as if prison wasn't bad enough...

Now we're calling the indentured labor done there "green"...

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679603/these-inmates-pay-their-debt-to-society-by-caring-for-the-planet

5 real-life weapons straight out of a sci-fi movie

For those of you keeping score at home...

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/5-real-life-weapons-straight-sci-fi-movie-215550863.html

Myth of "Responsible Capitalism"

This is a profound look at the problems of capitalism:

Eric Hobsbawm: The myth of "responsible capitalism"

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/04/08/eric-hobsbawm-the-myth-of-responsible-capitalism/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateandcapitalism%2FpEtD+%28Climate+and+Capitalism%29

On the same page there is a ink to "Capitalism and Degrowth—An Impossibility Theorem":
http://climateandcapitalism.com/2011/01/11/capitalism-and-degrowth-an-impossibility-theorem/

This programmed-in emphasis on growth as a part of the economy is, in my opinion, one of the key flaws in any viable economy, and certainly contradicts the view that our own economy is a free market. I don't believe it is. It is an economy carefully planned in every way around a false idea of growth as a necessary condition for money-lending activities.

Our society is simply "planned" in a different way, around the sacrosanct principle of continual growth.

CFP: Materialism and World Politics

Bear 71: Control Society meets Natured Nature?

http://bear71.nfb.ca/#/bear71

Cyber and Drone Attacks May Change Warfare More Than the Machine Gun

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/03/cyber-and-drone-attacks-may-change-warfare-more-than-the-machine-gun/254540/

U.S. accelerating cyberweapon research & Nation’s Biggest Spy Center Settles into Utah

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-accelerating-cyberweapon-research/2012/03/13/gIQAMRGVLS_story.html

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Nations_Biggest_Spy_Center_Settles_into_Utah_120319

Thacker talking about "After Life"

http://www.pactac.net/pactacweb/web-content/video66.html

Are corporations people. Yes if by people you mean murderers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/opinion/should-corporations-have-more-leeway-to-kill-than-people-do.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

Spring Break is right around the corner...

http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/iraq-tourism-industry-post-war-violence-safety-palaces-antiquities

NYC sign: "Drone activity in progress"

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_mid&fb_source=message#/video/bestoftv/2012/02/04/exp-erin-drones-in-new-york.cnn

View of War 1722 Dug Up by Michael Miller

A View of War. The year: 1722
[Some Middle English words modernized, author's italics lost in this posting]

Molloy, Charles. (1722). De Jure Maritimo Et Navali: or A Treatise of Affairs Maritime and of Commerce, Seventh Edition. London: John Walthos. [Charles Molly (1646-1690)]

"But then such War must be just, and he that undertakes it must be a Sovereign: the just caudes to make a War are our Prince's or Country's defence, and that of our Allies, the Satisfaction of our
Injuries, or theirs; our just Pretensions to an Estate or Right; Divines have added added another, not only the defence of Religion, but its Advancement and Propagation, by the way of Arms, and some the extirpation and rooting up a contrary" (4).

"VI. Publick War is either Solemn by the Laws of Nations, or else less Solemn. What we here call Solemn is commonly call`d Just, in the same sense as a just Testament is opposed to Codicils, not that it is not lawful for him that pleases to make Codicils, but because a Solemn Testament hath by the Civil Law some peculiar effects; and this difference is worth Observation, feeing many misunderstanding the Word Just conceive all Wars to be condemn`d as unjust and unlawful, whereunto this Appellation of Just is not agreeable.

VII. That War, according to the Law of Nations, may be Solemn, two things are requisite: First, That it be waged on both sides by his Authority who hath the highest Power in the Commonwealth. Secondly, That certain Rights be used (of which we shall speak in due place) one of these without the other (because they are both required) doth not suffice. Publick War less Solemn may want those rights, and be waged against private Person, and have for the Author any Magistrate. And according to the opinion of most Civilians, if the matter be considered without Civil Laws, it seemeth that every Magistrate hath right to wage War, as for the defence of the People committed to his Charge, so for the Exercise of Jurisdiction, if he be opposed
by Force: But because by War the whole Commonwealth is endangered; therefore by
the Laws of all Nations that War be not undertaken without the Authority of him
whose Power in the Commonwealth is the highest, there is extant such a Law of Plato's and in the Roman Law it is called Treason in him who without the Command of the Prince, hath waged War, or listed Soldiers, or raised an Army; in the Cornelian Law brought in by L. Cornelius Sylla
it was, without the Command of the People; in Justinian's Code is extant a
Constitution of Valentinian and Valens, None have leave to take any Arms without our knowledge or direction. And my Lord Coke in his Third Institutes observes, That by the Common Law of this Realm it was High-Treason to levy a War without Authority from the King for to him it belongeth only. And the reason why it should be so subjected is, because that natural Order for
preserving of peace among Men requires that an Authority and Council in undertaking of War should remain in Princes.

