audioaspects; last updated: November 2, 2004
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indefinite
spheres of sovereignty Spheres
of sovereignty are legitimated in forms that rely on control of
the legal and judicial systems, on the sustenance of political hierarchies,
on the application of military, police and investigatory systems,
on the regulation of the communication systems, on the management
of the information systems, - in short - spheres of sovereignty
are legitimated in forms that rely on the total control of culture.
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Transferred
into the floating sovereignty of the post 9.11 era, authority has
mutated into militarised ideologies which claim the entire planet
as a potential crime scene and establishes "state policing" as its
central principle. This comes too as a paradox in which a government
disclaims territoriality but enforces localized ideology. This merging
of imperial codes and empire logic is both reactionary and developmental.
It passionately roots the imperium as an entitlement of the good and
the just and it founds an empire on an renovated sovereignty. By mobilizing
itself as exempt from civil examination, it deprives the principle
it proposes to defend. By creating an overwhelming security apparatus
(or better a security ecosystem) it legitimates the "emergency state"
whose threat condition can never be reduced without undermining its
raison d'etre. Unable to sustain human rights, it substitutes itself
in their place. Instead of human rights, sovereign rights. This astonishing reversal liberates ideology from consensus. It detaches itself from accountability veiled behind secret rationalizations and self-legitimation. Not a conspiracy, it is a coup d'etat, an act of uprising in reverse, an insurgency against representative government itself. Floating above accusations, it nevertheless maintains a hold on the public sphere whether by legislated restrictions or by extra-legal means. Cowering below this looming territorial authority rights are no longer implicit-or inalienable-but either granted or denied, they are ostensible, not definite, subject to circumstance.  |
In order to provide cover for lingering and inconvenient territorial legalities, the new sovereignty invents indefinite spheres, zones in which legal status can be suspended, in which citizenship is invalidated, in which the assumption of innocence is thrown away, in which representation is denied. These civil black-holes are the holding-pens in which anyone can be a combatant. Joined with a tightening state security apparatus, the social sphere is increasingly one of confinement and risk. What used to be in the political sphere the "illegal immigrant," the refugee, the exiled, the other, has become, in an all too real sense, the world as a political asylum divided into combatants and non-combatants each existing under the reign of an irreproachable authority acting on a unsanctioned mandate. |
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