Collaboratory in Critical Security Methods
The International Collaboratory on Critical Methods in Security Studies is an ESRC funded project (RES-810-21-0072)
Discussion of Paul Veyne and Dreyfus and Rabinow chapters on Foucault's methodology
Discussion of:
Veyne, Paul. "Foucault Revolutionizes History." In Foucault and His Interlocutors, edited by Arnold I. Davidson, 146-82. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press, 1997;
and Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault : Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Brighton: Harvester, 1982), chapters 4 and 5.
The cluster’s discussions are guided by the following applied questions:
- How are history and time treated in these texts?
- How do they help us engage with complex and heterogenous realities?
- How do they help us "concretely" articulate a research method - if it does so?
- What are we applying the genealogical method to?
- How do we do that technically?
- In what sense is our method different from that of our peers?
- What can be considered our tools in this task?
Chris Zebrowski says
Hey guys,
Hope everyone’s well. I’ve organized my response in a way that, I hope, allows me to answer the first and second blocks of questions posed by Phillipe in tandem. Fortunately, the readings selected by Philippe have both influenced to a considerable extent my own interpretation of the ‘genealogical method’. As such, I have re-read the articles and focused the discussion below, which discusses the genealogical method I developed for a chapter I am working on, around the questions posed by Phillipe in relation to the articles.
While my PhD thesis is designed as a genealogy of the concept of ‘resilience’ within civil contingencies discourses, I feel that I might be able to talk more concretely about a chapter I am just completing which traces a genealogy of the category of ‘the essentials of life.’ According to the Emergency Powers Act of 1920, the state may declare a state of emergency when the ‘essentials of life’ are perceived to be under threat. While Schmitt concerned himself with who has the authority to decide the exception, this chapter draws attention to the political battle which has taken place over the course of the 20th Century over who decides what ‘the essentials of life’ are (how they were originally defined, and how the category has subsequently become a site of contestation). The chapter is influenced by Foucault’s insistence, which Veyne explores at length in his piece, that "history is the violent and surreptitious appropriation of a system of rules, which in itself has no meaning, in order to impose a direction, to bend it to a new will, to force its participation in a different fame, and to subject it to secondary rules then the development of humanity is a series of interpretations." (Foucault in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 107/108).
An initial draft of the chapter was scrapped because I felt it read too much like a ‘history’ of the civil contingencies apparatus in the 20th Century. I had initially set out to show how the practices used to govern civil contingencies in the UK had changed drastically over the course of the 20th Century—a fact which I attributed to different governmentalities. My desire to re-write the chapter was based primarily on my feeling that what was emerging was a ‘history’ of the civil contingencies apparatus, detailing all the events which impacted the evolution of this apparatus: a job that was far beyond me, if not impossible. Re-centering the chapter as a genealogy of the category ‘the essentials of life’ allowed for an analytics of government centered on a site of discursive contestation: who could best secure ‘the essentials of life’ was undoubtedly tied to how they were defined (in relation to the romantic military concept of ‘morale’ in which Military commanders were best placed to govern them; or in terms of their inherent vulnerability which only scientists working in OR and strategic bombing could assess, giving them authority).
Employing a genealogical method allowed me to break away from an exhausting attempt at the representation of a highly complex field, in which changes to practices were overdetermined by a range of causes that would be difficult if not impossible to fully enumerate. Instead, the genealogy employed sought to trace changes in the organization though a slow actualization of the practices and discourses associated with an underlying governmentality. This drew attention to how things changed rather than why.
I began by tracing mentions of the ‘essentials of life’ in the national archives, discovering the (vaguely defined) statement first appears in the context of the First World War. Importantly, the statement ‘essentials of life’ appears alongside discussions of morale and the capacity of the population to endure war (I argue placing a militaristic enframing on the notion of ‘life’). I continue the chapter by tracing how this notion, once articulated, comes is made more concrete in the context of the Emergency Powers Act (1920). This notion is appropriated to provide a condition on which liberal governance (famously self-conscious about governing too much or too little) can declare a state of emergency and when a state of emergency the limits on government (ie. Strikebreaking restricted to ‘the essentials of life’). Given the status of this category within legislation the ‘best’ way to secure them (which reflect different understandings of what they are) become a contest performed by rival governmentalities which comes to a head in the years following the Second World War.
The chapter thus follows Rabinow and Dreyfus’ definition of genealogy as a history of interpretations which ‘emphasizes how discursive rules are appropriated and used’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 108). History then, as Veyne suggests, is not marked by the persistant march of Reason (Veyne, 1997, p. 157) but by rivalries over world-views and the regimes of practices which both follow from and reiterate them in a kind of cybernetic loop. Rather than view the governance of emergencies in terms of the continual expansion of the state, this chapter sought to “seek out discontinuities where others found continuous development…find recurrences and play where others found progress and seriousness." (Foucault in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 106). Veyne’s suggestion that history is like movements of a kaleidoscope rather than a linear development, I thought, was a good way of visually thinking through the events which a genealogy seeks to describe. (Veyne, 1997, p. 167)
Finally, before concluding, I would like to say that in retrospect, the genealogical method I employed in this chapter was one fashioned in respect of my particular research question. Certainly, with regards to my larger project the genealogical method will necessarily change (for example, by placing a greater emphasis on the movement, or colonization, of practices from adjacent fields (c.f. Veyne, 1997, pp. 160-163)). Dreyfus and Rabinow do an excellent job, describing the Foucault’s fashioning of a genealogical method in light of his constantly advancing research project. But I also read their analysis as showing how Foucault never settled on a genealogical method, but was constantly having to fashion it in accordance with new problems. Similarly Veyne’s chapter describes a particular fashioning of the genealogical method for studying history, in which the emphasis is placed more on ‘practices’ and less on ‘technologies of the body’.
In discussing a genealogical method, or methods, I’m interested in how we can articulate a method which is still somewhat malleable; which can shift to encompass a range of research questions, without becoming overly restrictive. I wonder to what extent we might be able to articulate genealogy in the form of a series of considerations, to be interpreted and/or appropriated by the researcher, in order to prevent it from becoming technologized (like many other research methods in the social sciences). I am also aware that to a considerable degree one must begin a project with some form of methodology, but also that methodology is something that is refined through the research and writing process (perhaps this is when you fashion your own ‘genealogical method’). Again, these are all points I think we should consider in our discussion.