VIII. But as all Laws must be interpreted by Equity, so must this Law; and therefore there is no Question but that `tis lawful for one having Jurisdiction by force of those which we call a peaceable Guard or Power, viz. Constable, Serjeants, Watch men, or, to constrain a few disobedient Persons, and no eminent danger to the Commonwealth. Again, if it be so present a danger, that time will not admit of Consultation with him who hath Supreme Power, here also necessity affordeth anther Exception; and therefore in Garrisons, if the Townsmen should endavour to fall over to an Enemy, they may be dealt withal as Enemies by the Governor
of the Garrison, and by that Right L. Pinarius Governour of Enna, a Garrison in Sicily, having information that the Townsmen were falling off to the Carthaginians, making slaughter of them kept the Town: and the reason why such extraordinary Force is called War, for that the same is commenced by the right of the Magistrate, in which case the War is suppos`d to be made by the highest Power, because every one is judged Author of that which he giveth another Commission
to do; besides the universal reason which warrants the act, which requires that all Dangers, Rebellions, and Insurrections be withstood and checkt in the bud, and tho` this is called War, yet this strictly is not properly War, tho` the Parties who suppress or punish are impune.

IX. But War properly by the Laws of this Realm or Solemn, is, when the Courts of Justice
are shut up, and Judges and Ministers of the same cannot protect Men from violence, not distribute Justice: so when by Invasion, Insurrection, Rebellion, or the like, the current of
Justice is stopt and shut up. Et filent leges inter arma, then it is said to be time of War..." (4-6).

X. Wars, though undertaken by publick Authority, must have the Effects of Law, that is, there must be a just cause for the undertaking the same;....Now amongst the first principles of Nature there is nothing necessarily repugnant to War, there is much in favour of it; for both the end
of War, the conservation of Life and Members, and the keeping or acquiring of things useful unto Life is most agreeable unto those Principles; and it need be, to use Force to that purpose is not disagreeable, since every thing hath by the Gift of Nature strength, to the end it may be able to defend and help, and therefore be is by Nature fitted for Peace and War..." (6-7).

"A Truce is an Agreement, whereby tho` the War continue, yet all acts of Hostility do for a while cease, for between War and Peace there is no Medium, it is and may be called a War..." (138).

Presentation on Agamben Negri and Mbembe by Michael Miller

University of Hawai`i at Mānoa
Department of Political Science
POLS 635B – International Relations & War
Spring 2012
Instructor: Jairus Grove
Class Presentation
February 1, 2012

By Michael F. Miller

Week 4 Reinventing Biopolitics or Reinventing the Wheel?
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer Part III
Achille Mbembe, ”Necropolitics,” Public Culture, 2003.
Antonio Negri, War and Peace.

We have been charged with making a critical reading of the assigned material with a perspective on our own empirical research projects. Empirical research is a method of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience.

I take as a starting point, the idea put forth by Professor Grove in his syllabus concerning a "rupture driven historicism," and the hope of addressing his question of whether "biopolitics should be abandoned or modified" without losing Foucault's insight concerning the
"microphysics of power." Upon a further investigation of what Foucault meant by the “microphysics of power,” I came to the conclusion that such a view was beyond the scope of my assigned readings primarily due to the fact that these writings take an opposing view to the microphysics of power. However, I do see value in Foucault's work. (See: Santiago Abel Amietta’s Study on Microphysics of Power, 2011, 5).

“Michel Foucault’s work on power relations which he defines as the “microphysics of power” provides the analytical basis for my examination. This model, in contrast to the traditional
conceptualization of power as essentially repressive and negative, emphasizes power’s positive and productive nature. As described by Foucault, it consists of ‘humble modalities, minor procedures, as compared with the majestic rituals of sovereignty or the great apparatuses of the state’ (1978:170) and ‘exerts a positive influence on life, which endeavours to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations’
(1979:137).” [Amietta, Santiago Abel. (2011). “Governance in Córdoba’s Mixed Tribunal: A Study on Microphysics of Power.” Oñati Socio-Legal Series. 1(1): 1-33.
http://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/43]

It seems clear that the group of readings encompassing selected works by Giorgio Agamben (1942- ), Antonio Negri (1933- ), and Achille Mbembe (1957- ) strive to modify or reinterpret Foucault’s basic thesis involving biopolitics and biopower. Some have defined these views as a negative interpretation of biopolitics. There is a central theme around which all three writers converge. This theme involves the concepts of power, sovereign, and the idea of the "state of exception."

Carl Schmitt based the idea of the "state of exception" upon a perspective that "All law is 'situational law'" (Schmitt, 1922, 13). The law is the guarantor of life and much more. Schmitt writes: "the essence of the state's sovereignty, which must be juristically defined correctly, not as the monopoly to coerce or to rule, but as the monopoly to decide" (13). "Sovereign is he who decides on the exception" (5). "It is precisely the exception that makes relevant the subject of sovereignty..." (6). "the norm is destroyed in the exception" (12).

