Sarah+Roberts+and+Cayla+Lee


 * hello! here's contact info:**
 * cayla lee (2a/2n): cayla1202@gmail.com**
 * sarah roberts (2a/2n): sarahhroberts@icloud.com**

ableist language antiblackness k ballot turn bataille k berlant turn mbembe turn psychoanalysis k spanos k
 * past 1nc's***

antiblackness k ballot turn bataille k berlant turn mbembe turn psychoanalysis k spanos k
 * past 2nr's***

How I would love ... the final apotheosis of nonbeing? E. M. **Cioran**, Romanian madman, 19**34**, “Pe culmile disperării” Translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Fundaţia Pentru Literatură Şi Artă "Regele Carol II,". HHurt.
 * 1ac wenzhou***

However, Bataille’s work takes ... make more offerings than the others., (Xu and Xu 1990; quoted in Wang, M.M. 1995: 62)
 * The systematic suppression of cultures of excessive generosity and ritual destruction of wealth, such as the Wenzhou in China, is justified based on productive rationality and the desire to promote modern utilitarian mechanisms of productivity and disciplinary power. Despite their poverty, the CCP violently attempting to end Wenzhou “superstitions,” and bend the people to savings accounts and other productive expansion, the Wenzhou people still make more sacrificial offerings than before. They are an example of a profound holdout against the oceanic tide of the productive side of economic engagement.**
 * Yang 13**. (Mayfair, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Two Logics of the Gift and Banquet: A Genealogy of China and the Northwest Coast,” Taipei: National Chengchi University, Institute of Foreign Languages, Translation Center, 2013.

At the beginning of the 21 st century, ... must be recuperated and grasped for modernity.
 * Instead the 1ac sacrifices productive engagement with the topic, just like how in Wenzhou wealth is sacrificed and the will to productivity of Communist China is rebuked. Voting aff is the affirmation of a sovereign moment, where individuals can experience the basic freedom of luxuriousness that profane life has sought to eradicate.**
 * Yang 13.** (Mayfair, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Two Logics of the Gift and Banquet: A Genealogy of China and the Northwest Coast,” Taipei: National Chengchi University, Institute of Foreign Languages, Translation Center, 2013.

Despite the dire warnings of the prophets ... Wilson’s (2008b) two books on contemporary American supercapitalism, Great Satan’s Rage.
 * Absent a re-orientation of the politics of expenditure, humanity will succumb to the ongoing endless homogenization of itself, the infusion of a species by the spirit of a military neoliberal machine, which has no purpose other than work. This supreme form of nihilism operates on the very genome of individuality, total surveillance, poverty, and destruction across the world and the biosphere. The contemporary drive towards productivity immerses humans into the ultimate technological war machine and secures a fate of self-destruction and techno-nihilism alongside the liquidation of meaning as humanity becomes data trash in a commodity ecosystem.**
 * Featherstone 10.** [Mark, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Keele University, “Death-Drive America: On Scott Wilson’s Vision of the Cultural Politics of American Nihilism in the Age of Supercapitalism,” Fast Capitalism 7.1, 2010]

Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. ... all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me. E. M. **Cioran**, Romanian madman, 19**34**, “Pe culmile disperării” Translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Fundaţia Pentru Literatură Şi Artă "Regele Carol II,". HHurt.
 * Contemporary consumer society survives off the promise of a utopian fiction of escape from the pain of production and a life of eventual luxury bought and sold by the culture industry. The problem is the space of luxury no longer exists. Our relationship with China is currently a “grey zone” where we have over-produced to such an extent that there is really nowhere else to go.**

In this article, I propose to develop ... the death drive that heads over to the other side of material things.
 * We affirm the topic as a luxurious economic engagement with China, even while there is no more space for material expansion, this absurd model of active and affective transgression are key to subvert the ethics of calculation that dominate contemporary society and empower political multitudes to resist the will to overproductivty and violence of empire.**
 * Featherstone 16**. (Mark Featherstone, professor of sociology at Keele University, “Luxus: A thanatology of luxury from Nero to Bataille,” Cultural Politics Vol 12 Issue 1 pp. 67-71)

