Alain Joxe: Weak Discipline or Decentralized Fascism?
After reading the impressive intervention of Paul Edwards I admire the brilliance and capacity of English language to shape a poetic formulation of the fading out of centralized systems and birth of a universe built as a web of webs, since the 70' or the 9O' under ruling free transnational business factories and banks. He produces suddenly the concept of "weak discipline" as a jump in a new epistemology outmoding what he calls "70s theorists of capillary power" Foucault Giddens Bourdieu. Capillarity means 'sub-millimetric flows of power' and it is not at all the Foucault’s or Bourdieu's definition for 'basic scale of power relationship' nor Giddens definition of democracy . I think we do not need to create a disordered epistemology to the limited benefit of getting a good empirical grasp on a disordered civilization. The question is not at all psychoanalytically to "free ourselves of Ur-images of closed systems". No human system has ever been closed, even academic disciplines, except in the creeds and deeds of some groups. But all systems of oppressive power has been hierarchical till now. Historically the so called 'weak discipline' is not a new civilization or culture, but clearly —(from the point of view of a historian of low roman empire or middle ages, or baroque modernization),— it is a barbarization and/or feudalization process, called "global privatization of global precocity". Emerging new transnational dominant classes are closer to a type of violent evangelist nobility or are behaving like feudal nobility between the first and the second crusade, unifying low level chivalry and princes dukes and counts, under kings of a new type, with OPA, new type of tourneys, concentrating new type of non geographical feuds, before going to the big new colonial expedition, when, on the contrary, the Pope wanted to send the warriors quickly to mid east war and alleviate the burden of war in Christianity. History is a enormous reserve of multifaceted paradigms. Foucault or Bourdieu was clearly defining power in a new sociology of oppression, posterior to central stateness. Bentham panoptic can be global or municipal targeting. But oppression is never based on a weak discipline but on a strong vertical discipline. Sometime non state- never non violent. The study of violent ordered disorder doesn’t need a "weak discipline" pattern but a strong transdisciplinary epistemology.
Paul Edwards is apparently taking for granted that "disciplinary techniques are productive not only for institutions but also for disciplined individuals" It has been certainly true of many ecclesiastical know how and also political regimes. But it can work, in the middle or long term, only if it is a system of regulation of inequalities and also of protection of social life. If not, the techniques are pure tactics and finally drive to social upheavals of peoples The Eurasian people which have 5000 years of historical culture of oppression, are perfectly aware by tradition to the fact that the Assyrian or Mongol type of oppression may and must be suddenly destroyed or self destroyed So the "weak disciplinary" techniques produces more indisciplined citizens than disciplined individuals.
Now, I prefer to keep in mind firmly the main object of meditation, electing priority of research and create usable concepts in the fight for social democracy. There is no global civilization but a militarization of global economic power by (Euramerican) military and financial domination. If this SYSTEM of domination is organized, thanks to the electronic-information -revolution, by an anarchical spreading of "hierarchies plates" and non centralized free market of private violence managed by free market enterprises, it doesn't mean that it is not a sy-stem ; furthermore, it is a syn-oecism (human being are still localized co-habitants and recently global cohabitants) and a set of class com-pacts (systems are not necessarily hardware geographical, but also software) It seems to me very important to stress that point, because actually the global society is a place where dominant actors are actively trying to sell the idea that the sy-stem is not centralized politically and, therefore, plays a completely new game out of human time-space, so the President and the big businessmen are devilish or divine ; instead it is clear that this is a pure ideological representation, typical of a highly centralized managerial class. The system is socio-economically and ideologically centralized . The concept of war on terror through "critical infrastructure protection" mentioned by Julian Reid is precisely the type of system crating conformity between neoliberal economy , vanishing politics and half private repressive hierarchical new systems. I agree that it could be called logistical life, if taking the full significance of logistics which is supposedly quantitative objective accounting of flow and stocks of arms and men, and totally authoritarian and unilateral. In fact the Jominian military concept ("Etat Major" means "total inventory") In comparison Clausewitz is an elegant pre-romantic not at all a stupid quantitatively escalating Prussian, and he's trying to think impermissibility of strategic interaction as the necessary framework of freedom and limitation for political people. We should cope with that logistical phenomenon by a global conceptual strategy and reshaping concepts for democratic fights through strategic interactions without blurring all definitions of sociological political and historical categories.