At issue is the idea of whether these writers, who hold to a "rupture driven historicism," (Grove) have correctly interpreted the reality of such a foundational paradigm? A great deal hinges upon the assumption of the Foucault Turn from classical politics to biopolitics, and the turn to the "state of exception." The three works being reviewed can each be separated into two parts, one is primarily historical (their evidence) and the other is futuristic. The idea of "rupture driven historicism" seems to be based upon specific assumptions centering around temporal change and addressing the question of rupture or continuity in the flow of events. Three views seem to be emerging around this assumption. A rupture implies a break in the historical continuity and the novelty of a new direction. I find such a view problematic. However, the problems with their evidence is beyond the scope of this critical reading. Either these observed changes are inherent within the evolution of human nature, inherent within power politics with a much longer
history, or inherent within the emergence of the state apparatus itself. I find myself agreeing with these authors in part concerning the evolution of politics.

The three writers see a different aspect of sovereignty. Alliez and Negri see a “rupture driven historicism” that shows the emergence of a new meaning of war and peace. Agamben sees a “rupture driven historicism” that shows the emergence of a new meaning of the sovereign
exception. Mbembe sees a “rupture driven historicism” that shows the emergence of a new meaning in the subjugation of life to the power of death. Agamben sees the sovereignty apparatus from the perspective of the camp – a spatial concept. Negri sees the sovereignty apparatus from the perspective of the peace within war – a temporal concept. Mbembe sees the sovereignty apparatus from the perspective of the colony – a spatial concept. All of the authors see some form
of the state of exception emerging as a progression and transformation from theopolitics to geopolitics to biopolitics to necropolitics over time. Within the global social order all forms of politics are existing or becoming at the same time. The authors strive to explain their perceptions of history as some form of politics that is future-directed. The writings are polemic against the state. They focus on an inherrent aspect of the state with what they perceive as an emergent
"state of exception" or "sovereign exception" and its consequence on "biopolitics," "biopower," and "necropolitics." Their views seem to be deterministic in their predictions of the fate of sovereignty and the fate of the state apparatus. Peace becoming the exception to war as
another form of war, exploitation of the former colonies is becoming the exception to life as a form of death in which the colonies, now states, are exploited states essentially existing outside the state system - states that are exceptions to the state, and the constituting formal governance is becoming of exception to universal law.

I will not attempt to cover all the concepts found in these works, but focus on those that seem significant to my worldview. I have taken the view of politics from a diachronic perspective. Politics is future-directed, politics is action-directed, politics is collective-directed, politics is power-directed, and politics is ideologically-directed. I would add that politics has centralization as an inherent factor. The state apparatus centralization -directed and therefore war-directed. This brings to issue the ideas about politics being life-directed or death-directed.

The collective memory (history) states that the state apparatus emerged and the collective rationality holds that it will persist in relatively the same form over time. The collective (cognitive) foresight builds images of governance including the state of benevolence and the state of exception based upon perceptions in the "rupture" in continuity.

In the search for change we look to the fuzzy images of the past, or we look to the fuzzy images of the future, and we look to what seems to persist in the present. We have the aide of the collective memory that transcends our individual lives. We have the aide of the collective images of the future that also transcends our individual lives. We perceive a since of continuity and we perceive novelty in the form of ruptures to this continuity. Both continuity and novelty seem to have meaning in establishing direction. We debate over whether we have control over this direction. Politics is future-directed. Theories of social change try to identify comparative differences over time and extrapolate a periodization of change marked by some change in direction.

Giorgio Agamben

To argue about form, as in the emergence of camps, says nothing new. Does ban-structure of sovereignty tells us anything about power? Agamben holds that “The original political relation is the ban (the state of exception as zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exclusion and
inclusion).” The “camp” is the place outside the society, the place of exclusion from the society, The “camp” draws the distinction among the living as to the social exception. The “camp” is the place of bare life because of its exclusionary status from the primary society. The sovereign power to decide the composition of society predates the urban revolution. Agamben writes that “the
fundamental activity of sovereign power is the production of bare life as originary political element and as threshold of articulation between nature and culture, zoe and bios.” If the sovereign act is the production of bare life, what does this tell us about social change?

The fundamental character of the state in any form (including democratic or totalitarian) is based on the “politicization of life.” The transformation between different forms of the state is not the critical element. It is the state itself that is problematic. There are two forms of the
state, one based on the conspiracies of the elite imbued with the nationalization of the masses and the other based on the same conspiracies of the elite lacking or predating the nationalization of the masses. It might be argued that the masses represented the “living animals” and the elite
represented the “living being.” If a shift has occurred, it has been with the consciousness of the masses and the realization of their status as “living beings.”

