Challenging Ideas : Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities [1 ed.] 9781443887373, 9781443883726

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Challenging Ideas

Challenging Ideas: Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities Edited by

Maren Lytje, Torben K. Nielsen and Martin Ottovay Jørgensen

Challenging Ideas: Theory and Empirical Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities Edited by Maren Lytje, Torben K. Nielsen and Martin Ottovay Jørgensen This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Maren Lytje, Torben K. Nielsen, Martin Ottovay Jørgensen and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-8372-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8372-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 MAREN LYTJE, MARTIN OTTOVAY JØRGENSEN AND JOHAN HEINSEN I: Memory Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8 “Always historicize”: On the Ethical and Political Implications of a “Historical” Approach in the Context of Truth Commissions and Historical Commissions BERBER BEVERNAGE Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 24 Mourning a Way of Life: Justice and Justification in Just War MAREN LYTJE Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 43 The “Stolpersteine” between Commemoration and Biopolitics LARS ÖSTMAN Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 66 Short-term Memory Loss? Media Strategies in Times of Transformation EHAB GALAL II: History Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 88 Epochalism and the “Society of Security”: Continuity and Change in Self-Defence Culture FRANCIS DODSWORTH Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 108 Genealogies of Political Economy as Government NICOLAI VON EGGERS

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 127 X Marks the Spot: Archives and the Profanities of History JOHAN HEINSEN Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 140 Professional Interventions as a State-Crafting Grammar: Using a Sociological Concept of State in Historical Research CHRISTIAN YDESEN AND TRINE ØLAND Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 161 Back to the Future? A Call for a Genealogy of the Sexual Hygiene Regimes in UN Military Interventions MARTIN OTTOVAY JØRGENSEN Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 178 Damüls, Vorarlberg: 100 Years of Transformation from Meadows to Ski-Routes in an Alpine Environment ROBERT GROǺ Contributors ............................................................................................. 199

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter Three: The “Stolpersteine” between Commemoration and Biopolitics Figure 3.1 The First Stolpersteine, from Stolpersteine Homepage Figure 3.2 The Stolpersteine Artist, Gunter Denmig, from Stolpersteine Homepage Figure 3.3 The Stolpersteine Locations, from Stolpersteine Homepage Figure 3.4 The Five Fates, from Stolpersteine Homepage Figure 3.5 The Stolpersteine for Edith Stein, from Stolpersteine Homepage Figure 3.6 The Stolpersteine for Else Liebermann von Wahlendorf, from Stolpersteine Homepage Chapter Ten: Damüls, Vorarlberg: 100 years of Transformation from Meadows to Ski-Routes in an Alpine Environment Figure 10.1: Long-term development of technical energy consumption in Austria. Source: Krausmann F. and D. Wiedenhofer 2014 (pers. Com.) Updated version of the energy series presented in Krausmann et al. 2003. Figure 10.2: T-bar lift in Damüls/Austria. Picture postcard produced by Risch-Lau in 1957. In possession of the provincial library of Vorarlberg (Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek). With permission of the copyright holder Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek

INTRODUCTION MAREN LYTJE, MARTIN OTTOVAY JØRGENSEN AND JOHAN HEINSEN

Today it is almost inconceivable that researchers in the sciences and humanities should work without theory. Not theory in the sense of theoretical philosophy, but in the sense of a looking glass through which the academic can engage with empirical material and relate this to the world in which he or she lives. Sometimes the looking glass has a critical edge, in which case theory retains an air of ‘critical theory’ that keeps questioning the basic assumptions of what we do, say, think, write and study. As a prism that we have here and now and with which we might question our basic assumptions about the world, critical theory seems to establish a relation between past and present. An obvious example of this might be found within the discipline of history. In 1942, one of the founding fathers of the influential French Annales School, Marc Bloch, was apologetic about his discipline and spoke against the crude positivism of the last generation of historians. The knowledge of past human life, Bloch stated, passed through present human life, and the historian was obliged to keep updated and remain curious and critical about his own time.1 A critical engagement with the present was also the point of departure of Michel Foucault, who remains one of the most influential theoretical figures in post-war social sciences and humanities. At the beginning of his scholarly career, Foucault had a self-declared affinity with the Annales School, and he too saw the analysis of the past as a way to engage with the present. Michel Foucault belonged to the generation of French scholars who were raised on French structuralism and Frankfurter school critical theory. Structuralism had large implications for the theory formations at the universities in the post-war world, asking fundamental questions about the nature of human agency, human intention and human consciousness and of the ways in which we know.