Looking forward to hearing about your own projects, interpretations and concerns,
Best,
Chris
3 May 2010, 20:17
Andrew Neal says
Dear all,
First of all thank you Philippe for taking the initiative and suggesting such excellent readings as a starting point. Actually I am fairly familiar with the Veyne essay as I used it quite heavily in the concluding chapter of my book. The Dreyfus and Rabinow I’ve looked at before but only briefly, so this week I’ve spent a fair but of time slowly reading and digesting their two chapters.
Secondly, I thought the best way for us to have this discussion would be on the ‘forum’ section of the ICCM website. It would leave a clear record of our work a without it getting lost in our inboxes. Unfortunately that section does not seem to be running properly yet, as I could not find a way to ‘start a new topic’. I’ve alerted Claudia to this so hopeful the tech guys at the OU will see to it.
For now, I propose we add to this document as a way of keeping everything together. I propose that we transfer this to the forum somehow when we can.
Thirdly, thank you to Chris for starting this debate off with some very thought provoking comments.
Here is my (hopefully not too rambling) response to the chapters and to Chris.
The D&R chapter on archaeology annoyed me at first. I thought they were offering a very ungenerous reading of Foucault with unreasonable philosophical demands. I was especially troubled by their repeated concern with the ‘serious’ and ‘important’, as if uncovering these is the true purpose of intellectual thought. In my book I spent quite a lot of time on ‘archaeology’ and read it quite differently and was much more generous to Foucault in terms of the various summersaults he performs to insist archaeology is not structuralism.
Reading on to the genealogy chapter, I realised that D&R had probably set up chapter 4 in a deliberately provocative manner to give more weight to the more positive argument on genealogy. Once I realised this, I decided that I really like their interpretation.
The most interesting thing about it is the central role it gives to practice. This is also what Veyne does, but its not quite so explicit and rigorous in philosophical terms, as it’s more historical, though it’s just as persuasive.
Thinking back, D&R’s problem with archaeology is quite interesting: that Foucault commits the same problem that he detects in the human sciences (in The Order of Things/Les Mots et les choses). This is a doubling where, if I’ve understood it correctly, thinkers ‘find themselves treating as their object what is in fact their condition of possibility’. In other words, the observers claim to be above their object, looking down on it objectively, but are in fact constituted by it. The problem with archaeology is that it is both a descriptive analysis of discourse, but also a system of rules that constitute discourse. Where then do these rules exist, if not as some kind of transcendental a priori or empirical determinant (like the economy)? And furthermore, where can the archaeologist stand to analyse this discourse, and what gives that analysis validity if not the very object he claims to study.
My initial problem with D&R’s interpretation was that they underplay the notion of history in archaeology: ‘Since it does not have serious meaning and makes no serious truth claims the archaeologist’s discourse is ahistorical’ p. 96. In my own interpretation (in my book) I read the ‘rules’ of discourse to be historically contingent. In contrast D&R take Foucault more literally and read his ‘rules’ as technical and ahistorical. That reading is certainly possible, if ungenerous. On reflection, I think my more generous reading was very much informed by having a knowledge Foucault’s subsequent works. If one were to read Archeaology in isolation, it would be more problematic for the reasons D&R argue.
D&R’s strong criticism of archaeology is what allows them to give such a positive spin on Foucault’s attempt to go beyond its problems with genealogy. As they say, it’s all about ‘the inversion of the priority of theory to that of practice’. Once we have the move to practice, the technical, ahistorical ‘rules’ of discourse formation can be dropped, to be replaced with historically contingent problematizations.
The emphasis on historically contingent practice offers a way to relativize things of supposedly deep significance. This is the image that had the most impression on me in this reading: ‘effective history’ putting everything in ‘historical motion’ to bring seemingly solid and timeless things into a perspective of relativity. P.110.
This idea of ‘writing effective history’ seems to me especially important for the critical study of security. If the problem of security is that it is treated as an existential and timeless problem (the exception in Schmitt for example), then the aim of writing effective history for critical security studies should be to show that that idea is just a historically contingent surface effect, not a deep truth: ‘For the genealogist philosophy is over… There is nothing absolutely primary to interpret because, when all is said and done, underneath it all everything is already interpretation’ (p. 107). ‘Security’ has no essence.
With this much I agree with Chris above. The aim of an archaeology/genealogy is not to write a history, but to show the historical contingency of a given discourse, thus relativising and de-essentializing it.
I do differ slightly with regard to strategy and power. I think in Chris’s interpretation there is more emphasis on a power struggle over meaning, and the appropriation and use of concepts. I worry that this creates too much sense of conscious agency and strategy on the part of the actors. This I think Chris’s interpretation is an emphasis on the Nietzschean slant of Foucault, and certainly what is foregrounded in ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’. This is discussed in the following interesting section in D&R:
‘Nietzsche often seems to ground morality and social institutions in the tactics of individual actors… Foucault totally depsychologizes this approach and sees all psychological motivation not as the source but as the result of strategies without strategists.’ p. 109.
They develop this a little further on with the assertion that subjects do not enter battle pre-formed as subjects, but rather they ‘emerge on a field of battle and play their roles there and there alone’ p. 109.
The important thing here is that it’s not the strategic intentions of actors that constitute the battle. That would suggest something causal at work, and also presuppose some kind of ontology of the subject. Rather, it is the practice in and of itself that is interesting, not what is behind it. Indeed, there is no behind, no deep, no hidden cause or truth. I thought D&R highlighted this quite well with the Charcot/Freud example on p.122 – the cause of the symptom is not interesting, it is the symptoms themselves, or rather the practices, that we must confront.
Struggles and clashes emerge historically. Subjects do not stand outside, before or above; they are constituted within them and cannot escape, including the genealogist himself. Here I found their explanation of dispositif to be very interesting, as a ‘fundamental historical given’ (p. 122), the set of practices that are the starting point for examination in itself, not a signal of objective or subjective causes behind.
I especially liked the idea that dispositif is both the thing to be described and the method itself; a way of isolating the intelligibility of a cultural practice together with its ‘strategies of relations forces supporting types of knowledge and inversely’ (p. 121). It is a way of understanding the kind of intelligibility that practices have that avoid the doubling problem found in archaeology: by relying on dispositif as a historically emergent fact without objective laws (rules of discourse formation) or subjective intention (psychology, strategy etc). Instead of asking what the causes of a practice are, the aim is to ask what those practices are doing, what their effect is.