Are there two schools of thought based on the presumption of man? One based on man as a “living animal.” The other based on a degeneration and reemergence of man as a “living being.” Is there evidence that the fundamental nature of man has evolved? Or, does the record of civilization show that the fundamental nature of man has remained relatively unchanged over time? Man is portrayed in history, literature, and in science fiction as having the same character in his interpersonal relations unaltered over time. Was man able to do collectively what he failed to do individually? Are there “processes of subjectivization” that occurred in the passage from the ancient to the modern world? Has something occurred in man that can be said to have brought “the individual to objectify his own self, constituting himself as a subject and, at the same time, binding himself to a power of external control” (Agamben, Homo Sacer, 1995, 119)? Has a new biopolitical man emerged? Or, has the political rhetoric changed in the description of the same phenomena? Are we dealing with observations of real change or only in redescribing the old in new terms? Agamben makes reference to these ideas in Foucault’s writings. Foucault referred to this shift at the end of his introduction to The History of Sexuality where he wrote, “For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional
capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question (Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1, 143.)” The life of the modern subject, according Foucault, has become politicized in what Foucault called bio-power, which brings “life and mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life (Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1, 143.)” I would argue that there has always existed within the civil society a dichotomy between two types of man, those who are willing to do what others are not willing to do and those who submit to this willingness. This is the cutting difference. The individual against the conspiracy. It might be argued that the state exists beyond the explicit conspiracy. The state persists by tacit submission embedded in individual experience and the exploitation of submission which cannot occur except by multiple conspiracies. The foundational assumption underlying the theory of biopolitics rests with the
idea that a change occurred relative to the life and death of the individual and the collective. Agamben assumes that “biological life and its needs had become the politically decisive fact”
to explain the transformation from politics to biopolitics (122). Or, as Agamben says, from absolutism to bios (124). At the core of the assumption, is the notion that a form of politics
existed prior to the emergence of biopolitics that lack at life focus for some segment of society other than the sovereign. Of course, it is known that sovereignty apart from its base of support has never existed. The masses do not stand outside of society. The idea of the collective encompasses the collective elites and the collective masses. Placement is critical to the individual. The assumption is that the realization of the “rights of man” that mark the
emergence biopolitics has never permeated down to all individuals among the masses except in name only. It has remained relative to the emergent-elite. Biopolitics is an utopian politics. Biopolitics is irrelevant to the submission of the masses as the root of power. Biopolitics is confined to intra-elite relationships and it is only when representative democracy (a mediating form of governance) or totalitarianism (a mediating form of governance) touches the core of the masses, do they cry out for a savior. The type, shape, and design of outside control does not matter to an “innate will to obedience” (Alfred Vierkandt). The theory of the corpus (the body) as “a two-faced being, the bearer both of subjection and sovereign power and of individual liberties” is universal in principle, but exclusionary in practice. Are we confusing biopolitics with the nationalization of the masses? Biopolitics exists in myth and symbols, but has never left the sacred space of the elite.

Agamben argues that certain political transformations were produced within a context of biopolitics fully realized. He holds that “parliamentary democracies were able to turn into totalitarian states and the totalitarian states were able to be converted into parliamentary democracies. He attributes this phenomenon to the theory of bare life. He writes that
biopolitics can turn into thanatopolitics.

Eric Alliez and Antonio Negri

Negri writes that “Peace is given as the fundamental value. The Hobbes-Rousseau-Hegel assumes peace as the foundation: peace as the solution to war” (Negri, Time for
Revolution, 2005, 122). He asks the important question: “But are the concepts of peace and war truly conceptual opposites, so that peace can be considered to be the alternative and the resolution to war?” (Negri, 2004, 122). He answers the question in the negative. “The foundation of the State is maintaining of peace as the condition for the legitimate exercise of violence.
So peace is legitimate violence. Violence is legitimated by the duty of peace” (Negri, 2004, 122). “Peace is…war – simply war…” (Negri, 2004, 123). Negri is engaging in the de-mystification of the concept of peace. Negri sees peace and war in holistic and temporal terms.

Peace is only differentiated moments in a permanent state of war (124). As I understand it, war is a process which involves the movement of extreme violence in a back and forth motion likened to combat and non-combat, in which non-combat outside the front lines is equated with peace. There is a time element to interstate war and peace, war is hot and peace is cold, but they are
one whole. Peace is only of differentiated moments in a permanent war (Negri, 2004, 124). “It seems to me that peace is always related in a certain way to war. But in an imperial world such as ours, without any possible ‘outside’ the question may have no answer. Peace and war in effect have exchanged roles: war has become a force for order, while peace seems to be one of disorder. In this would without an outside, war and peace can no longer be outside one another. It is this bybridization of war and peace that needs to be analyzed.” “What one used to understand by ‘peace’ was therefore clear: the possibility of surviving…” (Negri, Negri on Negri, 2004, 139).

“War was the negative condition of peace…” (139). “When peace was achieved in the modern state, it had already become a utopia” (140). This is the first paradox. The second paradox is that “war is the maintenance of peace.” “The relationship between war and peace that obtained at the beginning of the modern era has been reversed: peace is no longer the solution to war, not even an ideal or a utopia; it is now a simple procedural condition that is internal to war (140). “Today one finds peace only in war” (140). “Peace is a value that only war makes possible…” (141-142). “In this situation, in this new hybridization of war and peace, this world without an ‘outside,’ one can only attempt exodus-an exodus that leads nowhere. By ‘exodus’ I mean constituent
power…(142).

