Agamben K

1nc

1nc
Modern surveillance reform is smoke and mirrors --- the state
of exception will continue to operate indefinitely
Douglas 9 (Jeremy independent scholar, Disappearing Citizenship: surveillance
and the state of exception, in Surveillance & Society, Volume 6, Number 1, 2009, p.
32-42, http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-andsociety/article/viewFile/3402/3365)
However, although many of the concepts and techniques we see at work in the camp are not fundamentally different today, not
everything has remained the same. The importance of a juridical- political system that acts according to the state of exception, or
suspension of the law, is evident in the emergence of recent totalitarian and democratic permanent states of emergency; for
example, the UK and the US have normalised the exception through the passing of laws (Terrorism Act, Patriot Act, etc.) that
essentially nullify the application of normal laws protecting human rights, while still holding them technically in force. We see also
that these exceptional laws go hand in hand with increased surveillance, both of which are tactics that establish control of the
population. Yet what remains to be analysed is the relation(s) between surveillance, territory, and the state of exception - how does
surveillance allow for the rise of the state of exception and the camp? And, more broadly, how are all there concepts integrated in

Surveillance must be regarded as the point at which the camp and

the bare of the state of exception intersect in the governmental control of
the population. Defining the Terms: Foucault and Agamben Although Michel Foucault wrote a book (Discipline and Punish)
an art of government?

that dealt extensively with one method of surveillance, the panoptic, his more useful contribution to the theory of surveillance
comes from his study of governmentality, or the art of governing. In the course of his 1970s lectures at the College de France,
Foucault underwent a significant shift in the emphasis of his theory, moving from the power- territory relationship of sovereignty to
the politico-economic governmentality of population; the concept of sovereignty concerned with maintaining power and territory is a
dated pre-modern concept, and what needs to be analysed now is the governing of a population though various circulatory (that is,
relational) mechanisms: it is not expanse of land that contributes to the greatness of the state, but fertility and the number of men
(Fleury quoted in Foucault 2007, 323). In other words, what is emerging in Foucaults writings, beginning with The History of
Sexuality Vol 1, is the concept of biopolitics: the management of life rather than the menace of death (Foucault 1990, 143).
Broadly, what is taking place in Foucaults works and lectures in the mid to late 1970s is his description of the differences (not

The essential goal

of sovereignty is to maintain power, which is achieved when laws are obeyed and
the divine right of the throne is reaffirmed . Power is the essential defining
component of sovereignty, while government is more or less just an administrative
component within the sovereign state
transitions) between sovereignty, discipline, and governmental management (Foucault 2007, 107).

- a component that is the function of the family; the family, oikos, in ancient Greece was the private management

(government) of economic matters where the father ensured the security, health, wealth, and goods of his wife and children, while the polis was the public realm where man realised his political significance in striving for the good
life. The rise of government in the sixteenth century is marked by this family government model being applied to the state as a whole (ibid, 93), as well as by the rise of mercantilism - the former not realizing its full scope and
application until the eighteenth century and the latter being a stage of rasion detat between sovereignty and governmentality. However, when the art of governing becomes the predominant goal of the state in the eighteenth
century, the family is relegated to the position of an instrument and population emerges as the main target (ibid, 108) of the government (territory is the main target of sovereignty insofar as a sovereign defines itself according
to its territory, while government defines itself in term of its population). With population as the central concern for government, other institutions and sites - such as territory, the family, security (military), police, and discipline - all
become elements or instruments in the management of the population - these biopolitical tactics are what primarily distinguish governmentality from sovereignty. Conduct and Subjectivization Foucault wants to situate bio-power
in the multiplicity of relations within the overarching structure of the state, and therefore not discard the notion of power but instead couch it in terms of governmentality. Biopolitics is produced in the relations between biological
life and political power (bio-power), which is possible when a population is confronted with and in relation to the biopoliticizing (not to be confused with disciplining) techniques of institutions, territory, police, security, and
surveillance; rather than positing a sovereign-people dialectic (which Agamben tends to do), Foucault wants to complicate the notion of biopolitics by accounting for a state that spreads it tentacles (Virilio 1997, 12) through its
various instruments and tactics. It seems as though, with the beginning of a governmentality discourse developing in the Security, Territory, Population course, Foucault feels he has said enough about biopolitics as such and can now
move towards the art and techniques of governmental and subjective conduct, in which biopolitics is implicit. Yet what emerges is, on the one hand, a theory of the top-down management of a population that is controlled through
governmental mechanisms such as statistics-guided surveillance and police practices, and, on the other hand, the bottom-up subjectivization of population through the regulation of actions confronted with state power relations; this
may also be regarded as biopolitical population control and individualizing discipline, respectively. These two streams of governmentality surface in Foucaults later writings from time to time, but he never clearly reconciles the art of
government and subjectivization. This subjective conduct or governing the self is a self-disciplining that is made possible through the knowledge of oneself as the other, as the object of an unseen seer (as is discussed with the
panoptic model in Discipline and Punish). This self-conduct, however, is framed in terms of the problematic of government that uses the power relation techniques of governing others to govern themselves (Foucault 2000, 340-342);
but again, where do these two points converge and differ? It seems as though we must look to surveillance to answer this question. We know that surveillance is certainly a governmental technique for the management and control
of the population, but we also see that subjectivization is only possible via surveillance, as just mentioned with the panoptic model. However, panoptic surveillance is an ancient notion, developed at least as far back as EBII,
sometime around 3000-2650BC (Yekutieli 2006, 78). The relation between the seer and the subject is no longer that of a physical perspective from a point fixe, nor is it localised in a contained space, as with Benthams prison model.
Rather, as Paul Virilio would argue, surveillance is making the traditionally confined space of the camp the very centre of the city. However, before examining the juridical-political applications of this notion, we must understand
Giorgio Agambens conception of biopolitics in terms of bare life and the state of exception. Redefining Biopolitics Following and completing Foucaults discussion of biopolitics, Agamben seeks to further explore the relation
between state power and life, not in terms of governmentality, but rather, in terms of sovereign power. That is, what affect(s) does the state have upon the lives of citizens in relations of power and control? In a sense, Agambens
position is formulated in accordance with what Arendt and Foucault failed to do: Agamben completes Arendts discussion of totalitarian power, in which a biopolitical perspective is altogether lacking (Agamben 1998, 4), and
completes Foucaults discussion of biopolitics, which fails to address the most paradigmatic examples of modern biopolitics, such totalitarianism and the camp. This revision of Arendt and Foucault is achieved through the
exemplification of the state of exception and bare life, which find their ultimate realization in modern examples of the camp. But first, it is necessary to understand how Agamben arrives at this conclusion. In Politics, Aristotle
distinguishes between natural, simple life , Zoe, and political life, bios. Zoe is private life confined to the home, oikos, while bios is life that exists in the public (political) realm of the city, the polis; the former is life regulated by the
economy of the family, while the latter is good life regulated by the state. It appears, then, that Zoe and bios are mutually exclusive, and man moves from an animal life to a distinct political life, as Aristotle seems to argue.
Foucault picks up on this Aristotelian animal/political life when he writes of the threshold of biological modernity (Foucault 1990, 143), in The History of Sexuality, and modifies it to reflect the transition from a politics of the powerlimit of death to the politicization of biological (or, more accurately, zoological - i.e. Zoe-logical) life: For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal [Zoe] with the additional capacity for a political existence
[bios]; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question (ibid). The distinction between Zoe and bios is called into question; what were once two distinct forms of life are now indistinguishable
- biology has become political and politics has become biological, giving rise to biopolitics. Agambens claim, however, is that Foucault, Arendt, and others have misread Aristotle; in interpreting Aristotle, they believe that the human
capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family (Arendt 1998, 24, authors italics). On the contrary, the
simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of life in politics - that is, the production of a biopolitcal life - is the original activity of sovereign power (Agamben 1998, 6). Although Aristotle appears to present zoe and bios as polar forms of
life - animal versus political - he provides indications that the supposed exclusion of natural life from the political realm is at the same time its inclusion, and therefore the originary biopolitical act: we may say that while [the polis]
grows for the sake of mere life, it exists for the sake of a good life (Aristotle quoted in Politics, Metaphysics, and Death, 3). This implies, as Agamben notes, that natural life had to transform itself into political life; political life is not
in direct opposition to natural life, then, but is born of it. The very notion of bios is itself only possible through its inclusion of zoe - Nation-state means a state that makes nativity or birth (that is, naked human life) the foundation
of its own sovereignty (Agamben 1998, 20); biopolitics is this indistinction between private life and public life, an undecidability...between life and law (Agamben 2005, 86). Bare Life and the State of Exception This conception of
biopolitics as an ancient and founding notion of sovereignty needs to be distinguished from what Agamben terms bare life or homo sacer (life that may be killed but not sacrificed). Biopolitical life, as mentioned above, is still
within the juridical-political realm, but bare life is that which is banished from the polis. It is not pure political life as such, but a life that exists at the threshold between zoe and bios. Bare life is the indistinguishability between natural
life and political life - a life that exists neither for the sake of politics nor for the sake of life: bare life.. .dwells in the no-mans-land between the home and the city (Agamben 1998, 90). It is a life that is banished from politics outside of law - but included in its exclusion - still within the force of law: The ban is essentially the power of delivering something over to itself, which is to say, the power of maintaining itself in relation to something presupposed as
nonrelational [i.e. bare life]. What has been banned is delivered over to its own separateness and, at the same time, consigned to the mercy of the one who abandons it - at once excluded and included, removed and at the same
time captured. (ibid, 110) How is this possible? How can bare life be excluded and included? What implications would this have? In order to understand how bare life is produced and how it can exists both within and outside of the
polis, it is necessary to introduce another concept: state of exception. This notion is derived, by in large, from Carl Schmitts book Political Theology, as well as from a fairly extensive debate between Walter Benjamin and Schmitt
concerning the nature of the state of exception. The state of exception is a suspension of law, which is usually instituted during a period of war or another state of emergency: The exception, which is not codified in the existing
legal order, can at best be characterized as a case of extreme peril, a danger to the existence of the state, or the like (Schmitt 1922, 6). Under the state of exception there becomes a threshold between law that is in the norm but
is suspended and law that is not the norm - i.e. not necessarily part of the juridical order - but is in force; so, in the state of exception there appears this ambiguous and uncertain zone in which de facto proceedings, which are
themselves extra- or antijuridical, pass over into law, and juridical norms blur with the mere fact - that is, a threshold where fact and law seem to become undecidable (Agamben 2005, 29). What needs to be underlined here is the
relation between the state of exception and bare life. This point is absolutely crucial for Agamben and for understanding the role of governmental surveillance: the state of exception opens up the possibility of bare life and of the
camp, where bare life is outside law but constantly exposed to violence and unsanctionable killing (Agamben 1994, 82). Agambens position can be understood in the triadic relation state of exception-camp-bare life; the ultimate
power of the sovereign, and the complete dissolution of democracy into totalitarianism - two political systems that, according to Agamben, already have an inner solidarity (ibid, 10) - happens at the point when the state of
exception becomes the rule and the camp emerges as the permanent realization of the indistinguishability between violence and law, to which we all, as homines sacri, are exposed. The paradigmatic example is, of course, Nazi
Germany; but what remains to be seen is how this triad can be applied to our current political milieu. The Potentiality of/for Violence Perhaps the closest Agamben comes to discussing the relations between the state of exception and
surveillance is his 11th January 2004 article in Le Monde, entitled, No to Bio-Political Tattooing (Agamben, 2004). This article comes as a result of Agambens cancellation of a course he was scheduled to teach at New York
University that March. The reason he cancelled the course was because he was denied entry to the US as a result of his refusal to provide biometric data as part of post-9/11 US security measures. The resulting article is mostly a

modern security and surveillance techniques are

emerging as the new paradigm (though not to the extent of the camp) of the state of exception, in
which the exception has become the rule: There has been an attempt the last
few years to convince us to accept as the humane and normal dimensions of our
existence, practices of control that had always been properly considered inhumane
and exceptional. Thus, no one is unaware that the control exercised by the state
through the usage of electronic devices , such as credit cards or cell phones, has reached
previously unimaginable levels. (Agamben 2004) Electronic and biometric surveillance are the
tactics through which the government is creating a space in which the exception is
routine practice. The biopolitical implication of surveillance is the universalization
of bare life: History teaches us how practices first reserved for foreigners find themselves applied later to the rest of the
citizenry (ibid). These new control measures have created a situation in which not only is
there no clear distinction between private and political life , but there is no
fundamental claim, or right, to a political life as such - not even for citizens from birth ;
thus, the originary biopolitical act that inscribes life as political from birth is more and
more a potential de-politicization and ban from the political realm . We are all
exposed to the stateless potentiality of a bare life excluded from the political realm ,
brief, simplistic version of his book Homo Sacer, but Agamben does imply that

but not outside the violence of the law (and therefore still included): states, which should constitute the precise space of political

it's humanity itself that has become the

dangerous class (ibid). Making people suspects is equivalent to making people bare
life - it is the governmental (a Foucauldian governmentality rather than an Agambenian sovereignty I would argue)
production of a life exposed to the pure potentiality of the state of exception : the
life, have made the person the ideal suspect, to the point that

sovereign ban, which applies to the exception in no longer applying, corresponds to the structure of potentiality, which maintains

Surveillance is the
technique that opens up this potentiality , which allows for the normalization of the
exception. In this particular instance - i.e. biometric data collection and surveillance in the US - the state of exception as a
itself in relation to actuality precisely through its ability not to be (Agamben 1994, 46).

permanent form of governmentality and the universalization of homines sacri has been brought into existence though the USA
Patriot Act and the Patriot Act II . I have used the term potentiality a number of times precisely to point to the state
in which the citizens (or, more broadly, the population) of a number of countries find themselves. The potentiality I want to analyse

to be stripped of citizenship, to be banned, to be

abandoned to the law, and to be subjected to political violence , or it is the potentiality for the
government to exercise violence and exceptional law upon the population. So, this potentiality can be both
negative and positive. Although violence becomes indistinguishable from law - or, more
specifically, indistinguishable from surveillance and control - in the state of exception,
what needs to be emphasised is that it is not a power relation of pure violence , but rather, of
potential violence. It is important, as Benjamin notes in Critique of Violence, to understand that violence is a
function of the power mechanisms of the government (although Benjamin would probably say
sovereign): the laws interest in a monopoly of violence vis-a-vis individuals is not
explained by the intention of preserving legal ends but, rather, by that of preserving
the law itself; that violence, when not in the hands of the law, threatens it not by the ends that it may pursue but by its mere
can follow two directions: it is the potentiality

existence outside the law (Benjamin 1933, 136). The state of exception arises when the population threatens to take violence away

the population (rather than individuals per se) are regulated by surveillance methods,
in order to ensure that the norm of the law is not threatened ; and for this norm to remain in
from the law -

force an indefinite period of state of exception is often exercised, as we see with the example of the USA Patriot Act. The American
State of Exception Surveillance and the External 'Threat' This politics of potentiality is created through the de facto laws of state of
exception legislation like the Patriot Act. Looking at actual parts of the Act, we can see that it exemplifies the state of emergency

the normal law of the state is not abolished but its application
is suspended so that it still technically remains in force (Agamben 2003, 31). As such, the
suspension of the normal application of the law is done on the basis of its right of
self-preservation (Schmitt 1985, 12), so that the exception is that which must produce and guarantee the norm.
referred to by Agamben et al.;

Obviously then the state of exception is not intended to be anything more than a temporary safeguarding of normal law. In fact,
there can be no normal law without the state of exception: the

state of exception allows for the

foundation and definition of the normal legal order (Agamben 1999, 48). The use of the state of
emergency to protect the normality of the legal order dates back at least as far as the Roman Empire. Whenever the Senate
believed the state to be in danger, they could implement the iustitium, which allowed for the consuls to take whatever measures
they considered necessary for the salvation of the state (Agamben 2005, 41). Looking back at the Judean Roman camp example,
the detention of the Jews could be seen as enacted during an iustitium when Jewish rebelliousness was endangering the newly
acquired Roman providence of Judea. The iustitium, as with other examples of the state of exception, is a void in which the
suspension of the law creates a zone that evades all legal definition. Thus, the state of exception is neither within nor outside of
jurisprudence - it is situated in an absolute non-place with respect to the law (ibid, 50-51). This non-place, however, also has
literal geographic implications - the place of the camp is no longer necessary for creating bare life. Rather, the mutually operative
surveillance and state of exception allow for a city-camp, which maintains control and suspicion over a population without
necessitating borders. But, we must distinguish - and this is relevant for the Roman camp example - between the functionality and
mechanization of camps (see abstract). For example, the Roman camp, prison, border camp, work camp, etc. all have a different
functionality - from the suppression of a rebellion to idle detention - but the mechanizations they employ to carry out this
functionality are the same - to monitor and maintain control over a given population by creating bare life (the reason the population
is in a camp in the first place is surprisingly irrelevant). Although the functionality of camps may differ, I want to emphasize that the
mechanizations of power will always employ a structure of surveillance; this is the link between ancient and modern camps. Moving
away from ancient examples of the state of exception and looking at the current American judicial-political situation, Agambens

modern politics are defined by the

permanence of a state of exception in which the exception becomes the rule , or the
central argument in Homo Sacer and State of Exception is that

norm. An example of this exception-as-the-rule can be seen in an American 2006 CRS Report for Congress on national emergency
powers: those authorities available to the executive in time of national crisis or exigency have, since the time of the Lincoln

Under the
powers delegated by such statutes [constitutional law, statutory law, and congressional delegations], the
President may seize property, organize and control the means of production , seize
commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all
transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise ,
restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens. (ibid, 4, authors italics).
Administration, come to be increasingly rooted in statutory law (Relyea 2006, 2, authors italics). It continues:

This report alludes to biopolitical powers for one, but also the ways in which the state of emergency is implemented through a

it is becoming more
difficult to identify juridical documents that provide state of exception powers that
are clearly distinguishable from normal law. The Patriot Act, to be sure, is clearly identifiable from
variety of statutes, and not instituted as one bill or act that can be in or out of force en bloc. Rather,

normal US law, but The Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003 was not passed under that name (nor under the alias Patriot Act
II), but was tacked on to other Senate Bills piecemeal. For example, some enhanced surveillance measures were not passed under
the Patriot Act, but were passed into US Code - under title 50, chapter 36, subchapter I, 1802 of the US Code: Notwithstanding
any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this
subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year. So, snooping

surveillance
tactics will still be part of normal law even if the Patriot Act is not renewed ; this is
what Agamben means when he writes of the permanent state of emergency
(Agamben 2005, 2).

There are a few sections of the Patriot Act that are worth discussing in order to demonstrate the modern state of exception, as well as its link to surveillance and the camp. Under Section 412 of
the Act, entitled Mandatory detention of suspected terrorists, the Attorney General has the power to certify that an alien meets the criteria of the terrorism grounds of the Immigration and Nationality Act, or is engaged in any
other activity that endangers the national security of the United States, upon a reasonable grounds to believe standard, and take such aliens into custody. The Attorney General must review the detention every six months and
determine if the alien is to remain in detention because of a continued risk to security. But what remains ambiguous, and allows for the indistinction between law and violence and between police and sovereignty, is this reasonable
grounds to believe standard. Suffice it to say, without going into greater depth, this standard is grounds for racial profiling and the detention of political opponents. Also, the detention of aliens on a belief is the production of bare
life, since it is the stripping of rights without reference to a violation under normal law; in other words, these suspected terrorists are detained without having done anything wrong, but must be situated in the state of exception
camp for those who may threaten the normal force of the law - this is the aforementioned void, or nonplace, of the law. Since these aliens cannot be detained under the normal law, a camp of suspects must emerge in a national
security emergency. What is also telling about this Act is that the ten Titles may be seen as different governmental tactics, networked in one state of emergency act; Titles include, Enhancing Domestic Security against Terrorism,
Protecting the Border, Strengthening the Criminal Laws against Terrorism, and Increased Information Sharing for Critical Infrastructure Protection. Foucault would be quick to point out that this Act characterizes the population
conducting tactics that define governmentality: policing, disciplining, and security. However, Title II, Enhanced Surveillance Procedures, not only becomes implicit in many of the other areas of the act that discuss intelligence and
security, but also allows the Act to go beyond the protection of the norm in a sovereign nation-state through foreign surveillance provisions. Section 214 functions in collaboration with and amends several parts of the Foreign
Intelligence Service Act 1978 (FISA) in order to allow for international surveillance activities in order identify suspected terrorists: during periods of emergency (i.e. state of exception), the US invests itself with the power to collect
foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or information to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities (Sec. 214(b) (1)). The detention and surveillance of aliens
continues though other mechanisms of jurisprudence, which, as mentioned, are becoming normalised through bills, acts, etc. that are not designed as state of emergency law per se. On 13th November 2001, George W. Bush issued
a military order for the Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism; by certain this order means anyone believed to be associated with al Qaida (PoTUS, 2001). Like with Section 412 of the
Patriot Act, suspected terrorists are to be detained without a court order. Similarly, under the Terrorism Act 2000 in the UK, A constable may arrest without a warrant a person whom he reasonably suspects to be a terrorist (Section
41(1)). As with the US, any person detained under this Act can remain in detainment following and pending a review (Schedule 8, Part II). The Disappearance of Citizenship What we have been discussing thus far applies to the
indefinite and mandatory detention of aliens, but the Patriot Act and the Terrorism Act contain various sections on increased surveillance measures that target aliens and native citizens alike. These surveillance activities include
the collection of DNA from anyone detained for any offence or suspected of terrorism, phone taps, wiretaps for electronic communications, the collection of individual library records (Section 215; this Section in particular has
received heavy criticism and debate), the collection of banking and financial records, and other indirect surveillance methods, such as the collection of biometric data at US borders (as Agamben experienced). However, these
universal surveillance methods become much more significant when we consider the proposed increased governmental powers outlined in the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003 (alias, Patriot Act II). Under Section 501 of
Patriot Act II the mandatory dentition of aliens suspected of terrorism extends to include Americans, who can also be stripped of their citizenship and made stateless detainees. As Gore Vidal remarks, under Patriot Act I only
foreigners were denied due process of law as well as subject to arbitrary deportation...Patriot Act II now includes American citizens in the same category, thus eliminating in one great erasure the Bill of Rights (Vidal 2003). Section
501, Expatriation of Terrorists, of the Act states: This provision (i.e. Section 501) would amend 8 U.S.C. 1481 to make clear that, just as an American can relinquish his citizenship by serving in a hostile foreign army, so can he
relinquish his citizenship by serving in a hostile terrorist organization. Specifically, an American could be expatriated if, with the intent to relinquish nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that
the United States has designated as a "terrorist organization, if that group is engaged in hostilities against the United States. With the power proposed in this section of the Patriot Act II, the government would be able to produce
bare life with both aliens and American citizens - a process leading to the disappearance of citizenship by transforming the residents into foreigners within, a new sort of untouchable [homo sacer], in the transpolitical and anational
state where the living are nothing more than the living dead (Virilio 2005, 165). We have seen how a permanent state of emergency creates a situation in which foreign residents or visitors can be detained without a court order for
an indefinite period of time; even greater governmental powers are now aiming at expanding this exposure to the pure power of the juridical-political system to citizens as well. Citizenship and political significance are becoming less
fundamental and inalienable rights and more categorizations that are only maintained though blind adherence to so-called democratic polices, which look more and more like a dictatorial structure (see: Arendt 1973). What should
also be mentioned is the production of bare life in foreign states; or, conversely, the loss of political rights to another state power within ones own country. The power to detain and expose individuals to pure violence and even death
is characteristic of the CIAs and MI5s borderless security, policing and surveillance mechanisms, which becomes more evident with the Patriot Act and FISA. This may be seen as grounds for a debate between sovereignty and
governmentality. Is sovereignty concerned, above all, with the territorial nation-state, as Foucault argues (Foucault 2007, 14)? Or, is sovereignty more accurately defined as that which decides on the exception, as Schmitt and
Agamben maintain? Neither of these questions can be properly answered until we understand the relations between sovereignty and foreign states. That is to say, is sovereignty only possible in a contained nation-state, or is it
something broader that can be applied to foreign nations and even to the point of being able to declare a state of exception in a foreign land? But if this latter situation is possible - the suspension of other sovereigns law - maybe it
is something that should, as Foucault insists, be called governmentality. What should be understood as common to both conceptions of sovereignty and governmentality, however, is the production of camp, in which the state of

The difficulty
with theorizing surveillance is that it cannot be done positivistically - it needs to be
exception reaches its ultimate realization. It should be clear that the Patriot Act and other juridical-political provisions precondition and allow for the continued existence of the camp. Conclusion

situated within a state system that has a biopolitical relationship with the population
through a network of various techniques and conducting mechanisms . Failing to do so will
result in a superficial study of surveillance that neglects the crux of governmental tactics. On the other hand, accounting for the
various relations that condition and require surveillance can make theoretical examinations appear as though they are not about
surveillance. But this is certainly not the case. Before we can even ask why a state uses surveillance mechanisms, we need to define

governmentality best describes our current

political situation, as it is above all concerned with managing the internal structure
of the state according to a biopoliticization of the population , rather than maintaining the power
what state structure we are talking about. Following Foucault,

over life and death, as is characteristic of sovereign politics. Governmentality is literally an art of governing, in which the
population is conducted through various relations and tactics employed by the state, such as institutions, security, statistics, and
surveillance. So, governmentality is the structure in which surveillance can operate as one of the arms of state power. When we
move towards the juridical-political situation of the state of exception, we see another area in which surveillance plays a crucial

The use of exceptional legal measures in order to protect the normal

force of law is what defines the state of exception . The normal law that is suspended is often that
biopolitical role.

which guarantees the rights and the citizenship of foreign and national citizens; thus, under an exceptional juridical situation,
individuals with no political significance are produced: bare life. The USA Patriot Act (among other documents) embodies this loss of

The state of exception,

is becoming more and more the normal course of politics - this is
nowhere more exemplary than in the camp . The camp is the place where bare life is produced and the
rights, production of bare life, and increased surveillance based on a perceived national threat.
Agamben argues,

exception becomes the rule. Yet, the Roman camp in Judea shows us that the emersion of surveillance in a camp-state of
exception- territory structure is nothing new. What is primarily modern is not biopolitics (Foucault) or the camp (Agamben), but the

With digital technology, the erasure of a

definite here or there means that the localised camp is no longer a paradigmatic
place where the limit of the state of exception is realised ; rather, the non-place of a population in
constant movement is what defines the new non-place of the city camp. Thus, surveillance is deeply imbedded
in and necessary for the governmental system that seeks to be instantly aware of
any potential threats to the state so that it can quash those threats by
depoliticizing dangerous portions of the population and exposing them to
the pure potentiality of the management of life .
governmental control of the disappearance of citizenship.

Refuse to draw lines between what forms of surveilling the

population are appropriate --- instead, refuse the ethic of
sovereign power which demands such control
Edkins and Pin-Fat 5 (Jenny Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth
University, and Veronique Senior Lecturer in politics at Manchester University,
Through the Wire: Relations of Power and Relations of Violence, in Millennium Journal of International Studies 2005, Volume 34, p. 14,
http://mil.sagepub.com/content/34/1/1.full.pdf)
One potential form of challenge to sovereign power consists of a refusal to draw
any lines between zoe- and bios, inside and outside.59 As we have shown, sovereign power
does not involve a power relation in Foucauldian terms. It is more appropriately considered
to have become a form of governance or technique of administration through
relationships of violence that reduce political subjects to mere bare or naked life . In
asking for a refusal to draw lines as a possibility of challenge , then, we are not asking
for the elimination of power relations and consequently , we are not asking for the
erasure of the possibility of a mode of political being that is empowered and
empowering, is free and that speaks: quite the opposite. Following Agamben, we are suggesting that
it is only through a refusal to draw any lines at all between forms of life (and indeed,
nothing less will do) that sovereign power as a form of violence can be contested

and a properly political power relation (a life of power as potenza) reinstated. We could call this
challenging the logic of sovereign power through refusal. Our argument is that we can evade
sovereign power and reinstate a form of power relation by contesting sovereign
powers assumption of the right to draw lines , that is, by contesting the sovereign
ban. Any other challenge always inevitably remains within this relationship of
violence. To move outside it (and return to a power relation) we need not only to contest its right to
draw lines in particular places, but also to resist the call to draw any lines of the sort
sovereign power demands. The grammar of sovereign power cannot be
resisted by challenging or fighting over where the lines are drawn. Whilst, of
course, this is a strategy that can be deployed , it is not a challenge to sovereign power
per se as it still tacitly or even explicitly accepts that lines must be drawn somewhere (and
preferably more inclusively). Although such strategies contest the violence of sovereign
powers drawing of a particular line, they risk replicating such violence in
demanding the line be drawn differently . This is because such forms of challenge fail to
refuse sovereign powers line-drawing ethos, an ethos which, as Agamben points out,
renders us all now homines sacri or bare life.

Security logic guarantees that the world lives in a state of

constant crisis and becomes the justification for a violent state
of exception that reduces us to bare life
Agamben 14 (Giorgio Ph.D., Baruch Spinoza Chair at the European Graduate
School, Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Verona, Italy, Professor of
Philosophy at Collge International de Philosophie in Paris, and at the University of
Macerata in Italy, From the State of Control to a Praxis of Destituent Power,
transcript of lecture delivered by Agamben in Athens, 11-16-13, published on
Roarmag, 2-4-14, http://roarmag.org/2014/02/agamben-destituent-powerdemocracy/)
A reflection on the destiny of democracy today here in Athens is in some way disturbing, because it obliges us to think the end of
democracy in the very place where it was born. As a matter of fact, the hypothesis I would like to suggest is that the prevailing
governmental paradigm in Europe today is not only non-democratic, but that it cannot either be considered as political. I will try
therefore to show that European society today is no longer a political society; it is something entirely new, for which we lack a

a concept which seems,

starting from September 2001, to have replaced any other political notion:
security. As you know, the formula for security reasons functions today in any domain,
from everyday life to international conflicts, as a codeword in order to impose
measures that the people have no reason to accept. I will try to show that the real purpose
of the security measures is not, as it is currently assumed, to prevent dangers,
troubles or even catastrophes. I will be consequently obliged to make a short genealogy of the concept of
proper terminology and we have therefore to invent a new strategy. Let me begin with

security. A Permanent State of Exception One possible way to sketch such a genealogy would be to inscribe its origin and history
in the paradigm of the state of exception. In this perspective, we could trace it back to the Roman principle Salus publica suprema
lex public safety is the highest law and connect it with Roman dictatorship, with the canonistic principle that necessity does not
acknowledge any law, with the comits de salut publique during French revolution and finally with article 48 of the Weimar republic,
which was the juridical ground for the Nazi regime. Such a genealogy is certainly correct, but I do not think that it could really

While the state of

exception was originally conceived as a provisional measure, which was meant to
cope with an immediate danger in order to restore the normal situation , the security
reasons constitute today a permanent technology of government. When in 2003 I
explain the functioning of the security apparatuses and measures which are familiar to us.

published a book in which I tried to show precisely how the state of exception was becoming in Western democracies a normal

The only clear precedent

was the Nazi regime. When Hitler took power in February 1933, he immediately
proclaimed a decree suspending the articles of the Weimar constitution concerning
personal liberties. The decree was never revoked, so that the entire Third Reich can
be considered as a state of exception which lasted twelve years . What is happening
today is still different. A formal state of exception is not declared and we see instead
that vague non-juridical notions like the security reasons are used to install a
stable state of creeping and fictitious emergency without any clearly identifiable
danger. An example of such non-juridical notions which are used as emergency
producing factors is the concept of crisis. Besides the juridical meaning of judgment in a trial, two
semantic traditions converge in the history of this term which, as is evident for you, comes from the
system of government, I could not imagine that my diagnosis would prove so accurate.

Greek verb crino; a medical and a theological one. In the medical tradition, crisis means the moment in which the doctor has to
judge, to decide if the patient will die or survive. The day or the days in which this decision is taken are called crisimoi, the decisive

what is essential
in both traditions is the connection with a certain moment in time . In the present
usage of the term, it is precisely this connection which is abolished . The crisis, the
judgement, is split from its temporal index and coincides now with the chronological
course of time, so that not only in economics and politics but in every aspect of social life, the
crisis coincides with normality and becomes, in this way, just a tool of government.
Consequently, the capability to decide once for all disappears and the continuous
decision-making process decides nothing . To state it in paradoxical terms, we could say that, having to
face a continuous state of exception, the government tends to take the form of a
perpetual coup dtat. By the way, this paradox would be an accurate description of what happens here in Greece
days. In theology, crisis is the Last Judgment pronounced by Christ in the end of times. As you can see,

as well as in Italy, where to govern means to make a continuous series of small coups dtat. Governing the Effects This is why I
think that, in order to understand the peculiar governmentality under which we live,

the paradigm of the state of

exception is not entirely adequate. I will therefore follow Michel Foucaults suggestion and investigate the origin
of the concept of security in the beginning of modern economy, by Franois Quesnais and the Physiocrates, whose influence on
modern governmentality could not be overestimated. Starting with Westphalia treaty, the great absolutist European states begin to
introduce in their political discourse the idea that the sovereign has to take care of its subjects security. But Quesnay is the first to
establish security (suret) as the central notion in the theory of government and this in a very peculiar way. One of the main

Before Quesnay, the usual

methodology was trying to prevent famines through the creation of public granaries
and forbidding the exportation of cereals. Both these measures had negative effects on production.
Quesnays idea was to reverse the process : instead of trying to prevent famines, he
decided to let them happen and to be able to govern them once they occurred ,
problems governments had to cope with at the time was the problem of famines.

liberalizing both internal and foreign exchanges. To govern retains here its etymological cybernetic meaning: a good kybernes, a
good pilot cant avoid tempests, but if a tempest occures he must be able to govern his boat, using the force of waves and winds for

This is the meaning of the famous motto laisser faire, laissez passer: it is not only the
catchword of economic liberalism; it is a paradigm of government , which conceives of
security (suret, in Quesnays words) not as the prevention of troubles, but rather as the ability
to govern and guide them in the right direction once they take place. We should not
neglect the philosophical implications of this reversal . It means an epochal
transformation in the very idea of government, which overturns the traditional
hierarchical relation between causes and effects . Since governing the causes is difficult and expensive, it
is safer and more useful to try to govern the effects. I would suggest that this theorem by Quesnay is the axiom of
modern governmentality. The ancien regime aimed to rule the causes; modernity
pretends to control the effects. And this axiom applies to every domain, from economy to ecology, from foreign and
navigation.

military politics to the internal measures of police. We must realize that European governments today gave up any attempt to rule

Quesnays theorem makes also understandable a

fact which seems otherwise inexplicable: I mean the paradoxical convergence today of
an absolutely liberal paradigm in the economy with an unprecedented and equally
the causes, they only want to govern the effects. And

absolute paradigm of state and police control. If government aims for the effects and not the causes, it will
be obliged to extend and multiply control. Causes demand to be known, while effects can only be checked and controlled.

Vote NEG to utilize the 1ACs politics of biopolitical crisis as an

impetus for radical transformation
Prozorov 10 (Sergei Professor of Political and Economic Studies at the University
of Helsinki, Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist, in Philosophy Social Criticism,
Volume 36, Number 9, p. 1056-1058, November 2010,
http://psc.sagepub.com/content/36/9/1053.abstract)
The second principle of Agambens optimism is best summed up by Ho lderlins phrase, made famous by Heidegger: where

danger grows, grows saving power also.20 Accord- ing to Agamben, radical global
transformation is actually made possible by nothing other than the unfolding of
biopolitical nihilism itself to its extreme point of vacuity. On a number of occasions in different
contexts, Agamben has asserted the possibility of a radi- cally different formof-life on the basis of precisely the same things that he initially set out to
criticize. Agamben paints a convincingly gloomy picture of the present
state of things only to undertake a majestic reversal at the end , finding
hope and conviction in the very despair that engulfs us.21 Our very
destitution thereby turns out be the condition for the possibility of a
completely different life, whose description is in turn entirely devoid of
fantastic mirages. Instead, as Agamben repeatedly emphasizes, in the
redeemed world everything will be as is now, just a little different,22 no
momentous transformation will take place aside from a small displacement
that will nonetheless make all the difference. While we shall deal with this small displacement in the
follow- ing section, let us now elaborate the logic of redemption through the traversal of danger in more detail. It is evident that

the danger at issue in Agambens work is nihilism in its dual form of the sovereign ban and the capitalist
spectacle. If, as we have shown in the previous sec- tion, the reign of nihilism is general and
complete, we may be optimistic about the pos- sibility of jamming its
entire apparatus since there is nothing in it that offers an alternative to
the present double subjection. Yet, where are we to draw resources for such a global transformation? It
would be easy to misread Agamben as an utterly utopian thinker, whose
intentions may be good and whose criticism of the present may be valid if
exaggerated, but whose solutions are completely implausible if not
outright embarras- sing.23 Nonetheless, we must rigorously distinguish
Agambens approach from utopian- ism. As Foucault has argued, utopias derive their
attraction from their discursive structure of a fabula, which makes it possible to describe in
great detail a better way of life, precisely because it is manifestly impossible.24 While utopian thought easily pro- vides us with
elaborate visions of a better future, it cannot really lead us there, since its site is by definition a non-place. In contrast,

Agambens works tell us quite little about life in a community of happy life
that has done away with the state form, but are remark- ably concrete
about the practices that are constitutive of this community , precisely
because these practices require nothing that would be extrinsic to the
contemporary condition of biopolitical nihilism . Thus, Agambens coming politics is
manifestly anti-utopian and draws all its resources from the condition of
contemporary nihilism. Moreover, this nihilism is the only possible resource for this politics, which would otherwise
be doomed to continuing the work of negation, vainly applying it to nihilism itself. Given the totality of contemporary biopolitical
nihilism,

any positive project of transformation would come down to the

negation of negativity itself. Yet, as Agamben demonstrates conclusively in Language and Death, nothing
is more nihilistic than a negation of nihilism.25 Any project that remains
oblivious to the extent to which its valorized positive forms have already
been devalued and their content evacuated would only succeed in plunging
us deeper into nihilism. As Heidegger adds in his commentary on Ho lderlin, It may be that any other
salvation than that, which comes from where the danger is, is still within nonsafety.26 Moreover, as Roberto Espositos work on the par- adox of immunity in biopolitics demonstrates, any attempt
to combat danger through negative protection (immunization) that seeks to
mediate the immediacy of life through extrinsic principles (sovereignty, liberty,
property) necessarily introjects within the social realm the very negativity that it
claims to battle, so that biopolitics is always at risk of collapsing into
thanatopolitics.27 In contrast, Agambens coming politics does not attempt to
introduce anything new or positive into the condition of nihilism but to
use this condition itself in order to reappropriate human existence from its
biopolitical confinement.28 Thus, while the aporia of the negation of negativity
might lead other thinkers to res- ignation about the possibilities of
political praxis, it actually enhances Agambens opti- mism . Renouncing
any project of reconstructing social life on the basis of positive principles ,
his work illuminates the way the unfolding of biopolitical nihilism itself pro- duces
the conditions of possibility for radical transformation . We can now see that the state of total crisis
that Agamben has diagnosed must be understood in the strict medical sense. In pre-modern medicine, the crisis of the disease is its
kairos, the moment in which the disease truly manifests itself and allows for the doctors intervention that might finally defeat it.29

the crisis is not something to be feared and avoided but an

opportunity that must be seized. Similarly, insofar as the sovereign state of exception and the absolutization of exchange-value completely empty out any
content of pos- itive forms-of-life, the contemporary biopolitical apparatus
prepares its self-destruction by fully manifesting its own vacuity .
For this reason,

2nc topshelf

turns case
The axiom of security has depoliticized society and generated
a permanent state of exception, permitting the extermination
of all entities under the cover of political and economic
necessity --- ecological catastrophe, torture, enslavement, and
military conflict are the end-points of a politics built on liberal
economics and unprecedented state and police control --thats Agamben
The plan reifies the failed logics at the foundation of the
surveillance state --FIRST IS PRE-EMPTION: scenario planning results in threat
creation because it relies on turning possiblities into
actualities
Massumi 15 (Brian Professor of Communication at the University of Montreal,
The Remains of the Day, in Emotions, Politics and War, Ed. hll and Gregory,
2015)
This isn't just stupidity or faulty reasoning. There is a perverse logic to it. Because if you accept that it's paramount to respond to
threat, and that you have to act in response to it even if it has not yet fully emerged, or even if it is hasn't really even begun to

A
terrorist threat can strike like lightning. Like lightning it can strike anywhere and any
time. But worse than lightning, it can strike anywhere at any time in any guise. This time it might be planes
crashing into buildings. Next time it might be an improvised explosive device. Or
a bomb in a subway. Or anthrax in the mail. No one knows. This only makes the
urgency of action all the more acute. Faced with urgent need to act in the face of the
unknown-unknown of a threat that has not yet emerged , there is only one
reasonable thing to do: flush it out. Poke the soft tissue. Prod the terrain. Stir things up and see
what starts to emerge. Create the conditions for the emergence of threat.
Start the threat on the way to becoming a clear and present danger , and then nip it
in the bud with your superior rapid-response capabilities . Make it real so you can
really eliminate it. I'm not saying that the Bush administration consciously decided to make Iraq a staging ground for
emerge, then you're facing a real conundrum. If you wait for the emergence, you'll have waited too long -- too late.

terrorism. I'm only saying that the fact that their preemptive actions did in fact do that fits perfectly into the logic of preemption,

It is fundamental to the logic of preemption

to produce what it is designed to avoid. That is the only way to give its urgent need to "go kinetic" in
and says something fundamental about what that logic implies.

response to threat something positive to attack. This is what distinguishes preemption from the logic presiding over the previous
age of conflict, the Cold War. The logic of the Cold War was deterrence: making something not happen. The goal, faced with the
clear and present danger of nuclear Armageddon, was to hold it in potential, to make sure the threat was never realized, precisely
by refraining from preemptive attack. What was fundamental to the logic of deterrence was the impossibility of a first strike

Deterrence exercises a negative power . In a way, it's logic is

the inverse of the logic of preemption. Its aim is to prevent the unthinkable from happening by transforming a
exactly what preemption requires.

clear and present danger into a threat, then to hold the threat in abeyance, so that it continues to loom over the present indefinitely,

Preemption, by
suspends the present. It puts us and our actions in that conditional timeloop of the would have/could have. It hangs us on a thread of futurity. It does this in order to make the
would-have-been/could-have-been a "will-have-been-in-any-case." The job of preemption is to translate the
unknown-unknown into a foregone conclusion. Preemption always will have been
right, because it exercises a positive power , a reality-producing power to make
so that it doesn't follow any action path back to the future. The aim of deterrence aim was to suspend threat.
contrast,

things emerge. There is a word for a reasoning that is always right regardless of the objective situation, and that always
leads a foregone conclusion in any case. The word is tautological. The logic of preemption is a tautological logic. But that's just the

The logic of preemption is a tautological logic that has the power to

produce the reality to which it responds. In spite of being tautological, or because of the particular
way it is tautological, preemption works. It operates. It operationalizes the future of threat in a way that
really, positively produces a future. It is an operative logic. I call an operative logic that is positively
productive of what will really come to be, an ontopower "onto-" meaning being. An ontopower is a power that
makes things come to be: that moves a futurity felt in the present, into a presence
in the future. When threat becomes effectively tautological, and power becomes ontopower, everything has changed. We've
half of it.

entered a brave new world, a new regime of power, and a new political era And yes, the more things change, the more they stay the
same. In a recent book, Andrew Bacevich, a life-long military careerist turned military critic, laments that "since taking office,
President Obama has acted on many fronts to adjust the way the United States exercized that leadership. Yet these adjustments

The global war on terror [begun by Bush has not only]

continued [under Obama] .. it has metastasized." It has turned cancerous. It has turned into
a self-driving tendency that has swept Obama up in it. The operative logic of
preemption is not a logic he has it has him. It has proven itself a selfpropagating historical force, an operative historical logic whose "rightness" is
still, as always, a foregone conclusion . It has proven its ability to continue, as a tendency, across the break
have seldom risen above the cosmetic.

between administrations and the changes on the level of explicitly stated doctrine. I will briefly go into how Bush's 9-11fueled-"everything-changed" is now Obama's "more off the same," despite the differences in doctrine, the change in the cast of
characters, and the obvious differences in personal quality and leadership style. But before I do that, I want to draw out a bit more
some of the implications of the recentering of war and politics on threat. On the way, I want to respond to an objection I've left my
account open to. The example of Al-Qaeda in Iraq that was central to my argument that preemptive power is a productive power is
just one example. In many eyes it might seem a weak one, since it could be laid to unforeseen collateral effects, and dismissed as a

in the operative logic

of preemption more-or-less unforeseen effects are precisely what is and must be
produced. If the situation is really one full of unknown-unknowns , in a perpetually
crisis-ridden, ungraspably complex, increasingly chaotic world, then unforeseen effects will
always accompany any action carried out according to any logic . That's a corrollary of the
foregone conclusion. What's particular about preemption is that makes a virtue of this. It turns this problem into
something positive as well. It turns it into a mechanism that fosters its own
continuation and proliferation. It can't make the unknown-unknown known. It can't pre-form or fore-see the exact
nature of the reality it will produce. But if it is ready with fast-adapting rapid response capabilities, it can field the
effects it brings into being, by immediately going kinetic in a follow-up action . When it
flushes out threat, it can contrive to keep the emergence within parameters it can handle, more-or-less. There will be
threat again. But if all goes well it will be in more controllable parameters. Preemption can then relegitimate itself affectively, and redeploy. In this way, to use the military theory jargon, the
operative logic of preemption "leverages" uncertainty . What preemptive power must
do is remain poised to go kinetic again and again, in serial response to the
exercise of its own ontopower. Every time it acts, it must already be poising itself to act again, with equal urgency.
In that way, each of its actions will contain within it the seeds of the next action, and
that action, the action after, so that the deployment of preemption cascades,
bringing its affective legitimation by threat with it, step by step . Preemptive action
has become self-driving. It only stands to reason that if terrorist threat is ever-present and
proliferates in unforeseen ways, then the power mobilized against it must be
similarly ever-present and proliferating. ow could anyone argue that we shouldn't be capable of
mere anomaly or accident, or simply a product of a miscalculation. The point I want to make is that

fielding uncertainty? We must always be poised for threat. We must assume the posture -- even if the stated doctrine has changed.
If we sit on our hands, all it will take to delegitimate a government would be another terror attack that happened on its watch.

No

government can afford not to be in a posture of preemption . We must assume the posture at
every moment we must be poised to go kinetic at a moment's notice, whenever and wherever in the world that threat is felt to
loom. Whenever and wherever. The realignment on time I mentioned earlier ends up driving a a tendency for the logic set in motion
to turn space-filling.

