We began, as per custom, with questions:
1. What's the difference between seeking a causal relationship, and working on and through the relation itself (cf. 59)? See also the "ontology of association" (p. 64)?
2. From what is the risk calculus derived? If it's a derivative, what is it a derivative of? (See page 57, 61, 75, etc..)
3. The shift from risk management to acting on the basis of the unknown, and the merely possible (p. 57; cf. 62). What would it mean to act on the basis of the unknown? And how does this shift take place?
4. Amoore's discussion of the correlation that is "indifferent" to the specificity of persons, places, and events (p. 64) -- So what are the stakes of this supposed indifference? Is it really an indifference or is it a mask for specific differences that are otherwise attended to?
5. How is intuition encoded into this model of possibility-based assessment? Amoore quotes an e-Borders official to this effect (p. 66). What does this mean? What is going on here?
6. "Not because the world become a more dangerous place after 9/11..." (p. 59). Is Amoore right about this?
7. Amoore discusses Foucault on page 72, distinguishing disciplinary apparatus from a security apparatus. And she links discipline with prevention and security with mobility. Does that fit our reading of Foucault?
And, then, my friends,... our discussion began:
Discussion of shift from risk society to 'possibility' society. This is an epistemic shift, not a shift in actual reality (as it were). .... But how does the Cold War fit into this? Was the Cold War not itself premised on the politics of possibility, at least as the threat of possible nuclear attack played out in the West?
Discussion of <i>derivatives.</i> Amoore defines derivatives on p. 57, and there are two elements to her defintiion: 1) derived from "multiple past data elements", 2) "toward which it is largely indifferent" (57). In this case, as is in many others, Amoore is using finance as a metaphor (or analogy? or precipitant?) for her discussion of political security apparatus?
There is a broader trend in the book here that is worth noticing: in Chapter 1 & 2 we are told that the current security apparatus has its origins in financial practices (data mining for M&S in Ch. 1, financial derivatives in Ch.2; see page 73 bottom). This is counter to other political histories that would seek to excavate the contemporary in terms of its military origins (e.g., information theory is a WWII phenomenon (cf. Kittler)). But how do these techniques migrate and mobilize? The story in Ch.1 is clear, but not all that clear to us in Ch. 2.
Can we read Amoore's critical method in terms of the distinction in 'new media theory' between socio-cultural analysis and more technical-hardware analysis? She seems to be largely focused on the latter, at least in Part I.
What does this chapter have to do with the earlier discussion of Agambenian sovereign power? How does the discussion of security apparatus (cf. p. 72) hook up with the discussion of sovereign power earlier on? This comes up earlier on page 65 where Amoore says, "In contrast to a world in which biopolticis eclipses sovereign and disciplinary power, we see a security appratus that mobilizes specific techniques for deploying the n orm to govern uncertain and unfolding populations" (65). What is the contrast here? Is it between security and biopolitics? Or is it between biopolitics as post-sovereign and biopolitics-security as connected to but modulated sovereignty? It's unclear, but what is clear is that what is new is the breaking up of subjects and objects into elemental degrees of risk (65). That's the logic of the derivative. The subject gets divided up. And security work takes place on the basis of amalgamation and aggregation and algorithmic processing of separate data points that some times coalesce in what looks like what we used to call the subject. (?????)
And that's where we ended...
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
Amoore, "Politics of Possibility," Ch.1
<b>Questions:</b>
- Near the end of the ch (pg 54): What is the “shift in the epistemic status”?
- What is the justification for the “move to the intuitive”? p. 44, 45 ...
- Relation between intuitive and speculative and algorithms p.44
- Relation between the sovereign and the subject in this “shift”? (specifically, what is the relationship between the democratic political apparatus and the type of sovereignty being described)?
- Relationship btwn sovereign exception and lineage of probabilistic and possibilistic analysis (two lines - one of exception and one about probability/possibility) p.52 —> how is this trad sovereign power rather than a politics of possibility that has colonized sovereignty; how is this soveirgn in line with Agamben, Schmidtt, etc.
- What does Amoore think of 9/11 - “dispel the myths of a post-9/11 radical break” (31) and "the
- What is missing: cf. BM’s book on sovereign masculinity… where is gender in the analysis, or is it hiding behind some fate ithings she is describing… the forms of calculations and logics that are coming into play here are masculinely coded activities… how does entering gender in to the analysis reveal more depth into her analysis.