Eric Alliez and Antonio Negri conclude the impossibility of producing a positive definition of peace. They examine this conclusion both historically and conceptually. They strive to show that war and peace can be understood as having existed in two forms: the classical-modern form and
hypermodern imperial form. (Alliez and Negri, “War and Peace,” 2003, 109-110). They hold that the historical record of the classical-modern form shows an “alternation between states of peace and states of war. They hold that the hypermodern imperial form indicates that the two terms of peace and war are absolutely contemporary with one another. The classical-modern form produced an interstate “civilized” regulation of states of war and states of peace. The
hypermodern form emerged as a result of a change in institutionalized war and peace. They argue that the change is reflected in the emergence of “a permanent state of exception” to the classical-modern form. This change produced a “new order.” Peace became “deduced as the [new order] institution of a permanent state of exception.” Peace became war by another means.
Given the argument that the State by it’s nature persists over time by war, and peace negates raison d’Etat (reason for the state), the security of the state mandates a state of exception for the preservation of war. War by means of exception is the same as war by means of declaration. War can continue whether in time of peace or time of war. If the state of exception to constituted war involves war by other means making war contemporary, continuous, and permanent. Negri can therefore write about “a general system of power relations whose truth denies any but a formal difference between the time of peace and the time of war” (113). The authors call for the “reinvention of peace” - “a peace ex nihilo” built on a “new temporality.”

How does the revelation put forth by Alliez and Negri bring on the “final state of the state form? (116). How can the exodus from obedience be achieved? How can the peace be reinvented as the biopolitical condition of life? Are they using cloaked language to call upon the multitudes combat
against war by means of an extreme deterritorialization of the state? How can a world without an outside be realized? This is a view from the revolutionary collective memory.

Achille Mbembe

Achille Mbembe (1957- ) was born in Cameroon and received his advanced education in France. He explored the idea of a common human nature, a humanity shared with others (J.-Achille, Mbembé, On the Postcolony, 2001, 2). Achille Mbembe declared that his “approach builds on Michel Foucault’s critique of the notion of sovereignty and its relation to war and biopower.”
In his discussion of the European juridical order, Mbembe identifies two key principles inherent in the concept of the state. The first is the juridical equality of all states that no state could make claims to rule outside of its borders and the state could recognize no authority above it within its own borders. The state held the powers to make war and peace. The second relates to the territorialization of the sovereign state. Given this order to the nature of the state, Mbembe concluded that “colonies are not organized in a state form,” and thus constitutes zones where the state of exception is operative. Mbembe states that “the distinction between war and peace does not avail” (25). Mbembe inquires as to whether colonies are an extension of the ruling state or
a zone of exception? He answers that colonies are “the zone where the violence of the state exception is deemed to operate in the service of ‘civilization’” (24). He goes on to note “the colony represents the site where sovereignty consists fundamentally in the exercise of a power outside the law…and where ‘peace’ is more likely to take on the face of a ‘war without end” (23).

We Live in Public

As the materiality of a Control Society has been weighing heavily on my mind of late, I thought I would share this. If you have not yet seen "We Live in Public," it is with the utmost degree of simultaneity that I'd like to say, "You're welcome!" & "I'm sorry!"

http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/

http://www.hulu.com/watch/192218/we-live-in-public

Hawaii May Keep Track of all websites visited...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57366443-281/hawaii-may-keep-track-of-all-web-sites-visited

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors: documentary on the net's hidden physical infrastructure

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/15/bundled-buried-behind-close.html

sinking in and a question...

being that I feel like I'm a preschooler in the school of political theory as such, the discussions today were great and it's all slowly sinking in... so now I have a question, the answer to which may be obvious, but I am curious what others think and how both Deleuze and Foucault might think about it...

being that in the control society there is a chaotic realm of data which is presumably a-moral, does that then mean that the filters through which data passes on its way to becoming information and/or knowledge are imbued with morality/judgment and if so, does this point of filtration become one of THE critical points of control and/or resistance?

