February 14, 2007
Re- Problematizing Terrorism: an epidemic approach
I was in Stanford yesterday and heard a fascinating lecture on “counter terrorism” by Paul Stares. The lecturer (who presented a USIP plan) suggested implementing the classic epidemiological model for defining and confronting the “future terror threat”.
I found this lecture crucial for many subjects:
- the bio-security configuration/ remediation (by the way he used terms “remedy” and “reform” in order to describe the “remediation” of terrorism)
- the application of “a bio model” and thinking through bio models about the social. (even though this new perspective was presented as a way to reduce uncertainty, is seems the bio model is generalizing the problem)
- the epidemic rationale suggested sounds like a rhizomic rationale (for both the problem and the solution), what does it mean in terms of preparedness “apparatus”?
- the changing definition of the threat from ”terrorism” to “militancy”, a much wider category like we have seen in with “risk” and “preparedness”.
- is it an emerging counter terror approach? re- problematizing terrorism?
I would love to hear your comments about: Rethinking the Global war on Terror: Counter Epidemic Approach
how is the political configured in this bio-model? Seems a major concern especially relative to the proposal of “immunization”.
One more thought:
The movement from “global” to “transnational” might be interpreted as the difference between a “general” threat and a “plural” threat. The general and the plural are no the same (like individual and singular…)
Whereas “the” “global” has a wide perspective yet unifying the components of the event, “a” “transnational” threat still holds wide perspective but its point of departure is the “plural”, “multiplicity” rather then the “common”.
Is preparedness holds a coherent perspective/ rationale/ logic toward all components of “biological threats”? Should we think of a different term that keeps the multiplicity in the level of objects and analytics? My suggestion: “pre-event configuration”.
On rhizomic rationality and millitary, an article on millitary academies that have made Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaux a core component of their theory course - http://www.metamute.org/?q=en/node/8192
There is a long history of casting pathogenic agents as “invisible enemies” that invade the body and threaten its health. The metaphorical transactions, as always, have gone back and forth: Just as pathogenic agents can be cast as enemies so can enemies as pathogenic agents. This goes back to at least Koch and is closely related to the ascendancy of bacteriology in the late 19th century.
Here is a good collection of essays on the topic:
http://www.suhrkamp.de/titel/titel.cfm?bestellnr=29407
This is fertile ground for cultural studies, it is less so, I think, for an anthropology of the contemporary. Metaphors may refresh and create a sense of newness even where there is none, and that’s where the danger lies. If metaphors are not matched up by practices one might end up following signifiers without a referent. If the newness doesn’t have an effect it might just be thin air.
The ideological is the object of study of cultural studies, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, this particular object allows cultural studies an interpretive authority that differs in important respects from an anthropological mode of engagement. The analysis of metaphors doesn’t discomfort the sovereignty of the hermeneutic subject very much. Work on concepts, in contrast, involves some kind of work on the self. Maybe this is something that might be worth discussing in relation to particular projects.
I think Carlo’s point is important… how do we develop it more? On the wiki (an entry on methaphor and method in the anthropology of the contemporary?)? Another blog post/discussion?
[...] right now (”The Social” on the Biopower and the Contemporary Blog , The discussion of metaphor and ideology on Lab Notes and the revisting of mode on Lab Notes), I’ve decided to take it [...]
Some of us reading selections from D&G last week arrived at the question of whether or not a rhizome was a metaphor. We decided it was and it wasn’t - which didn’t help very much. The above discussion on the distinction between concept and metaphor helps clarify things a bit, and a further discussion through wiki or blog would help even more. The distinction seems crucial for developing a (way of using) language that can give form to a situation and so make it available for thought, without at the same time neutralizing it into surface novelty.
how about “trope” ?
I think the rhizome is logic. Logic of how things are connected in the world. A metaphor of the rhizome will be the map.
“All tree logic is a logic of tracing and reproduction. The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. A map has multiple entry ways as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back “to the same”. (TP, 12)
In addition, doing concept work with a rhizomic perspective, as I understand it, will be done “from the middle”, as they say:
“it’s not easy to see things in the middle, rather than looking down on them from above or up at them from below, or from left to right or right to left: try it, you’ll see that everything changes.” (TP, 23)
So concepts are neither ideal type, nor metaphors, but hold the logic of “and”; empirical concept work. (“think with AND instead of thinking IS, instead of thinking for IS: empiricism has never had another secret”.(PI, 11)
This logic is different from the question of whether “metaphors matched up by practices” or not. Or “If the newness doesn’t have an effect it might just be thin air.” Concepts make connections not between the ideal world and the actual practices, but between practices in the real world. And there is nothing beyond that, just more of that.