Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2001 19:46:02 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.com>
Subject: Re: the state and violence and security and terror




Eric
The understanding that your use of the Baudrillard text is putting 
forward is very insightful - and is confirmed by the madness that has 
taken place since the collapse of the WTC, the unleashing of the dogs of 
security is a direct response to the continuation of history referred to 
below. Yes in other words your point is crystal clear...

It is curious how just as the couplet the state and violence seems to be 
a natural binary pair so to is the binary pairing security and terror.

But this is not surprising given that with the gradual collapse of the 
nation state as the necessary arm, the state form of our socio-economic 
system, and its gradual replacement by this strange new state-form 
(globalisation), we are also seeing the gradual end of the forms of 
politics which we have co-existed with, lived with throughout our lives. 
The end of this form of politics and I am here referring to the ongoing 
surrender of the tasks of the modernist state, which at least in the 
european field were structured around infrastructure, support, 
development and related state activities. In such a situation as we are 
still in transition - security and the maintenance of control becomes 
the central activity of the state... (the recent activities of the G8 
states confirms this I'd suggest)

Agamben suggests that 'A state which has security as its sole task and 
source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by 
terrorism to become itself terroristic...'  If considered as such then 
the difference between the state and terrorism almost disappears - a 
single organism that coexists to threaten and coerce us into behavior 
codified by the spectacle.  It may be that this restructuring around 
security is another means of enabling and legitimating the arbitrary and 
often  violent boundries between difference(s) I am of course thinking 
of the question of migrants and refugees...

A further danger may be the use of the spectre of security to encourage 
the un-politicisation of  the social, though given that this is 
impossible I am simply curious to see how  poilitics would e-emerge...

- i don't know as yet whether i think it is ironic or as you say merely 
convenient - in the case of Israel it has become clear that the 
'convenience' has just enabled the ongoing state killing - the question 
is how anyone can support such appalling actions... The multitude never 
goes away - it is clear that as N&H propose that the 'figure' simply 
mutates in response to societal events just as modern capitalism mutated 
into its current form in response to social changes...

I don't feel like allowing 'this society' the lead all the time as we 
tend to do...

regards
steve



Mary Murphy&Salstrand wrote:

>steve.devos wrote:
>
>>I can feel Lyotard's ghostly smile and I am sorry that the 'deep dark
>>depression' is still hanging around you...
>>
>
>Steve:
>
>The deep dark feeling I was trying to describe wasn't depression.
>
>I admit Baudrillard usually leaves me cold. Most of his insights come
>across as a kind of bargain basement McLuhan. However, his recent piece
>on 911 seems haunting to me.
>
>The root of the feeling Baudrillard seems to express is this. As you
>point out, the state (which includes the entire apparatus of late night
>capitalism) is both violent and oppressive. At the end of the cold war,
>America paradoxically found itself in a state of crisis and needed to
>assert itself in novel ways to maintain its hegemony. As a result, its
>power began to appear almost invincible, despite the forces who
>contested the top-down piss-on-the-poor globalism that only served to
>maintain the interests of the wealthy elites.
>
>The secret unconscious Freudian feeling many experienced with the
>collapse of the World Trade Center, besides the obvious conscious
>horror, was the hidden sense of surprize that American capitalism,
>imperialism, militarism remained vulnerable. Despite our latent fears,
>history had not ended after all. Another world was still possible.
>
>Which again for the umpteenth time is not to defend the actions of what
>those terrorists did.  Their motivations are much closer to those of
>Ashcroft and Sharon than they are to mine.  
>
>History ocurred in a way that was almost dreamlike and simultaneously a
>all-too-real catastrope - the innocents who died were certain made of
>flesh and blood, their tragedy remains inscribed in us. 
>
>What Bauddrillard evokes in his essay is exactly this strange, uncanny
>ambivalent feeling which many of us felt, but could not really express
>in the midst of the retribalization and suspicion that occurred among
>us.  
>
>Does this make my point any clearer? Certainly, our anxieties about the
>state and violence found a strange echo in 911.
>
>eric
>
>p.s. - Is it ironic, or merely convenient, that exactly when the
>nomadism of which you speak is on the rise, terrorism is used as an
>excuse to combat it?  Only the corporation is permitted to become
>nomadic under the law of capitalism because only the corporation and the
>fetus are considered real. The multitude remains an interloper which
>must be utilized before it is exterminated like vermin.
>
>Sharon aping Bush and 911 disgusts me to no end. Why can't he be tried
>by a military tribunal for his war crimes?
>
>

HTML VERSION:

steve.devos wrote:

I can feel Lyotard's ghostly smile and I am sorry that the 'deep dark
depression' is still hanging around you...

Steve:

The deep dark feeling I was trying to describe wasn't depression.

I admit Baudrillard usually leaves me cold. Most of his insights come
across as a kind of bargain basement McLuhan. However, his recent piece
on 911 seems haunting to me.

The root of the feeling Baudrillard seems to express is this. As you
point out, the state (which includes the entire apparatus of late night
capitalism) is both violent and oppressive. At the end of the cold war,
America paradoxically found itself in a state of crisis and needed to
assert itself in novel ways to maintain its hegemony. As a result, its
power began to appear almost invincible, despite the forces who
contested the top-down piss-on-the-poor globalism that only served to
maintain the interests of the wealthy elites.

The secret unconscious Freudian feeling many experienced with the
collapse of the World Trade Center, besides the obvious con
scious
horror, was the hidden sense of surprize that American capitalism,
imperialism, militarism remained vulnerable. Despite our latent fears,
history had not ended after all. Another world was still possible.

Which again for the umpteenth time is not to defend the actions of what
those terrorists did.  Their motivations are much closer to those of
Ashcroft and Sharon than they are to mine.  

History ocurred in a way that was almost dreamlike and simultaneously a
all-too-real catastrope - the innocents who died were certain made of
flesh and blood, their tragedy remains inscribed in us. 

What Bauddrillard evokes in his essay is exactly this strange, uncanny
ambivalent feeling which many of us felt, but could not really express
in the midst of the retribalization and suspicion that occurred among
us.  

Does this make my point any clearer? Certainly, our anxieties about the
state and violence found a strange echo in
 911.

eric

p.s. - Is it ironic, or merely convenient, that exactly when the
nomadism of which you speak is on the rise, terrorism is used as an
excuse to combat it?  Only the corporation is permitted to become
nomadic under the law of capitalism because only the corporation and the
fetus are considered real. The multitude remains an interloper which
must be utilized before it is exterminated like vermin.

Sharon aping Bush and 911 disgusts me to no end. Why can't he be tried
by a military tribunal for his war crimes?