Book Symposium: Mark Neocleous’s War Power, Police Power (EUP, 2013) will be discussed by Claudia Aradau, Illan Rua Wall, Caroline Holmqvist, and Yari Lanci, with a response by Mark Neocleous. LSE, Thai Theatre, Nov 22 6-8pm.

From waste to drones and no-fly zones. Why is liberalism so obsessed with waste? Is there a drone above you now? Are you living in a no-fly zone? What is the role of masculinity in the ‘war on terror’? And why do so many liberals say they love peace while finding new ways to justify slaughter in the name of security? In this, the first book to deal with the concepts of war power and police power together, Mark Neocleous deals with these questions and many more by using critical theory to radically rethink war power. Neocleous generates a provocative set of claims about state power and capital accumulation, the role of violence in the making of liberal order, the police wars at the heart of this violence, and the ways in which these processes come to be called ‘peace’. And he takes the reader down some unexpected paths: the ‘war on waste’, debates about effeminacy, the proliferation of resilience and trauma-talk, drones as the culmination of colonial bombing campaigns, and no-fly zones as the perfect accompaniment for drones. The result is a compelling book that articulates a vision of war/police power beyond the military and the police.