasped this, reviving hope in large-scale socio-political transformation by sketching out utopian pictures of an alternative world order. Endeavors like these are essential, for they spark ideas about possible and desirable futures that transcend the existing state of affairs and undermine the flawed prognoses of the post-Cold War world order; what ought to be and the Blochian ‘Not-Yet’ remain powerful figures of critique of what is, and inspire us to contemplate how social life could be organized differently. Nevertheless, my aim in this paper is to pursue a different tack by exploring how a dystopian imaginary can lay the foundations for a constructive engagement with the future.