“Socratic College” also contains multiple claims ... communication too far, pushing it until it dies.
 * The aff on the other hand is a joyful embrace of both the desirable and undesirable elements of communication. We cannot purge our existence of the accursed share of language, only by protecting the impossible difference fundamental to existence as communicators can we make debate great again.**
 * Lerman 15** (Lindsay Lerman, PhD in philosophy from the University of Guelph, “Georges Bataille's ‘Nonknowledge’ as Epistemic Expenditure: An Open Economy of Knowledge,” pp. 40-43)

It is no coincidence that Bataille ... given its attunement to a reality fecund with oblivion.9
 * A truly surrealist poetics is a marvelous embrace of death, the refusal of all exterior forms, and a sovereign moment of non-meaning and thus radiating beauty.**
 * Our performance of a surrealist poetics of sacrifice grants us access to the realm of the impossible as well as sovereignty.**
 * Hirsch 14.** Alexander Hirsch, professor of political science at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, “Sovereignty surreal: Bataille and Fanon beyond the state of exception,” Contemporary Political Theory (2014) 13, pg. 292

What kind of academic activity encourages ... the players who have not yet made their move.
 * In this debate, you have only to choose between liberating yourself from the principle of rational control OR the globalized misery of conventional life. You are not a neutral spectator engaging in cost benefit analysis. Pony up. Face your fears, embrace change and submit to no one but your own sovereign desire. Play your cards and live on the basis of innovation at the spur of the moment.**
 * Schnurer 04**. Maxwell, Ph.D., Pittsburgh, Assistant Professor at Marist College, Spring 2004 “GAMING AS CONTROL: WILL TO POWER, THE PRISON OF DEBATE AND GAME CALLED POTLATCH,” CONTEMPORARY ARGUMENTATION AND DEBATE.”


 * 1ac mourning***

The Long Genealogy of Struggles Over Funerals … to per- suade Confucian interlocutors.
 * The most glorious of expenditures was the ancient Chinese funeral: a privileging of the will of the dead over the living to defy the “natural” impulse to protect and privilege life, engaging in lavish acts of mourning for any and all bodies, and participating in exuberant celebration of unproductivity.**
 * Yang 13** (Mayfair, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Two Logics of the Gift and Banquet: A Genealogy of China and the Northwest Coast,” Taipei: National Chengchi University, Institute of Foreign Languages, Translation Center, 2013)

Poetry occupies a privileged place … Poetry is conceived here as a sacrifice of itself.
 * This unproductive expenditure, disavowal of future goals and specific purposes is our sacrifice.**
 * Brennan 15** (Eugene Brennan, Literature and Intoxication: Writing, Politics and the Experience of Excess, 2015, SHR)

Pain, anguish and torture are thus … desire they long for can be attained.
 * Our mourning is an interminable, impossible experience in which we rupture personal homogeneity with their rage and pain. Our mourning is intoxication. Extravagance. Exuberance. We refuse to return to everyday normality. **
 * Brennan 15** (Eugene Brennan, Literature and Intoxication: Writing, Politics and the Experience of Excess, 2015, SHR)

Akin to Seneca’s theory of the¶ natural … rather than the debased luxury of things.
 * The structure of modernized engagement with China has always depended upon a removal of luxurization – that which necessitates the death of one and the emergence of a new self. Now, we are caught in a restricted economy of productivity -- move on from each loss, don’t dwell too long in the present, make sure you are always thinking about the future -- and most importantly, don’t mourn here.**
 * Featherstone 16** (Mark Featherstone, LUXUS: A Thanatology of Luxury from Nero to Bataille, 78-79 shr)

In later works like Literature … the divine form melts like sugar in water). (p. 59)
 * Our poetic and sacrificial expenditure is the evocation of emotive forces through words of inaccessible possibilities. Conceal the known within the unknown and open yourself up to beyond yourself. Repaint the stories in exuberant colors and go beyond the intellectual, political, and economic systems governing human activity. Expend yourself in extravagance. Mourn with us.**
 * Botting and Wilson 97** (Fred Botting and Scott Wilson, The Bataille Reader, published in 1997, pg 9-10, shr)

