demonstratr

This guest editorial was submitted to the Kentucky Kernel 9/23/06

I read with interest the Kernel’s 9/22/06 Letters to the Editor section, which chastised the “madman” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for calling George W. Bush “the devil” in front of the United Nations last week. The “madness” of Chavez pertained to his speaking against Bush on US soil. Much media attention has been given to those “smells of sulfur” comments by Chavez (along with his plug for Noam Chomsky), but I encourage others to read the full text of his speech before making an ill-informed judgment of the Venezuelan leader.

In his speech before the UN, Chavez correctly asserted that this Administration approaches the world as if they were imperialists: “As the spokesman of imperialism, Bush came to share his nostrums [at the UN], to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.”

Chavez was critical of Bush’s model of democracy: “It’s the false democracy of elites, and, I would say, a very original democracy that’s imposed by weapons and bombs and firing weapons.”

“What kind of democracy,” Chavez wonders, “do you impose with marines and bombs?”

Chavez also had words for Bush’s penchant for creating an environment of fear: “Wherever Bush looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother — he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him. The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It’s not that we are extremists. It’s that the world is waking up. It’s waking up all over, and people are standing up.”

These comments by Chavez merit reflection, not only because of their accuracy, but more importantly because it lets Americans know how they are understood in a volatile world.

I do want to point to what I consider to be madness, and it is not Hugo Chavez the person, but rather his actions. I consider it to be madness that our society provides such little protection for it’s poor (e.g., Katrina victims) that Chavez has to provide free oil to lower-income families within the United States so that they can heat their homes in the winter.

As the New York Times reported last week (9/21/06): “Mr. Chavez offered to double the amount of heating oil Venezuela donates to poor communities in the United States.”

“CITGO,” New York Times notes, “is owned by Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., and delivered free and discounted oil to Indian tribal reservations and low-income neighborhoods in the United States, including the Bronx.”

Indeed, this is madness. It is madness that this nation’s resources go to making war on people across an ocean instead of maintaining levees or providing heat for the nation’s poor, while relying free resources from other countries. It is madness that funding for education is in crisis, yet the military receives an annual budget of $440 billion a year.

Despite this madness, it is little surprise coming from an Administration which seeks to re-interpret international human rights agreements in order to justify torture; or seeks to cut taxes for the rich while incarceration rates have doubled in urban poor areas since 2000; or refuses to acknowledge the health care crisis where 1 in 3 people between 18 and 35 are without health insurance. All this in the richest nation in the world.

That is madness, not a South American president who is popularly elected and donates resources to the urban poor in the United States.

I’ve been a little busy these last several days, so I haven’t really had the chance to post.  Hopefully that will change over this weekend.  I do want to take the opportunity to direct everyone’s attention to http://www.kykernel.com/ where we got major coverage for Wednesday’s mini-rally.  As a matter of fact, the Kernel published the closest close-up ever taken of a human face (and it was my face).  Anyway, the coverage was pretty good.  When you visit the website, check out all the comments.  Maybe somebody could respond…  This was a great way to start the semester and I’ve heard good things from a lot of excited people. 

Now we need to start thinking about new and better actions.  I’ll send out info on a meeting sometime next week.  Also, if you’re reading this and you’re not on the listserv send me an e-mail at dbabsh0@uky.edu and I’ll add you to the list.

I’m not going to talk too much today about the news accept to direct your attention to today’s headlines on www.democracynow.org where there is all the evidence you need of an all out attack on US civil liberties.  And yet we celebrate Constitution Day with American Apple Pie… 

Also, I know many will be interested in a story that appeared in today’s New York Times about the lack of pear pickers in California due to stepped up border control.  You can find the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/washington/22growers.html.  I was reminded of a talk that the Geographer Don Mitchell did here last year on migrant labor in California.  I’m not sure if the talk is available anywhere, but read in conjunction with the above story it throws a lot of light on the “immigration issue.”  Everyone should keep in mind, for instance, that the staunchly conservative editorial board at the Wall Street Journal has consistently supported President Bush’s immigration proposals.  A “guest worker program” comes with all the benefits that business wants and still allows racist Americans to preserve their undeserved feelings of superiority.  That is, “guest workers” don’t need to have benefits or security.  They don’t get the same social benefits and assurances as everyone else (although “everyone else” is loosing them right now too).  Essentially, a “guest worker” program guarantees cheap disposable labor and this is precisely what business demands.  But, of course, that’s not enough for most racists.  If they can’t actually persecute someone, things just aren’t as fun.