The operative logic of preemptive is not only self-driving ; it is self-

expanding. We watched this happen. Iraq was in fact used as a terror training ground.
Terrorist techniques such as the improvised explosive device and suicide bombings
were perfected there, then carried to the other front, Afghanistan, where they
fueled a resurgent insurgency . The preemptive follow-up response on the part of the US was to expand the use of
counter-terrorist tactics that matched the IED attack in terms of their ability to strike by surprise with lightning speed, and to morph
themselves to the shape any kind of circumstance, taking any number of guises. The use of these techniques by the US military
exploded. Chief among them were targeted assassinations using rapidly-deployed special operations forces, and unmanned drone
attacks. This escalation began under Bush , but was taken to new levels by Obama , who
had criticized the war in Iraq and called for its winding down only in order to shift attention to Afghanistan, which he defined as the

The blowback
from US cross-border drone attacks and special operations in Pakistan have
energized activity elsewhere in the world: in Somalia, in Yemen. Yet another proliferation. US
"good war" and the right war. The right war overflowed to the wrong side of the border, into Pakistan.

drone attacks and special ops have followed. Preemptive US military intervention has expanded to yet another continent. The
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan may be winding down. But the preemptive military posture of the US has only spread. And

nowhere has terrorist threat stopped looming. Last month (July 2011) was the bloodiest for
months for US military personnel in Iraq, and terrorist attacks in Afghanistan picked up spectacularly with the assassinations of the
governor of Kandahar province and the mayor of Kandahar city. Even after the "withdrawal" of US troops from Iraq, there will be a
continuing US presence indefinitely into the future, as Obama's Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it, in order to "fill the gap in
Iraqi Security Force operations." This continuing presence will be in the form of five high-tech compounds outfitted for drone
operations and housing aircraft and armored vehicles for rapid-response forays. The withdrawal from Afghanistan will similarly leave
a permanent preemption-ready presence. That presence has unprecedented reach. According to best estimates, the US preemptive
presence stretches across more than 750 bases around the world. The less focused it becomes on outright invasion, the more
spread-out and tentacular it becomes. US special operations forces are now active in no less than 75 countries around the world and
carry out an average of 70 missions a day. The number of countries "serviced" is slated to rise to 120. A key to advisor to General
Petraeus, the commander of US troops in Iraq, then Afghanistan, and now incoming CIA director, was recently quoted marvelling at

Preemption doesn't go away. It spreads its

tentacles. Things change. Boots on the ground may recede as drones advance, following the rhythms of public opinion and the
the reach of this "almost industrial scale killing machine".

electoral cycle of politicians' engrossment in domestic affairs. Nation-building might get backgrounded in favor of targeted

the operative logic of preemption only becomes more

widespread and insidious. The more it changes, the more it stays the same, ever-expanding. To the point that it can
be said to become the dominant operative logic of our times. Preemption octopuses on. Ontopower rules.
assassination campaigns. But

risk da
Current debate reverses the logical burden of proof --- we
begin from the presumption advantages start from 100% risk
instead of being built up by zero risk --- this distorts our risk
calculus
Cohn 13 (Nate politics writer for the NY Times, debate coach at Georgia,
Improving the Norms and Practices of Policy Debate, in CEDA Debate forums, 1124-13, http://www.cedadebate.org/forum/index.php?
action=printpage;topic=5416.0)
The fact that policy debate is wildly out of touchthe fact that we are a bunch of white folks talking about
nuclear waris a damning indictment of nearly every coach in this activity. Its a serious indictment of the successful policy debate
coaches, who have been content to continue a pedagogically unsound game, so long as they keep winning. Its a serious indictment
of policy debates discontents who chose to disengage. Thats not to say there hasnt been any effort to challenge modern policy
debate on its own termsjust that theyve mainly come from the middle of the bracket and werent very successful, focusing on

Judges were receptive to the sentiment

that disads were unrealistic, but negative claims to specificity always triumphed over
generic epistemological questions or arguments about why predictions fail. The
affirmative rarely introduced substantive responses to the disadvantage, rarely read impact defense. All considered, the
negative generally won a significant risk that the plan resulted in nuclear war . Once that
was true, it was basically impossible to win that some moral obligation outweighed the
(dare I say?) obligation to avoid a meaningful risk of extinction . There were other problems. Many of the
morality arguments and various predictions bad claims to outweigh.

small affirmatives were unstrategicteams rarely had solvency deficits to generic counterplans. It was already basically impossible

it was totally untenable to win that a moral

obligation outweighed a meaningful risk of extinction; it made even less sense if the
counterplan solved most of the morality argument. The combined effect was devastating: As these debates are currently
to win that some morality argument outweighed extinction;

argued and judged, I suspect that the negative would win my ballot more than 95 percent of the time in a debate between two
teams of equal ability. But even if a soft left team did betterespecially by making solvency deficits and responding to the
specifics of the disadvantageI still think they would struggle. They could compete at the highest levels, but, in most debates,

The risk
would be small, but the magnitude of the impact would often be enough to
outweigh a higher probability , smaller impact. Or put differently: policy debate still
wouldnt be replicating a real world policy assessment, teams reading small affirmatives
would still be at a real disadvantage with respect to reality. . Why? Oddly, this is the unreasonable result of a
reasonable part of debate: the burden of refutation or rejoinder , the responsibility of
debaters to beat arguments. If I introduce an argument, it starts out at 100 percent
you then have to disprove it. That sounds like a pretty good idea in principle, right? Well, I think so too. But its
really tough to refute something down to zero percenta team would need to
completely and totally refute an argument. Thats obviously tough to do, especially since the other team is
judges would still assess a small, but meaningful risk of a large scale conflict, including nuclear war and extinction.

usually going to have some decent arguments and pretty good cards defending each component of their disadvantageeven the

one of the most fundamental assumptions about debate all but ensures
a meaningful risk of nearly any argumenteven extremely low-probability , high
magnitude impacts, sufficient to outweigh systemic impacts. Theres another even more subtle
element of debate practice at play. Traditionally, the 2AC might introduce 8 or 9 cards against a
disadvantage, like non-unique, no-link, no-impact, and then go for one and two. Yet in reality, disadvantages are
underpinned by dozens or perhaps hundreds of discrete assumptions, each of which
could be contested. By the end of the 2AR, only a handful are under scrutiny ; the majority of
the disadvantage is conceded, and its tough to bring the one or two scrutinized
components down to zero. And then theres a bad understanding of probability. If
ridiculous parts. So

the affirmative questions four or five elements of the disadvantage, but the negative was still clearly ahead on all five elements,

most judges would assess that the negative was clearly ahead on the disadvantage. In reality, the risk of the disadvantage has

If there was, say, an 80 percent chance that immigration reform

would pass, an 80 percent chance that political capital was key, an 80 percent chance that the
plan drained a sufficient amount of capital, an 80 percent chance that immigration reform was necessary to prevent
another recession, and an 80 percent chance that another recession would cause a nuclear war (lol), then theres a 32
percent chance that the disadvantage caused nuclear war . I think these issues can be overcome.
First, I think teams can deal with the burden of refutation by focusing on the burden of
proof, which allows a team to mitigate an argument before directly contradicting its
content. Heres how Id look at it: modern policy debate has assumed that arguments start
out at 100 percent until directly refuted . But few, if any, arguments are supported by
evidence consistent with 100 percent. Most cards dont make definitive claims . Even
when they do, theyre not supported by definitive evidence and any reasonable person should assume
been reduced considerably.

theres at least some uncertainty on matters other than few true facts, like 2+2=4. Take Georgetowns immigration uniqueness
evidence from Harvard. It says there may be a window for immigration. So, based on the negatives evidence, what are the odds
that immigration reform will pass? Far less than 50 percent, if you ask me. Thats not always true for every card in the 1NC, but

If you apply this very

basic level of analysis to each element of a disadvantage, and correctly explain
math (.4*.4*.4*.4*.4=.01024), the risk of the disadvantage starts at a very low level,
even before the affirmative offers a direct response. Debaters should also
argue that the negative hasnt introduced any evidence at all to defend a long list of
unmentioned elements in the internal link chain. The absence of evidence to defend the argument that,
say, recession causes depression, may not eliminate the disadvantage, but it does raise uncertaintyand it doesnt take
too many additional sources of uncertainty to reduce the probability of the
disadvantage to effectively zerosort of the static, background noise of prediction. Now, I do
sometimes its even worselike the impact card, which is usually a long string of coulds.

think it would be nice if a good debate team would actually do the worktalk about what the cards say, talk about the unmentioned

debaters can make these observations at a meta-level (your evidence isnt certain,
lots of undefended elements) and successfully reduce the risk of a nuclear war or
extinction to something indistinguishable from zero . It would not be a factor in my decision.
stepsbut I think

Based on my conversations with other policy judges, it may be possible to pull it off with even less work. They might be willing to
summarily disregard absurd arguments, like politics disadvantages, on the grounds that its patently unrealistic, that we know the
typical burden of rejoinder yields unrealistic scenarios, and that judges should assess debates in ways that produce realistic
assessments. I dont think this is too different from elements of Jonah Feldmans old philosophy, where he basically said when I
assessed 40 percent last year, its 10 percent now. Honestly, I was surprised that the few judges I talked to were so amenable to
this argument. For me, just saying its absurd, and you know it wouldnt be enough against an argument in which the other team
invested considerable time. The more developed argument about accurate risk assessment would be more convincing, but I still
think it would be vulnerable to a typical defense of the burden of rejoinder. To be blunt: I want debaters to learn why a disadvantage
is absurd, not just make assertions that conform to their preexisting notions of whats realistic and whats not. And perhaps more
importantly for this discussion, I could not coach a team to rely exclusively on this argumentIm not convinced that enough judges
are willing to discount a disadvantage on its absurd. Nonetheless, I think this is a useful frame that should preface a following,
more robust explanation of why the risk of the disadvantage is basically zeroeven before a substantive response is offered. There
are other, broad genres of argument that can contest the substance of the negatives argument. There are serious methodological
indictments of the various forms of knowledge production, from journalistic reporting to think tanks to quantitative social science.

Many of our most strongly worded cards come from people giving opinions, for
which they offer very little data or evidence . And even when qualified people are
giving predictions, theres a great case to be extremely skeptical without real
evidence backing it up. The world is a complicated place, predictions are hard, and
most people are wrong. And again, this is before contesting the substance of the negatives argument(!)if deemed
necessary. So, in my view, the low probability scenario is waiting to be eliminated from debate, basically as soon as a capable team
tries to do it. That would open to the door to all of the arguments, previously excluded, de facto, by the prevalence of nuclear war
impacts. Its been tough to talk about racism or gender violence, since modest measures to mitigate these impacts have a difficult
time outweighing a nuclear war. Its been tough to discuss ethical policy making, since its hard to argue that any commitment to
philosophical or ethical purity should apply in the face of an existential risk. Its been tough to introduce unconventional forms of
evidence, since they cant really address the probability of nuclear war. Yes, the affirmative would still need to debate counterplans.
Sometimes, I get the impression thats a point of controversy, too. Quite frankly, I think counterplans are good. I dont think the
negative should only be forced to exclusively debate about harms. Theres no way we can have a fair topic about, say, prison
reform, if the negative can only defend the status quo. Thats especially true if you dont want to debate the political cost of the
actionwhich, in many instances, is the reason why the government hasnt made obvious policy changes. Yet at the same time, I
think its probably time to retire a few genres of generic counterplans. I think its time to retire the alternative actor counterplan,

which isnt a logical response to the affirmative. I also think its time to require that teams read evidence at a comprehensible
speed. Comprehensible in front of me would still be fast by non-debater standards, but it would make debate far more accessible,
it would solve the apparently rampant issue of card clipping, and, well, I dont really know why it wasnt required in the first place. I
still think judges should call for cards, but they should call cards for additional scrutiny, not to make up for the fact that they never
understood the content in the first place. Top policy judges and coaches should consider leading on this issues by writing and
endorsing a pact establishing norms for clarity. The standard should be simple: the relevant warrant and argument in the card
should be on your flow. There are certainly other problematic norms that I havent addressed. Id love to hear others comment on
specific norms and practices that they find problematic.

IR predictions are impossible --- IR theory is not as simple as

assuming everyone is a rational actor that always acts in a
certain idea --- people base decisions off of experiences and a
set of unpredictable circumstances
Bernstein et al. 2k (Steven Associate Professor of Political Science at the
University of Toronto, Richard Ned Lebow James O. Freedman Presidential
Professor of Government, Emeritus at Darthmouth University and Professor of War
Studies, King's College London, Janice Gross Stein member of the Order of Canada
and the Royal Society of Canada, University Professor of Political Science at the
University of Toronto, director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University
of Toronto and Associate Chair and Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and
Negotiation, and Steven Weber professor at the School of Information and the
Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, holds an
M.D. and a Ph.D in political science from Stanford University, God Gave Physics the
Easy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World, in the European
Journal of International Relations, Volume 6, Number 43,
http://ejt.sagepub.com/content/6/1/43.short)
scholars responsible for the behavioral revolution in social science were European refugees who sought to
use the tools of social science to analyze the causes of war, prejudice, civil unrest
and poverty. Their commitment to social science flowed from an even deeper commitment to use disciplined
methodologies to generate knowledge that would help prevent the horrors of war and
fascism and improve the world around them. They and their American collaborators were not
interested in theory for its own sake, but principally for the capacity it might provide to analyze and address world
problems. This vision has been largely lost. From the vantage point of the 21st century, it is sadly apparent that the founding
fathers of the behavioral revolution failed to transmit as clearly the value
commitments that motivated their scientific study of international relations. For
many of their students and grand-students, the scientific means has become more an
end in itself, and the science of the social, a jeu desprit, like chess. In the worst instances, researchers
choose problems to investigate because the problems are thought to be tractable,
not because they are important. They evaluate solutions in terms of the elegance of
the logic rather than actual evidence. Meanwhile, on the other extreme, those who do study policy problems
Many of the

frequently do so in isolation from those working seriously with theory. Both communities are thus impoverished. The founders of the
scientific study of international relations would bemoan the separation of theory from evidence and of logic from data.1 Most of all,

the founders would reject the separation of theory from policy and its relative failure
to address practical problems of the political world. A deep irony is embedded in the history of the
scientific study of international relations. Recent generations of scholars separated policy from
theory to gain an intellectual distance from decision-making, in the belief that this
would enhance the scientific quality of their work. But five decades of wellfunded efforts to develop theories of international relations have produced
precious little in the way of useful, high confidence results. Theories
abound, but few meet the most relaxed scientific tests of validity . Even the

most robust generalizations or laws we can state war is more likely between
neighboring states, weaker states are less likely to attack stronger states are
close to trivial, have important exceptions, and for the most part stand outside any
consistent body of theory. A generation ago, we might have excused our performance on the grounds that we were a
young science still in the process of defining problems, developing analytical tools and collecting data. This excuse is neither

there is no reason to suppose that another 50 years of well-funded

research would result in anything resembling a valid theory in the Popperian sense.
credible nor sufficient;

We suggest that the nature, goals and criteria for judging social science theory should be rethought, if theory is to be more helpful in
understanding the real world. We begin by justifying our pessimism, both conceptually and empirically, and argue that the quest for
predictive theory rests on a mistaken analogy between physical and social phenomena. Evolutionary biology is a more productive
analogy for social science. We explore the value of this analogy in its hard and soft versions, and examine the implications of both
for theory and research in international relations.2 We develop the case for forward tracking of international relations on the basis
of local and general knowledge as an alternative to backward-looking attempts to build deductive, nomothetic theory. We then apply
this strategy to some emerging trends in international relations. Newtonian Physics: A Misleading Model Physical and chemical laws
make two kinds of predictions. Some phenomena the trajectories of individual planets can be predicted with a reasonable
degree of certainty. Only a few variables need to be taken into account and they can be measured with precision. Other mechanical
problems, like the break of balls on a pool table, while subject to deterministic laws, are inherently unpredictable because of their
complexity. Small differences in the lay of the table, the nap of the felt, the curvature of each ball and where they make contact,

Most predictions in
science are probabilistic, like the freezing point of liquids, the expansion rate of gases and all chemical reactions.
Point predictions appear possible only because of the large numbers of units
involved in interactions. In the case of nuclear decay or the expansion of gases, we are talking about
trillions of atoms and molecules. In international relations, even more than in other domains of social
science, it is often impossible to assign metrics to what we think are relevant
variables (Coleman, 1964: especially Chapter 2). The concepts of polarity, relative power
and the balance of power are among the most widely used independent
variables, but there are no commonly accepted definitions or measures for
them. Yet without consensus on definition and measurement, almost every
statement or hypothesis will have too much wiggle room to be tested
decisively against evidence. What we take to be dependent variables fare little better.
Unresolved controversies rage over the definition and evaluation of
deterrence outcomes, and about the criteria for democratic governance
and their application to specific countries at different points in their history.
Differences in coding for even a few cases have significant implications for tests of
theories of deterrence or of the democratic peace (Lebow and Stein, 1990; Chan, 1997). The lack
of consensus about terms and their measurement is not merely the result of
intellectual anarchy or sloppiness although the latter cannot entirely be dismissed. Fundamentally, it
has more to do with the arbitrary nature of the concepts themselves. Key terms in
physics, like mass, temperature and velocity, refer to aspects of the physical
universe that we cannot directly observe. However, they are embedded in theories with deductive
amplify the variance of each collision and lead to what appears as a near random distribution of balls.

implications that have been verified through empirical research. Propositions containing these terms are legitimate assertions about

Social science theories are for the most part built on

idealizations, that is, on concepts that cannot be anchored to observable
phenomena through rules of correspondence. Most of these terms (e.g. rational
actor, balance of power) are not descriptions of reality but implicit theories about
actors and contexts that do not exist (Hempel, 1952; Rudner, 1966; Gunnell, 1975; Moe, 1979; Searle, 1995:
68-72). The inevitable differences in interpretation of these concepts lead to different
predictions in some contexts, and these outcomes may eventually produce widely
varying futures (Taylor, 1985: 55). If problems of definition, measurement and coding could
be resolved, we would still find it difficult, if not impossible, to construct
large enough samples of comparable cases to permit statistical analysis. It
is now almost generally accepted that in the analysis of the causes of wars, the
reality because their truth-value can be assessed.

variation across time and the complexity of the interaction among putative causes
make the likelihood of a general theory extraordinarily low . Multivariate theories run
into the problem of negative degrees of freedom, yet international relations rarely generates data sets
in the high double digits. Where larger samples do exist, they often group together
cases that differ from one another in theoretically important ways.3 Complexity in
the form of multiple causation and equifinality can also make simple statistical
comparisons misleading. But it is hard to elaborate more sophisticated statistical tests until one has a deeper baseline
understanding of the nature of the phenomenon under investigation, as well as the categories and variables that make up candidate

Wars to continue with the same example are

similar to chemical and nuclear reactions in that they have underlying and
immediate causes. Even when all the underlying conditions are present, these processes generally
require a catalyst to begin. Chain reactions are triggered by the decay of atomic nuclei. Some of the neutrons they
causes (Geddes, 1990: 131-50; Lustick, 1996: 505-18; Jervis, 1997).

emit strike other nuclei prompting them to fission and emit more neutrons, which strike still more nuclei. Physicists can calculate
how many kilograms of Uranium 235 or Plutonium at given pressures are necessary to produce a chain reaction. They can take it for
granted that if a critical mass is achieved, a chain reaction will follow. This is because trillions of atoms are present, and at any
given moment enough of them will decay to provide the neutrons needed to start the reaction. In a large enough sample, catalysts

Wars involve relatively few actors. Unlike the weak force responsible for
nuclear decay, their catalysts are probably not inherent properties of the units. Catalysts
may or may not be present, and their potentially random distribution relative to
underlying causes makes it difficult to predict when or if an appropriate catalyst will
occur. If in the course of time underlying conditions change, reducing basic
incentives for one or more parties to use force, catalysts that would have triggered
war will no longer do so. This uncertain and evolving relationship between
underlying and immediate causes makes point prediction extraordinarily difficult. It
also makes more general statements about the causation of war
problematic, since we have no way of knowing what wars would have occurred in
the presence of appropriate catalysts. It is probably impossible to define the universe of would-be wars or to
construct a representative sample of them. Statistical inference requires knowledge about
the state of independence of cases, but in a practical sense that
knowledge is often impossible to obtain in the analysis of international relations.
Molecules do not learn from experience. People do , or think they do.
Relationships among cases exist in the minds of decision-makers, which makes it
very hard to access that information reliably and for more than just a very small
number of cases. We know that expectations and behavior are influenced by
experience, ones own and others. The deterrence strategies pursued by the United
States throughout much of the Cold War were one kind of response to the failure of
appeasement to prevent World War II. Appeasement was at least in part a reaction
to the belief of British leaders that the deterrent policies pursued by the continental
powers earlier in the century had helped to provoke World War I. Neither
appeasement nor deterrence can be explained without understanding the
context in which they were formulated; that context is ultimately a set of
mental constructs. We have descriptive terms like chain reaction or contagion effect to describe these patterns, and
will be present in a statistical sense.

hazard analysis among other techniques in statistics to measure their strength. But neither explains how and why these patterns

relationship between human beings and their

environment is not nearly so reactive as with inanimate objects. Social
relations are not clock-like because the values and behavioral repertories of actors
are not fixed; people have memories, learn from experience and undergo shifts in
the vocabulary they use to construct reality. Law-like relationships even if they
existed could not explain the most interesting social outcomes , since these are precisely the
emerge and persist. The broader point is that the

Any regularities would be

soft; they would be the outcome of processes that are embedded in history and
have a short half-life. They would decay quickly because of the memories, creative
searching and learning by political leaders. Ironically, the findings of social science contribute to this decay
outcomes about which actors have the most incentive to learn and adapt their behavior.

(Weber, 1969; Almond and Genco, 1977: 496-522; Gunnell, 1982: Ch. 2; Ball, 1987: Ch. 4; Kratochwil, 1989; Rorty, 1989; Hollis,
1994: Ch. 9). Beyond these conceptual and empirical difficulties lies a familiar but fundamental difference of purpose. Boyles Law,
half-lives, or any other scientific principle based on probability, says nothing about the behavior of single units such as molecules.

social science ultimately aspires or

should aspire to provide insight into practical world problems that are generally
part of a small or very small n. In international relations, the dynamics and
outcomes of single cases are often much more important than any statistical
regularities. Overcoming Physics Envy The conception of causality on which deductivenomological models are based, in classical physics as well as social science, requires empirical
invariance under specified boundary conditions . The standard form of such a statement is this given A,
B and C, if X then (not) Y.4 This kind of bounded invariance can be found in closed systems. Open
systems can be influenced by external stimuli, and their structure and causal
mechanisms evolve as a result. Rules that describe the functioning of an open
system at time T do not necessarily do so at T + 1 or T + 2. The boundary conditions
may have changed, rendering the statement irrelevant. Another axiomatic condition
may have been added, and the outcome subject to multiple conjunctural causation.
There is no way to know this a priori from the causal statement itself. Nor will
complete knowledge (if it were possible) about the system at time T necessarily
allow us to project its future course of development. In a practical sense, all social
systems (and many physical and biological systems) are open. Empirical invariance does not
exist in such systems, and seemingly probabilistic invariances may be causally
unrelated (Harre and Secord, 1973; Bhaskar, 1979; Collier, 1994; Patomaki, 1996; Jervis, 1997). As physicists
readily admit, prediction in open systems, especially non-linear ones, is
difficult, and often impossible.
For many theoretical and practical purposes this is adequate. But

normativity da
Normative legal thought obscures the pain and death of
disciplinary systems with language games
Schlag 91 (Pierre, Professor of Law, University of Colorado, NORMATIVITY AND
THE POLITICS OF FORM, University of Pennsylvania Law Review (April 1991),
http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=3741&context=penn_law_review)
Many legal thinkers understand this dramatic conflict in terms of an opposition between the "realities" of practice and the "ideals" of

For these legal thinkers, it will seem especially urgent to ask once again: What
should be done? How should we live? What should the law be? These are the
hard questions. These are the momentous questions. And they are the wrong ones. They are
wrong because it is these very normative questions that reprieve legal thinkers
from recognizing the extent to which the cherished "ideals" of legal academic
thought are implicated in the reproduction and maintenance of precisely those ugly
"realities" of legal practice the academy so routinely condemns. It is these normative
questions that allow legal thinkers to shield themselves from the recognition
that their work product consists largely of the reproduction of rhetorical
structures by which human beings can be coerced into achieving ends of
dubious social origin and implication. It is these very normative questions that allow legal
academics to continue to address (rather lamely) bureaucratic power structures as if
they were rational, morally competent, individual humanist subjects. It is these very
normative questions that allow legal thinkers to assume blithely that-in a world
ruled by HMOs, personnel policies, standard operating procedures, performance
requirements, standard work incentives, and productivity monitoring they somehow have
escaped the bureaucratic power games. It is these normative questions that
enable them to represent themselves as whole and intact, as self-directing
individual liberal humanist subjects at once rational, morally competent, and in
control of their own situations, the captain of their own ships, the Hercules of their own empires, the author
the legal academy.

of their own texts.

value to life
The state of exception reduces humans to the bare state of
existence
Dillon 5 (Michael Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster
University, Cared to Death: The Political Time of Your Life, in Foucault Studies, No.
2, p. 37-38, May 2005, http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucaultstudies/article/viewFile/858/876)
biopolitics
must determine the quality of the stuff so that investment in its extraction, promotion
and refinement may itself be continuously assessed . It follows that some life will be found
to be worth investment, some life less worth investment, while other life may prove intractable
to the powers of investment and the demands it makes on life . Here, assaying morphs into
evaluating the eligibility and not simply the expected utility of life forms. Ultimately, some life may turn out to be
positively inimical to the circulation of life in which this investment driven process of
biopolitics continuously trades, and have to be removed from life if its antipathy to
biopoliticised life cannot otherwise be adapted , correctedor contained. Behind the lifecharged rhetoric of biopolitics, lies the biologisation of life to which biopolitics is
committed, the violence of that biologisation and the reduction of the classical
political question concerning the good life (and the good death) to that of the endlessly
extendable, fit and adaptable life. The good life Agamben refigures in terms of the pure - he also says 'profane'
One might say in Heideggerian fashion that life is the stuff of biopolitics. In the process of reducing life to stuff,

but note that there is no profanity without sanctity - immanence of 'happy life'.

at: framework
a. their framework is responsible for an affective terror that
locks us into prisons of fear --- link turns political engagement
Debrix & Barder 12 (Franois Professor of Political Science at Virginia Technical
University, Director of the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought
program, and Alexander Professor of Political Science at the American University
of Beirut, Beyond Biopolitics: Theory, violence, and horror in world politics,
Routledge, 2012, p. 66)
what Dillon's thought on emergent living/being indicates is that it is
time to push Foucault's thought on the biopolitical production of fear much further,
perhaps beyond its biopolitical confines. For when we (and others) intimate the presence of a biopolitical
productivity of fear or terror today, what we are pointing to is the existence of a fear
of fear itself, or of a fear of being fearful. Docile and normalized bodies of
biopolitical and governmentality regimes are not just afraid of not being able to live
their normal life, as we hinted at above. They are also to be seen as emergent living forms
that are designed to fear being afraid of living a life that has fear/terror as its vital
impulse but also that are incapable of escaping such a terror. This is yet another
dimension of the horror that awaits emergent living things as they are fixed or
frozen by a fear of being afraid that, once again, allows them to be anticipatory and on
the qui vive, but also prevents them from moving away from such a condition (here, we
Among other things,

can recall Cavarero's useful distinction between terror and its capacity to put bodies in motion and horror and its paralyzing effects,

As we saw with the swine flu case, emergent humans

fear being afraid not so much of the spreading disease and its social and
physiological effects. Rather, they fear the terror that the disease (or any other danger)
comes to represent. But this fear of the terror itself is unavoidable and, in a way,
desirable or required for emergent life. By treating the pandemic (or the weather
catastrophe, or the terrorist attack, or the nuclear scare, and so on) no longer as a possible
natural or man-made disaster but as terror itself, a terror that, as Cavarero has argued,
envelops one in fear but also opens up the door for horrific violence, 78 emergent
living things deprive themselves of any possible solution or any resistant
technology of living or being human that, perhaps, could tackle the problem that is said
to be at the source of the terror (the so-called danger, although one should wonder whether such a danger
as we mentioned in the Introduction).

matters at all as any encounter or circumstance in the life of emergent beings appears to be amenable to being the next terror). 79

Instead, the only way for emergent living things to deal with the impending doom is
to fear more and more, that is to say, to produce more and more terror situations that will
end up proliferating even more self-monitoring, self-carceralizing, and selfeffacing techniques and dispositifs that, in turn, will confirm that they indeed had
good reasons to be fearful in the first place. For today's emergent humanity, there is indeed
nothing to fear but fear itself.

b. the logic of speed bypasses their deliberation standard and

internal link turns solvency
Glezos 9 (Simon Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of
Victoria, Introduction: Fear of a fast planet, in The Politics of Speed: Capitalism,
the State and War in an Accelerating World, p. 1-4)

This project started in despair and ended in hope; despair over the acceleration of the world and hope in the possibilities that speed
can bring. I would be lying if I said that this sense of fear and anxiety wasnt in some way influenced by my move to the United
States from Canada in mid-2002. Arriving in a country still reeling from the September 11th attacks, I was overwhelmed by the

The war in Afghanistan not even over, the

Bush administration had already started the push to invade Iraq, justifying the rush to
action by the imminent threat they claimed Saddam Hussein posed. We were told that
action had to be taken immediately, that we could not wait to allow inspectors to
determine if the threat was, in fact, real. We were told that we could not afford to wait
and allow the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud. Implicit in this
quote, and countless others like it, was an exposition of the new temporal order of the political
world: in this accelerated world, the pace with which new threats can materialize leaves no
time for hesitation. Decisions must be made quickly and efficiently by a centralized
and authoritative executive. Slow-moving processes of deliberation and debate (not to mention
investigation) are no longer viable. Indeed, they potentially threaten our survival. This claim, that the pace of
runaway pace of events (and in this, Im sure I was not alone).

events necessarily privileges the power of a unified executive and marginalizes the possibility of democratic deliberation is one of
the central charges leveled at speed, and one which I discuss in detail in chapter one. I, like many citizens of both America and the
world, was not convinced by the American Presidents claims of the imminent threat posed by Iraq to the free world, and joined the
hundreds of thousands in the streets of Washington, D.C. (and millions in cities all over the world) in protest. However, these
protests produced little to no effect, and in this I was again attuned to another worrisome aspect of speed. At the same time that

the pace of events in the world encourage the government to act in ways too fast for democratic deliberation, it also
allowed them to act so quickly as to escape democratic censure. At this point, five years
into the war, it feels as if those in power have gone from one reckless action to another ,
always moving too fast to be held accountable for their destruction, lies and
illegalities. A quote from an article in the New York Times Magazine a few years ago, profiling the character of the Bush
administration, seemed to get to the heart of this new freedom of those in political power. In it, reporter Ron Suskind interviews a
high-level aide within the Bush administrations. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the
reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the

continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create

our own reality. And while you're studying that reality judiciously, as you will we'll act
again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.
We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." In
world really works anymore," he

addition to informing us that, apparently, members of the Bush administration have been reading a lot of Baudrillard, this quote

political power now

move too fast for traditional mechanisms of oversight and accountability. And the news media
which is supposed to exercise this accountability must itself move so fast that , in moving from scandal to scandal,
those in power need only wait for the news cycle to move on . Thus, when a decision is
made, by the time we figure out what has happened, and discuss whether or not it is
a good thing, the decision makers have act[ed] again, creating other new realities.
The process of democratic deliberation and popular accountability becomes a never-ending game
of catch-up, freeing the powerful from real responsibility . This is because responsibility
and accountability are necessarily backward looking, while, in a fast paced world, we
are pressed to focus our eyes on the future (there is no time to play the blame game). I think this is what
gives insight into the new temporal order of politics. It tells us that the actions of those in positions of

is at the heart of Sheldon Wolins critique of speed which we will discuss in the next chapter.

c. The alternative is to tear down the system and replace it

with a new politics of interconnectedness and true democracy
Giroux 06 (Henry A., Prof of Cultural Studies @ McMaster University, Reading
Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v033/33.3giroux.html)//BW

Any viable attempt to challenge the biopolitical project that now shapes American
life and culture must do more than unearth the powerful antidemocratic forces that
now govern American economics, politics, education, media, and culture ; it must
also deepen possibilities of individual and collective struggles by fighting for the
rebuilding of civil society and the creation of a vast network of democratic public
spheres such as schools and the alternative media in order to develop new models of individual
and social agency that can expand and deepen the reality of democratic public life .
This is a call for a diverse "radical party," following Stanley Aronowitz's exhortation, a party that prioritizes
democracy as a global task, views hope as a precondition for political engagement ,
gives primacy to making the political more pedagogical, and understands the
importance of the totality of the struggle as it informs and articulates within and
across a wide range of sites and sectors of everyday lifedomestically and globally.
Democratically minded citizens and social movements must return to the crucial issue of how race, class, power,
and inequality in America contribute to the suffering and hardships experienced daily by the poor, people of color,
and working- and middle-class people. The fight for equality offers new challenges in the process of constructing a

Such a politics would

take seriously what it means to struggle pedagogically and politically over both
ideas and material relations of power as they affect diverse individuals and groups
at the level of daily life. Such struggles would combine a democratically energized
cultural politics of resistance and hope with a politics aimed at offering workers a
living wage and all citizens a guaranteed standard of living, one that provides a
decent education, housing, and health care to all residents of the United States .
Biopolitics is not just about the reduction of selected elements of the population to
the necessities of bare life or worse; it is also potentially about enhancing life by
linking hope and a new vision to the struggle for reclaiming the social, providing a
language capable of translating individual issues into public considerations , and
recognizing that in the age of the new media the terrain of culture is one of the most important pedagogical
spheres through which to challenge the most basic precepts of the new
authoritarianism. The waste machine of modernity, as Bauman points out, must be challenged within a new
understanding of environmental justice, human rights, and democratic politics (2000, 15). Negative
globalization with its attachment to the mutually enforcing modalities of militarism
and racial segregation must be exposed and dismantled . And this demands new forms of
politics that directly addresses poverty, class domination, and a resurgent racism.

resistance that are both more global and differentiated. But if these struggles are going to emerge, especially in the
United States, then we need a politics and pedagogy of hope, one that takes seriously Hannah Arendt's call to use
the [End Page 189] public realm to throw light on the "dark times" that threaten to extinguish the very idea of

Against the tyranny of market fundamentalism, religious dogmatism,

unchecked militarism, and ideological claims to certainty, an emancipatory
biopolitics must enlist education as a crucial force in the struggle over democratic
identities, spaces, and ideals.
democracy.

at: alt doesnt solve

Abandoning institutions in favor of collective resistance to
political monopolization through a repoliticization of bare life
allows for a re-structuring of sovereign power
*3pt font for long passages with no relevance
Zevnik 9 (Andreja Lecturer in International Politics at Manchester University,
Sovereign-less Subject and the Possibility of Resistance, in Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, Volume 38, Number 1, p. 14-22,
http://mil.sagepub.com/content/early/2009/07/09/0305829809336255.full.pdf)
In global politics, for example, the demonstrations on Tiananmen Square in 1989 can be
perceived as both an act and an Event. As such, Tiananmen differs from other protests,
and in particular from more recent ones that have occurred in the West. It started without any common
demands or offical leadership - it might be even possible to argue that Tiananmen, in its foundations, was a
spontaneous gathering that commemorated the death of a popular Chinese leader ,
attracted masses of people and in its late stage triggered sovereign violence in its
purest form. As seen, not all demonstrations push sovereign power to react in this manner. In contrast, most protests
and in particular those that start by voicing specific demands or with a wish to
protest against the ongoing activities of sovereign power, like the protests against
the war in Iraq, are either overlooked, ignored or even welcomed by sovereign
power. These protests, instead of questioning the authority of sovereign power ,
reinstate the system and grant it additional legitimacy . To return to Agamben, if we are to assume
that bare life bears the possibility of action and transformation of the existing order of sovereign power, it has to embody two
practices: a demand of being and passage a l'acte. The latter idea derives from Lacanian clinical psychoanalysis, where it illustrates
the death of the subject, or an act with which the subject abandons an existing subjectivity/form of subject and becomes a new

the subject breaks off from the

place assigned to it by the sovereign power and becomes alienated from the
determinations and identifications thrust upon it by the sovereign power . On the other
subject. The concept, especially when accompanied by violence, indicates that

hand, the general idea behind the 'demand of being' resembles Agamben's 'whatever being'; the difference, however, would be that

a 'demand of being' is an act or a way of resistance , whereas 'whatever being' refers

to a new form of being that emerges within the process of resistance or as its result .
Both 'demand of being' and 'whatever being' are without any determinative
substance as such. In the demand of being, the sovereign power is asked for something it
does not possess and indeed cannot possess . In other words, those who represent the demand of being,
demand a place in the order that is not the existing order of sovereign power, but rather a place that opens up after the collapse of

The demand of being is a demand that transgresses the powers of the

existing sovereign and demands its decline, its symbolic death. It is a demand
which the sovereign cannot fulfil, because the consequence of its fulfilment is the
vacillation, fading or obliteration of sovereign power. Therefore, if the being has not been allocated its
this order.

place beforehand, finding a place in the order entails the questioning of sovereign's authority. A demand of being sends a message
to the sovereign power that it is not whole and that what is lacking in its wholeness are 'us'. A necessary consequence of a
successful demand of being is then a radical transformation of the structure of the sovereign power which in its last instance leads

The demand of being is so specific , because

in the political realm, most demands are voiced from a place which presupposes the
existence of common identity, community, upon which certain demands are formed
and represented. While the demand of being is addressed to the sovereign power by whatever, and therefore generic,
to either the creation of a new sovereign or to its obliteration.

singularities which withdraw from any kind of identity or belonging to a community, the recognition of such a demand implies a
breakage of all social bonds. I argue that the protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989 can be read as a form of resistance that
corresponds to the above presented idea of resistance.

Tiananmen, as already mentioned, started as a

spontaneous gathering to commemorate the death of Hu Yaobang . People, mostly

students and intellectuals, assembled on the Square on 16 April 1989 to mourn his
death and to demand a revision of Party's view of him . Hu had been forced to resign from the position
of Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1987 because of his call for rapid reforms and pro-democratic
statements. His death was an opportunity for the people of China to rise up in support of him for the last time. Up until his funeral on
22 April, students voiced a series of requests concerning the status of Hu and urged to meet with leading officials of the Party.

The protest which was

initiated by students and intellectuals gradually gained in size and soon attracted
the support of urban workers and peasants . By 4 May the protest became a national phenomenon. The
However, the Party did not respond and the protesters decided to proceed with their activities.

number of protesters on Tiananmen rose to 100,000, with millions supporting the movement throughout the country, and the
demands surpassed the initial political revival of Hu. Instead, protestors campaigned to end corruption, to gain political freedom,
democracy, freedom of speech, new media laws and other political reforms. Because the background of the protestors was so

It was impossible to point out one common demand, as

it was impossible to pin down all individual demands . It soon became obvious that the ruling
Party could not cope with the demands voiced by protestors as they were
addressing almost every aspect of the existing political order, demanding its
rapid reformation. By then, the protest had outgrown its spontaneity; leaders were elected and talks with the government
diverse, the demands remained dispersed.

begun. However, the decision was taken to start a hunger strike on 13 May to preserve the spirit and the momentum of the protest,
only two days prior to the visit of Soviet reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This proved to be a brilliant strategy as it not only
demonstrated the determination of those gathered on the Square, but also strengthened the voice justifying the need for reforms
similar to those done by Gorbachev in the Soviet Union. In the following 10 days, local hospitals treated almost 10,000 students who
collapsed or required hospitalisation. People became sympathetic and emotionally involved with students' action in show of support

the Chinese leadership, although initially reluctant to intervene with force, saw no
alternative but to declare martial law. Despite this decision, the military was denied access to Beijing by
came to the Square. On 20 May

throngs of protesters. However, on the evening of 3 June the final call was taken to clear the Square by allowing the military to use

The army used tear gas, rifles and tanks.

Eyewitnesses and foreign journalists
reported that the leaders of the protest ordered people not to use weapons . Many tried to
leave the Square before the fighting began, but the army captured and beat them . Those who knew what was
all force necessary. The intervention began on 3 June at 10.30 pm.

During the night, heavy fighting was reported on and around the Square.

coming wrote their final wills, hoping it would not come to that: By morning, the Square had been cleared and occupied by the army.
It came as no surprise that people had died that night, but no one knew how many. The official figure given by the Chinese
government stated 241 victims and 7000 wounded, Amnesty International reported 3000 deaths and 8000 wounded, and the
Chinese Red Cross estimated approximately 5000 deaths. After the crackdown, the protest continued for another week, although it
became clear that the government had managed to forcefully suppress the uprising. These events can be read as a form of

the protesters can be associated with bare life; they were willing to
sacrifice their own being and therefore portray Tiananmen as an Event; and through
sacrifice, the protestors were able to voice a form of demand (the demand of being)
the government could not ignore
resistance in three ways:

. I will further explore these three points in turn. The protesters on Tiananmen Square occupied a very distinctive position - they were perceived by the government as bare life. However,

this was not only characteristic of the protesters, but potentially of the entire Chinese population. The Chinese were subjected to various human rights abuses and deprivations of personal freedom, all of which prevented them from acting outside the existing symbolic and political order. After the protests had
begun, the government placed the protestors outside the existing order and initially tried to ignore their demands. However, their demands became too obvious to be overlooked, but equally impossible to address in their entirety. What is more, the protesters' demands mostly corresponded with the proposed
reforms of the Party's pro-democratic stream. As such, the protesters were not aiming for their exclusion or for something that the Party might deem as being impossible. If the Party wanted to proceed on their reformist path it could not exclude or ignore protestors' demands. As Nathan writes: 'most of [the
protestors] stayed within the bounds of certain pieties, acknowledging party leadership and positioning themselves as respectful, if disappointed, supporters of the Party's long term reform project'. The difficulty of the protestors' position and the Party's response then derived from the fact that the protestors
should have remained part of the community, and the Party should have embraced their demands and their willingness to support the regime. However, it was the Party's disapproval of the means by which these demands were voiced that placed the protestors in the space of indistinction. By sending the
military to deal with the protestors, the government recognised the protesters' existence, but decided that their life could be sacrificed for the sake of the Party and its monopoly over power. As such, the military action reaffirmed the spatiality of indistinction and protestors' (re-)inclusion through the exclusion.
The Party recognised the protesters' existence, but kept them excluded from sovereign laws. Such exclusion from sovereign laws, however, does not mean that the protestors were apolitical or politically excluded; on the contrary, they represented a very strong political entity that managed to disrupt the
normality of CCP power politics. The protestors, on the other side, acknowledged their particular form of being that resembled 'whatever being' and created a space inside the sovereign power from which the sovereign power itself was excluded and where it could no longer draw lines between different types
of subjectivity. The spatiality of the zone of indistinction was opened on Tiananmen Square. According to one eyewitness: Central Beijing was in effect a liberated zone. There were no police in sight, no soldiers, no symbols of authority. Troops had advanced to the capital's outskirts after martial law was
declared but had been withdrawn back to their bases after being immobilised by crowds of residents and street barricades. And it seemed to work fine. People laughed and shouted, and no one had any idea of how it would all end The police, if they were around, did not show themselves. The army was out of
sight. No one was in charge, authority was suspended. And the city continued to work in an atmosphere of freedom never before experienced. For a few days, sovereign power had nothing to say on Tiananmen Square, it was a space of a new being. The protesters took their resistance further with hunger
strikes and a call for no weapons and violence when the crackdown began. According to the eyewitness accounts, the protesters were not worried about their own being, they were prepared to sacrifice their existence, their body, and they were aware that this is what they were required to do. In support of
their demands they were willing to become a different being. However, they were not disillusioned, but knew precisely what the sovereign power, in the form of the Politburo, was capable of doing and what consequences they could face. By writing their last wills the protestors showed their awareness of the
situation and demonstrated how far they were prepared to go. Their action had more than just a performative value; it was an Act in the Lacanian sense. The protestors were first prepared to sacrifice their own lives in support of the political reforms and the Chinese Party - something the Chinese political
regime of that time could not fully comprehend; and, second, they were equally prepared to sacrifice their subjectivity, their social and symbolic position within society. During the crackdown and in its aftermath, many were actually deprived of these: killed or put in prison and later executed; or caught, put in
prison and convicted of supporting or organising hostile acts to undermine the system. A number of student leaders were forced to flee to the United States. Perhaps the most vivid and publicised example of the willingness to use one's own body against sovereign power is the example of the 'Tank Man'. On 5
June 1989, a day after the Tiananmen crackdown, the military took over Beijing with tanks. On their way, these were stopped by a single man, unarmed, carrying only white plastic bags in his hands. The man walked onto the Square and stood in front of the moving tanks. For a few minutes, he managed to
stop them, even climbing on one and talking to the soldiers. Reportedly, he asked them why they were there. Although he was soon removed from the scene by fellow protesters who feared for his life, his image was inscribed in history as one of the most influential images of the 20th century. It became a
symbol of resistance against political oppression. However, the consequences of this act were unclear; whether the 'Tank Man' physically and symbolically sacrificed his life remains unknown; divergent accounts of his fate suggest that he was either imprisoned and killed a few weeks after the event, or is still
in hiding in mainland China. And finally, Tiananmen embodies the demand of being. As such, these demands initially outgrew individual interests and a political reinstatement of a dead person. With the exception of a demand concerning corruption, these were not demands for something particular that
existed in the present political order, but neither were they entirely out of context. They aimed at bringing in something new but, nevertheless, many significant people in the CCP publicly endorsed them. Zhao Ziyang, the leader of the Party at that time, even acknowledged that all student slogans supported
the Constitution as they favour democracy and oppose corruption. These demands, as Zhao observed, 'are basically in line with what the Party and government advocate, so we cannot reject them out of hand'. Thus nonchalant rejection was impossible, in particular because of the extent of the protests and
the involvement of all classes. However, the Party was unable to recognise the demands because they could not recognise the identity of the group and therefore take control of it. The Party believed that 'as soon as it gives in to any demand from any group that it does not control, then the power monopoly
that it views as an indispensable organisational principle of the political system will be destroyed'. But what the Party perceived as an additional problem was the students' hunger strike. They were aware that demands voiced with such backing carry more weight and could not be ignored permanently, or else
the Chinese government would be disgraced in political or humanitarian terms. Thus, in the words of Zhao, the tactic of the Party was initially 'to get the students to de-link their fasting from their demands and then get them put off the Square and back to their campuses'. If the Party's endeavours failed, as

The
demonstrators transformed their being in the process of resistance; they were no
longer understood as the subjects of the Party's regime, but rather as 'whatever
being'. By posing a demand of being they asked for their place in the sovereign
order - but no place could be allocated to them , because their political inclusion in
the system would demand a radical transformation of Chinese political space.
Zhao observed, anything could happen 'in the blink of an eye'. Although the Party's analysis of the situation was sober and extremely realistic, they could not and did not want to sacrifice the supremacy of their sovereign power to prevent bloodshed.

Their desire was to transform the political system by remaining part of it. Such a stance was of course in contradiction to that of the
Party - the sovereign power aimed to preserve the supreme power by excluding the protestors. However, whatever the decision of
the sovereign power would be, to either officially politically include or to exclude the protestors, in situations where the protestors
become 'whatever being' and manage to voice a demand of being, the specificity and the character of the protestors' demands

made it impossible for the government to make a clear distinction and to act in its own favour. If they employed violence, as they
did, they had to manipulate the 'truth' of Tiananmen, hide the victims and deal with the leaders of the protest. If no violence had
been employed, the supremacy of sovereign power would have been called into question. On the one hand, the Party would have to
admit its faults and the necessity for urgent reforms, and, on the other hand, its sovereignty would be infringed by the emergence of

Through such an act, the protestors established themselves as

singularities. Instead of being the 'subjects of sovereign power' , they became a form
of being that is neither determined nor created by the sovereign power ; it is a being
whose existence emerges from the singularities themselves . And without the need
for a common identity, such singularities or 'whatever beings' threaten the
existence of the sovereign power. In the aftermath of the Event, the sovereign power reinstated its
the power of 'civil society'.

superiority and primacy over territory and population first through violence and a political purge, and second through the politics of
fear. Although the students were prepared for a violent reaction from the sovereign power, a military reaction of that size was
unthinkable. During that night, the protestors faced the real and the traumatic. As a result of this encounter, the confidence that
civil society and pro-democratic activists gained in the time of the protest vanished overnight. The protest lost momentum; the
space of indistinction was closed and the faithfulness to the Event lost. In the days and weeks following the crackdown, the CCP

Despite the final outcome, the Tiananmen

protest challenged sovereign power in a very particular way . Unlike the asylum seekers from
regained its political power, and appeared stronger than before.

Edkins and Pin-Fat's example, the Tiananmen protestors did not demand their political recognition and inclusion. Quite the opposite,
the force of the protest came from the fact that their demands were recognised by the Party as being legitimate; however, after
being voiced publicly and in such a manner, the Party could no longer afford to acknowledge these demands as being legitimate
without losing the monopoly over political power in China.

We control uniqueness --- structures of biopolitical control

have emptied themselves of positive content, possible of only
inflicting death or doing nothing --- we should desert
biopolitical apparatuses rather than reform them
Prozorov 10 (Sergei Professor of Political and Economic Studies at the University
of Helsinki, Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist, in Philosophy Social Criticism,
Volume 36, Number 9, p. 1059-1060, November 2010,
http://psc.sagepub.com/content/36/9/1053.abstract)
Agamben generalizes this logic and transforms it into a basic ethical
imperative of his work: [There] is often nothing reprehensible about the individual
behavior in itself, and it can, indeed, express a liberatory intent. What is disgraceful both politically and morally - are the apparatuses which have diverted it from their
possible use. We must always wrest from the apparatuses - from all
apparatuses - the possibility of use that they have captured.32 As we shall discuss in the
following section, this is to be achieved by a subtraction of ourselves from these
apparatuses, which leaves them in a jammed, inoperative state. What is crucial at
this point is that the apparatuses of nihilism themselves prepare their demise by
emptying out all positive content of the forms-of-life they govern and
increasingly running on empty, capable only of (inflict ing) Death or (doing)
Nothing. On the other hand, this degradation of the apparatuses illuminates the
inoperosity (worklessness) of the human condition, whose originary status Agamben has affirmed from his
earliest works onwards.33 By rendering void all historical forms-of-life , nihilism brings to light
the absence of work that characterizes human existence , which, as irreducibly potential,
logically presupposes the lack of any destiny , vocation, or task that it must be
subjected to: Politics is that which corresponds to the essential inoperability of
humankind, to the radical being-without-work of human communities . There is
politics because human beings are argos-beings that cannot be defined by any
proper operation, that is, beings of pure potentiality that no identity or vocation can
possibly exhaust.34 Having been concealed for centuries by religion or ideology, this originary inoperosity
In a later work,

is fully unveiled in the contemporary crisis, in which it is manifest in the

inoperative character of the biopolitical apparatuses themselves , which
succeed only in capturing the sheer existence of their subjects without being
capable of transforming it into a positive form-of-life: [T]oday, it is clear for anyone who is not in
absolutely bad faith that there are no longer historical tasks that can be taken on by, or even simply assigned to, men. It was
evident start-ing with the end of the First World War that the European nation-states were no longer capa ble of taking on historical
tasks and that peoples themselves were bound to disappear.35 Agambens metaphor for this condition is bankruptcy: One of the
few things that can be declared with certainty is that all the peoples of Europe (and, perhaps, all the peoples of the Earth) have gone

Thus, the destructive nihilistic drive of the biopolitical machine and

the capitalist spectacle has itself done all the work of emptying out positive
forms-of-life, identities and vocations, leaving humanity in the state of destitution
that Agamben famously terms bare life. Yet, this bare life, whose essence is entirely
contained in its existence, is precisely what conditions the emergence of the
subject of the coming politics: this biopolitical body that is bare life must itself
be transformed into the site for the constitution and installation of a form-of-life that
is wholly exhausted in bare life and a bios that is only its own zoe .37 The happy
form-of-life, a life that cannot be segregated from its form, is nothing but bare life that has
reappropriated itself as its own form and for this reason is no longer separated
between the (degraded) bios of the apparatuses and the (endangered) zoe that functions as
their foundation.38 Thus, what the nihilistic self-destruction of the appara tuses of
biopolitics leaves as its residue turns out to be the entire content of a new form-oflife. Bare life, which is, as we recall, nothing reprehensible aside from its con finement within the apparatuses, is
reappropriated as a whatever singularity', a being that is only its manner of
being, its own thus.39 It is the dwelling of humanity in this irreducibly potential whatever
being that makes possible the emergence of a generic non-exclusive community
without presuppositions, in which Agamben finds the possi bility of a happy life. [If] instead of continuing to search for
bankrupt.36

a proper identity in the already improper and sense less form of individuality, humans were to succeed in belonging to this
impropriety as such, in making of the proper being-thus not an identity and individual property but a singularity without identity, a
common and absolutely exposed singularity, then they would for the first time enter into a community without presuppositions and

rather than seek to reform the apparatuses, we should simply

leave them to their self-destruction and only try to reclaim the bare life
that they feed on. This is to be achieved by the practice of subtraction that we address in the following section.
without subjects.40 Thus,

at: perm
either it doesnt solve or it severs --- thats bad because it
makes rejoinder impossible and hampers argumentative
responsibility --- links are DAs to the permutation
1. it does not refuse the sovereign ethos of endless linedrawing on which biopolitical control is founded
2. it does not begin from the position of bare life which ensure
its cooption under national/social movements
3. the perm does not ensure that the state of exception ends
which means its single-issue legal solution will be
circumvented
*2pt font for long passages with no relevance
Zevnik 9 (Andreja Lecturer in International Politics at Manchester University,
Sovereign-less Subject and the Possibility of Resistance, in Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, Volume 38, Number 1, p. 2-9,
http://mil.sagepub.com/content/early/2009/07/09/0305829809336255.full.pdf)
sovereign
power has the means and authority to draw lines or to distinguish between different
types of subjectivities. It has power to determine and allocate someone a place
inside or outside of community and, therefore, to grant or deprive that person of their
political rights. As Agamben writes in Means without Ends, since the 1789 Declaration of Human Rights, human rights are
Edkins and Pin-Fat draw upon Giorgio Agamben's understanding of sovereign power further. They argue that

'attributed to the human being only to the degree to which he or she is the immedi ately vanishing presupposition of the citizen'. In

human rights or any kind of rights belong to a subject in a

community and not to the subject or to the being as such. Exclusion from the
community not only deprives that individual of citizenship but also of (human)
rights. Therefore, as Edkins and Pin-Fat argue, sovereign line-drawing strategies, a politics of
inclusion and exclusion, condition to some extent the existence of a community and
of each and every human being. Sovereign power, as a power which makes the decision
as to who counts as a subject and who does not , is precisely this line-drawing
politics that includes, excludes or places beings in-between, in the zone of indis
tinction. Following the argument in Agamben's Homo Sacer, we can say that the current biopolitical imaginary, where sovereign
other words, Agamben is saying that

power imposes human/non-human distinctions on every 'being' subjected to sovereign power, is exactly the imaginary in which

The rise of
unjust, exclusionary and de-privileging political practices through which this power is
manifest, may provide an occasion for sub jects to resist the sovereign politics of
drawing lines.
subjects are constantly faced with the threat of being deprived of their rights, subjectivity or 'human ity'.

