Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of WarAfflicted Powers is an account of world politics since September 11, 2001. It aims to confront the perplexing doubleness of the present’s lethal mixture of atavism and new-fangledness. The world careers backward into forms of ideological and geo-political combat that call to mind the Scramble for Africa, and the Wars of Religion. But this brute return of the past is accompanied by an equally monstrous political deployment of (and entrapment in) the apparatus of a hyper-modern production of appearances. Capital is on the move again. In the Middle East and elsewhere it is attempting, nakedly, a new round of primitive accumulation and enclosure. Now, however, it is obliged to do so in unprecedented circumstances. Never before has imperialist victory or defeat depended so much on a struggle for hegemony in the world of images; never before has the dominant world power been subject to real catastrophe in the realm of the spectacle. The present turn to empire and enclosure, what Retort terms military neo-liberalism, is confronted not only by various forms of radical Islam but by a new kind of vanguard armed with the toolkit of spectacular politics. This book attempts to rethink certain key aspects of the current global struggle within this overall perspective, and to provide some critical support for present and future oppositions. Its main themes are the spectacle and September 11, blood for oil, permanent war and illusory peace, the US–Israel relationship, revolutionary Islam, and modernity and terror. |
From inside the book
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Page 6
... al - Qaida had redrawn the political map . It is one thing to recoil from the uses our masters have made of the " threat " . It is another not to recognize that the threat is real . Opposition to the War on Terror , we believe , ought ...
... al - Qaida had redrawn the political map . It is one thing to recoil from the uses our masters have made of the " threat " . It is another not to recognize that the threat is real . Opposition to the War on Terror , we believe , ought ...
Page 7
... al- Qaida . Most revivalisms turn out to be deeply in love with aspects of the present they claim to despise . But as a marker of what it is in al - Qaida's vision of agency and temporality that differ- entiates it from almost all ...
... al- Qaida . Most revivalisms turn out to be deeply in love with aspects of the present they claim to despise . But as a marker of what it is in al - Qaida's vision of agency and temporality that differ- entiates it from almost all ...
Page 12
... al - Qaida's deployment of the same cyber - apparatus , and at the whole recent dynamic of spec- tacular politics , will let us decide if the " something " is smoke and mirrors or truly the beginning of a new offensive . But the problem ...
... al - Qaida's deployment of the same cyber - apparatus , and at the whole recent dynamic of spec- tacular politics , will let us decide if the " something " is smoke and mirrors or truly the beginning of a new offensive . But the problem ...
Page 14
... al - Qaida strikes on Madrid - and outright defeat in the war of appearance is something no present- day hegemon can tolerate . ( This is our topic in Chapter 1. ) If the Left is to survive as a political entity , it seems to us that ...
... al - Qaida strikes on Madrid - and outright defeat in the war of appearance is something no present- day hegemon can tolerate . ( This is our topic in Chapter 1. ) If the Left is to survive as a political entity , it seems to us that ...
Page 15
... al - Qaida . Our subject – if we were pressed to sum it up in an inevitably clunky phrase is the contradic- tions of military neo - liberalism under conditions of spectacle . Distinguishing the old from the new in this hell is a task to ...
... al - Qaida . Our subject – if we were pressed to sum it up in an inevitably clunky phrase is the contradic- tions of military neo - liberalism under conditions of spectacle . Distinguishing the old from the new in this hell is a task to ...
Other editions - View all
Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War Iain A. Boal,T.J. Clark,Joseph Matthews,Michael Watts No preview available - 2005 |
Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War Iain A. Boal,T.J. Clark,Joseph Matthews,Michael Watts No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
Afflicted Powers Afghanistan al-Qaida al-Zawahiri American apparatus Arab argue argument arms Asia attacks Ayman al-Zawahiri Baghdad barrels believe Blood for Oil bombing Bush capital capitalist civil Cold War commodity course crisis Debord decade defeat democracy economic empire enemy European force geopolitical global Gulf Guy Debord House of Saud human ideological imperial insurgency invasion Iraq Iraqi Islamists Israel Israeli jahiliya Jihad Left London Marx massive means Middle East militant military neo-liberalism million modern movement Muslim Muslim Brotherhood neo-liberalism occupation oil companies oil prices Olivier Roy OPEC Palestinian past peace percent petroleum political Islam present primitive accumulation production Qu'ran question Qutb Qutb's radical reality regimes resistance revolution revolutionary Islam Saddam Saudi Arabia secular September 11 Shi'ite social society spectacle spectacular state's strategic struggle tactics Terror threat tion turn vanguard ideal Wahhabism words worldwide York Zionism
Popular passages
Page 12 - But, on the other hand, these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal arrangements. And the history of this, their expropriation, is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.
Page 8 - I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.