Discussion drew us to p. 51: “A ‘new person’” - isn’t this good old fashioned biopower?
- Project of categorization: race and gender might be produced slightly differently than what categories do for themselves
<b>Discussion:</b>
- Intuition/speculation: “a piece o f the translation from probability to possibility"
- race conditions are going to shape the way calculations assert risk
- “X” can signify anything - within what X can be, race and gender have more than fashion, action, etc.
- Does race carry an inherently higher “risk value"
- But does Amoore need this?
- in the question of race and gender —> VISIBLE … p. 47
and point to the limits of such technology - camouflage so that you don’t present those threatening marks.
- Charlie Hebdo Terrorists were using “spam format” for their emails.
- She does not even broach the subject of race enough to even dismiss it, when one would expect her to justify it at least (esp. given she is discussing the aspects of the war on terror).
- What are you missing by not regarding race and gender?
- Race seems to be relevant enough to regard - wether the algorithms build in race into their calculations. If she did look - what did she find?
- Other ways race can travel though this : patterns of interaction, coded as dangerous from the beginning they would carry more risk, higher probability that the “new person” coming in to the system will not be a stranger because they are already more likely to be picked up. They have associations
- Gender: may be that males are more heavily coded as females
- BM's book: all of the people in a room discussion the effects of dropping nuclear warheads in certain places… outburst re: 30,0000 people. Impact: side of decision making. Like a new kind of “man of reason” - man understood in terms of technical calculations.
(I would have liked an example of such an algorithm)
- Racist state plays a key role in F’s account of biopower.
- when F talks about race, he has a problem to solve to understand biopolitical society can still kill. Hey, here is race, that’s how you kill.
- what plays, what makes the algorithm run, we can continue inventing ways to keep killing ourselves
- but her example is war on terror, is it possible to avoid race?
Why is she doing this (this=not discussing race, etc.)
- Strategic avoidance b/c
- Questions is not wether or not you can look into the past and see how race produces this and try to infer… then you are limiting the extent of the unexpected
- Statistical extrapolation from past events to make the best inference is missing the point… When looking at the data, you look at more than just race.
- “Judgment by Computation” : the “veneer of objectivity”; “techno-scientific gleam” p.51-52 —> can the lack of discussion of race reflect the operation of the form of power that she is discussing in that data-mining, etc. replace, stand-in for other kinds of decision making. Then it makes sense (Ex: bottom of page 51)
- The desired result of these comp. logics would be to hide these other considerations. What goes into the algorithm? —> she doesn’t say exactly how they run
* Analogy to a project on aspects of the politics of information: re: Galton - struggling with how to treat eugenics in… it would overrun the project. ∆ "infopolitics is dangerous is because it’s racist” —> But there are other injustices in addition to racial injustice.
- “intuititve and imaginative inference”: is this a way to
- Does this distract us from other ways that intuition works? If the kinds of persons that these calculations get a grip on don’t conform to our traditional categorizations ...
- There are different logics of justice at work :
- Her argument assumes "Not all systems of oppression interlock” or demand/produce each other. Though it would have helped her argument in a way that it is not reducible to race.
- to p. 18: “must produce a particular economy of decision” - dig in to the politics that is concealed by this technoscientific apparatus, then raising the questions of other forms of power that we are used to dealing with would be one way of asking after what those politics are. To avoid them is to risk missing the ways in which this particular, if not new, the way this form of power takes shape.
- Is it the case that, historically speaking, forms of oppression feeds on each other; still does answer the other question that one form of oppression cannot exist without. Not how, but ?necessarily so?
- Can it be the case that we can have a space of possibility separate from the space of historicity?
- She is desiring this different politics that is present, which is differ than what happens in practice. This politics operates on radicalized, gendered lines but it is not necessarily so —> p.51 ∆ She seems to be describing what is happening on the theoretical level. Can she make this without assuming that race operates on the theoretical level?
- What is the role of race in the formation of these algorithms?
- But, if race has a historical function within this society. She looks at the function and sees what is the function and she feeds the function with different variables. “Yes, I can see the logic behind race”
- Charles Mills “The Racial Contract”: original production conceals a racial operation
- is this a diff btwn british academic left and american academic left?
