The biopolitics of the war on terror: Life struggles, liberal modernity and the defence of logistical societies

by Julian Reid

This is a book which completely overturns existing understandings of the origins and futures of the War on Terror for the purposes of International Relations theory. As the author shows, this is not a war in defence of the integrity of human life against an enemy defined simply by a contradictory will for the destruction of human life as commonly supposed by its liberal advocates. It is a war over the political constitution of life in which the limitations of liberal accounts of humanity are being put to the test if not rejected outright. Seeking a way out of this conflict must in turn mean learning to question the limits of existing understandings of what constitutes human life and its political potentialities. The pursuit of such a line of questioning is integral to the biopolitical analysis developed in this book.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published June 12, 2007

Reviews

[Nmoversae Company · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book
شركة نقل اثاث
شركة نقل اثاث دبي
نقل عفش في العين
نقل أثاث الشارقة
نقل اثاث في دبي
نقل اثاث الفجيرة
نقل اثاث خورفكان
نقل اثاث العين
نقل اثاث الشارقة
نقل اثاث الرويس
نقل اثاث راس الخيمة
نقل اثاث المصفح

[Lukáš · Rating 5 out of 5]

While one can angrily question whether the discipline of IR has at all even cared about engaging the concept of Terror, especially because of its reduction of the 'problem' to its own theoretical and empirical superficiality, this book looks at Terror as a political strategy that operates at the conjuncture of different struggles. While taking up the problem that liberal modernity, especially in the thought of Foucault is theoretically conceived as a military project invading the civil society with discipline, the book instead uses the cases of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; Jean Baudrillard; Paul Virilio and Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt as 'case studies' for thinking about the Terror struggles, their relation to subjectivity and the martial constitution of modern life.
In particular, the chapters about Deleuze and Virilio are entertaining in their engagement, using the examples of nomadism and architecture as fields of struggle, and in particular to how the War on Terror 'spills' into territories of movement, its liberation and containment, while pointing to the successes and failures of this kind of engagement.
In general, if one cares more about exploring the ways of thinking about the problem of Terror as a strategy of governance instead of merely staying satisfied with what this or that politician said, this book might come handy for its profound and sophisticated engagements.