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 1
... become the disbelieving and contemptuous many . - In common with almost everyone , the writers of this book could hardly believe their eyes as they swung with the crowd into San Francisco's Market Street . Out of the torpor and ...
... become the disbelieving and contemptuous many . - In common with almost everyone , the writers of this book could hardly believe their eyes as they swung with the crowd into San Francisco's Market Street . Out of the torpor and ...
Page 3
... become nonpersons . Maybe an occasional Edmund Burke speaks out : " It is not with much credulity I listen to any ... becomes harder to bear . Elation is one thing , effectiveness another . “ If not what resolution from despare ... 1 ...
... become nonpersons . Maybe an occasional Edmund Burke speaks out : " It is not with much credulity I listen to any ... becomes harder to bear . Elation is one thing , effectiveness another . “ If not what resolution from despare ... 1 ...
Page 4
... become a reality . ? Maybe the new Spinozists have it right . Here at last was the multitude taking shape in the public sphere , already in possession of its own apparatus , by the look of it , its own spatiality , its own style ; and ...
... become a reality . ? Maybe the new Spinozists have it right . Here at last was the multitude taking shape in the public sphere , already in possession of its own apparatus , by the look of it , its own spatiality , its own style ; and ...
Page 8
... becomes an administrator , a cog in the machine made by automata for others of their kind.5 4 Friedrich Nietzsche , Thus Spoke Zarathustra , trans . Walter Kaufmann , in The Portable Nietzsche , New York 1954 , p . 129 . 5 Alexandre ...
... becomes an administrator , a cog in the machine made by automata for others of their kind.5 4 Friedrich Nietzsche , Thus Spoke Zarathustra , trans . Walter Kaufmann , in The Portable Nietzsche , New York 1954 , p . 129 . 5 Alexandre ...
Page 9
... become the present again : this is the mark of the moment we are trying to understand . ( It is " the end of Grand Narratives " and " the trap of totalization " and " the radical irreducibility of the political " which now seem like ...
... become the present again : this is the mark of the moment we are trying to understand . ( It is " the end of Grand Narratives " and " the trap of totalization " and " the radical irreducibility of the political " which now seem like ...
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.