William Burroughs, Limits of Control

THE LIMITS OF CONTROL

 
There is a growing interest in new techniques of mind-control. It has been suggested that Sirhan Sirhan was the subject of post-hypnotic suggestion [as he sat shaking violently on the steam table in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while an as-yet unidentified woman held him and whispered in his ear]. It has been alleged that behavior-modification techniques are used on troublesome prisoners and inmates, often without their consent. Dr Delgado, who once stopped a charging bull by remote control of electrodes in the bull’s brain, left the U.S. to pursue his studies on human subjects in Spain. Brainwashing, psychotropic drugs, lobotomy and other more subtle forms of psychosurgery; the technocratic control apparatus of the United States has at its fingertips new techniques which if fully exploited could make Orwell’s 1984 seem like a benevolent utopia. But words are still the principal instruments of control. Suggestions are words. Persuasions are words. Orders are words. No control machine so far devised can operate without words, and any control machine which attempts to do so relying entirely on external force or entirely on physical control of the mind will soon encounter the limits of control.
A basic impasse of all control machines is this: Control needs time in which to exercise control. Because control also needs opposition or acquiescence; otherwise it ceases to be control. I control a hypnotized subject (at least partially); I control a slave, a dog, a worker; but if I establish complete control somehow, as by implanting electrodes in the brain, then my subject is little more than a tape recorder, a camera, a robot. You don’t controla tape recorder—you use it. Consider the distinction, and the impasse implicit here. All control systems try to make control as tight as possible, but at the same time, if they succeeded completely, there would be nothing left to control. Suppose for example a control system installed electrodes in the brains of all prospective workers at birth. Control is now complete. Even the thought of rebellion is neurologically impossible. No police force is necessary. No psychological control is necessary, other than pressing buttons to achieve certain activations and operations.
When there is no more opposition, control becomes a meaningless proposition. It is highly questionable whether a human organism could survive complete control. There would be nothing there. No persons there. Life is will (motivation) and the workers would no longer be alive, perhaps literally. The concept of suggestion as a control technique presupposes that control is partial and not complete. You do not have to give suggestions to your tape recorder, nor subject it to pain and coercion or persuasion.
In the Mayan control system, where the priests kept the all-important Books of seasons and gods, the Calendar was predicated on the illiteracy of the workers. Modern control systems are predicated on universal literacy since they operate through the mass media—a very two-edged control instrument, as Watergate has shown. Control systems are vulnerable, and the news media are by their nature uncontrollable, at least in Western society. The alternative press is news, and alternative society is news, and as such both are taken up by the mass media. The monopoly that Hearst and Luce once exercised is breaking down. In fact, the more completely hermetic and seemingly successful a control system is, the more vulnerable it becomes. A weakness inherent in the Mayan system is that they didn’t need an army to control their workers, and therefore did not have an army when they needed one to repel invaders. It is a rule of social structures that anything that is not needed will atrophy and become inoperative over a period of time. Cut off from the war game—and remember, the Mayans had no neighbors to quarrel with—they lose the ability to fight. In “The Mayan Caper” I suggested that such a hermetic control system could be completely disoriented and shattered by even one person who tampered with the control calendar on which the control system depended more and more heavily as the actual means of force withered away.
Consider a control situation: ten people in a lifeboat. Two armed self-appointed leaders force the other eight to do the rowing while they dispose of the food and water, keeping most of it for themselves and doling out only enough to keep the other eight rowing. The two leaders now need to exercise control to maintain an advantageous position which they could not hold without it. Here the method of control is force—the possession of guns. Decontrol would be accomplished by overpowering the leaders and taking their guns. This effected, it would be advantageous to kill them at once. So once embarked on a policy of control, the leaders must continue the policy as a matter of self-preservation. Who, then, needs to control others but those who protect by such control a position of relative advantage? Why do they need to exercise control? Because they would soon lose this position and advantage and in many cases their lives as well, if they relinguished control.
Now examine the reasons by which control is exercised in the lifeboat scenario: The two leaders are armed, let’s say, with .38 revolvers—twelve shots and eight potential opponents. They can take turns sleeping. However, they must still exercise care not to let the eight rowers know that they intend to kill them when land is sighted. Even in this primitive situation force is supplemented with deception and persuasion. The leaders will disembark at point A, leaving the others sufficient food to reach point B, they explain. They have the compass and they are contributing their navigational skills. In short they will endeavour to convince the others that this is a cooperative enterprise in which they are all working for the same goal. They may also make concessions: increase food and water rations. A concession of course means the retention of control—that is, the disposition of the food and water supplies. By persuasions and by concessions they hope to prevent a concerted attack by the eight rowers.
Actually they intend to poison the drinking water as soon as they leave the boat. If all the rowers knew this they would attack, no matter what the odds. We now see that another essential factor in control is to conceal from the controlled the actual intentions of the controllers. Extending the lifeboat analogy to the Ship of State, few existing governments could withstand a sudden, all-out attack by all their underprivileged citizens, and such an attack might well occur if the intentions of certain existing governments were unequivocally apparent. Suppose the lifeboat leaders had built a barricade and could withstand a concerted attack and kill all eight of the rowers if necessary. They would then have to do the rowing themselves and neither would be safe from the other. Similarly, a modern government armed with heavy weapons and prepared for attack could wipe out ninety-five percent of its citizens. But who would do the work, and who would protect them from the soldiers and technicians needed to make and man the weapons? Successful control means achieving a balance and avoiding a showdown where all-out force would be necessary. This is achieved through various techniques of psychological control, also balanced. The techniques of both force and psychological control are constantly imimproved and refined, and yet worldwide dissent has never been so widespread or so dangerous to the present controllers.
All modern control systems are riddled with contradictions. Look at England. “Never go too far in any direction,” is the basic rule on which England is built, and there is some wisdom in that. However, avoiding one impasse they step into another. Anything that is not going forward is on the way out. Well, nothing lasts forever. Time is that which ends, and control needs time. England is simply stalling for time as it slowly founders. Look at America. Who actually controls this country? It is very difficult to say. Certainly the very wealthy are one of the most powerful control groups, since they are in a position to control and manipulate the entire economy. However, it would not be to their advantage to set up or attempt to set up an overly fascist government. Force, once brought in, subverts the power of money. This is another impasse of control: protection from the protectors. Hitler formed the S.S. to protect him from the S.A. If he had lived long enough the question of protection from the S.S. would have posed itself. The Roman Emperors were at the mercy of the Praetorian Guard, who in one year killed many Emperors. And besides, no modern industrial country has ever gone fascist without a program of military expansion. There is no longer anyplace to expand to—after hundreds of years, colonialism is a thing of the past.
There can be no doubt that a cultural revolution of unprecedented dimensions has taken place in America during the last thirty years, and since America is now the model for the rest of the Western world, this revolution is worldwide. Another facfactor is the mass media, which spreads all cultural movements in all directions. The fact that this worldwide revolution has taken place indicates that the controllers have been forced to make concessions. Of course, a concession is still the retention of control. Here’s a dime, I keep a dollar. Ease up on censorship, but remember we could take it all back. Well, at this point, that is questionable.
Concession is another control bind. History shows that once a government starts to make concessions it is on a one-way street. They could of course take all the concessions back, but that would expose them to the double jeopardy of revolution and the much greater danger of overt fascism, both highly dangerous to the present controllers. Does any clear policy arise from this welter of confusion? The answer is probably no. The mass media has proven a very unreliable and even treacherous instrument of control. It is uncontrollable owing to its need for NEWS. If one paper or even a string of papers owned by the same person makes that story hotter as NEWS, some paper will pick it up. Any imposition of government censorship on the media is a step in the direction of State control, a step which big money is most reluctant to take.
I don’t mean to suggest that control automatically defeats itself, nor that protest is therefore unnecessary. A government is never more dangerous than when embarking on a self-defeating or downright suicidal course. It is encouraging that some behavior modification projects have been exposed and halted, and certainly such exposure and publicity could continue. In fact, I submit that we have a right to insist that all scientific research be subject to public scrutiny, and that there should be no such thing as “top-secret” research.

