audioaspects; last updated: November 2, 2004
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Interfacing
different logics and codings of transnational space and power
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Transnational, indefinite territories Global information technologies are pro-ducing new territorial principles of order , new logics of space. These new constituting territorial logics are produced by forms of transnational power. Transnational sovereignty invents indefinite spaces, 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. Unlawful logics Thus these new indefinite territories of power are often outside the law, outside the protocols governing civilized conflicts, and often produces more and more NON-public spheres. On the other hand : Identity via exclusions of unlawful persons : "Western" and European civilization seeks to define itself over and against a population understood as, by definition, illegitimate. Transnational power is characterized by connecting extraterritorial sovereignty with bio politics (forms of power ordering over the life and the body) Extraterritorial logics Exterritoriality describes a logics of space which is outside of the state and it's law system but are yet controlled by the referring state power and sovereignty. Exterritoriality performs logics of Inclusive exclusion:  |
On one hand sovereign power segregates and excludes , on the other it includes and occupy the excluded. Thus it enables an occupation of transnational space and an Extension of power, exterritorial to the national state but within a territory of a world public, there lies the chance for the engagement of the public. Examples for extraterritorial spaces are Guantanamo and aircraft carriers used as detainment camps, military bases of Bagram excluded from the world public, islands like the British military base Diego Garcia, (total isolated 1500km away from the next territory), islands north of Australia mainland figuring as detention camps for boat people, the actual envisioned European detention camps in Libya, Morocco for African Migrants and Asylum seekers trying to entering Europe. These camps are examples that the new sovereign is not longer ordering the norms of law and the forms of life in a through borders defined territory but is using extraterritories as elements for constituting power. All these detention camps are test fields for parallel law systems and parallel sovereignties. State of exception manifests in different forms of extrateritoriality. It has become the regulator of democratic spaces. It is defined by the law which includes the form of the bare life through its own suspension. |
A
recent example is military order of the US president over "Detention,
Treatment and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism"
after Sept.11 The state of emergency with suspended law is not only
inherent to law and power, it is their pre-condition. Moving border logics Sovereignty is emerging from borders and is imposing borders. The function of the border is a demarcation from external enemies and a criminalization of inner enemies. The border is par excellence the location where the controls and guarantees of the law systems are lifted, it is the undemocratic condition of the democracy. Borders are no longer the external borders of democracy, which functioned as protective walls for civil rights which had no contact direct with the life of citizens They move now into the centres , into the global cities. Control of persons taking no longer place on border lines, but in often invisible detention zones inside cities, in urban areas functioning as filtering facilities. Imperative: Democratising of borders, putting collective control on them, under the sovereignty of people. |
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