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Introduction

The challenges raised by structuralist thought were taken up by the succeeding generation of scholars, to which Foucault belonged. These scholars criticized the a-historicity and determinism of structuralist thought, emphasized the relationship between past and present as an important element in the study of society and pointed to ways in which any structure could be undermined. One of the central figures of poststructuralist thought, Jacques Derrida, saw writing as the undermining element, whereas Michel Foucault assigned this role to power. Unlike structuralists, poststructuralists took Frankfurter school critical theory to heart and engaged in its critique of enlightenment philosophy and modernity. While structuralism, post-structuralism and Frankfurter school critical theory certainly differ in fundamental respects, they also share a tendency towards undermining the ‘crude positivist assumptions’ about the relationship between past and present which had embarrassed Marc Bloch more than seventy years earlier. Theory in its different critical variants has certainly made their impact, and we think that it is fairly safe to say that it would be hard to come by a crude positivist in the social sciences and humanities today. Nevertheless, there still seems to be a gap between theory and empirical research. For example, scholars often use Foucault as the figurehead of a paradigm and praise him for his theoretical contribution rather than for his historical writing. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction has also proven hard to ‘apply’ in textual analysis, and Walter Benjamin’s social critique remains mainly a literary genre rather than a research method and theory. It is true that post-history and post-secular categories, which have emerged out of post-structuralist thought such as memory, have proven useful for conducting analysis in a critical vein; for example, the memory turn has made us aware of the discrepancy between historical synthesis and the ways in which people actually remember especially traumatic events. Some historians have acknowledged such challenges and have changed their research object or primary sources accordingly (for example to the study of memorial literature), causing their works to raise new theoretical questions. The articles in this volume all attempt to respond to some of the challenges that theory poses to empirical research and vice versa. They grew out of papers from a workshop held at Aalborg University, Denmark, in April 2013. The workshop sought to address two possible concerns: the concern that theory had turned into an academic trade rather than a critical endeavour; and the concern that theory had become a matter of scholars needing to position themselves in relation to different schools, rather than

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acting on the challenges that these ‘schools’ posed to “traditional” ways of conducting research. The volume consists of two parts, which address different aspects of the theoretical challenges listed above: Memory and History. The first section, Memory, responds to some of the challenges posed by the memory turn in the field of history. In the first article, 'Always historicize'. On the ethical and political implications of a 'historical' approach in the context of truth commissions and historical commissions, Berber Bevernage questions the use of historicizing strategies in Truth and Reconciliation Committees in countries with violent pasts, such as South Africa. Bevernage argues that while historians can play an important ethical role in the pursuit of historical justice, the strategy of historicizing might have some unwanted consequences. For example, by building a hierarchy of time and assigning the past to its proper place, there is a risk that historicizing may prematurely close off a traumatic past which is still felt by the victims in the present. Nevertheless, Bevernage argues that historians still have an important role to play in transitional justice: while they cannot claim to be able to solve complex ethical or political dilemmas simply on the basis of their expertise in measuring time and deciding what is past and what is present, they can still play a critical role precisely by reflexively pointing out the use and abuse of historical discourse and politics of time used in different strategies of transitional justice. In the second article, Mourning a Way of Life: Justice and Justification in Just War, Maren Lytje investigates the relationship between the justice and justification of what is considered a just war. Lytje argues that the link between justice and justification often remains unexplored and suggests that the two concepts might be joined by focusing on justice as the way of life of the political community to be defended in war, and justification as the ways in which this way of life is made visible through what she terms the media’s frames of justice. She argues that frames of justice consist of collective memory traces embedded in the media’s own archives. Such traces are repeated in case of an act of aggression against the way of life of the political community. This repetition, she suggests, resembles a mourning process through which the way of life of the political community separates itself from what is merely living and thereby reestablishes itself. Lytje proceeds to explore how the Danish national broadcast network constructed frames of justice in the initial stages of the “War on terror” in 2001. In the third article, Biopolitics and Cultural Memory in Holocaust Monuments, Lars Östman focuses on the transnational memorial culture of the Stolpersteine, which commemorates victims of the Nazi regime.

