of its own unmaking. It promotes human progress yet puts forward the thesis of infinite regress to highlight humankind’s imperfections. And it claims that all life has an original predisposition to good and a simultaneous propensity to evil. Liberal life is forced to endure a self-imposed temporal purgatory — life is always guilty of the moral deficiencies of the past yet incapable of exorcising them in the future. These imperfections are actually demanded so that the antiproductive body can prove its moral and political worth. While this morally deficient default setting invariably moves us beyond any metaphysical attachment to the humanitarian principle (humanity is, after all, too flawed to become the unifying principle) and while the power of law alone is insufficient to overcome the imperfections of modern people, faith is restored by something in the order of the divine economy of life itself.
One could argue here that contemporary liberalism is, in itself, facing terminal crises. Whatever one’s opinions of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is clear that Western populations have no taste for new forms of military interventionism and lasting engagement in the global borderlands. And whether one considers a resurgent socialism in Latin America, the emergence of new forms of capitalization by alternative geopolitical powers, the changing nature of religious movements that have used democratic procedures to their own political advantage, or the continuation of indigenous struggles that challenge any hold over the terms “rights,” “freedom,” “democracy,” and “justice,” liberalism appears to be operating within a declining zone of political influence. As recent events in Libya illustrate, however, we must be wary of signaling its lasting demise. Throughout modern history, liberalism has proved to be resilient when faced with its own crises of legitimacy and authority. Its claims to violence in particular seem to enjoy a remarkable ability to regenerate as the memory of indigenous subjugation and depoliticization fades with time. One could be more cynical and suggest that given the only things that liberal regimes in Western zones of affluence can materially export today are war and violence, rather than write of its demise, the liberal war thesis is only beginning to enter a new retrenching chapter, which will resonate for a considerable time.
Originally published in somewhat different form as “The Liberal War Thesis: Introducing the Ten Key Principles of 21st Century Biopolitical Warfare” in The South Atlantic Quarterly.
New Thinking is Needed About September 11
Brad Evans & Simon Critchley
Thursday, 31 August 2011
THE TEN-YEAR DISTANCE from the attacks of September 11, 2001, gives us an opportunity to reflect on the significance of that day’s violence. Common sense asserts that our world is changed forever because of 9/11. But if true, shouldn’t we have spent more time considering the stakes of the event? The attacks were abhorrent and criminal, but our response so far represents a profound failure of the political imagination.
The many human faces to the tragedy provided a passing glimpse into a genuine ethical response mobilized by grief. But all too quickly the mourning ended as matters turned to the usual militarism. The invasion of Afghanistan, the illegal bombardment of Iraq, the establishment of torture camps and, most recently, the execution of Osama bin Laden.
Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise. Despite paying lip-service to global security, peace, and justice, the West’s history is marked by violence against those who refuse to capitulate to it. After 9/11, Giorgio Agamben wrote that security was fast becoming the main criterion of political legitimacy. Elections would be won on claims to protect domestic populations from rogue elements. This means taking the fight to enemies who, it seems, hate our existence. But when this happens, the state can itself become a terrorist entity.
Our political response has been pitiful. The left accuses the right of suffocating politics by taking advantage of so-called “exceptional” conditions. The right accuses the left of blindness to the ideological dangers of Islamofascism. The left condemns the unmediated abuse of power but supports or remains silent on NATO-led violence. The right draws connections between Islam and one of the most shameful episodes in modern history to justify violence.
Without trying to critically understand why people support the willful oppression and slaughter of “others” — especially within the shallow remit of international “norms” — our justification to control through violence is rarely questioned.
Modern politics is infected by a utilitarian mindset that bets the future against the present. “Our present actions are justified because they will make the world a better place” is a hypothesis that cannot be disproved. But these supposedly reasoned deliberations have underwritten the collateral slaughter of millions. Nor can they answer these questions: when is too much killing enough, and how many deaths must there be before a well-intentioned action loses its moral credibility?
We require new ethical ways of thinking about living in a radically interconnected world.
Originally published in somewhat different form in The Guardian.
9/11 – A Duty to Remember, but What?
Brad Evans & Simon Critchley
Thursday, 31 August 2011
THE VIOLENCE WITNESSED TEN years ago was spectacularly horrify- ing. Mass death quite literally broadcast “live.” Many images of that fateful day linger. We still recoil at the moment the second plane impacted, the point at which we knew this was no accident. Our memories can still recall that frozen transience, the same experienced shared by President George W. Bush, who, in a room full of children, cut a powerless figure. And still, we are traumatized by the thought that any one of us may have faced that terrifying predicament, whether to jump or not as the searing heat became too intense to bear. Such an impossible decision thankfully most of us will never have to face.
Let us be clear from the outset. 9/11 was both unjustifiable and abhorrent. Not only did it defy logical reasoning, completely blurring beyond all intelligible meaning the enemy and the innocent, the target and collateral damage. As an event, it offered no promise that the future could be opened to better ethical relations amongst peoples of this world. Indeed, if being terrified is the defining political criterion for what happens in devastating times, for those of us who live in advanced liberal societies, the term “terror” is indeed a more than satisfactory explanation.
One of the most remarkable results of that memorialized day was the way the shared sense of grief translated into something like a genuinely felt shared sense of human sensibility. Operating on an emotional level, our sympathies extended the hand of friendship to victims who we would most likely never meet. If the humanitarian principle has any real meaning, it must be in times like these it finds its most affective power. This responsiveness wasn’t about universal legal proclamations. Neither was it about retributive calls for justice. Less grandiose, yet certainly charged with more potent realism, human togetherness showed itself through the willingness to affirm life in the face of the most indescribable suffering.
Yet all too quickly, this time of civic grief would be seized upon to inflict violence upon those deemed complicit. Tragically Orwellian, the dream of global peace would be transformed into a planetary war. In Afghanistan and Iraq, our retributive justice would soon adopt its own limitless utilitarian logic. “To save us at home, the war must be taken to them,” politicians reasoned. Hunting down perpetrators in this way inevitably produced its own collateral damages — blurring, once again, perceived enemies from those caught within the violent crossfires of ideological rage.
While the numbers of dead in those countries seem countless, and we imagine their terror, being terrified resonated here with the same petrifying force. Well intentioned bombs don’t do less damage. A wound inflicted by a stray humanitarian bullet has the same impact no matter the righteousness of the cause. A just cause cannot sanction an innocent death unless we subscribe to the belief that some lives are more disposable than others.
So, what could we have done differently? Surely not taking the fight to them (whatever the cost) shows weakness in the face of danger? Proposing here a more liberalized war effort is certainly not the intention. Students of colonialism will quickly appreciate that “war by other means”