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).