As Veyne puts it, ‘Foucault has not discovered a previously unknown new agency, called practice; he has made the effort to see people’s practices as they really are; what he is talking about is the same thing every historian is talking about, what people do. The difference is simply that Foucault undertakes to speak about practice precisely, to describe its convoluted forms, instead of referring to it in vague and noble terms.’ (Veyne P. 156).
So how do we answer Philippe’s questions and ‘apply’ this concretely. D&R seem to suggest the following:
1. identify a current problem/technology of power/set of practices
2. ask how did we get here? (i.e. make the move to history)
3. identify instances where that particularly technology (first) arose.
4. identify and diagnose what makes it intelligible as a cultural practice
5. note inversions, changes, iterations between the history and the present
6. try to understand how that technology became prevalent in the present
7. as D&R discuss on p. 124, this exegesis does not make the actors mere puppets, nor strategists, and nor does it reduce everything to the common denominator of their shared everyday understandings, or to a deep and hidden meaning. It is a surface level analysis that nevertheless adds something: ‘a pragmatically guided readings of the coherence of the practices of the society’ (p. 124).
I hope this is reasonably coherent as a first contribution. We’ll have to return to Philippe’s questions as the discussion continues. I haven’t given them enough attention here.
Best,
Andrew
4 May 2010, 08:12
Sven Opitz says
Dear all,
Thanks for the texts, questions, valuable comments, readings and fascinating insights into your own research!
First of all I must apologize for two things: I have to confess (!) that my current work on security is not genealogical and only partly Foucauldian. But, nonetheless, it has a lot to do with the issue of time. Therefore I will split my response into two parts. I start by circumscribing some scattered thoughts on Foucault and thereby touching on some of the questions already raised by all of you. After that, I will give you a rough insight into my own research on time and security. Second apology: As you might have already realized, I’m not a native speaker. So please don’t feel offended by some weird use of words, wrong prepositions and strange grammatical turns.
1. “Exceptionality” (Veyne) -- “heterogeneous realities“ (Bonditti) -- „different governmentalities“ (Zebrowski)
As Foucauldians we know that Veyne is right: “politics do not develop systematically from great principles.” (p. 157). Conversely, many works influenced by Foucault try to reconstruct a kind of “systematicity” out of the dust of events. They trace the historical formation of epistemic structures, regimes of the acceptable and conditions of intelligibility. Beyond any doubt, this methodological perspective has proven to be very fruitful. At the same time, it has its own totalizing tendency. Re-Reading Veyne, it occurred to me that he might have already seen this problematic tendency, therefore choosing “practice” as a conceptual starting point, “rather than ‘discourse’ or epistemological breaks” (p. 167).
This made me think of two works, I’ve recently read: François Ewald’s work in insurance and a student’s work on vaccination. Although it’s not one of his main points, Ewald argues that insurance as a technology of risk existed long before actuarial mathematics was available to design this technology properly. Of course, insurance as a technology of risk existed always in relation to certain practices of mobility and corresponded with certain rationalities of relating to the future. But it could not be an application of apt mathematical knowledge on probabilities, since this knowledge hadn’t existed for decades of insurance. Rather Ewald asks us to consider insurance as a practice to be involved in the emergence of a certain kind of actuarial knowledge – many centuries later. The student’s work on vaccination – which I’ve had to read recently – points to a similar phenomenon: The student analyses the discussions surrounding a specific vaccination campaign in 19th century Switzerland and shows that the commentators didn’t know how to make sense of this vaccination practice. Immunology wasn’t settled, yet. Some historical commentators pointed just to empirical evidence. Others tried to refer to bacteriology – which proved to be incommensurable with the practice of vaccination. In short, you could sense the (disorderly) noise of the historical battle surrounding that practice – neither the objectifications through practice nor the rationality of practice had been firmly sedimented at this historical stage.
What could follow from these observations? Maybe we should dwell upon the notion of “exceptionality”, used by Veyne, radicalizing it a bit, until we end up with something like “heterogeneity” in the sense of Georges Bataille (in: “The Psychological Structure of Fascism”). Maybe we should be prepared to “allow historical accidents” (Veyne 155), i.e. to see the historical incommensurable. Instead of singling out the paradigmatic diagrams (I stumbled across the first essay on the paradigm in Agamben’s new book on method), one could focus on the chaotic times of discursive dissolution and rearticulation: the chaotic times of transition, the not-yet-established historical forms of rationality at the verge of irrationality, the neither completely intelligible nor completely unintelligible. I’m thinking for instance of the figure of the monstrous in (non-)relation to law, as Foucault has analysed it in his lectures on the abnormal. The appearance of monster marks one of the (relatively) rare moments in Foucault’s oevre where he describes a figure that couldn’t be incorporated into a certain rationality – an irritating figure, which caused a discursive regime to re-organize. Last but not least, I’m thinking of the possibility of different governmentalities operating at the same time, as mentioned by Chris. For instance we could imagine a sovereign appropriation of a liberal governmental rationality, exploiting the authoritarian potentiality of the latter etc. etc. … …
2.Meaning? Semantics? Metaphorology? – Problems of a Praxeology
My second comment stems from the fact, that many people I spoke to about archeological-genealogical work came across the same kind of double-doubt: How does my work differ from an old school-type of “history of ideas”? Am I too much preoccupied with questions of meaning, given the fact that Foucault always tried to refrain from the game of interpreting? (It would be interesting to hear, if Chris came across these kind of questions in his fascinating project, since he says he wants to trace the statement of the “essentials of life” in its movement through time…)
Again, I understand Veyne’s rejection of Semantics (Kosselleck’s “Begriffsgeschichte”?). The focus on practices has two advantages: It not only dissolves the seemingly evident subjects and objects, it also points to the materiality of the social sphere. The remarks on Deleuze and affect in the footnote on page 163 are very instructive and contemporary in this respect. However, although not as decisively as Deleuze, Foucault has made clear the he is not interested in meaning or signs. I guess, Veyne’s repeatedly uttered statement “Foucault is not Lacan” points in that direction.
Nonetheless, I sometimes have the feeling that one shouldn’t necessary be dogmatic with regards to the questions of meaning and signs. Especially if one is concerned with questions of time, it could be interesting to attune oneself to the play of rhetorical figures and tropological movements in discursive regimes. Why? I think for two reasons: First, metaphors can be conceived of as technologies of reason(ing) (Derrida seems to be preoccupied with this aspect in his recently published lectures on sovereignty). For example, analogies – between the incarcerated and beasts, between rulers and wolves, between the madman and monsters or incarcerated and madman as monsters – operate as vehicles for the transport of meaning. Second, such metaphorical transport can convey meaning through time in processes of substitution, condensation and re-iteration. The metaphor, in this respect, serves as time machine, connecting different temporal horizons through acts of figuration.