 How I would love one day to see all people, young and old, sad or happy, men and women, married or not, serious or superficial leave their homes and their work places, relinquish their duties and responsibilities, gather in the streets and refuse to do any- thing anymore. At that moment, let slaves to senseless work, who have been toiling for future generations under the dire delu- sion that they contribute to the good of humanity, avenge them- selves on the mediocrity of a sterile and insignificant life, on the tremendous waste that never permitted spiritual transfiguration. At that moment, when all faith and resignation are lost, let the trappings of ordinary life burst once and for all. Let those who suffer silently, not even uttering a sigh of complaint, yell with all their might, making a strange, menacing, dissonant clamor that would shake the earth. Let the waters flow faster and the moun- tains sway threateningly, the trees show their roots like an eternal and hideous reproach, the birds croak like ravens, and the ani- mals scatter in fright and fall from exhaustion. Let ideals be de-clared void; beliefs, trifles; art, a lie; and philosophy, a joke. Let everything be climax and anticlimax. Let lumps of earth leap into the air and crumble in the wind; let plants make strange ara- besques, frightful and distorted shapes, in the sky. Let wildfires spread rapidly and a terrifying noise drown out everything so that even the smallest animal would know that the end is near. Let all form become formless, and chaos swallow the structure of the world in a gigantic maelstrom. Let there be tremendous com- motion and noise, terror, and explosion, and then let there be eternal silence and total forgetfulness. And in those final mo- ments, let all that humanity has felt until now, hope, regret, love, despair, and hatred, explode with such force that nothing is left behind. Would not such moments be the triumph of nothingness and the final apotheosis of nonbeing? E. M. Cioran , Romanian madman, 19  34  , “Pe culmile disperării” Translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Fundaţia Pentru Literatură Şi Artă "Regele Carol II,". HHurt.


 * Nonproductive expenditure has all but disappeared in modern life—humanity exists now in an ever-increasing state of self-objectification that is part and parcel with the history of the West’s colonial mission to eradicate mystery and unproductive consumption. The prohibition of wasteful expenditure mirrors the topic’s imperative to render all engagement with China useful. The will to productivity is a disciplinary apparatus that dictates what is useful debate activity, but also what is a useful way to exist in the world.**

