Surveillance: From Image to Archive

by Jake Goldenfein • 18 June 2013 • 1 Comment

Although we may no longer be able to limit the amount or scope of information about us that is collected, privacy still has a role in regulating how it is used, and in diminishing the negative consequences that can occur. Surveillance has become alarmingly commonplace. CCTV cameras, mobile phones, aerial drones, webcams, automated number plate recognition, facial recognition and other biometric measures, DNA databases, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in transport tickets and credit cards, and government data-mining programs — these all represent a type of governance that relies on information obtained from citizens. This flow of data enables efficient administration, but the price of these services is providing institutions with our personal information. Often, in contexts like law enforcement, security and intelligence, that information…

by Stephen Connelly • 17 June 2013 • 2 Comments

Key Concept Note: readers should first study the key concept Power (potentia) before proceeding. When students (res)trained in law approach Spinoza’s theory of natural right (ius naturale) they face precisely the formidable terminological barrier which Spinoza endeavours to teach us how to break through. It is the same barrier which the student of mathematics encounters when reading Euclid’s Elements, a work that directly inspired Spinoza’s method. In both cases the language and method, respectively jurisprudence and geometry, constitute tools by which we construct a machine capable of participating1 in the world intellect. The tools are not themselves the things to be conceived. Thus while several legal and political historians have endeavoured to shoehorn Spinoza into the history of natural right theories as an eccentric Hobbist who…

by Stephen Connelly • 14 June 2013 • 9 Comments

Aether vortices around celestial bodies (Descartes)

Key Concept In this article I will focus exclusively on Spinoza’s theory of power (potentia) which forms a key element of his theories of natural right and imperium. For the legal theoretical importance of potentia in the areas, see the forthcoming articles NATURAL RIGHT and IMPERIUM, and for the relation to capacity (power) see the forthcoming article POTESTAS. My purpose here is to convey the deep structure of the Spinozan concept of power, rather than become too lost in the geometrico-theological terminology he deploys, or the countless interpretations by which he has been determined. Following Spinoza, it is necessary to construct a definition. Firstly, Spinoza posits a self-caused something (substance) which is the cause of all things — this is its essence, which follows from its…

by Costas Douzinas • 13 June 2013 • 2 Comments

Thesis 7: For a cosmopolitanism to come (or the idea of communism). Against imperial arrogance and cosmopolitan naivety, we must insist that global neoliberal capitalism and human-rights-for-export are part of the same project. The two must be uncoupled; human rights can contribute little to the struggle against capitalist exploitation and political domination. Their promotion by western states and humanitarians turns them into a palliative: it is useful for a limited protection of individuals but it can blunt political resistance. Human rights can re-claim their redemptive role in the hands and imagination of those who return them to the tradition of resistance and struggle against the advice of the preachers of moralism, suffering humanity, and humanitarian philanthropy. Liberal equality as a regulative principle has failed…

by Ipek Demirsu • 12 June 2013 • 2 Comments

As a PhD candidate in Political Science and a citizen of Turkey, never have I felt so hopeful and desperate simultaneously. I feel hopeful because I have never experienced or known such persistent solidarity amongst the traditionally adversary segments prevalent in this society. I feel desperate because the government and the media are being unreasonably insistent on turning a blind eye to the protests and the demands raised by ‘the people’. Participating in the early days of the protest I was traumatized by the police violence, and for the first time of my life I actually thought I might get killed or heavily injured by the agents of the state. My generation has been brought up in the apolitical environment of the 80s and 90s, when state brutality at such an…

by Denise Ferreira Da Silva • 11 June 2013 • 2 Comments

Dialogue, negotiation, compromise, and similar jewels of the liberal lexicon have no meaning in the colonial context. In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force. The intermediary does not lighten the oppression, nor seek to hide the domination; he shows them up and puts them into practice with the clear conscience of an upholder of the peace; yet he is the bringer of violence into the home and into the mind of the native. Frantz Fanon In…

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos • 10 June 2013 • 1 Comment

