Amoore, 'Politics of Possibility,' Ch. 2

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...