Soundings a journal of politics and culture |
‘Bare life’ - or mere life - is a phrase that has recently been brought into debate by Giorgio Agamben.1 It is used to signal a contrast between mere biological life and human life as cultural, political and civic. This distinction raises many questions about what it means to be - and to be recognised as - fully human.
In the enlightenment tradition, citizenship of a nation state implies rights, recognition, membership of a legitimate collectivity. The concept of human rights, though ostensibly a universal term, is closely connected to this idea; it is underpinned by quite complex ideas about what constitutes membership of humanity. As neoliberal globalisation intensifies some of these underpinnings are beginning to unravel. Nation states are less powerful; millions live beyond the protection of states, whether as internally displaced people or as refugees; and an increasing number of countries are regarded as failed states or rogue states. Alongside these developments, the United States has adopted a much more interventionist global stance in recent years. Its promotion of global markets has become infused with a revived sense of its mission to spread ‘civilisation’ to what it increasingly sees as barbarian badlands (see Jonathan Rutherford’s commentary in this issue for more on this). All this is very bad news for the large proportion of the world’s population that is at risk of slipping into a condition of ‘mere life’.
In this issue, several contributors discuss terror and the ‘war’ against it. Faisal Devji focuses on Al-Qaeda, which, he argues, is itself the product of globalisation. He sees parallels between Al-Qaeda and other global movements, all of which have no forum in which they can have political purchase. This means that their politics is based on ethics and identity, rather than taking the form of a political organisation that is focused on transforming a state. He also shows how Al-Qaeda flourishes in the interstices of the global marketplace - its existence is dependent on the global mobility of people and money. This is a movement that is dissolving traditional Islamic politics - hence its appeal to the young. Faisal Devji’s approach is interesting because it treats Al-Qaeda as a political response to world events, rather than as a monster besieging the gates of civilisation.
Kurt Jacobsen documents the rise and rise of the rehabilitation of the strategy of ‘pacification’ in the United States. He traces the continuities between the pacification of the wild west and modern day military strategy. He shows how this policy failed totally in Vietnam - mainly because of the huge contradiction between winning hearts and minds (which is theoretically part of the strategy) and bombing and napalming people. An outside state’s model of civilisation - however defined - is not something that can be violently imposed on another country. Violent imposition is predicated on a refusal to give credence to the standpoint of those who oppose you; it stems from regarding your opponent as less than fully human. And, as Mike Rustin shows in his discussion of Robert McNamara’s recent recantations, this is an unlikely pathway to conflict resolution - and hence to any real peace.
Sayeed Khan looks at the history of Afghanistan in the last century and a half. He shows how successive attempts at imposed ‘modernisation’ have resulted in the entrenchment of conservatism. The polarisations of the cold war then led the West to side with the mujahidin, with tragic and destabilising consequences for the region. The attempt to defend against the encroachments of the old communist enemy have helped to give birth to something even more frightening.
Doreen Massey identifies the beast that is driving so much of this agenda. She reminds us that it is important not to think of globalisation as something that always arrives from somewhere else. In her discussion of the GLA’s London Plan, she draws attention to the fact that London - especially the City of London - is a main site in the production of neoliberal globalisation. This means that when we celebrate diversity, we should not forget the external effects of London’s position as a world city (and this argument is generalisable to other global centres). We need to contest this aspect of London’s role much more actively.
Many of those who live within the walls of civilisation also experience less than full recognition of their humanity. Ejos Ubiribo’s moving contribution shows the pain that fuels the gun crime epidemic among some subcultures of young black men in Britain. Through her dialogues with people involved in this life, she succeeds in conveying the sense of exclusion that drives people to try to seize their own version of the good life (money and respect - as in the mainstream) through violence. That this is a strategy borne of desperation can be seen in the death and destruction it has brought to so many.
Ruth Lister also draws attention to a key flaw in New Labour’s ‘respect agenda’; it has completely overlooked the lack of recognition and respect from dominant groups in society towards those who live in poverty. In pointing to the many exclusions experienced by those living on low incomes - from consumption, from recognition, from power, from dignity - she calls for the respect agenda to be turned upside down.
Elsewhere in the issue, Robin Wilson argues that making concessions to communalism, as in the Belfast Agreement of 1998, is no solution to inter-ethnic conflict. Instead he calls for a politics based on more fluid conceptions of identity and a civic cosmopolitanism. Richard Minns discusses the gradual transformation of the Israeli state - once firmly anchored in a corporatist Labour Zionism, it has now adapted itself to the neoliberal norm. These changes are analysed through the prism of what is going on in pension funds - institutions that are hugely important both financially and socially, and are consequently excellent barometers of wider attitudes.
Pat Devine argues that after the falling apart of the postwar settlement in 1970s, a move towards neoliberalism was not inevitable. The political history of this period, as well as alternatives put forward by the left at that time, is worth revisiting, since we are still living with the consequences of the reverses we suffered then. Finally, Janet Newman offers some interesting reflections on competing ideas about the nature of the public and the different terrains across which battles are currently being fought. The retreat of the public under the onslaught of the market is another process which has been underway since the 1970s, and here too, as Janet argues, it is important to go beyond social democratic conceptions of the public sphere if we are to make a serious challenge to creeping marketisation.
1. See Giorgio Agamben, ‘Form-of-life’, Means Without End, University of Minnesota Press. The term ‘mere life’ comes from the work of Walter Benjamin - see ‘Critique of Violence’ in One Way Street and Other Writings, Verso 1985. For a discussion of bare life in relation to asylum seekers, see also Nira Yuval Davis, ‘Human security and asylum seeking’, Mediactive 4 Asylum.
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