So, the first thing I want to say is that we will be having a demonstration THIS WEDNESDAY between classes from 11:45 AM until 12:00 PM (or whenever we’re done).  This will be Constitution Day on campus and there will be a celebration of some sort beginning at noon at the Main Building.  We will obviously cut into their schedule, but that’s good for us.  Also, they’d look pretty ridiculous telling us to stop on “Constitution Day” when they will be extolling the virtues of individual rights.  Just to make that the irony is palpable should they try some such non-sense, I encourage everyone who comes to make a sign (even a small one will be ok) with the First Amendment written on it.  For my part, I plan to speak on issues related to speech and rhetoric most of which I will touch on momentarily.  Secondly, I encourage everyone to either grab or bring another sign with an anti-Iraq War message.  There are signs already made which can be found in the basement of Miller Hall or in the Student Organizations Center with all the old LSU stuff.  This could be a really great start to the semester on campus.

On to my thoughts about Right Wing speech and rhetoric…  In my comment to Oliver’s post, I mentioned that fascist rhetoric is typically centers on national unity and ethnic homogeneity.  In the rhetoric of the contemporary American Right, this has found its clearest expression in the Bush’s claims that “If you’re not with us, you’re against us!”  This rhetoric has today reached one of its more absurd impasses.  President Buch and his henchmen on right-wing radio have been attacking John McCain for “aiding terrorism.”  (See the New York Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/washington/18mccain.html?ex=1158724800&en=2c830b4f8298885e&ei=5087%0A).  McCain and several other Republicans on the Senate Armed Forces Committee have passed a bill to the floor to challenge the bill passed last week by the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The joke of course is that McCain and his Republican compatriots are all ardent nationalists and men with distinguished military records (he is joined by Sen. Lindsay Graham of SC and Sen. John Warner of Virginia.)  These patriots oppose Bush’s arbitrary re-interpretation (better understood as an outright dismissal) of the Geneva Conventions because they think it will put US soldiers at greater risk of being subjected to torture.  Better yet, McCain, the man Bush is accusing of “supporting terrorism,” was shot down and captured in Vietnam and was held for years as a POW.  During his imprisonment, of course, he was tortured.  So Bush’s rhetoric is so divorced from reality as to charge a man who “fought for his country” and was captured and tortured with “aiding our enemies.”  Of course, this insanity has already been used by Swift Boat Veterans and company to attack other prominent veterans of the Vietnam War (John Kerry and Max Cleland are the two obvious examples).  But this is the first time this has happened within party ranks on the Right side of the fence.  While I am inclined to laugh at this kind of thing once in a while, I also am profoundly worried that people have somehow completely lost the ability (as if they ever had it?) to discern horseshit and respond appropriately (in this case with impeachment, etc.).

Now to Mexico…  Over the weekend, the leftist candidate in the July election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, declared that he will be leading a “parallel government.”  This is an important move for a number of reasons.  The first of which is what appears to be a general shift of power in Central and South America to candidates who refuse to be bullied by the US.  This last week there was a meeting of the “non-aligned nations” in which many of these new leaders were criticial of the US (see http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=12422).  Anyway, if history is any indicator this push for independence from American influence will probably result in stepped up violence and espionage on the part of the US.  I guess we’ll see if the “parallel government” in Mexico will be able to withstand such bullying.  The other reason this is important is that it clearly speaks to the failure of the leadership on the left in the US.  By the time Bush took office, there was no question about election fraud in the 2000 race and the 2004 race was obviously similar - very few people on the left think that Bush won Ohio.  But, here we are with a president who should be impeached fighting a morally outrageous war, all the while disregarding any and every international law.  WHERE IS OUR PARALLEL GOVERNMENT?  The stakes are very HIGH - more than 41,000 dead in Iraq, increasing anti-American sentiment world-wide, militarization of American life, etc.  WHY IS AL GORE ON THE SIDELINES?  WHY IS JOHN KERRY ON THE SIDELINES?  WHY IS RALPH NADER ON THE SIDELINES?  Are there leaders on the left with any courage or integrity?  Apparently not.

Brandon             

‘I reminded them [House Republicans] that the most important job of government is to protect the homeland.” — George W. Bush, Thursday Sept. 14th New York Times

We need to begin asking questions about the origins of such questions of protecting homelands, since what is ultimately at stake is the militarization of space. It should go without saying what that sort of militarization would mean for the prospects of radical democracy.

The discourse of security that is in circulation today has a long history based in liberal thought. The liberal notion of security can most succinctly be traced back to Jeremy Bentham. Liberalism in Bentham’s time was a reaction to sovereign power: it contested the extent to which a sovereign could understand/manage social processes that were argued to be opaque to the sovereign gaze. These social processes (the economy, the bureaucracy, the family, the reasoning individual, etc.) were understood by liberals to be natural social phenomena outside the realm of sovereign power (who sought to make such processes transparent). Thus, the various disciplines of political-economics, political science, public administration, sociology, etc. were established to investigate and reflect upon these processes that were understood to be operative outside (though internally to) the transcendent state.

But, the question was eventually posed as to how to manage such processes within a territorially bound space, and how to make them productive for economic and state growth (hence the title of Adam Smith’s ” An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”).