This article explores and aims to theorise the possibility of resistance to sovereign power that entails the emergence of a new kind of 'being' - a 'whatever being' - whose identity and sense of belonging to a com munity are altered. It follows Edkins and Pin-Fat's theoretical lead and adopts the theory of Giorgio Agamben, in particular his understanding of bare life and 'whatever being', in

order to explore forms of resistance. Yet, I would like to suggest, Agamben's theory is insufficient for think ing resistance, for he left unexplored the transformation from bare life to 'whatever being'. To fill this gap I introduce the theory of Jacques Lacan. The main purpose of looking at Agamben's and Lacan's explorations of resistance to sovereign power is to find grounds for a challenge to sovereign power which do not fall back into sovereign discourse. An
alternative mode of resistance cannot derive from revolution - all revolu tions, as Lacan argues, result in the re-instalment of another sovereign and the revolution continues - but must proceed from the subject's posi tion, which withers away sovereign power as we know it, and brings to the forefront a 'subject' or a kind of 'being' whose existence no longer requires the intervention or recognition of sovereign power. This article searches for an alternative to the
exclusionary practices of contemporary politics and a form of resistance through a challenge to Edkins and Pin-Fat's argument in the article 'Through the Wire'. The article argues that when suggesting a refusal to draw lines and the assumption of bare life as a potential form of resistance, Edkins and Pin-Fat overlooked an important aspect in Agamben's thought and thereby their proposal of resistance falls short of their goal, which is a successful challenge to
sovereign power and the forms of life that it produces. The article first elaborates on Agamben's theorisation of bare life as a potential form of resistance; second, it introduces Edkins and, Pin-Fat's alternative forms of resistance and further engages with and critiques their understanding of bare life and 'the politics of drawing lines' presented as the 'refusal' and the 'assumption of bare life'; and, third, it develops an alternative challenge to sovereign power by
referring to the theory of Jacques Lacan and the concepts of passage a I'acte and a demand of being. By exploring the events at Tiananmen in 1989, which, as argued in the article, represent an innovative way of thinking resistance and lead to the emergence of a new form of being, the article searches for the embodiment of a product ive challenge to sovereign power. Unlike Edkins and Pin-Fat's example of the asylum seekers, the article argues that the events
at Tiananmen can be understood as the embodiment of a particular political form of being distinct from bare life. The Bare Life of Giorgio Agamben Agamben has recently become a leading philosopher in the theorisation of resistance. His theory offers two ways of thinking resistance: bare life and whatever being. Both concepts theorise a particular form of existence. While the latter represents an alternative form of being, the former - bare life - can be read in
two ways. It can signify a closed form of exis tence where no resistance can be thinkable, or, in a more Marxist way, it can be seen as a necessary yet destructive by-product of sovereign power. These readings correspond to Slavoj Zizek's observations of the relation ship between Foucault's and Agamben's theorisation. Agamben's dis tinctive way of engaging with the political, as Zizek argues, defines him as a philosopher whose theoretical conceptualisation is
biopolitical, but the notion of biopolitics is picked up from where Foucault left off. While Foucault's understanding of biopolitics, according to Zizek, leaves space for resistance, Agamben's, with a distinctive conceptualisation of life, does not. Although I agree with Zizek's observation on the status of bare life, my reading of Agamben's theory contradicts Zizek's. I argue that Agamben's theory has space for resistance; however, this space is narrow, underdeveloped
and has remained largely unaddressed by Agamben himself. Here I explore this space of resistance. In the Introduction to Homo Sacer Agamben discusses two concepts from Greek philosophy: zoe and bios. Aristotle associated them with two forms of life: 'natural life' and 'good life'. Agamben elaborates on Aris totle's two forms of life by understanding zoe as a form of life common to all living beings and bios as a form of life distinctive of a group or politi cal
community. This reading of zoe and bios is not new. It originates, as Foucault wrote in History of Sexuality, in the transformation of politics to biopolitics - biopolitics then being a result of the entry of zoe into bios. In other words, the emergence of biopolitics, where zoe and bios are equally present, does away with the ancient Aristotelian separation between public/political and private sphere. As a consequence of zoe's relocation in the centre of biopolitical
mechanisms and practices, both private and public sphere become political. Thus, as Agamben argues, zoe enters the 'political' as a biopolitical body and a product of sovereign power. The relationship between zoe and the political embodies the manner in which law refers to life - inclusive exclusion, where the exception remains included in relation to the rule through its very suspension. As such though, zoe is never fully part of bios, but always already included
by its exclusion through the distinctively sovereign nexus of law and life. The practice of such 'inclu sive exclusion' in the Western sovereign biopolitical imaginary blurs the distinctions between zoe and bios, in a way which makes them inseparable or indistinct. Agamben's sphere of in-between-ness or indistinction opens with the proclamation of a sovereign exception. The exception is ontologically indefinable space, where inclusion and exclusion are nonexistent and dividing lines cannot be drawn. It is a place, as argued by Agamben, where 'the exception is what cannot be included in the whole of which it is a member and cannot be a member of the whole in which it is always already excluded'. The topological structure of the state of exception then takes the form of 'being outside and yet belonging'. It resem bles at least two specific relationships, the one between sovereign and law, and the other between law
and life. For as long as the former prob- lematises the indistinct place of the sovereign, neither inside nor outside the law but in a position to declare the exception, the latter resembles the spatial problematic of the camp, where sovereign violence takes place under the exception of law and, in biopolitical terms, produces lives with no political power - bare lives of survival. However, for Agamben, the camp is not a random product of the state of exception, but a
symptom of the Western political system and its juridical order, whose task is to strengthen security by dividing, excluding and generalising. For Agamben though, the decisive force in the reconceptualisation of Western political imaginaries is not merely the inclusion of zoe into bios, but the emergence of a space of indistinction where zoe cannot be sepa rated from bios and of which the product is bare life. Once, bare life used to be situated at the margins of the
political, now it gradually coincides with the centre of the political. Bare life, then, 'is not simply natural reproductive life, the zoe of the Greeks, nor bios, a qualified form of life. [But] the bare life of homo sacer ... [is] a zone of indistinction and continuous transition between men and beast, nature and culture'. It is a creation of sovereign power for sover eign power in the zone of indistinction which always already produces us as bare lives or homines sacri in
becoming. In this way Agamben unties bare life from zoe and bios and illustrates the way in which the subjectivities of bare life are stripped of legal and political protection. Bare life is a product of sovereign power par excellence: it is both included and excluded from the political. It is excluded because zoe to which bare life partly relates is an apolitical form of life, but it is included because it belongs or is a product of that very same order of sovereign power. As

However, there is another side to bare life . As a byproduct of sov ereign power, bare life can also be a form of life that is out of reach of
sovereign power. In the biopolitical, where bare life gets created, the sovereign power
exercised all its power for the creation of bare life , and is therefore left without any
such, bare life then does not possess power; in fact it is stripped of any legal and political protection and unable to redefine political power rela tion or have an impact on sovereign power.

control over its own 'by-products'. Thus sovereign power becomes power-less in
relation to bare life. Once bare life is understood in such a way, 'the sovereign' can no longer
exercise its powers. In this context, bare life, instead of being disabled and separated from sovereign power,
becomes its primary enemy and a destructible force . The form of life associated with bare life is in this
context onto logically different from bare life that is stripped of any legal and political protection. Such form of bare life can no
longer be seen as apolitical, but it rather constitutes a form of being that inhibits a space where
sover eign power cannot draw lines or further exclusions . In fact, bare life now
becomes explicitly and immediately political . It attacks sovereign power 'from the
outside' where the categories of acceptance , inclusion or exclu sion no longer hold .
Equally, in the discourse of this 'new form of being' notions like state order or human rights become obsolete. Such a form of life
then, although it remains 'deprived' of all the attributes of humanity, can embody a singular and sovereign-less form of being. In my

such being has political power; which enables it to enter and alter
political power games and to resist . Therefore, this new political form of life can no longer be understood as 'bare life' in its original sense.
reading of Agamben,

What is proposed here is rather the understanding of life that exists by itself, life as such, or in 'medieval terms', life in quodlibet. It is a life that has no other conditions of existence but
itself or, as Agamben writes, life that is its own potentiality. In fact, in The Coming Community Agamben describes this form of being as 'whatever being'. He writes that 'whatever being'
is a form of being that is included in political realms through its exclusion while at the same time deprived of all attributes of humanity. The 'whatever- ness' of this being implies its break
with the Enlightenment's under standing of the subject. This being is 'that which is neither particular nor general, individual nor generic'. It is a being such as it is, with all its properties.
However, as Agamben writes, it is also a being that is immate rial and indefinably human or inhuman, politically qualified or excluded. Whatever being is outside the binary logics of the
universal and the par ticular, inclusion or exclusion; it is free from the question of belonging to a class or a set of common identities. Instead, whatever being is a being that is inherently
hidden in the condition of belonging. It refers, belongs and relates to other 'whatever beings' through the condition of belonging as such, and not through the possession of common
identities, race, class, religion, language, culture or any other form of belonging to a commu nity. Thus, 'whatever beings' relate to one another through means which do not fall under
the logic of sovereign power. 'Whatever being' is 'a being whose community is mediated not by any condition of belonging ... nor by the simple absence of conditions ... but by belonging
itself.' As such, the communities of whatever being are defined by negativity and not by present characteristics - rather than being a community of similar ities, it is a community of

'Whatever beings', as Agamben argues, cannot form social or national

movements that would demand recognition of their identities or nation alities as
there is no identity or nationality upon which such a move ment could emerge there are no common identities that would seek recognition , as well as no particular
demands to fight for. While sub jects of sovereign power form political communities
or social movements based on their identity in order to voice demands and to seek
recognition, the togetherness of 'whatever beings' has no grounds in identity or in
demands that arise from such commonalities. Instead, 'whatever beings' voice their demands
regardless of the sovereign power. These demands are intolerable or make no sense in the
existing sovereign order, and are as such hostile to sovereign power. Sovereign power,
difference, a community of 'non-community'.

as Agamben writes, in fact cannot tolerate 'that humans co-belong without any representable condition of belonging ... [or] that singularities form a community with out affirming an
identity'. What is more, demands voiced by groups of 'whatever beings' are perceived as a threat to the system, because sover eign power does not know the direction from which they
are coming, nor does it know how to address them. I argue that 'bare life in itself' is apolitical and has no capabilities of resistance; however, that changes when and if bare life is
understood as a form-of-life?4 Only in circumstances that lead towards the emergence of 'whatever being' can bare life be perceived as a potential path towards resistance. However,
while there seems to be a continuing line of thought that leads from bare life to 'whatever being', the gap of how this trans formation could appear, I argue, is left largely unaddressed. In
the next section I will look at how Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat try to adopt Agamben's theory to further their conceptualisation of resistance. Refusal of Bare Life, Assumption of
Bare Life and Whatever Politics Drawing on Agamben's idea of bare life, Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat pushed forward alternative paths of resistance and challenges to sovereign
power. Here, it should be acknowledged that they are not argu ing for 'a challenge to a particular sovereign order, but to sovereignty, or sovereign power, in general, as a form of order
that entails specific forms of life'. As such, they are not searching for a new political order with another, different sovereign, but a form of sovereign-less political commu nity. Although
Edkins and Pin-Fat declare their opposition to sovereign power as a form of order, they do not deny the general possibility of order or political life. In their view, both political life and
order can exist outside sovereign imaginaries, though such order would be a very different one. Edkins and Pin-Fat propose two forms of resistance in this context: refusal and the
assumption of bare life. In the former, the subject refuses the line-drawing policies of sovereign power and the ability to make dis tinctions between forms of life upon which the

Refusal to draw lines between

zoe and bios or inside/outside, as both authors believe, could potentially contest the violence
of sovereign power. Edkins and Pin-Fat, by following Agamben, suggest that 'it is only through a refusal
to draw any lines at all between forms of life ... that sovereign power as a form of
violence can be contested and a prop erly political power relation reinstated' . This,
according to the authors, implies that a refusal to draw some lines will not suffice , because if some
lines are accepted then the right of a sovereign to draw lines remains uncontested.
As such then, a refusal has to refer to the line-drawing poli tics which prevents the
drawing of any lines of the sort that the sovereign power demands .
sovereign power relies; and in the latter, the subject takes on the form of life that sovereign power seeks to impose .

4. the perm devolves into political conservativism, which

inherently falls short
Bryant 11 (Levi Professor of Philosophy at Colin College and Ph.D. from Loyola
University, Lacan and the Closure of Political Realism, in Larval Subjects, 8-1-11,

https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/lacan-and-the-closure-of-politicalrealism/)
political realism is always an attempt to
instantiate a closure of reality. What it aims for is a politics of reality against a politics of the real. This
closure consists in a restriction of being to reality, to the system of appearance defining places and
positions of the beings involved in a system, that strives to erase the anarchic and contingent
ground of this order, thereby hoping to eradicate the eruption of the real. Its fiction is that all those
entities involved in the situation have clearly defined and counted identities and
positions that can be smoothly calculated and managed in a governmental
decision process. Yet to establish this, political realism must perpetually have
recourse to the logic Lacan outlines in the masculine side of the graph of sexuation, pointing to a supplementary
sovereign, God, natural order, king, charismatic leader, transcendent authority, etc.,
that covers or veils the absence of foundation, the excess, upon which reality is
contingently founded, fixing this order. Political realisms thesis is always that 1) all
entities involved are counted and accounted for, and 2) that no other order is possible. Of
course, this order also disguises the fact that the interests it claims to be in everyones
interests are really the interests of a few. In repressing this anarchic and contingent ground of the reality
system, political realism thereby promotes the lie that such and such a course of action
is the only possible course of action, the only thing that can be done. As Naomi Klein
showed so nicely in The Shock Doctrine, political realism manufactures crisis as a way of forcing
the demos to accept their exploitation as the only way to avoid catastrophe. If
politics must be placed in square quotes when discussing political realism, then this is because political realism is not
really a politics at all, but is rather mere administration (in all the terms literal and connotative senses).
Insofar as political realism treats all elements as counted and accounted for, insofar as it treats all
possibilities as pre-delineated in the anticipatory system of reality , politics becomes
mere administration in determining which vectors should be pursued in these pre-delineated systems of anticipation
Returning to my critique of political realism from a few days ago,

(usually constructed around what Lacan calls a forced vel or disjunction, where the people are forced to choose, as in the muggers
scenario, between their money or their life). Genuine politics, by contrast, is a politics not of reality, but of the real. Following

politics that contests the very system of counting and

distributing positions, that refuses the closure of reality that would claim that all is
counted, accounted for, and with a proper place, and that orients its praxis with
respect to the contingent appearance of the inapparent . Yet above all, a politics of the real is a
Ranciere, a politics of the real is that

politics that refuses the very system of counting, both at the level of the entities populating the social order and at the level of

A politics of the real gives

birth to new possibilities, possibilities with no place or count within the reigning
system of possibility. Where political realism says this is all that is possible and
therefore we must do x, a politics of the real contests this very system of ordering
the world and invents new possibilities inimical to this gamed system of counting .
Thus, for example, with Civil Rights the reality was that there was no place for
African-Americans as equal citizens. The system of reality said that AfricanAmericans are counted in this way such that they go to these schools, use these
fountains, go to these restaurants, sit on these seats on the bus, etc . Any other way
of participating and relating, said political realism, was impossible insofar as people were
not ready for it, it would ruin re-election chances of various politicians sympathetic
to equality, thereby undermining efforts of equality, etc. Thereby, we were told, only
incremental steps were possible. Anything else would produce catastrophe. Yet
the civil rights movement founded itself not on political realism , but on a politics of
the real. Everywhere in civil rights struggles we saw the appearing of the inapparent. We see the appearing of
predelineated possibilities, refusing the system of predelineation governing appearances.

the impossible, of the strange spectre of that which is simultaneously counted (in a particular way by the oligarchic order)
and the uncounted when Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of the bus . We see it when
people refuse to go to their assigned seats in restaurants or to go to assigned
restaurants. We see it in the speeches that evoke the oligarchic orders claim to be equal (separate but equal) demanding
the truth of the principle of equality while denouncing the inequality its reality function practices. We see it in people
being attacked by dogs and fire hoses without fighting back . In this way the inequity
beneath the reality claiming to be revealed is simultaneously revealed and the
excess of the real, of that which is not counted within this reality, is also revealed
challenging the closure of this order. Above all, in refusing to go to the back of the bus or eat at the counter,
the contingency of the so-called natural order (blacks naturally want their places and to be among
their kind just as whites do) is disclosed, revealing the possibility of a different order . From
the standpoint of political realism and incrementalism , these eruptions are
understood to be both ontologically impossible (as everything has a proper place) and to be
avoided at all costs. The reality-order becomes a massive regulatory mechanism, a defense formation, designed to
forestall any eruption of the real within the social order. Yet in defending the position of incrementalism
and political realism what one really defends is the reign of oligarchs
claiming to act on behalf of the interests of everyone. And, of course, here it goes without
saying that politics is generally what takes place outside government. Government is
always a political realism that attempts to reduce the social order to the system of
the count. Politics is what contests that system of counting, revealing its anarchic and contingent nature. Politics is not
what presidents, congressmen, etc., do; nor is it what takes place in the voting
booth. All of these things belong to the order of reality that effaces and erases the real. Politics can, of course, address
governance, but always in a polemical mode that contests its symbolico-imaginary sorting.

2nc at

2nc at: h-triv

Agamben isnt making a direct comparison, and his theories
have clear reasons for the parallels he draws
Robinson 11 (Andrew political theorist, activist based in the UK and research
fellow affiliated to the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ),
University of Nottingham, In Theory Giorgio Agamben: the state and the
concentration camp, in Ceasefire Magazine, 1-7-11,
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-giorgio-agamben-the-state-and-theconcentration-camp/)
some will reject his theories for violating Godwins Law, or because they feel it is
trivialising or decontextualising the camp to compare it to every instance of
repression. This, I suspect, is based on a misunderstanding. For one thing, Agamben is not
actually saying that we are all treated like camp inmates, simply that were all at risk
from being treated as if we are of this status we could be killed by the state with
impunity, even if we arent. Also, this is not just a case of Agamben calling people he dislikes Nazis. There are
clear, structural reasons for the parallels he draws. I would argue that, in contrast, the
tabooing of discussion of fascistic elements of present state practices is based on a
kind of irrational splitting, which wards off the subversive implications of never
again by keeping them at a distance, pretending they dont apply to us, they only
apply to issues behind some imaginary boundary (in undemocratic societies for instance) which
historically would prove to be far more porous . It is, I think, a peculiar perspectival blockage of radicalisms
Doubtless

in countries like Britain to confine anti-fascism to opposing small neo-Nazi groups. In contrast, German antifa have long recognised
the parallels between the repressive practices (and even the personnel) of the current German state and those of the Third Reich; so
have radicals in Italy, Spain, Greece and Japan. It is only in countries like Britain and America, with no recent fascist past to compare
to, where the existence of a continuum between fascism and the deep state is something of a public secret, even among radicals.

The Holocaust happened for contingent, historical reasons but

the camp was a key precondition
Robinson 11 (Andrew political theorist, activist based in the UK and research
fellow affiliated to the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ),
University of Nottingham, In Theory Giorgio Agamben: the state and the
concentration camp, in Ceasefire Magazine, 1-7-11,
https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-giorgio-agamben-the-state-and-theconcentration-camp/)
The concentration camp, and Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz in particular, are for Agamben particularly definitive or telling

The camp (which preceded the Holocaust by a long time ) was a

turning-point for Agamben because it made the temporary state of exception
permanent, locating it in space instead of time (unlike the declaration of a state of emergency), and
local to the core area of power, within its territory but outside its law (unlike the colony or warzone). This fixing
examples of sovereignty.

of the state of exception as a permanent feature at a site in time and space intensifies the danger to people declared homo sacer.

Formerly, an outlawed person would be literally banished , becoming a wandering figure driven into
exile. Now, an outlawed person is not allowed to go into exile (think for instance of the immense efforts put into
catching high-profile fugitives), but rather, is put in a situation suspended between inside and
outside, constantly at risk of arbitrary power. For Agamben, camps differ from other disciplinary spaces
(prisons, asylums and so on) because in them, anything is possible, and the guard is absolutely
sovereign. The Nazi Holocaust marks a second turning point in which the horrors of the camp are revealed in all their
monstrosity. The Holocaust happened when and where it did for contingent, historical

reasons, but its real causes were the creation of a particular kind of space , the camp,
where people were defined as having lives not worth living , and as being vulnerable
to being killed with impunity. Auschwitz is the high point of the logic of sovereignty, showing its ontological nature in
its realisation: it shows where the combination of biopolitics and sovereignty leads. Auschwitz marks the point of no return which
reveals the nature of sovereignty for what it really is. It thus marks the starting point for a new politics.

2nc at: try or die

Timeframe based try or die calculations justify consolidation of
power and radical, unprecented violence
Vivian 13 (Bradford Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at
Syracuse University, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, Times of Violence,
Published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Volume 99, Issue 2, 2013, pg. 1,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00335630.2013.775704?
journalCode=rqjs20#.VGaEkvnF90o)
The ways that authoritative institutions invoke and order time as a means of
consolidating and expressing power often engender violence. Conflicting interpreta- tions of
holy writ and spiritual obligation have incited bloody religious persecutions and armed conflicts for centuries. Slavoj Zizek
contends that secular (not only religious) regimes justify radical police or military
action by invoking apocalyptic senses of time: Apocalyptic time is the time of
the end of time, the time of emergency, of the state of exception when the end is
nigh.2 States of exception in liberal-democratic nations are also times of exception:
executive authorities exercise unprecedented forms of violence both within and
without national borders by citing as justification allegedly temporary
episodes of state emergency.3

2nc at: determinate site

Sovereign exceptionalism is spatializing, not spatially bounded
Belcher et al. 8 (Oliver Belcher postdoctoral researcher on the RELATE Center of
Excellence located at the University of Oulu, Finland, former postdoctoral researcher
on the BIOS Project at the Arctic Center, University of Lapland, Finland, Lauren
Martin Academy of Finland, Postdoctoral Researcher, RELATE Centre of Excellence,
Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland, PhD in Geography,
Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, Anna Secor
Full Professor, University of Kentucky, Geography Department, PhD, University of
Colorado, Stephanie Simon, Tommy Wilson, Everywhere and Nowhere: The
Exception and the Topological Challenge to Geography, Published in Antipode,
Volume 40, Issue 4, pages 499503, September 2008,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00620.x/abstract)
Geography's use of Giorgio Agamben's work has proliferated in recent years. While approaches and interpretations of Agamben's
political theory have varied, a common aim has been to apply his theory of exception to socio-geographical phenomena and to
disclose the ban as the originary political relation (Diken and Laustsen 2005:2425; Ek 2006:363; Kearns 2006; Minca 2005,

focus on the space of the exception as a determinate sociotemporal site, such as Guantanamo Bay. We argue that this focus on determinate spaces elides the
real spatializing work of the exception, which, we emphasize, is topological (see also Coleman
2007). The problem with focusing on a static geometry of exceptional spaces is that it
obscures the ways in which the exception operates as an unlocalizable process of
transformation. As Brian Massumi (2002:184) puts it, the distinction between topology and static
geometry is the distinction between the process of arriving at a form through
continuous deformation and the determinate form arrived at when the process
stops (see also Hannah 2006). Topologies, unlike topographies, do not map discreet locations
or particular objects. While it is true that we can identify operative spaces of exception ,
the exception also materializes ordinary spaces. As a topological figure that creates
the conditions for particular materialized sites, the exception is emergent, which is to say
that it is not a preformed category but a dynamic set of techniques of power . In this way,
2006). The result has been a

we emphasize Agamben's relationship with Foucault, an affinity that is often lost in various interpretations of his writings. The
implications of a topological and emergent understanding of the exception become clearer in the context of Agamben's idea of
sovereignty as potential and actual. At the same time, our intervention aims to show how a topological, emergent understanding of

If the spatiality of Agamben's political theory

has been treated in too fixed a manner , this tendency might in no small part be due
to a confusion between Agamben's political theory and that of the primary theorist of the
sovereign exception, Carl Schmitt. Schmitt argues that juridical rule and State authority are
made possible by the decision on what constitutes the normal case (where the rule of law
holds) versus the exception (where the law is suspended) (Schmitt 1985). Schmitt's idea of the
ordering of space involves above all the decision on the exception that establishes the
inside and the outside of the law. The state of exception, according to Schmitt, designated a zone of free and
the exception might open up a potential for radical politics.

empty space, that is, a suspension of all law for a certain time and in a certain space (Schmitt 2003:99). For Schmitt, therefore,
the decision on the exception performs a juridical and territorial ordering at the same time as it demarcates a specific spatio-

Agamben's departure from Schmitt on the question of

space is clear in Homo Sacer, where he writes: In its archetypal form, the state of
exception is therefore the principle of every juridical localization , since only the state of
exception opens the space in which the determination of a certain juridical order
and a particular territory first becomes possible . As such, the state of exception itself is
thus essentially unlocalizable (even if definite spatio-temporal limits can be
temporal orderthe space of the exception.

assigned to it from time to time) (Agamben 1998:19). Thus for Agamben the state of exception is the principle of
territorialization (ordering and orienting) but is itself essentially unlocalizable. While Schmitt explicitly renders the state of exception
as spatially and temporally bounded, Agamben's contribution to the theory of the exception is to reread Walter Benjamin's
engagement with Schmitt and to bring into sharp relief its contemporary relevance. For Agamben, this state inaugurates a rupture
within the Schmittian correspondence between order and orientation, between law and space. For Schmitt the decision on the

for Agamben the exception also

produces and diffuses a zone of indistinction within which the law and its
suspension become indistinguishable. This state of exception is not itself a kind of
space, but rather a technique of government (Agamben 2005:2) that produces a
topographical juridical-territorial order by determining the inside and the outside of
law (as Schmitt also argues); establishes the principles by which we distinguish law from its
application; and produces a topological relationship between the inside and outside
of law such that they become indistinguishable (delocalization). Because topological space is always a
exception merely demarcates the inside and the outside of the law, but

process of becoming, we use analytics of governmentality, which itself refers to the everyday emergence of power and control, to
think through how the exception works. For Foucault, governmentality refers to a field of everyday practices, organized by a
complex of techniques of power that govern and optimize processes immanent to a population. In this field, discipline, government,
and sovereignty are imbricated and indistinguishable, so that the exception operates as a potential (dis)ordering principle, a
potential technique of government (Foucault 1991:102). For Agamben, the declaration of the state of exception has gradually been
replaced by an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government (Agamben

governmentalization of the structure of the exception forms a complex

topological figure in which not only the exception and the rule but also the state of
nature and law, outside and inside, pass through one another (Agamben 1998:37). As a
technique of government, then, the exception is never completely hidden, nor is
it purely manifested. The state of exception produces material effects, even when
it remains virtual. This poses an important question for geographers: how do we analyze the material effects of the virtual?
2005:14). This

If the topological character of the state of exception means that it operates at the edges of materiality, how should we make use of
Agamben's theories to understand the spatiality of the exception (and governmentality, for that matter)? We argue that

Agamben's limit case, the state of exception, is spatializing, not spatialized. When we say
that the exception is spatializing, we emphasize processes of transformation and emergence
(the topological) and fold the operation of spatialization into the field of potential .
The exception thus produces a governmental potential to link specific arrays of
discursive objects, procedures, and rationalities towards particular ends . Based on this
understanding of Agamben, which emphasizes the emergent spatialization of the exception rather than its determinate spaces, we
argue for foregrounding the idea of potentiality in geographical analyses of the
exceptional. Situated on the edge of materiality, the state of exception has the potential to materialize or not to materialize
actual spaces of exception. Potentiality, for Agamben, is the tension between actuality (materialization)
and the potential not to bethe faculty to say I can, without the action being
materialized (Agamben 1999:179). To have a faculty, argues Agamben, means to have a privation, ie the potential not to
be. This potentiality, argues Agamben, maintains itself in relation to actuality in the form of
its suspension; it is capable of the act in not realizing it, it is sovereignly capable of
its own im-potentiality (Agamben 1998:45). For example, in his discussion of sovereignty, Agamben poses
abandonment, the rationality of power that marks the exception, as topological in that it has the ability not to be: it is potential.

The exception is the zone of indistinction between constituting and constituted

power. The decision on the exception realizes itself by simply taking away its own
potentiality not to be, letting itself be (Agamben 1998:46). Topological space is therefore
not only emergent and governmental, but also always potential that is, both capable
of becoming and of not becoming. It is no coincidence that in the denouement of his essay On potentiality that
Agamben finds the root of freedom also within the abyss of potentiality (Agamben
1999:183). Agamben's political praxis is one of radical desubjectivation , a
desubjectification that refuses to be captured in a topological state of exception [a
synthesis between Walter Benjamin's divine violence (1996) and Gilles Deleuze's (2006)Immanence: a life ]. He writes, We
can say that

between immanence and a life there is a kind of crossing with neither

distance nor identification, something like a passage without spatial movement

(Agamben 1999:223). This passage without a spatial movement is a matrix of infinite
desubjectification (Agamben 1999:232). Absolute immanence (ie potential freedom) is a call for Benjamin's barbarians:
those law-destroying lives that cannot be captured in a sovereign's state of exception. It is a life whose
principle is infinite desubjectification, which cannot be abandoneda de-subject
that preempts the potential state of exception, and therefore cannot be striated into
the biopolitical subject of bare life, that succubus that haunts our political
landscape. Just as the subjective homo sacer is the material kernel for the sovereign exception, Agamben's radical
desubjectification is the material kernel for freedom . This praxis of Agamben's may be what Deleuze
once said was philosophy, nothing else but philosophy (cited in Ek 2006:363) in response to a question on the utility of A
Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze and Guattari 1980). This poses a challenge to geographers of how to produce knowledge and
geographical imaginaries that at once promote just political and intellectual projects and refuse to produce subjects that can be
captured.

2nc at: state of exception bad

Misreading --- our point is the duality of power feeds into itself
Prozorov 10 (Sergei Professor of Political and Economic Studies at the University
of Helsinki, Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist, in Philosophy Social Criticism,
Volume 36, Number 9, p. 1056-1057, November 2010,
http://psc.sagepub.com/content/36/9/1053.abstract)
This totalized image of the global state of exception has been criticized as both hyperbolically
excessive and internally contradictory. Paul Passavant has argued that Agambens theory suffers from a contradictory concept of the

While Agamben is most famous for his

deconstruction of the logic of sovereignty that radicalizes Schmitts conception ,8 he
has also, from his earliest work onwards, confronted the more dispersed, governmentalized
modes of power relations characteristic of late capitalism in the manner highly
influenced by Guy Debords work on the society of the spectacle .9 Against the argument that this
state that also plagues his affirmative vision of the coming politics.7

conjunction of sovereignty and governmentality in the analysis of late-modern power relations constitutes a contradiction, we must

this duality of the contemporary apparatus of power is explicitly affirmed

by Agamben himself, who, similarly to Foucaults claim for the indissociability of sovereignty, discipline and
government,10 regularly insists that the system is always double .11 The inextricable link between the
two aspects of the contemporary social order consists in the nihilistic deployment of life itself as a (post-)historical task. Both
state sovereignty and the late-capitalist society of the spectacle are biopolitical and
thus permanently feed into each other. The contemporary neo-liberal governmentality extends the operation
recall that

of economic rationality to life itself, whereby life is conceived as a paradigmatic form of enterprise,12 and in this manner
expropriates the being-in-language that defines human existence and subjects it to the laws of exchange-value or, in Agambens
later works, exhibition value.13 Conversely, sovereign power expropriates the potentiality of human existence, transforming it into
the bare life that it then grounds itself in and applies itself to in the perpetual state of exception. The state does nothing more than
sustain the spectacle with its apparatuses of security, while the spectacle does nothing more than perpetually produce the degraded
forms-of-life that sovereign power can apply itself to.

2nc at: utopian/mwajeh 5

We are manifestly anti-utopian --- possibility for change is
always already present
Prozorov 10 (Sergei Professor of Political and Economic Studies at the University
of Helsinki, Why Giorgio Agamben is an optimist, in Philosophy Social Criticism,
Volume 36, Number 9, p. 1057, November 2010,
http://psc.sagepub.com/content/36/9/1053.abstract)
It is evident that the danger at issue in Agambens work is nihilism in its dual form of the sovereign ban and the capitalist spectacle.
If, as we have shown in the previous sec- tion, the reign of nihilism is general and complete, we may be optimistic about the possibility of jamming its entire apparatus since there is nothing in it that offers an alternative to the present double subjection. Yet,

It would be easy to misread Agamben

as an utterly utopian thinker, whose intentions may be good and whose
criticism of the present may be valid if exaggerated , but whose solutions
are completely implausible if not outright embarras- sing .23 Nonetheless, we
must rigorously distinguish Agambens approach from utopian- ism . As Foucault
has argued, utopias derive their attraction from their discursive structure of a
fabula, which makes it possible to describe in great detail a better way of life, precisely because it is manifestly impossible.24
where are we to draw resources for such a global transformation?

While utopian thought easily pro- vides us with elaborate visions of a better future, it cannot really lead us there, since its site is by

Agambens works tell us quite little about life in a

community of happy life that has done away with the state form , but are
remark- ably concrete about the practices that are constitutive of this
community, precisely because these practices require nothing that would
be extrinsic to the contemporary condition of biopolitical nihilism . Thus, Agambens
coming politics is manifestly anti-utopian and draws all its resources from
the condition of contemporary nihilism.
definition a non-place. In contrast,

This is offense against you --- an inability to imagine a

different world doesnt change its possiblity
Kelly 14 (Mark GE Senior Lecturer in Humanities at the University of Western
Sydney, Against prophecy and utopia: Foucault and the future, in Thesis Eleven,
Volume 120, Number 1, p. 112-113,
http://the.sagepub.com/content/120/1/104.full.pdf+html)
It might be said that such a position is itself utopian , positing a utopian vision of a world devoid of
utopianism, by which to condemn the present, predicting, without knowing it, that things will work better without utopianism.
Neither Foucault nor I do this, however. We offer no vision of how a world without utopianism might operate, no claim that it will lead

We only identify a certain form of practice existing in the

present that we advocate, over other practices in the present that I argue are
immanently self-contradictory. I make no claim about the dangers or lack thereof in non-utopian procedures, only
to any particular practical consequence.

that they avoid the specific dangers of utopianism and prophecy. Another possible line of objection is that anti-utopianism is

any positive political project

is attacked as utopian, which is to say as unrealistic. It is true that such criticisms are
widespread, but they are often incorrect. While there are utopianisms on the left, revolutionary
thought is not generically utopian. Revolution is compatible with my position, in the form of an immanent
associated today with reactionary politics. Alain Badiou (2001: 13) points out that today

revolution from below, in which the participants attend to and deal with the radically new and unforeseeable conditions as they

The critique that

castigates left-wing politics in general as utopian is the inverse of our critique of
emerge in a revolutionary situation. The point is to prevent revolution being utopian or prophetic.

utopianism. Where we claim that utopianism fails because it attempts to say how society should work, critiques of
left-wing thought as utopian tend to claim that left-wing positions are insufficiently
articulated, hence utopian because they cannot offer an alternative vision . We would
argue that utopianism is marked not by the absence of a utopian vision , but by its
presence. According to my argument, the inability to imagine how something would work is
no argument against its possibility, just as the ability to imagine how something
would work does not adequately demonstrate that it is actually possible ,
since the complexity of the social outstrips our ability to model society in our minds .
There is nothing utopian about saying that another world is possible , where this slogan is
raised without detailing what this world would look like. Badious own position is utterly non-utopian, because it is a matter of fidelity
to a truth event in the past that is neither about reviving the past situation nor aiming at producing any particular future situation.

it is
problematic to say that another world is not possible, that there is no alternative .
Such pronouncements are prophetic. The claim that communism is impossible has the same flaw
as the claim that communism is inevitable: we cannot know whether a determinate
form of social organization is either inevitable or impossible , possible or desirable, in
advance. Grand historical claims are prophetic, even if they are negative, like
Fukuyamas famous neo-Hegelian diagnosis of the end of history
Badious philosophy is one of profound openness which is inimical to utopianism as I have described it. Conversely, however,

2nc at: ojakangas 5

Ojakangas elides the intrinsic relation between caring for
living and adjudicating death
Dillon 5 (Michael Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster
University, Cared to Death: The Political Time of Your Life, in Foucault Studies, No.
2, p. 37-38, May 2005, http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucaultstudies/article/viewFile/858/876)
The key point of dispute with Ojakangas concerns the self-immolating logic of
biopolitics. "Not bare life that is exposed to an unconditional threat of death," he says in the introduction to his paper, "but the
care of'all living' is the foundation of biopower." (emphasis in the original). Ojakangas says: "Foucault's biopower has nothing to do
with that [Agamben] kind of bare life." I agree. Foucault's biopolitics concerns an historically biologised life whose biologisation
continues to mutate as the life sciences themselves offer changing interpretations and technical determinations of life. This
biologised life of biopolitics nonetheless also raises the stake for Foucault of a life that is not a biologised life. So it does for
Agamben, but differently and in a different way. For Foucault, the biologised life of biopolitics also raises the issue of a life
threatened in supremely violent and novel ways. So it does for Agamben, but again differently and for the same complex of reasons.
In contesting Agamben in the ways that he does, Ojakangas marks an important difference, then, between Foucault and Agamben.
That done, perhaps the difference needs however to be both marked differently and interrogated differently. I have argued that
there is a certain betrayal in the way Agamben reworks Foucault. There is however much more going on in this 'betrayal' than
misconstruction and misinterpretation. There is a value in it. Exploring that value requires another ethic of reading in addition to that
of the exegesis required to mark it out. For Agamben's loathing of biopolitics is I think more 'true' to the burgeoning suspicion and
fear that progressively marked Foucault's reflections on it than Ojakangas' account can give credit for, since he concentrates on

In posing an intrinsic and unique

threat to life through the very ways in which it promotes , protects and invests life,
'care for all living' threatens life in its own distinctive ways . Massacres have
become vital. The threshold of modernity is reached when the life of the species is
wagered on its own (bio) political strategies. Biopolitics must and does recuperate
the death function. It does teach us how to punish and who to kill. Power over life
must adjudicate punishment and death as it distributes live across terrains of value
that the life sciences constantly revise in the cause of life's very promotion . It has to.
That is also why we now have a biopolitics gone geopolitically global in
humanitarian wars of intervention and martial doctrines of virtuous war. Here, also,
providing the exegetical audit required to mark it out rather than evaluate it.

is the reason why the modernising developmental politics of biopolitics go racist: "So you can understand the importance - I almost
said the vital importance - of racism to such an exercise of power." In racism, Foucault insists: "We are dealing with a mechanism
that allows biopower to work." But: "The specificity of modern racism, or what gives it its specificity, is not bound up with

In thus
threatening life, biopolitics prompts a revision of the question of life and especially
of the life of a politics that is not exhaustively biologised ; comprehensively subject to biopolitical
mentalities, ideologies or the lies of power. It is bound up with the techniques of power, with the technology of power."

governance in such a way that life shows up as nothing but the material required for biopolitical governance, whether in terms

Emphasising care for all living - the promotion, protection and

investment of the life of individuals and populations - elides the issue of being cared
to death. Being cared to death poses the issue of the life that is presupposed ,
posed by Foucault or Agamben.

nomologically for Agamben and biologically for Foucault, in biopolitics. Each foregrounds the self-immolating logic that ineluctably
applies in a politics of life that understands life biologically, in the way that Foucault documents for us, or nomologically, in the way

Ojakangas seems
to emphasize a line of succession rather than of radical dissociation. One, moreover, which threatens to elide the
intrinsic violence of biopolitics and its essential relation with correction and
death.
that Agamben's bare life contends. When recalling the significance of the Christian pastorate to biopolitics,

If life is a production of biopolitics it is circular to claim

biopolitics saves lives
Dillon 5 (Michael Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster
University, Cared to Death: The Political Time of Your Life, in Foucault Studies, No.
2, p. 37-38, May 2005, http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucaultstudies/article/viewFile/858/876)
The nomological concerns the law, the biological concerns 'life' and the theological concerns the relation of life to transcendence in
the form of divinity. At a philosophical level, the life of politics may be said to find its bearings in relation to the changing
interpretations and correlations of force that characterise the intimate relationality of this trinity of nomos, bios and theos.
Agamben takes Foucault's account of biopolitics away from history and relocates it back in the centre of these key determinants of
political philosophy. Whereas Agamben's nomological account of biopolitical violence threatens a certain kind of political paralysis,

Ojakangas' insistence on the productivity of

biopolitics threatens to elide the violent inner logic of biopolitics and to miss what
Agamben's nomologically driven ontologisation nonetheless does rigorously expose.
Incomparably the most interesting thinker thinking today, one of the things that Agamben is thinking in
response to the provocations of biopolitics is the question of life undetermined by
the life of biopolitics, a life elevated in addition by a refiguration of transcendence without a godhead, in the form
of the immanence of the messianic. He also thinks the facticity of a corporeality beyond the reduction of the
however, in as much as it ontologises that violence,

body to biology. It is in these moves, among others, that he thinks beyond the initial provocation to political thought that he takes
from Foucault's biopolitics. Like any such response, the issue becomes less the degree of faithlessness than the worth of the
betrayal.

Death is a function of biopolitics --- it must eliminate the

threat to life
Dillon 5 (Michael Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster
University, Cared to Death: The Political Time of Your Life, in Foucault Studies, No.
2, p. 37-38, May 2005, http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucaultstudies/article/viewFile/858/876)
in the biopolitical context of the circulation of life as species being , Foucault says
death is not so much disqualified, but, "something to be hidden away." It loses that spectacular ritual character
it once had, marking the move from one power, that of secular sovereignty, to another power, that of a sovereign God. Death
does not disappear from biopolitics . Neither is it attenuated beyond political concern, quite the contrary. It
Moreover,

changes its character, undergoing political transformation as biopolitics re-inscribes death in the process of 'recuperating the death

Whereas no power can ultimately exercise power over death , biopower can
and does exercise power over life. One of the means by which it does so is via the biopolitical preoccupations
with mortality, morbidity, pathology and mutation. Concerned with death in terms of the vital signs of
life, biopolitics is also increasingly concerned these days with the re-inscription of
the vital signs of life in terms of code , both molecular and digital. Contra Ojakangas, then, biopolitics
does reclaim the death function, for a number of reasons and in a variety of changing ways. It must do so.
Reclaiming the death function is integral to its logic . It also reflects the changing operational dynamics
of biopolitics. In relation to biopolitical logic: "In the biopower system... killing , or the imperative to
kill, is acceptable only if it results not in a victory over political adversaries, but in the
elimination of the biological threat to and the improvement of the species or race ." It
function'.

is acceptable and biopolitically necessary to kill, if not necessarily in the nomological sense of being exposed to death formulated in
Agamben's thesis of bare life. In relation to the operationalisation of biopolitics: if biopolitics is to promote, protect and invest life, it

This continuous biopolitical assaying of life proceeds

through the epistemically driven and continuously changing interrogation of the
worth and eligibility of the living across a terrain of value that is constantly
must engage in a continuous assay of life.

changing. It is changing now, for example, in response to what the life sciences are teaching about what it is to be a living
thing. It is changing as biopolitical investment analysts (politicians, risk analysts, governmental technologisers) also interrogate
where the best returns on life investment happen to be located in the manifold circulation and transformation of life locally and
globally. Life itself mutates in and through these very circuits, not least in relation to molecular biology and electronic
communication. We can broadly interpret life science now to range from molecularised biology, through digitalization, to the new
social and managerial sciences of development now prominent in the fields of global governmentality, global development policies,
human security and even military strategic discourse including, for example, 'Operations Other than War".