Excerpt from Foucault's Preface to Anti-Oedipus.

During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe),there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of political discourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud. And one had to treat sign-systems—the signifier—with the greatest respect. These were the three requirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.

Then came the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years. At the gates of our world, there was Vietnam, of course, and the first major blow to the powers that be. But here, inside our walls, what exactly was taking place? An amalgam of revolutionary and antirepressive politics? A war fought on two fronts: against social exploitation and psychic repression? A surge of libido modulated by the class struggle? Perhaps. At any rate, it is this familiar, dualistic interpretation that has laid claim to the events of those years. The dream that cast its spell, between the First World War and fascism, over the dreamiest parts of Europe—the Germany of Wilhelm Reich, and the France of the surrealists—had returned and set fire to reality itself: Marx and Freud in the same incandescent light.

But is that really what happened? Had the Utopian project of the thirties been resumed, this time on the scale of historical practice? Or was there, on the contrary, a movement toward political struggles that no longer conformed to the model that Marxist tradition had prescribed? Toward an experience and a technology of desire that were no longer Freudian. It is true that the old banners were raised, but the combat shifted and spread into new zones....

Whence the three adversaries confronted by Anti-Oedipus. Three adversaries who do not have the same strength, who represent varying degrees of danger, and whom the book combats in different ways:

1. The political ascetics, the sad militants, the terrorists of theory, those who would preserve the pure order of politics and political discourse. Bureaucrats of the revolution and civil servants of Truth.

2. The poor technicians of desire—psychoanalysts and semiologists of every sign and symptom—who would subjugate the multiplicity of desire to the twofold law of structure and lack.

3. Last but not least, the major enemy, the strategic adversary is fascism (whereas Anti-Oedipus' opposition to the others is more of a tactical engagement). And not only historical fascism, the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini—which was able to mobilize and use the desire of the masses so effectively—but also the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us. I would say that Anti-Oedipus (may its authors forgive me) is a book of ethics, the first book of ethics to be written in France in quite a long

time (perhaps that explains why its success was not limited to a particular "readership": being anti-oedipal has become a life style, a way of thinking and living). How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant?

How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior? The Christian moralists sought out the traces of the flesh lodged deep within the soul. Deleuze and Guattari, for their part, pursue the slightest traces of fascism in the body.

Paying a modest tribute to Saint Francis de Sales,* one might say that Anti-Oedipus is an Introduction to the Non-Fascist Life. This art of living counter to all forms of fascism, whether already present or impending, carries with it a certain number of essential principles which I would summarize as follows if I were to make this great book into a manual or guide to everyday life:

• Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

• Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

• Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is

positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

• Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable. It is the connection of desire to reality (and not its retreat into the forms of representation) that possesses revolutionary force.

• Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.

