Georgina Kilborn- Final Entry (no. 7)

To view this course as if it were a text is to go beyond the conventional theories of war and peacemaking as grand achievements orchestrated by “great men”. Rather, this course offers insight into the polycentric nature of both violent and peaceful events, in which viruses, drones, reports and surveillance mechanisms are as capable as human agency in accomplishing such outcomes. 

By beginning with Tolstoy’s pluralistic and less rational and actor-centred interpretation of history-making, the foundations were laid for exploring how ‘great movements of people’ throughout history come about. He employs inharmonious elements such as inevitability and freewill, the State and Power, morality and physical strength, freedom and necessity and consciousness and reason, to describe how the antagonistic dualism between these forces can be used to analyse our conception of history. In doing so, he initiates polemics against “historians” who idealise the role of powerful men.

Fittingly complementing and serving as an extension of the Tolstoyan model, was the inclusion of Latour’s, “The Pasteurisation of France” into the course. Latour restores to history the role of unreason and chance. He widens the range of actors and gives war a scientific analogy, through an analysis of Pasteur’s scientific revolution and it’s engineering as a key social transformation in France. Interestingly, Latour takes issue with sociologists and how the division of society and nature has been organised in modern times, therefore destructing the walls between society and science. He thus eschews many social scientist methods, preferring an inductive approach- analysing the problem from below. He emphasises the importance of associations between ‘actants’ and how the movements of these networks function to create power. HIs introduction of medicine and biopolitics to study power resembles Foucauldian method. However, where Latour enters his analysis of power relations through the laboratory, Foucault commences with the study of powerful discourse and knowledge.

Thus, Foucault’s “Society must be defended”, serves as a perfect link to the content of the course thus far. Foucault offers an insightful theory for our conception of human society, in which war functions as a model through which social relations can be interpreted in times of both peace and war. His "historico-political” discourse, on perpetual war, is evident in all instruments of power, therefore offering a robust assessment of sovereignty. Foucault focuses on power at the level where it is invested in real intentions and practices. So, where Foucault is interested in the ‘how’ of power and looks to its micro levels, he is essentially against liberal and Marxist deductive methods of analysis.

The idea that war is never averted but is an ever-present undercurrent in our ‘peaceful’ society, infiltrating the fabric of modern politics, institutions and its discourses, is evident in our inquiry into the ‘report’. The technology of the ‘report’ is not to be forgotten as a new mode of control and violence, as is purported by Taussig and more recently established in the decoding of NSA files by whistlelower, Edward Snowden. An interesting discussion explored in this week of study was the concept of the ‘middle man’ or ‘trickster’. Taussig cites the “muchachos” as occupying the middle space and similarly, whistle-blowers such as Snowden fill the invaluable position between two camps- in this case between the NSA and the population. This is a powerful position in which the actor can speak to both sides but is at high risk.

The paradigms of war and peace have been exponentially expanded by the technology of the drone, as is illuminated by Derek Gregory. For me, this enquiry was particularly pertinent as it elucidated the new ‘morals’ of the war on terror, as well as the micro processes of how the war is being waged, thereby looking beyond the ‘terrorist’ as a central agent in international war making.

Further, counterinsurgency confinements constitute fixtures of asymmetric wars elucidates Khalili. For Khalili, the state is the locus of power, and while this is contradictory to Foucault’s conception of how power arises, she nevertheless offers an interesting evaluation of how a state can be liberal but maintain illiberal practices in the context of incarceration.

The notion of ‘blurring’ can be seen to tie our studies on the report, the drone and counterinsurgency confinement, neatly together. When analysing drone wars, we noted that there are blurred boundaries and legal parameters in the international ‘war zone’. In the context of the report, covert operations and counterterrorism mechanisms constituted a blurring on behalf of the state. Moreover, in terms of incarceration, active secrecy and objects such as CIA black sites, embody the notion of blurring.

Thus, if this course were itself a text, it would be praised for linking recognised theories with post-colonial events in an insightful and thoughtfully interlaced manner. The works studied have provided a broad foundation from which the traditional notions of leaders, chains of command and strategies can be undermined in order to better understand power relations in the context of war and peace.