Yang 13. (Mayfair, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Two Logics of the Gift and Banquet: A Genealogy of China and the Northwest Coast,” Taipei: National Chengchi University, Institute of Foreign Languages, Translation Center, 2013. · ritual expenditure is a non-productive consumption that has disappeared in utilitarian and future-oriented modern life · monuments like Egyptian pyramids, medieval European cathedrals that we consider “wasteful” and “useless” allowed people to have a deep connection with the sacred realm of the gods, ancestors, and supernatural beings · “intimacy” as the non-differentiation between self and the world—original cosmic unity · utilitarianism and tool-use has broken up this originary monistic world, starting with the distinction between humans, animals, and gods · the longing to return to our original lost “intimacy” is satisfied through periodic effervescent religious rituals of material waste and loss because to destroy material wealth is to destroy the “thingness” that has imprisoned us (example of wild vs. domesticated animal for sacrifice) · sacrifice is self-destruction for its own sake—a transgression for the pursuit of survival //it’s not about repayment but the excess of gift that transcends the means-end relationship that entraps us in current politics// // · debate should be a potlatch (native americian tribe in the NW part of north America, Wenzhou people in Zhejiang Province) the ceremony of gift giving in which you sacrifice your material wealth to others as a way of understanding your relationship to a group of individuals without the premise of subject/object relations – there is no desire for economic gain which challenges the law of utility // // However, __Bataille’s work takes the Nietzschean spirit of anti- utilitariansim to new heights. **Central to Bataille’s passionate critique of modernity was** his notion of **“ ritual expenditure” ** as a key form of “non -productive consumption” **that has all but disappeared in our utilitarian and future -oriented modern life. ** These expenditures include **religious fest i- vals, massive rituals and sacrifices, competitive spectacles, lavish court luxuries and ceremonies ,** large non -productive monastic communities, and **giant monuments like the Egyptian pyramids and medieval European cathedrals, that we moderns consider “wasteful” and “useless”**__ (Bataille 1985; 1989a). For Bataille, __these expenditures allowed people to maintain a deep connection with the sacred realm of the gods, ancestors, and supernatural beings. **He envisioned archaic humanity as** **being like the state of animality, where consciousness is in a state of original oneness and immanence with the world.** This original ** non -differentiation between self and the world ** he called the state of “intimacy”__ (Bataille 1989b). Bataille’s notion of intimacy resonates with the Daoist state of original cosmic unity. __However, ** what breaks up this originary monistic world for Bataille is ** not language,__ as in Daoist philosophy, __but ** tool -use ,** reflecting the Marxist influence on Bataille .__ For Bataille, **__in-creasingly in human history, distinctions are drawn between human and animal, and between humans and supreme beings, whereas before there was a sense of continuity between humans, animals, and gods__** (Bataille 1989b). **__With progressive tool -use, not only animals become “things” for the use of humans, but humans themselves become increasingly objectified __** __as “things.”__ According to Bataille, **__ the longing for a return to our original lost “intimacy” is __** __then ** partially satisfied through periodic effervescent religious rituals and festivals that refocus people on “the present” and allow them to indulge in an excess of material waste and loss. To destroy material wealth is to destroy the “thingness” that has come to imprison us and to allow us to get back to int i- macy with the gods for a time.**__ For example, **__Bataille points out that in animal sacrifice, wild animals are seldom offered in sacrifice. It is domesticated animals, draft animals or meat -bearing animals that are slaughtered, in keeping with this posited need to destroy the “useful” in the animal.__** Non -Reciprocity and Wasteful Destruction //in// Chinese Rituals Turning now to __the Chinese cultural past, we find “waste” not only in banqueting, but also in rituals and festivals of a religious nature, when sacr i- fices are offered to transcendent beings residing in other worlds. Sacrifices in China are a form of religious gifts given to the gods and ancestors.