• Do not demand of politics that it restore the "rights" of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power. What is needed is to "de-individualize" by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization.

• Do not become enamored of power. It could even be said that Deleuze and Guattari care so little for

power that they have tried to neutralize the effects of power linked to their own discourse. Hence the games and snares scattered throughout the book, rendering its translation a feat of real prowess. But these are not the familiar traps of rhetoric; the latter work to sway the reader without his being aware of the manipulation, and ultimately win him over against his will. The traps of Anti-Oedipus ate those of humor: so many invitations to let oneself be put out, to take one's leave of the text and slam the door shut. The book often leads one to believe it is all fun and games, when something essential is taking place, something of extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives.

Classroom Change

The class is now going to be held in Webster 102. This will give us access to media if we wish to us it.

Cinematic thinking

If you are trying to envision control society I think it is to be found in the mundane conflict that escalates to life and death in a film like Michael Clayton. The problem with dystopian films like V for Vendetta or even to some extent Children of Men is that they rely on a very conservative that is outdated totalitarian aesthetic. To limit one's imagination to the grey austere uniforms of 1984 or the George Lucas' fascination with Nazi fashion obscures Deleuze's point. Control can accomplish all of the same exploitation, war, without the disruption or extremity of state fascism. So think less Brazil or futuristic dystopia and think more soldiers having to sit through what sounds like a Jamba Juice 'find your full potential' seminar before they go into Fallujah.

My soundtrack to this weeks readings

Listen at your risk...

after class what-have-you...

So, it seems that we're going to have the chronic problem of engaging in stimulating, yet hanging, discussions, which is compounded by only having 2.5 hours, this semester. In the spirit of fostering dialogue and building commensality, I'd like to offer up a suggestion to gather informally after class for some drinks and a bite to eat, perhaps not every week, but often enough that it feels intentional, if not regular.

It just so happens that one of the finest purveyors of tacos on this island has a regular gig at the Ward Farmer's Market on Wednesday evenings. If you've yet to experience the culinary delight of Zaratez Mexicatessen, then you're in for a treat (google it). Transportation might be an issue, but maybe enough of us have wheels, in various forms, to make something off campus work. For future gatherings, something in Manoa likely makes the most sense, but I'm certainly open to a variety of locales.

Translation: I'm going to get tacos after class on Wednesday and as I think you're all very smart and cool, I was wondering if anyone from class wants to come and talk about stuff?

Thinking About Biopolitics- Michael Miller

It has been stated that biopolitics is concerned with population as a political and scientific problem. This can be understood in the context of population density and the duration of life.
These two factors are the driving forces of biopolitics. These two factors have created the complexity of what we perceive as simultaneity.

Biopolitics is a problem of state power. State power is concerned with the life and death of the social body. Life and death do not constitute a dichotomy in this context. The social body is conceived in the sense of the collective. It is the collective life and death. The problem
of the collective life and death has emerged as being “affected with a public interest.” It is in the collective interest that the one should perish for the people, rather than the many. This is sometimes referred to as the Caiaphas maxim (John 18:14). This is a maxim of preemption. Life and death have become “affected with a public interest.” This is our modernism. The issue is who shall determine the public interest.

Any form of governance in which the few stand-in place of the many creates the locus of
power in the hands of those who decide the exception. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, 1922). Sovereign are the few who decide what is “affected with a public interest.” Representative governance is a system of the few standing in place of the many. They decide the exception that is “affected with a public interest.”

The public interest is interwoven with the state interest. That which is “affected with a public interest” also becomes a “corporate responsibility.” The many become responsible for the actions of the few. The many have the responsibility and the few have the power. The driving force of judicial power is fostered by the state. The persistence of the law as a social construct is linked to the continuity of the state. The law and the state are the forces that protect against chaos. It is here that the two concepts merge in purpose. The idea of the corporate responsibility shared by the social body and that it is in the interests of the social body that the better is that one man should perish for the people share the same social reason.

“The whole group, including its past, present, and future members, might function as a single individual through any one of those members conceived as representative of it. Because it was not confined to the living, but included the dead and the unborn, the group could be conceived as living forever.” H.Wheeler Robinson. “The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality.” In Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, rev. edn., 1980, 25-26]. See: Joel S. Kaminsky. Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield Academic Press, 1995.

This merging becomes operative within the internal and external contexts of state power. State power depends upon two things, fear of the masses and obedience of the masses.

If biopolitics is concerned with the problemization of life and death politics, as I think it might be, it is bound up in governance as the arbiter of life and death. The “governmental reason” (Michael Foucault) is the question. The avoidance of collective disobedience or the promotion of collective liberty are governmental reasons of a kind. Each is dependent upon state power and the persistence of law. We view state power through the illusion of an “equitable equilibrium” created by the myth of representative (stand-in) governance. Test the state power and learn the meaning of biopolitics that is embodied in life and death. The crucial concept is that state power involves two aspects, one of simultaneity and one of succession. We can only perceive of state power in the present state of our motion through the lens of collective action of obedience.