2nc links

crisis
Modern security fortifies the line-drawing depoliticisation and
violence of sovereign power, while closing off alternative
political logics
*4pt font for long passages with no relevance
Raw 11 (Jessica M.Sc. from Aberystwyth University, Exploring Security and
Community: Inoperativity, Immunity and Political Organisation, MSc(Econ) in the
Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 9-19-11,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/7811/raw%20jessica
%20ipm0060.docx?sequence=1)
Modern security politics which place primary importance on preserving the life and
security of individual subjects and work to reduce politics to practices of
management and control, simultaneously defend a specific notion of political
community that is antithetical to qualified political life and circumscribes the
ways in which we can imagine being with one another. The global ubiquity of
security, along with the notion that security is a positive political value which is to be achieved by privileging
sovereign power, has become so uncontested and unquestioned that we frequently fail to
adequately trace the historical specificities of the idea and the foundations and assumptions
underpinning it. The logic of securitisation is too often accepted and reified, even, I argue in this thesis, within critical security
studies literature. Despite efforts by some, including CSS scholars, to problematise the term, its pursuit what I refer to as the will

We thus see what Jean-Luc Nancy and

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe term the retreat (retrait) of the political, which is the over-determination of the
political by a philosophical concept becoming that which determines the nature of
political life and, simultaneously, a withdrawal of such concepts from questioning and
contestation. The concept in this case is the idea that activity must be geared towards the pursuit of secure communities,
to security remains an unquestioned assumption of the universal state system.

and that this is able to condition the ways in which we might imagine being with one another politically. It is argued here that as
soon as a particular idea of security or organising politically is simply assumed to be the case, we lose the potential to challenge it
as merely one philosophical concept among many. This common sense exerts a tyranny under which all forms of political life and

In accepting
international relations as an endless war of securitisation , we are witnessing what Nancy terms the
total completion of the political. This dissertation reveals our modern understandings of politics to be reliant,
organisation must correspond to its unquestionable assumptions, and thus constitutes a totalitarian politics.

foundationally, on the will to security. Among myriad and complex reasons for this, the one that I explore as most fundamental is the
unstated reliance on liberal, substantive notions of political community that form seemingly immutable foundations of much of
Western political thought, but particularly modern international politics of security. In order to expose these implicit foundations, I
juxtapose radically different notions and discussions of community against typical Western liberal understandings which permeate
security discourse. Specifically, I deploy the ideas of inoperativity and immunity as forwarded by Jean-Luc Nancy and Roberto
Esposito respectively in order to expose foundational myths and deep-rooted assumptions at the heart of the will to security. Above
all, I argue that these assumptions are unfounded and, ultimately, unnecessary to the extent that international relations scholars,
rather than engaging in attempts to do security better or to locate ideal forms of political community, must first explore the
motivations and assumptions behind these pursuits. It is undeniable that scholars currently criticise the modern politics of security
permeating international relations thought and practice on a number of levels. There is a burgeoning CSS literature which rightly
problematises the pursuit of national security objectives over the well-being of the majority of a states and indeed the worlds
population. Many question the placement of the state as the referent object of the theory and practice of security, recognising as
they do that all security technologies revolve around changing understandings of the properties of that referent object. Some
debate, for example, centres on replacing state security with individual security. This methodological individualism can be seen in
the work of the Aberystwyth School and the human security discourse, the latter seeing a large degree of success within policymaking circles and having been adopted by the United Nations. This thesis addresses the impoverished nature of thinking on
political community in this literature, highlighting ways of organising politically that are implicitly accepted as immutable or ideal
within logics of securitisation. Despite the partial acceptance within CSS of David Campbells thesis that security politics constitutes

the ideological project of

much international relations thinking that posit states as harmonious circles of order within an
uncertain, anarchical and dangerous system as neatly highlighted by Richard Ashley over twenty years
ago - continues largely uncontested . To expose this ideology adequately would, I argue, reveal the will to
a continuous attempt to establish secure political order internally as much as externally,

security to be as much, if not more, about securing specific types of political

community and rendering them common-sense, unchallengeable solutions, as it is
about making life live or of securing individuals . It is the contention of this thesis that though there is
very little intrinsically human or necessary about security that we will inevitably fall back on it however politics might be
conceived, it is a necessary component of liberal international politics centred on the sovereign state. Security is the generative and
immanent principle of formation of liberal political community. I reveal this to be the case through a refutation liberal ways of seeing
and doing, including its ideas on community which are firmly rooted in social contractarian thought. The disruptions explored to
modern security politics in adopting unorthodox notions of community cannot be read as simply asserting an alternative form of
true security, if we understand the term in the forms explored from the outset of chapter one of this dissertation. In exploring
more heterodox and critical ways of envisioning political community, using notions derived from the thought of Nancy and Esposito, I
further reveal the harmful, ideological and, ultimately, contingent nature of the pursuit of security. This thesis thus constitutes an
attempt to place a critique of modern security politics alongside burgeoning attempts to locate political community above, below or

A number of movements within critical international relations to

question and critique orthodox security studies fall back too readily into the logics of
sovereign political community and hierarchical organisation that they profess to challenge. Rather than tweaking or
beyond the sovereign state.

attempting to improve security discourse and practice, I argue that the will to security is fundamentally about securing particular
forms of political community which are increasingly redundant and lacking in foundation. Notwithstanding the risk that a position
such as this is, as Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams caution, almost certain to result in continued disciplinary exclusion,

it is

necessary to engage in a more fundamental critique of modern thinking on

security than that which is typically broached by CSS scholars , in order to reveal ideological bias
of those studying and practising security towards certain forms of political community, and thus to reveal the
contingency of logics of security. Chapter one engages directly with the notion that [s]ecurity within CSS is
open to argumentation and dispute and reveals the security discourse as complicit in the securing of modern, liberal political
community. Debates about security could be seen to centre around, on the one hand, an uncertainty as to whether more broadly
defined forms of political community can be realised, and, on the other, the idea that a denial of the possibility seems historically
myopic. I contend that the latter arguments are not able to answer important questions regarding the nature of international
politics, much of which are increasingly about the management, operation and control of populations rather than contestation,
negotiation or the furthering of emancipatory possibility. In the second chapter I explore ideas about community forwarded by Nancy
and Esposito which set themselves against the hegemony of localised and substantial notions of community as posited by and
recycled since Plato, Hegel and Kant. Nancys work is fundamentally different in its anti-teleology and the new understanding of
freedom which develops from this. Furthermore community is no longer substantive; it does not have a here or a there, a specific
location on a map with its boundaries drawn, and insiders and outsiders neatly positioned. It exists before all contracts and, in fact,
exists to resist all such exclusive, self-legitimating communities. It is, above all, inoperative, and unable to constitute, or be put to
work. Esposito furthers this understanding by considering modern, liberal political community to be, in fact, immunity. Through the
institution of the social contract, we have successfully created the myth that we have interiorised exteriority when, in fact, we have
simply suppressed it, along with relations of being-in-common, thus immunising ourselves against community. This chapter does not
constitute a purely exegetical task; I develop, mould and add to these ideas in order to highlight the instances of immunity and
operativity that I see permeating modern discourses and politics of security. The will to security reduces community to immunity,
and renders this an operative tool in a technological, managerial political project which precludes the possibility of thinking relations
of being-with differently. Herein lies the injury done to international politics by thinking within logics of security. Chapter three
confronts directly the claim that it is the job of international relations theories to secure political community against danger, threat
and insecurity (however these might be variously interpreted and whatever they might be deemed to be). I explore the contention
forwarded by Jenny Edkins amongst others that, in fact, they should aim at the reverse; that their task must be to challenge the
hegemony of the power relations or symbolic order in whose name security is produced, to render visible its contingent, provisional
nature. My method for rendering visible this contingency is to study the onto-theological underpinnings of modern thought on
security and community. The goal here is to make philosophically problematical what has been practically axiomatic in international
relations; to bring security into question is to bring the entire foundation and architecture of this political construction into question.
This stems from my contention that it is only through the destruction of known values that the creation of new values becomes
possible. Though it is not my aim to shake the epistemic order of security by simply seeking a new, hegemonic order, it is also true
that a concept does not die simply when one wants it to, but only when new functions in new fields discharge it. Disrupting the
terms of security/insecurity should be undertaken as a means to opening new possibilities at the margins and to asserting the hope
that politics can be something other than the possibility or the instrument for keeping life alive. Modern security politics are, of
course, diverse and heterogeneous. This thesis will undoubtedly fall prey to a certain level of essentialism in an effort to make its
point about the problematic philosophical underpinnings of security discourse, and the concomitant assumptions about political
community which foster, and are simultaneously created by it. Tackling the notion of politics as management is to expose wholly
unmanageable edges (those of being-together) and to expose the attempt by managerial anti-politics to securitise that which is
necessarily ontologically unstable. Thus, although I will undoubtedly be criticised for reifying insecurity, or not taking seriously
enough the plight of the global insecure, it is for ontological, not moral, reasons, that a management of security cannot be
pursued as politics. Politics are totalised and complete within the framework of security, control, non-negotiation and stability. For
too long the powerful and influential idea that those behind modern thinking and practice of security are labouring under the
exigencies of necessity has foreclosed any hope of imagining ways of living and being in common and of conceiving of the full
political potentials of community and life. Chapter 1 Securitisation, the elimination of strangehood and the defence of substantive,

modern security politics do not

achieve their purported aims, and increasingly serve to bolster particular ways of
conceiving of and practising politics. Modern ways of warfare and the politics of securitisation are seen in much
liberal political community It is clear to growing numbers of scholars that

of the CSS literature to harm more than protect, insecuritise rather than securitise, and depoliticise instead of forwarding political

possibility. However, rather than exploring in greater depth where the foundations for this will to security in modern politics lie, we
increasingly see attempts within CSS to broaden the security agenda whilst incorporating traditionalist, militaristic positions, to
criticise specific security practices of surveillance, bordering and control, or to attempt to bring the security of individuals to the

question why are our modern

understandings of politics are so reliant, foundationally, on security and to
investigate the ways in which this limits and circumscribes political organisation and
possibility. In this first chapter, I situate my work alongside burgeoning literature which criticises both traditional and CSS
fore. It is more interesting and pertinent, I argue in this thesis, to

literatures for their assumption that security is a neutral and desirable aim of politics. Central to such critiques have been efforts by
Edkins, Michael Dillon, David Campbell and others to expose the mythical foundations of security, its intimate and co-constitutive
nature with insecurity, and the ways in which the promise of security is an impossible and yet crucial foundation of statecraft. Others
still, have discussed the militarised and exceptionalising nature of security discourses, or the promotion of highly specific and
contingent forms of life deemed worthy of protection within them. The arguments forwarded challenge the pursuit of security as the
ultimate positive value of politics, and these scholars contend that to make security the end of politics is depoliticising,
highlighting the power-effects which issue from the securing of security. I am also interested to engage with the work of scholars
who, in the face of problems that are global in scope, and the increasingly unstable ontological foundations of political thought and
activity, are critiquing many important myths surrounding the formation of the surrounding nation state in early modernity, and
looking to alternative forms of political organisation and sources of authority than the sovereign state. I specifically look to the
possibilities for expansion of political community beyond the borders of the sovereign state and the broader critiques of sovereignty
contained within contemporary continental political philosophy. With shifting conceptions of security in the post-war period
(motivated by the apprehension of irremediable threats at a global level); the events of September 11th 2001 and the ensuing war
on terror and its aftermath; and current attempts to locate sovereignty above and below the sovereign state, this is a fecund and
timely period in which to be studying security and community together. The implications of thinking within logics of security: Statist
bias in CSS In this section I provide a brief, critical overview of a range of debates relevant to this piece which are taking place
within the security studies sub-field. In challenging their underlying assumptions, I place this piece more squarely within movements
wishing to engage with modern security practices and discourse in order to fundamentally critique current logics of securitisation. A
number of CSS scholars argue in favour of an objective definition of security insofar as the critical security theorist can determine
which security problems are particularly threatening and a subjective definition insofar as an individuals own definition of security
problems should be taken into account. As a consequence of retaining the term, and, more importantly, the desire to render
subjectivities and politics knowable, controllable and secure, many of the logics that underpin and are legitimated by traditional
conceptions of security remain entrenched within critical work. Most pertinent for the discussion here is the retention of a liberal
political imaginary which views community as an observable and substantive phenomenon which can be harnessed for work within

Logics underpinning the will to security take community to be an

absolute end, to such a degree that all other thinking on and possible meaning of
the term is annihilated and rendered redundant. This can be seen most clearly in orthodox security
literature and practice, which pursues the security of the substantive political community that
is the sovereign state above all other political values. However, it is also evident in much of the CSS literature. The
particular political projects.

Aberystwyth School employs Frankfurt School critical theory to advocate an emancipatory security which places individuals at the
heart of analysis as referent objects in an apparent attempt to sideline sovereign states domination of the security agenda. Though
this has raised the question of whether a positive value can be assigned to security and therefore challenged the primary

proponents adhere to a
statist logic, engaging in only limited ways with the potential to think community
differently. States are problematically posited as the communities, or agents, deemed most capable and best-placed to
provide security, and by extension it is argued emancipation. The pervasive statism within this theory
and the failure to look beyond dominant conceptions of political community
threatens the internal logic and consistency of the approach and silences
alternative, non-dominant, non-substantive approaches to political organisation. The failure to
importance placed on eliminating sources of insecurity (pervasive in more orthodox accounts),

adequately deconstruct and challenge securitiser/securitisee logics renders the critical potential of this school limited. The ways in
which community is invoked in much CSS thought is invariably caught within traditional metaphysical notions of the term, where
community is something that can serve as a tool in a specific political project. For Booth, community is the site of security implying
a priori, empirically observable political organisation pre-existing the power relations which arise as a result of security politics. In
their recent introductory publication on CSS, Nick Vaughan-Williams and Columba Peoples claim that, [r]ather than celebrating
difference for its own sake, CSS argues that it is emancipatory community based around inclusionary and egalitarian notions of
identity that should be promoted over communities that are predicated on internal relations of domination (such as patriarchy) and
chauvinistic forms of identity (such as notions of national superiority). The lengthy and important debate surrounding the meaning
of emancipation and emancipatory in these contexts aside, it is revealing of the entire discourse of CSS that community is
consistently posited in such empirical, substantive terms. Hence Ken Booth is able to state that, [a]s a political orientation [CSS] is
informed by the aim of enhancing world security through emancipatory politics and networks of community at all levels, including
the potential community of all communities common humanity. Booths invocation of community in this way remains within liberal
Western political paradigms, ones which treat and regard community as an end point and as a substantive goal to move towards. He
leaves us in danger of placing community at the heart of a specific political project and precludes a truly radical re-envisioning of
community, which could not be put to technical, managerial use. Above all, Booths account betrays a treatment of community as a
Rousseauean or Kantian form of destination and presupposition, a common temporal trope in literature on community which I will
expand upon in the following chapter. Mick Dillon challenges the pursuit of security in politics more fundamentally. In fact, he views
engagement with both traditional and CSS literature as a fundamental obstacle to thinking about new ways of conceiving of the
political due to the failure of both to ask questions of security as such. Instead, it invokes security as a ground and seeks largely to

specify what security is, how it might be attained and which are most basic, effective, and cost-effective means of doing so. Dillon,

view security through a biopolitical lens

and wholly problematise the pursuit of security as part of a broader Western , liberal
modernist project to control and manage life . As Foucault contends, the biopolitical apparatus includes
along with Foucault and Agamben, to whom his thought is indebted,

forecasts, statistical estimates, and overall measures[:]...security mechanisms [that] have to be installed around the random

we have witnessed
the biopoliticisation of war and of security, offers an interesting and worthwhile critique of much existing
element inherent in a population of living beings so as to optimize a state of life. The notion that

thinking on security. The human security discourse, for example, defines and enacts the human in biopolitical terms, and actively

The target
of much modern security practice is to make live the life of the individual through a
complex of strategies initiated at the level of populations . Human security discourses frame of
supports states attempts to secure life and its properties ahead of its historical focus on sovereign territoriality.

intervention, for example, is the health and welfare of populations, necessarily entrenching hegemonic notions of agency and

advocate efforts to
secure the individual is to advocate the exercise of sovereign power (and, often, violence)
over subjects. David Chandler argues effectively that human security discourse prioritises its responses to populations that
community, which value liberal and hierarchical forms of political organisation above all others. To

are threatened in relation to servicing the maintenance of the global liberal order, linking this servicing to a more intimate
connection between sovereign power, biopolitics and the maintenance of post- 9/11 order. In vindicating my argument that the will
to security is driven by, and fosters, a will to secure specific forms of political community, this connection between the human
security discourse preparing conceptually a form of life that is at hand for the mounting of proactive sovereign interventions of preemption and prevention, is a significant one. Perhaps the most successful at highlighting this bureaucratic, managerial type of antipolitics of security whilst being accepted by the CSS mainstream, are those scholars working loosely under the banner of the Paris
School. Didier Bigo, for example, studies transnational networks and practices of insecurity. Bigo highlights the (in)securitisation
process enacted by policies purporting to secure, highlighting not the exceptionalism of security politics but, rather, the more

Weberian
routines of rationalisation, of management of numbers instead of person s, of use of
technologies, especially the ones which allow for communication and surveillance at a distance
through databases and the speed of exchange of information . The securitisation of societal
mundane bureaucratic decision of everyday politics and the structures of consumerist society. He focuses upon the,

issues, he contends, raises the issue of protection by insecuritising the audience the security discourses are addressing.
(In)securitisation translates into a social demand for the intervention of coercive state agencies through reassurance discourses and
protection techniques. However, in highlighting the network of heterogeneous and transversal practices working at the transnational
level in order to reveal relational processes of (in)securitisation and (un)freedomisation, the Paris School still falls into the trap of
strengthening and giving credence to the security signifier, of reifying security and demonising insecurity. Though this approach
undoubtedly highlights the ways in which security relates to people or political subjects and provides a different account of the
actors involved in managing unease in our societies far more effectively than other critical approaches, it does not go far enough

Highlighting the tendency of

modern security practices to render us insecure implies that some level of security
is desirable; it is still merely a question of finding different ways of achieving this
level of security. The critique is not extended adequately enough, however, into the ways in which security is inscribed into
in challenging the pursuit of security as an ontological good, or end, of politics.

the very discourses and practices of liberal modernity. Though Bigo advocates unmaking the security frame and replacing the
drama of exception for mundane everyday practices in order that we might envisage alternative forms of political order that govern
and shape freedom in less exclusionary and violent ways, there is not notion of what would replace it, because there is a lack of
focus on the implications of questions of political community in liberal modernity, which depend upon, and foster, logics of security.
Within the CSS literature, community either goes unchallenged, or is posited as an empirically observable phenomenon which can
be put forward for use within certain technical political programmes, i.e. that of securing its citizens politically unqualified lives.
Modern security politics necessarily entail and embody a particular kind of ordering. Placing the life of subjects or communities at
the heart of a political project is an inescapable component of the politics of security, and this is not adequately problematised in
current CSS literature. It is not enough to ask states to step back from providing security or to step down as referent objects of
security in the hope that individuals will fill their place, without an understanding of the work that security is doing to produce and
reproduce those subjectivities and communities it purports to protect, along with the modes of political organisation that it is

It is necessary to challenge fundamentally the

ontological preoccupation with security and the commitment to politics of
securing the subject or the community. To do so is also to challenge Western political
thought as a project of making things certain, mastered and thus controllable.
Security is much more about calculation and control than it is about concern and
care. As Dillon argues, Western political thought has been impelled by its metaphysical
determination to secure the appropriate theoretical grounds and instrumental
means by which security itself could be secured . But the politics of organisation must be about bringing
obscuring and rendering impracticable.

new possibilities into being, about bringing new ways of being-together into being which necessarily entails uncertainty, instability,
negotiation and change. Security as the will to power of sovereign presence ...despite the absence of any legitimate meta-

yardsticks, governments around the world claim to possess an ultimate yardstick in the name of security, the law, human integrity
and the liberal ideals of the free market...philosophical thinking offers at least some arguments that stand firmly opposed to such a
logic. Thanos Zartaloudis To ask questions of the politics of security is to reveal certain assumptions it necessarily holds about
political organisation and community to be contingent, and to open up broader questions of liberal modernity. It unmasks some of
the fundamental assumptions that underpin Western political and philosophical thought. As Dillon argues, posing the security
question necessarily calls into question the way thought itself has been thought. In asking philosophical questions of security, we
are able to more fundamentally critique the insistence upon the need to secure security which is rendering politics increasingly

As well as logics of
securitisation attempting to render knowable , and incorporate all uncertainty within
an onto-epistemological framework predicated on securing , on reassuring, and
eliminating enemies, strangers, and strangehood, it is concomitantly a reassertion of the
necessity of hierarchical, vertical sovereign power for maintaining political order .
Sovereignty and security are each seen as conditions of possibility for
political life. It is here that numerous assumptions about ideal forms of community and political organisation within security
exclusionary and violent. I aim to reveal the will to security as the will to power of sovereign presence.

discourse can be located. This thesis explores the ways in which modern understandings of the politics and modern practices of
politics can be seen to derive the requirement of security from requirements of metaphysical truth itself. Dillon phrases it thus:
Security became the predicate upon which architectonic politics discourses of modernity were constructed; upon which the
vernacular architecture of modern political power, exemplified by the State, was based; and from which the institutions and
practices of modern (inter)national politics, including modern democratic politics, ultimately seek to derive their grounding and
foundational legitimacy. It will therefore be necessary to investigate and explore communitys absent ground (or, rather, the
presence of ground as absence) and, in so doing, to unmask Western political thoughts inherited onto-theology of security, or the a
priori argument that proves the existence and necessity of security because of the current widespread, metaphysical belief in it.
Within this notion, relations between singularities are regulated, controlled and ultimately destroyed in order that we might remain
loyal to vertical, transcendental authority, which is deemed to keep us secure and seen as a prerequisite to engagement in
political activity and life. As such, as James Der Derian argues, within the concept of security lurks the entire history of Western
metaphysics best described by Derrida as a series of substitutions of centre for centre in a perpetual search for the
transcendental signified. As he notes, [f]rom God to Rational Man, from Empire to Republic, from King to the People...the security of
the centre has been the shifting site from which the forces of authority, order and identity philosophically defined and physically
kept at bay anarchy, chaos and difference. The will to security, and the desire for substantive political community can each be seen
as the search for an Archimedean point on which we can safely rest and from which we can set out without fear. A number of
scholars questioning notions of political community challenge the view that the sovereign state is the only and ideal type of political
community in international relations as opposed to a convenient ideological fiction, on similar grounds. Discussions on community

The
system of sovereign states teaches us that communities cannot operate other than
by the exclusion of certain individuals, by the rhetorical and indeed physical
expulsion of non-citizens from within their midst . Sovereign power, as perceived by Giorgio
Agamben, is the power to determine whether individuals belong inside or outside of
community, and, therefore, to grant or deprive them of political rights. Sovereign linedrawing strategies and a politics of inclusion and exclusion , as Edkins and Vronique Pin-Fat
contend, condition to some extent the existence of community and of each and every
human being. Such a community, predicated upon exclusion and on Schmittian
contractarian notions, can clearly be seen at work in the discourse of the War on
Terror, a discourse which legitimises a level of oppression against excluded groups. This thesis can thus be seen, in part,
as an exploration of onto-political underpinnings of modern international politics , in
particular that which has the security of populations as its heart and end goal . The project of
speak to a wider range of themes and assumptions running through and underpinning Western political thought and practice.

politics has moved far away from making way for human beings freedom as possibility; this piece aims to challenge this and to
suggest that this has much to do with how community is envisaged or, perhaps more importantly, what possibilities are precluded
from being envisaged, within international relations literature. International

relations thought constitutes a citadel

of metaphysical thought on the political and often actively fosters the closure of
political thought and a reliance, instead, upon the technologised instrumentalisation of
it as representative-calculative thought. Western thinking has thus far aimed at an ontology of unconditioned
uncertainty. Politics is equated with technology and therefore also with metaphysics and
contemporary world society is equated with technologised totalitarian politicisation
of all life. Thus, to rethink community and reject modern politics of security is to
answer to an unforeseeable event that escapes any instituted order of meaning and
constitutes the site where the question of the very meaning of political existence is
reopened. It is the reinstating of a politics seeking to answer to the limit of the political a limit, as Nancy terms it, where all

politics stops and begins. The political is the place where community is brought into play as only a being-in-common can make
possible a being-separated. It is therefore important to ask deeper questions of the politics of security and to take us beyond merely
political objections to security (the argument, for example, that the pursuit of security is self-defeating and that security necessarily

It is a question of challenging the

ontological preoccupation with security and its commitment to politics of securing
specific modes and types of political community and organising with one another .
reduces politics to a dilemma among competing wills to security.)

Beyond the study of securitised subjectivity to securitised political organisation Of the investigations into the concept of security
that have preceded this one, some have explored security alongside political subjectivity, and specifically the existence of a
securitised subjectivity. Rob Walker, for example, details how modern accounts of security define the conditions under which we
have been constructed as subjects subject to subjection. They tell us who we must be. This understanding that our subjectivity is
bound up with, written by and disciplined through discourses of security, he argues, make[s] any simple, cursory rejection [of the
term] at best limited, at worst destined to replicate the terms which must be refused. These contributions are important to bear in
mind when discussing community and security alongside one another. The constitution of the subject certainly entails and is
inextricably linked with the constitution of a particular social or symbolic order. Neither one is prior to the other; indeed, notions of
priority and separation are themselves bound up with particular modern conceptions of a sovereign subjectivity. Political philosophy
tends to think of community as a wider subjectivity which has interesting implications but does not extend far enough to highlight
the fact that to think of community is to think within an instance of the political. Here, the political is taken to be the site where what
it means to be in common is open to definition, in opposition to politics which is seen as the play of forces and interests engaged in
a conflict over the representation and governance of social existence. As well as logics of security being keen to posit as known
certain notions of political community, they also aim to secure the position of the subject and the nature and stability of political

Far more important and revealing than attempting to rehabilitate the

security signifier for good is to challenge the claim that security is or must be
retained as the only positive value in world politics . Deeply embedded within modern
security politics and discourse and, indeed, within Western modernity itself, is a managerial sort of
anti-politics, which aims at routinisation, control, certainty and knowledge
processes which are wholly depoliticising, exclusionary, and, ultimately, contingent.
The will to security is, more often than not, the will to secure a specific type of substantive,
bounded, liberal form of political community rooted in social contractarian thought.
An exploration into alternative notions of community or organising politically reveals
this most effectively, and reveals the Western political thought which is based
around securing the lives of populations or subjects to be totalitarian and based on
contingent ontological assumptions posited as stable and necessary .
subjectivity.

Chapter 2 Imagining non-managerial

community: Challenges posed to security politics by inoperativity and immunity In this chapter I tackle the concept of community, specifically broaching the notions of inoperativity and immunity as forwarded in the philosophies of
Jean-Luc Nancy and Roberto Esposito. I look specifically at how these ideas challenge fundamental assumptions of current modes of liberal political thinking on community as well as their potential contributions for re-envisaging the
political and re-orientating away from a politics of security. An understanding of Nancys notion of inoperativity underpins a critique of substantive notions of community which form an important part of the techno-economic political
project of security. The idea that community cannot be put to work or utilised as a tool in a broader political operation or project is vital for understanding my wholesale critique of the current security politics. Thus, in the first
section of this chapter, I discuss the need for a recessed, inoperative domain in order for politics to be properly pursued. This domain is, I argue, incompatible with ideas and logics of security and securitisation. Second, I explore
Nancys take on the concept of being-with and argue that a co-existential ontology an appreciation that we exist only in relation to one another is vital in order to forward a valid notion of community, that of a community-of-being.
Third, having constructed an ontological framework borrowing from Nancian notions of being-in-common, I am then able to deploy and expand upon Espositos immunisation paradigm and to emphasise its potential to provide a
strong critique of the social contractarianism that Western liberal thought and political imagination, organisation and practice, including its politics of security, are reliant upon foundationally. It is argued that substantive, nonrelational notions of community underpinning securitisation preclude multifarious ways of being-together, which are obscured and disregarded in favour of a contractarian bond. In revealing Thomas Hobbes social contract, in
particular, to be a violent suppression of being-together, I see this bond, which is central to the functioning of logics of security, as a violent ir-relation, rather than a being-with. It is impossible, then, to break this cycle or war of
securitisation without a wholesale critique of operative, substantive and non-relational logics of community. To begin with, I tackle some of the common problems and pitfalls associated with the use of the concept of community
and defend my use of the term. Despite the efforts by many to deny the centrality of theorising being-together within political philosophy, thinking on political community does not leave us. As numerous and varying critiques of
the position, efficacy and legitimacy of the traditional sovereign nation-state abound, so too does thinking on political community. Efforts to locate political authority, order, sovereignty, legitimacy and organisation beyond the
sovereign state can be seen in the work of English School, cosmopolitan and communitarian thinkers. Additionally, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have attempted to reinstate Spinozan notions of the multitude into Anglophone
international relations discourse. There is, I argue, much contained within thinking about political organisation, and specifically about notions of community, that is useful for approaching some of the deadlocks arising from the
globalisation of Western liberal international politics. An oft-invoked argument for shunning thinking on political community is the danger that thinking on community leads too easily to a totalitarian or fascist political appropriation of
the idea. The concern that some form of fictional community will become the intractable, problematic heart of a political project is a very real and legitimate one. The closure of the political and concomitant descent into totalitarian
politics, which I raised as an important challenge to liberal democracy in the first chapter, is a risk when a foundational, non-fictional and substantive notion of community is propagated and when this is used as a point around which
politics can focus its energy on. This thesis is sceptical that Western liberal democracy signals an end to totalitarian politics; in fact, highlighting the assumptions about community which underpin these politics (especially those
which are driven by logics of security) reveals the continuities between liberal modes of anti-politics and the totalitarian closure of politics. Security politics are a contemporary, albeit vastly different, totalitarian style of politics
which closes the political to alternative philosophical concepts. So far, much writing on security has either constituted a denial of being-with, a project to actively destroy the possibility of this, or an unproblematised use of
community as an operative concept within a wider technical political project. The radical challenge that Nancy and Esposito pose to non-relational, liberal political community and foundational political and philosophical thought, to
which I turn in this chapter, resists the co-optation or re-appropriation for use as totalitarian political practice and eschews thinking politics in terms of certainty and security. Inoperativity and its challenge to the managerial project of
security There is simply no work that community could perform for the end of such exposure: it cannot be overcome or put operatively to any social or political task. Rather, community is precisely this exposition of finitude, not a
sublation producing a certain utility. Benjamin Hutchens It is my contention that traditional metaphysics and concomitant flawed assumptions about political subjectivity and community haunt Western political thought and have led
us to engagement in an endless war of securitisation in which the will to security forms the traumatic core of our (a)political projects. Crucially, this will to security denies politics a recessed inoperative domain, which, as Nancy
asserts, serves as a shared public space providing politics with sense and measure. Logics of security reduce politics to the management of life of populations and, as highlighted successfully in the Paris School of CSS, reduce
political method and practice to control, surveillance and the recording of data. Much contemporary political thought, especially that found in international relations discourse and security studies, reifies techno-economical
organisation or the making operational of the world. Even those scholars who attempt to locate political community and possibilities of being-together outside the sovereign state conceive of this as a project, as essentially a
matter of work, operation or operativity, which is at the root of flawed thinking on community and politics. History has long been thought on the basis of a lost community to be regained or reconstituted. The natural family, the
Athenian city or the Roman republic are all ways in which this lost, or broken, community is exemplified. Modernity is imbued, as Nancy contends, with thinking about a lost age in which community was woven of tight, harmonious
and infrangible bonds and in which above all it played back to itself, through its institutions, its rituals, and its symbols, the representation, indeed the living offering, of its own immanent unity, intimacy and autonomy. Rousseaus
contract can be seen as an example of this mode of thinking as it does not merely institute a body politic but dissolves community into the general political will and, in so doing, also produces mankind itself. This is because Rousseau
substantialises community and proceeds to subordinate it to a public will, which, in fact, constitutes a dissolution of bonds. In creating social arrangements, it generates a determined community in the place of a free flow of
relations of being-with. Similar actions and injuries can be seen in efforts of orthodox security thought and practice which seek to protect the sovereign state as the ideal mode of political organisation to bring order and political life
against outside threats to an ideal community that is constantly posited as having existed in the past and/or able to be retrieved in the future. This arises from a failure to grasp communitys central dynamic: that of being-with
others, also central to the notion of inoperativity. In other accounts of community, including those permeating the security discourse, there is an assumption that there is, somewhere, another substantial basis of being that simply
requires a technical programme of realisation in order to unmask it. The assumption in the security literature is that the security of subjects and of communities is a prerequisite to the revelation of this other substantial ontological
basis. Without security, qualified political life is impossible, but we are led to believe that each of these things is lying in wait just around the corner. It is assumed that a certain substance is immanent to the beings that comprise the
community and that, while this substance may be obscured or imperfectly revealed, it merely requires a technical program one centred on a will to securitise individual subjects or sovereign states - in order to realise its potential.
This dynamic, in which a particular concept (or figure) is assumed to represent or comprise the immanent substantial basis of community, is referred to by Nancy as figuration. Figuration, a quasi-messianic concept which is put
beyond contestation in the political arena, constitutes, ultimately, a totalitarian philosophical determination of the political. In much modern Western political thought, this is the will to security. The task at hand, in figurative
accounts of community is the realisation of the substance that the figure is assumed to represent. All that fails to correspond to the decreed program of realising this immanent substance is disavowed, elided, obscured and
ultimately destroyed. In our times, the task is predicated on the security of subjects, with anything that diverts our attention from this deemed irrelevant. Despite the obvious failure of many efforts to secure in a diverse array of
contexts, such figures continue to exercise a grip on politics under the assumption that these failings are mere empirical imperfections of transcendental substances that can be remedied by better programs of security or the
realisation of the lost basis of community. How, then, should we conceive of a contrasting, inoperative community? Contrary to the lost community paradigm, in which community is lying in wait for the revelation of a substantial
basis of being, and rather than being historically superseded by society, community constantly appears in the wake of society, as an event. Community is based, or founded, on the lack which derives from the impossibility of
complete immanence and is constituted by an infinite lack of infinite identity. Through notions of finitude, we are able to retrace community and to describe the essence of finite being as the sharing of singularities. Here,
philosophical understanding of community is stripped bare to its basic elements: the nature of the clinamen or of the basic social relation, not among individuals, but among singularities. These singularities have nothing in common,
but, as Nancy explains, they com-pear [com-paraissent] each time in common in the face of the withdrawal of their common being. And, thus, it is only through the withdrawal of communion, immanence or work that community
appears. The answer, then, lies in thinking of the finite being as a singular being, which is not the individual. Community is not to be thought as the relations between sovereign individualities, but rather as relational singularity. The
individual in liberal modernity is modelled upon the self-sufficient modern subject which, in its monadic existence, does not rely on other individuals. It does not relate, it does not compear and it does not share. Singularities, on the
other hand, are exposed to the in-between through their relation of sharing. They are constituted by, as Oliver Marchart explains, the sharing that makes them others: other for one another, and other, infinitely other for the Subject
of their fusion, which is engulfed in the sharing, in the ecstasy of sharing. One of the central themes and arguments of this chapter is that inoperativity is central to a critique of politics that centres on logics of security and empties
politics of contestation, choice, sense and measure. We are caught within the imagination of an operative or managerial type of world community, based on fundamental misconceptions surrounding subjectivity and political
ontology which has left little room for contesting claims and concepts. The notion of inoperativity centres on questions of Being, in particular that Being is the plurality of always singular instances of being and that this plurality is
inscribed into the very differential structure of Being. The question of the possibility of the metaphysics of a non-substantial community centres around and is reliant upon a coexistential analytic, in which the question of
coexistence is the ontological question par excellence. An understanding of this is central to a thorough critique of the contractarian politics of security, and so it is to the question of Being that I now turn. Community, security &
Being: The implications of Nancys coexistential ontology The individual is merely the residue of the experience of the dissolution of community. Jean-Luc Nancy Claims to the pursuit of security presuppose a referent object in need of

securing, one which is able to be secured. There are certain assumptions about the nature of this person, thing or community, to be secured that underlie this claim or desire. In this section I want to investigate Nancys elaboration of
ontology as being singular plural and to place the question of community directly alongside that of being. In contradistinction to Hobbes, Rousseau and Kant, Nancy stresses a community-of-being over and above the notion of the
being-of-community. Being is necessarily being-with. Even as singularities, for Nancy, we are immediately in a relation of being-with other singularities, thus a singularity is indissociable from a plurality and [a]ll experiences of
being a self are formed in the context of always already being-with-others. The focus, then, is not on how we might establish a bond between us, but rather on how it is that we have come to consider ourselves separate in the first
place. This question encourages us to rethink political organisation and to problematise, perhaps irrevocably and irreparably, a politics of the securing of subjects. It is often noted in both critical and traditional security literature, as
briefly discussed in the first chapter, that understanding how we have been written by security also demands an understanding of how securitys logic is bound up in the promise of existence. We are, for many international relations
theorists, unable to live and engage as political subjects without enjoying a certain level of security. Security is posited, Anthony Burke contends, as an overarching political goal and practice that guarantees existence itself, which
makes the possibility of the world possible. Western political thought is thus preoccupied with substantial concern for specifying conditions under which rulers can guarantee their subjects a secure private existence as well as to
decide at what price, in terms of obligations and duties, subjects ought to pay for this privilege. Security is necessarily implicated in this. As V. Spike Peterson contends, subjects engage in the exchange of obedience/subordination
for (promises of) security She goes on to outline the ways in which, protection systems also reproduce non-participatory dynamics while obscuring accountability of protectees for maintaining boundaries, hierarchies, and identities
that are the medium and outcome of protection systems...Identification of the protected with their protectors (as opposed to other protectees), as well as identification of protectors with each other, further complicates alliance
formation directed at transforming the system itself. Protection systems also distort the meaning of consent by both mystifying the violence that backs up the systemic inequality and perpetuating the illusion of equality among
parties to contractual obligations. The liberal account of the political constitution of the subject, as brought out by Peterson with notions of distorted consent and the illusion of equality within protection discourse, is
fundamentally challenged by a Nancian ontology in which being is, in fact, between-beings, one of being-together or being-with. In this respect, Nancy takes his cue from Heidegger, who reinstates Dasein (being-there)as Mitsein
(being-with), with Nancy radicalising this hypothesis to place the with at the heart of Being so that the order of ontological exposition in philosophy is reversed and Mitsein, in fact, ontologically precedes Dasein. The between, the
with and the together are all irreducible aspects of Being which therefore can only be thought of as being singular plural. An ontology of singular-plural Being, which starts from the plural singular of origins (from being-with)
radically challenges the methodological individualism of accounts of security which presuppose a subject there to be secured prior to any necessary relation with others. The politics of the securitised, protected subject are founded
upon and simultaneously work to create people who are willing to subordinate affirmative values to the necessities of security, a logic which, above all, ensures the security of the sovereign, rational self and state. The flawed
presupposition of substantial individuals whose essence and being is ontologically predetermined (beings-as-such) as well as rationally, politically and juridically pre-established is an assumption that is often challenged in poststructuralist international relations literature. How can this critique be extended to my discussion of the ideological bias surrounding community which forms an immutable foundation of modern security politics? Contra Descartes,
Nancy coins ego sum expositus (I am first of all exposed to the other, and exposed to the exposure of the other.) Within this, lies the proposition that community is not merely the aggregation of individual subjects conceived
ontologically as unencumbered and antecedently individuated...[and thus] prior to society as it appears within liberal-contractarian traditions. In fact, it is the linkages of sharing that interrupt such collectivisation and reflect its
substantial and operative cohesion that constitute the sense of community. The finitude of singular being is always presented communally, and is always exposed to the judgements of community formative of law. Co-appearing, as
these singular beings do, does not mean that there is any bond among them, as if something were superimposed upon them. There is merely the material and immaterial spaces of sharing in the between and the with that
singular beings share among themselves. With this understanding, it perhaps becomes possible to imagine community and freedom existing within mutually habitable, rather than viciously and unsustainably circumscribed limits.
Giorgio Agamben , Maurice Blanchot , Franoise Dastur and Alphonso Lingis have each engaged in a rethinking of Mitsein, exploring the implications of regarding being-with as more primordial than being and the consequent
priority of the question of community to that of being. The emphasis on Mitsein signals a move from a thinking of being as substance to one which thinks being as act. This is how these accounts of community differ significantly from
those which call for a world community, a common humanity, or from liberal cosmopolitan calls for the transformation of political community. The act is motivated by the excessive character of the relation of the I to the Other, with
the excess generating a movement or a dynamic sharing of the world between us. In this understanding, community is not a substance that is shared, but a dynamic movement of sharing. The shift from a substantial to a dynamic
conception of community appears to offer a philosophical questioning of being and community which escapes the strictures of substantivist metaphysics. The will to security and its inextricable link with the spectre of insecurity
demands a subordination of affirmative becoming, and fosters, as James Der Derian asserts, a herd morality which enslaves through its affirmation of life as slavery. Writers who (implicitly or explicitly) adopt a co-existential
ontology, on the other hand, are able to explore possibilities of finding grounding and foundational legitimacy for modern democratic politics away from the state, away from the institutions of international politics and away from
substantive notions of individual being. For Agamben, for example, the novelty of what he optimistically terms the coming politics or the coming community is that it will no longer be a struggle for the conquest or control of the
state, but a struggle between the state and the non-state (humanity), an insurmountable disjunction between whatever singularity and the state organisation. Whatever singularities, he explains, cannot form a societas because
they do not possess any identity to vindicate nor any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition. In the final instance the state can recognise any claim for identity even that of a state identity within a state. What it cannot
tolerate is that the singularities form a community without affirming an identity, or the idea that humans co-belong without any representable condition of belonging. These ideas are explored effectively by a number of postcolonial
scholars and others who challenge the reification of sovereignty and the nation-state within international relations and the unachievable demands that they place on subaltern subjects, for example, indigenous populations. And thus
we can link being-with back to inoperativity. In this understanding, community is made by the retreat or subtraction of the fulfilled infinite identity of community what Nancy terms its work. It is through this lack of a particular
substance of being contra liberal and nationalist conceptions of community that we are able to realise an unmanageable, unworking or inoperative community beyond our instrumental control. Political programs imply this
work, either as the product of the working community, or else the community itself as work. But, in fact, it is the work that the community does not do and that it is not that forms it. The community that becomes a single thing (be it
a body, a mind, a fatherland, or a leader) necessarily loses the in of being-in-common, losing the with or the together that defines it. It yields its being-together to a being of togetherness. The truth of community, on the contrary,

itself comes to be defined as relational, as non-absoluteness,

and as community. According to contractarian notions of sociality, by contrast,
communities are groups of pre-existing individuals whose bonds politics works to tie
or untie. I now explore the contention that the community which features in
accounts of modern liberal politics of security is what Roberto Esposito would term
an immunised community or immunity. This would support Nancys contention that
the violent repression of being-in-common is the permanent rule of Western
thought. Within the political imaginary of security politics, communities are
rendered immune, that is, the immunisation project of modernity has been
directed against the law of associated coexistence and they have been left bare.
Immunity and the violence enacted by liberal social-contractarian thought [T]he
Leviathan-State coincides with the breaking of every communitarian bond, with the
squelching of every social relation thats foreign to the vertical exchange of
protection obedience. It is the bare relation of no relation. Roberto Esposito In
revealing liberal community as immunity, Esposito looks to the complex and
combined concept of munus from the Latin communitas. Munus can be seen as the
dialectics of community; at once gift and obligation, benefit and service rendered,
joining and threat. Modern liberal politics and especially, perhaps, those of war and
the pursuit of security, attempt the suppression of the former concepts and the
furthering of the latter. The social contract at the heart of the politics of protection
and security is, thus, the absence of munus and the concomitant loss of a dialectical
understanding of community. Modern contractarian individuals, as I have
previously mentioned, are absolute individuals, bordered in such a way that they
are isolated and protected from one another. However, this isolation, and the
contract itself, can only be achieved if they are freed in advance from the debt
that binds them one to the other. Thus, an immunised community is one in which
individuals are released from, exonerated, or relived of the contact that exposes
them to the contagion of the relation with others which could lead to possible
conflict. For Esposito, the philosopher who followed this logic to its extreme
theoretical consequence was Hobbes. What men have in common, what makes
them more like each other than anything else, is their generalised capacity to be
killed. As Agamben consistently asserts [t]he first foundation of political life is a life
resides in the retreat of such a being and hence Being

that may be killed, which is politicised through its very capacity to be killed.
Political community is based on the possibility of this punishment. Thus, for Hobbes,
communitas (cum with munus or a sharing of munus) is to be feared; it carries with
it the gift of death. In order to protect, or securitise, we must immunise ourselves
beforehand and, in doing so, negate the very foundations of community. In Hobbes,
this expresses itself in his eagerness to understand causes in order facilitate the
development of a science that can make us masters and possessors of nature thus
enabling us to eliminate the danger of violent death. Esposito posits that modernity
underwent a process of auto-immunisation; immunisation brought modernity into
existence, and modernity started when politics was coupled with biology and
centred on the survival and reproduction of life. In this way, Hobbes represents the
paradigmatic philosopher of modernity, since with his philosophy the question of an
immunitary self-preservation of life came to the centre of political theory and praxis.
Nowhere does this manifest itself more clearly than within modern logics of
securitisation. Our existence is dominated by fear and insecurity. Peculiar to our
modern life is a constant demand for protection with new, imaginary, and concrete
borders emerging everywhere. We feel as if our lives are threatened from all sides
and demand, more and more, immunisation from these threats. The relationship
with others seems to involve the threat of contamination and, although Esposito
does not deny that immunity is necessary for the survival of an organism, if it grows
in excess, it leads to the death of the organism. The modern securit
d state does not eliminate the fear from which it is originally generated; in fact,
more worryingly, it is founded precisely on fear as the motor and guarantee of the
states functioning. In this paradoxical situation, common ground is shifted from
within to without and, as Esposito contends, [i]t is as if the victimizing mechanism
suitable for maintaining the community were to determine at the same time an
absolute exteriorization that subtracts community from itself: the common now
describes in fact the enemy that attacks it and the power that keeps it united
against the enemy. Modern political thought on security and the sovereign state
sees an acceptance that the relation between individuals is destructive and
that the only route of escape and hope for salvation from this is the
destruction of the relation itself. Hence, the drastic elimination of every kind of social bond is necessitated. Only
by dissociating themselves absolutely from any relation can individuals avoid lethal contact. Agamben and Alain Badiou
have each shown that the state is not founded on a social bond but , rather, on its
dissolution and unbinding. Sovereign subjects are those that have nothing in
common since everything is divided (not shared) between mine and yours . This
dovetails with Nancian ontology and Nancys claim that modern philosophy and politics are constantly engaged in a project to
repress the with of being-with. As a consequence of the destruction of relationality, [l]ife is sacrificed to the preservation of life
and community is the victim of this dialectic. The paradoxical and irrational nature of the sum of refusals out of which sovereign
authorisation is made is revealed. Thus [t]he modern subject who enjoys civil and political rights is itself an attempt to attain
immunity from the contagion of the possibility of community. Similar themes can be seen in the figure of Agambens homo sacer
who is at once, and paradoxically, included in the social order by his very exclusion. Exclusion from the protections and official
punishments of the political order is the ultimate punishment, meaning that exclusion from the political order is itself a relationship
to the political order. Contractarian thought attempts to demonstrate the manner in which the linkages between individuals
constitute social reality, but, in fact, it eradicates them in the name of political standards of appropriation. The politics of security
are impoverished by its presumption of the political in terms of contractually constituted and tacitly bound subjectivity as if there
are no ties prior to the contract for the provision of security. The nihilistic and destructive character of this decision to sacrifice life to
the preservation of life, is a theme to which I will return in the following chapter. Away from security and operation, towards a politics
of unworking This chapter has challenged the liberal, substantive notions of community permeating security discourse and practice

Modern politics of
security and the logics underpinning them are founded upon the liberalwhich treat of community as simply the result of an empirical gathering of political subjects.

contractarian tradition which takes humans as solitary in nature and attempts to

reconcile the conflicts that it assumes will occur between these individuals in their
attempt to share space. This tradition, as Coward asserts, assumes community as an antecedent, contingent aspect of
being (almost a nuisance), not essential to it. A challenge to this thinking is offered by Nancys co-existential analytic which
encourages us to question not only how we can be together, but how we ever managed to imagine ourselves as separated from one
another in the first place. Community, rather than constituting a substantial and bordered point on a map, is made by the retreat or
subtraction of its work or of the infinite lack of infinite identity. It is through this lack of a particular substance of being that we are

Modern security practices imply

operativity and attempt to put community to work within a managerial political
program, obscuring the fact that it is the work that the community does not do that
forms it. Challenging hegemonic power structures, including that of security theory and practice requires a non- or antimanagerial outlook. The notion of an inoperative community serves as a bulwark both
against a totalising globalism dominated by hegemonic power and against the
surrender of politics to the relentless self-interest of individualistic agents (be these states,
able to realise an inoperative community beyond our instrumental control.

corporations or private individuals). All of the work done to realise a substantial basis for being, of which modern politics of security
are a part, is perpetually undone by the existential priority of relationality and without a theory of being which hinges on

nonmanagerial politics of unworking is incompatible with notions of bordered individual

sovereign subjects, with social contractarian thought and with the will to security
that stems from these.
relationality, we are destined to remain within the violent logic of securitisation to which we have become accustomed. A

Unworking first comprises a return the origins and foundations of Western thinking on security and, above all, to challenging the current dominant ways of approaching

philosophically these origins. It does not merely entail a question of replacing the politics of security with a politics of community. Nancy fails in The Inoperative Community to answer the charge that community, as philosophys
responsibility after nature, is still just one more myth in myriad narratives of nature. In problematising the foundations of Western thinking on security, it is not adequate to posit community as an answer, as merely the story of
another coming, the last god, or a new poiesis of world. Nor is it a case of positioning relationality as a new, revived, desirable onto-theological discourse after numerous attempts to locate meaning and foundation for political
thought have manifestly failed. These are the themes which motivate the final chapter of this thesis; the philosophical approaches necessitated in order to avoid reviving onto-theological discourse perhaps offer the most promising
way out of the impasse that logics of securitisation and of secure community currently constitute within international relations thought. Chapter 3 Onto-theologies of security and community: Rethinking international relations
through notions of encounter There are many questions, posited as perennial, that the study and practice of security, within broader international relations discourse, claim to address. Many of these are the very same questions that
thinking on political community is trying provide answers to. In this chapter, I explore a number of these, arguing that alongside radically different thinking on community, it is also necessary to approach alternatively the seemingly
immutable foundations of international relations thought in order to expose the war of securitisation in which we find ourselves as ideological and contingent. Logics of securitisation, as well as being necessitated by, and
simultaneously fostering liberal, substantive notions of political immunity, also work to control and manage the aleatory element of life and death. The same might be said of much thinking on community. As Nancy asserts,
[c]onceiving of singular resistances (such as death) that disrupt the ever-threatening closure of substantial communities under given conventions and that open singular beings to the circulation of sense is both necessary for, and
frustrating of, any contemporary conception of community. For many, security through sovereignty, rather than a political choice, is a necessary reaction to an anarchical condition. Security and order are posited as conditions of
possibility for community and, more radically still, the thought of community and our desire for it is often seen to be little more than a belated invention that tries to respond to the harsh reality of modern experience. In order to
respond to such questions, it is necessary to show that both the will to security, and the closely inter-related technologised and managerial political thinking on community is a component of the broader Western political and
philosophical thinking which seeks metaphysical ground, in short, in order that something is thought as opposed to nothing. As Dillon asserts, the fate of metaphysics and the fate of the politics of security are inextricably
intertwined. Metaphysically determined communities are a foundational requirement to security. In this, my final chapter, I briefly explore the philosophical and onto-theological foundations of the will to security which will help us to
understand the ways in which logics of securitisation work to advocate bounded, contractarian, operative community within liberal political thought and, more importantly, to foreclose all alternatives. In this chapter, I link both the
impulse to know and see absolutely and the fear of the catastrophic threat-event that is the breakdown of order at the heart of modern security politics, to an onto-theological impulse as a desire for pure fulfilment and to liberal
political thought grounded in the ideas of fear, finitude and salvation. I argue that we must adopt a radically different approach to foundations in both philosophy and politics, and further advocate the unworking of politics in order
to break out of the war of securitisation deadlock in which we find ourselves. Origins and foundations of the will to security From lost communities and the origins of the social contract, to contemporary discourses of protection and
risk, the politics of security, and that of Western political and philosophical thought more generally, is the search for foundations and representation when it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is very little from which to
ground our thinking on the political. To think without security politics and rather, with the unworking of politics and community, is also to think alongside the absence of metaphysical yardsticks, think beyond political foundations and
at the end of politics. This mode of thinking is, as Nancy claims, a blessing and a defect at the same time an anomaly never felt more keenly that we feel it today. Our task is to work out where this blessing and defect might
respectively be leading us. Security politics are predicated on the fear of the vastly misunderstood origins surrounding the birth of the sovereign state and the return to a Hobbesian state of nature. The origins of the project of
modernity, based as it was on fear and possible salvation, seem to determine its outcome. It is therefore to origins that I now turn, in order to argue that we have inherited an onto-theology of security and that these logics (and the
politics which stem from them) start to make less sense if we unpack and critique this. It is possible to adopt a radically different approach to origins which eschew the onto-theological ones that we have inherited, with an
understanding of Louis Althussers aleatory materialism and the notion of the encounter. Onto-theology, as Coward contends, refers to the manner in which an ontology, or theory of being, is predicated on a transcendent value (a
value that is taken to be a universal essence independent of any particular empirical circumstances). In other words, the philosophical search for the ground of being (a universal truth), and the theological search for that which
explains being (God as the creator) are joined into one. The recent theological turn in continental philosophy, much of which is, for Anthony Paul Smith and Daniel Whistler, a reaction to the theologisation of philosophy, is offering
political philosophers new avenues for thinking and, in particular, for challenging the apparent completion of the political that I referred to at the opening of the thesis. The aim of many, including this author, is to attempt to
liberate philosophy, along with political thinking, from theological constraints and to challenge the revival of onto-theological discourses that clearly permeate writing on community and security in an attempt to deconstruct them
and thus free thinking on the political. Much Western liberal thinking on community can be seen as an extension of Christian eschatology. Global politics are, I have argued, governed by a single, dominant principle; that of attending
to a messianic and salvific will to security. Alongside this, we see the securitisation project justified by the pretensions of enlightenment and secularisation discourses, in which God has apparently been replaced by mans reason and
will. As Dillon argues, [s]ecularization theses flatten the violent differences that persisted within the medieval church just as much as they exaggerate the extent to which the modern problematization of politics and rule has been
secularized. Any new accounts of community within international relations have an important and pervasive onto-theological foundation to contend with. Similarly, discourses of security which espouse the securing of humankind or
humanity must search for the assumptions rooting claims, for instance the contention that we all share something essential which sovereign power and liberal political community are able to secure. To fail to do so only revives
and strengthens onto-theological discourses and, I argue in this essay, problematic discourses of sovereignty, security and bounded community. Thinking on Western liberal political community, and, indeed, much international
relations thought, is centred on the Hobbesian social contract, which is itself rooted in Christian conceptions of community alongside fear, and the notion that man can and must master nature. As Der Derian contends, Hobbes
provides onto-theological foundations of an epistemic realism, in the sense of an ethico-political imperative embedded in the nature of things. The security of epistemic realism is ontological, theological and teleological: that is,
metaphysical. In the modern, Hobbesian perception of community, the love for ones neighbour is directly proportional to the memory of common danger that we share. If the community of sin from which we originate is marked by
fear, no-one can be secure in this life, as it is literally besieged by death. As Gillespie contends, according to Hobbes, [t]he world for natural man is a dark place ruled by a mysterious and indefinable force that ultimately produces
our death which pushes us ultimately toward an encounter with the reality of the natural world, facilitating the development of a science that would make us masters and possessors of nature and enable us to eliminate the danger of

Modern security politics are motivated, I argue, by this Hobbesian fear of violent death,
inextricably linked to the fear of a breakdown of order tout court. As Dillon asserts,
[t]he catastrophic threat-event of the dissolution of the temporal order of things is
continuously also interrogated to supply the governing technologies , by which the
political order is regulated in peace to be fit for war and is regulated so as to resist
the same catastrophic threat-event. Dillon thus terms modern international politics
a katenchontic war of endless securitization. Arguing that security politics contain
a kind of political eschatology (i.e. we work on the assumption of the coming end of
things), he explains the katechon as the desire to secure against this end, in order
to avoid, at all costs, the catastrophe that would be the dissolution of the normal
order of things. Ideas of eschatology, of salvation, and a desire for belonging to God
or to the sovereign, return us to the ideas of a lost oneness that never was that also
permeate traditional thinking on community. This is of concern because, along with
the promise of an eschaton within modern security politics determined as they are
violent death.

which is

by their form as politics thought in the last light of things is the indispensability of
the katechon. This is due to the aporetic faith of political modernity: one of a justice
not in this life, but of a justice to come. The katechon is underpinned and
maintained by the ever-presence of fear which is reduced by the social contract but
does not recede and is not forgotten. In the second chapter, I mentioned Nancys
messianic notion of figuration and the way in which, implied within thinking on
community is the idea that we are waiting for a figure, person or concept to reveal a
hidden, substantial basis for being that has thus far been obscured. I suggested that
in much of Western liberal political thinking, this figure is the will to security. The will
to security is the onto-theological gesture that simultaneously attempts to name the
ground of being and yet place it beyond question or to make it an assumption or
article of faith. This is based on assumptions of, and in order to safeguard, liberal
political community and sovereignty. The parallels between the sovereign and God
are well-known to readers of Carl Schmitts Political Theology. Schmitt describes the
social contract thus: the terror of the state of nature drives anguished individuals to
come together, their fear rises to an extreme: a spark of reason (ratio) flashes, and
suddenly there stands in front of them a new god. This powerful narrative acts to
bolster the notion, pervasive in international relations discourses which have
typified the Westphalian era, that states exhibit an inner circle of harmony and
progress within an outer circle of the eternal recurrence of competition and conflict.
As Linklater asserts, [t]he tyranny of the concept of the sovereign nation-state has
impoverished the Western political imagination, and left it ill-prepared for the
current challenge of rethinking the foundations of modern community. Modern
security studies and politics serve only to fuel this and to render Western thought
increasingly impoverished and political possibility foreclosed. The katechontic will to
security acts to produce and reproduce certain operative, circumscribed, sovereign
forms of political community. Aleatory materialism and a philosophy of the
encounter: Challenging the will to power of sovereign presence In order to
understand how this production and reproduction takes place, and, in so doing, to
fundamentally challenge the ontology of security and community (as well as other
building blocks of IR, such as sovereignty, the state, order, and international
anarchy), I consider at this juncture the potential of Louis Althussers aleatory
materialist philosophy of the encounter. Althusser thinks about origins in terms of
moments of contingent encounter for which a notion of the aleatory is necessitated.
He stresses the importance of the encounter in relation to the emergence of
capitalism in Europe the existence of which must be thought of as alongside its
non-existence in order to emphasise the process of establishing the accomplished
fact rather than thinking the accomplished fact itself but applied this equally
usefully when talking about the emergence of the state. In doing so, he was able to
fundamentally challenge idealist and teleological accounts of both the formation of
the state and of capitalism. It is through a radically different approach to origins as
encounters that we might discover a route to challenging fundamentally the
politics of security and liberal notions of immunised, bounded community. For
Agamben, the problem at stake in political thought is the rethinking of...a
presupposed condition of relevance or possibility and more generally the rethinking
of the very act of transmission of traditions as a problem , as an embarrassment even, rather
than as a presupposed and unthinkable dogma . It is with aleatory materialism, and its emphasis on

encounter, contingency and chance, perhaps, that we see the most fundamental rejection of the cogent necessity of old models and
the site of the greatest opening up of possibilities for thinking differently about security and the state as ideal political community,

Rather than viewing the world as a fait

accompli, the encounter reveals that which makes the fait accompli , requiring us to
look at the way in which the state (as ideal type of political community, necessitating an endless war of
securitisation in order to protect it as such) is produced through an ex nihilo encounter , rather than
as a teleology forming an immutable building block of international relations theory. Thus we
along with their respective positions within international relations.

can begin to understand Nancys assertion of community as non-necessity or as an escape from teleology. Community is not
something that may be produced and instituted or whose essence could be expressed in a work of any kind, and thus it cannot be
the object or telos of a politics. In fact, despite Rousseauean assertions, there is no absent foundation that could act as the present
ground on which community could be built. Continuing to uphold notions of community as immunity is to fail to escape violent logics
of security. What the community sacrifices to its own self-preservation is not other from itself but, rather, it is sacrificed in the
sacrifice not only of the enemy but also of every single member of community, since every member finds in its own being the
originary figure of the first enemy. Sacrifice responds to this origin, to the fear that the origin provokes and infinitely reactivates it in
a circle from which we still have not emerged. To challenge this opens up the possibility of challenging other ideological founding
assumptions of international relations, such as sovereignty and the false dichotomy between order and disorder. It also opens up
political possibility surrounding political organisation. It is clear that we have come to privilege the sovereign state as the sole and
best provider of security. Richard Ashley notes that the privileging of certain terms as a higher reality casts others in only in a
derivative and negative way...as something that endangers this ideal. If security is to be understood in the forms explored
throughout this thesis as a logic embedded in tying down, making knowable and certain, and demanding a totalised and hegemonic
subjectivity, then it is not a case of changing provider or referent within this project.