__ The char- acters 祭祀, both with the “spirit” radical, refer to the act of making a sacr i- fice to spiritual forces or supernatural beings. The ancient Chinese characters 犧牲 display the “cow” or “ox” radicals, and referred to “animals used for sacrif icial rites, such as oxen, goats, and pigs” ( Ci Hai 1976: 872). **__In sacrifice,__** __the gift that is given represents the transfer of wealth from this world to another world beyond this one, and **return is quite uncertain or not at all.**__ Sa c- rifice is an archaic mo de of ritual common to all ancient cultures. In sacrifice, the simple Maussian notion of reciprocity in the gift does not suffice. Ce r- tainly there is the hope that in sacrifice to ancestors and spirits, these beings would respond ( 對 ) to such gifts and rewa rd the sacrificers. However, **__ sacrifice __** also **__ reaches for something beyond a return. Sometimes,__** in excessive no-holds -barred sacrifice, **__there is simply the desire for__** destruction or __ s**elf -destruction for its own sake, a transgression of the supposedly “natural” human instrumental pursuit of** **life, survival, and species expansion.**__ So **__Bataille wanted to explore__** a dimension of **__sacrifice where it ceases to be a__** mere **__means to gain__** a **__repayment from the gods, but displays an excessiveness that becomes a spiritual end in itself.__** __This second logic of the gift, found in ** the excess of the gift , enables one to transcend the means -end relationships that entrap us in the conventional world .**__ I must say here that I did not start doing fieldwork in rural China ha v-ing already r ead Bataille, but I discovered Bataille’s relevance to Chinese culture after my fieldwork encounters with the frequent theme of prohibition of “waste” (Yang 2000). Local  officials __in__// __rural and small -town Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province__// where I did fieldwork i n the 1990’s to 2012 __were always calling on the people to scale down their rituals and avoid waste or going into debt to pay for lavish weddings and funerals. Many large -scale religious rit u- als and ritual processions were__ just __banned altogether. The reasons __ that off i- cials chastised the local people  for excess ritual expenditure __were that people would not have enough money for investing in their family businesses, in children’s education, and that these activities were “superstitious.”__ 6 While __officials expected the__ people’s __excessive waste of money on rituals to decline with increased prosperity and exposure to the rational influence__ s __of modern urban culture__ in the area, __the opposite occurred. As __ local __people had more money to spend, their__ family and __community rituals became more lavish.__ Wenzhou local officials’ attempt to scale down ritual expenditure r e- minds me of __the Canadian colonial authorities in 19th century British Columbia__ who __ banned potlatches because they encouraged “heathenism” and “indolence” (even though they always noted how energetically the natives pr e- pared for potlatches)__ (Cole 1991). __Below are two entries by colonial agents in British Columbia: 1883 – The energy they display in collecting property is certainly remarkable... but unfortunately, so much is squandered at feasts and otherwise, that they have not as they ought to have, conti n- uous comfort. 1890 – I am sorry to say that I cannot report any improvement among these Indians; they seem to have given themselves up again to the “Potlatch,” which has absorbed the whole of their time and energies..., and, in conse -quence they have earned very little money, though they could all have ob -tained remunerative employment at the different canneries had they chosen to work.__ (Codere 1950: 82-83) Anthropologists who have studied the Northwest Coast natives observe that they were quite hard -working, especially for their potlatch accumulations. They were also quick to adapt to the Western money economy and were skillful in becoming economically prosp erous, compared to other Native American groups. According to Douglas Cole, __amongst the__ four recorded __reasons for the European banning of potlatches__ in 1885, __the “economic re a- son was doubtless the most important:__ __the [potlatch] system was based on the hoar ding of goods, not for savings and investment, but for seemingly sens e- less waste... The potlatch was not only a waste of time, but a waste of r e- sources, and incompatible with the government’s goal of Indian economic and social progress”__ (Cole 1991: 140). 