Question: What is the picture of authority that she is giving us? She really believes Connolly’s thesis (and Schmitt) - if you start assuming that the sovereign is not just one but is multiple
- For Schmitt, the sovereign decision is VERY time sensitive. ∆ you can get a decision fast within a sense of emergency, but when you pluralize how do you deal with the time issues
the assumption is there is an integration between the plurality of forces, they always output decision X. Are all those tiny forces working together?
- It would be very sensible if the sovereign is masculine, it would be very sensible to adopt this system.
- but any project puts limits on how it’s fulfilled.
- But the objectivity that is produced ultimately reifies the notion of sovereign, reinscribes what it means to be a sovereign.
- Asking about the processes or asking about the justification?
- Some scholars are concerned with the way that this gets justified while this project may be more concerned with the functioning —> might be a way of disting. the intents and understand Amoore’s decision to not address race.
- Foucauldian and Deleuzian pluralism: “there is no locus of great refusal” but a strategic fight on multiple fronts.
- Her argument seems to enact the logic that she is tracking.
- We wish she had devoted an entire chapter on ONE instantiation of a particular algorithm (some would critique her work as not 'anthropological' enough)
- Near the end of the ch (pg 54): What is the “shift in the epistemic status”?
- What is the justification for the “move to the intuitive”? p. 44, 45 ...
- Relation between intuitive and speculative and algorithms p.44
- Relation between the sovereign and the subject in this “shift”? (specifically, what is the relationship between the democratic political apparatus and the type of sovereignty being described)?
- Relationship btwn sovereign exception and lineage of probabilistic and possibilistic analysis (two lines - one of exception and one about probability/possibility) p.52 —> how is this trad sovereign power rather than a politics of possibility that has colonized sovereignty; how is this soveirgn in line with Agamben, Schmidtt, etc.
- What does Amoore think of 9/11 - “dispel the myths of a post-9/11 radical break” (31) and "the
- What is missing: cf. BM’s book on sovereign masculinity… where is gender in the analysis, or is it hiding behind some fate ithings she is describing… the forms of calculations and logics that are coming into play here are masculinely coded activities… how does entering gender in to the analysis reveal more depth into her analysis.
Discussion drew us to p. 51: “A ‘new person’” - isn’t this good old fashioned biopower?
- Project of categorization: race and gender might be produced slightly differently than what categories do for themselves
<b>Discussion:</b>
- Intuition/speculation: “a piece o f the translation from probability to possibility"
- race conditions are going to shape the way calculations assert risk
- “X” can signify anything - within what X can be, race and gender have more than fashion, action, etc.
- Does race carry an inherently higher “risk value"
- But does Amoore need this?
- in the question of race and gender —> VISIBLE … p. 47
and point to the limits of such technology - camouflage so that you don’t present those threatening marks.
- Charlie Hebdo Terrorists were using “spam format” for their emails.
- She does not even broach the subject of race enough to even dismiss it, when one would expect her to justify it at least (esp. given she is discussing the aspects of the war on terror).
- What are you missing by not regarding race and gender?
- Race seems to be relevant enough to regard - wether the algorithms build in race into their calculations. If she did look - what did she find?
- Other ways race can travel though this : patterns of interaction, coded as dangerous from the beginning they would carry more risk, higher probability that the “new person” coming in to the system will not be a stranger because they are already more likely to be picked up. They have associations
- Gender: may be that males are more heavily coded as females
- BM's book: all of the people in a room discussion the effects of dropping nuclear warheads in certain places… outburst re: 30,0000 people. Impact: side of decision making. Like a new kind of “man of reason” - man understood in terms of technical calculations.
(I would have liked an example of such an algorithm)
- Racist state plays a key role in F’s account of biopower.
- when F talks about race, he has a problem to solve to understand biopolitical society can still kill. Hey, here is race, that’s how you kill.
- what plays, what makes the algorithm run, we can continue inventing ways to keep killing ourselves
- but her example is war on terror, is it possible to avoid race?
Why is she doing this (this=not discussing race, etc.)
- Strategic avoidance b/c
- Questions is not wether or not you can look into the past and see how race produces this and try to infer… then you are limiting the extent of the unexpected
- Statistical extrapolation from past events to make the best inference is missing the point… When looking at the data, you look at more than just race.