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Introduction

Östman argues that the Stolpersteine assumes a ‘state of law’ in Nazi Germany which was, in fact, completely absent. He utilizes the Italian political philosopher, Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of the ‘state of exception’ to suggests that the commemoration of the victims of Nazi atrocities should reflect the state of exception of Nazi Germany and the biopolitics of the concentration camps. In the fourth article, Short-term Memory Loss? Media Strategies in Times of Transformation, Ehab Galal combines media and memory theory to interrogate the changes in political power and the media landscape in Egypt in the course of 2011. He reassesses the revolutionary potential of the “new” social and digital media, arguing that the “old” media of television might be more influential than new media in forming the historical remembrance of the 2011 revolutionary struggle. The articles in the second section, History, all attempt to come to terms with different ways in which historical research might function. Opening this section with his article Epochalism and the “Society of Security”: Continuity and Change in Self-Defence Culture, Francis Dodsworth discusses the link between historical research and ‘grand social theory.’ He suggests that social theory often assumes contemporaneity with social phenomena of study and often disregards its historical roots. Through the example ‘security society,’ he shows how the security society can be traced back to the 19th century. The implication of Dodsworth’s argument is that the discipline of history should not simply play a corrective role in relation to social theory, but that the work of historians can establish continuities between past and present societies which are relevant to the development of theory. In the second article, Nicolai von Eggers explores three genealogies of economy: Michel Foucault’s genealogy of economy in Security, Territory, Population, Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of economy in The Kingdom and the Glory, and Bernard Balan’s genealogy of economy in “Initial Studies on the Origin of the Formation of the Concept Animal Economy”. Eggers suggests that a synthesis of the three genealogies allows us to explore how a series of different meanings of the word economy are brought together in the mid-late18th century: economy as the administration of the household, economy as God’s government of the world through natural law, economy as the natural laws of bodies and the principle through which a given body sustains itself. These different meanings might remind us of the im- and explicit theoretical and metaphysical underpinnings of the emergence of political economy, which may still remain operative within the semantic core of modern economics.

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In the third article, X marks the Spot, Johan Heinsen discusses a different aspect of historical research, namely the archival text. Following Derrida, Heinsen suggests that the archival text is steeped in alterity, despite its claim to self-presence. He uses a historian’s markings in the margins of an archival document to suggest that the historian’s practice might undermine a text’s claim to self-presence. In this view, history is an unruly discipline which refuses poetics and undermines the order often claimed by historical writing itself. Focusing also on the research process, Christian Ydesen and Trine Ølund invite the readers into the methodological and theoretical “engine room” of their current collaborative project on professional state interventions addressing “the immigrant.” They criticize the “closet positivism” of many historians and proceed to develop a process-oriented approach on the basis of the works of French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquantn. This approach might be useful for understanding how Danish and British state officials have (re-)identified, (re)problematized and targeted the “immigrant” as their “other” over the past five decades. While praising the archival work of historians, Ydesen and Øland finally suggest that interviews can be equally important and that the discipline of history might benefit from sociological reflections on the workings of the social. Moving from matters of social theory, conceptual analysis and research processes, the last two articles turn towards concrete examples of how empirical research and theory might be linked in social and historical scholarship. In Back to the Future? A Call for a Genealogy of the Sexual Hygiene Regimes in UN Military Interventions, Martin Ottovay Jorgensen challenges the dominant view amongst researchers that the current problems of sexual violence, trafficking and prostitution in relation to international military interventions are linked to the current neo-liberal paradigm. Instead, he points to the continuities between the regimes of sexual hygiene of imperial armies and international forces, thus taking a first small step towards a genealogy that links current problems to the deeper connections between the gendered projects of capitalism, imperialism and global governance. In the closing article, Challenging efforts of sustainable development? Tourism and the transformation of an alpine village in Vorarlberg/Austria, Robert Groȕ studies the environmental history of the Austrian winter tourism destination of Damüls. Throughout the 20th century, Damüls underwent profound changes, making the chaotic transition from a small hamlet to one of the region’s most profitable ski resorts. Groȕ critically explores this transition, raising questions as to the integration of

