Deep Structures of Empire: A Note on Imperial Machines and Bodies

The Biological Culture of Empire IN A RECENT, PAPER, NIKOLAS ROUSE (2000) APTLY SHOWED HOW OVER THE PAST FEW decades a seems to have emerged and developed in the wake of neoliberalism. Indeed, Rose demonstrates, in an age when we are all constituted individual actors who are constantly required to freely exploit opportunities and, while taking such initiative, to restrict ourselves from harmful excess, in short, to behave when necessary, then who fail to combine both prescribed lines of action await a new form of regulation. Freely exploiting opportunities while self-restricting when necessary, in neoliberal ideology, should come naturally. Failing to do so constitutes unnatural, indeed unhealthy behavior, and should therefore be dealt with accordingly. This line of reasoning, claims Rose (2000: 5), forms the backdrop or foundation of recent and current strategies of regulation and control aim to identify, treat, and control individuals predisposed to impulsive or aggressive conduct, and that should be implemented against those whose conduct seems to show wanton disregard for the moral constraints on the conduct of free individuals in a liberal Genetics, or medicine more generally, clearly provide the logic with which unnaturally deficient individuals should be sanitized away from the allegedly natural, free-flowing, but orderly, body of neoliberal society. Neoliberal society appears in this emerging biological culture the natural, healthy state of humanity, i.e., a state that, we have heard, moved beyond history (Fukuyama, 1989) after the fall of despotism and totalitarianism. Let us take a closer look: We are bound together never before. This coming together provides us with unprecedented opportunity, but also makes us uniquely The threat comes, because, in another part of the globe, there is and darkness where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship; where a third of our planet lives in poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine; and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam and because in the combination of these afflictions, a new and deadly virus has emerged. The virus is whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling.... This is an extract from Prime Minister Tony Blair's congressional address on July 17, 2003, delivered shortly after the formal end of the Iraq War. Let us focus on just this extract (for a more detailed discussion and other textual materials, see Lippens, 2004). There is a way of reading this extract another expression of a biological culture in a neoliberal age, albeit now on a larger, global scale. Blair's address seems to betray a particular imaginary. There is an image of a world--a world of technology, communication, trade, and travel, Blair claims elsewhere--that is now truly connected, unified, full of opportunity, freedom, human feeling, and moral constraint. The state the world is in appears to be a natural state, albeit one that has emerged as never before; it appears to be an accomplished state, not unlike the state of a natural body, a naturally healthy body. The global world of interconnected freedom, opportunity, and (self-)constraint, however, like any other body, is vulnerable. Dangers lurk outside, in shadow and darkness. The most lethal danger of all is of a medical, epidemiological nature: it is viral. This virus, terrorism, is unconstrained, knows no boundaries, is wildly fanatical (rather than free and self-constrained), frequently crosses the skin of the healthy body, constantly threatens to unsettle its delicate, interconnected balance of freedom, opportunity, and order, and should therefore be dealt with epidemiologically. To deal with global terrorism is to adopt and to follow the logic of epidemiological emergencies and interventions. …