- “Judgment by Computation” : the “veneer of objectivity”; “techno-scientific gleam” p.51-52 —> can the lack of discussion of race reflect the operation of the form of power that she is discussing in that data-mining, etc. replace, stand-in for other kinds of decision making. Then it makes sense (Ex: bottom of page 51)
- The desired result of these comp. logics would be to hide these other considerations. What goes into the algorithm? —> she doesn’t say exactly how they run
* Analogy to a project on aspects of the politics of information: re: Galton - struggling with how to treat eugenics in… it would overrun the project. ∆ "infopolitics is dangerous is because it’s racist” —> But there are other injustices in addition to racial injustice.
- “intuititve and imaginative inference”: is this a way to
- Does this distract us from other ways that intuition works? If the kinds of persons that these calculations get a grip on don’t conform to our traditional categorizations ...
- There are different logics of justice at work :
- Her argument assumes "Not all systems of oppression interlock” or demand/produce each other. Though it would have helped her argument in a way that it is not reducible to race.
- to p. 18: “must produce a particular economy of decision” - dig in to the politics that is concealed by this technoscientific apparatus, then raising the questions of other forms of power that we are used to dealing with would be one way of asking after what those politics are. To avoid them is to risk missing the ways in which this particular, if not new, the way this form of power takes shape.
- Is it the case that, historically speaking, forms of oppression feeds on each other; still does answer the other question that one form of oppression cannot exist without. Not how, but ?necessarily so?
- Can it be the case that we can have a space of possibility separate from the space of historicity?
- She is desiring this different politics that is present, which is differ than what happens in practice. This politics operates on radicalized, gendered lines but it is not necessarily so —> p.51 ∆ She seems to be describing what is happening on the theoretical level. Can she make this without assuming that race operates on the theoretical level?
- What is the role of race in the formation of these algorithms?
- But, if race has a historical function within this society. She looks at the function and sees what is the function and she feeds the function with different variables. “Yes, I can see the logic behind race”
- Charles Mills “The Racial Contract”: original production conceals a racial operation
- is this a diff btwn british academic left and american academic left?
Question: What is the picture of authority that she is giving us? She really believes Connolly’s thesis (and Schmitt) - if you start assuming that the sovereign is not just one but is multiple
- For Schmitt, the sovereign decision is VERY time sensitive. ∆ you can get a decision fast within a sense of emergency, but when you pluralize how do you deal with the time issues
the assumption is there is an integration between the plurality of forces, they always output decision X. Are all those tiny forces working together?
- It would be very sensible if the sovereign is masculine, it would be very sensible to adopt this system.
- but any project puts limits on how it’s fulfilled.
- But the objectivity that is produced ultimately reifies the notion of sovereign, reinscribes what it means to be a sovereign.
- Asking about the processes or asking about the justification?
- Some scholars are concerned with the way that this gets justified while this project may be more concerned with the functioning —> might be a way of disting. the intents and understand Amoore’s decision to not address race.
- Foucauldian and Deleuzian pluralism: “there is no locus of great refusal” but a strategic fight on multiple fronts.
- Her argument seems to enact the logic that she is tracking.
- We wish she had devoted an entire chapter on ONE instantiation of a particular algorithm (some would critique her work as not 'anthropological' enough)
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Amoore, "Politics of Possibilitiy", Intro
We began, as per custom, with questions...
What notion of the sovereign is she working with? (p3)
What are the politics of the possibility of risk (p8)
What is an apparatus? (p4) Referencing Deleuze and Guattari
Distinguishing between the norm and becoming the norm
What is her relationship between biopolitics and the sovereign?
Relationship between probability and possibility? (p24) Are we pointing to a new kind of power?
Moving from discipline to risk (p8) have we left discipline behind?
Why does she neglect climate change? Even when she lists terrorist organizations, border security, etc. it is not that new risks come into being but that society comes to understand
How does she decide to stabilize her cases and why are they not inflected with climate change?
What is Agamben’s distinction between civil society and bare life? (p13) what renders bodies governable?
Discussion ensued...
