Empire (6 page)

exclusion proper to rule are thus increasingly interiorized within

the subjects themselves. Power is now exercised through machines

that directly organize the brains (in communication systems, infor-

mation networks, etc.) and bodies (in welfare systems, monitored

activities, etc.) toward a state ofautonomous alienation from the

sense of life and the desire for creativity. The society of control

might thus be characterized by an intensification and generalization

ofthe normalizing apparatuses ofdisciplinarity that internally ani-

mate our common and daily practices, but in contrast to discipline,

this control extends well outside the structured sites ofsocial institu-

tions through flexible and fluctuating networks.

Second, Foucault’s work allows us to recognize the
biopolitical

nature ofthe new paradigm ofpower.2 Biopower is a form of power

that regulates social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, 24

T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T

absorbing it, and rearticulating it. Power can achieve an effective

command over the entire life of the population only when it be-

comes an integral, vital function that every individual embraces and

reactivates ofhis or her own accord. As Foucault says, ‘‘Life has

now become . . . an object ofpower.’’3 The highest function of

this power is to invest life through and through, and its primary

task is to administer life. Biopower thus refers to a situation in

which what is directly at stake in power is the production and

reproduction of life itself.

These two lines ofFoucault’s work dovetail with each other

in the sense that only the society ofcontrol is able to adopt the

biopolitical context as its
exclusive
terrain ofreference. In the passage from disciplinary society to the society of control, a new paradigm

ofpower is realized which is defined by the technologies that

recognize society as the realm ofbiopower. In disciplinary society

the effects of biopolitical technologies were still partial in the sense

that disciplining developed according to relatively closed, geometri-

cal, and quantitative logics. Disciplinarity fixed individuals within

institutions but did not succeed in consuming them completely in

the rhythm ofproductive practices and productive socialization; it

did not reach the point ofpermeating entirely the consciousnesses

and bodies ofindividuals, the point oftreating and organizing them

in the totality oftheir activities. In disciplinary society, then, the

relationship between power and the individual remained a static one:

the disciplinary invasion ofpower corresponded to the resistance of

the individual. By contrast, when power becomes entirely biopoliti-

cal, the whole social body is comprised by power’s machine and

developed in its virtuality. This relationship is open, qualitative,

and affective. Society, subsumed within a power that reaches down

to the ganglia ofthe social structure and its processes ofdevelopment,

reacts like a single body. Power is thus expressed as a control that

extends throughout the depths ofthe consciousnesses and bodies

ofthe population—and at the same time across the entirety of

social relations.4

In this passage from disciplinary society to the society of con-

trol, then, one could say that the increasingly intense relationship

B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N

25

ofmutual implication ofall social forces that capitalism has pursued

throughout its development has now been fully realized. Marx

recognized something similar in what he called the passage from

the formal subsumption to the real subsumption of labor under

capital,5 and later the Frankfurt School philosophers analyzed a

closely related passage ofthe subsumption ofculture (and social

relations) under the totalitarian figure ofthe state, or really within

the perverse dialectic ofEnlightenment.6 The passage we are refer-

ring to, however, is fundamentally different in that instead of focus-

ing on the unidimensionality ofthe process described by Marx and

reformulated and extended by the Frankfurt School, the Foucaul-

dian passage deals fundamentally with the paradox of plurality and

multiplicity—and Deleuze and Guattari develop this perspective

even more clearly.7 The analysis ofthe real subsumption, when this

is understood as investing not only the economic or only the cultural

dimension ofsociety but rather the social
bios
itself, and when it is attentive to the modalities ofdisciplinarity and/or control, disrupts

the linear and totalitarian figure ofcapitalist development. Civil

society is absorbed in the state, but the consequence ofthis is an

explosion ofthe elements that were previously coordinated and

mediated in civil society. Resistances are no longer marginal but

active in the center ofa society that opens up in networks; the

individual points are singularized in a thousand plateaus. What

Foucault constructed implicitly (and Deleuze and Guattari made

explicit) is therefore the paradox of a power that, while it unifies

and envelops within itselfevery element ofsocial life (thus losing

its capacity effectively to mediate different social forces), at that

very moment reveals a new context, a new milieu ofmaximum

plurality and uncontainable singularization—a milieu ofthe event.8

These conceptions ofthe society ofcontrol and biopower

both describe central aspects ofthe concept ofEmpire. The concept

ofEmpire is the framework in which the new omniversality of

subjects has to be understood, and it is the end to which the new

paradigm ofpower is leading. Here a veritable chasm opens up

between the various old theoretical frameworks of international

law (in either its contractual and/or U.N. form) and the new reality

26

T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T

ofimperial law. All the intermediary elements ofthe process have

in fact fallen aside, so that the legitimacy of the international order

can no longer be constructed through mediations but must rather

be grasped immediately in all its diversity. We have already acknowl-

edged this fact from the juridical perspective. We saw, in effect,

that when the new notion ofright emerges in the context of

globalization and presents itselfas capable oftreating the universal,

planetary sphere as a single, systemic set, it must assume an immediate

prerequisite (acting in a state ofexception) and an adequate, plastic,

and constitutive technology (the techniques ofthe police).

