Neocleous, Critique of Security (Ch.1)

Notes for 

12 February 2015

CGC

Critique of Security, Mark Neocleous (2008)

Questions

1)    What is Neocleous's working df of 'security'?  What are the merits of rejecting security rather than redefining?  (What is Neocleous's argument vis-à-vis Ken Booth, page 5?)

2)    What is his conception of critique (page 7) vis-à-vis Foucault?  Is this a critical project that is Foucaultian in orientation, or Marxist, or ... ?

3)    What is MN's argumentative relationship to 'liberalism'?  How is liberalism being envisioned, as an object of critique (is it a theory, an ideology, a set of techniques, a rationality, a practice?)?  And how does this enable MN to position liberalism as a project that contradicts itself?  What other alternatives are available?  Why not say that liberalism fails to live up to its own ideals?

4)    What was the pre-Lockean conception of prerogative?  What was the pre-sovereign conception of prerogative?

5)    Why is the rule of law not governed by necessity whereas the rule of prerogative is governed by necessity?  (pp. 21-23).

6)    MN reads liberalism less as an ideology, more as a "technique of security" in which "security is deployed as liberty" (pp. 31-32).

Discussion

2) Critique as preliminary to judgment? What’s the primary investment, critique or judgment? Security discourse that begins in liberalism. (7) – MN really at core a Marxist, but he likes Foucault’s concept of historical critique? Critique in the sense of unmasking contradictions?

à 3) liberalism as ideology – Is it okay to conflate liberalism with liberty? Liberalism as a technique of security (31) In actual fact, are liberals deploying security rather than liberty? Does that make it a technique? Related to not seeing critique in Foucault’s sense. MN wants both worlds, but without realizing he can’t have both worlds: C-O-P of theory, and the unintelligibility, and wants the historical component of C-O-P. Can you attempt to conditions on the theoretical level (what is liberalism, show a self-contradiction within the very theory of lib.), and attempt the conditions on the historical level (as in Foucault) – theoretical and historical critique potentially mutually exclusive. How these contradictions are grounded in a historical moment? Modes of thought – practices don’t have to function at the same level as that of thought?

(p.18) – sovereignty and prerogative – as a form power can take under specific conditions – prerogative as the instance of sovereign power within the liberalism tradition.  – sovereignty being subsumed under the prerogative , making Locke more Hobbesian (Lockean account not one of consent).  Locke à need a consent mechanism in order to bring about order (if we don’t consent, we’re in a state of war with the state). If prerogative is fundamental for Locke, perhaps he looks more Hobbesian. à How is prerogative fundamental for Locke?

5) States of emergency when action not according to the rule of law is necessary (21-23) – (17) – is the necessary justifiable without consent? Consenting to something that responds to the emergency situations. à Locke – consent as actual. Consent to the function of the prerogative power or to the ways in which the prerogative power obtains in a very specific emergency moment. Being in a state of rebellion. Negation of the possibility of the clause of exception? Limiting the instances or the places where the clauses of exception attain. (35-6) – Legitimacy of prerogative lies in its legality. Argument made for states of emergency for long periods of time, or no ends to the states of emergency? Prolonged states of emergency justified by liberal statecrafts. Arbitrary power of the prerogative is a trust (a consent).

– Whatever critique you give will have to cohere with what solution you give to the problem you’ve identified. Liberal theory inherently self-contradictory at the theoretical level à abandon security rather than redefine it – question of the strategy of the argument is that while both can show a failure or self-contradiction, none is giving us insights of how to move forward. 1) Conceptual project 2) Historical project (not functioning at the same level) à how do you put them into dialogue? MN wants both levels, but the question remains how do you move from one level the other?

à Contradiction applying to the level of theory, meeting contradictions within practice? (2 of intro) – contradictions found in practice. Why go all the way back to Locke for a contemporary project of security? à Looking for the conditions that created something like this (theoretical conditions) – MN blocking the desire to bring back liberal human rights protections.

What MN means by security? – uses social security, examples from introduction (6) False binary (security-liberty) – handing over liberties for our security-fetish.