Is It Still Paranoia If You’re Right?
The Washington Post has an interesting article up today outlining some illegal activities in which the FBI engaged in the collection of phone records in the counter-terrorism fight by failing to adhere to their own procedures and, “technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.”
Of course, the whole article is worth a read, but a line from the beginning caught my eye in particular,
Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately.
I believe that that is true and, in fact, I believe that under the vast majority of recent cases involving improper to illegal behaviour, those involved were not intending to do wrong and were labouring under the sincere belief that their actions were designed specifically to avoid a greater potential wrongdoing. The sincerity of that belief is why I find it so dangerous and, in no small part, why I think a healthy skepticism about the actions of government, especially in those recesses of those dark corners of gray, isn’t just warranted — it is mandatory.
I am not naturally skeptical of government, or, at least, not in a particularly knee-jerk fashion. There are many areas wherein I believe that the involvement of government can bring a lot of good (my views on health care are a good example). In this regard, I make a poor libertarian — I lack the die-hard quality of a staunch individualist.
But, as I’ve suggested in the past, if I am in part libertarian leaning, it is in a Foucauldian sense, if I may, vis-a-vis my skepticism towards centres of power themselves and the perfectly predictable behaviour that tends to flow out of the centres of power. To quote the man directly,
By power… I do not understand a general system of domination exercised by one element or one group over another, whose effects… traverse the entire body social… It seems to me that first what needs to be understood is the multiplicity of relations of force that are immanent to the domain wherein they are exercised, and that are constitutive of its organization; the game that through incessant struggle and confrontation transforms them, reinforces them, inverts them; the supports these relations of force find in each other, so as to form a chain or system, or, on the other hand, the gaps, the contradictions that isolate them from each other; in the end, the strategies in which they take effect, and whose general pattern or institutional crystallization is embodied in the mechanisms of the state, in the formulation of the law, in social hegemonies. The condition of possibility of power… should not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique space of sovereignty whence would radiate derivative and descendent forms; it is the moving base of relations of force that incessantly induce, by their inequality, states of power, but always local and unstable. Omnipresence of power: not at all because it regroups everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced at every instant, at every point, or moreover in every relation between one point and another. Power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere.
So when I express a predilection towards skepticism in regards to the actions of government, especially in regards to issues like torture, it is not so much that I am coming from an clean Manichean dualism of black and white, good and evil. It is rather that I read statements like the above offered by bureau officials and see a demarcation of power relations that have set in not just in terms of government, but more broadly in the mindsets of a whole swath of perfectly well-intentioned individuals.
One looks around and one sees the wreckage of what is largely understood to be the illegitimate invasion of another country, one sees a twenty-first century Department of Justice conjuring legal justifications for the use of torture, one sees horrible displays like those at Abu Ghraib, one sees an explicit rejection of due process in the existence of a place like Guantanamo Bay, one sees the infringement of civil liberties by legislation like the Patriot Act and FISA all of which is delivered under the hospice of “working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack”.
And, of course, if one is so audacious as to question all or any of these instances of abuse of power that warrant good reason for concern on their own, let alone taken as a sum, one is almost immediately accused of being some sympathizer or another, of not really caring about the security of the country — nay, the world! — and of being paranoid, of course. It is, in many regards, inexcusable to point these disconcerting instances out and ask questions about their appropriateness and seek remediation where clear wrongdoing has been perpetrated because doing so questions the integrity and honour of those involved. And, after all, those involved, “were not violating the law deliberately”.
But all of these sign posts seem to point to a reality that we not only face, but that has been embedded into the very way we seem to look at and understand the world: that not only are we beset by enemies and that we are at constant war with those enemies — that is a relatively old trope — but that those enemies are among us, they work with us, they shop with us, they are married to us, and they might not even know they are the enemy, but at any moment, they could turn. So you must be vigilant and unrelenting in your pursuit to ferret out and destroy these enemies for the good of our common way of life.
And no doubt there is danger and we need to be on our guard. It is a good thing that agencies like the FBI and CIA are tracking groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban and that attempts are constantly under way stop the needless deaths of innocent individuals, both home and abroad.
But the very justice of this cause is that which most subversively turns it against itself. It is the obvious and inherent goodness of our fight that makes it such a useful lever of power. And it is the personal responsibility that so perfectly ensconces the implementation of power in our sense of self and duty. It is in our belief that lives hang immanently in the balance that we are able to commit atrocious acts ranging from inappropriate to indecent and inhuman and forgive and overlook excess and indiscretions.
We all feel it in a personal way and that is why it is so powerful, overwhelming, and effective.