The alternative is key --- rejecting the ontological project of

security is the only way to challenge sovereign violence
Raw 11 (Jessica M.Sc. from Aberystwyth University, Exploring Security and
Community: Inoperativity, Immunity and Political Organisation, MSc(Econ) in the
Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University, 9-19-11,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/7811/raw%20jessica
%20ipm0060.docx?sequence=1)
Whatever is seen to challenge the project of security, whoever is posited as a
possible alternative agent other than the state and whatever alternative notions of
political community to be secured are forwarded , are each going to be seen to
endanger the ideal of security. It is with a critique of security such as the one offered
in this thesis that we might challenge sovereign power and the biopolitical
management of life. Thus, the more interesting challenge might not be the resistance
to a particular sovereign order of security , but to the disruption of security as a
sovereign order, as a challenge to sovereignty itself, an idea that has been explored by Edkins
and Veronique Pin-Fat. Perhaps the loss of the theological sovereign thus opens the possibility
of a new sense of politics, and raises the question of how the sense of being-incommon can make itself sovereign in a new way. Efforts on the part of some scholars to move beyond
the state in order to try and locate political life and community often fail because their theories and political projects are predicated
on the necessary existence of the state, concomitant logics of security, and the reality of the these as accomplished facts as the
guarantee of their durability. Any notion of an aleatory encounter and the profound implications of thinking in this way are rendered
peripheral. Utopian political projects are pursued in order to try to transcend sovereignty and to locate the political outside the state.
Without breaking free from the liberal, cosmopolitan model, which sees the state as immutable, these projects continue to suffer
from the illusion of representation and do not escape teleology or idealism, serving ultimately to give new life to onto-theological

A philosophy of the
encounter, one in which we think in terms of no determination of the being which
issues from the 'taking-hold' of the encounter as being prefigured , allows us to grasp
the political immanently, to think of world-becoming as detheologized, that is to say without recourse to an image or
representation of the world: the world is simply the accomplished fact . Neither security nor
community can serve as the figures or foundations on which to think and build
politics if they are re-thought in these ways . Conclusion Death is the scandal, the ultimate humiliation of reason. It
discourses attempting to imbue meaning onto politics transcendentally where, in fact, none exists.

saps the trust in reason and the security that reason promises. Zygmunt Bauman It is the contention of this thesis that liberal political immunity and its
basis in immunised Hobbesian social contractarian thought is dependent on insecurity and exclusion for its survival as such and that the study of security,
by both orthodox and critical scholars, does not fully problematise this dependency. Much of the security literature (explicitly in the case of orthodox

studies, and implicitly, I argue, in the case of CSS) advocates the protection and consolidation of operative, immunised communities which foreclose and
preclude multifarious ways in which we might be together. Western politics as a vast machine that attempt to capture and control life, repress any
possibility of being-in-common. Nowhere do we recognise its overreach more keenly than in modern discourse and practice of security, and it is this
problem that this thesis has addressed. Modern politics of security preclude the opening up of politics to negotiation, contestation, and the productive
interplay of competing philosophical claims regarding community. It has been argued that the politics of security, which attempt to limit the aleatory
element of life and death, fail abjectly to answer questions of community as relationality and that the liberal contractarian thought which underpins it
actively works to destroy possibilities of being-with one another. It has been my intention to deconstruct our thinking on community so that we might
unmask its contingency and to highlight how the will to security, in its efforts to physically or symbolically secure space, prohibits any notion of space as
continually negotiated. The Hobbesian social contract does not make sense and does not function as such without relation in and of itself being immunised
and, ultimately, destroyed. At the bottom, that which the community wants to exclude is that which does not let itself be identified in it and thus exclusion
is an illusion. Exclusionary community which, I argue, a politics of security is reliant on, is both morally and ontologically untenable as relationality is
dependent upon a constant unworking in order to make sense as such. Communities as singularities facing each other in death are necessarily
radically unmanageable, unstable and insecure. Rather than an empirical reality or presence, what we share is the lack of community. Community is an
open spacing of others that excludes the possibility of foundation, even the foundation seemingly created from the exclusion of others. It is this sharing,
this being-with or co-appearance to one another as such vulnerable beings that constitute insubstantial community. This sharing serves as the
groundlessness that singularises and differentiates beings as such. The politics of security, however, attempt to work something which is unworkable
and inoperative. Logics of security work to silence any alternative thinking on community and, speaking only within the prevailing paradigm, bolster
ideas of hierarchical authority and of sovereignty, refusing the recognition of dependencies upon any open community, and ultimately eradicating the
singularities of the entities that compose it. There is a largely unwritten and unproblematised collective denial within thinking on security of the idea that,
currently, political communities are indebted to insecurity for their existence and that this immunitary logic permeates much of international relations
discourse. The roots of security politics in the Hobbesian state of generalized conflict, and the institution of sovereign power that acts to protect, or better
immunize, the community from a threatened return to conflict, links sovereign power theoretically to communal self-preservation and self-negation.
Richard Wyn Jones warned in 1999 that the pressures for conformism are heightened in the field of security studies when governments have a very real

To challenge the reduction of politics and the closure of

the political at the behest of modern security politics is to challenge the
line-drawing depoliticisation and violence of sovereign power . It is to render
problematic and contingent what has been posited as accomplished and , therefore,
necessary. The will to security, and its problematic and contested foundations, shelter us from the unbearable excess of
interest in marginalizing dissent.

community, and it is with a radically different approach to the stubborn foundations of international relations thought that we can
successfully unmask and challenge this. A number of the themes motivating a critique of modern security politics also act to expose
the problems posed by traditional metaphysics within modern Western political thought. Hobbes has placed the problem of the

it is in exploring modern thought and practice of

security that we can see it constituting by far its most prevalent dimension and
foreclosing any possibility of a constitutive power that is not sovereign power .
Sovereignty is seen to be the common sense solution to managing the aleatory
element of death, but is also revealed as the not-being-in-common of individuals and
as the political form of their desocialisation . Along with reducing international political thought and practice
conservatio vitae at the centre of political thought, and

to the katechontic and endless war of securitisation, it has rendered the self-preservation of life as the modern problem and driving

It is only with a rejection of immunitary logics, a cogent

reassertion of relationality and of the aleatory element of life and death, and an
approach which grasps the necessity of contingency and encounter , that we can
hope for politics to be something other than the possibility or the instrument for
keeping life alive.
force of international relations.

democracy
Democratic discourse drives biopolitical action by the state
Gven, 08 (Ferit, professor of philosophy at Earlham College. Received MA. and
Ph.D. from the philosophy department, of DePaul University, Foucault, Biodisciplinary Power and the Problem of Democracy Abstracts: Foucault Circle 2008
http://foucault.siu.edu/pdf/abs08.pdf)//BW
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Foucaults conception of power developed in Discipline and Punish
(disciplinary power) and The History of Sexuality (bio-power), provides an adequate starting point for understanding
the functioning of the ideal of democracy. My paper aims to demystify our unreflective fascination with democracy
today and sets the concept of democracy into a critical context. My argument has two dimensions: First, I propose

claims made from within democratic discourse regarding other political systems
are claims of bio-disciplinary power. Second, the specific power relations that exist within democracy
that

can neither be reduced to struggles for emancipation or freedom, nor to the structures of oppression and
repression.

This does not mean that there are no claims for freedom and resistance to
oppression within democracies. However, these claims do not function outside of
bio-discipline, indeed these claims are the concretion of bio-disciplinary power. Hence my claim is not that
democracy functions in a totalitarian or oppressive way, but rather the functioning of democracy can be
best explained in terms of bio-disciplinary power. My analysis of democracy relies neither on
some kind of conspiratorial thought-control strategy nor on a liberal commitment to the sovereign subject, who
cuts through the darkness associated with evil forces in society and reaches the light through struggle. I do not say
that this discursive subject does not exist, but I claim that it functions in an entirely different way within democratic
discourse. Foucaults notion of bio-disciplinary power also explains the difference between modern democracy and
the ancient Greek conception of democracy without appealing to the classical conception of sovereignty. This
conception of sovereignty presupposes a unity. Consequently, critiques of democratic structures presume the same
kind of unity when they criticize the power elite, agenda setting media etc .

Democractic discourse
does not manufacture consent, but rather produces the unity of a political subject .
The bio-disciplinary power does not function as a unified system, in a comprehensive and exhaustive fashion. It,
therefore, does not rely on a unified theory of sovereignty. Foucaults conception of bio-disciplinary power, however,

By cogitological
power, I mean neither the power of the cogito, nor the power of logic. This power
emanates neither from the thinking subject (cogito), not from the rules of logic, or
reason, but rather it is a discursive power that manufactures the rational, thinking
subjects of democracy. Cogitological power functions as a third dimension of the bio-disciplinary axis. In
has to be supplemented by what I call cogito-logical power, or cogito-logical effects.

addition to obedient subjects and populations, cogito-logical power forms political, thinking subjects imagining

the functioning of democratic discourse

as well as its practice can be most effectively understood in terms of cogito-logical
power.
themselves at the center of the problem of unity. I claim that

domestic surveillance
The logic of the state of exception ensures that domestic
surveillance will be unfettered
Barnard-Wills 12 (David Senior Research Analyst at Trilateral Research &
Consulting, Ph.D. in Politics from Manchester University, Surveillance,
Governmentality, Identity and Discourse, in Surveillance and Identity: Discourse,
Subjectivity and the State, p. 23-24)
state retains a role in surveillance research, especially at the boundary
between surveillance studies and International Relations. Giorgio Agamben has analysed how
by creating states of emergency which were previously limited to wartime ,
contemporary states have been able to create states of exception which remove
prior limits on government action, including the use of surveillance, alongside permanent
detention of terrorists or enemy combatants (Agamben 2005). The logic allowing Guantanamo Bay also
allows for increased state surveillance. Similarly, Bigo has shown the importance of the nation state with the
However, the

continued existence (and the reinforcement) of the national border, even in (and because of) a globalised world of supposedly free
movement (Bigo 2006b:47). Bigo situates this amongst sovereignty debates in International Relations and the construction by the
United States of a global state of in-security. e suggests that the heavy monitoring of the border (see for example the fortified USMexico border, the so-called security fence built in the Palestinian territories by Israel and the experience of asylum seekers in UK
detention centres) and the treatment of the immigrant should be understood as techniques of government by unease through the
normalisation of a state of watchful emergency (Bigo 2006b:63). As Mathiesen prefigured, in many ways the state itself can be
subject to surveillance by other actors. The contemporary example would of course be the whistleblowing WikiLeaks website,
making publicly available internal secret state documents in an attempt to hold states to account for their actions. WikiLeaks found
a way to effectively hijack and redirect the internal military and government surveillance infrastructures, demonstrating the way
that information systems can be put to a variety of political uses. States also exist in an international system which features other
states and the interactions between these can also be understood as having a surveillant dimension. The arguments around the
invasion of Iraq essentially focused upon the information produced by different regimes of inspection and surveillance UN weapons
inspectors or the CIA intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (CNN 2003a, CNN 2003b). It is important not to forget that the

Despite discourses of globalisation discussing

the weakening of the nation state in the face of international pressures it should be
remembered that this may be a weakening of specific elements of the nation state .
Control over economic and fiscal policy may be reduced whilst other elements may
remain strongly intact or even redoubled in response to these pressures (security and
state retains substantial coercive capacity and resources.

policing). Surveillance studies must proceed with recognition that there are multiple surveillance actors, with multiple technologies,
resources and motivations underpinning their surveillance activities, yet it must not forget that

one of these surveillant

actors is the nation state, and that it is still a significant actor. From a political studies perspective,
attempting to address the political effects of surveillance, this is a highly important consideration.

Domestic surveillance has spread beyond the homeland into a

global apparatus of inclusion and exclusion
Gates 12 (Kelly, Associate Professor of Communication, Science Studies, and
Critical Gender Studies at University of California, San Diego, The globalization of
homeland security in Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies Edited by Kirstie
Ball, Kevin D. Haggerty and David Lyon, p. 293)
How have the priorities of homeland security in the post-9/11 era been mobilized
to bolster an expanding global industry, and what are the consequences of this
industry expansion on surveillance practices transnationally? It is the aim of this chapter to
consider the globalization of homeland security. It examines the extent to which the US model of homeland
security has been exported to other countries, and what the results have been for the spread of new
surveillance practices across national borders. Homeland security is typically understood as a

policy program instituted in the United States as a response to the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. I argue that it is more adequately understood as a broader governmental
rationality that reconfigures the US Cold War national security regime in ways
more amenable to the post-Cold War context , and to the priorities of an emerging
global security industry. In order to be promoted as a form of national identity, the US model of homeland security
has been and must continue to be defined as uniquely American. However, it is also being globalized in
particular ways in order to serve as a powerful political and economic strategy in
the war on terror (see also Hayes, this volume). One focus of this strategy has been the USAled effort to create a global surveillance apparatus , a dispersed system of
monitoring and identification that aims to enact a USA-centric politics of inclusion
and exclusion on a global scale. Not only the USA, but much of the world, is
engaged in what Giorgio Agamben (2005) has called a permanent state of exception. Here
constitutional laws and human rights are suspended indefinitely , and individuals are
continuously called upon to demonstrate their legitimate identity and right to exist.
As the USA and its allies carry out the seemingly endless war on terror, a heavily
financed security-industrial complex has taken shape. Along with it has come a
seemingly endless and increasingly integrated stream of new surveillance systems
and practices.

Curtailing domestic surveillance does not challenge the global

logic of American surveillance hegemony
Keiber 15 (Jason Ph.D. in International Relations, Lecturer at Ohio State
University, Surveillance Hegemony, in Surveillance & Society, Volume 13, Number
2, http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-andsociety/article/view/snowden_hegemony)
Introduction In 2013 Edward Snowden began revealing how busy the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been scooping up

The capacityand, frankly, the boldnessof the NSA makes

very clear the seriousness with which the US conducts surveillance on individuals
abroad. In dragnet style the NSA scoops up information and communications content from
large swaths of the world's population. In order to situate the NSA activity within the broader context of US
surveillance abroad, the paper makes two claims. First, the US exercises surveillance hegemony .
Hegemony requires material power (e.g. technological capability) and a normative and
institutional framework that supports and provides legitimacy to that power . Since
9/11 strong anti-terrorism norms have evolved calling on states to develop domestic
capacity to keep track of "bad guys and share information with other states . There are
information on individuals worldwide.

institutions that promulgate this normsuch as the United Nationsand many more that facilitate information sharing on suspected

Surveillance hegemony is the reason why the US can rely on myriad

avenues for surveillance. The hegemonic triad of material power, legitimizing norms,
and supporting international institutions greases the wheels of US efforts to get
information on suspected and known terrorists throughout the world . In addition to secretive
terrorists more generally.

efforts like the NSAs, hegemony is reflected in surveillance programs with other states conducted more above board. I review two of

US surveillance hegemony fosters an

information ecology that connects secret and public surveillance efforts . Information gains
these programs in this paper. This leads to the second claim.

in one part of the ecology has effects for other programs in the system. NSA activity cannot be fully understood without
understanding how the information with which it works interacts within this information ecology. In fleshing out US surveillance
hegemony, the paper brings an International Relations (IR) perspective to Surveillance Studies to emphasize the interaction of
states and the role of international norms and organizations. IR is well suited to note the ways in which states cooperate, clash, and
project power abroad to collect information on individuals living in other sovereign states. In addition, focusing on

the USs

surveillance hegemony acts as a corrective to the obsession with NSA power . While
the NSA disclosures display US technology and willingness to go-it-alone, much of
the US surveillance apparatus is actually a product of cooperation and
negotiation with other states and is fostered by norms and institutions. The
paper begins by looking at what we learn from Snowdens trove of documents about the USs international surveillance ambitions.
After Snowden, we need to wipe our lenses clean and look again at how the US practices surveillance abroad. In the next section the
paper explains the concept of hegemony and argues that the US is a surveillance hegemon. I then introduce two non-secret
surveillance programs to illustrate other significant ventures that help constitute and are made possible by surveillance hegemony.
In the final section of the paper I illustrate how these programs, along with the NSA, are part of an information ecology. When
viewed through the hegemony lens, we see how NSA activity fits in the broader context of US surveillance activity abroad and

As the interests and problems of

governments have gone global, so too has the opportunity for surveillance to
appear as one of a range of solutions at that scale (Murakami Wood 2012: 335). Recently disclosed
international politics more broadly. Surveillance and International Politics

NSA activity is a perfect example of this. States, it seems, are increasingly interested in conducting surveillance not only on their

Global surveillance reflects and is affected by

dynamics of globalization that fundamentally change how individuals interact in
space and time. Rising geographical mobility, plus the stretching of social relationships enabled by ... new transport and
communication technologies, [means] the general decline of face-to-face relationships (Lyon 2007: 125). As governments
(and the private sector) seek to comprehend and influence these global social relationships
forms of surveillance and information infrastructures have become globalized (Lyon
2004). Documents provided by Edward Snowden testify to the depth of international surveillance practices. Security
surveillance is no longer a domestic centered practice. Moreover, when powerful
states (the US in particular) conduct international surveillance, they are often gathering
information on ordinary individuals.
own populations but also on individuals living abroad.

The monitoring of millions of telephone calls in Spain (Greenwald and Aranda 2013; Gonzales 2013) and the actual recording of calls in the Bahamas (Devereaux, Greenwald and

Poitras 2014) are but two examples. States used to be preoccupied with learning about the behavior of other states. The NSA disclosures powerfully illustrate how the US has dedicated itself to the surveillance of individuals outside of its borders as well as those within. This paper focuses on international
surveillance by states that occurs when one state (working alone or with others) collects, stores, or disseminates information about people (their activity and environments) who live in foreign jurisdictions for the purposes of influence, intervention, or further surveillance. This conceptualization of surveillance
draws our attention to how states interact in the conduct of surveillance. It shifts attention to the international politics of surveillance and opens up questions concerning the strategic interaction of states and the role of norms and international organizations. To better understand this particular dimension of
surveillance, it will pay dividends to draw from International Relations (IR). Surveillance Studies has demonstrated a particular interest in the genealogy of the methods, concepts, and technologies of surveillance in the global context (Mattelart 2010 is a particularly good example) and often draws attention to
how global surveillance facilitates neoliberalism (Murakami Wood 2013). My goal in this article is to supplement this understanding of the international dimension of surveillance with a more explicit focus on international politicshow states interact to achieve surveillance objectives. The intersection of
Surveillance Studies and IR has already proven productive (work on the implications for borders is particularly interesting: Bigo 2008; Vaughan-Williams 2009). But more can be done. The state centrism of IR (which can be problematic for the field) can be leveraged in an analysis of state- led global
surveillance practices. Todays forms of surveillance are often networked and rhizomatic interconnected and rootlike. Todays surveillance systems act as an assemblagea multiplicity of heterogeneous sources and flows of information on individuals that are not necessarily connected or unified by
design, but rather can connect up and function together to powerful effect. There is no concrete surveillant assemblage that one could point to as it were. Rather, to the extent that the surveillant assemblage exists, it does so as a potentiality, one that resides at the intersections of various media that can be
connected for diverse purposes (Haggerty and Ericson 2000: 609). Rhizomatic surveillance assemblages tend to be discussed as less central and less hierarchical. As such, the interaction of states (hulking, centralized, hierarchical powers) is often neglected as surveillance scholars instead focus on more
diffuse, hidden, capillary forms of surveillance power. But states still matter tremendously in international politics. International politics is fundamentally different than domestic politics. States enjoy sovereignty and are not legally bound to an overarching authority the same way citizens are bound to their
states. This makes it difficult for any one state to conduct surveillance on the citizens of a different state. Secret programs like those run by intelligence services offer one way to mitigate such difficulties. States can also try to work together. After all, there are incentives for states to cooperate on transnational
issues such as terrorism and crime (Andreas and Nadelmann 2006; on the benefits of working through institutions see Keohane 2005). Cooperation on surveillance matters, however, does not come easy. States tend to take their domestic sovereign prerogatives seriously. We shouldnt expect any state to
wantonly share information about its citizens with other states. One way the US has been able to get other states and institutions to cooperate on surveillance, is through its hegemonic position in world politics. Hegemony Many IR scholars pay close attention to how many great powers there are in the world
as a parsimonious way to understand how countries get along. The Cold War era was a bi-polar world dominated by the US and the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US remained atop in a uni-polar system. Some IR scholars see bi-polarity as very stable because it facilitates a
balancing of power (Waltz 1979; for contrast, see Hopf 1991). Today, the expectation of some is that other states will eventually balance against the US by either forming alliances or shoring up their own power (Waltz 2000; Mearsheimer 1990). Others scholars argue that a single dominant power can provide
order to the system through hegemony. Hegemony does not simply mean dominance in material power. It refers also to a dominance in the way things are done. Hegemony is reflected in a particular constellation of power, ideas and institutions which together produce stability (Cox 1981). A materially
powerful actor by itself is not a hegemon. Hegemony also requires a foundation in ideas (e.g. norms and social images) that provide at least a veneer of legitimacy to the dominant actors power and influence. Institutions, in turn, provide transmission belts for the proliferation of ideas and venues for other
actors to participate inand not resistthe social order. Whereas in an imperial system, the dominant power sets the rules for subordinates to follow, in a hegemonic system, the dominant power sets up the rules for allincluding itself, though with exceptionsto follow. Hegemony offers a negotiated order
that benefits (or purports to benefit) states that dont go against the grain. Hegemony is still hierarchical. It is, however, hierarchy softened by legitimizing norms and (often merely quasi-) inclusive institutions. The leading power of a hegemonic order is the prime mover in creating and protecting the major
rules and institutions of international politics. IR scholar John Ikenberry explains: Compliance and participation within the order is ultimately ensured by a range of power capabilities available to the hegemonmilitary power, financial capital, market access, technology and so forth. Direct coercion is always an
option in the enforcement of order, but less direct carrots and sticks are also mechanisms to maintain hegemonic control. (Ikenberry 2004: 616) Today it is the US which exercises global hegemony. It runs a political order built on liberal hegemonic bargains [...] public goods provision, and an unprecedented
array of intergovernmental institutions and working relationships (Ikenberry 2004: 611). The seeds of US hegemony were sown after World War II with the creation of the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, and GATT/WTO. The latter three institutions helped underpin an international liberal financial and
trading regime. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US with its preponderance of power became the unchallengeable supporter and protector of this liberal order (for more on the military dimension of hegemony see Posen 2003). As a result of this broader hegemonic political order, the US has been able to
establish what I call surveillance hegemony. It is useful to make this distinction between surveillance hegemony from hegemony broadly construed for at least two reasons. First, the type of power at playsurveillancecuts to the core of statehood. Everything that a state does from mere administration to
the most lethal acts of coercion relies on surveillance. Second, as will be discussed further below, the ideas that support the expansion of international surveillance are more specifically reliant on security discourses, rather than the (neo)liberal discourses that underpin the broader US led hegemonic order. This
last point is important because in order for the Wests anti-terrorism discourse and its related security practices to spread, there needs to be a discursive fit between the agenda of the US and the norms held by the security and intelligence elites of other states. Indeed, the anti-terrorism discourse and the
related counterterrorism surveillance measures it calls for is readily intelligible because it speaks the security vernacular shared by these elites. More importantly, there is good reason to believe that such a discourse is also viewed as legitimate, and this is where hegemony achieves a firm grip. (For a great
discussion on discursive fit and hegemony see Hopf 2013: 321-323.) Surveillance Hegemony: Power, Norms and Institutions The extraordinary material surveillance capabilities of the US is perhaps most easily measured by its exorbitant funding. Nearly a third of the USs $52.6 billion intelligence budget is
dedicated to fighting terrorism (Gellman and Miller 2013). The NSA in particular gets one fifth of the overall budget. This money sustains a talented workforce and produces cutting edge surveillance techniques. These capabilities are often put to use covertly and unilaterally. The US, however, can also
influence others to participate in its broader, strategic surveillance efforts. One of the more striking examples of secret cooperation is the recently disclosed RAMPART-A program in which over a dozen countries allow the US to install equipment to congested cables so that the US can intercept phone and
internet traffic (Gallagher 2014). With some caveats, both the US and the host country reportedly get access to the fruits of that surveillance. In general there are 37 states that are approved SIGINT partners (Greenwald 2014). This highlights the fact that other states accept (to varying degrees) core
premises of how surveillance should work on an international scale. This acceptance, in turn, rests on a broader set of norms that emphasize the threat of terrorism and the necessity of counterterrorism measures. On the normative side of the ledger, a modicum of international surveillance in the form of
information sharing has become not just tolerated, but held up as a responsibility states owe each other. Finally there is an array of international institutions that support surveillance activities. The US has been able to use its influential position within these institutionsthe UN in particularto establish an
array of information sharing practices, all of which benefit US surveillance goals. Anti-terrorism norms existed prior to 9/11, but the attacks on that day in 2001 vaulted anti-terrorism business to the top of the agenda. Terrorism moved from a threat to the predominant threat. Pre-9/11 norms began emerging as
early as the end of the 19th century as a response to anarchism (Jensen 2013), but developed more thoroughly in the 1970s (see Rapoport 2002 for more on the international dimensions of terrorism over time). The general emphasis was that states should refrain from supporting international terrorism. After
9/11 this changed into a norm urging states to actively intervene to stop international terrorism. This requires shoring up their own surveillance capacity at home and sharing information with others abroad. For scholars and policy makers accustomed to seeing the world through a geopolitical lens, it might
seem unusual (or surprising) that security norms would shift to prioritize terrorism. After all, the actual threat of terrorism to the West is marginal (Mueller and Stewart 2012; Mueller 2009). Normative change has been facilitated by several factors. First, there is a strong fit between international security
discourses obsessed with terrorism and the more parochial security discourses which reference traditional state security concerns. On this score, the portrayal of terrorism as a threat to the security of all states (not just the US) is readily digestible by other governments. Second, because the targets of antiterrorism practices are individuals and not states, any security gains by one state is not likely to be viewed as directly threatening to the security of other states. States dont perceive much of a threat to their security interests by cooperating on an anti-terrorism agenda. In IR parlance, there is no security
dilemma in which the gains in security by one state threatens (inadvertently or not) the security of other states (Herz 1950; Jervis 1978). Finally, the post-9/11 world has been one where states are not preoccupied by the prospect of significant interstate war. There is geopolitical slack that allows states to
focus on other issue areas. The normative change is most clearly seen in how the US and the UN speak of counterterrorism (CT). Clearly, 9/11 had a major impact on how the US views international security. The US views CT as an international responsibility all states share. Among the US objectives in its
earliest National Strategy for Combating Terrorism was to [e]stablish and maintain an international standard of accountability with regard to combating terrorism (The White House 2003: 18). It further argued that [s]tates that have sovereign rights also have sovereign responsibilities that revolve around
counterterrorism. Even though the Bush administration was known for its go-it-alone attitude, international cooperation was integral to the USs CT strategy. The initial CT strategy document broke up the world up into four different types of states. Where states are willing and able, we will reinvigorate old
partnerships and forge new ones to combat terrorism and coordinate our actions to ensure that they are mutually reinforcing and cumulative. Where states are weak but willing, we will support them vigorously in their efforts to build the institutions and capabilities needed to exercise authority over all their
territory and fight terrorism where it exists. Where states are reluctant, we will work with our partners to convince them to change course and meet their international obligations. Where states are unwilling, we will act decisively to counter the threat they pose and, ultimately, to compel them to cease
supporting terrorism. (The White House 2003: 12) The hegemonic position of the US is evident in its CT strategies. First, the US offers carrots to weak states, promising to strengthen the capacity of such War on Terror partners to reclaim full control of their territory through effective police, border, and other
security forces as well as functioning systems of justice (The White House 2006: 16). Only a powerful state could offer (and sometimes foist upon other states) such assistance. Second, over time the US shifts from unilateral bluster (which is implicitly backed by direct coercion) to a more international
approach (which relies on US diplomatic strengths and advantages in international fora). In the 2006 CT strategy, the language of willing and able states persists, but the stark language from 2003 is absent. Instead, for those states reluctant to fulfill their sovereign responsibilities to combat terrorist-related
activities within their borders the US would lean on diplomacy and the rest of the international community to persuade [these] states to meet their obligations to combat terrorism and deny safe haven under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373 (The White House 2006: 16). This is the approach of a
hegemon relying on less coercive modes of influence. There are two watchwords throughout these documentscapacity and partnership. Both reflect US hegemony, and both find increasing use in the subsequent CT national strategies. State capacity is used twice in 2003, nine times in 2006, and 17 times
in 2011 (The White House 2011). References to partnerships occurred 25, 41, and 59 times in the respective years. The US sees its CT relationship with other willing states as that of a partnership. Partnerships with able states are exercised through more joint efforts. In its partnerships with weaker states
the US would help build their capacity to fight terrorisma capacity that includes surveillance. The expectation is that the US approach to surveillance would be dominated by cooperative efforts with more capable states and assistance for weaker states to shore up their domestic surveillance capability. The
United Nations (UN), often through US initiative, has also been instrumental in fostering US surveillance hegemony. Although the UN does not itself conduct surveillance it has passed significant Security Council Resolutions which have shaped international counterterrorism practices, including surveillance.
Resolutions 1267 and 1373, in particular, have effectively mandated that states maintain and monitor a list of sanctioned individuals related to terrorism and that states share information with one another. Accordingly, states might be assessed against certain norms and metrics for how well their
counterterrorism policies match up. The UN itself monitors state compliance with both resolutions. In addition to motivating specific policies, the UN activity has helped reproduce a certain way of doing the business of counterterrorism. The general template has two elements. First, states ought to develop
capacity that respects certain liberal norms but cracks down on terrorism. Second states ought to share relevant information with foreign partners. The later suggests that terrorism is a community problem, as does the very fact that the UN has tasked itself to address terrorism. Resolution 1373 is binding on
UN member states because it was passed by the Security Council (under its Chapter 7 authority). Its measures are meant to keep states from supporting terrorism and ensure that states take steps to suppress and stop terrorism. The mandatory provisions entail adopting domestic policies that criminalize
terrorism, and prohibit terrorism financing and travel. This has led some to characterize 1373 as legislation signifying an important break in the practice of the UN Security Council. Szasz writes: In the past, [...] the Security Council has often required states to take certain actions, such as to implement
sanctions against a particular state or to cooperate with an ad hoc tribunal, but these requirements always related to a particular situation or dispute and, even though not explicitly limited in time, would naturally expire when the issue in question and all its consequences were resolved. By contrast, as
Resolution 1373, while inspired by the attacks of September 11, 2001, is not specifically related to these (though they are mentioned in the preamble) and lacks any explicit or implicit time limitation, a significant portion of the resolution can be said to establish new binding rules of international law- rather
than mere commands relating to a particular situationand, moreover, even creates a mechanism for monitoring compliance with them. (Szasz 2002) Of particular interest to surveillance are the mandatory provisions in 1373 relating to sharing of information. The resolution stipulates that states shall: Take
the necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts, including by provision of early warning to other States by exchange of information. Afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with criminal investigations or criminal proceedings relating to the financing or support of
terrorist acts, including assistance in obtaining evidence in their possession necessary for the proceedings. Both provisions require, or at the very least imply, a domestic surveillance capability and an ability to convey that information to other states thereby effectively expanding surveillance across borders.
As a result of Resolution 1373 states have made changes. 1373 created the Counter-Terrorism Committee to monitor states compliance with its mandatory provisions, and member states are required to file progress reports to that end. As of 2010 All 192 U.N. member states filed at least one report with the
[.] body that was created to monitor and enforce compliance with Resolution 1373. [...] By August 2006, 107 countries had filed four reports, and 42 had filed five (Scheppele 2010: 442). The US has leaned on these UN resolutions to get other states to take CT and related surveillance seriously. According to
the 2003 strategy document, the US promised to use UNSCR 1373 and the [12] international counterterrorism conventions and protocols to galvanize international cooperation and to rally support for holding accountable those states that do not meet their international responsibilities (The White House
2003: 19). Here again we see the language of responsibility. On the one hand the US regards this international responsibility as derivative from specific international law. But on the other hand the connection between sovereign rights to CT responsibilities can also be read as something which UNSCR 1373
reflects rather than establishes. For instance, the same document reads, Together, UNSCR 1373, the international counterterrorism conventions and protocols, and the inherent right under international law of individual and collective self-defense confirm the legitimacy of the international communitys
campaign to eradicate terrorism. This line suggests that the legitimacy of CT norms including information sharing between statespre-exists the international instruments mentioned, as if the norms are justified by the simple fact that terrorism exists. The broader counterterrorism norm is that states
should cooperate in counterterrorism, and effective counterterrorism entails cooperative international surveillance of individuals. Looking at actual international surveillance practice we see two trendsthe growth of information sharing and an emphasis on increasing domestic capacity. Both are frequently
treated as a responsibility owed to the international community. A more specific form of the norm, therefore, would be: States ought to (a) to share information with international partners, and (b) have the domestic capacity to accomplish that sharing, and generally keep a cap on ones own bad guys. The
norms are part of a shared representation of what it means to be a good steward of international security and a responsible sovereign state at home. Other international organizations deserve special mentionINTERPOL, the Financial Action Task Force, and The Global Counterterrorism Forum. The former two
organizations are the major institutions that facilitate international law enforcement and anti-money laundering initiatives. The latter is one of the few new institutions (created de novo) with major buy-in from great and secondary powers, and therefore offers a possible glimpse of future CT global governance.
All of the institutions enjoy buy-in from the US. Indeed, it could be argued that without the US they would be impotent. Hegemonic Surveillance Capabilities There are two sides to American surveillance power. One is secret and exemplified by the NSA. This surveillance hides and dissembles. The other is a
more public (though not necessarily publicized) surveillance. Both piggyback on the general hegemonic position of the US and rely on the warp and weft of US interactions with other states and institutions. The public side of surveillance is often semi- consensual. This is not meant to suggest the absence of
power (there is always power at play), but rather to highlight the more negotiated way of approaching surveillance. Without knowing more about the NSA programs, it is hard to know to what extent the US is strong arming states into partnerships. Regardless, both forms of surveillancethe hidden and the
publicare part of a broader information ecology. They feed each other. Their synergy works to feed not only the US information, but partner countries information as well. Some surveillance programs play a more central role in this ecology. I discuss two of these below. One involves information sharing
between countries. The other involves the distribution hardware to other countries for use in their surveillance activity. Both implicate and benefit from NSA activity. Information Sharing The US has hundreds of information sharing agreements with foreign countries, many of which are minor, but one set of
agreements is of particular importance. In September of 2003 President Bush signed Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 6. HSPD 6 required the government to consolidate and continue developing a database of information on individuals known or suspected to be involved in terrorism and to use
that information [...] to support (a) Federal, State, local, territorial, tribal, foreign- government, and private-sector screening processes, and (b) diplomatic, military, intelligence, law enforcement, immigration, visa, and protective processes (Bush 2003). The eventual result was the Terrorism Screening
Database, also called the Terrorist Watch List (hereafter, watchlist). HSPD 6 also called for enhancing cooperation with certain foreign governments [...] to establish appropriate access to terrorism screening information of the participating governments (Bush 2003). The result has been the proliferation of
HSPD 6 agreements that deal with the bilateral exchange of terrorism screening information. The US ingests the data provided by other countries adding some of it to the watchlist, and some foreign partners receive a subset of the watchlist data for their own screening purposes. The FBI has referred to
the watchlist as the worlds most comprehensive and widely shared database of terrorist identities (Healy 2009). The watchlist is a product of hegemony. The US uses its leverage but does not command by fiat. For instance, the US requires all countries participating in its Visa Waiver Program (which allows
foreign citizens to travel to the US for a temporary time without a visa) to sign an HSPD 6 agreement. This is a quid pro quo arrangement, wherein the US gets data and the citizens of participating countries get travel benefits. It should also be noted that the US has good relationships with these countries, a
product broader US hegemony. But the benefits of participation for partner countries dont stop there. The US is in a position to share watchlist dataknown as the Foreign Partner Extractwith its partners (some, presumably the core allies like the UK, get more routine access). Importantly, as more
countries funnel their datasets of bad guys to the US, the US not only learns about new persons of interest, but can also triangulate across multiple sources to make better inferences about threatening individuals. As of September 2012, the US had signed over 40 of these with partner countries (Ramotowski
2012). This accounts for roughly 20 per cent of states in the world representing nearly 700 million people. All this data flows to the surveillance hegemon, enabling the US to act as an international terrorism data brokera global NCTC as it were. This feat of surveillance is described by the FBI as follows: The
screening agencies throughout the world who attempt to ascertain if a person screened is watchlisted constitute a global network, dedicated to identifying, preventing, deterring, and disrupting potential terrorist activity (Healy 2009). Providing Information Systems A second example of a public practice
supporting US surveillance hegemony is a program known as PISCES. Run by the US Department of State, PISCES is a screening/watch-listing system meant to assist other countries with border security. By providing countries with the necessary hard- and software, the US intends to bolster the recipients
surveillance capacity. PISCES also provides the US an opportunity to give datasets to other countries to use on the provided system, thereby effectively outsourcing surveillance. The NSA, as we will see, is also implicated in this program. Surveillance hegemony empowers the US to proliferate and maintain
PISCES systems. Through April 2012, the system was working at 184 ports of entry across 18 states. 53 of these, across 11 states, had biometric capabilities (US Department Of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism 2013).The participating countries are considered by the US as suffering from a higher risk of
terrorist transit and lacking the infrastructure to address that problem. States with the twin burdens of weak domestic capacity and a domestic terrorism problem are likely to be interested in accepting assistance from other states. The US, in turn, has both the technological capability and the security interests
to make such an offer. Finally, because it provides training and system maintenance, the US is able to foster a dependency on its wares. It is unclear whether or not the US has direct access to the data that gets entered into PISCES systems worldwide (or even what direct access would amount to). PISCES is
deployed in Pakistan, but the country recently considered scrapping the system partially out of fear that US had direct access to the data. However, both Pakistani and US officials denied that this was true. In 2011 a former Pakistani Interior Minister said that the data was never available to [the US] and was
solely for the FIAs [Pakistans FBI] use (Imtiaz 2011). A representative from the US embassy in Islamabad echoed that, saying, [t]here is no one at the Embassy who runs the TIP/PISCES programme. The Department of State provides support from Washington but the programme here is run by the interior
ministry (Imtiaz 2011). After a similar concern was raised in Malta, the US embassy clarified how PISCES is used. PISCES systems are not interconnected. Each is a standalone system in the country where it has been installed to add to that nations capacity to protect its national security. Monitoring of PISCES

data is carried out by the Government of Malta. None of this data has been shared with the USG. (Vella 2004) While the US might not have a direct line in or out of these systems, there are at least two ways in which the system serves a surveillance function. First, if the US wants information regarding specific
individuals or travel patterns, it can make a request (Imtiaz 2011). Similarly during check-up visits, the US can make inquiries about data collection and analysis conducted by the host country. Second, the US provides data to the PISCES systems to facilitate checks that would benefit US interests. A 2003
Congressional Research Service report describing US-Pakistani counterterror cooperation states that the PISCES software is said to make real-time comparisons of photographs and other personal details with the F.B.I. database in order to track the movements of Islamic militants (Kronstadt 2003: 10). In
addition, according to a 2007 Department of State report, TIP provided photos and travel history to Pakistan of three of the four July 7, 2005 London Metro bombers and hundreds of travelers have been interdicted in Pakistan on suspicion of using stolen passports (US Department of State 2007: 63).
Depending on how they are set up, PISCES systems can also pull or duplicate data from other databases. Yet another Department of State report mentions U.S. and host nation requests for customized interfaces with local and international databases [...] while ensuring that the PISCES system maintains
standards in accordance with international norms (US Department of State 2013: 161). Also, at least some PISCES systems are mentioned as having INTERPOL and Schengen II interfaces (2013: 216-7). Access to the Schengen system is presumably limited to Schengen members which run PISCES systems.
However, there is no reason that installation of INTERPOL interfaces should be limited. For example a Pakistani government website describing PISCES mentions using INTERPOL data as well as linking to other countries visa issuance systems. Information Ecology Unpacking US surveillance hegemony
reveals an ecology of programs and practices that shuffles information around for analysis and development of future surveillance tasks. To continue with the current examples, the NSA, HSPD 6 agreements, and PISCES systems are all part of the same surveillance system. The information obtained from each
redounds and feeds the others. The axis about which all US surveillance on suspected terrorists revolves is the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and a database known as TIDE. By law, the NCTC is responsible for integrating and analyzing all foreign terrorism information. If the CIA or the NSA comes
across new information on a terrorist suspect, it must get reported to the NCTC. The NCTC, in turn, is required to share terrorism information with other intelligence agencies and parts of the US government. The US shores up digital power through databases (Teboho Ansorge 2011), the most important of
which for counterterrorism purposes is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). TIDE is a centralized master-list containing information on all persons of interest related to terrorism. Run by the NCTC, it supports the entire US governments counterterrorism efforts. There are currently around
870,000 individuals listed in TIDE. The terrorism watchlist mentioned above is a subset of TIDE. The NSA, like other agencies in the intelligence community, pulls and pushes information from TIDE. TIDE includes a great deal of intelligence information obtained through the activities of the Intelligence
Community, often implicating the most sensitive sources and methods of intelligence gathering (Clapper 2013: 5). If the NSA discovers new terrorism information from its bulk collection programs such as PRISM (Greenwald and MacAskill 2013) or SOMALGET (Devereaux, Greenwald and Poitras 2014), it is
required to send this information to the NCTC. Upon review, the NCTC will decide whether the TIDE will be updated. HSPD 6 agreements and the State Departments PISCES program also relate to TIDE. Any information gained through an HSPD 6 agreement, assuming it is credible, will end up in TIDE. While
there is no public accounting of just how much the US has learned from these agreements, we can infer their importance from the diplomatic weight the US has put behind getting them signed. Not only were the agreements mandated by presidential directive, the US made travel privileges with close allies
contingent on signing the agreements. Moreover, according to a 2012 information sharing report, HSPD 6 agreements have enhanced current information already contained in the [terrorism watchlist] as well as added new identities to the [TIDE master list] and the information provided downstream to our
domestic and international screening partners (ISE Program Manager 2012: 19). Finally, we also know the watchlist data gets used frequently. In 2009, for example, the US processed over 55,000 encounters with individuals, of which over 19,000 were a positive match to a watchlisted known or suspected
terrorist (ISE Program Manager 2012: 19). The role of PISCES in the surveillance ecology is less direct. On the one hand, recent reporting suggests that the NSA has a direct line into the systems. According to reporting by the New York Times based on documents provided by Snowden, In addition, the agency
was working with the C.I.A. and the State Department on a program called Pisces, collecting biometric data on border crossings from a wide range of countries (Risen and Poitras 2014). It is unclear whether or not countries using PISCES are aware of this. Since 2010, the NSA has been able to cross-reference
its own biometric database, known as Pinwale, with data held by TIDE. Therefore, it is likely that data collected from PISCES systems also serves to update TIDE. Regardless of whether the US gets direct access to data processed by PISCES, the systems play a surveillance role informed by TIDE. The US can
urge those states receiving PISCES to populate the system with specific data. Used as such, travelers moving in and out of recipient states have their identities checked against those data entries. To be clear, the data being used for watchlisting could be anything from most-wanted-terrorists to fraudulent
document alerts. In 2012, PISCES processed an estimated 250,000 travelers every day (US Department Of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism 2013). This is a significant achievement for US surveillance. If only one tenth of one per cent of those travelers raise a flag, there would be over 90,000 matches every
year. The US has effectively delegated surveillance activity through the PISCES program. In sum, the NSA feeds TIDE and vice versa. TIDE feeds other terrorism-related databases and activity. As other surveillance activity, both secret and public, gather information, the TIDE gets updated. Moreover, the US can
push out data to other states for use in their screening and intelligence activity. This allows the US to use other states for its surveillance agenda. The entire picture reflects a surveillance ecology that circulates information to great effect. Conclusion I have argued that the NSA activity disclosed by Edward
Snowden is but one element of US surveillance hegemony. There is a wide array of surveillance practices that serve to feed US information on individuals around the globe. However, these practices do not rest on brute material power alone. Surveillance hegemony also derives from ideas that normalize
surveillance practices and institutions that concretize them. Two examples of more public surveillanceHSPD 6 agreements and PISCES systemsshowed other significant ways the US conducts surveillance on individuals abroad. Moreover, along with the NSA (and other intelligence programs) US surveillance
activities form part of an information ecology. They all, in some way, rely on and contribute to data held by the NCTC and TIDE. I want to close with two takeaways. The first speaks more directly to the relevance of this analysis to today. The second speaks to what seems to be the USs future surveillance
ambitions. Decisions by the NCTC and reflected in TIDE can literally kill people. There is a kill list naming individuals who might be targeted by drone strikes. The process by which individuals get nominated (an unfortunate term) starts with the NCTC and TIDE. According to reporting in 2012, the NCTC
creates a list for, and using criteria provided by, the White House. That list receives further review by a group at the National Security Council. For those individuals who eventually get targeted, the President signs off on some and the CIA on others. The information ecology revolving around TIDE serves this
undertaking. (For more the nominations process see Becker and Shane 2012; Miller 2012; Brennan 2012; for more on how the NSA has directly contributed to drone strikes see Miller, Tate and Gellman 2013). The potential for enormous consequences is all the more reason to take state-led surveillance

Even if the US
makes reforms to address these concerns domestically, the US is unlikely to
significantly dial down its foreign surveillance activity. Underpinned as it is by
hegemony, the US has coopted othersparticularly the UK (MacAskill et al. 2013)into playing
integral roles in global surveillance. The goal, it seems, is to make populations
everywhere legible to the US (Scott 1998). This conquest of illegibility is
quintessentially a state making activity . If the present continues on the trajectory of
more surveillance by states over individuals globally , surveillance will be normalized
as a global phenomenon dealt with by internationalnot domesticstates
structures. It could be argued that what we are seeing is an instance of international state formation along a particular
practices seriously. The second takeaway concerns the future. US surveillance hegemony suggestsand the recently disclosed NSA activity makes clearan ambition to insinuate state power into the lives of people across the globe.

dimension of state power. There are obvious implications for those concerned with privacy and the democratic deficit of
international state power. While privacy concerns may seem increasingly quaint in the digital age, global publics will surely clamor
for more accountability and transparency. Whether or not enough pressure builds for states to make meaningful changes remains to
be seen.