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Introduction

materiality into historical analysis. He makes a powerful argument for the need to combine the insights of social and cultural historians with a close study of materiality and its shaping of human practices. The contributions in this volume encourage historically oriented scholars to approach their work with an active interest in disciplines close to their topic and a reflexive attentiveness to the broader power relations within which they work. Reflecting on the relationship between past and present in historical writing might inspire historically oriented scholars to rethink their own politics of time. Or, as phrased by Berber Bevernage, historical thoughts should not be mere “sterile sophistry;” rather they should work towards realising their potential of “social relevance.”2 We hope that the contributions to this volume will offer different perspectives on the intrinsic relationship between past and present at work in the interactions between theory and empirical research. We believe that this relationship gives impetus to the challenging ideas and to the challenging of ideas in the social sciences and in the humanities.

Notes 1

Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft; (New York: Knopf, 1953), 42. Berber. Bevernage, History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence: Time and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2012), x. 2

I: MEMORY

CHAPTER ONE “ALWAYS HISTORICIZE”: ON THE ETHICAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF A “HISTORICAL” APPROACH IN THE CONTEXT OF TRUTH COMMISSIONS AND HISTORICAL COMMISSIONS BERBER BEVERNAGE

According to the Dutch historian Antoon de Baets, five basic strategies deal with legacies of 'historical' injustice: forgetting, denying, explaining, purging and prosecuting.1 In this paper, I focus on another important socio-cultural mechanism for dealing with legacies of violent conflict which is seldom analyzed or recognized; a mechanism that might be called 'consigning to history', 'declaring to be past' or 'historicization'. I will argue that this mechanism of 'historicization' (1) cannot be reduced to an issue of 'explaining' or 'understanding'; (2) is a mechanism which is often used for dealing with historical injustices by both historians and other social actors; (3) can have profound ethical and political implications; (4) can be important or even indispensable for historians as well as for society at large, but can also turn against the pursuit of justice; (5) can never be legitimized merely on the basis of 'historical' arguments and should therefore never be considered as the exclusive or privileged domain of historians. In the first part of the article, I will analyze the manner in which the technique and especially the ethics of 'historicization' is often presented by historians. In order to illustrate this, I will focus mainly on the work of the French historian Henry Rousso and the Dutch historian Bob de Graaff. In the second part of my article, I will argue for a radically different interpretation of the ethics and politics of 'historicization'. In order to do so, I will focus on a series of practical examples taken from my own

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research. Finally, I will reflect on the question of how historians can engage the legacies of collective violence and injustice.

