Tournament: college prep | Round: 2 | Opponent: harker gs | Judge: parth shah
The galaxy "out there" represents yet another frontier to be conquered and known by the settler colonial state, if not explicitly for the possibility of further settlement, then for the preservation of its existing spatial extent on Earth.
Colonization in the name of interplanetary exploration and scientific benefit carve out outer space as the New Final Frontier, attractive because, with seemingly no Indigenous people, settlers can occupy and become the new natives of space.
The line between distinct settler and Native identities is dismissed into the milky way in exchange for an all-encompassing innocent identity of "Indigeneity."
Veracini '20 ~Lorenzo, Associate Professor in history and politics at Swinburne's Institute for Social Research. His research focuses on the comparative history of colonial systems and settler colonialism. "Settler Evasions in Interstellar and Cowboys and Aliens: Thinking the End of the World is Still Easier Than Thinking the End of Settler Colonialism." Published in Cinematic Settlers: Taylor and Francis Group. 2020. Accessible Online at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003057277-16/settler-evasions-interstellar-cowboys-aliens-thinking-end-world-still-easier-thinking-end-settler-colonialism-lorenzo-veracini~~ /mlk-jo/
The settler is illegitimate. He has stolen the land. This is another existential
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type of settler wishful thinking and of the narrative structures that sustain it.
Colonial expansion relies on subjugation, dehumanization, and the labor of black and brown bodies, embedding antiblackness, heteropatriarchy, and imperialism into a larger settler colonial structure that necessitates violence and is the root cause of havoc on our planet (nuclear war, climate change, and disease are all produced by the chaos of coloniality).
settler colonialism is an ongoing process not a one time event
to have immorality on land, settler colonialism as a structure needed to happen first (it ungirds moral frameworks that determine justice)
Tuck and Yang '12 ~https://www.academia.edu/2721597
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whereas the Indigenous inhabitant and the chattel slave are unnatural, even supernatural.
Interplanetary harm and settler colonial violence are forever neglected as the settlers that made themselves foundational in our systems that necessitate these sorts of harm fly off in shuttles to outer space because their weaponizations and imaginations of an OUTER SPACE have freed them of accountability.
Veracini '20 ~Lorenzo, Associate Professor in history and politics at Swinburne's Institute for Social Research. His research focuses on the comparative history of colonial systems and settler colonialism. "Settler Evasions in Interstellar and Cowboys and Aliens: Thinking the End of the World is Still Easier Than Thinking the End of Settler Colonialism." Published in Cinematic Settlers: Taylor and Francis Group. 2020. Accessible Online at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003057277-16/settler-evasions-interstellar-cowboys-aliens-thinking-end-world-still-easier-thinking-end-settler-colonialism-lorenzo-veracini~~ /mlk-jo/
Astro ship Endurance leaves Earth and the narrative can now move forward. Future Cooper
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sky, thousands of frozen embryos, and a brand-new planet?
Bormann '6 (Natalie, Visiting Assistant Professor in The Global Security Program at the Watson Institute at Brown University, 2006, "The Lost Dimension? A Spatial Reading Of Outer Space Weaponization," Paper Presented At The Annual Meeting Of The International Studies Association, March 22nd-25th, Available Online via All Academic at http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/8/6/7/p98677_index.html) / recut
To begin with, the concept of space does not lie in space; but
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space, then we need to ask: what has informed this process?
Then, the colonizing discourse surrounding space allows us to become complicit in furthering impositions of geographical and material violence through the building of paranoia about the "Other" – other worlds and peoples threatening our new one, perfectly modeled after settler ideals.
Springer '11 (Simon, "Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies" Political Geography 30, pp. 90-98) / recut
The idea that violence might be integral to cultural practice is difficult to accept.
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presents itself as the harbinger of rationality and the only guarantor of peace.
Step away from hegemonic, settler interpretations of space. Indigenous people have been exploring the stars and visiting the moon for thousands of years – why do we need to spend billions of dollars to do the same?
A decolonial understanding of outer space (as not just somewhere not to be conquered) refocuses our understanding of space to a critical interrogation of our inner spaces.
Smiles '20 ~Deondre, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, in B.C., Canada, citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and Indigenous geographer whose research interests are multifaceted, including Indigenous geographies/epistemologies, science and technology studies, and tribal cultural resource preservation/protection. "The Settler Logics of (Outer) Space. Society and Space: Settler Colonial and Indigenous Geographies." October 26th, 2020. Accessible Online at: https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/the-settler-logics-of-outer-space~~ /mlk-jo/
Another potential avenue of engagement with Indigenous methodologies and epistemologies related to space comes with
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a crucial moment where the settler state turns its gaze towards the same.
This can help progress our counter-hegemonic movement of decolonization. Decol is crucial to creating post-colonial ethics under the relationship framework where we recognize the Earth and each other's inherent values.
Walia 12 (Harsha Walia, "Colours of Resistance Archive." Home - Colours of Resistance Archive. 2012. http://www.coloursofresistance.org/769/moving-beyond-a-politics-of-solidarity-towards-a-practice-of-decolonization/)
While centring and honouring Indigenous voices and leadership, the obligation for decolonization does rest
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other and normalizes a lack of responsibility to one another and the Earth.
Geographical and material violence because of the weaponization of space extends to the activity of debate. The debate space is colonized through the theorizations that undergirds the discussion and by creating "policies" that are determined by settler frameworks to validate the current structure in the Tuck and Yang card above.
Specifically, the point of LD is to engage in a values or theory debate but every time someone reads a different value the space is so opposed. We tend to focus on extinction scenarios (violence OUT there) without realizing the effects on Native bodies and ignoring rooted claims of settler futurity.
Mitchell 17 (Audra Mitchell, CIGI Chair in Global Governance and Ethics, Balsillie School of International Affairs, and Associate Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, former Senior Lecturer in International Relations, department of Politics, University of York, Ph.D. Queen's University of Belfast, "Decolonizing against extinction part II: Extinction is not a metaphor – it is literally genocide," Worldly, 9-27-2017, https://worldlyir.wordpress.com/2017/09/27/decolonizing-against-extinction-part-ii-extinction-is-not-a-metaphor-it-is-literally-genocide/)
Extinction is not a metaphor… Extinction has become an emblem of Western, and
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attacking the genocidal, racializing, eliminative logics that are diffused throughout settler.
To have debates about the material implications of the appropriations by private entities, we first must understand how the strategic weaponization of space throughout the season impacts our ability to have those debates about outer space, in this space.
Grondin '06 (David, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, University of Quebec at Montreal. Assistant Professor, School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa. "THE (POWER) POLITICS OF SPACE: THE US ASTROPOLITICAL DISCOURSE OF GLOBAL DOMINANCE IN THE WAR ON TERROR" March 25th, 2006 p. 13-14)
From the outset, many may ask why is there, looming over our head
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US space power and the discourse of US space power as space weaponization.