And so, at the end of the day, that common way of life is maintained, despite the ravages of 9-11 and Al Qaeda and Islamo-fascism. We have risen to the challenge of meeting these attacks upon ourselves and our way of life and in the zest of our principled stance, we don’t even think to question what we may have lost along the way or how we might look to get it back. And we don’t even have the eyes to see what we may well have closed ourselves off to realizing in the future anymore.
In short, I look around and I see ample reason to be skeptical of the actions of government, ample indication that the centres of power have circled their wagons, and ample evidence that we’ve assisted in that process. What’s left is to ask what one intends to do about it.
20 comments
Yes, yes, one thousand times yes!!!
(It’s strange how the template of “if you oppose X, then that means that you support the wholesale slaughter of children!” works so very well no matter the value of X even after all this time.)
There is also the added hypocrisy that excuses such violations of law amongst law enforcement while demanding zero-tolerance of law-breaking among the general population.
So even if you did not intend to break a law, or did so for just and honest reasons, you are still in violation and must be prosecuted.
Bob Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I tend to agree, after-all, courts are established with this sort of nuance.
Bob Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
“established to deal with this sort of nuance.”
Jeez.
Mr. Prosser Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 6:22 am
In the extreme this hypocrisy is what establishes a subculture which works below the surface of society, establishing networks to work around the law; the Sicilian mafia in its early days, the black market networks of eastern Europe during the Cold War, Yakuza during the Shogunate, etc. They were originally acknowledged as legitimate by the citizenry, or at least tolerated.
Send all the foreigners to Canada!
North Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
They have room in Canada for all the foreigners Bob but what on earth are all us Americans going to do stuffed together on the tundra and what on earth will the indians do rattling around by themselves in the USA?
Northie, I thought we won that one? See my Indian remarks here:
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/01/the-heart-of-light-and-the-heart-of-darkness/
Try though I may, I can’t get a good fight started anywhere?
Nice comments at PoMoCon…did you read my reply?
North Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Not yet but I shall.
North Reply:
January 19th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
I have and I’ve replied in turn. You’re a generous man Bob and if my wit has overcome my courtesy then I apologize. It is only in hindsight that it occurred to me that my response might be crass to the devout.
Scott, I share your general skepticism about power, particularly when it comes to government, and I’m certainly more sympathetic to Foucault the older I get. The question I’ve always had about his ideas, like the above, is whether he ever offered any model of a non-alienated social interaction. I can’t think of any. And if power comes from everywhere, it sounds like we’d be doomed in trying to find one. Which suggests, to me, that every attempt to collectively resist power is doomed to be just another exercise of power. I find that sort of hopeless in some way.
I’ve asked the Foucaultian profs in my department about this, some of whom actually knew the man (he actually slept on one of my adviser’s couch for a few weeks); and I’ve never gotten an answer. One of them said, “Oh, that’s just the cliche criticism of Foucault”.
Maybe so, and I definitely agree that taking a spoonful of Foucault is good for maintaining healthy skepticism of all potential points of power. But I don’t know how to take the ideas to any logical conclusion without wanting to live alone or kill myself.
Jaybird Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 8:34 am
Rufus, the argument I’ve always seen is a variant of “there aren’t any, give me an example of one”.
And every example is then deconstructed.
Scott H. Payne Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 9:26 am
Rufus, cliche or not, I think you’ve hit on the key critique of Foucault’s thinking. Here, I guess, would be his response (emphasis mine),
I try to carry out the most precise and discriminative analyses I can in order to show in what ways things change, are transformed, are displaced. When I study the mechanisms of power, I try to study their specificity… I admit neither the notion of a master nor the universality of his law. On the contrary, I set out to grasp the mechanisms of the effective exercise of power; and I do this because those who are inserted in these relations of power, who are implicated therein, may, through their actions, their resistance, and their rebellion, escape them, transform them—in short, no longer submit to them. And if I do not say what ought to be done, it is not because I believe there is nothing to be done. Quite on the contrary, I think there are a thousand things to be done, to be invented, to be forged, by those who, recognizing the relations of power in which they are implicated, have decided to resist or escape them. From this point of view, my entire research rests upon the postulate of an absolute optimism. I do not undertake my analyses to say: look how things are, you are all trapped. I do not say such things except insofar as I consider this to permit some transformation of things. Everything I do, I do in order that it may be of use.
Which is, I suppose, to say that for Foucault, the heart of resistance lies not in theorizing about it, but in the embodiment of it and that there is no one way or no overarching praxis of resistance but, as he suggests, thousands of paper cuts of resistance. Being as that Foucault was one of the pre-immanent postmodernists, this answer is not altogether surprising, but I would be lying if I said that there remains something unsettling about the tension you point out.