7 __Th us in the entries by colonial agents above, what the colonial authorities really objected to was that the natives did not spend enough time working in the way that they approved of, in fulltime and permanent employment attached to the modern disciplinary apparatus of capitalist economy. Like the Canadian colonial officials before them, **the C**__ hinese **__C__** ommunist **__P__** arty **__in contemporary Wenzhou are__** __also **trying to bend the local people to the modern rational enterprise of ascetic and disciplined savings, investment, accumulation, and productive expansion**__ ( 擴 大在生產 ). //The local culture of Wenzhou, which indulges in excessive ritual waste, is today an anomaly in China, an obstinate holdout in an oceanic tide of utilitarianism.// Earlier in China, Rebecca Nedostup has shown h ow __the Guomingdang government in the 1930’s also tried to put an end to lavish expenditures in Nanjing for the lunar calendar Ghost Festival and other traditional festivals by switching to a solar calendar__ (Nedostup 2008). __Later, the Chinese Co m- munists__ of __course went much further__ than the Guomindang __in prohibiting public religious rituals altogether, and persecuting those who dared defy the ban. Thus,__ we can see clearly here that __both **the colonial Canadian authorities and the Chinese Guomindang and Communists were modern colonizing state forces who sought to systematically suppress archaic Bataillean cultures of excessive generosity and ritual destruction of wealth in order to promote modern utilitarian mechanisms of productivity and disciplinary power. **__ However, at the same time, I have also discovered that __in China, the condemnation of wasteful ritual expenditures__ is not limited to either the R e- publican era or the Communist period, but __has a venerable genealogy stretching back into ancient Chinese history.__ For example, one often finds sentiments __by educated Confucian scholars like this one, traveling through the Wenzhou area during the Qing Dynasty, chastising Wenzhou people for their wastefulness:__ The local custom o f **__ the people __** within the Commandery **__ of Wenzhou __** is to __support spirit mediums and get access to spirits and ghosts. They ** hold elaborate **__ Buddhist **__ ceremonies and __** **Daoist** **__ rituals, engaging in extravagant expenditures and exhausting their energies in these efforts. Unconcerned with heavy -duty waste- fulness,__** __each year during the first lunar month, they hold a lantern festival that lasts over ten days. These attract festival -goers late into the night,__ the men mixing freely with the women. __They also get into competitions of dragon lanterns, each with fine d e- tailed craftwork. Well over several tens of gold pieces are wasted on a single large dragon lantern. Gongs and drums are beaten thunderously, the boisterous din is insane. In just a few days, the dragon lanterns are then put to the torch. This sort of reckless wastefulness must be immediately prohibited. __ Lao Daoyu, Leisurely Tour of the Ou River ( Oujiang Yizhi ), Qing Dynasty, 18 th c. 8 __Unlike **modern Chinese elites** who **wanted to end the “superstitions” that prevented China from developing modern science and economic growth,** what disturbed educated Confucian sensibili ties in late imperial China about popular religion was its wastefulness and the foolhardy ritual extravagance of poor people. Confucians in late imperial China__ did not oppose religion against science, or see religion as “backwards” or primitive in a linear history, but they __looked down on the customs of the common people and decried the popular overindulgence in reli gious sentiments. In Qing Dynasty Quanzhou, a city that was China’s greatest cosmopolitan port city in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Confucian o fficials also objected to wasteful expenditures: During the Universal Salvation Festival, all households in Quanzhou put t heir offerings in the streets. They set up opera stages and dis play many precious things. These cost people all their property and ex haust the funds of temples... Even though poorer families are strained by the amount of expenditure, they never stop trying to make more offerings than the others.,__ (Xu and Xu 1990; quoted in Wang, M.M. 1995: 62) //
 * The systematic suppression of cultures of excessive generosity and ritual destruction of wealth, such as the Wenzhou in China, is justified based on productive rationality and the desire to promote modern utilitarian mechanisms of productivity and disciplinary power. Despite their poverty, the CCP violently attempting to end Wenzhou “superstitions,” and bend the people to savings accounts and other productive expansion, the Wenzhou people still make more sacrificial offerings than before. They are an example of a profound holdout against the oceanic tide of the productive side of economic engagement.**