For a hardcore-Foucauldian this turn to rhetorical analysis is probably hard to take. But although I strongly sympathise with Veynes “materialistic” reading of Foucault, I can’t get rid of the impression, that the term of “practice” serves as a kind of methodological shortcut – a little bit like Latour’s advice “just follow the actor!”. All in all, we know that we don’t have unmediated access to a “thing” called “practice”; “quite simply” (p. 156) encountering “historical reality” (ibid.) via practice isn’t probably that simple. I think, Veyne knows this himself: He admits that the “bringing to light” of the “objectivisations through practice” is “an original and attractive experiment” (159). With respect to methodology this experiment has remained a kind of black box in his text. So, why not use the tools of rhetorical analysis when confronted with the archive? At least from time to time?
Okay, colleagues, it’s getting late, I think I have to stop here and go home. This means, I will have to tell you about my own research later in detail. For today, it should suffice that it is mainly on Niklas Luhmann’s theory of law. What interests me with regards to Luhmann is the fact that his social theory is a theory of social events connecting each other in time and thereby producing temporal horizons (always present relations to past and future events). Unfortunately, I have only an old text by Luhmann available in English. Title: “The future cannot begin” -- you’ll find it attached. The late Luhmann became very much interested in Derrida and (although significantly less) in Deleuze, but in this old text from the 1970ies, he sounds much more like, I don’t know, someone doing para-phenomenology? Nonetheless, it’s not too bad...
I end with summarizing what kind of time-related topics could be interesting to follow:
- temporal inversions, anachronisms, the untimely (Elizabeth Grosz, Jacques Derrida, ...)
- time travels and rhetorical time machines
- the temporality of affect and other potentialities (Brian Massumi, Gilles Deleuze, ...)
- social orders as temporal orders, differing temporalities, accelerations and decelerations of social time (Niklas Luhmann, William E. Scheuerman, ...)
All the best,
Sven
4 May 2010, 08:57
Philippe Bonditti says
I have to confess that it has been extremely difficult for me to articulate the following comments as I am not a specialist of Foucault’s early work. Though I am not a specialist of Foucault, I think that I can say that I know quite well his work in the 1970s, let’s say from The Discourse on Language to Security, Territory, Population. But only recently I read The Order of Things and The Archeology of Knowledge. I don’t know at all his work in the 1980s.
This to say that the Archeology is something relatively new for me and that I have no other choice but to understand it from Genealogy just like I have no other choice to understand the epistémè from the dispositif. This is, in a way, the reverse move I am making comparing to the one D&R offer in their exploration of the archeological and genealogical moments in Foucault’s work (though they argue – rightly in my view – that there is no such division).
I also have to confess that the reason why I suggested D&R’s chapters is also because I could not manage reading them by myself. I never manage to finish reading the chapter 4. I found it extremely difficult to read and extremely annoying. Suggesting them for readings has been a way for me to make sure I will eventually read them ;-). I did not change my mind about chapter 4 but, more or less like Andrew, I really liked the chapter 5 and share with them most – if not all – of what they suggest about genealogy, about the dispositif, about the articulation of archeology and genealogy in Foucault’s work…
In my comments bellow, I wish to come back on 2 main aspects: practices and the articulation of archeology and genealogy. I will then try to expose my own use of Foucault’s proposal for a genealogy.
Let’s start with practices on which you have put the emphasis right at the beginning of your comments Sven – which I liked a lot. Veyne actually insist on the idea to start from practices also arguing that “the object is only the correlative of this practice.” That said, I am not sure that what Foucault brings is the idea to start from practices. Sociology, Anthropology, Ethnology (just to name a few) brought the idea of exploring the practices long before Foucault even started to write… No, what Foucault brings in the analysis is twofold in my view: first that discourses ARE practices so that we don’t have the division between discourse and practice, but between discursive and non-discursive practices. I shall return back later on this first aspect which raises a lot of questions and also some shadowy zones in Foucault’s method itself. The second thing Foucault brings in the analysis is the very process of the making of the “object”: “what was made, the object, is explained by what went into its making at each moment of history” (Veyne, p. 160-161). The making/le faire instead of the fact/ le fait. Historical sociology with someone like Elias certainly brought that too, but completely missed the point about relationality. It is this process-centric perspective articulated with a relational approach which explains why Foucault is neither exclusively a historian, nor exclusively a (historical) sociologist, nor exclusively a philosopher but more surely a little bit of all this altogether. Foucault as the site of de-disciplinarization (isn’t it you, Andrew, who argued this somewhere?...)
That said, I am not fully convinced by the way Veyne puts it (cf. citation Andrew picked up): “Foucault has not discovered a previously unknown new agency, called practice; he has made the effort to see people’s practice as they really are (…) only he shows [the practical conduct of the government] as it really is, by stripping away the veils” (p. 156). Of course there is no such things: there is no veil. For this same reason, I don’t really like the idea of the “concealed base of an iceberg” (though I understand it is an extremely useful idea for the purpose of Veyne’s paper), not only regarding the idea of “concealed” but also regarding the idea of the “base” which reproduces the infra/supra structure. I do agree with Andrew’s point: “there is no behind, no deep, no hidden cause or truth”. That said, this does not mean that there exist no such space for things to be made/ maintained invisible by specific discursive formations (“cet espace confus du non-dit” = “this scattered space of the non-said”): it is the space of the not-yet-actualized-virtualities, which is crucial as it is also the path for another conception of time (and not just history) in Foucault’s work (the kaleidoscopic perspective). So that, if still relying on the idea of the iceberg, what the archeology/ genealogy is about in my view, it is about the making and unmaking of the line of demarcation between what is made visible and what is made invisible. Again, no need to look at the “background” but only at the making of it.
Then of course, the question of strategy Andrew raises following Chris’ interpretation of genealogy/archeology is a very important one in my view. And I can’t make my mind about it, though I think that like Chris, my interpretation of genealogy/archeology puts emphasis on power struggles over meaning. On the one hand, I can remember that Foucault locates the strategic aspect in the dispositif itself. It is one of the three main characteristic Foucault gives to the dispositif: “By dispositif, I mean – let’s say – a sort of formation, which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need” (Le jeu de Michel Foucault, my translation). The dispositif is strategically oriented it could be argued. And “subjects emerge on a field of battle and play their roles there and there alone”.
