Tournament: Northern Iowa | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge: 

Welcome to the meaningless earth, a place where Western scientific rationality has mechanized and controlled Nature. We no longer ask why the universe behaves in certain ways, just that it does.

Sébastien Malette 2010, ("Green Governmentality and its Closeted Metaphysics: Toward an Ontological Relationality," University of Victoria)
Many other remarks and clarifications could be added regarding what I have described as the
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1983, p. 145; Adorno and Horkeimer 2008; Marcuse 2008).

Discursive management of the environment enables capitalism. Discourses about energy turn energy into a product, defining the epistemology of Nature, the only goal of policymakers and scientists is to gain management and control over the environment.

Luke 99 ~[Timothy W.: University Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chair, Department of Political Science. Professor Luke’s areas of research include environmental politics and cultural studies, a s well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory.   "Training Eco-Managerialists: Academic Environmental Studies as a Power/Knowledge Formation." Living with Nature: Environmental Discourse as Cultural Politics, eds. Frank Fischer and Maarten Hajer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.  103-120.~].
Before scientific disciplines or industrial technologies turn its matter and energy into products, nature
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to find truth, but to augment power’ (Lyotard 1984: 46).

This environmentalism is the new form of biopolitics – a discourse of control and discipline that seeks to create and monitor properly ecologically-minded subjects that internalize the operations of biopolitics.

Darier 99 ~[Eric Darier, Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change at Lancaster University, 1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 22-25~]
This concern for life (’biopolitics’) identified by Foucault is largely anthropocentric, in
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contributors to this volume, Thomas Heyd and Peter Quigley, apply it.

All interactions between human beings and Nature have become regulated by power-knowledge regimes seeking to manage the health and longevity of the population. Environmentalizing biopolitics holds the very survival of the planet in question.

Luke 99 ~[Timothy W.: University Distinguished Professor of Political Science. Chair, Department of Political Science. Professor Luke’s areas of research include environmental politics and cultural studies, as well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. 1999, Discourses of the Environment, p. 142-44~]
The ideas advanced by various exponents of sustainable devel¬opment discourse are intriguing. And,
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as essential elements in managing the health of any human ecosystem’s carrying capacity.
*gender paraphrased

Western thought also relies on the dualism between nature and human. This dualism is hierarchal and anthropocentric, devaluing everything that is non-human.

Hoetzer 10 ~[Irene: law lecturer at the Sydney International Campus of Central Queensland University. Irene is currently completing a PhD in environmental law at Macquarie University.  "Ecofeminism and Environmental Justice" http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/hoetzerpaper.pdf p. 4~]
One explanation of why a society does not feel morally compelled to¶ protect nature can be attributed to its underlying belief system. In the Western world, this is largely shaped by Christian ideals and traditions,¶ according to which nature is viewed to exist for human use, thus as something to be exploited for its materials and resources and sources of knowledge, which in turn lead to power and control.15 Also under this belief¶ system, ~[hu~]mankind is created in the image of a God, who is omnipotent,¶ omniscient but also benevolent. Whilst the concepts of omnipotence and¶ omniscience are clearly evident in the desire for power and control, the¶ aspect of benevolence is however clearly overlooked, perhaps because¶ utilitarian objectives intuitively do not take the interests of others into¶ account. Thus, the moral standing of the West is to value others only in terms of its own interests, so all judgments are made in terms of Western perceptions, values and experiences. Furthermore, Western thought also organises things into hierarchical dichotomies according to which the world is to be interpreted and interactions with it dictated. As it is believed that¶ humans are created in the image of God, humans are considered to be the most important entity on earth and to have been granted greater powers than others, as evidenced in the power of reason.¶ This anthropocentric view of the world, which distinguishes between instrumental and intrinsic values, fails to acknowledge the intrinsic value of anything that is not human.16 Environmental ethicists challenge this view and¶ claim that all of nature has its own, separate intrinsic value. Ecofeminists also¶ hold this view but further argue that the culture over nature dichotomy that dominates Western thought is representative of the dominance/subordinance hierarchy that permeates the fabric of patriarchal capitalist society and results in women and nature sharing a common inferior position. For ecofeminists,¶ therefore, the ecological crisis is more than a question of environmental destruction and human misery. By drawing attention to the interconnection of¶ women and nature, ecofeminists argue that egalitarian, non-hierarchical¶ structures must be created, in which the inherent value of nature is¶ acknowledged and the relationships between humans, non-humans and the¶ natural environment become just and sustainable.17

Western culture and modernity continue to subjectify and destroy other cultures based upon its anthropocentric posturing toward the world / a reorientation of metaphysics and epistemology is critical
Sébastien Malette 2010, ("Green Governmentality and its Closeted Metaphysics: Toward an Ontological Relationality," University of Victoria)
The different critiques offered by supporters of the deep ecology movement have inspired many to
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for its main benefactors, while excluding what is perceived to be different.