How do we define the exception? The role of the sovereign is decide btwn friend and foe also to decide the state of exception (for both Agamben and Schmidt). Is this a being rather than a state of being? An exceptional process instead of a state of exceptionality. She is pluralizing the possibility of sovereignty claiming an exceptional space. Maybe is happens in governance, border control, etc. is she assuming a split between the economy and the sovereign? (p20) even though they share an entymology? Although she uses economy in its broadest sense (p15). Drawing attention to the reintegration of soverignity into arena that were traditionally biopolitical. Sept 11th brings biopolitics to a close and now were are again within a sovereignty, her intervention is complicating this move increasingly present in political theory. Is it the same sovereignty (that which can institute an exception) that came before? Most would say no. Another read says there is an interrelation between the two – it is was takes the lead in a given apparatus – it is not an epoch or an era.
She may or may not be tweeking Agamben. Some reads of Agamben say it is simply re-emerging in the same form because it was always inside it. Logic of sovereignty is present even if we can’t point to one particular sovereign. Expands the places in which sovereignty can take place.
Contra Beck – relationship to science and expertise expand
Whole person is a criminal of a certain kind, now segmentation in to different selfhoods, parsing out parts of ourselves seems to parse out, multiply, expand risk. Does this give rise to a multiplicity of authorities?
Norms function in this way (p17). But wasn’t risk always present? Only in the fact that we are attempting. Risk has not change just the calculus of risk has changed – shift to risks of “low probability but high consequence” this is the shift between logics of probability that works against playing out of events vs. unfolding of events through a ray of imagined possible futures. Logic of possibility actuality math moves to predictual math – power will lay with those who can access data and articulate a solution , not so much arrangement of risk factors and the correlation itself, it is the translation of a best strategy. Is this the Deleuzian idea of the virtual?
Could war “Terroist attack” was not probabilistically or conceptually possible. Then it becomes a possibility so it joins together a series or range of disparate acts. Being able to mobiltze the kinds and size of BIG DATA produces something new that maybe doesnt translate (she traces actuarial math to predictive formulas) to earlier models of soverignity.
P9-10 change in the status of science expertise and decision are rearticulated so the distinction btwn scicen and non-science becomes more malleable. What logic is operating here? Imagined scenarios are not lead by the data but how the data is used?
Identify threat that one can articulate threats that competitors cannot, would win the bid on her argument.
Creative ways to bring about terrorists threats to the country. Is there a difference between the large positron collider – is one more made up politically, more explicitly value laden? Influence decision making in governmental activity. The arguments for building the collider (funding) are going to be value laden – it is hard to get big science projects built
Probability is based on predictive based on past events, and the move to possibility based on complex algorithms of computerized very remote possibilities – what is the difference? The difference is that the probability of these new possibilities are so low.
In disciplinary case, you run probabilities and try to control at the end of the situation. Whereas now, control come much sooner, you control the combination of possibilities, by controlling what can become possible.
How does this translate into the dividuated self? You could actually stop people at the border and search them
Is she right to conceptualize the argument this way? If she is right then the people who do security this way are crazy? Travel patterns, communication history, is hypothetically the process at getting at possbilitites and getting at intervening.
Is the infopolitical age merely an outgrowth of biopolitics? What do we gain with this conceptual shift? What can we say with this that we could not say before? There is a significantly quantitative data, she is describing the shift that makes big data possible. We have always had too much data. Possibilities lend themselves better to sovereign-power but probabilities lend themselves better to biopolitics which would have to be true if her argument is correct. Is it neoliberalism, is it sovereignty redux? Maybe these are useful terms, maybe not but within political theory this helps us understand what is new.
Are we assessing high concentrations of risk in individuals and then eliminating them, by drone attack. Does the military still use probalistic analysis in that this person is 80% likely to carry out a terrorist attack so they should be eliminated
She believes there is something new – first page “in an era after the events of 9/11”- she is proposing a new epoch.
Right plays catastrophe on terrorism while the left play catastrophe on climate change.
She grasps the commodification of the state of exception.
What notion of the sovereign is she working with? (p3)
What are the politics of the possibility of risk (p8)
What is an apparatus? (p4) Referencing Deleuze and Guattari
Distinguishing between the norm and becoming the norm
What is her relationship between biopolitics and the sovereign?
Relationship between probability and possibility? (p24) Are we pointing to a new kind of power?
Moving from discipline to risk (p8) have we left discipline behind?