As it turns out, I recently wrote an essay that dealt with almost precisely this dilemma that will be posted on a different site to which I will be contributing in the near future (the site has yet to launch). So without spoiling myself, let me say that I think the logical conclusion is that there is no escaping the contexts of power relations to which Foucault points, but that that ought not to lead you to hermitism or suicide. Why will be forthcoming in a link to the piece.
Great thoughts, as always.
Scott H. Payne Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 9:37 am
Sorry, I should say: I would be lying if I saif that there doesn’t remain something unsettling…
You mean the argument from Foucaultians or his critics? I’d promise not to deconstruct any examples from his work. Actually, I’m wondering if his stance on the Iranian Revolution, which everyone criticizes, doesn’t suggest that a religious movement could somehow avoid the trap of becoming a conduit for power. Certainly the French Romantics (Chateaubriand, Lamartine, etc) thought as much, and I’ve always considered Foucault to be a Romantic more than anything.
I don’t know. Like I’ve suggested, I have mixed feelings on old Mickey Foucault. I’m in a history department where Foucault resided for a year or so and upon arrival was encouraged to read pretty much everything he wrote in seminars. I definitely think there are some very useful hermeneutics there, but I’ve had some colleagues who probably forget to take him with a grain of salt.
Jaybird Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 9:15 am
No, I mean, when you said “The question I’ve always had about his ideas, like the above, is whether he ever offered any model of a non-alienated social interaction”.
I’ve seen this question asked and the answer I’ve seen given is “well, could *YOU* give me an example of a non-alienated social interaction?”
And students then get the pleasure of watching a professor explain the power dynamics between the student and his or her mother/sibling/lover or whomever s/he happens to offer as an example.
Ah, okay. I’ve seen this too! But there’s got to be degrees of power, right? I think, okay, so there’s power dynamics between me and, say, my butcher; but it’s got to be of a different sort than between me and the cop who just pulled me over, and that’s hopefully qualitatively different than between the dissident and the secret police in an authoritarian state. Because, otherwise, it’s hard to see how any sort of collective endeavors aren’t pretty much screwed.
And I think Foucaultians (although maybe not Foucault?) often forget the differences. I remember a classmate in university, who earned the nickname Phil Foucault, who used to chide us for suggesting that someone like Saddam Hussein was a vicious tyrant by saying, “Oh and you don’t think the state has power over its people in this country?” I felt like he was too reductivist. My hope is that this was just some sort of “vulgar Foucaultianism”, although I could never really tell reading Foucault’s stuff.
I will note that when I found his books in France (where they’re a lot less popular, incidentally), I noticed the French editions were often twice as long as the English. So, maybe there’s a lot there that’s missing. Or maybe I just missed it in the English. It wasn’t a revelatory experience for me like it was for some people and so I probably skimmed more than I should have.
Scott H. Payne Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Absolutely. In terms of Foucauldian/Foucaultian analysis, I tend to think of power as an ontologically relational process rather than a specific entity. It is under constant negotiation depending on the micro-context of it’s dynamic poles, or agents, if you will.
Rufus Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Ah, okay- I can see why he’s been so influential in cultural history. A lot of cultural history (my own included, although not nearly as much as other people’s) tends to focus on culture/discourse as an arena of power negotiations, with a lot of jockeying between several loci of power. The positive side is that it gets us away from dreary 70s Marxian ideas of the ever-oppressed and the ever-oppressive, showing instead how individuals make use of whatever they can to their advantage, even if they have considerably less power than other groups. I think the downside is that, at some point, it makes it hard for us to say what cultural ideas were actually true and not just vehicles of power-negotiation- and even the suggestion that a historian might make such decisions about truth is pretty much considered vulgar among many of our profs.
Incidentally, I’m about to lose access to this computer (foiled by power yet again!) so, hopefully it won’t seem rude if I’m not around.
Scott H. Payne Reply:
January 20th, 2010 at 10:25 am
No worries. Let me end of by saying two things:
1.) Just because we talk about power being everywhere, does not, necessarily, imply an omnipresence or totalizing pervasiveness. Power may be everywhere, but it is not all that there is everywhere.
2.) In forwarding a radical anti-essentialism, I think one has to acknowledge that while relations of power are a pervasive element of our understanding of the world and ourselves, they are not necessarily or by definition a negative influence. Those relations simply are there, do influence us, and tend to have certain proclivities. This is especially true following from my suggestion above that there is no specific entity that is power to which certain attributes can be applied, but rather an applicable relational process that is manifested through particular agents (primarily human beings, though, not necessarily exclusively).