The Biopolitics of the war on terror: A critique of the 'return of imperialism' thesis in international relations

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 237-252

  Reid, Julian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GEOPOLITICS; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; SOVEREIGNTY; TERRITORIALITY; TERRORISM;

EID: 27844594942     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0143659042000339100     Document Type: Review

References (56)

1. Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000, p i.
2. Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, 2000 Ibid, p xii.
3. Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, 2000 Ibid, p xiv.
4. Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, 2000 Ibid, p i.
5. For a more expansive account of the violence of these processes, see Julian Reid, 'War, liberalism and modernity: the biopolitical provocations of Empire', Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17 (1), 2004, pp 63-79.
6. Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 83-87. For an elaboration of the concept of disutopia see their earlier work
7. Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State-Form, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994, pp 310-313.
8. The concept of immanent or 'constituent' power is developed in Labor of Dionysus and is close to Marx's concept of 'living labour'. The Foucauldian concept of biopower is only developed in the later part of Hardt and Negri's Empire. The distinction between immanence and biopower remains heavily under-theorised in their work, leading to several lines of critique of their theoretical case. This article is an attempt, in part, to address that lacuna by developing a more authentically Deleuzean account of relations between immanence, biopolitics and political sovereignty.
9. Ivan Eland, 'The empire strikes out: the 'new imperialism' and its fatal flaws', Policy Analysis, 459, 2002, pp 1-27.
10. Michael Cox, 'The empire's back in town or America's imperial temptation - again', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 32 (1), 2003, pp 1-27.
11. Tariq Ali, 'Re-colonizing Iraq', New Left Review, 21, 2003, pp 1-19.
12. For a further elaboration of the ways in which Deleuze's concept of deterritorialisation informs Negri's theory of immanent power, see Julian Reid, 'Deleuze's war machine: nomadism against the state', Millennium, 32 (1), 2003, pp 57-85.
13. For example, see Robert Kagan, 'Power and weakness', Policy Review, 113, 2002, available at http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/kagan.html.
14. Cox, 'The empire's back in town', pp 13-14.
15. David Hastings Dunn, 'Myths, motivations and " misunderestimations": the Bush administration and Iraq', International Affairs, 79 (2), 2003, pp 279-297.
16. www.newamericancentury.org.
17. Audrey Kurth Cronin, 'Rethinking sovereignty: American strategy in the age of terrorism', Survival, 44 (2), 2002, pp 119-139.
18. The denouncement of the imperialism of US foreign policy can be traced back at least as far as the formation of the American Anti-Imperialist League in 1899.
19. See, for example, Ronald Bleier, 'Invading Iraq: the road to perpetual war', Middle East Policy, IX (4), 2002, pp 35-42;
20. Cox, The empire's back in town', pp 13-14;
21. Eland, 'The empire strikes out', p 5;
22. and Ali, 'Re-colonizing Iraq'.
23. See The imperial backlash on empire: Antonio Negri interviewed by Ida Dominijanni', at http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/000487.php.
24. Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 51-52.
25. For two excellent and nuanced accounts of Deleuze's theorisation of the relation of state sovereignty to processes of deterritorialisation, see Ronald Bogue, 'Apology for nomadology', Interventions, 6 (2), 2004, pp 169-179;
26. and Ulrike Kistner, 'Raison d'état: philosophy of and against the state', Interventions, 6(2), 2004, pp 242-251.
27. Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press, 2000, p 260.
28. As discussed in Dirk Messner & Franz Nuscheler, 'World politics - structures and trends', in Paul Kennedy, Dirk Messner & Franz Nuscheler (eds), Global Trends & Global Governance, London: Pluto Press, 2002, pp 125-155.
29. See Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 4-6 on this point.
30. Abbas Alnasrawi, 'Iraq: economic sanctions and consequences, 1990-2000', Third World Quarterly, 22(2), 2001, pp 205-218.
31. As laid out in Resolution 688 (5/4/91). Discussed in Peter Malanczuk, 'The Kurdish crisis and allied intervention in the aftermath of the second Gulf war', European Journal of International Law, 2, 1991, pp 114-132.
32. http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/background/fact-sheet.html.
33. Judith S Yaphe, 'America's war on Iraq: myths and opportunities', Adelphi Papers, 354 (1), 2003, pp 23-44.
34. G John Ikenberry, 'America's imperial ambition', Foreign Affairs, September-October 2002, p 81.
35. Roger MacGinty, The pre-war reconstruction of Iraq', Third World Quarterly, 24 (4), 2003, p 606.
36. http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N03/368/53/PDF/N0336853.pdf? OpenElement.
37. MacGinty, 'The pre-war reconstruction of Iraq', p 606.
38. MacGinty, 'The pre-war reconstruction of Iraq', Ibid, p 607.
39. Ikenberry, 'America's imperial ambition'.
40. Ikenberry, 'America's imperial ambition'. Ibid.
41. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War, Cambridge: Polity, 2003, pp 133-134.
42. Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War; Kosovo and Beyond, London: Vintage, 2001, p 201.
43. Adam Roberts, 'Law and the use of force after Iraq', Survival, 45 (2), 2003, pp 31-56.
44. Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, London: Athlone Press, 1999, p 509.
45. Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 1999 Ibid, pp 351-423.
46. Paul Patton, 'Future politics', in Paul Patton & John Protevi (eds), Between Deleuze & Derrida, London: Continuum, 2003, p 21.
47. Here I am paraphrasing Kistner's formulation whereby 'nomadism is haunted by the state that it attempts to ward off. Kistner, 'Raison d'état', p 250.
48. Hardt & Negri, Empire, pp 35-37.
49. A demand more substantially made by Paul Gilroy in his recent After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture, London: Routledge, 2004, pp 13-21.
50. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture 2004 Ibid, pp 91-92.
51. Kaldor, Global Civil Society, p 156.
52. Kaldor, Global Civil Society Ibid, 159.
53. Douglas Kellner, 'September 11, social theory and democratic polities', Theory, Culture & Society, 19 (4), 2002, p 158.
54. Benjamin Barber, 'The war of all against all: terror and the politics of fear', in Verna V Gehring (ed), War After September 11, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003, p 88.
55. Benjamin Barber, 'The war of all against all: terror and the politics of fear' War After September 2003 Ibid, p 76.
56. Kellner, 'September 11, social theory and democratic polities', p 158.