As Michael Dean discusses in his book “Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society,” Bentham sought to articulate four ’subordinate ends’ for state legislation in order to fulfill the utilitarian end of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” The ends, according to Bentham, were to provide subsistence, to produce abundance, to favor equality, and to maintain security.

According to Dean, “security, including security of person, honour, property and condition, was lifted to the top of the hierarchy of government for it is the ‘foundation of life’ on which everything depends.” Of course, this had to due with the economic relation between security and subsistence. Thus, security was first and foremost a disciplining mechanism: a mechanism to produce liberal subjects that exercised a particular type of freedom. In other words, the service of security had to be structured in such a way as to “lead indigent and other troublesome groups to exercise a responsible and disciplined freedom in the market and in the family (Dean).” Bentham’s liberty, argues Dean, is reduced to a branch of security. The detailed regulation of “men and things” thus involves “governmental interventions in the name of security [in order to] to produce forms of liberty appropriate to the participation in the market (Dean).”

How can we trace this liberal notion of security put forward by Bentham to the current predicaments of security that have risen in the aftermath of 9/11?

I think we have to think of the disciplining effects of the purposeful use of the word “homeland” prior to the word “security” when the Bush Administration speaks on the subject. The word “homeland” is a control mechanism that seeks to create what Hardt and Negri call a “differential unity” that must be managed. What do I mean by “control,” and further, what do I mean by “differential unity?”

My use of the important term “control” is borrowed both from the so-called “governmentality” literature, and from the essay “Postscript on control societies” by Gilles Deleuze, whereby a shift has occured from the society that disciplines subjects through institutions (factories, schools, barracks, etc.) outlined by Foucault, to a society where “one is always in continuous training, lifelong learning, perpetual assessment, continual incitement to buy, to improve oneself, constant monitoring of health and never-ending risk managment. Control is not centralized but dispersed; it flows through a network of open circuits that are rhizomatic and not hierarchical (from Nicholas Rose’s “Powers of Freedom”).”

To quote Rose at length:

“IN such a regime of control, Deleuze suggests, we are not dealing with ‘individuals’ but with dividuals: not with subjects with a unique personality that is the expression of some inner quality, but with elements, capacities, potentialities. These are plugged into multiple orbits, identified by unique codes, identification numbers, profiles of preferences, security ratings and so forth: a ‘record’ containing a whole variety of bits of information on our credentials, activities, qualifications for entry into this or that network. In our societies of control, it is not a question of socializing and disciplining the subject ab initio. It is not a question of instituting a regime in which each person is permanently under the alien gaze of the eye of power exercising individualizing surveillance. It is not a matter of apprehending and normalizing the offender ex post facto. Conduct is continually monitored and reshaped by logics immanent within all networks of practice. Surveillance is ‘designed in’ to the flows of everyday existence. The calculated modulation of conduct according to principles of optimization of benign impulses and minimization of malign impulses is dispersed across the time and space of ordinary life.”

Of course, this everyday existence with multifarious networks of practice should not be understood as a homogeneous existence. Quite the contrary. Operative power within the everyday should be understood as seeking to manage difference towards unifying ends. This is why we cannot understand power today as a return of fascistic tendencies. Fascism requires a homogeneous society with top-down control–a society with a hammer over its head. Indeed, this kind of power that assumes homogenous populations certainly still exists (e.g., in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, China, etc.). But, there is a marked difference between a fascistic sort of power, and the power operative today in the United States.

Instead of a homogeneous society where power is based on top-down fascist violence, power in the United States (and Europe) seeks security through a general economy of command: a management of the flows and networks of everyday existence that Deleuze identified above. This sort of neo-liberal operative power Hardt and Negri identify as “the management and hierarchization of differences;” in other words, it is a power operative through freedom: a subjective freedom that should be understood as participating in markets, taking care of the self, dividualizing, molecular, atomistic.

So when the Bush Administration speaks of “homeland security,” the word “homeland” needs to be understood as a unifying signifier: a signifier that seeks to unify differential and multiple networks into a productive hegemonic acquiescence. The goal is to have the effect of a subject saying “Yes, let us protect that territorially-bounded abstraction (the homeland), while I participate in my everyday over here.” In other words, let them take care of that over there, while I do this over here. The accumulation of the latter sorts of practices (”taking care of this, my own everyday, here”) is what needs to be understood as security. It is the detailed regulation of “men and things” identified above: the “governmental interventions in the name of security [in order to] to produce forms of liberty appropriate to the participation in the market.” That is the meaning of protecting the homeland. The act of articulation on the part of George Bush is a productive managing discourse.

This is a productive power operative through subjects, not on subjects (as in fascism)–subjects that can operate within and reproduce a market-friendly society of control.

Of course, I am here only dealing with subjects that imagine themselves to be participating in the abstract “homeland” of the United States.

–Oliver.