//**Status quo models of economic engagement as well as models of debate condemn us to the incessant grindstone of productive existence. This not only condemns life to a homogenized bare minimum of existence, but also threatens existence on the planet. The endless drive for productivist politics with China mirrors a productive research curriculum in debate, which when taken together guarantees humanity’s destructive turn to modern warfare and nuclear weapons.**//

//**Instead the 1ac sacrifices productive engagement with the topic, just like how in Wenzhou wealth is sacrificed and the will to productivity of Communist China is rebuked. Voting aff is the affirmation of a sovereign moment, where individuals can experience the basic freedom of luxuriousness that profane life has sought to eradicate.**// // Yang 13. (Mayfair, Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Two Logics of the Gift and Banquet: A Genealogy of China and the Northwest Coast,” Taipei: National Chengchi University, Institute of Foreign Languages, Translation Center, 2013. // //  · the general vs. restrictive economy // //  · modernity closes off the joie de vivre of ritual profligacy and religious destruction // //  · the catastrophic destruction of modern warfare becomes the single outlet for our destructive desires // //  · surplus of production, stockpiled weapons etc. have led to the increasingly frequent warfare in the modern era // //  · sacrifices can be that of time, personal benefit, family, power // //  · the state has appropriated religious force and we need to reclaim it through “sovereign moments” // //  · sovereignty: life beyond utility or the use of resources for non-productive ends // // · sovereign moments: we can attain these moments through rituals and religious consumption—trance, prayer, meditation, spirit possession, states of eroticism, sobbing, laughter, poetry, artistic inspiration, and getting drunk are all moments when we experience a fundamental state of freedom // // · these sovereign moments reinforce communal solidarity and identity, and is distinct from the necropolitics of sacrificing ourselves for the utility of the state // //__At the beginning of the 21 st century, what can we learn from this an-cient de bate over funerals and burials?__ Whil e some of the common people back in ancient times might have sided with Mozi against the profligacy of the rich, at the same time, __most__ of them __probably would not have wished to shortchange their dead by sk imping on their ritual honors. After so much moder n destruction of traditional Chinese religious culture, our understan d- ing of this ancient quarrel would be different from the an cients. From a Bataillean modern perspective, we might say, **“What better way to waste and destroy wealth than burying precious goods deep into the ground in graves where they will never be u sed or enjoyed by the living?”** Following Bataille, we can say that such ** “waste” of resources on death instead of life is an ex- pression of otherworldly religiosity and a direct challenge to the modern focus on temporal and profane life. We now live a life that has condemned us to an incessant grindstone of production, and a way of thinking that is about rational- utilitarian maximization. This endless expansion of productivism is ultimately unsustainable, as environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and global cli mate change are all warn ing us. The modern world enjoins us to thrift, productivity, and maximization, but offers very little in the way of d e- structive release through ritual and festival to transcend this temporal world.** Although Mozi’s populism can still speak powerfully to our modern world, the fact remains that today in China, it is usually rural, peasant, and small -town people__, such as my fieldwork subjects in Wenzhou, __who most insist on reviving traditional ritual expenditures, wasteful religious festivals, and lavish fu nerals and burials. **Indeed, the desire for ritual expenditures in China is in direct relationship to the lack of exposure to modern formal education** provided by th e state.__// __ Urban Chinese have for the most part been ab- sorbed into the consumerist expenditures that feed back into the productivism of the capitalist economy. //Bataille’s experience of the horrors of war as a soldier in the trenches of World War I infor ms his theory of the modern decline of ritual expend i- tures and the modern obsession with industrial productivism and military expenditures//__// in his The Accursed Share, vol. 1. For Bataille, **__the law of physics in the “general economy” of the universe decrees that surpluses must be destroyed in order to rebalance the life and death, wealth and subsistence. With secularization and the decline of religiosity, modernity closes off__** the joie de vivre of **__ritual profligacy and religious destruction. Thus, modernity condemns us to the other single outlet for our destructive desires: the cat a- strophic de struction of modern warfare. Thus, the more we diminish ritual destruction, the more our destructive impulses turn to warfare. From the Reformation to the mid -20 th century, it was Europe that was constantly at war, having closed off the paths to ritualized destruction of wealth. Since the early 20 th century, as more of the Third World is brought into the embrace of our common modern productivism, we have also seen a concomi tant increase in war thr oughout the rest of the world. We can see what happens with our su r- plus production of weapons of war: the stockpiled weapons get used sooner or later.__** __Today, in the modern period, we have a quite different system of state -spons ored destructiveness in ritual sacrifice, for the modern state has almost entirely captured the archaic religious practice of sacrifice. Modern states, or would -be states, send off their young men to death in wars and la v- ish rewards and monuments to the co llective memory of state or revolutio n- ary martyrs.__ As the modern etymological dictionary Ci Hai shows, __the mo d- ern notion of “sacrifice”__ ( 犧牲 ) retains the same connotations that were there in the archaic words for sacrificial victims: making a donation ( 捐 ), giving up something ( 棄 ), or sustaining a loss of wealth. Modern connotati ons that the term suggests are: making a sacrifice of one’s time, one’s personal benefit or career, one’s family, and one’s power. However, the modern term __does retain the ancient mea ning of the sacrifice of one’s (or another’s) life, although in the modern sense, sacrifice is usually understood as being for one’s own country. All of these impetuses for sacrifice focus on temporal and profane life, except for the latter, when one gives up one’s life for a highe r and more transcendent cause. Thus, mortality becomes immortalized for the collective or the state good .