Surveillance reform become band-aid fixes that mask the

biopolitical control of the government
Glennon 14 (Michael J., Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy, Tufts University, National Security and Double Government,
http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf)//BW
Madison, as noted at the outset,543 believed that a constitution must not only set
up a government that can control and protect the people, but, equally importantly,
must protect the people from the government.544 Madison thus anticipated the enduring tradeoff:
the lesser the threat from government, the lesser its capacity to protect against
threats; the greater the governments capacity to protect against threats, the
greater the threat from the government. Recognition of the dystopic implications of
double government focuses the mind, naturally, on possible legalist cures to the
threats that double government presents. Potential remedies fall generally into two categories. First,
strengthen systemic checks, either by reviving Madisonian institutionsby tweaking them about the
edges to enhance their vitality or by establishing restraints directly with in the
Trumanite network. Second, cultivate civic virtue within the electorate. A. Strengthening Systemic Checks The first
set of potential remedies aspires to tone up Madisonian muscles one by one with ad hoc legislative and

judicial

reforms, by, say, narrowing the scope of the state secrets privilege ; permitting the recipients
of national security letters at least to make their receipt public; broadening standing requirements; improving
congressional oversight of covert operations, including drone killings and cyber
operations; or strengthening statutory constraints like FISA545 and the War Powers Resolution.546 Law reviews
brim with such proposals. But their stopgap approach has been tried repeatedly since the Trumanite networks
emergence. Its futility is now glaring. Why such efforts would be any more fruitful in the future is hard to
understand. The Trumanites are committed to the rule of law and their sincerity is not in doubt, but the rule of law

Continued focus on
legalist band-aids merely buttresses the illusion that the Madisonian
institutions are alive and welland with that illusion, an entire narrative premised on the
to which they are committed is largely devoid of meaningful constraints.547

assumption that it is merely a matter of identifying a solution and looking to the Madisonian institutions to effect it.

a
fundamental change in the very discourse within which U.S. national security policy
is made. For the question is no longer: What should the government do? The questions now are: What
should be done about the government? What can be done about the government ?
That frame deflects attention from the underlying malady. What is needed, if Bagehots theory is correct, is

What are the responsibilities not of the government but of the people?

Surveillance reform fails leads to circumvention and furthers

biopower
Glennon 14 (Michael J., Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy, Tufts University, National Security and Double Government,
http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf)//BW
Enough examples exist to persuade the public that the network is subject to judicial,
legislative, and executive constraints. This appearance is important to its operation, for the network
derives legitimacy from the ostensible authority of the public, constitutional branches of the government. The
appearance of accountability is, however, largely an illusion fostered by those
institutions pedigree, ritual, intelligibility, mystery, and superficial harmony with the
networks ambitions. The courts, Congress, and even the presidency in reality
impose little constraint. Judicial review is negligible; congressional oversight dysfunctional; and presidential
control nominal. Past efforts to revive these institutions have thus fallen flat . Future
reform efforts are no more likely to succeed, relying as they must upon those
same institutions to restore power to themselves by exercising the very
power that they lack. External constraintspublic opinion and the pressare insufficient to check it.
Both are manipulable, and their vitality depends heavily upon the vigor of constitutionally established institutions,

Nor is it likely that any such

constraints can be restored through governmental efforts to inculcate greater civic
virtue, which would ultimately concentrate power even further. Institutional
restoration can come only from an energized body politic . The prevailing incentive structure,
which would not have withered had those external constraints had real force.

however, encourages the public to become less, not more, informed and engaged

economic security
The economy produces biopower as a way to control
production
Giroux 06 (Henry A., Prof of Cultural Studies @ McMaster University, Reading
Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v033/33.3giroux.html)//BW
Within the last few decades, matters of state sovereignty in the new world order have been retheorized so as to

the political nature

of social and cultural life, and the merging of life and politics as a new form of
biopolitics. While the notion of biopolitics differs significantly among its most prominent theorists, including
provide a range of theoretical insights about the relationship between power and politics,

Michel Foucault (1990, 1997), Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2002, 2003), and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004),

the convergence of life and politics,

locating matters of "life and death within our ways of thinking about and imagining
politics" (Dean 2004, 17). Within this discourse, politics is no longer understood exclusively through a disciplinary
what these theorists share is an attempt to think through

technology centered on the individual bodya body to be measured, surveilled, managed, and included in
forecasts, surveys, and statistical projections. Biopolitics points to new relations of power that are more capacious,
concerned not only with the body as an object of disciplinary techniques that render it "both useful and docile" but
also with a body that needs to be "regularized," subject to those immaterial means of production that produce ways
of life that enlarge the targets of control and regulation (Foucault 1997, 249). This shift in the workings of both
sovereignty and power and the emergence of biopolitics are made clear by Foucault, for whom biopower replaces
the power to dispense fear and death "with that of a power to foster lifeor disallow it to the point of death. . . .
[Biopower] is no longer a matter of bringing death into play in the field of sovereignty, but of distributing the living
in the domain of value and utility. Its task is to take charge of life that needs a continuous regulatory and corrective
mechanism" (Ojakangas 2005, 6). As Foucault insists, the logic of biopower is dialectical, productive, and positive
(1990, 136). Yet he also argues that biopolitics does not remove itself from "introducing a break into the domain of
life that is under power's control: the break between what must live and what must die" (1997, 255). Foucault

the death-function in the economy of biopolitics is justified primarily

through a form of racism in which biopower "is bound up with the workings of a
State that is obliged to use race, the elimination of races and the purification of the
race, to exercise its sovereign power" (258). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have both modified and
extended Foucault's notion of biopower, highlighting a mode of biopolitics in which immaterial labor
such as ideas, knowledge, images, cooperation, affective relations, and forms of
communication extend beyond the boundaries of the economic to produce not just
material goods as "the means of social life, but social life itself. Immaterial
production is biopolitical (2004b, 146). In this instance, power is extended to the educational force of the
believes that

culture and to the various technologies, mechanisms, and social practices through which it reproduces various

of biopolitics is that power

remains a productive force, provides the grounds for both resistance and
domination, and registers culture, society, and politics as a terrain of multiple and
diverse struggles waged by numerous groups in a wide range of sites . For my purposes,
forms of social life. What is crucial to grasp in this rather generalized notion

the importance of both Foucault's and Hardt and Negri's work on biopolitics is that they move matters of culture,
especially those aimed at "the production of information, communication, [and] social relations . . . to the center of
politics itself" (Hardt and Negri 2004b, 334). Within these approaches, power expands its reach as a political force
beyond the traditional scope and boundaries of the state and the registers of officially sanctioned modes of

Biopolitics now touches all aspects of social life and is the primary political
and pedagogical force through which the creation and reproduction of new
subjectivities takes place.
domination.

Neoliberalism/Capitalism is the driving force of biopower in the

modern day
Giroux 06 (Henry A., Prof of Cultural Studies @ McMaster University, Reading
Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v033/33.3giroux.html)//BW
I want to further this position by arguing that neoliberalism, privatization, and
militarism have become the dominant biopolitics of the mid-twentieth-century social
state and that the coupling of a market fundamentalism and contemporary forms of
subjugation of life to the power of capital accumulation, violence, and disposability,
especially under the Bush administration, has produced a new and dangerous version of
biopolitics.4 While the murder of Emmett Till suggests that a biopolitics structured around the
intersection of race and class inequalities, on the one hand, and state violence, on the other, has
long existed, the new version of biopolitics adds a distinctively different and more dangerous register. The new
biopolitics not only includes state-sanctioned violence but also relegates entire
populations to spaces of invisibility and disposability . As William DiFazio points out, "the
state has been so weakened over decades of privatization that it . . . increasingly
fails to provide health care, housing, retirement benefits and education to a massive
percentage of its population" (2006, 87). While the social contract has been suspended in varying
degrees since the 1970s, under the Bush Administration it has been virtually abandoned. Under such

the state no longer feels obligated to take measures that prevent

hardship, suffering, and death. The state no longer protects its own disadvantaged
citizensthey are already seen as dead within a transnational economic and
political framework. Specific populations now occupy a globalized space of ruthless politics in which the
circumstances,

categories of "citizen" and "democratic representation," once integral to national politics, are no longer recognized.
In the past, people who were marginalized by class and race could at least expect a modicum of support from the
government, either because of the persistence of a drastically reduced social contract or because they still had

This new form of

biopolitics is conditioned by a permanent state of class and racial exception in
which "vast populations are subject to conditions of life conferring upon them the
status of living dead" (Mbembe 2003, 40), largely invisible in the global media, or, when disruptively
some value as part of a reserve army of unemployed labour. That is no longer true.

present, defined as redundant, pathological, and dangerous. Within this wasteland of death and disposability, whole
populations are relegated to what Zygmunt Bauman calls "social homelessness" (2004, 13). While the rich and
middle classes in the United States maintain lifestyles produced through vast inequalities of symbolic and material

the "free market" provides neither social protection and security nor hope to
those who are poor, sick, elderly, and marginalized by race and class . Given the
capital,

increasing perilous state of the those who are poor and dispossessed in America, it is crucial to reexamine how

biopower functions within global neoliberalism and the simultaneous rise of security
states organized around cultural (and racial) homogeneity. This task is made all the
more urgent by the destruction, politics, and death that followed Hurricane Katrina.

Economic securitization reduces humans to bare life and

furthers the biopolitical agenda
Giroux 06 (Henry A., Prof of Cultural Studies @ McMaster University, Reading
Hurricane Katrina: Race, Class, and the Biopolitics of Disposability,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v033/33.3giroux.html)//BW

the category "waste" includes no

longer simply material goods but also human beings, particularly those rendered
redundant in the new global economy, that is, those who are no longer capable of
making a living, who are unable to consume goods, and who depend upon others
for the most basic needs (Bauman 2000, 2003, 2004). Defined primarily through the combined discourses
Under the logic of modernization, neoliberalism, and militarization,

of character, personal responsibility, and cultural homogeneity, entire populations expelled from the benefits of the
marketplace are reified as products without any value to be disposed of as "leftovers in the most radical and

Even when
young black and brown youth try to escape the biopolitics of disposability by joining
the military, the seduction of economic security is quickly negated by the horror of
senseless violence compounded daily in the streets, roads, and battlefields in Iraq
and Afghanistan and made concrete in the form of body bags, mangled bodies, and
amputated limbsrarely to be seen in the narrow ocular vision of the dominant
media. With the social state in retreat and the rapacious dynamics of neoliberalism,
unchecked by government regulations, the public and private policies of investing in
the public good are dismissed as bad business, just as the notion of protecting
people from the dire misfortunes of poverty, sickness, or the random blows of fate is
viewed as an act of bad faith. Weakness is now a sin, punishable by social exclusion.
This is especially true for those racial groups and immigrant populations who have
always been at risk economically and politically . Increasingly, such groups have become part of
effective way: we make them invisible by not looking and unthinkable by not thinking (2004, 27).

an ever-growing army of the impoverished and disenfranchisedremoved from the prospect of a decent job,
productive education, adequate health care, acceptable child care services, and satisfactory shelter. As the state is
transformed into the primary agent of terror and corporate concerns displace democratic values, dominant "power
is measured by the speed with which responsibilities can be escaped" (Qtd. in Fearn 2006, 30). With its pathological
disdain for social values and public life and its celebration of an unbridled individualism and acquisitiveness, the
Bush administration does more than undermine the nature of social obligation and civic responsibility; it also sends
a message to those populations who are poor and blacksociety neither wants, cares about, or needs you (Bauman
1999, 68-69). Katrina revealed with startling and disturbing clarity who these individuals are: African-Americans

those ghettoized frontier-zones created by

racism coupled with economic inequality. Cut out of any long term goals and a
decent vision of the future, these are the populations, as Zygmunt Bauman points
out, who have been rendered redundant and disposable in the age of neoliberal
global capitalism.
who occupy the poorest sections of New Orleans,

environment
Environmental policy is used to further biopolitics
Fletcher 10 (Robert, Department of Environment, Peace, and Security, University
for Peace, Neoliberal environmentality: Towards a poststructuralist political ecology
of the conservation debate, http://www.conservationandsociety.org/article.asp?
issn=09724923;year=2010;volume=8;issue=3;spage=171;epage=181;aulast=Fletcher)//BW
This distinction between disciplinary and neoliberal forms of governmentality has
intriguing implications for our understanding of conservation practice that have yet
to be extensively explored (for preliminary applications to environmental
governance in general see Oels 2005). Efforts to conserve biodiversity, of course,
have been described as an exercise of biopower, in that: 1) interventions are
commonly justified in terms of their role in nurturing and sustaining life, both
human and that of other organisms (even the whole of life) as well (Luke 1999a);
and 2) interventions' object is commonly 'populations' (both human and non-) as a
whole, seeking to maximise the total area of protected forest and amount of land
under forest cover minimise, the quantity of extinct species, etc. As Youatt (2008)
observes, the United Nations Environmental Program's (UNEP) Global Biodiversity
Assessment can be seen as a paradigmatic biopolitical approach to conservation,
endeavouring to appraise the total health of global life according to a set of
statistical indicators and thereby establish a baseline upon which to intervene in
order to manipulate these indicators (reducing the rate of fish depletion, for
instance) so as to augment and sustain this life-as-a-whole. As with a more
conventional, human-centred exercise of biopower, biopolitical conservation policy ,
while aimed at populations, is actually applied to individual human bodies , often
through disciplinary techniques intended to alter their natural resource use
(Borgerhoff Mulder & Coppolillo 2005). In this respect, conservation has often been
described as a form of 'green' governmentality intended to inculcate an
environmental ethic by means of which people will self-regulate their behaviour in
conservation friendly ways (e.g., Luke 1999a, 1999b; Rutherford 1999; Neumann
2001; Peluso & Watts 2001; Sundar 2001; Agrawal 2005a, 2005b). Agrawal (2005b:
162), for instance, building upon Luke (1999a, 1999b), describes an
'environmentality' aimed at the creation of 'environmental subjects-people who care
about the environment'. Environmental education would constitute a paradigmatic
example of this environmentality in action, whereby, through diverse decentralised
institutions (state schools, NGO trainings, community workshops, ecotourism
excursions, etc.), norms intended to encourage in situ natural resource preservation
are advocated. Agrawal's (2005a, 2005b) environmentality describes a disciplinary
form of conservation governmentality. Neoliberal governmentality, as described
above, implies a much different approach to natural resource policy. Rather than
attempting to inculcate ethical norms vis--vis the environment, within a neoliberal
framework conservationists would simply endeavour to provide incentives sufficient
to motivate individuals to choose to behave in conservation-friendly ways. In this
perspective as well, 'environmental problems cease to be discussed in moral terms
and are now addressed as issues that require cost-benefit-analyses' (Oels 2005:

196). Finally, neoliberal policy would be directed first and foremost towards
encouraging economic growth as the means to include concerns for social justice
within conservation policy. This, of course, is the essence of the approach termed
neoliberal conservation described at the outset. Hence, we might describe
neoliberal conservation as the expression of a novel 'neoliberal environmentality' in
natural resource policy, an effort to combat environmental degradation in the
interest of biopower through the creation of incentive structures intended to
influence individuals' use of natural resources by altering the cost-benefit ratio of
resource extraction so as to encourage in situ preservation.

Efforts to reform environmental policy guarantee cooption and

enhance biopolitical control
Fletcher 10 (Robert, Department of Environment, Peace, and Security, University
for Peace, Neoliberal environmentality: Towards a poststructuralist political ecology
of the conservation debate, http://www.conservationandsociety.org/article.asp?
issn=09724923;year=2010;volume=8;issue=3;spage=171;epage=181;aulast=Fletcher)//BW
It is this contest among incommensurate governmentalities, indeed, that Foucault
sees as constituting the terrain of political debate. Just as Foucault describes four
distinct governmentalities operating within politics in general, we might observe a
similar situation within contemporary conservation policy as well, viewing the
conservation debate described above as embodying a variety of distinct
environmentalities. First, we have the commodifying, market-based neoliberal
environmentality outlined earlier. Second, we have the disciplinary environmentality
described by Agrawal (2005a) and others, which is an effort to create
'environmental subjects' through diffusion of ethical norms. In addition to these, we
might observe a third, sovereign environmentality in the 'fortress conservation'
approach, wherein resource preservation is enacted through the creation and patrol
of so-called protected areas (the 'fences and fines' strategy), usually on the part of
nation-state regimes for the recreational use of societal (or international) elites
(Igoe 2004). Finally, one might add to all of this a fourth environmentality,
corresponding with Foucault's 'art of government according to truth'. This 'truth
environmentality' might be observed, for instance, in the perspective advocated by
deep ecologists, who often argue for a particular approach to resource preservation
based on claims concerning humans' essential interconnection with nature , an
interconnection commonly understood as evolutionarily derived (Roszak et al. 1995;
Fletcher 2009b). Alternative resource use regimes, such as those practiced by many
indigenous peoples drawing on so-called traditional ecological knowledge (TEK),
might be seen as variants of truth environmentality as well (Berkes 2008). These
various environmentalities may be mixed and matched in particular positions within
the conservation debate. Community-based conservation might be seen to embody
alternate strands of disciplinarity and neoliberalism, depending upon whether a
programme emphasises ethics or incentives (or a combination of the two) in its
efforts to motivate local participation. A disciplinary environmentality might be
observed in some of the recent critiques of neoliberal conservation. McCauley, for

instance, contends that 'market-based mechanisms for conservation are not a

panacea for our current conservation ills. If we mean to make significant and longlasting gains in conservation, we must strongly assert the primacy of ethics and
aesthetics in conservation' (2006: 27). Elements of a sovereign environmentality
might be identified in the recent backlash to the CBC approach, calling for a return
to a protectionist, fortress conservation model in which rules will be enforced and
borders patrolled irrespective of the desires of local residents altogether (Wilshusen
et al. 2002). While in Foucault's (2003) original formulation biopower was described
as arising in opposition to sovereign authority, within contemporary conservation
discourse a sovereign governmentality may be harnessed to biopower itself, with
state-centred protectionism justified as the defense of non-human life. At the same
time, in the neoprotectionist backlash sovereign governmentality may be decoupled
from the state through the process that Ferguson (2006) calls the 'privatization of
sovereignty'. We can observe this, for instance, in the creation of private protected
areas (Langholz 2003) or those operated by NGOs, who may at times employ
coercive means to secure these areas' preservation (e.g., Clynes 2003). As I
intimate elsewhere, the use of ecotourism as a conservation tool may combine
disciplinary and neoliberal environmentalities, involving not only the promotion of
economic incentives but also the use of various disciplinary techniques intended to
condition local participants to an 'ecotourism discourse' (Fletcher 2009a). Neoliberal
and truth environmentalities may come together in the charismatic authority
exercised by 'conservation celebrities' who champion environmental causes on
behalf of BINGOs and their corporate partners (Brockington 2006, 2009). Likewise,
truth and sovereign environmentalities might be combined in certain strands of a
fortress conservation approach. For instance, early advocates of fortress protected
areas such as Muir and Thoreau self-consciously framed their advocacy in terms of
an essential human need for connection with the sacred in nature (Igoe 2004).
Similarly, Edward Abbey, one of the main sources of inspiration for the deep ecology
group EarthFirst!, famously asserted "The wilderness once offered men a plausible
way of life... Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge... Soon there will be no place to
go... Then the madness becomes universal... And the universe goes mad" (2000:
63). In such views, truth may be harnessed to biopower as well (EarthFirst!'s central
slogan, for instance, is 'No Compromise in Defense of Mother Earth'). In the
framework proposed here then, governmentality, biopower, discipline, sovereignty,
neoliberalism, and truth would all be viewed as distinct yet interrelated concepts
that may alternately merge, divide, compete, conflict, or coexist within any given
context [Table 1]. Contemporary trends and debates within conservation policy
might thus be understood as instances of the 'interplay' (Foucault 2008) among
incommensurate though not incompatible environmentalities in which these various
elements intersect.

hegemony
War and the pursuit of hegemony are used by the sovereign to
further biopower leads to reproduction of patriarchy, racism
and neoliberalism
Corva, 09 (Dominic, University of Washington, Biopower and the Militarization of
the Police Function, ACME,
http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/acme/article/view/828/685)//BW
war has become a regime of
biopower, a form of rule aimed not only at controlling the population but producing
and reproducing all aspects of social life (2004, 13). It is well beyond the scope of this review to
Hardt and Negris central claim with respect to this task is that

examine Foucaults theorization of biopower, 2 but it is important to point out that Hardt and Negris inclusion of
controlling the population in their definition is consistent with an often-overlooked aspect of governmentality,

the mode of governance in which strategies of sovereign power are subsumed by

biopower. This aspect is the inclusion of sovereign power, rather than its total
eclipse, in strategies associated with liberal governmentality (see Foucault in Burchell et al,
1991, 102). In this article, I use the term sovereign power to denote the use of state-sanctioned force (what
Foucault calls negative or repressive power) to control domestic and/or foreign territories. And biopower,

though it is articulated with strategies of sovereign power, positively produces

subjects of governance through techniques of normalization. Biopolitical strategies
of governance secure the reproduction of hegemonic social orders (capitalist,
patriarchal, masculinist, sexist, racist and so forth). For Foucault, both strategies are articulated
and dispersed through the territorial state, to address the problem of governing a national population. The state,
with its attendant sovereign functions, is an effect of hegemonic orders, while at the same time a necessary nexus
for the dispersal of hegemony-friendly, mostly biopolitical but also sovereign, strategies of governance.

Sovereign power, in the last instance, takes life or lets live (Foucault, 1984, 261). Biopower,
on the other hand, which functions through the proliferation of acceptable freedoms, fosters life or disallows it to
the point of death. It fosters life through the production of knowledge about the (legitimate) self, especially in
relation to a given population. This is what is meant by normalization, which refers to the construction of what
behavior, and therefore who, is normal in the population. While Foucaults work examines the relationship

global
governmentality that produces the neoliberal , capitalist world subject whose
national citizenship is increasingly secondary to global economic citizenship. If Empires
biopower is truly hegemonic, then the exercise of sovereign power should be articulated with and
between the liberal, European nation-state and its subjects, Hardt and Negris Empire theorizes a (sort of)

disciplined by the biopolitical practices of what Hardt and Negri refer to as the global aristocracy: transnational
corporations (TNCs), the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and so forth. Empires
imperialism should reproduce the neoliberal order, in the long run, rather than disrupt or de-legitimate it.

Hegemony is a paranoid fantasy --- the strategy of

omnipotence sees threats to empire everywhere, which
necessitates constant violence
McClintock 9 (Anne Chaired Professor of English and Womens and Gender
Studies at the University of WisconsinMadison, M.Phil. from Cambridge University,
Ph.D. from Columbia University, Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantnamo and
Abu Ghraib, in Small Axe, March 2009, Issue 28, p. 50-74,
http://smallaxe.net/repository/file/sx%2028/5-SA28%2520McClintock%2520%285074%29.pdf)
dominated by two grand and dangerous
hallucinations: the promise of benign US globalization and the permanent threat
By now it is fair to say that the United States has come to be

of the war on terror. I have come to feel that we cannot understand the
extravagance of the violence to which the US government has committed itself
after 9/11two countries invaded, thousands of innocent people imprisoned, killed, and
torturedunless we grasp a defining feature of our moment , that is, a deep and
disturbing doubleness with respect to power . Taking shape, as it now does, around fantasies
of global omnipotence (Operation Infinite Justice, the War to End All Evil) coinciding with
nightmares of impending attack, the United States has entered the domain of
paranoia: dream world and catastrophe. For it is only in paranoia that one finds
simultaneously and in such condensed form both deliriums of absolute power and
forebodings of perpetual threat. Hence the spectral and nightmarish quality of the war on
terror, a limitless war against a limitless threat , a war vaunted by the US
administration to encompass all of space and persisting without end. But the war on
terror is not a real war, for terror is not an identifiable enemy nor a strategic, real-world target. The war on terror is what
William Gibson calls elsewhere a

consensual hallucination, 4 and the US government can fling its

military might against ghostly apparitions and hallucinate a victory over all evil only at the
cost of catastrophic self-delusion and the infliction of great calamities
elsewhere. I have come to feel that we urgently need to make visible (the better
politically to challenge) those established but concealed circuits of imperial violence that
now animate the war on terror. We need, as urgently, to illuminate the continuities that connect
those circuits of imperial violence abroad with the vast, internal shadowlands of prisons and supermaxesthe modern
slave-ships on the middle passage to nowherethat have come to characterize the United States as a super-carceral
state. 5 Can we, the uneasy heirs of empire, now speak only of national things? If a long-established but primarily covert US
imperialism has, since 9/11, manifested itself more aggressively as an overt empire, does the terrain and object of
intellectual inquiry, as well as the claims of political responsibility, not also extend
beyond that useful fiction of the exceptional nation to embrace the shadowlands of
empire? If so, how can we theorize the phantasmagoric, imperial violence that has come so dreadfully to constitute our
kinship with the ordinary, but which also at the same moment renders extraordinary the ordinary bodies of ordinary people, an

casting states of
emergency into fitful shadow and fleshly bodies into specters? For imperialism is
not something that happens elsewhere, an offshore fact to be deplored but as easily ignored.
Rather, the force of empire comes to reconfigure, from within, the nature and violence of the nation-state
imperial violence which in collusion with a complicit corporate media would render itself invisible,

itself, giving rise to perplexing questions: Who under an empire are we, the people? And who are the ghosted, ordinary people

a crisis of violence and the visible.

How do we insist on seeing the violence that the imperial state attempts to
render invisible, while also seeing the ordinary people afflicted by that violence? For to allow the spectral, disfigured
people (especially those under torture) obliged to inhabit the haunted no-places and penumbra of empire to
be made visible as ordinary people is to forfeit the long-held US claim of moral and cultural
exceptionalism, the traditional self-identity of the U nited States as the uniquely
superior, universal standard-bearer of moral authority, a tenacious, national
mythology of originary innocence now in tatters. The deeper question, however, is not only how to
beyond the nation-state who, in turn, constitute us? We now inhabit

see but also how to theorize and oppose the violence without becoming beguiled by the seductions of spectacle alone. 6

we must also find a way to speak with ghosts, for specters

disturb the authority of vision and the hauntings of popular memory disrupt the
great forgettings of official history. Paranoia Even the paranoid have enemies. Donald Rumsfeld Why
paranoia? Can we fully understand the proliferating circuits of imperial violence
the very eclipsing of which gives to our moment its uncanny, phantasmagoric cast without understanding
the pervasive presence of the paranoia that has come, quite violently, to
manifest itself across the political and cultural spectrum as a defining feature of our
Perhaps in the labyrinths of torture

time? By paranoia, I mean not simply Hofstadters famous identification of the US states tendency toward conspiracy theories.

7 Rather, I conceive of paranoia as an inherent contradiction with respect to power: a double-sided phantasm that oscillates
precariously between deliriums of grandeur and nightmares of perpetual threat,

a deep and dangerous

doubleness with respect to power that is held in unstable tension, but which, if suddenly destabilized (as after 9/11),
can produce pyrotechnic displays of violence. The pertinence of understanding paranoia, I
argue, lies in its peculiarly intimate and peculiarly dangerous relation to violence. 8 Let me be clear: I do not see paranoia as a
primary, structural cause of US imperialism nor as its structuring identity. Nor do I see the US war on terror as animated by some
collective, psychic agency, submerged mind, or Hegelian cunning of reason, nor by what Susan Faludi calls a national terror
dream. 9 Nor am I interested in evoking paranoia as a kind of psychological diagnosis of the imperial nation-state. Nations do
not have psyches or an unconscious; only people do. Rather, a social entity such as an organization, state, or empire can be
spoken of as paranoid if the dominant powers governing that entity cohere as a collective community around contradictory
cultural narratives, self-mythologies, practices, and identities that oscillate between delusions of inherent superiority and
omnipotence, and phantasms of threat and engulfment. The term paranoia is analytically useful here, then, not as a description
of a collective national psyche, nor as a description of a universal pathology, but rather as an analytically strategic concept, a
way of seeing and being attentive to contradictions within power, a way of making visible (the better politically to oppose) the
contradictory flashpoints of violence that the state tries to conceal. Paranoia is in this sense what I call a hinge phenomenon,
articulated between the ordinary person and society, between psychodynamics and socio-political history. Paranoia is in that
sense dialectical rather than binary, for its violence erupts from the force of its multiple, cascading contradictions: the intimate
memories of wounds, defeats, and humiliations condensing with cultural fantasies of aggrandizement and revenge, in such a
way as to be productive at times of unspeakable violence. For how else can we understand such debauches of cruelty? A critical
question still remains: does not something terrible have to happen to ordinary people (military police, soldiers, interrogators) to
instill in them, as ordinary people, in the most intimate, fleshly ways, a paranoid cast that enables them to act compliantly with,
and in obedience to, the paranoid visions of a paranoid state? Perhaps we need to take a long, hard look at the simultaneously
humiliating and aggrandizing rituals of militarized institutions, whereby individuals are first broken down, then reintegrated
(incorporated) into the larger corps as a unified, obedient fighting body, the methods by which schools, the military, training
camps not to mention the paranoid image-worlds of the corporate mediainstill paranoia in ordinary people and fatally
conjure up collective but unstable fantasies of omnipotence. 10 In what follows, I want to trace the flashpoints of imperial
paranoia into the labyrinths of torture in order to illuminate three crises that animate our moment: the crisis of violence and the
visible, the crisis of imperial legitimacy, and what I call the enemy deficit. I explore these flashpoints of imperial paranoia as
they emerge in the torture at Guantnamo and Abu Ghraib. I argue that Guantnamo is the territorializing of paranoia and that
torture itself is paranoia incarnate, in order to make visible, in keeping with Hazel Carbys brilliant work, those contradictory
sites where imperial racism, sexuality, and gender catastrophically collide. 11 The Enemy Deficit: Making the Barbarians
Visible Because night is here but the barbarians have not come. Some people arrived from the frontiers, And they said that there
are no longer any barbarians. And now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.
C. P. Cavafy, Waiting for the Barbarians The barbarians have declared war. President George W. Bush C. P. Cavafy wrote
Waiting for the Barbarians in 1927, but the poem haunts the aftermath of 9/11 with the force of an uncanny and prescient dj

crisis of
legitimacy in that it flings its power over territories and peoples who have not consented to that power. Cavafys insight is
that an imperial state claims legitimacy only by evoking the threat of the
barbarians. It is only the threat of the barbarians that constitutes the silhouette of
the empires borders in the first place. On the other hand, the hallucination of the barbarians disturbs the
empire with perpetual nightmares of impending attack. The enemy is the abject of
empire: the rejected from which we cannot part. And without the barbarians the
legitimacy of empire vanishes like a disappearing phantom. Those people were a
kind of solution. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the grand antagonism of
vu. To what dilemma are the barbarians a kind of solution? Every modern empire faces an abiding

the United States and the USSR evaporated like a quickly fading nightmare. The cold war rhetoric of totalitarianism,

Where were the enemies now

to justify the continuing escalation of the military colossus? And now what
shall become of us without any barbarians? By rights, the thawing of the cold war
should have prompted an immediate downsizing of the military ; any plausible external
Finlandization, present danger, fifth columnist, and infiltration vanished.

threat had simply ceased to exist. Prior to 9/11, General Peter Schoomaker, head of the US Army, bemoaned the enemy deficit:
Its no use having an army that did nothing but train, he said. Theres got to be a certain appetite for what the hell we exist
for. Dick Cheney likewise complained: The

threats have become so remote. So remote that

they are difficult to ascertain. Colin Powell agreed: Though we can still plausibly identify specific threats
North Korea, Iran, Iraq, something like thatthe real threat is the unknown, the uncertain. Before becoming president, George
W. Bush likewise fretted over the postcold war dearth of a visible enemy: We do not know who the enemy is, but we know they
are out there. It is now well established that the invasion of Iraq had been a long-standing goal of the US administration, but
there was no clear rationale with which to sell such an invasion. In 1997 a group of neocons at the Project for the New American
Century produced a remarkable report in which they stated that to make such an invasion palatable would require a
catastrophic and catalyzing eventlike a new Pearl Harbor. 12 The 9/11 attacks came as a dazzling solution, both to the enemy

political casus belli

and the military unimaginable license to expand its reach . General Peter Schoomaker would
deficit and the problem of legitimacy, offering the Bush administration what they would claim as a

publicly admit that the attacks were an immense boon: There is a huge silver lining in this cloud. . . . War is a tremendous
focus. . . . Now we have this focusing opportunity, and we have the fact that (terrorists) have actually attacked our homeland,

which gives it some oomph. In his book Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke recalls thinking during the attack, Now we can
perhaps attack Osama Bin Laden. After the invasion of Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell noted, America will have a
continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind we could not have dreamed of before. Charles Krauthammer, for one,
called for a declaration of total war. We no longer have to search for a name for the post-Cold War era, he declared. It will
henceforth be known as the age of terrorism. 13

Unipolar power precludes an effective long-term solution to

nuclear deterrence and encourages proliferation --- only a
return to previous balance of power can solve
van Munster and Sylvest 13 (Rens Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for
International Studies, Casper Associate Professor at University of Southern
Denmark, paper prepared for the ISA Annual convention, March 2013, p. 5-13,
https://research.ncl.ac.uk/media/sites/researchwebsites/classicalrealism/vanMunster
&Sylvest_NuclearRealism_ISA2013.pdf)
nuclear weapons could thus not be downplayed as an unintended
consequence of the scientific enlightenment (Walker, 2007: 431). To the contrary, the
thermonuclear revolution was made possible by science , technology and rationality.
The existence of

In that sense, nuclear realists would have strongly agreed with Adornos (1966: 320) famous remark that there is no universal

a
blind faith in the principles of science and rationality was unwarranted in light of the
horrors of the twentieth century. It could even be outright dangerous , as Herz realized after
history leading from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb. At any rate,

having witnessed, at close range in Geneva, the breakdown of the reformed international order with the League of Nations at its
center an order he as an ardent liberal had politically supported (Herz, 1939; Herz, 1942; Herz, 1951). Mumford underwent a
similar conversion. Having visited Germany in the early 1930s during a time when the national socialist movement was growing
rapidly and making its political presence felt, he had failed to note both the movements presence and the intensity of its anti-liberal
ideals. When Mumford belatedly realized what was at stake, his atonement took the form of a fight against what he termed
pragmatic liberalism and its isolationist implications for American foreign policy. As he argued, such a liberalism was too noble to
surrender, too sick to fight, plagued by a total incapacity to face the worst and thereby risking the ultimate perversion: being too

Nuclear realists therefore argued for a more sober and humble

calibration of liberalism and its optimistic belief in progress . What was needed was a
language and understanding of politics in the face of dark realities that no rational
theory could provide a bulwark against.4 Such a language had to be formulated between the optimist belief in
virtuous to live.3

universal values of a rational science and progress on the one hand and a pessimistic retreat from emancipation and liberty on the

Given the absolute materiality of nuclear weapons and the political context in
which they existed at the height of the Cold War , liberalism required a healthy dose
of realism without illusions (Philp, 2012) that should not begin from an idea of how
people ought to act ideally or rationally, but from an appreciation of the context
within which politicians and policy-makers have to make choices as well a critical
examination of their actual conduct. This realist form of liberalism has strong affinities with Foucaults later
injunction that: We must try to proceed with the analysis of ourselves as beings who are
historically determined, to a certain extent, by the Enlightenment. Such an analysis implies a series of historical
other.

inquiries that are as precise as possible; and these inquiries will not be oriented retrospectively toward the essential kernel of
rationality that can be found in the Enlightenment and would have to be preserved in any event; they will be oriented toward the
contemporary limits of the necessary, that is, toward what is not or is no longer indispensable for the constitution of ourselves as
autonomous subjects (Foucault, 1986: 42, 43) For nuclear realists, the contemporary limit of the necessary was nothing less that

In their view a state-dominated configuration of

international politics was bound to produce a politically suicidal and morally
unacceptable great power nuclear war (or a great power conventional war that risked escalating into a nuclear
the question of survival of the species.

war), something that classical realists familiar to IR scholars, even if somewhat belatedly, also came to accept (Craig, 2003). This
appreciation of the limits of science and means-ends rationality guides for political action also informed their critique of deterrence
and the dangerous illusion amongst government officials that the H -bomb was a usable, if not a winning, weapon rather than a
technique of extermination. The central element in the nuclear realist critique of deterrence was an appreciation of how the politics
of deterrence coalesced with the changing knowledge economy of the emerging military-industrial complex. Although civilians
managed to break the military monopoly on strategy in these years, they did so from positions of intellectual authority established
by funds from within this ever-expanding complex; whether in think tanks like RAND or in the several centers dealing in nuclear
strategy that were established at major universities during this period (Kuklick, 2006; Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2000). To nuclear realists this

reconfiguration of knowledge production failed to adequately face the challenge of these new weapons; indeed, it merely signaled
how the scientific method that had spurred (and been spurred by) modern civilization was incapable of confronting the moral and
existential dimensions of military force after the thermonuclear revolution. Clearly, science and technology had brought wonders to
the modern world, but when dictated and pursued by power-intoxicated agents the prospects for civilization were dim (see also

Nuclear realists kept stressing that the focus on short-term order and
stability amounted to moral failure: it produced a false sense of security, a host of
negative side-effects and precluded a sustainable long term solution. The moral critique of
deterrence was strongly rooted in epistemological concerns and nuclear realists maintained that the majority of
politicians and strategists relied on an overtly thin or too rationalist concept of
deterrence that in their realist conception of politics was untenable . While both Herz and
Sylvest, 2013a).

Russell conceded in the late 1950s that deterrence had been paradoxically successful, they also argued that it was based on rather
optimistic assumptions. When Herz made these points he also offered a knowledgeable and in some respects sympathetic

security through nuclear weapons meant

complete insecurity and that the most potent weapon was shot through with
paradoxes and ambivalences. In making these points, Herz clearly grasped that credibility was the crucial issue
(Herz, 1959: 198, 202, 215). But then a host of problems remained, none of them negligible: lunatics,
application of rationality in a context of uncertainty , risks of misinterpretation,
different kinds of trigger-happiness in officials running so-called fool proof systems
and, not least, the endless second-guessing of intentions (Herz, 1959: 183f.; Herz, 1962: 131-133). With
discussion of nuclear strategy. He began by noting that

respect to the latter Herz sarcastically remarked that [i]t may be doubted that even the theory of games as applied to international
relations can cope with this one (Herz, 1959: 207n.). Against the background of the elevation of deterrence to dogma (Herz, 1959:

unilateral and mutual deterrence. The former mainly based on the concept of massive
was plagued by confusion and lack of precision (a common refrain
among critics of Eisenhower administrations policies in the 1950s). The notion of mutual deterrence was not
straightforward either and Herz argued that only a strict concept of mutual deterrence, only threatening retaliation
against nuclear attacks, could work (Herz, 1959: 189).5 Everything else would be illogical , since it would
presume an adversary (or deteree) to be deterred by something that would not
deter the deterrer. Unfortunately, Western policy was founded on such shaky foundations .
A policy of retaliation that was not precise and determinate, i.e. based on a proclamation of nofirst use, might provoke rather than prevent war and especially coupled with a
defense policy underemphasizing conventional military force it could mean an
involuntary rush into the very conflict we want to avoid (Herz, 1959: 194-5). Russell made many
184) Herz examined both

retaliation was found wanting: it

similar points (Russell, 1959: 30-31, 39, 70-1), but he was more outspoken about the motivation behind his dissection of nuclear
strategy and simulation; namely to counter the widespread belief that the H-bomb constituted a winning weapon and to unmask
the long-term instability of the concept of deterrence (or what Dulles called brinkmanship). Russell did this by invoking an analogy

the game played by

running two cars against each other, testing the resolve of both drivers before being
decided by a crash or the first turn away from it symbolized the inherent instability
of deterrence. Russell was at pains to refute the argument that there was no alternative to continue playing a suicidal game
to the game of chicken made popular in a Hollywood movie a few years previously. For Russell,

or surrendering to the Soviet adversary (Russell, 1959: 30-1). The chicken analogy was Russells most insightful contribution to
contemporary nuclear strategy and secured for him a supporting role in the development of strategic thought: the following year
RAND theorist Herman Kahn used Russells analogy in his notorious treatise On Thermonuclear War (1960). The virtue of Russells
analogy was its perceptiveness in relation to the crucial issue of credibility.6 In Kahns hands, however, chicken became an
argument for blind, automated resolve along the lines of the infamous doomsday machine that later made it into Western folklore

Russell engaged in the kind of

simulation that characterized Kahns strategizing , he did so in order to expose the
absurdity and futility of considering the use of military force after the thermonuclear
revolution. His purpose was completely contrary to that of Kahn, who thought it important to think the unthinkable and
through its appearance in Stanley Kubricks Dr. Strangelove. Although

contemplate the possibility of nuclear war. Indeed, when it came to American policy, Russell pointed out I can find almost nothing
that seems to me compatible with rationality in Kahns adoption of deterrence (Russell, 1961: 17). The fact that Kahn thought

the effects of this

phenomenon landed Kahn in a paradox not unlike that presented by the weapons he
strategized about: the notion that thermonuclear war could be fought led to a bleak
and cheerless outlook, but it is the best that Mr. Kahn can offer us even by stretching optimism to the very limits of
thermonuclear war in some instances rational and that he underestimated, according to Russell,

In an environment populated by fallible , pugnacious and

occasionally mad human beings, a concept based on how decision-makers rationally
ought to act was not just unrealistic , but also extremely dangerous.7 The political
rationality underlying the traditional conduct of international politics , whatever its severe
shortcomings in the pre-nuclear era, reached an absolute limit in the mid-twentieth century. The horrifying nature of
World War II both its increasingly total, unstrained character , the German
extermination policy towards the Jews and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that(virtually) brought the war to a close obviously contributed to this increasing realization, but it
was the advent of thermonuclear weapons that finally undermined time-honored practices of international society. Three
interrelated institutions are of particular importance: the balance of power ,
diplomacy and war. Herz, who had much in common with other classical realists of his time, had argued that the
traditional European balance of power policy was a safeguard against imperial
ambitions that, with Britain strategically placed at the center as the holder of the
balance, had achieved near-perfection in the eighteenth century . In contrast to a more
credibility (Russell, 1961: 17).

mechanical system where order was achieved at random Herz stressed that [b]alance of power politics is an applied art, not an

Two challenges to this (idealized) construction of the balance

of power presented themselves in the post-war era . First, the power shifts of the international system
applied science (Herz, 1951: 216).8

made it doubtful whether a balance of power (policy) could function in a more rigid configuration with only two major players and no

After the arrival of the thermonuclear bomb , furthermore, combating

Kremlins false ideology required an altogether different strategy of genuinely
appealing to the people in the communist world . Emphasis should not be put on a
fabricated, hollow fantasy of the American dream but on the actual pluralistic
system which allows the greatest variety and play to whatever economic forces and
institutions, private or public, will efficiently further the common good (Mumford, 1954a: 8).
Second, the classical balance of power had, when it worked best, depended on the
existence of a system of diplomacy that allowed for frank exchanges of view and , in
case diplomacy failed, war as a continuation of diplomacy by other means. Again,
however, injecting thermonuclear weapons into this already fragile and dangerous
organization of international politics exposed the limits of traditional political
rationality and diplomacy. Drawing on George F. Kennan, Herz (1959: 180) pointed out how the nature of
new weapon made it unsuitable for being used as a threat in diplomatic
relations. Russell repeatedly stressed this same point during the 1950s. With the existence of the thermonuclear bomb, he
argued, [d]iplomats ... are deprived of their traditional weapon . They are in fact
reduced to a game of bluff and blackmail . If it is thought that the other side would rather exterminate the
human race than yield, it is rational to give way to the lunacy of opponents. There is thus a premium on madness, and onesided rationality entails defeat for the less irrational .9 War, or the threat of war, similarly
lost its meaning in the modern Clausewitzian sense . Although the dictum that war is a continuation of
policy has been true hitherto, it is true no longer (Russell, 1954b: 251), since [i]n a war using the H-bomb,
there can be no victor.10 Of the nuclear realists treated here, Russell was the most outspoken in stressing the novelty
holder of the balance.

of situation that the thermonuclear revolution had brought about. The Bikini tests, his early grasp of the physics and scale of the Hbomb, as well as his attention to those few facts and judgments about the new weapon made available by politicians and military

the ends of war can no longer

be achieved with the most advanced weapons. As he starkly put it, [w]e can all live or all die, but it is no
officials at the time, led him to stress the wholly new fact (Russell, 1954d: 51) that

longer possible to think that only our enemies will die.11 Towards the end of the 1950s, when John Herz published International

Unlimited war ... can no longer

bestow on any power waging it in the form of nuclear war that which used to be the
fruit of superiority and thus of victory: the attainment of war aims, whether
security or any others (Herz, 1959: 21). This situation was brought about by guided,
intercontinental missiles and the revolutionary force of fusion bombs that achieved
Politics in the Atomic Age (1959), he entirely agreed with Russells point:

an uncanny absoluteness of effect (Herz, 1957: 488). Consequently, security meant

insecurity, while victory was a mere word. This state of affairs was particularly
dangerous, in Herzs analysis, in a situation where war was increasingly
bureaucratized or reified (Herz, 1959: 274) and where the dynamics of the security
dilemma played itself out in a context of ideological conflict and mutual
suspicion. Oppenheimers metaphor of two scorpions in a bottle was highly appropriate (Herz, 1959: 13). Lewis Mumford was
in complete agreement with Herz and Russell about the fundamental point: There will be no victor in World War III, Mumford
argued, since a genuine war of extermination would bring about our own downfall (Mumford, 1954b: 88 [italics in original], 77). In

Mumford warned that modern

war pursued to its logical end would mean not the defeat of the enemy but his
total extermination: not the resolution of conflict but the liquidation of the
opposition (Mumford, 1954b: 170). Anders concurred and drove home the point with characteristic simplicity: because
nuclear weapons overwhelm their targets, their almightiness is their defect [Ihre
Allmacht ist ihr Defekt] (Anders, 1956: 258). The H-bomb flouts the conventional understanding of
a means by entailing the destruction of the end. Or simply: the bomb is too big. In Anders
words, the end discovered its own end in the effect of the means , which signaled nothing less
than the degeneration of the conceptual distinction between means and end. Nowhere was this more obvious
than in the context of arms racing, where [t]he production of means has become
the end of our existence [Dasein] (Anders, 1956: 251). For these reasons, nuclear realists were also sceptical about
the possibility of fighting a limited nuclear war. After it was clear that the Soviet Union had obtained a thermonuclear device, the
combination of a nuclear standoff and a doctrine of massive retaliation that
despite several attempts at qualification (e.g. Dulles, 1954) was still seen as risking a
major nuclear exchange over a minor conflict led to an attempt to make war
fighting possible and plausible again . It was feared that the credibility of the nuclear
threat was compromised by touting it in the context of minor conflicts or any kind of
aggression. Lodged in such moves was a tacit recognition that the H-bomb (a strategic weapon) transgressed
the category of a military weapon that could be used for political purposes and a
conviction that tactical nuclear weapons were a weapon like any other . As Henry Kissinger
re-publishing and developing ideas published as a reaction to the atomic bomb,

phrased it in Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957), [t]he prerequisite for a policy of limited war is to reintroduce the political
element into our concept of warfare and to discard the notion that policy ends where war begins or that war can have goals distinct
from those of national policy (Kissinger quoted in Freedman, 2003: 97). Although nuclear realists had some sympathy with the
argument that the superpower conflict needed a safety valve,12 they ultimately were unconvinced by the argument for limited
nuclear war. The main problem they foresaw here concerned escalation, a problem which advocates of limited nuclear war has never

None of the various suggested

distinctions as to graduated deterrence, targets, tactical as opposed to strategic atomic weapons, and
so forth, seems to offer a sufficient guarantee against eventual (or even immediate) outbreak
of all-out nuclear war; only avoidance of the first use of any and all atomic and
nuclear weapons (in the sense of fission and fusion weapons) might guarantee this (Herz, 1959: 200). This
convincingly cracked (Freedman, 2003: xiv). As Herz put this point in 1959:

was an argument that Herz shared with Russell (as well as with more conventional strategic thinkers opposed to limited nuclear
war). Indeed, this discussion of limited nuclear war led straight back to the overriding theme in the nuclear realist analysis of how
military force was reconfigured in the wake of the thermonuclear revolution. By falsely considering the H-bomb a weapon let alone a

military strategists and

defenders of deterrence failed to appreciate the reorganization of basic truths that
followed in the wake of technological progress .
winning weapon in effect by even entertaining the notion that they were usable

nuclear
Nuclear rhetoric justifies biopolitical control over a population
and leads to permanent war and genocide over indigenous
cultures
Bussolini 08 (Jeffrey, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies,
College of Staten Island Nuclear State of Exception: Reading and Extension of
Foucault's Concepts of Biopower and Biopolitics in Agamben and the Nuclear Age
Abstracts: Foucault Circle 2008)//BW
Near the beginning of Stato de eccezione, Giorgio Agamben includes a very telling
quotation from Rossiter: Nellera atomica in cui il mondo sta ora entrando,
probabile che luso dei poteri di emergenza costituzionale divenga la regola e non
leccezione. (In the atomic era into which the world is now entering, it is likely that
the use of constitutional emergency powers will become the rule rather than the
exception). Studying the atomic age along these lines, as well as those of the
earlier considerations on biopolitics in Agambens Homo Sacer and Michel Foucaults
lecture courses at the College de France from 1976-1979 (including the crucial
concepts of permanent war and the importance of conquest and colonization in
contemporary state structures), bears out Rossiters quotationthe advent of
nuclear technology has indeed coincided with an augmentation of biopolitics and
continued hostility both between and within states. By any reckoning nuclear
weapons are major artifacts of geopolitics and biopolitics. They are inherently
geopolitical tools that emerged from a history of intense inter-state conflict, and
their scope and effects make any use a geopolitical event (despite repeated
attempts to fashion smaller battlefield or tactical nukes and come up with
scenarios for their employment). The nuclear age is characterized by distrust and
hostility between states as well as suspicion of a states own citizens and
populations (as foreign agents, active threats, or as insufficiently disciplined to
handle the secrets and necessary actions of security). Lending credence to the
notion that the atomic age is closely linked to a state of exception as nationalist
norm, all countries that have developed nuclear arms have substantial secret
institutions devoted to developing them and devising plans for their possible use.
Nuclear secrets are among the most closely guarded of national security matters. In
the United States, all information about nuclear arms is born classified and
automatically subject to strict controls, the only such category in U.S. classification.
The 1947 Smyth Report on the Manhattan Project and U.S. nuclear science says that
the secrets of the weapons must remain secret now and for all time. Clearly these
are regarded as central pillars of geopolitics. The very real threat of Armageddon
from these weapons easily gives way to thinking of expediency and triage which
instrumentalizes certain populations The fate of those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
as well as the continuing collection of data about them by the Atomic Bomb
Casualty Commission, has been described in Robert Jay Liftons Death in Life.
Thousands of soldiers and scientists from different nations have been exposed in
tests and research. Indigenous people from the American southwest to the Pacific
Islands, Kazakhstan, and Algeria have been forcefully relocated to make room for
atomic tests, exposed to radiation, or both. Groups such as prisoners and mental

patients have been subjected to radiation experiments against their will or

knowledge, supposedly for the purpose of building up crucial knowledge about
nuclear effects, as documented in Eileen Welsomes Plutonium Files and
Department of Energy reports on Human Radiation Experiments. These weapons,
then, are intimately tied to power over life and death and the
management of subject populations. As such, it seems that the exigency
related to nuclear thinking justifies (or is the expression of) significant
sovereign power over bare life. In the histories mentioned here, survival and
protection of the population at large was seen to validate causing death or illness
among smaller subsets of that population. One can note that, given their scale,
nuclear weapons force consideration of population-level dynamics, as whole
populations are placed at risk. In this respect, these arms follow on and accentuate
the massive strategic bombing of World War II in which enemy populations were
targeted as vital biopolitical resources. In developing his thoughts on states of
exception and bare life, Agamben draws explicitly on the work of Michel Foucault. In
addition to being of interest in terms of the intellectual history of geopolitics, I
believe that the aspects of Foucault upon which he draws also help us to notice
some important aspects of the nuclear age and its attendant shifts in government.
Agamben draws especially on Foucaults lecture courses from 1976-1979 at the
College de France (Il faut dfendre la societ; Scurit, territoire, population; and
Naissance de la biopolitique). I have been undertaking study of those courses, along
with Agambens Stato di eccezione and Homo Sacer: il potere sovrano e la nuda
vita, in order to investigate the Nuclear State of Exception under which the
acquisition and production of nuclear arms justifies permanent emergency powers,
intense secrecy, and harm or sacrifice of portions of state population. In Il faut
defendre la societ, Foucault begins to elucidate his concept of permanent war (la
guerre perptuelle) as a model for modern society. According to him this state of
permanent war is the backdrop (or the foreground) for thinking about sovereignty,
and it has to do with the fact of invasion, conquest, and colonization. Through
considering the examples of the Norman conquest of England, the Franc conquest of
Gaulle, and, briefly, the example of the European colonization of Native Americans,
he describes a situation of invasion in which permanent antagonism between
conqueror and conquered is inevitable, hence a permanent war. Seen from this
point of view, it is not surprising that major nuclear powers including the United
States, France, and the Soviet Union all carried out dangerous nuclear experiments
in colonized territories populated by indigenous peoplesthese tests were an active
symbol and a continuation of the conquest. State sovereignty is a mechanism used
to legitimize and increase the power of the conqueror , preventing the outbreak of
the dreaded war of all against all that Hobbes feared. But, in another sense, this
situation is the war of all against all. According to this line of thinking, the Nuclear
State of Exception is also a special kind of class warfare in which the power of the
sovereign state is increased to maddening levels while the state population is
increasingly seen as a conquered group upon whom the sovereignty must be
secured. Certainly, communists in the United States bore an especially intense
brunt of the Nuclear State of Exception.