Even though the state ofexception and police technologies

constitute the solid nucleus and the central element ofthe new

imperial right, however, this new regime has nothing to do with

the juridical arts ofdictatorship or totalitarianism that in other times

and with such great fanfare were so thoroughly described by many

(in fact too many!) authors.9 On the contrary, the rule oflaw

continues to play a central role in the context ofthe contemporary

passage: right remains effective and (precisely by means of the state

ofexception and police techniques) becomes procedure. This is

a radical transformation that reveals the unmediated relationship

between power and subjectivities, and hence demonstrates both the

impossibility of‘‘prior’’ mediations and the uncontainable temporal

variability ofthe event.10 Throughout the unbounded global spaces,

to the depths of the biopolitical world, and confronting an unfore-

seeable temporality—these are the determinations on which the

new supranational right must be defined. Here is where the concept

ofEmpire must struggle to establish itself, where it must prove its

effectiveness, and hence where the machine must be set in motion.

From this point ofview, the biopolitical context ofthe new

paradigm is completely central to our analysis. This is what presents

power with an alternative, not only between obedience and disobe-

dience, or between formal political participation and refusal, but

also along the entire range oflife and death, wealth and poverty,

production and social reproduction, and so forth. Given the great

difficulties the new notion of right has in representing this dimension

B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N

27

ofthe power ofEmpire, and given its inability to touch biopower

concretely in all its material aspects, imperial right can at best only

partially represent the underlying design ofthe new constitution

ofworld order, and cannot really grasp the motor that sets it in

motion. Our analysis must focus its attention rather on the
productive

dimension ofbiopower.11

TheProduction of Life

The question ofproduction in relation to biopower and the society

ofcontrol, however, reveals a real weakness ofthe work ofthe

authors from whom we have borrowed these notions. We should

clarify, then, the ‘‘vital’’ or biopolitical dimensions of Foucault’s

work in relation to the dynamics ofproduction. Foucault argued

in several works in the mid-1970s that one cannot understand the

passage from the ‘‘sovereign’’ state of the ancien re´gime to the

modern ‘‘disciplinary’’ state without taking into account how the

biopolitical context was progressively put at the service ofcapitalist

accumulation: ‘‘The control ofsociety over individuals is not con-

ducted only through consciousness or ideology, but also in the

body and with the body. For capitalist society biopolitics is what

is most important, the biological, the somatic, the corporeal.’’12

One ofthe central objectives ofhis research strategy in this

period was to go beyond the versions ofhistorical materialism,

including several variants ofMarxist theory, that considered the

problem ofpower and social reproduction on a superstructural level

separate from the real, base level of production. Foucault thus

attempted to bring the problem ofsocial reproduction and all the

elements ofthe so-called superstructure back to within the material,

fundamental structure and define this terrain not only in economic

terms but also in cultural, corporeal, and subjective ones. We can

thus understand how Foucault’s conception ofthe social whole was

perfected and realized when in a subsequent phase of his work he

uncovered the emerging outlines ofthe society ofcontrol as a figure

ofpower active throughout the entire biopolitics ofsociety. It

does not seem, however, that Foucault—even when he powerfully

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T H E P O L I T I C A L C O N S T I T U T I O N O F T H E P R E S E N T

grasped the biopolitical horizon ofsociety and defined it as a field

ofimmanence—ever succeeded in pulling his thought away from

that structuralist epistemology that guided his research from the

beginning. By structuralist epistemology here we mean the reinven-

tion ofa functionalist analysis in the realm ofthe human sciences,

a method that effectively sacrifices the dynamic of the system, the

creative temporality ofits movements, and the ontological substance

ofcultural and social reproduction.13 In fact, if at this point we

were to ask Foucault who or what drives the system, or rather,

who is the ‘‘bios,’’ his response would be ineffable, or nothing at

all. What Foucault fails to grasp finally are the real dynamics of

production in biopolitical society.14

By contrast, Deleuze and Guattari present us with a properly

poststructuralist understanding ofbiopower that renews materialist

thought and grounds itselfsolidly in the question ofthe production

ofsocial being. Their work demystifies structuralism and all the

philosophical, sociological, and political conceptions that make the

fixity of the epistemological frame an ineluctable point of reference.

They focus our attention clearly on the ontological substance of

social production. Machines produce. The constant functioning of

social machines in their various apparatuses and assemblages pro-

duces the world along with the subjects and objects that constitute

it. Deleuze and Guattari, however, seem to be able to conceive

positively only the tendencies toward continuous movement and

absolute flows, and thus in their thought, too, the creative elements

and the radical ontology ofthe production ofthe social remain

insubstantial and impotent. Deleuze and Guattari discover the pro-

ductivity ofsocial reproduction (creative production, production

of values, social relations, affects, becomings), but manage to articu-

late it only superficially and ephemerally, as a chaotic, indeterminate

horizon marked by the ungraspable event.15

We can better grasp the relationship between social production

and biopower in the work ofa group ofcontemporary Italian

Marxist authors who recognize the biopolitical dimension in terms

ofthe new nature ofproductive labor and its living development

B I O P O L I T I C A L P R O D U C T I O N

29

in society, using terms such as ‘‘mass intellectuality,’’ ‘‘immaterial