But on the other hand, this strategical orientation does not only shape the agent/ actors. It is also being internalized by these same agents/ actors. And if agents certainly do some strategic moves unconsciously – reproducing the “meta-strategic orientation of the dispositif”, they also make some strategic move consciously to impose their own definition of a problem and therefore their own solutions (for example). And when they do so, they do it mainly, if not exclusively in relation to the little tiny game they are part of with the other agents/ actors and which may have nothing to see at all with the urgent need for which the dispositif is strategically oriented. But while doing so, they also impact on this general strategic orientation of the dispositif. I don’t know if I am clear enough here, but for sure, this second aspect – at least in my research – is a crucial one as it can be understood as one of the “engines” of the dispositif. So that, whether Nietzsche’s or Bourdieu’s slant ;-), the emphasis on strategy and power struggles over meaning is crucial in my view.
So that if I agree with the idea that it is not the actor which constitute the battle but the battle which shapes the actors, I am still wondering how to articulate an understanding of the subject whose existence is given by the tight network in which it appears on the one hand, and an understanding of the subject who is permanently redefining this network through the conscious strategic moves he makes within a game which is only a little tiny part the broader battle (a dispositif within the dispositif…)
This obviously has to be linked to the debate about the constituting subject and the suggestion Foucault made when he said: "one has to dispense with the constituting subject, to get rid of the subject itself, that's to say, to arrive at an analysis which can account for the constitution of the subject within a historical framework.” (Foucault, Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon, New York: Vintage, 1980, 117). Does getting rid of the subject itself means getting rid of the agent? Or can we get rid of the subject but keep the (productive) agent in it? How can one apprehend and assess the heterogeneity of practices if one do not have the agent to understand how it deploys practices also in relation to other existing practices deployed by other agents? I really need your help on this, also to clarify my own questioning which, I confess, is not clear at all. The only sure thing in this respect is relationality and the need to move from a philosophy of the object taken as an end to a philosophy of the relation (Veyne, 162) which I think is the other strong claim in Veyne’s paper.
My second comment is about the articulation of archeology and genealogy. With D&R I agree that there is no pre- and post archeology or genealogy in Foucault, though the way they structure their argument with chap 4 on archeology and chap 5 on genealogy has been a important vector within the Foucault studies for this idea that there was an archeological moment and then a genealogical moment in Foucault own trajectory. On the contrary, I would argue that genealogy was already working within archeology just like archeology is still working as the deep method within genealogy which the design. (Foucault, What is enlightenment). Maybe we should talk further about how archeology works within a genealogical design as it appears to be less discussed than the question of how the genealogical project was already in the making in Foucault’s early work on archeology?...
I also liked a lot what D&R argue about the dispositif, but I would like to ask one main question here: if, as Foucault argue, the dispositif is something much broader than the espiteme (it is also about architectural dispositions and certainly about technological tools…) Then, does that mean that genealogy does not only apply to the discursive but also to the non-discursive? And how? My answer is yes but I would like to have your views on this. And in my own research on antiterrorism – which turned out to be an analysis of the transformation of the practices of sovereignty and of the art of governing people - I am trying to make a double genealogy of the usages of the notion of terrorism on the one hand, and of the bureaucracies of antiterrorism on the other, looking at who is defining terrorism and how, and at the mutation of the very structure of the bureaucratic architecture of antiterrorism (organization charts). I am trying to do that from a relational perspective to eventually qualify/ describe the very nature of the relation between the mutations observed at the epistemic level (definitions of “terrorism”) and the mutations of the antiterrorist bureaucratic structure. While doing so, I am trying to engage not only with discursive formations (narratives and utterances about “terrorism”) but also with the non-discursive aspects of anti-terrorism (bureaucracies, tools and instruments) which, for the latter, I can only access through textual traces (archived documents)… And the very nature of this relation I argue is a mimetical one which is also the site for the reformulation of the art of governing people with the advent of traceability as a fourth pole of contemporary govermentality (with sovereignty, discipline and biopolitics).
This leads me to Andrew’s suggestions as for how to “apply this concretely”. Deriving from D&R you (Andrew) list 7 points, the first of them being: ‘identify a current problem/ technology’. If I try to apply this retractively to my own research, I realize that this is not precisely how I did it.
I certainly identified I problem: “terrorism” or I should say “the multiple usages of the term ‘terrorism’”. Foucault may have started with madness. But I did not start with the technology (traceability) which only came later in my work, precisely as the result of the research. My point here is to say that somewhere in between these points we have to leave some rooms for what the research tells us and how the archeological method in the genealogical project permanently reshapes the questions we have. In other words, the way I read these points is that the problem/ technology identified at the very beginning does not change within the course of the research, which in my view – and deriving from my own experience – is not true. Let’s talk about it too guys!
Well I realize I should stop here even though I have not engaged yet with the questions I asked a month ago… I hope anyway that this will be helpful for our discussion.
Philippe
4 May 2010, 19:19
Andrew Neal says
Dear all,
I was going suggest that we go round again in the same order. This would mean waiting for Chris to respond next. But since I’ve just read Philippe’s contribution and it’s fresh in mind, I thought I’d respond now. I agree with Philippe’s email content about returning to the questions. Also, it would be great to introduce other texts (like Luhmann, and perhaps Bourdieu and Latour) but I think we get a bit further with our current discussion before we do so.
I wanted to respond to Philippe’s very interesting questions, which I’ll summarise as follows:
1. What is the role of strategy in the dispositif? Is the strategy of the dispositif itself, or that of the agents/actors/subjects? Or some combination of both?
2. What is the relationship between archaeology and genealogy? Or more specifically, how does archaeology continue in the genealogical project?
Interestingly enough, I’ve been working on an article about discourse and strategy. This discussion has really helped me to shape that. Funnily enough, the quote that Philippe found on dispositif, strategy and historical need was one I found myself a few days ago by following the references from D&R. I’m going to paste in a section of the draft here to show how I’ve been thinking this through (and you can also see the references):
“To make sense of the complex relations between discourse and practice in the invasion coalition we use the concept of dispositif from the work of Foucault. Dispositif is both a method and the thing to be described; a way of isolating the intelligibility of a cultural practice together with the strategies, relations of force and types of knowledge that support it. There is no direct English translation, but imperfect suggestions have included apparatus, assemblage and grid of intelligibility. As Foucault puts it (in translation), the ‘coupling of a set of practices and a regime of truth form an apparatus (dispositif) of knowledge-power’.