Democracy may have lost the battle but it can avoid losing the war. Let capital be afraid. The relation between democracy and capital has always been a tense one, of even total contradiction. Capitalism only feels safe it is ruled by whoever owns capital or identifies with its needs, whereas democracy, on the contrary, is the rule of the majorities who have neither capital nor reasons to identify with the needs of capitalism. The conflict is distributive: a contest between the accumulation and concentration of wealth on the part of the capitalists and the demand for the redistribution of wealth on the part of workers and their families. The bourgeoisie has always feared the poor majorities taking power and has used the…

by Yvette Russell • 6 June 2013 • 2 Comments

Key Concept Equality is a concept that has concerned Luce Irigaray, in various guises, throughout her work. In this post I will discuss both her critique of liberal mobilisations of equality, and her rethinking of equality through sexual difference. Irigaray’s work is often divided into three phases.1 Briefly, in the first phase, or the ‘critical’ phase, she excavates the monosubjective (masculine) character and tradition of Western culture during which she revisits the seminal texts of philosophy and psychoanalysis and contests the defining concepts of enlightenment thought. In the second, she seeks to define the conditions necessary to develop a culture in the feminine and in the third, her focus is on the elaboration of a genuine coexistence between masculine and feminine subjects, without hierarchy,…

by Hager Weslati • 4 June 2013 • 2 Comments

Kojeve’s theory of revolutionary action can provide us with a better perspective on the historical significance of the more recent revolutions across the ‘middle-eastern’ region of the ‘Dernier monde nouveau’. If the French and Russian revolutions provided two models of post-revolutionary politics, neither of them led to the realisation of a universal and homogenous state, an empirical existence where State, Right and Religion would become obsolete. Kojève’s overlooked theory of revolutionary action describes a mode of existence ruled by the universal and homogenous authority of judges, leaders and masters within the horizon of post-revolutionary terror and the global particular bourgeois state. Often described as the philosopher of the end of history, Kojève mostly wrote about a form of modern post-revolutionary existence where history becomes “bad infinity”. As Picasso’s Guernica…

by Costas Douzinas • 3 June 2013 • 1 Comment

Thesis 6: In advanced capitalist societies, human rights become strategies for the publicization and legalization of (insatiable) individual desire. Liberal theories from Immanuel Kant to John Rawls present the self as a solitary and rational entity endowed with natural characteristics and rights and in full control of himself. Rights to life, liberty, and property are presented as integral to humanity’s well-being. The social contract (or its heuristic restatement through the “original position”) creates society and government but preserves these rights and makes them binding on government. Rights and today human rights are pre-social, they belong to humans precisely because they are humans. We use this natural patrimony as tools or instruments to confront the outside world, to defend our interests, and…

by whatishappeninginistanbul.com • 2 June 2013 • 3 Comments

It started with hundreds of peaceful protesters resisting the demolition of Gezi Park, one of the very few green spaces left in the center of Istanbul. There are plans to replace it with yet another shopping mall. The disproportionate police response to the peaceful Gezi protests has triggered a nationwide revolt within a matter of days. What we have witnessed since the early hours of 30 May is not only a display of the collective will of Istanbul residents claiming their right to the city but also a broad-based rebellion against the authoritarianism of Turkey’s conservative neo-liberal Islamist government. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ages and political stripes have united around slogans such as “shoulder to shoulder against fascism,” and calling for…

by Costas Douzinas • 31 May 2013 • 1 Comment

Thesis 5: In advanced capitalist societies, human rights depoliticize politics. Rights form the terrain on which people are distributed into rulers, ruled, and excluded. Power’s mode of operation is revealed, if we observe which people are given or deprived of which rights at which particular place or point in time. In this sense, human rights both conceal and affirm the dominant structure of a period and help combat it. Marx was the first to realize the paradoxical nature of rights. Natural rights emerged as a symbol of universal emancipation, but they were at the same time a powerful weapon in the hands of the rising capitalist class, securing and naturalizing emerging dominant economic and social relations. They were used to take out of…

by Costas Douzinas • 30 May 2013 • 1 Comment

Thesis 4: Universalism and communitarianism rather than being opponents are two types of humanism dependent on each other. They are confronted by the ontology of singular equality. The debate about the meaning of humanity as the ground normative source is conducted between universalists and communitarians. The universalist claims that cultural values and moral norms should pass a test of universal applicability and logical consistency and often concludes that, if there is one moral truth but many errors, it is incumbent upon its agents to impose it on others. Communitarians start from the obvious observation that values are context-bound and try to impose them on those who disagree with the oppressiveness of tradition. Both principles, when they become absolute essences and define…