__ I submit that in this sort of modern self -sacrifice for the state or one’s __country, we are back to the domain of religiosity, even for such an atheistic state as Communist China. This suggests that although the mo d- ern state has exerted tremendous efforts to stamp out extravagant and “wasteful” ritual expenditures in the domains of family and community life, at the same time, it has quietly incorporated the last vestige of archaic rel i- gious sacrifice fully a nd deeply into the state body. Thus, we should not be fooled by thinking in terms of the modern state being secular, and religiosity lying in the private domain of the family or even the p ublic domain of civil society. Under cover of modern state secularization drives, the state has act u- ally appropriated the most powerful religious force, Bataille’s n on- reciprocal gift for itself. Thus, with self -sacrifice for state war -making, we are back to Bataille’s thesis that the decline of traditional ritual expenditures and reli- gious destruction of surplus values, conducted by families and communities, has led to new outlets for modern state war -making. How can we in modernity retri eve or re -appropriate some of this s e- cond logic of the gift, or this powerful religious force back from the state that has captured it, and use it for communities, families, persons, and other non -state social formations ? **In The Accursed Share,**__ vol. 3, **__ Bataille __** (1993) **__ introduces his notion of “sovereignty,” which he defines as “ life beyond uti l- ity ” or “the use of resources for non -productive ends.”__** Whereas Marx f o- cused on material production and distribution by and for the proletariat, **__Bataille subverts Mar x in conceiving of alienation as the process whereby one is made into a mere instrument for production. In Bataille’s notion of alienation, one loses one’s “sovereignty” or the basic freedom of attaining moments of transcendence from the chains of earthly profane life. Rituals and religious consumption allow ordinary people to attain “sovereign moments” that used to be reserved for monarchs and aristocracies leading lives of luxury. These “sovereign moments” attained in trance, prayer, meditation, spirit po s- session, or in states of eroticism, sobbing, laughter, poetry, artistic inspiration , and after drinking wine, are all moments when we experience a fu ndamental state of freedom. Thus, in modernity, we can strive to hang onto and expand these “sovereign mom ents” that have not been appropri ated and deployed by the state. And we can continue to engage in ritual expenditures that enhance local community s olidarity and identity. These include donations to charities, NGO’s, social movements, and religious and kinship organizations and ritual activities; constructing temples and monasteries, and so forth.__** Conclusion Whether we are addressing Mauss’ reciprocity of the gift or __Bataille’s non -reciprocity of ritual waste and sacrifice__, both logics __have venerable g e-nealogies in ancient Chinese culture .__ Indeed, there is some evidence to su g- gest that potlatch culture, or __the excessive ritual destruction of wealth__ that came with it, __can be found__ not only among Northwest Coast natives in the New World, but also __in archaic China and northeast Asia, where it may have originated. In Chinese modernity,__ these logics of the gift have been weakened, and __the second logic has become imperiled, due to the ravages of radical state secularization, the decline of religiosity and relig ious festivals, and the more recent inroads of profit -driven capitalist rationalization and radical consu m- erist materialism. The__ se two __logic__ s __of the gift can counter the two powerful forces of the modern state and modern capitalism, which today have become a single combined force in China, that of state capitalism. Thus, we must work to retrieve both these gift logics which have been so central to ancient Chinese culture, and reintegrate them back into modern life. They may enable us to strengthen social solidarity rather than relying on state integration, n a- tionalism, or state power to generate social solidarity. ** Sacrifice **__** ( ****犧牲**** ), __in the original Chinese sense of transferring wealth from the profane world to a higher divine world, must be recuperated from its modern sense of sacrificing one’s life for the state. __** **__It’s Bataillean sense of killing the “thingness” in ou r- selves that robs us of our “intimacy” and immanence in divinity, must be r e- cuperated and grasped for modernity.__**//

//**Absent a re-orientation of the politics of expenditure, humanity will succumb to the ongoing endless homogenization of itself, the infusion of a species by the spirit of a military neoliberal machine, which has no purpose other than work. This supreme form of nihilism operates on the very genome of individuality, total surveillance, poverty, and destruction across the world and the biosphere. The contemporary drive towards productivity immerses humans into the ultimate technological war machine and secures a fate of self-destruction and techno-nihilism alongside the liquidation of meaning as humanity becomes data trash in a commodity ecosystem.**// //**Featherstone 10.** [Mark, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Keele University, “Death-Drive America: On Scott Wilson’s Vision of the Cultural Politics of American Nihilism in the Age of Supercapitalism,”// Fast Capitalism //7.1, 2010]// // · the current supercapitalist empire is int eh process of reducing everything and everybody to the status of code, the machine that endlessly reproduces // · //American supercapitalism: the growth of human economy through the states of industrialism and postindustrialism until the current globalized economic system which has resulted in the emergence of an informational ecosystem that treats everybody and everything as economic data to be circulated through the channels of the network in order to enable the production of more value in the form of profit. it should be understood as a manufactured technological mode of brutality modeled on the state of nature that is totally ignorant of the value of culture and civilization//