A dispositif is a formation of heterogeneous elements that may include the discursive and the non-discursive, for example ‘discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic positions’. As such, it is not a coherent episteme or paradigm built around clear principles or concepts but rather a flexible and strategic system of relations between these elements: ‘there is a sort of interplay of shifts of position and modifications of function which can also vary very widely.’ What defines a dispositif is not intellectual coherence but strategic coherence around a given historical problematization. As Foucault puts it, it is a ‘formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need.’ It is, in other words, a strategic coalition of discourse and practice.
Yet although a dispositif facilitates strategies, it does not assume mastery by rationally calculating strategists. Rather, a dispositif signifies the constitution and organization of subjects around historical problematizations, such as liberty and liberation. It is not that from the perspective of a dispositif subjects are dupes, puppets or sleepwalkers. As Paul Veyne argues with regards to a ruling monarch, ‘he knows what he is doing, when he reacts to events by making decisions.’ But by viewing a problem in terms of a dispositif, with its associated genealogical approach, we can show that there is more going on than the actors immediately realise; that their discourses and practices are iterations of historically prior problematizations that exceed their knowledge and strategic intentions.”
So I think, following Philippe, I seem to be saying that although individual agents have strategies and engage in power struggles, they do not constitute/master the strategic game/imperative of the dispositif in general. For example, parliamentarians engage in power struggles everyday, but they do not necessarily have mastery over the strategic direction of politics in general. Perhaps I am suggesting that there are two levels of strategy in Foucault – the generalised strategic need around which the dispositif emerges (e.g. the problem of madness in society), and the strategic games of actors themselves, who may not see the bigger picture (but may perhaps become aware of it).
To pick on the relationality point, we could understand this in terms of relativity. From the my perspective sitting on a TGV, it does not look like my lunch is travelling at 300 kph. But for Philippe standing by the trackside, it certainly does. As D&R say, the motion of history has a relativising effect. What actors think are pressing, deep and transcendent problems are in fact only contingent historical problems, but from their perspective the actors cannot see this.
On the second question about archaeology, I really like Philippe’s point and identifying a starting problem but moving from there. In the Archaeology, Foucault talks a lot about the additive qualities of statements – statements have meaning because of their relation to other (perhaps prior) statements, and in relations to objects, concepts, strategies etc. In other words, archaeology is profoundly relational. A starting problem (e.g. madness) is never an object, only a node in a discursive formation/assemblage/grid of intelligibility/dispositif that can only be understood in relational terms (this is the aspect of archaeology that is sort of structuralist).
With this in mind, we could say that archaeology continues into the genealogical method because it gives us a way to work through the additive/relational constellations that problems are enmeshed in. It gives us a way to follow and make those links, their condition of possibility and so on. In some way this is quite a formal method, quite Kantian in some ways. In this way perhaps it can help us to not get too blinded by the spectacle of a historical battlespace that we seek out through genealogy: that even a particular historical problematization remains relational, and is not a singular point of origin.
A few other points: Philippe - yes I made the point that Foucault helps make IR a less disciplined discipline in my comments at the ISA roundtable on Foucault last year. (Now published as 'Rethinking Foucault in International Relations: Promiscuity and Unfaithfulness', Global Society, Vol. 23, No. 4, October 2009: 539-543.)
And I also like Philippe’s quite critical points about Veyne. It is not just practice that Foucault brings us, nor the hidden depths, but rather the historicization of problems/objects, and the relationality. Veyne is, as Philippe implies, too much the historian. (Incidentally his recent book on Foucault is going to come out in English in a couple of month and I’m very excited about reading it, perhaps we’ll be able to discuss it here at some point http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745646411)
I’m afraid I have not really responded to Sven’s comments here, which just a circumstance of the moment, having Philippe’s point fresh in my mind. But I certainly agree with Sven’s thoughts, and see no incompatibility between Foucault and problems of metaphor and symbolism. The use of these by actors is after all just another practice. And indeed, History of Madness is absolutely full of analysis of these kinds of metaphors and symbolic exchanges.
Finally, I had very interesting question from a student today. Does genealogy have to be historical as a method? She finds genealogy very convincing as a method in terms of its emphasis on practice, its problematization of discourse, its critique of the sovereign subject and so on. But does using genealogy have to mean doing something historical? If so, why? If not, how can we articulate it as a method?
Andrew
5 May 2010, 09:41
Chris Zebrowski says
Hey guys,
It looks like I’m spoiled with the opportunity to address quite a range of interesting ideas at this point. At risk of neglecting some very interesting, and important points however, my contribution will continue to reflect upon the discussion of the role of strategy within genealogy. However, I do so with some caution, recognizing that Foucault himself re-worked the concept of strategy a number of times (for example during the Society Must Be Defended series in which he questioned the value of military metaphors, or later in his work on ‘subjectivation’). It may be useful therefore to remind ourselves in discussions of Foucault’s ‘method’ that we are always oriented towards at a moving target.
I think that Philippe and Andrew have both rightfully expressed concern over the degree to which strategy is psychologised. Indeed, the dispositif is a ‘strategy without strategists’ which, as Andrew notes, ‘organizes’ and ‘constitutes’ subjects. Dispositif ‘facilitate strategies’ (Andrew) but cannot be mastered. I also liked Philippe and Andrew’s differentiation between the local and global (as in total, combined) strategic direction of the dispositif, which explained how local struggles draw upon, and thus perpetuate, a dispositif with no consideration of its ‘global’ direction. Yet, while all this is true in relation to the functioning of the dispositif, I also believe that it is important to recognize times in which actors have considerably more impact over the constitution of the dispositif—namely in the event of a problematisation.
As of yet we have not yet given considerable attention to problematisations. Problematizations are significant in that they put into question the unreflective practices and related rationalities through which we orient ourselves in the world. This image of thought is detailed quite explicitly in Veyne’s Chapter and can be summed up with his suggestion that “[t]he role of consiousness is not to makes us notice the world but to allow us to move within it” (157). The distinction is one between thought and consciousness. For example, the carpenter does not think about hammering. In fact, they can hammer and sustain pretty heady conversations about all sorts of things whilst they do it. They’re certainly conscious they’re hammering but it does not need to be an object of their thought. A problematisation would bring this practice to thought: say they hurt their right hand, forcing them to consider how exactly they hammered before in order to transfer the hammering to their left. As such it opens a space for thought, in which the practice can be modified or replaced.