The atomic age and nuclear threats have been constructed in

order to enhance the biopower of the state and create a state
of exception
Bussolini 08 (Jeffrey, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies,
College of Staten Island Nuclear State of Exception: Reading and Extension of
Foucault's Concepts of Biopower and Biopolitics in Agamben and the Nuclear Age
Abstracts: Foucault Circle 2008)//BW
Near the end of this volume Foucault makes the explicit linkage between the
nuclear age and biopolitics as, he says, placing the population under an absolute
risk of death was a necessary precursor and transition to biopolitical management
of life. In Securit, territoire, population, Foucault further elucidates his thinking on
sovereignty by considering the way that it focuses on the need for demonstrable
securing of territory and population. The emphasis on protection of territory in the
nuclear age, through extensive radar, satellites, strategic bombers, missiles,
undersea sonar nets, submarines, and the like, is well known. Especially, Foucault
focuses on the need for regulation and guidance of populations to ensure national
vitality (in ascending liberalism). As a result public health campaigns and human
government (governmentality) come to have new importance. He relates this to the
augmentation of state sovereignty through the increasing development of a liberal,
laissez-faire system in which subjects and workers must be fit, self-guiding, and
motivated. It is interesting to note that the atomic age/Cold War discourse of the
United States was heavily oriented in this direction in which the integrity of
populations and the motivation of individual citizens was seen as crucial to the
overall vitality of the nationand thus intimately tied to chances of winning or
losing the geopolitical contest. Recall the insane General Ripper from Kubricks
masterpiece Dr. Strangelove and his maniacal obsession with Purity of Essence on
the part of the American population. In Naissance de la biopolitique Foucault
continues his treatment of liberalism and neoliberalism as modern forms of
government, calling liberalism the general frame of biopolitics (le cadre general
de la biopolitique). One important aspect of this is the pairing of laissez-faire
liberal emphasis on rights with strong sovereign states of overwhelming power.
Flowing from this is a bifurcation (or multiple segmentation) of populations into
more and less desirable groups. The agents and workers of neoliberalism versus
those who do not fit within, or who oppose, the liberal model. It is precisely this
aspect of biopolitics that Agamben picks up on in Homo Sacer and the section on la
vita indigna di essere vessuta (life that is not worth living). As we have already
seen, the Nuclear State of Exception bears this out as some parts of the population
were selected as vital/productive, while other parts of the population, especially the
colonized and undesirables, were classed as expendable and subjected to various
harms of nuclear technology

prisons
The prison has moved from a disciplinary apparatus to one of
exceptional measures that have become routine
Lyon 6 (David, Queens Research Chair in the Sociology Department and Director of
the Surveillance Project at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada,
Theorizing Surveillance: The panopticon and beyond, edited by David Lyon, p.11-12)
The panopticon was a distinct
and bounded area; now, he says, zones of indistinction are crucial, and in fact, are the locus
of power. Where (as he argues) Arendt or Foucault failed to connect their analyses of the world of power with those of everyday
life, Agamben now proposes that sovereign power and bare life converge in the camp . As
Didier Bigo argues, however, one way this happens is through mechanisms of surveillance
power that create and perpetuate the ban . And as some of these mechanisms are
technological, we also must examine the virtualizing of the ban . Does carrying a
national ID card or a Permanent Resident Card also express the zone of
indistinction and the ban each time it is swiped or scanned? The ongoing quest for surveillance
Agambens work, like Baumans and Arendts, also speaks to surveillance theories.

theory It seems clear that some constructive contributions to surveillance theory are needed. Surveillance theory cannot ignore the
panopticon but it can surely move beyond it. Quite which directions will be taken beyond is a matter of ongoing debate. First the
ground has to be cleared. Kevin Haggerty makes no bones about his project: Tear down the walls! He comments effectively on
demolishing the panopticon, a project that has several significant rationales. His key point is that what might be called

panopticism as an all-embracing model or paradigm should be abandoned. And rather

than contribute any single such explanatory model in place of the panopticon , Haggerty
hints that another Foucaldian theme, governmentality, should be seen as a source of useful
insights that serve to frame a range of activities under the surveillance studies
rubric. Didier Bigo picks up this theme by proposing some quite specific forms of analysis that relate security with surveillance
studies in the context of early twenty-first century global developments. For this time, Bigo insists, the inclusive
panopticon simply will not work as a heuristic. In its place, he explores the implications of his
alternative exclusion-stressing formulation, deriving partly from Agamben, the banopticon. The
governmentality of uncertainty, fear and unease, argues Bigo, is characterized above all
by exceptional practices, extraordinary measures, that paradoxically are now
routine. These involve profiling and containing foreigners at the same time as
promoting the normative imperative of mobility. Increasingly, he demonstrates, the idea is
advanced of the formation of a world empire to protect us all from fanatics . But while
this may be seen in various agreements, legal developments and new institutions, these should not deflect
attention from the routine technologies of control that surveillance studies attempts
to illuminate. Bigo pleads for further analysis of security and surveillance that is attuned to our times and prepared to
confront current political trends driven by what might be called the security-informational complex.

Reforms to the prison systems fail and guarantee

circumvension
Lacombe 96 (Dany, Professor of Sociology, received her BA from Universite de
Sherbrooke, and her MA and PhD from the University of Toronto, Reforming
Foucault: A Critique of the Social Control Thesis,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/591730.pdf?acceptTC=true)//BW
In Discipline and Punish (1979) Foucault demonstrates this productive aspect of
power through an analysis of the relationship between punishment, a technology of
power, and the development of the social sciences. He demonstrates that out of the

modern practices of punishment (observation, examination, measurement,

classification, surveillance, record keeping, etc.) emerged a systematic knowledge
of individuals that provided the seed for the development of the human sciences
(psychology, criminology, sociology, etc.), a knowledge that allowed for the exercise
of power and control over those individuals. Foucault's analysis, therefore, reveals
how knowledge, as forms of thought and action, is intricately connected to the
operation of power. Indeed, power and knowledge are intimately linked by a process
of mutual constitution; one implies the other. Hence Foucault coined the expression
'powerknowledge' and set out to investigate the relationship that linked the two
practices: 'there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of
knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the
same time power relations'. (Foucault 1979: 27) 'Powerknowledge' implies that
there can be no assertion without a field of power, or stated differently, that there is
no truth without a politics of truth. This concept has methodological implications for
the way we approach the study of power. Rather than trying to determine why
power exists, which would lead us to define it in terms of an essence, the concept
'powerknowledge' invites us to inquire about how power operates, that is about the
strategies and procedures through which power is exercised. As Ewald (1975)
indicates in his review of Discipline and Punish, Foucault approaches the truth
claims of the prison reform movements and the discourses they emanate from in a
descriptive fashion: Which strategy of production do they come from? Which
relations of power do you proceed from? What kinds of subjection or liberation do
you produce? (Ewald 1975: 1 230)

security
The 1ACs attempts to securitize itself from the impacts
reinforce biopolitical control by the sovereign
Stockdale, 10 (Liam P.D., Ph.D. in International Relations, Department of
Political Science, McMaster University, Securitizing the Future? A Critical
Interrogation of the Pre-emptive Turn in the Theory and Practice of Contemporary
Security, http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2010/Stockdale.pdf)//BW
the development of security
practices in the post-9/11 era, and this trend is particularly evident in the activities
of what are popularly termed liberal or Western states. 2 Indeed, empirically speaking,
the majority of the pre-emptive practices with which I am here concerned take place
either within the context of the WOTsuch as the indefinite detention of terror suspects without
charge (Mutimer 2007)or vis--vis the purported threat of large inflows of migrants
As mentioned above, an explicitly temporal element has underwritten

exemplified by the myriad detention centres on the periphery of the EU and by Australias so-called pacific

These issues represent

top security concerns for states that are conventionally identified as liberal
democratic polities, and therefore the pre-emptive practices upon which I focus
most often originate from the sovereign decisions undertaken by the governments
and security agents of such states. This is important in theoretical terms because the fact that it is
solution of mandatory pre-emptive detention (Isin & Rygiel 2007, L. Weber 2007).

precisely states which are avowedly liberal democratic states, openly committed to the rule of law (Mutimer

the types of pre-emptive practices I seek to problematize renders

the logic underlying such actsand perhaps even the concept of the liberal polity
itself in the current security momentquite problematic . This latter point will be central to the
2007) that are behind

second half of the paperand will be discussed in greater depth below in relation to Derridas notion of
autoimmunityand thus a more detailed discussion of pre-emption as it is practiced by contemporary liberal

the idea of pre-emption with regard to discourses of

security is perhaps most often associated with the so-called Bush Doctrine in US foreign
polities is warranted at this juncture. While

policymakingmost clearly exemplified, of course, by the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Ehrenberg et al. 2010, C. Weber

taking explicit action in the present to preempt

potential irruptions of danger in the futurewhat might be termed the logic of
preemptionis far from limited in its deployment to the realm of interstate security
relations alone. Indeed, as criminologist Richard Ericson asserts, the logic of pre-emption can be
seen to permeate all aspects of the exercise of sovereign power in the current
moment, to the point where the contemporary security environment might be best
termed a state of pre-emption (Ericson 2008: 58). Under such conditions, security is conceived in
2007)it must also be stressed that the notion of

terms of safeguarding the future from what may occur by undertaking precautionary measures in the present that
are conceived in relation to an imagined future. Security is thus pursued by attempting to police the future by
anticipation, with the ultimate goal being the realization of an imagined future perfect where the risks against
which these present exceptional practices are deployed will no longer be of concern (Bigo 2007: 31). Accordingly,

the logic of pre-emption is innately concerned with exerting control over the
temporal dimension of human existence. Sovereign power deployed in pursuit of the
logic of pre-emption is thus active in both the spatial and temporal realms, as it
attempts to manipulate and control the relationship between present and future
through calculations about probable futures in the present [the temporal element], followed by interventions into
the present in order to control that potential future [the spatial element] (Aradau et al. 2008: 149). The crucial
point is that a security climate premised upon the logic of pre-emption is concerned primarily with safeguarding the
future, while the present is constructed in instrumental terms as a site of intervention through which this ultimate

under the logic of preemption, the future is securitized (Buzan et al. 1998). The result is that the proverbial door is opened
aim might be realized. As such, to use the terminology of the Copenhagen School,

for the deployment of exceptional practices beyond the realm of normal politics in the present, since the logic of
pre-emption holds that it is through proactive/preemptive/precautionary measures enacted in the present that the
security of the future can be ensured

Biometrics are used to marginalize subjects and leads to a

state of exception Dooms us to error replication Only the aff
can solve
Stockdale, 10 (Liam P.D., Ph.D. in International Relations, Department of
Political Science, McMaster University, Securitizing the Future? A Critical
Interrogation of the Pre-emptive Turn in the Theory and Practice of Contemporary
Security, http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2010/Stockdale.pdf)//BW
It is this last point, as stressed by Amoore, that is most important to note for present
purposes, in that, although many of the governmental technologies employed by sovereign
power under the pre-emptive security logic are explicitly directed at arbitrarily
marginalized subjectivities such as migrants or particular racial or religious groups , it
is crucial to note that no individuals are a priori absolved under the logic of pre-emption .
Indeed, the immanent uncertainty of the future necessitates that as wide an logic of the Agambenian
state of exception, as the contravention of civil liberties and human rights norms
that are an explicit consequence of pre-emptive acts can only be legitimated within
the juridical framework of the liberal states enacting them if this framework is
deemed not to apply under the present exceptional circumstances (Agamben 2005).
The securitization of the future and the logic of pre-emption that is its
corollary thus necessarily produce a discourse of the exception, as the practices
necessary to uphold that logic require the presence of such a state to be justifiably enacted (Muller 2008: 208). Yet,

the very nature of the move of securitizing the future

ensures that this present state of exception can never be transcended so long as
the logic of pre-emption continues to hold , as the latter is concerned only with securing a future
as will be seen in the following sections,

that has yet to come to pass through exceptional interventions in the present. In this sense, we might conceive of
this condition as a state in which the present is, in some ways, taken hostage in the name of the future.

Modern day biometrics are being used to further biometric

warfare
Shapiro 11 (Michael J., professor of political science at the University of HawaiI,
Every Move You Make: Bodies, Surveillance, and Media, Surveillance,
http://eprints.cscsarchive.org/136/1/_xeNZR9zc.pdf)//BW
Along with the territorial ambiguities that the new warfare-as-crime- fighting entails,
a new biopolitics is emerging. The criminalization of military adversaries has been
accompanied by a biometric approach to intelligence and surveillance. The significance of
this change becomes evident if one contrasts Giddenss treatment of the surveillance technologies that
paralleled the modern states monopolization of violence with the current ones.
Throughout his discussion Giddens refers primarily to the use of paper trails. He begins with a treatment of the
states use of writing, proceeds to the states coding of information, and concludes with some observations about
cultural governance, the sponsoring of printed materials, not only for surveillance but also for enlarging the scope
of the public sphere.20 Certainly, the paper trail and its electronic realization in the form of computer files remain

new modes of warfare-as-crime-fighting involve the development of a

biological rather than merely a paper trail, as new genetic tracing discoveries are
being recruited into intelligence gathering. Is the biometric, designer weapon far
behind? Anticipating the role of biometric coding in futuristic forms of warfare, the science fiction writer William
significant, but the

Gibson began his novel Count Zero with this passage: They set a SLAMHOUND on Turners trail in New Delhi,
slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and
came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram
of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.21 Thanks to advanced cloning technology in Gibsons futuristic war
world, Turner is reassembled from some of his own parts and some others (eyes and genitals bought on the open
market). He lives on as the novels main character, a commando, operating in a war over research and

Whether or not the military logistics of biometric warfare is now

underway, the surveillance dimension is being rapidly developed . And the use of
development products.

pheromones in the Gibson account is technologically anachronistic. The technology of DNA tracing, now well
developed, is complementing the photograph and paper trial to surveil and intercept dangerous bodies.22

Shortly after the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, thenU.S.

Attorney General John Ashcroft sought changes in federal law to allow the Federal
Bureau of Investigation to maintain a DNA databank of profiles taken from al-Qaeda
and Taliban fighters detained in Afghanistan and Cuba .23 Subsequently, forensic experts
were dispatched to Afghanistan to test the human tissue found in one battlefield to see if any of the dead included
bin Laden or his senior associates. Of course, policy makers face legitimation issues when introducing new modes of
surveillance and criminalization. When those operating the reasons of state are involved in implementing a

an extraordinary mode of surveillance, and

management of the global order and the domestic population they have to produce
warrants for the new policy initiatives. Accordingly, after the 9/11 episode, the Bush administration
began operating on two fronts to solicit acquiescence to its simultaneous intensification of domestic
surveillance and preparation for global military incursions (a strategy of preemptive
defense).24 On the one hand, there was a feverish search for legal precedents, hence the designation of
an American citizen as an enemy combatant to apply a law of war that was earlier
applied only to foreign nationals; on the other hand, the administration approached fi lm and television
historically unorthodox governmentalityin this case

producers to encourage them to create patriotic feature films and TV dramas designed to elicit public support for
the new policies. For example, in early November 2002, the media carried a story about a meeting between White
House adviser Karl Rove and several dozen top television and film executives. Aware of the film industrys role in
World War II, the Bush administration wanted to encourage patriotic war movies that characterized the early years
of that war.25 After that meeting, nearly a dozen patriotic war movies were under production and television
dramas followed suit. Among the most notable of the TV genre was an episode of JAG (a CBS drama about military
lawyers). The 30 April 2002 episode, produced with the Pentagons help, featured a trial of a defiant al-Qaeda
terrorist (undoubtedly modeled after Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged twentieth 9/11 hijacker) by a military tribunal
at which he received a fair trial (a promise by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the media after the tribunal
plan was floated). As one commentary notes: The strategy behind the Tribunal episode is more transparent than
ever: the show creates the wish-fulfillment fantasy of capturing a terrorist responsible for the attacks, depicts an

more terror in the works, affirming the

governments real-life message that America must remain vigilant .26
idealized military, yet ends with an ominous threat of

state
Government is the reason biopower exists
Nadesan, 08 (Majia Holmer, professor of communication in the School of Social and
Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences,
Governmentality, Biopower, and Everyday Life, https://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=QEqTAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=%22economic+security
%22+and+biopower+and+agamben&ots=iSmmUdVRPC&sig=c0GAKJJxPEdjnZJV7BjudTumx
H4#v=snippet&q=biopower%20and%20government&f=false)//BW

Foucault contended that the emergence of the early modern liberal state depended
upon the institution of more diffuse, but ultimately more pervasive, forms of
government that slowly replaced the authoritarian and repressive power of the
feudal sovereign. In the premodern eraprior to the development of the modern
statepower was largely localized in the corporeal body of the sovereign monarch,
who exercised his or her will absolutely on those within his or her scope of
execution, or territory, in the form of the power of life and death (Foucault, 2003b).
Foucault observed: it is at the moment when the sovereign can kill that he
exercises his right over life (Z003b, p. 240), However, sovereign power was subtly
transformed across time with the development of the modern state through three
important developments. First, state and sectional interests motivated by security
and wealth extended governable spaces," beginning in the sixteenth century but
particularly in the late eighteenth century. Second, the development of new ways of
thinking about governmentprincipally in relation to juridical administration, the
states appropriation of pastoral power over the administration of population, and
curtailment of sovereignty over political economyaltered the nature and
operations of societal control and power leading ultimately to more diffuse, but
simultaneously permeating, technologies of government. Third, these changes
realigned sovereignty around the power and the right to make live and let die "
(2003h, p. 241) as sovereignty became entwined with biopower, Foucaults
genealogy of the transformation from sovereignty to government began by
exploring how sovereignty and political rule started to he theorized in political
philosophy. In particular, Foucault was interested in the development of rationalities
of government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that articulated the
responsibilities and modes of conduct appropriate for sovereign and patriarchal
authorities in the context of the evolution of the early modern state. Foucault
specifically focused on how seventeenth century texts on the art of government
created lines of continuity between the government of the family and the
government of the state, These lines of continuity addressed the twin problem of
maximizing population-wealth, a dilemma seen as vital for securitizing the
territorially delimited nation and central to the administrative practices of police.
Accordingly, Foucault described how the rationalities of government developed
during the seventeenth century included (a) the art of self- government, connected
with morality; (h) the art of properly governing a family, which belongs to
oeconomy; and (c) the science of ruling the state" (1979b, p. 9). Foucault read
these seventeenth-century texts as articulating a continuum linking the diverse
forms of government. Foucault used the term police to describe the downwards
line, which transmits to individual behavior and the running of the family the sample

principles as the government of the state {1979b, pp. 9-10). In contrast, the proper
training of the sovereignhis pedagogyensures the upward continuity of the arts
of government.

Governmental action fails to solve for the biopower of the

sovereign
Lemke 13, (Thomas, sociologist and social theorist, Foucault, Politics, and
Failure A Critical Review of Studies of Governmentality, Foucault, Biopolitics, and
Governmentality, http://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:615362/FULLTEXT03.pdf)//BW
Studies of governmentality distance themselves from realist sociology and from
sociologies of rule that study the ways in which rule is actually accomplished . By
contrast, work on governmentality focuses on the projects and programs of government, on rationalities and
technologies rather than on their outcomes and effects.28 This self-understanding parallels Foucaults explicit
interest in the lectures on governmentality in investigating the art of governing, that is to say, the reasoned way of
governing best and, at the same time, reflection on the best possible way of governing or governments
consciousness of itself.29 Taking up this line of investigation, studies of governmentality have analyzed
mentalities of rule.30 This does not mean that the research has focused on ideal types and normative
interpellations. Rather, studies of governmentality have examined governmental programs as empirical facts,
insofar as they shape and transform the real by providing specific forms of representing and intervening in it. While

programs
have been analyzed that has given rise to a number of problems . First, some authors have
it has rarely been disputed that studies of governmentality focus on programs, it is the way such

tended to treat programs as closed and coherent entities, as achievements and accomplishments rather than as
projects and endeavors. They have often explicated in what ways programs have successfully obscured political

Governmental programs were often depicted

as totalizing and powerful, while contestation remains residual and marginal . However,
alternatives, obstructing resistance and opposition.

opposition and struggles do not only take place in an interval between programs and their realization; they are
not limited to some kind of negative energy or obstructive capacity. Rather than distorting the original plans,
they are instead always-already part of them, actively contributing to compromises, fissures and
incoherencies constitutive of such programs. Thus, an analytics of government must take into account the
breaks or gaps interior to programsviewing them not as signs of their failure but as the very condition of their
existence.31 There is a second tendency in the governmentality literature that contrasts and complements the first.

regarding government as a permanently

failing operation.32 Failure stands here for the collision between program and reality .
Many authors have stressed the importance of failure,

While this reading rightly subverts the idea of a closed and coherent program or idealized schemein the stress
that it places on the fragility and the dynamic aspect of governmentthe focus on failure is nonetheless somewhat
ambivalent. As Pat OMalley remarks, failure is not an intrinsic property of an event so much as it is a property of a
program. To think in terms of failure puts the emphasis on the status of the collision from the programmers

While failure points to the

incompleteness and contingencies of governmental programs, it inadvertently
reduces the role of opposition, struggle and conflict to that of obstruction and
refusal. For many studies of governmentality contestation is not part of the programs and its role remains
viewpoint, and consequently reduces resistance to a negative externality.33

purely negative and limited to resistance. As a consequence, the constructive (and not only obstructive) role of
struggles, and the ways in which opposition and rule interact, tend not to be analyzed.34 Thus it seems the focus
on failure is insufficient. To contrast rationalities and technologies of government does not trace any clash between
program and reality, the confrontation of the world of discourse and a field of practices. The relations between
rationalities and technologies, programs and institutions, are much more complex than a simple application or
transfer. The difference between the envisioned aims of a program and its actual effects does not refer to the
distance between the purity of the program and the messy reality, but, rather, to different layers of reality. To
capture this dynamic relationship, it might be useful to take into account Foucaults insistence on the strategic

In contrast to many studies of governmentality, Foucault not only

shows that government fails or how it gives rise to unintended effects . Moreover
character of government.

he takes into account that actors respond to changing outcomes, calculating and
capitalizing upon them and integrating them into their future conduct .35 Let me illustrate
this through an example Foucault provides in Discipline and Punish, namely the failure of the prison system, which
produced delinquency as an unintended effect. In his genealogy of the prison Foucault does not confront program
and reality, nor does he frame the problem in terms of functionality. The institutionalization of the prison in the
nineteenth century produced an entirely unforeseen effect which had nothing to do with any kind of strategic ruse
on the part of some meta- or trans-historic subject conceiving and willing it. This effect was the constitution of a
delinquent milieu [...]. The prison operated as a process of filtering, concentrating, professionalizing and
circumscribing a criminal milieu. From about the 1830s onward, one finds an immediate re-utilization of this
unintended, negative effect within a new strategy which came in some sense to occupy this empty space, or
transform the negative into a positive. The delinquent milieu came to be re-utilized for diverse political and
economic ends, such as the extraction of profit from pleasure through the organization of prostitution. This is what I

Emphasizing the strategic

dimension of government allows the focus to be placed on the conflicts and
contestations advanced against the very technologies and rationalities constituting
governmental practices. Political struggles cannot be confined to the expression of a contradictory logic or
call the strategic completion (remplissement) of the apparatus.36

an antagonistic relation; they have their own dynamics, temporalities and techniques.37 With due focus on the

governmentshoning in specifically upon their

failures and shortcomings what becomes possible is the,
circumventing of any functionalist bias. If contestation is limited to the refusal of programs,
parasitic relationship38 of

then the following question arises: what exactly does failure mean? Since the criteria of judging both failure and
success are an integral part of rationalities, they cannot be regarded as external yardsticks. In fact, the success of
a program is no guarantee of its continuation, since success might eventually abolish the material foundations or
preconditions for a given program, making it redundant thereby. Conversely, the putative failure of a program
could mean its success, since it might give rise to strategic reinvestment. Put differently: a program might work
well because it does not work at all or only works badly, for example, by creating the very problems it is
supposedly there to react to. Therefore, the failure of the prison as a means to combat criminality might possibly
help to account for its raison d'tre.39

The governments neoliberal structure uses biopower to

manipulate the people into following artificial policies
guarantees cooption
Fletcher 10 (Robert, Department of Environment, Peace, and Security, University
for Peace, Neoliberal environmentality: Towards a poststructuralist political ecology
of the conservation debate, http://www.conservationandsociety.org/article.asp?
issn=09724923;year=2010;volume=8;issue=3;spage=171;epage=181;aulast=Fletcher)//BW
The distinction among Foucaultian concepts such as governmentality, biopower,
discipline, and neoliberalism outlined above may help to clarify previous analyses of
environmental governance within a Foucaultian frame, in which various of these
concepts are commonly conflated. For instance, in the introduction to their edited
volume Violent environments, a political ecology critique of environmental security
scholarship, Peluso and Watts (2001) describe governmentality and disciplinary
power as interchangeable concepts (indeed, their index lists the terms
interchangeably as well) (see also Neumann 2001; Sundar 2001 in that volume).
Conversely, Li (2007: 5) distinguishes discipline and governmentality yet conflates
the latter with biopower, writing that "the concern of government is the well-being
of populations at large". Others describe governmentality and biopower
interchangeably as well (Luke 1999a, 1999b; Rutherford 1999). Li also conflates
disciplinarity and neoliberalism in her discussion of biopower, observing that

"government operates by educating desires and configuring habit s" while quoting
Bentham to describe governmentality as "artificially arranging things so that
people, following their own self-interest, will do as they ought" (2007: 5). Still
others, by contrast, distinguish disciplinary and neoliberal governmentalities yet
conflate the former with biopower, describing biopower as the opposite of neoliberal
forms of influence (Bckstrand & Lvbrand 2005; Oels 2005). These conflations are
understandable, given that much of Foucault's discussion of these various terms
occurs only in his most recently-released work. The larger context surrounding his
famous Governmentality lecture only became available to Anglophone readers in
2007. Similarly, 2003 first saw the English-language publication of Foucault's earlier
(1976-1967) lecture series Society must be defended (2003), in which he clearly
distinguishes among sovereign power, disciplinary power, and biopower. In addition,
in that work, Foucault suggests the possibility of articulating sovereignty and
biopower. In his Biopower lectures, first available in English in 2008 (although
commentary on the original audio recordings of these lectures dates back to at least
2001; see Lemke 2001), Foucault clearly describes neoliberalism as a possible
vehicle for the exercise of biopower as well. In addition to disciplinary and neoliberal
governmentalities, Foucault (2008) also introduces two additional arts of
government into his equation in the Biopolitics lectures. One involves the direct
exercise of sovereign power through the construction and enforcement of codified
rules. While in his lecture series of the previous year, Foucault (2007) seemed to
describe governmentality as opposed to sovereign rule, as noted above, in his
Biopolitics talks Foucault describes sovereign power as a form of governmentality in
its own right, aimed at the rational governance of a territory through compelling
subjects' obedience to sovereign will by direct threat of punishment (2008: 312).
While these first three governmentalities are all seen to operate on principles of
calculation and rationality, Foucault's fourth governmentality is different, what he
calls the 'art of government according to truth', that is, 'the truth of religious texts,
of revelation, and of the order of the world' (2008: 311). In this approach, authority
and prescriptions for appropriate behaviour derive not from rules, norms, or even
incentives but rather from the claim that such prescriptions accord with the
fundamental nature of life and the universe (Foucault's main contemporary example
of this approach is Marxism). Foucault, of course, recognises that these different
governmentalities, while distinct, are not mutually exclusive, but may coexist in any
given context, alternately conflicting or acting in concert. For instance, neoliberal
governmentality could be seen as reliant upon certain disciplinary techniques to
facilitate its operation. That is, disciplinary governmentality would be necessary to
construct the rational actors upon which neoliberal governmentality would then
operate by inculcating subjects' self-perceptions as self-interested, competitive
individuals through such mechanisms as schools and sports leagues encouraging
these types of behaviours. The various techniques that Martin (1994) describes as
serving to encourage workers to embrace the uncertainties of a 'flexible' neoliberal
global economy (e.g., adventure ropes courses) can be seen as examples of
disciplinary governmentality in service of neoliberalism as well. Similar
complimentarity could be found among other governmentalities. On the other hand,
different governmentalities may conflict as well, leading to debate concerning the
proper approach to governance within a given situation. In short, Foucault (2008:

313) suggests that In the world we have known since the nineteenth century, a
series of governmental rationalities overlap, lean on each other, challenge each
other, and struggle with each other: art of government according to truth, art of
government according to the rationality of the sovereign state, and art of
government according to the rationality of economic agents, and more generally
according to the rationality of the governed themselves.

terror
Monsterization of terrorists is a biopolitical tool used to control
the populations Creates terrorists
Rai, 04 (Amit S., Senior Lecturer in New Media and Communications, OF
MONSTERS: Biopower, terrorism and excess in genealogies of monstrosity
http://dferagi.webs.ull.es/d/politicas2/docs/Biopolitica.2.pdf)//BW
Terrorism, in this abstract machine, is a symptom for the deviant psyche, the psyche
gone awry, or the failed psyche; the terrorist enters the stage as an absolute
violation. Not surprisingly, then, coming out of this discourse, we find another very common way
of trying to psychologize the monster-terrorist is by positing a kind of failed
heterosexuality, or, as in the quote above, a crypto-homosexuality . Therefore, we hear
often the idea that sexually frustrated Muslim men are promised the heavenly reward of 60, 67 or sometimes even
70 virgins if they are martyred in jihad. But as Asad Abu Khalil (2001) has argued, In reality, political / not sexual /
frustration constitutes the most important factor in motivating young men, or women, to engage in suicidal
violence. The tendency to dwell on the sexual motives of the suicide bombers belittles these sociopolitical causes.
Now, of course, that is precisely what terrorism studies intends to do: to reduce complex social, historical and
political dynamics to various psychic causes rooted in childhood family dynamics. As if the Palestinian intifada or
the long, brutal war in Afghanistan can be simply boiled down to bad mothering or sexual frustration! Finally, all of
these explanatory models and frameworks function to: (1) reduce complex histories of struggle, intervention, and
(non)development to Western psychic models rooted in the bourgeois heterosexual family and its dynamics; (2)
exclude systematically questions of political economy and the problems of cultural translation; (3) master the fear,
anxiety and uncertainty of a form of violent political dissent by resorting to the banality of a taxonomy; and (4)
consolidate the practical solidarity between abstract methods of psychological enquiry and modern apparatuses of

we should recall Deleuzes warning of the new role of

psychoanalysis as a strategy of biopower . There is no state which does not need an image of
power. On this last point,

thought which will serve as its axiomatic system or abstract machine, and to which it gives in return the strength to
function: hence the inadequacy of the concept of ideology, which in no way takes into account this relationship. This
was the unhappy role of classical philosophy ... / that of supplying ... the apparatuses of power, Church and State,
with the knowledge which suited them. Could we say that the human sciences have assumed this same role, that of
providing by their own methods and abstract machine for modern apparatuses of power / receiving from them
valuable endorsement in term? So psychoanlysis has submitted its tender, to become a major official language and
knowledge in place of philosophy; to provide an axiomatic system of man in place of mathematics; to invoke the
Honestas and a mass function. (Deleuze and Parnet 1987, p. 88) We will return to

the mass function of

counter-terrorism discourses in our conclusion, but we must pursue another line first: What are the
specific racial and sexual genealogies of this taxonomizing abstract machine of counter-terror? One answer: a
specifically colonial genealogy, an aspect of which could be named Oriental despotism. Since at least the
eighteenth century, the despots of the East have been constructed as the quintessential enemies of (Western)
civilization. Indeed British colonial justice, having secured order where previously only the riot of the imagination
(James Mills phrase) had reigned, was predicated on its radical difference from that recurring example of otherized
oppression, Oriental despotism. Let us recall some of the key points in the construction of Oriental despotism as it
appeared in hegemonic discourses in the nineteenth century. Developed in the wake of the Enlightenment (and
later codified in the Utilitarian) critique of the ancien regime, the divine right of kings and aristocratic privilege, the
discourse of Oriental despotism posited an essentially Western order as a civilizational corrective to Eastern

The representatives of this moderate and reasonable West would confront

(and eventually dominate) their supposed opposite in the colonial mirror of
nineteenth century discourse.11 It was almost as if these inherent differences logically and naturally
irrationality.

gave rise to two radically different traditions of political and economic organization. For Europe, a constitutional
monarchy or republic would be the characteristic form of polity, while the capitalist mode of production its

the arbitrary or
capricious rule by fear of an all-powerful autocrat over docile and servile masses
would be the normal and distinctive form of government ; these peasant masses distributed
characteristic economic institution (Inden 2001, p. 53). For the East, despotism /

over innumerable, self-sufficient villages, engaging in a mixture of low-grade agriculture and handicrafts / make
over to the despot the surplus of what it produces in the form of a tax, and subsist on the remainder a mode of
production that Marx termed Asiatic (see Habib 1990).12

US counter-terrorist discourse is a form of biopower

Rai, 04 (Amit S., Senior Lecturer in New Media and Communications, OF
MONSTERS: Biopower, terrorism and excess in genealogies of monstrosity
http://dferagi.webs.ull.es/d/politicas2/docs/Biopolitica.2.pdf)//BW
Such responses oblige us to recognize that in a moment of what is termed an ongoing national crisis even
platitudinous dissent in beyond the pale of the proper. How does a drug charge disallow a subject from speaking
from a space that is morally legitimate / how does any kind of impropriety disqualify a subject who would dissent
from such norms of citizenship? But what this reviewers diatribe points to are the subtle and not-so-subtle forms of
normalization that the new patriotism demands of all us. Of course, this demand is never represented as such:

Indeed, biopower, as it invests life, and as bodies come to being through its very
modes, takes on the form and substance of ever more democratic rule, and
through which diffuse relations of power are rendered ever more immanent to the
social field, distributed through the brains and bodies of citizens . But what we see in
discourses of American counter-terrorism is the very production of the citizen
through strategies demanding cultural and national belonging , and sexual and gender
normality / perhaps their greatest achievement is the construction of a common sense understanding of this
historically contingent experience of normalization as democracy in a time of monsters. Consider, then, the
doubled TV frame of this special

Terrorist Episode as itself a kind of abstract machinery of

biopower that relays images and narratives, producing subject-effects as part of network imagination. On the
one hand, it would seem these TV relays arrest the attention of the viewer in ways that would be appropriate to a
pluralistic America inviting us to repeat a certain pledge of allegiance. On the other, specific images seem to give
themselves to undecideable lines of flight whose aporias draw us to another future.19 Keep in mind: we see a
double-framed reality. On the one side, brightly lit and close to the hearth (invoking the home and the family) is the
Presidential classroom, a racially and gender plural space, where the President as Father enters and says what we
need right now are not suicidemartyrs but life-affirming heroes; where the First Lady as Mother tells the precocious,
and sometimes troublesome, youngsters a kind of bedtime story of two once and future brothers, Isaac (the Jews)

where male experts regale them with fantastic facts concerning

the first acts of terrorism committed back in the tenth century by drug frenzied Muslims; where one
and Ishmael (the Arabs);

woman staff member (C.J. Cregg, played by Allison Janney) declares, We need spies. Human spies ... Its time to
give the intelligence agencies the money and the man power they need; and where Josh finally advises the
students to remember pluralism. You want to get these people? I mean, you really want to reach in and kill them
where they live? Keep accepting more than one idea. It makes them absolutely crazy.

US Counter-terrorism is used to justify biopower and extend

the sovereign control
Hannah 06 (Matthew, Ph.D., Adjunct Associate Professor, Torture and the
Ticking Bomb: The War on Terrorism as a Geographical Imagination of
Power/Knowledge, Annals of the Association of American Geographers Volume 96,
Issue 3, 2006, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.14678306.2006.00709.x#.VaZ7LxNVikp)//BW
Administration policy since 11 September 2001 (hereinafter 9/11) and the American
public's continued willingness to live with it can be explained to a significant degree
by a particular discursive construction: the ticking-bomb scenario. To the extent that this scenario
frames official and public understandings of the threat of terrorism, it tends to make torture appear more
reasonable as a response. The ticking-bomb scenario prompts a reimagining of the landscapes of everyday life as
suffused with an unacceptably high level of risk. If unacceptable risk is extrapolated to cover the entire national
territory, the imperative to eliminate such risk is intensified. The imagined imperative to eliminate this risk at all
costs constitutes an opening for the contemplation of torture. This argument is circumstantial in nature and is
probably stronger as an explanation of relative public complacency than as an explanation of the Bush

administration's actual motives. Even on the latter point, however, it is a plausible account of a stance many

The threat of terrorism and the response

of torture are fruitfully understood in terms of power/knowledge, particularly by
means of the concepts of biopower and governmentality. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
(2004, 19) are correct to claim that, when individualized in its extreme form, biopower
becomes torture. But they do not fully explain why this is so. Like Hardt and Negri (2000, 2004), Giorgio
commentators find difficult to explain fully in other ways.

Agamben (1998,;2005) and Judith Butler (2004) have also drawn on these Foucaultian concepts to explain the
complex of extraterritorial prisons within which torture has occurred. But together these authors have only partly
explained the response to terrorism, and little of the perceived threat. Once the threat of terrorism is understood as
a threat to forms of power/knowledge, it becomes possible to supplement, to sort out more clearly, and then to tie
together the still somewhat loose and incomplete biopolitical analysis found in the writings of Hardt and Negri,
Agamben, and Butler. No account of torture in the current geopolitical context can be complete if it is not linked to

the threat of terrorism that serves as its justification . If forms of power

that involve life, knowledge, and the body are indeed as central to the maintenance
of modern social order as Foucault and many others believe them to be, it is necessary to attempt to relate
an analysis of

torture, which represents an extreme example of the political articulation of life, knowledge, and the body, to wider
questions of social order. In his recent review of geographical approaches to such issues, Colin Flint cautions social
scientists against succumbing to the temptation to characterize the present geopolitical conjuncture as one of
chaos or unfathomable disorder: geographers and other scholars need to offer parsimonious theories that help
uncover the multiple roots of all contemporary geopolitical acts (Flint 2003, 100). Viewing torture as a geopolitical
act of apparently renewed importance, this article is one response to Flint's call. The argument presented here does
not attempt to answer once and for all the question of whether any particular interrogation practice actually
constitutes torture. As the now copious documentary evidence makes clear (Danner 2004; Greenberg and Dratel
2005), legal debates over the definition of torture can themselves become quite tortured. And as the public
discourse has made abundantly clear, the credibility of the Bush administration does not hang on whether what is
happening at Guantnamo Bay or in Iraqi prisons technically constitutes torture. What is important for the

how anything like torture could be seen as a

potentially legitimate tool in the attempt to counter terrorism . Therefore all that is needed is
argument presented here is simply the question of

a fairly basic functional definition of torture (in this article, I use the terms torture, abuse, and brutal
interrogation practices interchangeably): torture is the infliction of unwanted physical and/or psychological
suffering on an individual in order to induce him or her to surrender information. Whether the suffering crosses any
particular threshold of acuteness or severity, whether it produces lasting damage, whether the individual

extent to which the act of inflicting suffering

represents a symbolic ritual of domination, these issues are all immaterial for the purposes of the
actually possesses the information sought, or the
present argument.

AFF

2ac law good

We should retrieve the descriptive force of Agambens
criticism of law without neglecting the strategic benefits
reform provides for the oppressed
*4pt font for long passages with no relevance
Deranty 4 (Jean-Philippe Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University,
Agambens challenge to normative theories of modern rights, in borderlands,
Volume 3, Number 1, 2004,
http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no1_2004/deranty_agambnschall.htm)
7. The question, though, is whether Agambens counter-theory that results from this critical inspiration is itself valid. This paper aims
to assess some of Agambens key arguments against normative theories of rights, to show that his own proposal is itself caught up
in major conceptual and political difficulties. This leads to the conclusion - which can only be programmatically sketched within the

there is still a need to attempt to retrieve the force of

Agambens critical arguments, but without abandoning the resource that
modern rights, in their normative dimensions, can provide for an alternative
political theory and practice.
scope of this short paper - that

Agambens Essentialism 8. Agambens conception of the task of thinking is deeply Heideggerian. It can be summarized in this way: the thinker isolates

ontological essences in which the common ground of apparently different, or even opposite, empirical and historical phenomena is revealed. The constantly reoccurring conceptual gesture in Agambens writings is that of
indistinction. Political power is the instigation of an indistinction between the state of exception and the normal legal order, between fact and law, nature and norm, animality and humanity, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion.
It must be noted that, paradoxically, this recurrent movement of indistinction that effaces conceptual and empirical differences runs counter to the Foucauldian distinctions and discontinuities. 9. Consistent with this foundationalist
essentialism, Agamben does not restrict indistinction to the conceptual or structural level, but extends it to empirical, historical phenomena. The archaic State is not substantially different from the modern one. There is no essential
difference between democracy before Auschwitz, the totalitarian States themselves, and democracy after Auschwitz between liberal democracies and dictatorships (Agamben 1998:10). In Auschwitz, there is no difference between
victim and executioner (Agamben 1999a: 21). No distinction between the sacred priest, the criminal banned from the archaic community and the modern citizen; no distinction between the bodies in Auschwitz and the bodies of
victims of car accidents in modern Europe (1998: 114); no distinction between the Muselmann in the extermination camp and the immigrant locked up by police in a hotel at Charles de Gaulle Airport (1998: 174), or between the
Muselmann and the overcomatose person (1999a: 156); no distinction between the Nazi extermination camps and the camps established in the former Yugoslavia. 10. On a general, philosophical level, the essentialist method that
leads to general indistinguishability would be questioned by other traditions of thought. The strongest critique would probably come from the Hegelian tradition, for which the essence is to be found nowhere but in its modes of
appearance, identity in differences. The conceptual imperative that ensues is the task of thinking precisely what appears as different, and not look for a transcendent "thing-in-itself" in which all differences are swallowed. If indeed
there are historiographical differences between democracy and fascism (1998: 10), then perhaps it should bear more weight in the theory, and not be blurred into indistinction. From a Hegelian perspective, Agambens conceptuality
looks very much like a Schellingian night where all cows are black. This in itself is obviously not a ground for rejection, as all theory starts from a theoretical decision which is itself ungrounded and the matter of pure freedom, as
Fichte demonstrated. Thought, like politics, is all about the decision and its implications. 11. In the case of empirical examples, the erasure of difference between phenomena seems particularly counter-intuitive in the case of

From a practical point of view, it seems counter-productive to claim that

there is no substantial difference between archaic communities and modern
communities provided with the language of rights, between the lawlessness of war
times and democratic discourse. There must be a way of problematising the
ideological mantra of Western freedom, of modernitys moral superiority, that does
not simply equate it with Nazi propaganda (Ogilvie 2001). Habermas and Honneth
probably have a point when they highlight the advances made by modernity in the
entrenchment of rights. If the ethical task is that of testimony , then our testimony
should go also to all the individual lives that were freed from alienation by the
establishment of legal barriers against arbitrariness and exclusion . We should heed
Honneths reminder that struggles for social and political emancipation have often
privileged the language of rights over any other discourse (Fraser, Honneth 2003). To reject
the language of human rights altogether could be a costly gesture in understanding
past political struggles in their relevance for future ones , and a serious strategic,
political loss for accompanying present struggles . We want to criticise the ideology
of human rights, but not at the cost of renouncing the resources that rights provide .
Otherwise, critical theory would be in the odd position of casting aspersions upon
the very people it purports to speak for, and of depriving itself of a major
weapon in the struggle against oppression.
dissimilar modes of internment.

