2. The Exception?
• After 9/11, we were thought have entered a
period of ‘exceptional’ politics. Going beyond
the constitution or legislative powers, shifting
more power in to an executive until such time
when the reasons for ‘exceptional politics’ no
longer exist.
• But 12 years later, what happens when the
exception, becomes the norm?
• A line of thinking attributed to Giorgio
Agamben, political philosopher and his text
“State of Exception”
3. UN/Exceptional?
• “Power by means of its own suspension”
• States find impressive and boundless power--
to arrest, detain, and interrogate--but to do so
means the state has to surrender what
traditionally makes it powerful, a rule of law.
• The tactics surveyed this week all rely on that
confusion to place state power beyond the
traditional ‘checks and balances’ it is held to,
for the exceptional purposes of returning
safety and order.
4. Surveillance: How does watching and monitoring create new geographies and new spaces for control? On the body? Above
ground? Beyond the national borders?
5. Visibility
• Surveillance brings new spaces in to
perspective, visibility, and control.
• The growth of CCTV has become a tool to
track and monitor individual mobility--on
streets, office buildings, and on public transit.
• Representing a privacy over-reach, are seen
as part of ‘exceptional’ politics.
• Technologies of surveillance today allow the
viewer to be separate from the camera--i.e.
drones, CCTV--opening up spaces across
distances.
6. US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba aka ‘Gitmo’, 90 miles off the US coastline.
9. Detention
• Private prison/detention facilities have
expanded rapidly, especially in the U.S.
• Companies like the GEO Group and CCA run
for profit prison-like facilities for US
Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
• Centres have popped up in the US Southeast,
and military bases throughout the world.
• It becomes increasingly difficult to answer, for
legal purposes, ‘where are you?’ once inside.