I agree with Ryan Bishop ( I have read too late (much better and Laconic than my heavy almost Germanical proposals) saying that the passage between two geopolitical/ technical world is not clean and neat and that de hierarchical vertical can articulate with horizontal flattened network And also with Ana Valdes Estoy convencido de que la aproximacion juridica actualmente es un lugar de creatividad critica muy importante porque fuente de rigor conceptual y etica en el desorden actual. Los juristas necesariamente empiricos mas que doctrinartios en el ambito international economico y militar, hacen un travbaro de hormiga, de recopilacion de todods los lugares en donde el desorden busca orden. Como el juez del Kreidekreis nombrado por soldados locos in situacion de excepcion, de guerra feodal con criterios CarlSchmittianos dice a veces el justo y el injusto de la mujer y del niño, Yo considero tambien que el golpe chileno puede ser definido como la primera accion violenta del neoliberaismo de guerra al comienzo de la transnacionalizacion del capital. La esperanza viaja.>
Alain Joxe
Paul Edwards is apparently taking for granted that "disciplinary techniques are productive not only for institutions but also for disciplined individuals" It has been certainly true of many ecclesiastical know how and also political regimes. But it can work, in the middle or long term, only if it is a system of regulation of inequalities and also of protection of social life. If not, the techniques are pure tactics and finally drive to social upheavals of peoples The Eurasian people which have 5000 years of historical culture of oppression, are perfectly aware by tradition to the fact that the Assyrian or Mongol type of oppression may and must be suddenly destroyed or self destroyed So the "weak disciplinary" techniques produces more indisciplined citizens than disciplined individuals.
Now, I prefer to keep in mind firmly the main object of meditation, electing priority of research and create usable concepts in the fight for social democracy. There is no global civilization but a militarization of global economic power by (Euramerican) military and financial domination. If this SYSTEM of domination is organized, thanks to the electronic-information -revolution, by an anarchical spreading of "hierarchies plates" and non centralized free market of private violence managed by free market enterprises, it doesn't mean that it is not a sy-stem ; furthermore, it is a syn-oecism (human being are still localized co-habitants and recently global cohabitants) and a set of class com-pacts (systems are not necessarily hardware geographical, but also software) It seems to me very important to stress that point, because actually the global society is a place where dominant actors are actively trying to sell the idea that the sy-stem is not centralized politically and, therefore, plays a completely new game out of human time-space, so the President and the big businessmen are devilish or divine ; instead it is clear that this is a pure ideological representation, typical of a highly centralized managerial class. The system is socio-economically and ideologically centralized . The concept of war on terror through "critical infrastructure protection" mentioned by Julian Reid is precisely the type of system crating conformity between neoliberal economy , vanishing politics and half private repressive hierarchical new systems. I agree that it could be called logistical life, if taking the full significance of logistics which is supposedly quantitative objective accounting of flow and stocks of arms and men, and totally authoritarian and unilateral. In fact the Jominian military concept ("Etat Major" means "total inventory") In comparison Clausewitz is an elegant pre-romantic not at all a stupid quantitatively escalating Prussian, and he's trying to think impermissibility of strategic interaction as the necessary framework of freedom and limitation for political people. We should cope with that logistical phenomenon by a global conceptual strategy and reshaping concepts for democratic fights through strategic interactions without blurring all definitions of sociological political and historical categories.
I agree with Ryan Bishop ( I have read too late (much better and Laconic than my heavy almost Germanical proposals) saying that the passage between two geopolitical/ technical world is not clean and neat and that de hierarchical vertical can articulate with horizontal flattened network And also with Ana Valdes Estoy convencido de que la aproximacion juridica actualmente es un lugar de creatividad critica muy importante porque fuente de rigor conceptual y etica en el desorden actual. Los juristas necesariamente empiricos mas que doctrinartios en el ambito international economico y militar, hacen un travbaro de hormiga, de recopilacion de todods los lugares en donde el desorden busca orden. Como el juez del Kreidekreis nombrado por soldados locos in situacion de excepcion, de guerra feodal con criterios CarlSchmittianos dice a veces el justo y el injusto de la mujer y del niño, Yo considero tambien que el golpe chileno puede ser definido como la primera accion violenta del neoliberaismo de guerra al comienzo de la transnacionalizacion del capital. La esperanza viaja.>
Alain Joxe