Interspecies violence is inflicted in the same forms as inter-human violence: this takes the form of genocide, colonialism, and war

Kochi and Ordan 2008
Tarik Kochi %26 Noam Ordan
Queen’s University %26 Bar Ilan University" An argument for the global suicide of humanity", vol 7, no 4, Borderlands, http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol7no3_2008/kochiordan_argument.pdf
Within the picture many paint of humanity, events such as the Holocaust are considered
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"an eternal Treblinka" (Singer, 1968, p.750).

Our advocacy is: to affirm a rethinking of our ontological relationship with Nature. We seek to adopt a relational ontology that has radical openness to fields of flesh====

Our advocacy seeks to analyze our ontological assumptions about the world by adopting a relational ethos that is dynamic and open-ended. This allows us to rethink the way we conceive our relationship with Nature.

Sébastien Malette 2010, ("Green Governmentality and its Closeted Metaphysics: Toward an Ontological Relationality," University of Victoria)
After examining the current fragmentation and absorption of the ecological movement by what appears to
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, including with this irreducible, symbiotic and dynamic diversity I call Nature.

Our conception of subjectivity is one that denies the autonomous individuality of the West – this is critical to creating relational agency which leads to different models of social and ecological interaction

Sébastien Malette 2010, ("Green Governmentality and its Closeted Metaphysics: Toward an Ontological Relationality," University of Victoria)
With respect to ―human freedom‖, which is often conceived in terms of having
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which would lead to different models of social and ecological interaction and mediation.

====flesh is the fabric of our relationship to the world around us. It is this connection that allows us to question our ontological relationships in the world by recognizing that ’my body is made out of the same flesh as the world.’====
Bryan E. Bannon 2011 (Flesh and Nature: Understanding Merleau-Ponty’s Relational Ontology, Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011) 327-357, Wesleyan University)
Having explored the notion of the flesh of things, we are now prepared to
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composed, since space, time, and movement are themselves relational processes.

The affirmative isn’t to dream of a world in which humanity never interfered with nature or created a pristine nature, rather, we must reorient ourselves towards a world in which human has an environmental ethic which recognizes the interconnectivity among all beings

Bryan E. Bannon 2011 (Flesh and Nature: Understanding Merleau-Ponty’s Relational Ontology, Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011) 327-357, Wesleyan University)
Another important benefit of breaking with the anthropomorphism inherent within the experiential approach is that
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idiom of Aldo Leopold, is a good citizen within the land community.

Aesthetics go beyond the bound of our sensory perception—it is all bound in our metaphysical understanding of "environment as experience"

SANART 1997, " (ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS  ," Arnold Berleant, October 1997,  Sanart Association for the Promotion of Visual Art in Turkey, Founded by Benoit Junod, former First Secretary of the Swiss Embassy, http://www.sanart.org.tr/artenvironment/Berleant_fullpaper.pdf-http://www.sanart.org.tr/artenvironment/Berleant_fullpaper.pdf)
’Perception’ is a difficult term. We not only see our living world; we
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directness, with its strong focus on immediacy and presence, becomes preeminent.   

Our affirmation of flesh transforms the way we engage the world around us by breaking down the dualisms between self and environment.

Brook, 2005 (Isis, Institute for Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy; Furness College; Lancaster University, "Can Merleau-Ponty’s Notion of ’Flesh’ Inform or even Transform Environmental Thinking?" in Environmental Values 14.  NG)
So how might this notion of flesh transform our thinking about environmental¶ questions?
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this that Merleau-Ponty’s concept of ’flesh’ helps us to do.

Only a new understanding of the lowercase flesh allows for this experiential environmentality.

Bryan E. Bannon 2011 (Flesh and Nature: Understanding Merleau-Ponty’s Relational Ontology, Research in Phenomenology 41 (2011) 327-357, Wesleyan University)
If, however, flesh is not properly a kind of thing or being,
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be the case that being itself is determined by and through human experience.