The Critique of Human Rights 12. In order to argue against fundamental rights as the normative

grounding of modern politics, Agamben presents the biopolitical thesis: the actual subject of the law is not the citizen, understood as a person vested with fundamental rights, but the human being as living creature. The actual
subject of power is bare life. 13. I want to consider this rejection of the principle of human rights from the angle of the emergence of biopolitics at the time of the declarations of human rights. Agamben accepts the well-established
distinction between ancient natural law, natural law under absolutism, and modern natural law (Strauss 1953). His narrative, however, runs counter to the usual one: It is almost as if, starting from a certain point, every decisive
political event were double-sided: the spaces, the liberties, and the rights won by individuals in their conflicts with central powers always simultaneously prepared a tacit but increasing inscription of individuals lives with the state
order, thus offering a new and more dreadful foundation for the very sovereign power from which they wanted to liberate themselves (Agamben 1998: 121). 14. This is a kind of dialectic of Enlightenment: the more individuals
liberate themselves legally from the shackles of authority, the more they subject themselves to power biopolitically. This dialectic enables Agamben to postulate a continuous line running from the first formulation of the Habeas
Corpus, through the Bill of Rights, to the 1933 Nuremberg eugenic laws: along this line we find the body of the individual directly exposed to the state of exception. In the different Declarations of Human Rights that signal the
historical birth of modernity, the subject becomes citizen that is bearer of sovereignty, solely on account of his birth, his natio, or nationality. Behind the citizen, man as bare life is hidden. This bare life exposed to sovereign power is
precisely the pure substance that the Nazi regime attempted to produce, which justifies the perception of continuity between modern democracy and the totalitarian State. 15. This reading of the French Revolution and of the
Declarations of Human Rights used as preambles to the different constitutions of the Rpublique is problematic. First of all, in the American Revolution, which in many senses was the model for the French, it would be difficult to find
the figure of homo sacer. The American declaration of independence, influenced by Lockes theory of natural law, places the origin of the rights of men in divine laws. Political power does not apply to individuals considered from the
point of view of their birth, their natio or nationality, but to individuals fully endowed with natural rights, as creatures of God (Kervgan 1995: 660). 16. Agamben is greatly inspired by Hannah Arendt. She is the one that explicitly
makes the "internment camp" a central figure of modern times (Arendt 1966: 276). In her, he finds a strong counter-objection to the remark above. In both the "American formula" that relies on the authority of God, and the "French
formula" that relies on philosophical justifications of natural law, the fiction of a universal essence of man is denounced by the factual helplessness of all the refugees and stateless people created by the turmoils of the 20th century.
17. Agamben quotes Arendts critical conclusion: the conception of human rights, based upon the assumed existence of a human being as such, broke down at the very moment when those who professed to believe in it were for the
first time confronted with people who had indeed lost all other qualities and specific relationships except that they were still human (Arendt 1966: 299; Agamben 1998: 126). But he fails to quote the very next line, which makes all
the difference: "The world found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of the human being" (Arendt 1966: 299). 18. What Arendt means is that only when they are realised in a political "commonwealth" do human rights have any

meaning. They are an abstraction otherwise. More important than the right to freedom or the right to justice is "the right to have rights", that is, to be the member of a political community. Arendt therefore asserts the opposite of
what Agamben wants to say: she believes that the political solution lies in what he considers to be a fiction, namely the citizen. Her point is that when man and citizen come apart, we realise that man never really existed as a subject
of rights. This is the exact opposite of Agamben for whom the citizen is just a travesty. 19. Despite this opposition, Agamben borrows Arendts critical interpretation of the French revolution and modernity in general, even though this
interpretation itself is not beyond doubt. The French declaration makes it clear that human rights lose all significance if they are not reinscribed within a political community that transforms them into constitutional principles, and the
American constitution also defines a clear link between individual freedom and a political order whose goal is freedoms protection. Yet, Agamben reads the first article of the Declaration of 1789, "all men are born and remain free
and equal in rights" as proof that modern sovereign power applies to bare life, here in the form of birth (Agamben 1995: 128). But this seems disingenuous. Birth here refers not to nationality, but simply to the fundamental fact of
the equality of all human beings in right. The term effectuates the radical break with ancient and absolutist natural law, a break that is synonymous with legal modernity. In ancient natural law, rights were associated with the social
position or the notion of a perfect cosmic order underpinned by God. 20. This emphasis on the rupture that the declarations consummate leads to the question of historical continuity. The Habeas Corpus is not necessarily a precursor
of modern declarations as it uses a non-egalitarian definition of freedom, reserved for the elite. It lacks the fundamental notion that is the mark of modernity, the universal equality of all. 21. Agamben does not emphasise equality,
but it could be argued that, above all others, even above the notion of right, it is this category that gives modernity its actual normative content. Modern man is therefore not first and foremost the national, but a universal being
liberated from the particularisms of traditional society. This amounts only to an empty universalism if no political project realises freedom and equality, but this is precisely a mistake that the American and French revolutions, for all
their ambiguities, did not commit. Agamben refuses to consider basic legal equality as the true content of declarations of human rights and instead focuses on the national aspect. In this he is faithful to Schmitt who rejects the
republican conception of popular sovereignty. Schmitt, Benjamin and the Violence of the Law 22. One of the most impressive aspects in Agambens oeuvre is the extent to which it has developed to such a high level of conceptual
sophistication, and how it delves to such a degree into philological, historical and conceptual detail, whilst remaining ever faithful to the letter and spirit of Walter Benjamins writings. This is true of his meditations on language,
literature, and the "end of experience". This especially true, however, of Agambens political writings. They can be read as the results of a systematic research undertaken with the goal of developing and giving substance to the

It is important to
approach Agambens theses on political sovereignty from this perspective because
their radical nature risks blocking access to their meaning and critical potential
insights put forward by Benjamin in his long forgotten and now famous 1921 article, "Critique of Violence", as well as the 1940 "Theses on the Philosophy of History".

. 23. The

second of the three volumes to be dedicated to the figure of homo sacer (Homo Sacer II, 1) studies afresh many of the key theses, concepts and references that were present in the first instalment (Homo Sacer: sovereign power and
bare life). The new genealogical and ontological analyses in this second volume make both the negative, critical, and the positive, programmatic, aspects of Agambens politics very clear. 24. By focusing on the paradox of
constituting power, the extra-juridical nature of the decision that founds the juridical field, the paradox of political sovereignty, which, in its normality and normativity, logically relies on the power to decree the state of exception, Carl
Schmitt has isolated the violent, anomic core of all juridical and political systems. In this sense, Schmitt tells the truth about the political, the truth about Western politics. For example, empirically, the world in which we live is a
Schmittian world, where the state of exception becomes the rule of even supposedly "democratic" governments. 25. But, to use Heideggers turn of phrase, that is only the guiding question, not the founding one. More importantly, in
their very accuracy, the Schmittian theses point to all that is wrong in Western politics, and thus, negatively, to another form of politics. With Schmitt, Agamben believes one can cut to the very essence of Western politics, beyond
illusory rationalistic and normative frameworks. Only after having reached that point, once the essence of all politics has been identified, can one hope to find the correct alternative. Any solution that would not confront the
Schmittian challenge would remain caught up in unending conundrums. The embracing of Schmitt is thus only a negative, propaedeutic step towards a positive political theory. 26. So what is wrong with Schmitt, according to
Agamben, and what political field opens up once we have crossed this ultimate threshold? In the central chapter of Homo Sacer II, 1, Agamben reconstructs the different stages of Schmitts theory of sovereign exception as a series of
responses to Benjamins fundamental challenge, the idea expressed in the 1921 "Critique of violence", and reiterated in the 1940 eighth thesis on history, of a "pure" revolutionary "violence" beyond all forms of law, which therefore
would not be violent, of a "real state of exception", the revolutionary one, that would replace the absolute violence of the state of exception "in which we live" (Benjamin 1991: 291[292]). 27. For Agamben, Schmitts theory of
sovereignty is the attempt to conjure up the threat of (Benjaminian) revolution, by tying up the anomy at the core of human action to the juridical order via the theory of exception. This gesture of tying up anomic violence to a
normative order is exactly isonomic to the metaphysical gesture that attempts to capture Being in the net of logos. This is why Schmitt, as the one who identified the pure elements of all legal orders, the anomic core of normal
legality, but continued to tie the two together, represents the true acme, both conceptually and for what he stood for historically, of Western politics. And this is why Benjamin, who had learnt from Schmitt about the exceptionality
forming the core of legal normality and normative legality, but perverted the Schmittian lesson by cutting the link between exception and law, shows the right way out of the political impasse of the West. The effective theory of
revolution is the messianic utopianism of Benjamin. 28. All this explains why Agamben chooses to focus on the decisionistic tradition (Hobbes, Heidegger, Schmitt). With it, he wants to isolate the pure essences of all juridical orders
and thus highlight the essential violence structuring traditional politics. Since the law essentially appears as a production and capture of bare life, the political order that enunciates and maintains the law is essentially violent, always

The problem with this strategic use of

the decisionistic tradition is that it does not do justice to the complex relationship
that these authors establish between violence and normativity , that is, in the end the very
normative nature of their theories. In brief, they are not saying that all law is violent , in essence or in its core,
rather that law is dependent upon a form of violence for its foundation . Violence can
found the law, without the law itself being violent.
threatening the bare life it has produced with total annihilation. Auschwitz is the real outcome of all normative orders. 29.

In Hobbes, the social contract, despite the absolute nature of the sovereign it

creates, also enables individual rights to flourish on the basis of the inalienable right to life (see Barret-Kriegel 2003: 86). 30. In Schmitt, the decision over the exception is indeed "more interesting than the regular case", but only
because it makes the regular case possible. The "normal situation" matters more than the power to create it since it is its end (Schmitt 1985: 13). What Schmitt has in mind is not the indistinction between fact and law, or their
intimate cohesion, to wit, their secrete indistinguishability, but the origin of the law, in the name of the law. This explains why the primacy given by Schmitt to the decision is accompanied by the recognition of popular sovereignty,
since the decision is only the expression of an organic community. Decisionism for Schmitt is only a way of asserting the political value of the community as homogeneous whole, against liberal parliamentarianism. Also, the evolution
of Schmitts thought is marked by the retreat of the decisionistic element, in favour of a strong form of institutionalism. This is because, if indeed the juridical order is totally dependent on the sovereign decision, then the latter can
revoke it at any moment. Decisionism, as a theory about the origin of the law, leads to its own contradiction unless it is reintegrated in a theory of institutions (Kervgan 1992). 31. In other words, Agamben sees these authors as
establishing a circularity of law and violence, when they want to emphasise the extra-juridical origin of the law, for the laws sake. Equally, Savignys polemic against rationalism in legal theory, against Thibaut and his philosophical
ally Hegel, does not amount to a recognition of the capture of life by the law, but aims at grounding the legal order in the very life of a people (Agamben 1998: 27). For Agamben, it seems, the origin and the essence of the law are
synonymous, whereas the authors he relies on thought rather that the two were fundamentally different. 32. Agamben obviously knows all this. He argues that it is precisely this inability of the decisionists to hold on to their key
insight, the anomic core of norms, which gives them the sad distinction of accurately describing an evil order. But this reading does not meet the objection to his problematic use of that tradition. 33. If the authors of the decisionistic
(Hobbes-Schmitt) and ethnonationalistic (Savigny-Schmitt) traditions do not want to emphasize the extra-juridical core of the law, but rather polemically establish the non-rationalistic and non-positivistic grounding of an otherwise
fully acknowledged normative order, then it seems as though Agamben makes them prove too much. If Hobbes, Savigny and Schmitt are intent, as much as their theoretical opponents, on shoring up the normative order, then they
cannot be used as proponents of an anti-normative essence of normativity. Conversely, a more serious engagement with the opposing traditions (mainly, natural law, positivism and rationalism) is required, since it is not the case that
the nationalistic-decisionistic one would be situated at a deeper level of analysis than its opponents. 34. This is illustrated in the passage in Homo Sacer II, 1 where Agamben analyses the justification-application dichotomy. The
passages on Schmitts theory of the state of exception show explicitly the hermeneutic slide in the reading of this key author. Indeed, "the state of exception separates the norm from its application in order to make the latter
possible". But Schmitts point is not what Agamben makes of it in the next paragraph, namely that, as a consequence, "it (the state of exception) introduces into the law a zone of anomy", in which "the two elements of the law" (the
norm and its application) "show their intimate cohesion" (Agamben 2003: 64). Instead, for Schmitt, the distinction between justification and application simply shows the political grounding of the legal moment. 35. But this grounding
in the political is just the result of a theoretical decision, and the alternatives should be confronted more explicitly. This lack of a substantial engagement with other legal alternatives becomes obvious a few pages later, when
Agamben analyses once more the specific problem of the application of the law. When he writes that "in the case of the juridical norm, the reference to the concrete case supposes a "process" that always implies a plurality of
subjects, and that culminates in the last instance in the enunciation of a sentence, that is to say, a statement whose operative reference to reality is guaranteed by institutional powers" (Agamben 2003: 69), he simply formulates a
classical distinction that can receive an entirely different treatment with no less plausibility. A recent philosophical solution to the gap between justification and application has been famously given by Habermas (1990 and 1996).
Chapters 5 and 6 of Between facts and norms in particular provide an excellent overview of plausible alternatives to Schmitts decisionistic theory of adjudication, from Kelsen to Critical Legal Studies. 36. But then Agamben cannot
simply use the fact that "the application of a norm is not contained in it" as leading directly to the theory of the state of exception, since from the very same premise another form of political grounding of the legal could be advanced,
one, for instance, that focuses on intersubjectivity and the institutionalisation of dissensus. The "violence" that realizes the statement is not necessarily "without logos". For Schmitt, it draws its authority from the political, that is, the
logos of the polis as ethnos; for another tradition, it would do so from the logos of intersubjectively constituted and essentially contested institutions. 37. Here, as in many other aspects of his thought, Agamben draws on Benjamin
for whom there is "something rotten in law" (Benjamin 1991b: 188 [286]), a fateful violence, "the destruction of which becomes obligatory" (199 [297]). There is undeniably a continuity in Benjamin, from the "Critique of Violence" to
the theses on the philosophy of history, that has to do with his fundamental vision of history as a series of catastrophes, a series of orders recurrently establishing themselves as forms of fate that unleash their violence, rephrased in
the language of the law, over the oppressed. But the other continuity in Benjamins writings is underplayed by Agamben. For Benjamin and his readers of 1921, the divine violence that is "law-destroying", and therefore - as negation
of the violent negation of law - no longer violent, is obviously the violence of the proletarian revolution, and there is no need, in 1921, to ask about its "logos", the normative source of its justification. This source is the "total condition
that is man" (Benjamin 1991b: 201 [299]), the "wholly transformed work" (1991b: 294 [292]), in other words, in a Marx-inspired vision of global revolution, however vague or heretic the reception of Marx. Again, in 1940, the theses
on history use historical materialism as their obvious background, though Agamben acknowledges this only in passing in Homo Sacer II (108), and appropriates Benjamin without reference to the background securing his
revolutionary messianism in Homo Sacer 1. Agamben acknowledges this only in passing in Homo Sacer II, 1 (2003: 108). Homo sacer I strikingly appropriated Benjamin without reference to the background securing his revolutionary
messianism. This means, however, that the new law beyond the law that no longer has the form of law is a lot more substantive than simply the "study" of, or "play with", the old law (Agamben 2003: 108-9). It is the immanent law of
the liberated community, whose book had already been written in extenso by another great German Jew. In other words, Benjamin indeed demonstrates the violent anomic core of law, but only to point to a new, normative law, the
new law of a community that has defeated fate. With this reference to Marx as the immanent normativity of Benjamins messianism, the notion of a politics of "pure means" becomes far more intuitively evident. Ontology of Politics,
Politics of Ontology 38. With the "Critique of Violence", Benjamin pursued the goal of a "politics of pure means" which would undercut the violence implicit in all articulation of morality and justice in (justified) means for (just) ends.
"The violence of an action can be assessed no more from its effects than from its ends, but only from the law of its means" (Benjamin 1991b: 195 [292]). Since the law of the legal orders means is the establishment of a violent fate
that captures bare life and produces guilt and punishment as forms of that capture (Benjamin 1991a: 175 [308]), the destruction of all forms of legality is "obligatory" before the advent of a just society. 39. Agamben takes up
Benjamins indication and engages in systematic research into the ontology of means and ends in order to show its absolute violent isonomy with the logic of sovereignty. To do this, Agamben borrows from Schmitt the definition of
sovereign power as the decisionary power over the state of exception, which he interprets as the paradoxical power to exclude and thereby include, or alternatively to include by excluding. 40. This formal model, he then shows,
following Heidegger, exactly corresponds in structural terms to the classical Aristotelian articulation of potentiality to actuality. Aristotle identifies two senses of potentiality. Potentiality is potentiality to be, and in that first sense, it is
directly related to actuality: potentiality as potentiality of actuality. Potentiality is therefore more truly itself in a second sense, as potentiality not to be. In this second sense, however, it also remains related to actuality. Indeed the
potential not to be, if reflectively turned onto itself, is again actuality. Not to be the power not to be is both being true to the nature of not being, and also to be in the most actual form of actuality. Impotentiality taken seriously is
both pure potentiality and as the impotentiality of the potential not-to-be, pure actuality. In other words, "pure potentiality and pure actuality are indistinguishable" (Agamben 1998: 47). 41. This conceptual indistinction, whereby the
potential is also the most actual form of actuality, is perfectly isomorphic with the sovereign structure if sovereignty is also defined as a power to suspend itself (potential not-to be) which is at the same time the source of itself and,
as normative power, the source of legal reality (actuality). 42. The conclusion is clear: if we want to move beyond biopolitics, beyond the violent politics of sovereignty, we have to develop an alternative ontology where the potential
is not always already recaptured by its own potentiality and thus forced to relate to its opposite, actuality. We have to think potentiality as pure or absolute potentiality, "beyond every figure of relation" (1998: 47). 43. Agamben thus
connects Benjamins "politics of pure means" with the alternative ontology articulated by Heidegger on the basis of his reading of Aristotles metaphysics. In his 1931 lectures on the Metaphysics (Heidegger, 1981: 114), in his
Nietzsche lectures (1980: 64-65), and in the Letter on humanism (1977: 220), Heidegger had tied the imperative of a "recovery of the question of Being" to a radical rethinking of the categories of modality in which Being is freed
from the productivist paradigm of actualitas. Only through a questioning of the modal logic operating within the onto-theological tradition could a free "ethos" be prepared as a genuine dwelling. Agambens thought owes just as
much to this fundamental inspiration as he does to Benjamin. How much Heideggers ontology of potentiality has exerted a fundamental influence on him is especially clear in the lectures at the Collge international de Philosophie
published under the title Lombre de lamour (1988: 44-46). 44. The description of the radical politics that emerges from the ontology of pure potentiality can be found in The Coming Community, and it is here that the full
consequences of Agambens problematic interpretation and reappropriation of Benjamin, Heidegger, Schmitt and Arendt become apparent. 45. In the notes that Benjamin was writing in preparation for his Theses on the philosophy of
history, one reads: "The messianic world is the world of overall and integral actuality" (Benjamin 1991e: 1235). The last expression is a self-reference to the 1929 essay on surrealism (1991d: 309, [1929]). Against Benjamins explicit
equation of the "real state of exception" (the state of liberated humanity), with actuality, Agambens coming community is a community of subjects that exist only as negative potentialities (actualities that are the possibility of notbeing, actualisations of potentiality), the "whatever singularities". Because he has severed the concept of the community from all normative ties, and has rejected all conceptual and normative distinctions (between state of nature
and civil state, law and violence, nomos and physis, normal state and exception, etc.), this community-to-come can only be ever described negatively, as beyond all forms of community, and accessed only in the flight from all
present and all immanence. It is difficult to avoid thinking that the assumed messianism of this radical politics is only a form of negative theology. Difficult not to think, also, that politics constructed as the "gigantomachy" (Agamben

How can we heed Agambens warning

about the necessity to continue to question the normativity of modernity after
Auschwitz without dissolving politics into onto-theology? This seems to be one of the most pressing
demands for political thought today. 47. If, with Rancire, we define politics not through the institution of
sovereignty, but as a continual struggle for the recognition of basic equality, and
2003: chapter 4) of an onto-theology of power does not lead to the evanescence of politics. Rights, Politics, Contingency 46.

thereby strongly distinguish politics from the police order viewed as the functional
management of communities (Rancire 1999), then it is possible to acknowledge the
normative break introduced by the democratic revolutions of the modern age
without falling into a one-sided view of modernity as a neat process of
rationalisation. What should be stressed about modernity is not primarily the list of
substantive inalienable and imprescriptible human rights , but the equal entitlement
of all to claim any rights at all. This definition of politics must be accompanied by the parallel acknowledgment that
the times that saw the recognition of the fundamental equality of all also produced the total negation of this principle. But this
parallel claim does not necessarily render the first invalid . Rather it points to a tension
inherent in modern communities, between the political demands of equality and the
systemic tendencies that structurally produce stigmatisation and exclusion . 48. One
can acknowledge the descriptive appeal of the biopower hypothesis without
renouncing the antagonistic definition of politics. As Rancire remarks, Foucaults late hypothesis
is more about power than it is about politics (Rancire 2002). This is quite clear in the 1976 lectures (Society must be defended)
where the term that is mostly used is that of "biopower". As Rancire suggests, when the "biopower" hypothesis is transformed into
a "biopolitical" thesis, the very possibility of politics becomes problematic. There is a way of articulating modern disciplinary power
and the imperative of politics that is not disjunctive. The power that subjects and excludes socially can also empower politically
simply because the exclusion is already a form of address which unwittingly provides implicit recognition. Power includes by
excluding, but in a way that might be different from a ban. This insight is precisely the one that Foucault was developing in his last
writings, in his definition of freedom as "agonism" (Foucault 1983: 208-228): "Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only

The hierarchical, exclusionary essence of social structures

demands as a condition of its possibility an equivalent implicit recognition of all ,
even in the mode of exclusion. It is on the basis of this recognition that politics can
sometimes arise as the vindication of equality and the challenge to exclusion . 49. This
insofar as they are free" (221).

proposal rests on a logic that challenges Agambens reduction of the overcoming of the classical conceptualisation of potentiality

Instead of collapsing or dualistically separating

potentiality and actuality, one would find in Hegels modal logic a way to articulate
their negative, or reflexive, unity, in the notion of contingency. Contingency is precisely
the potential as existing, a potential that exists yet does not exclude the possibility of its opposite (Hegel 1969: 541and actuality to the single Heideggerian alternative.

554). Hegel can lead the way towards an ontology of contingency that recognises the place of contingency at the core of necessity,
instead of opposing them. The fact that the impossible became real vindicates Hegels claim that the impossible should not be

the possible and the impossible are only reflected images of

each other and, as actual, are both simply the contingent . Auschwitz should not be called absolute
opposed to the actual. Instead,

necessity (Agamben 1999a: 148), but absolute contingency. The absolute historical necessity of Auschwitz is not "the radical
negation" of contingency, which, if true, would indeed necessitate a flight out of history to conjure up its threat. Its absolute
necessity in fact harbours an indelible core of contingency, the locus where political intervention could have changed things, where
politics can happen. Zygmunt Baumans theory of modernity and his theory about the place and relevance of the Holocaust in
modernity have given sociological and contemporary relevance to this alternative historical-political logic of contingency (Bauman

politics is only the name of the contingency that strikes

at the heart of systemic necessity. An ontology of contingency provides the model with which to think together
1989). 50. In the social and historical fields,

both the possibility, and the possibility of the repetition of, catastrophe, as the one heritage of modernity, and the contingency of

Modernity is ambiguous because it provides

the normative resources to combat the apparent necessity of possible systemic
catastrophes. Politics is the name of the struggle drawing on those resources. 51. This
ontology enables us also to rethink the relationship of modern subjects to rights .
Modern subjects are able to consider themselves autonomous subjects because
legal recognition signals to them that they are recognised as full members of the
community, endowed with the full capacity to judge. This account of rights in modernity is precious
because it provides an adequate framework to understand real political struggles , as
fights for rights. We can see now how this account needs to be complemented by the notion of contingency that
undermines the apparent necessity of the progress of modernity. Modern subjects know that their rights are
granted only contingently, that the possibility of the impossible is always actual . This
is why rights should not be taken for granted. But this does not imply that they
catastrophe as logically entailing the possibility of its opposite.

should be rejected as illusion, on the grounds that they were disclosed as contingent
in the horrors of the 20th century. Instead, their contingency should be the reason
for constant political vigilance. 52. By questioning the rejection of modern rights, one is undoubtedly
unfaithful to the letter of Benjamin. Yet, if one accepts that one of the great weaknesses of the Marxist philosophy of revolution was

politics that
define themselves as the articulation of demands born in the struggles against
injustice are better able to bear witness to the "tradition of the oppressed" than
their messianic counterparts.
its inability to constructively engage with the question of rights and the State, then it might be the case that the

Law is transformative and positive --- Agamben oversimplifies

Brnnstrm 08 (Leila, Assistant Professor (subst), Lund University Faculty of
Law, How I learned to stop worrying and use the legal argument A critique of
Giorgio Agambens conception of law, http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?
func=downloadFile&recordOId=2370100&fileOId=4001240)//BW
In Agambens writings law is represented as a uniplanar surface , even if a sophistication is
present as the surface is twisted to the form of a Mbius strip (cf. Agamben 1998, 15, 37). Despite the twist, law is
still represented as a homogeneous entity with a single border. The twist in the surface represents that, in

A state of affairs he claims

instantiates itself in paradoxes like the im/possibility of legal creation ex nihilo and
the im/possibility of the legal regulation of legally banned situations for example legal
codification of self-defense or the right of resistance against unlawful law. The paradoxical structure of
law is, in turn, claimed to explain how life, violence, and sovereignty are
simultaneously inside and outside the legal order . The paradoxes that Agamben enumerates are
Agambens wording, law is outside itself (Agamben 1998, 15).

however engendered in the first place by his understanding of law as a mystic, monolithic, unilaterally productive,

Agambens reasoning suppresses temporality and depopulates

the legal field, paradoxes arise as a result of treating law as an object rather than a practice that is performed.
and ahistorical entity. As

Behind the fear of law that Agamben shows when he says that an unprecedented biopolitical catastrophe is
awaiting us if we do not break with the current politico-legal rationality, is a representation of law as an object as
a machine standing outside history and affecting the course of events. Foucault has argued that if the state is
abstracted and hypostatized as a cold-blooded monster or the instrument of class repression it appears to be the
driving force behind all sorts of effects, which leads to the overvaluation of the state-problem and causes
inflationary effects such as statophobia. He reminds us that the state is nothing more than a flexible bundle of
juxtaposed practices (Foucault 2006, 112115). Similarly, law is not all too powerful or all too powerless; it is a
protean combination of law-producing and reproducing practices and does not have an existence outside of that.

Agambens way of treating law as a point of departure rather than as a the result of
complicated social processes and as the origin of historical power relations rather
than their effects is somewhat ironic since the crux of his argument seems to be
that law does not have an independent life. His point, after all, is that the hold that law has over life
can be broken and what is ultimately at stake in the state of exception, in legal production and decision-making and
in biopolitical matters, is extrajudicial (cf. Agamben 2005, 11, 8788). 41 Another example of such

overestimation of the legal point of view in Agambens work would be the

overstatement of the differences between incarcerated aliens and incarcerated
citizens. Agambens black and white image of law has its counterpart in his notion of bio-power as the controlling
of the (increasingly blurred) borderline between life and death. Bio-power is here reduced to a question of either/or,
eradicating all differentiation in the administration and management of life .

It is all the more problematic

as the control of the borderline is construed as a legal matter which is particularly
troubling as law is equaled to repression and the state is the sole legal agent
mentioned. The transposition of law and repression obscure the fact that some legal
norms, rather than immediately directing and appraising behavior, distribute
competences or legal powers which allow legal subjects to introduce changes in
legal status through contract or other arrangements . Think for instance of the biopolitical effects

of patenting human genome or the markets for surrogacy motherhood or for human organs. Neither is bio-power
necessarily exercised by the state or even through legal action. As Lemke appropriately points out, it is more and
more the scientific consultants, economic interest groups, and civil societal mediators that define the beginning, the
end and the value of life, in consensus conferences, expert commissions, and ethical counsels (Lemke 2005, 11).

Agamben seems to equate power and repression it comes as no surprise that

he cannot see that bio-power can be exercised in ways radically different from those
of the Nazi-regime. It is not wholly accidental that the biopolitical decisions of market actors scenting
Since

investment opportunities and those of us who quit smoking because we are acting in a biopolitically responsible

Agamben overestimates here, as elsewhere, the role of

law in a story where the (narrow and distorted) legal point of view tends to
substitute reality.
way, go unnoticed in Agambens story.

2ac - agamben wrong

Agambens conception of law are incredibly essentialist and
provides no remedy
Schotel 09 (Bas, assistant professor (Ph.D., LLM) at University of Amsterdam,
DEFENDING OUR LEGAL PRACTICES: A LEGAL CRITIQUE OF GIORGIO AGAMBENS
STATE OF EXCEPTION,
http://amsterdamlawforum.org/article/viewArticle/68/124)//BW
to Agambens provocative questions directed at lawyers. According
to Agamben we are silent about the killing machine , which concerns us because it is inherently tied to
VI. Critique Let us return

law: the state of exception. Our legal culture is in radical decline, because we have not come up with an adequate theory of the
state of exception. We have been incapable of addressing the two forces at work: law and life. We have not been able to create an
open space where we can play with the elements and create new meaning of life and law. These accusations do not hold .

In
earlier reviews it has been correctly pointed out that lawyers are not silent and that
especially in court lawyers have raised their voice, which Agamben totally omits in
his thesis. Reference to those excellent reviews should suffice, if they would not have conceded already too much to
Agambens thesis.10 These misrepresentations (or outright omissions) of what lawyers are doing are not harmless or innocent
omissions. They constitute a dangerous move away from a contextual understanding of law as practice of practical reasoning.
Instead Agamben moves us to a kind of ontological and even metaphysical notion of law. To appreciate my concern one may simply
ask one question: what is left in concrete and practical terms -of the law if we adopt Agambens thesis? What are lawyers doing
when Agamben will have it his way?

In spite of all his good intentions and legitimate concerns,

Agamben covertly advocates a selling out of our legal practice. So rather than
giving Agamben a charitable reading, and tolerate the often alien tenor11 of his
work, I will show its fundamental inadequacy to provide a plausible account of the
current legal practice and law in general. Both his methods to describe law as
the descriptions of it are deeply flawed. VI.1 Law Has Normative Force At the outset of his thesis
Agamben runs into fundamental difficulties. His concern is the impunity of violations of international law by governments that

If we take Agambens diagnosis and his solution

seriously, there is actually no way we can tell whether there are violations of
international law in the first place. The only thing Agamben can claim is that killings,
incarcerations, infliction of hardship, in short violence acts are taking place. But
under his theory there is no legal standard available to qualify these acts as
violations. This is probably the greatest danger of his theory. It cannot identify outright abuse of the law and bad faith, while
nevertheless still claim to be applying law.

this is clearly what was going on with the Bush government.12 By giving too much credit to the discourse of these governments and
taking this discourse as his starting point, there is no concern for him to deal with. The simple fact that violence is used could not
concern him as such. It may only worry him if there is a normative standard according to which this violence is wrong, unjust
illegitimate, or illegal. In other words,

Agamben is in blatant contradiction. The simple fact that he

believes that governments are violating current international and domestic law
means that they have normative force. It means that they are supposed to be obeyed and that as such they
constitute reasons for action. If so, then already this simple but fundamental point makes Agambens enterprise practically obsolete.

It seems that he realises this contradiction, since he hardly ever speaks of

violations, abuses and misuses of the law. VI.2 Lawyers Are Not Silent Agambens failure to
recognise his own need to rely on the normative force of existing law explains why
he cannot or does not want to hear the lawyers . Yet lawyers are far from silent. For sure, they may not
engage in philosophical inquiry into the genealogy and etymology (!) of obscure phenomena of Roman law, they have been raising
their voice in the context of a particular practice, i.e. legal practice. Just to take the example of the treatment of Guantanamo

From
the justices of US Supreme Court and professional human rights defence lawyers,13
law clinic students14, to Pentagon officials, and former military defence lawyers.15
The lawyers are equally talkative when it comes to theorising the state of exception .
detainees: lawyers of all ranks, affiliation and function have been fighting the violations of international and domestic law.

As Kanwar nicely shows, constitutionalist produced a great deal of legal writing on the issue, they may not have reached any
consensus on these issues, but that is not the same as remaining silent16 In short, as long as the legal practice can assert that

violations of law are taking place, the law has normative force. In other words, Agambens philosophical concern seems to vanish
and his first accusation has been proven false. VI.3 The Law Is Being Applied A gamben

may object to my
previous points that all those lawyers that are raising their voice are only referring
to a law that is formally in force but not applied : force-oflaw. Again, he is wrong from an empirical
perspective. The Supreme Court cases cited earlier show that gradually but progressively the Guantanamo practices are
invalidated.17 But let us, for arguments sake, concede that gross violations are taking place with impunity to the effect that the law
is actually not-applied. This empirical claim raises important methodological and normative issues. What is the level of compliance
needed for a law to be qualified as applied? What do we measure: the quantity or the quality of the compliance? Or do we only

What Agamben needs are standards to evaluate whether or not a

law, a set of laws or even the law itself, is bankrupt. But this means that he has to
provide us with an account of the functions and capabilities of law. Obviously, he
fails to do so. This alone should already dismiss his claims . For it shows a categorical refusal to
measure the violations?

account for even the most minimal features of a phenomenon he seeks to criticise, even revolutionise. Let me briefly illustrate how
ones definition of the functions of law matters to determining laws effectiveness.18 If the focus is on guiding behaviour, then
failure to comply with the law will sooner amount to its ineffectiveness. By contrast, if the function of the law is more a matter of
restorative justice then violations do not really affect its effectiveness. What matters is whether sooner or later the norms are ex
post enforced on the violators. Of course, law is more complex and may have a variety of functions. But this goes just to show that
one should distinguish between different branches of law, because often the functions change accordingly. Also, we must consider
the experience of the law with applying particular norms. For example, some human rights are quite old while others very recent.
One cannot expect the new right to be as effective as the older one.19 VI.4 Law Cannot Be Understood through a Paradigm and
Genealogical Inquiry Maybe I have overstated my fears for Agambens work. By the mere fact of using the instrument of the
paradigm and the method of genealogical inquiry he gives up any pretension of offering us a far reaching insight into the law.20 So
he is harmless after all. But just to be sure let me briefly indicate why Agambens methodology can tell us so little about the law

his enterprise is not at all sociological he has no regard for the actual
practice and contexts in which certain legal concepts were used. As a result he
cannot actually say whether a certain legal arrangement was actually seriously
practiced at all, let alone found relevant. For a genealogy this does not pose any problem. This also explains
(qua law). First, since

why Agamben can bring to the stage without any embarrassment extremely obscure legal arrangements such as the iustitium in

Roman law seems to Agamben just as relevant

as US constitutional law. In fact, as Kanwar pointed out, US constitutional does not seem at all relevant to Agamben.
combination with the senatus consultum ultimum. In fact,

Similarly, the disregard for practice explains why he can omit one of the greatest practices of modern legal systems: judicial review.

The same
happens with all the authorities that do not fit Agambens paradigm. Rather than
questioning his paradigm he rejects the authority. 21 However, the grounds for the rejections are unclear
The reason is simple: because social facts do not matter only the aspects are withhold that fit the paradigm.

or rather absent. Often he cannot do better than etymology. In any event, the rejections cannot be based on a more plausible,
complex and contextualised understanding of the particular practice in which the legal concept was used. For practice does not

it is not acceptable for

understanding practices of collective action and discourse such as politics and law.
His contempt of practice, and the necessary singular focus of the paradigm, drive
Agamben into a dangerous ontological, and at the same time metaphysical,
exercise. This paves the way for an essentialist and indeed singular understanding of law. Ultimately everything can be
matter to Agamben. This maybe a well accepted methodology in the art of aesthetics,

traced back to the state of exception. And since the law is defined as the state of exception and social facts are not to be accounted

As he deprived the law of all its complexities,

diversity, openness and at the same time constraints (and thus normativity), no
wonder why Agamben wants to get rid of the law . Agamben has put up a straw man. First he erects up
for, it is impossible to refute this account of the law.

the straw man of an outdated legal formalism, as if lawyers still believed that the application of the norm could be derived
exclusively from the norm. Hardly any legal positivist will hold this view. Of course there is a decision in both law making and law
applying. Big deal! You do not need Schmitt anymore to make this point. And you certainly need not jump from the decision to an
omnipresence of the state of exception.22 What matters is to see that even -or precisely -the decision is must be subjected to legal
constraints. The second straw man is a law confined to a simplistic struggle between law and life. Obviously, when presented with
such an arid and binary view of law, we need metaphysical constructs such as pure law and open space of human praxis. Instead,
if we put aside this straw man, and abandon a foundationalist and essentialist view of law, a myriad of actual legal concepts
surfaces.23 And each of these concepts can create constraints for governmental legal actions. Of course ,

none of these
concepts can rule out governments abusing the law and acting in bad faith. But
they make it difficult for them. And today our current legal practices can actually
hold the individual officials accountable.24 For sure, this takes time. But the law must hesitate and take its
time, for the law needs to make a multitude of connections. In fact, without the necessary hesitations the law may even become
suspect of coinciding with self-evidence and common sense.25

The jargon of exception is depoliticizing and ignores social

reforms
Huysmans 8 (Jef Professor of Security Studies at the Open University, The Jargon
of ExceptionOn Schmitt, Agamben and the Absence of Political Society, in
International Political Sociology, Volume 2, Issue 2, June 2008,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-5687.2008.00042.x/abstract)
Agambens conception of the exception-being-therule for reconfiguring conceptions of politics in a biopolitical age comes at a serious cost, though. It inserts
both a diagnosis of our time and a conceptual apparatus for rethinking politics that
has no place for the category that has been central to the modern democratic tradition:
the political significance of people as a multiplicity of social relations that condition politics and that are
Deploying the jargon of exception and especially

constituted by the mediations of various objectified forms and processes (for example, scientific knowledge, technologies, property

Even if one would argue that Agambens framing of the current

political conditions are valuable for understanding important changes that have taken place in the
twentieth century and that are continuing in the twenty first, they also are to a considerable extent depoliticizing.
Agambens work tends to guide the analysis to unmediated, factual life. For example, some draw
relations, legal institutions...).

on Agamben to highlight the importance of bodily strategies of resistance. One of the key examples is individual refugees protesting
against their detention by sewing up lips and eyes. They exemplify how individualized naked life resists by deploying their bodily,
biological condition against sovereign biopolitical powers (for example, Edkins and Pin-Fat 2004:1517). I follow Adorno and others,

such a conception of bodily, naked life is not political. It ignores how this life
only exists and takes on political form through various socioeconomic, technological,
scientific, legal, and other mediations. For example, the images of the sewed-up eye- lids and lips of the individualized
however, that

and biologized refugees have no political significance without being mediated by public media, intense mobilizations on refugee and
asylum questions, contestations of human rights in the courts, etc. It is these mediations that are the object and structuring devices

Reading the politics of exception as the central lens onto modern con- ceptions
politics, as both Agamben and Schmitt do, erases from the concept of politics a rich and constitutive
history of sociopolitical struggles, traditions of thought linked to this history, and key sites and
temporalities of politics as well as the central processes through which
individualized bodily resistances gain their sociopolitical significance.
of political struggle.
of

2ac action over theory

Our strategic engagement within the law is the only way to
end biopolitical control
Edkins 7 (Jenny Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University,
Whatever Politics, in Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty and Life, Ed. Calarco and
DeCaroli, 2007, p. 84)
What is crucial here is whether the alternative Agamben proposes is radical enough. Does it entail a
refusal of the machine, or merely a reinstatement of it with a different "definition" of what it means to be human? In The Open,

Agamben does seem to reject Heidegger's problematic separation of Dasein, as a being that can see the
open, from the animal, poor in world, that cannot.45 Ultimately, Agamben appears to be
arguing that any negation of the machine cannot be accomplished on a philosophical
plane, but only in terms of practice. In the end, practice or human action, not philosophy, is what
counts. Ontology and philosophy are to be considered only to the extent that
they are political operators and, specifically, biopolitical weapons in the service of the
anthropological machine of sovereignty. In order to try to stop the biopolitical machine that
produces bare life, what is needed is human action, "which once claimed for itself the
name of 'politics'" (SE, 88). It is because there is no necessary articulation "between
violence and law, between life and norm," that it is possible to attempt to interrupt or halt
the machine, to "loosen what has been artificially and violently linked " (SE, 87). This
opens a space for a return not to some "lost original state" but to human praxis and political
action (SE, 88).

2ac state internal link turn

A politics of dissent from the state beginining from our appeal
to hope in the face of the security state and War on Terror
allows us to create political communities around dissensus and
inspire ethical resistance
Critchley 7 (Simon Professor of Philosophy at the New School, Infinitely
Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance, Verso, 2007, p. 111-114)
Keeping these examples of the political function of rights in mind, I would like to move on to the question of the state. We inhabit

The state whether national like Britain or France, a supranational quasi-state like the EU, or imperial like the USA
is the framework within which conventional politics takes place . Now, it is arguable
states.

that the state is a limitation on human existence and we would be better off without it. It is arguable that without state systems of
government, bureaucracy, the police and the military, human beings would be able to cooperate with each other on the basis of free
agreement and not merely through obedience to law. It is arguable that interwoven networks of such cooperative associations might
begin to cover all fields of human activity so as to substitute themselves for the state. It is arguable that the vertical hierarchy of the
state structure could be replaced with horizontally allied associations of free, self-determining human beings. Such is, of course, the
eternal temptation of the anarchist tradition, particularly for someone like Kropotkin, and I will come back to anarchism in more

we cannot hope, at this point

in history, to attain a complete withering away of the state, either through concerted
detail below. However to put it at its most understated it seems to me that

anarchosyndicalist or anarcho-communist action or through revolutionary proletarian praxis with the agency of the party. Within
classical Marxism, state, revolution and class form a coherent set: there is a revolutionary class, the universal or classless class of
the proletariat whose communist politics entails the overthrow of the bourgeois state. The locus classicus for this position is Lenin's
State and Revolution, a text that is, in my view, fatally sundered by conflicting authoritarian and anarchist tendencies. On the one
hand, in the name of the 'authentic' Marx, Lenin claims that the bourgeois state must be smashed and replaced by a democratically
centralist workers' state the dictatorship of the proletariat but, on the other hand, he claims that this is only a pre-condition
for the eventual withering away of the state in communism or what he calls the 'fullest democracy'. 29 The condition of possibility
for the Leninist withering away of the state is the emergence of a revolutionary class, the proletariat, whom Hardt and Negri seek to
update into the multitude. 30 Now, if class positions are not simplifying, but on the contrary becoming more complex through the
processes of social dislocation described in this chapter, if the revolution is no longer conceivable in a Marxist-Leninist manner, then

we are stuck with the state. The question then

becomes: what should our political strategy be with regard to the state , to
the state and states that we're in? In a period when the revolutionary proletarian subject has decidedly
broken down, and along with it the political project of a withering away of the state, I think that politics should be
conceived at a distance from the state .31 Or, better, politics is the praxis of
taking up distance with regard to the state, working independently of the
state, working in a situation. Politics is praxis in a situation and the labour of politics
is the construction of new political subjectivities , new political
aggregations in specific localities , a new dissensual habitus rooted in
common sense and the consent of those who dissent. In addition to the examples of the
that means that, for good or ill let's say for ill

politics of indigenous rights discussed above, this is arguably a description of the sort of direct democratic action that has provided
the cutting edge and momentum to radical politics since the days of action against the meeting of the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and
subsequently at Prague, Nice, Genoa, Quito, Cancun and elsewhere. 32 In the face of the massive re-territorialization of state power
in the West after 9/11, this movement has continued in the huge mobilizations against US and UK intervention in Iraq, and in
numerous other protests, such as the opposition to the Republican National Convention in New York in late summer 2004.

Despite obvious electoral failures, it is the experience of such mobilizations

that provides, in my view, the ethical energy for a remotivation of politics and
future democratic organization. However, to forestall a possible misunderstanding, this distance
from the state is within the state, that is, within and upon the state's
territory . It is, we might say, an interstitial distance , an internal distance that
has to be opened from the inside. What I mean, seemingly paradoxically , is that
there is no distance within the state. In the time of the purported 'war on
terror', and in the name of 'security', state sovereignty is attempting to saturate the
entirety of social life. The constant ideological mobilization of the threat of external
attack has permitted the curtailments of traditional civil liberties in the name of

internal political order, so-called 'homeland security', where order and security have
become identified. Such is the politics of fear, where the political might be defined with Carl Schmitt as that activity which
assures the internal order of a political unit like a state through the more or less fantastic threat of the enemy. 33 Against this, the
task of radical political articulations is the creation of interstitial distance
within the state territory. The Mexican example of indigenous identity
discussed above is a powerful instance of the creation of such a distance ,
an act of political leverage where the invocation of an international legal
convention created the space for the emergence of a new political subject .
Similarly, political activism around the so-called illegal immigrants in Paris, the sans-papiers, is the attempt to create an interstitial
distance whose political demand 'if one works in France, one is French' invokes the principle of equality at the basis of the French

One works within the state against the state in a political articulation
that attempts to open a space of opposition. Perhaps it is at this intensely
situational, indeed local level that the atomizing, expropriating force of
neo-liberal globalization is to be met, contested and resisted. That is,
resistance begins by occupying and controlling the terrain upon which one
stands, where one lives, works, acts and thinks. This needn't involve millions
of people. It needn't even involve thousands. It could involve just a few at
first. Resistance can be intimate and can begin in small affinity groups . The
art of politics consists in weaving such cells of resistance together into a
common front, a shared political subjectivity. What is going to allow for the
formation of such a political subjectivity the hegemonic glue, if you will is an appeal to
universality, whether the demand for political representation, equality of
treatment or whatever. It is the hope, indeed the wager, of this book that the ethical
demand described above the infinite responsibility that both constitutes
and divides my subjectivity might allow that hegemonic glue to set into
the compact, self-aware, fighting force that motivates the subject into the
political action spoken of in the epigraph to this chapter.
republic.

2ac alternative fails

Alternative Fails current methods of surveillance doom all
movements only the aff can solve
Glennon 14 (Michael J., Professor of International Law, Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy, Tufts University, National Security and Double Government,
http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf)//BW
The government itself, meanwhile, could not be counted upon to remain passive in
the face of growing public obduracy in response to its efforts to do what it thinks
essential to safeguard national security. Here we do have historical precedents, and none is
comfortably revisited. The Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1790s;537 the Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920;538 the

governmental spying on and disruption of

civil rights, draft protesters, and anti-war activists in the 1960s and 1970s;540 and
the incommunicado incarceration without charges, counsel, or trial of unlawful
combatants only a few short years ago541all are examples of what can happen
when government sees limited options in confronting nerve-center security threats .
round-up of Japanese-American citizens in the 1940s;539

No one can be certain, but the ultimate danger posed if the system were to fall to earth in the aftermath of a
devastating terrorist attack could be intensely divisive and potentially destabilizingnot unlike what was envisioned
by conservative Republicans in Congress who opposed Trumans national security programs when the managerial

It is therefore appropriate to move beyond explanation and to

turn to possibilities for reformto consider steps that might be taken to prevent the
entire structure from falling to earth.
network was established.542

2ac - no impact
No biopolitics impact --- democracy checks
Dickinson 4 (Edward R. Professor of History at UC Davis, Biopolitics, Fascism,
Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About Modernity, in Central
European History, Volume 37, Issue 1, March 2004,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?
fromPage=online&aid=2758180&fileId=S0008938900002776)
And it is, of course, embedded in a broader discursive complex (institutions, professions, fields of social, medical, and psychological

continuities
between early twentieth-century biopolitical discourse and the practices of the
welfare state in our own time are unmistakable . Both are instances of the disciplinary society and of
expertise) that pursues these same aims in often even more effective and inescapable ways.89 In short, the

biopolitical, regulatory, social-engineering modernity, and they share that genealogy with more authoritarian states, including the

And it is certainly fruitful to view them from

this very broad perspective. But that analysis can easily become superficial
and misleading, because it obfuscates the profoundly different strategic and local
dynamics of power in the two kinds of regimes . Clearly the democratic welfare
state is not only formally but also substantively quite different from totalitarianism.
Above all, again, it has nowhere developed the fateful, radicalizing dynamic that
characterized National Socialism (or for that matter Stalinism), the psychotic logic that leads from
National Socialist state, but also fascist Italy, for example.

economistic population management to mass murder. Again, there is always the potential for such a discursive regime to generate
coercive policies. In those cases in which the regime of rights does not successfully produce health, such a system can and

there are political and policy

potentials and constraints in such a structuring of biopolitics that are very different
from those of National Socialist Germany. Democratic biopolitical regimes
require, enable, and incite a degree of self-direction and participation that is
functionally incompatible with authoritarian or totalitarian structures. And
this pursuit of biopolitical ends through a regime of democratic citizenship does
appear, historically, to have imposed increasingly narrow limits on coercive policies,
and to have generated a logic or imperative of increasing liberalization . Despite
historically does create compulsory programs to enforce it. But again,

limitations imposed by political context and the slow pace of discursive change, I think this is the unmistakable message of the
really very impressive waves of legislative and welfare reforms in the 1920s or the 1970s in Germany.90 Of course it is not yet clear
whether this is an irreversible dynamic of such systems. Nevertheless, such regimes are characterized by sufficient degrees of
autonomy (and of the potential for its expansion) for sufficient numbers of people that I think it becomes useful to conceive of them
as productive of a strategic configuration of power relations that might fruitfully be analyzed as a condition of liberty, just as much

totalitarianism cannot be the

sole orientation point for our understanding of biopolitics , the only end point of the
logic of social engineering. This notion is not at all at odds with the core of
Foucauldian (and Peukertian) theory. Democratic welfare states are regimes of
power/knowledge no less than early twentieth-century totalitarian states;
these systems are not opposites, in the sense that they are two alternative ways of organizing the same thing. But they
are two very different ways of organizing it. The concept power should not
be read as a universal stifling night of oppression , manipulation, and entrapment, in
which all political and social orders are grey, are essentially or effectively the
same. Power is a set of social relations, in which individuals and groups have varying degrees of autonomy and effective
as they are productive of constraint, oppression, or manipulation. At the very least,

subjectivity. And discourse is, as Foucault argued, tactically polyvalent. Discursive elements (like the various elements of
biopolitics) can be combined in different ways to form parts of quite different strategies (like totalitarianism or the democratic
welfare state); they cannot be assigned to one place in a structure, but rather circulate. The varying possible constellations of power
in modern societies create multiple modernities, modern societies with quite radically differing potentials.91

Biopolitics is good --- it supports life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness
Ojakangas 5 (Mika Professor of Political Thought at the University of Jyvaskyla,
Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power: Agamben and Foucault, in Foucault Studies,
Number 2, p. 26-27, http://dferagi.webs.ull.es/d/social2/docs/Foucault.3.pdf)
In fact, the history of modern Western societies would be quite incomprehensible without taking into account that there exists a
form of power which refrains from killing but which nevertheless is capable of directing peoples lives. The effectiveness of biopower can be seen lying precisely in that it refrains and withdraws before every demand of killing, even though these demands
would derive from the demand of justice. In bio-political societies, according to Foucault, capital punishment could not be
maintained except by invoking less the enormity of the crime itself than the monstrosity of the criminal: One had the right to
kill those who represented a kind of biological danger to others.112 However, given that the right to kill is precisely a
sovereign right, it can be argued that the bio-political societies analyzed by Foucault were not entirely bio-political. Perhaps,

present-day
European societies have abolished capital punishment. In them, there are no longer exceptions. It
there neither has been nor can be a society that is entirely bio-political. Nevertheless, the fact is that

is the very right to kill that has been called into question. However, it is not called into question because of enlightened moral

because of the deployment of bio-political thinking and practice. For

Agambens thesis, according to which the concentration camp is the
fundamental bio-political paradigm of the West , has to be corrected.113 The biopolitical paradigm of the West is not the concentration camp , but, rather, the
present-day welfare society and, instead of homo sacer, the paradigmatic figure of the bio-political society
sentiments, but rather
all these reasons,

can be seen, for example, in the middle-class Swedish social-democrat. Although this figure is an object and a product of the
huge bio-political machinery, it does not mean that he is permitted to kill without committing homicide. Actually, the fact that he
eventually dies, seems to be his greatest crime against the machinery. (In bio-political societies, death is not only something
to be hidden away, but, also, as Foucault stresses, the most shameful thing of all.114) Therefore, he is not exposed to an

the bio-political
machinery does not want to threaten him, but to encourage him, with all its material
spiritual capacities, to live healthily, to live long and to live happily even when, in
biological terms, he should have been dead long ago.115 This is because bio-power is not bloody
power over bare life for its own sake but pure power over all life for the sake of
the living. It is not power but the living, the condition of all life individual as well as collective
that is the measure of the success of bio-power .
unconditional threat of death, but rather to an unconditional retreat of all dying. In fact,