A historical problematisation is an event; an event which brings an object, a concept or a practice to thought. For Foucault, thought opens up the range of possibilities for action, and thus is associated with freedom:
“Thought is that which permits a certain distance from a manner of acting or reacting, that which makes it possible to make that manner of acting into an object of reflection and to make it available for analysis of its meanings, its conditions and its goals. Thinking is the freedom one has in relation to what one does, the movement through which one detaches oneself as an object and reflects on all this as a problem” (quoted in Rabinow, Anthropos Today, 47).
Of course this freedom is not completely emancipatory but it does allow for a reconsideration of one’s practices and their associated rationalities. This opens a space for the refashioning of the dispositif or indeed the emergence of a new dispositif. How is a dispositif fashioned? To draw on another French term without adequate English translation, the dispositif is a kind of strategic bricolage. A problematisation provides the freedom to create something new (which of course does not mean that it is invented from scratch) by placing into relation things already around you. Here, I really like Andrew’s suggestion that actors may be drawing on discourses and practices formed in relation to prior problematisations, without regard to their original function. This sits well with Foucault’s description of strategy within the Birth of Biopolitics lectures as an ‘art of combinations’: “The function of strategic logic is to establish the possible connections between disparate terms which remain disparate. The logic of strategy is the logic of connections between the heterogeneous and not the logic of the homogenization of the contradictory” (Foucault, Birth of Biopolitics, 42). The consolidation of practices into apparatuses is thus dependent upon a strategy of "relaying, connecting, converging and prolonging." (Deleuze, Foucault, 27). We might say that a problematisation opens an opportunity for the creative fashioning of new assemblages (dispositif) out of the myriad of tools which pre-exist but are doubtfully ‘fit for purpose.’ Indeed these dispositif may themselves be transformed into more general technologies, permitting their migration to other applications. As Andrew rightly points out, the dispositif has a strategic orientation insofar as it harmonizes heterogeneous elements (discursive and non-discursive) in response to a historical problematisation.
This relationship between strategy and problematisation is, I believe, central to the genealogical method itself. Genealogy doesn’t look to tell a history, but to operate upon history itself. As such, genealogy doesn’t aspire to representation but to problematisation. It calls into question the received narratives, and the associated lessons learned from history, in an attempt to open up the field of possibility in the present. In doing so genealogy refuses to abide to the Platonic duty towards representation of an icon, an original (Deleuze, Plato and the Simulacrum). It does so by itself operating a strategic logic: establishing relations between series formerly held separate, creating resonances and dissonances which serve to counter-actualize a historical field (I apologize to Philippe who raised a rightful objection to using the notion of field here—however I haven’t yet thought of a more applicable term. Any suggestions are more than welcome). The genealogist is much more interventionist than the archaeologist (though I am unconvinced that Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ work was as apolitical or disinterested as Dreyfus and Rabinow suggest): acknowledging their own position in the play of forces and looking to intervene upon them through targeted genealogy.
This brings us finally to the question posed by Andrew’s student, which I’d like to respond to briefly. Perhaps I’m being too conservative, but as I outlined above I do think that genealogy necessarily operates upon a historical field. That being said, I definitely think that certain elements of genealogy can be used to inspire, or inform methods which are not historical. But why bother then to call them genealogy? For example, instead of counter-actualizing a historical field, why not operate on security imaginaries ( I believe, Andrew that you are doing something similar in your current work, but from a historical perspective)? Such a project might similarly conceptualize the future, rather than something ahead of us, as something which currently acts upon us governing present behaviour. Counter-actualization might look to problematize security technologies such as horizon-scanning, disaster simulations and pre-emption which are used to create imaginaries which inform our current practices. Perhaps, in an effort to ‘branch out’ (see the latest call for activity), we can begin to reflect on critical methodologies with operate in relation to time that are non-genealogical. On this point, I’d be curious to know a little more about the methodology underpinning Sven’s work in particular.
I’ll leave it there for now. Looking forward to your responses…
Chris
18 May 2010, 16:09
Sven Opitz says
Hey guys,
Sorry that it took me so much time to answer you – and I hope that my input doesn’t come untimely. Because I’m afraid that I might not proceed chronologically, contribute to linear progression. However, I enjoyed reading your comments again. And in this repetitive reading, I recapitulated and reframed some questions, questions which relate to the topic of time:
1. Chris’ research points towards two conceptual questions of great importance: First, the idea of rival governmental regimes operating in parallel, i.e. at the same time. Second, the idea of a threshold between liberal and illiberal governmentality: liberal governmentality’s potential for turning to illiberal meassures.
(The question of illiberal governmentality is one that occupied me for some time. I wrote an article on this topic for an anthology to be published this summer, if you’re interested, I can send it to you…)
2. Andrew showed that Foucault offers valuable tools to counter timeless notions of security. In this context, he mentions the exception in Schmitt. My question: Following up on the first point, how can the framework of governmentality studies help us to historicise exceptional rationalities? If I understood Chris in a proper way, he’s hinting in this direction in his research, since he analyzes “the essentials of life” as a specific leverage in the historical struggles over exceptions within the horizon of liberal governmentality.
3. My aim was to draw attention to moments of heterogeneity, to radical unintelligibility, the incommensurable, the noise in the discursive system. Elements that cannot relate to other discursive elements: Objects that doesn’t count as objects, subjects that doesn’t count as subjects. – What is the time-form of the emergence of such elements? I guess: THE EVENT. How does the event differ from another time-form that could be of interest in this context: THE ANACHRONISM? (Is it helpful to think about temporality in terms of time-forms?)
4. How do these time-forms (event, anachronism, …) contribute to our understanding and maybe to a strengthening of the “process-centric perspective”, mentioned by Philippe? Do they form turbulences that accelerate discursive activity? I don’t need to tell you that there’s not much literature on this topic. But confronting it might bring us to a more complex understanding of the dynamics inherent in specific dispositifs. It might enable us to move beyond the idea of strategic re-organizations, according to “needs”. I’m not arguing to abandon the notion of strategy in total. But I would like to think of elements that remain alien to strategic reorganization.