Why does she neglect climate change? Even when she lists terrorist organizations, border security, etc. it is not that new risks come into being but that society comes to understand
How does she decide to stabilize her cases and why are they not inflected with climate change?
What is Agamben’s distinction between civil society and bare life? (p13) what renders bodies governable?
Discussion ensued...
How do we define the exception? The role of the sovereign is decide btwn friend and foe also to decide the state of exception (for both Agamben and Schmidt). Is this a being rather than a state of being? An exceptional process instead of a state of exceptionality. She is pluralizing the possibility of sovereignty claiming an exceptional space. Maybe is happens in governance, border control, etc. is she assuming a split between the economy and the sovereign? (p20) even though they share an entymology? Although she uses economy in its broadest sense (p15). Drawing attention to the reintegration of soverignity into arena that were traditionally biopolitical. Sept 11th brings biopolitics to a close and now were are again within a sovereignty, her intervention is complicating this move increasingly present in political theory. Is it the same sovereignty (that which can institute an exception) that came before? Most would say no. Another read says there is an interrelation between the two – it is was takes the lead in a given apparatus – it is not an epoch or an era.
She may or may not be tweeking Agamben. Some reads of Agamben say it is simply re-emerging in the same form because it was always inside it. Logic of sovereignty is present even if we can’t point to one particular sovereign. Expands the places in which sovereignty can take place.
Contra Beck – relationship to science and expertise expand
Whole person is a criminal of a certain kind, now segmentation in to different selfhoods, parsing out parts of ourselves seems to parse out, multiply, expand risk. Does this give rise to a multiplicity of authorities?
Norms function in this way (p17). But wasn’t risk always present? Only in the fact that we are attempting. Risk has not change just the calculus of risk has changed – shift to risks of “low probability but high consequence” this is the shift between logics of probability that works against playing out of events vs. unfolding of events through a ray of imagined possible futures. Logic of possibility actuality math moves to predictual math – power will lay with those who can access data and articulate a solution , not so much arrangement of risk factors and the correlation itself, it is the translation of a best strategy. Is this the Deleuzian idea of the virtual?
Could war “Terroist attack” was not probabilistically or conceptually possible. Then it becomes a possibility so it joins together a series or range of disparate acts. Being able to mobiltze the kinds and size of BIG DATA produces something new that maybe doesnt translate (she traces actuarial math to predictive formulas) to earlier models of soverignity.
P9-10 change in the status of science expertise and decision are rearticulated so the distinction btwn scicen and non-science becomes more malleable. What logic is operating here? Imagined scenarios are not lead by the data but how the data is used?
Identify threat that one can articulate threats that competitors cannot, would win the bid on her argument.
Creative ways to bring about terrorists threats to the country. Is there a difference between the large positron collider – is one more made up politically, more explicitly value laden? Influence decision making in governmental activity. The arguments for building the collider (funding) are going to be value laden – it is hard to get big science projects built
Probability is based on predictive based on past events, and the move to possibility based on complex algorithms of computerized very remote possibilities – what is the difference? The difference is that the probability of these new possibilities are so low.
In disciplinary case, you run probabilities and try to control at the end of the situation. Whereas now, control come much sooner, you control the combination of possibilities, by controlling what can become possible.
How does this translate into the dividuated self? You could actually stop people at the border and search them
Is she right to conceptualize the argument this way? If she is right then the people who do security this way are crazy? Travel patterns, communication history, is hypothetically the process at getting at possbilitites and getting at intervening.
Is the infopolitical age merely an outgrowth of biopolitics? What do we gain with this conceptual shift? What can we say with this that we could not say before? There is a significantly quantitative data, she is describing the shift that makes big data possible. We have always had too much data. Possibilities lend themselves better to sovereign-power but probabilities lend themselves better to biopolitics which would have to be true if her argument is correct. Is it neoliberalism, is it sovereignty redux? Maybe these are useful terms, maybe not but within political theory this helps us understand what is new.
Are we assessing high concentrations of risk in individuals and then eliminating them, by drone attack. Does the military still use probalistic analysis in that this person is 80% likely to carry out a terrorist attack so they should be eliminated
She believes there is something new – first page “in an era after the events of 9/11”- she is proposing a new epoch.
Right plays catastrophe on terrorism while the left play catastrophe on climate change.
She grasps the commodification of the state of exception.
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