by Philippe Theophanidis • 28 May 2013 • 2 Comments

“Global civil war” has become (or is about to become) our prevalent mode of being-together. At the end of the 60s, American artist Martha Rosler produced a series of phởtomontages titled House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home. One of those images, “Red Stripe Kitchen”, shows two GI soldiers rummaging through the immaculate kitchen of what looks like a typical American bungalow. It was displayed recently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the exhibition Faking It: Manipulated Phởtography Before Phởtoshop (October 11, 2012 — January 27, 2013). I had seen the image during the fall of 2012 and it had made quite an impression at the time. Many of the recent phởtos from the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings which were made available…

by Klaus Dörre, Stephan Lessenich, Ingo Singe • 25 May 2013 • 5 Comments

Universities and institutions of higher education across the globe are being impacted by structural change, guided by principles of the entrepreneurial university. The imposition of New Public Management principles means that universities are increasingly being managed like private enterprises. Resources are being allocated according to performance records and target agreements. Academic capitalism has entered Germany, and its main instruments are university department rankings and league tables. The downside is an academic routine biased towards quantitative performance indicators (research funding, number of doctorates and graduates) and a neglect of qualitative criteria. Work in academia has changed fundamentally in both design and content. Teaching and research are increasingly being obstructed by the growth of administrative responsibilities. There is a logic of escalation inherent in…

by Costas Douzinas • 23 May 2013 • 1 Comment

Thesis 3: The post-1989 order combines an economic system that generates huge structural inequalities and oppression with a juridico-political ideology promising dignity and equality. This major instability is contributing to its demise. Why and how did this combination of neoliberal capitalism and humanitarianism emerge? Capitalism has always moralized the economy and applied a gloss of righteousness to profit-making and unregulated competition precisely because it is so hard to believe. From Adam Smith’s ‘hidden hand’ to the assertion that unrestrained egotism promotes the common good or that beneficial effects ‘trickle down’ if the rich get even bigger tax breaks, capitalism has consistently tried to claim the moral high ground.1 Similarly, human rights and their dissemination are not simply the result of the liberal…

by Ivan Evans • 22 May 2013 • 3 Comments

Instead of resisting the “adjunctification” of the professoriat by incorporating these colleagues into the university and our respective departments, we tolerate them as useful proof of our Brahmin status. They are our untouchables Chris from Remaking the University writes to introduce a post by Ivan Evans, professor of sociology at UC San Diego. Tarak Barkawi’s opinion piece, “The Neoliberal Assault on Academia,” produced a long discussion on several lists because of its claim that faculty have played a central role in shifting their universities towards revenue metrics and managerial assessments of intellectual value. His example is the arrival of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in the UK, which has molted into the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Though pushed by the Thatcher government, the RAE was accepted…

by Costas Douzinas • 21 May 2013 • 2 Comments

Thesis 2: Power and morality, empire and cosmopolitanism, sovereignty and rights, law and desire are not fatal enemies. Instead, a historically specific amalgam of power and morality forms the structuring order of each epoch and society. We will explore the strong internal connection between these superficially antagonistic principles, at the point of their emergence in the late 18^th century here and in the post-1989 order in the next part. The religious grounding of humanity was undermined by the liberal political philosophies of early modernity. The foundation of humanity was transferred from God to (human) nature. Human nature has been interpreted as an empirical fact, a normative value, or both. Science has driven the first approach. The mark of humanity has been variously sought…

by Richard McAleavey • 20 May 2013 • 4 Comments

Freemen-on-the-land is a reactionary western movement which argues that law is based on consent. They distribute legal advice, suggesting that people can and should refuse to accept the jurisdiction of the courts. This has become particularly important in Ireland recently, following the increasing foreclosure on debts. The Irish Times reports over 100 ‘Freeman’-style arguments used in the Irish courts this year, citing the Law Society Gazette [for the traditional legal response see here and here]. Last Tuesday, Francis Cullen (36) was sentenced to another three months in Mountjoy Prison for refusing to recognise the court’s jurisdiction. He claimed, according to the Irish Times report, that he was ‘a private, sovereign person’. The Law Society of Ireland ‘advises anyone in financial difficulty to…