(I don’t know if this is of conceptual use for your research: Michel de Certeau deals with the two types of strategy, Andrew distinguishes. He calls them “strategies” and “tactics”, the latter deviating from the strategies, provoking them, altering them etc. But I think, one has to go further…)
There are two more points, the question of the actor and the question of the non-discursive. I think Philippe wanted to have our opinion on them, what I really appreciate. Both of my comments are pretty subjective:
Actor/Acting --- Personally, I’d like to follow Judith Butlers proposal to combine subjectivation and iteration. She re-arranges Foucault’s power/knowledge and Derrida’s temporalization: Subjection takes place in the process of bodily iterations of norms, and each iteration causes a deferral of the norm. This is, maybe, kind of a boring answer. A more exciting answer could follow Deleuze’s interpretation of the techniques of the self as a way of risking the being by unfolding the fold. Is this not the only way to really act?
Non-Discursive --- Again, personally, I would let this notion drop, since it stands somewhat opposed to the idea of discursive materiality, be it a prison wall or a video camera. Again a boring answer. Another take: I was completely overwhelmed by Brian Massumi’s deleuzian analysis of the “terror alert system” in his text “Fear (The spectrum said)”. I think, there, he probes access to the non-discursive. The price to pay: an ontology of becoming.
***
I would be really interested in following these leads in our future discussions. However, Chris was so kind to ask what I am working about. And he was absolutely right, that my work is non-genealogical. In short, my PhD makes two main points:
First, it develops a deconstructive reading (in a strict Derridean sense) of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of law. It shows that law as conceived of by Luhmann tends to deconstruct itself at several points: it is always already threatened by dislocation – by turning the outside into the inside and corrupting neat legality in this process. Second, my work shows that problematizations [Foucault] of security operate on these dislocations and inscribe forms of “counter-law” [Foucault] into law. These amount to para-legal forms of exclusion.
When I applied for membership in the ICCM, I tried to sum up my project in the following way:
“The concept of counter-law, to be found in Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and taken up lately in security studies by Richard V. Ericson, has proven fruitful as a critical tool for portraying an inverted law: a law turned against itself, undermining its liberal qualities. The notion of counter-law thereby seems to capture most recent developments in security politics such as the suspension of habeas corpus by antiterrorism laws in the UK or the suspension of basic human rights by the German governmental initiative to legalize the shooting down of passenger flights supposedly high jacked by terrorists. Nonetheless, there are two main obstacles for studying counter-law empirically. On the one hand the concept of counter-law remains mostly detached from a theory of law. This is a fundamental problem since one needs a proper account of law to delineate in which respect it is actually countered. On the other hand the concept of counter-law fails to explain how the inversion of law is socially achieved. In itself it does not stimulate the investigation of the social mechanisms through which it comes into being. In both respects the concept of counter-law needs to be amended in order to serve as a methodological tool in security studies.
In my PhD-thesis I am therefore linking the concept counter-law to Niklas Luhmann’s theory of the legal system and to the theory of securitization put forward by the so-called Copenhagen School. In short, I conceive of securitization processes as a kind of “parasite” (Michel Serres) of law, simultaneously injecting disorder into the legal system and thereby creating a paralegal counter-order. This at first hindsight abstract theoretical manoeuvre reveals its relevance for empirical research if one takes into account the bottom line of Luhmann’s comprehensive sociology of law. Luhmann analyses in great detail various social mechanisms through which the legal system constitutes itself as a discursive field by producing the boundary towards its outside: For example, the legal system relies on its own style of distinguishing between lawful and unlawful, thereby excluding “third values” such as morals or reason of state; furthermore the legal system establishes its own social time of acting reactively on legal cases, thereby precluding to judge over actions not yet committed; moreover, the legal system cultivates its own modes of legal argumentation trying to ban semantic indeterminacy. In each instance the unity of the legal system is achieved by excluding social possibilities, thereby articulating the law in difference to its other. However, discursive acts of securitization thwart these mechanisms through which law constitutes itself. By inscribing the constitutive outside of the system into the system they turn the law against itself, ruining its boundaries. This contaminating inversion takes the form of counter-law: police laws that rely on indeterminate formulas like “security and public order”; preventive laws that criminalize future behaviour not yet materialized in an actual deed; exceptional laws that repeal the normal distinction between lawful and unlawful by referring to security concerns. All these forms of counter-law disrupt the legal system. They push law to the paradoxical point where it is radically uncertain if it is still lawful to distinguish between lawful and unlawful.”
Additionally, let me explain why systems theory is all about time. If you’re not familiar with Luhmann, think of a social system as a discourse in the sense of Ernesto Laclau. Like Laclau, Luhmann thinks the boundary towards the environment (the “outside”) as the constitutive element of a social system. Unlike Laclau, yet, Luhmann thinks of a system as a highly temporalized order. It produces itself by connecting communicative acts. The legal system, for example, is nothing but the concatenation of legal acts that differentiate the system from other communicative acts (economic transactions, scientific truths, …). Luhmann, thus, conceives of a social system as purely operational: It is made up by social events (for example legal events) relating to each other in chains of connectivity.
On the one hand, communicative acts are events in time. They appear and disappear. On the other hand, these elements constitute time. Because when they relate to each other, they constitute a specific temporal dimension. Each event draws a distinction between before/afterwards (thereby realizing the highly elusive present). It relates in specific way to past and future, working on the difference of, for example, “present future” (the future conjured up in the present) and “future present” (the present to be taking place). Since Luhmann thinks of systems as differentiated against each other, they distinguish themselves by constituting different temporalities. Law relates differently to past and future than Economy, Education differently than Politics. Each system has its “proper” time (“Eigenzeit”).
What is law’s “Eigenzeit”? Firstly, it operates after-the-fact, that is, after a deed has been committed. Secondly, it allows for stabilizing social expectations over time, since norms which have been codified in the past are to be maintained in the future. It de-futurizes the future, as Luhmann points it. However, this legal temporality is challenged by the security dispositif revolving around the idea of preemption. Therefore in my work, I elaborate, for example, on the temporal interference between law and the combating strategies inscribed in recent figuration of the enemy – an enemy characterized by his catastrophic potential. As you can see, from this angle you end up with a theory of exception that does neither start form a sovereign subject, nor from a decision, but from “le différend” [what’s the English word?] of temporal patterns.
Oh, well, I hope I haven’t bored you to death. Such a long comment. I don’t know, if I could make myself clear… Since it’s very difficult to sum up a deconstructive argument, which heavily relies on slow and close readings of primary theoretical texts…
It would definitely be great to be sitting in a bar with you three and have some drinks while discussing this stuff. I’m looking forward to meeting you!
All the best,
Sven
6 June 2010, 10:34