Historicizing: Rousso and De Graaff There is a long and honorable tradition which attributes to historians the emancipatory potential to resist both the tyranny of the past over the present as well as the totalitarian dominance of the present over the past and the future. Historians can do this, it is claimed, by mapping and demonstrating the fundamental differences between the past and the present. One prominent member of this intellectual tradition is Henry Rousso. According to Rousso, the métier of the historian results in a liberating type of thinking, because it rejects the idea that people or societies are conditioned by their past without any possibility of escaping from it.The historian can deliver this liberating types of thinking because, in contrast to the 'activist of memory' or the devotees of the 'religion of memory', (s)he only brings the past into the present in order to demonstrate the fundamental 'distance' that separates these two realities.2 While 'activists of memory' ignore the 'hierarchies of time' and do not seem to grasp the distance between past and present, historians observe the past where it belongs [‘à sa place’] and are conscious of the fact that they do so from the present, where they belong [‘notre place’]. Rousso's argument could be paraphrased as follows: the good historian is inherently an emancipator, because by measuring time, he knows what is contemporary and what is past or over, and because he also knows what is the 'proper timing' between past and present. 'Proper' because historians can measure this timing correctly; and 'proper' because it is considered ethically responsible to do so. The same plea for a proper relation to time and timing also plays a prominent role in Rousso's famous refusal to function as an expert witness in the Holocaust trial of Maurice Papon.3 The problem with this trial, which took place several decades after the events according to Rousso, was the great distance in time. Due to this distance, the trial tended to apply a 'presentist' ethical perspective to the historical events and become a trial of memory rather than a normal judicial process. In the context of the plea for a historiography that liberates the present by placing the past at a distance and by rejecting the 'religion of memory', it is significant that Philippe Petit writes about Rousso that he became a contemporary historian who conceded to 'accept the irreparable.'4

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The Dutch historian Bob de Graaff - known for his participation in the research team that was commissioned by the Dutch government to scrutinize Dutch responsibilities in the Srebrenica massacre - holds similar ideas about the ethical value of historiography. He too considers the historian to be an expert of proper times and timing and draws a contrast between the historian on the one hand and (genocidal) victims and survivors on the other. According to De Graaff, for victims and survivors the difference between past and present is vague, and they live in a synchronic rather than a diachronic time, or even in an 'extra-temporality'.5 He refers to holocaust victims for whom, he claims, the 'past remains present,' and to whom it seems as if atrocities 'only happened yesterday or even today.' The task of historians is, in contrast, to place events, even genocidal ones, in their proper time; literally historicizing them. Historians have to do this by trying to 'determine the individual character of particular epochs, demarcating one epoch vis-à-vis the other.' As De Graaff phrases it: 'the historian historicizes' in the sense of 'closing an epoch by recognizing its entirely individual/particular character.' The historian recognizes the fact that the past can be 'called up' again, but in contrast to the survivor, (s)he does this voluntarily. Moreover, (s)he also 'registers' that facts of the past are 'bygone', 'definitely lost' or have 'come to a downfall.' According to De Graaff, good historiography is therefore the antidote for resentment. Much like Rousso, De Graaff considers the professional duty of the historian to be socially desirable: to 'draw a line under victimhood.' Sooner or later our gaze has to be redirected from the past to the future. De Graaff therefore approvingly cites the literary author Hellema, saying that: 'it has become about time ['hoog tijd'] to put the past in its place.' I have long shared this vision of Rousso and De Graaff. Undoubtedly, the skill or habitus of historians forms an essential part of our critical thought and, especially in these times of crisis, or rather crisis of time, this skill is potentially of great importance. Have we not all started to feel uncertain about the borders separating present and past? Have we as historians and as citizens not collectively lost our ability to measure time and recognize or acknowledge the difference between 'today', 'yesterday' and 'the day before yesterday'; and on this background, are we still able to distinguish between when we may hold on to things and try to intervene and when it is time for a more contemplative attitude?

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Times of crisis/crises of time Times seem in many ways in crisis. On a social level, until recently, the temporal borders between what is contemporary and what is past were until recently still, to an important extent, codified by socially prescribed periods of mourning.6 Classic prescriptions on terms of mourning, however, have recently become faint in many modern societies. Many intellectuals report with dismay that, certainly in relation to massive violence, we should no longer take for granted that time heals all wounds.7 These intellectuals posit that pain has no 'expiry date' and that 'everything passes by except for the past'8. Moreover, politicians seem to be unable to point to the shortest road to the future on the basis of their political agenda: they seem to need a long and toilsome detour via the painful past of historical injustices to reach something that resembles a project for the future.9 According to historian Charles Maier, something is thoroughly wrong with politics in the Western world, which might even stand at the end of an age. For example, Maier speaks of 'the end, or at least the interruption, of the capacity to found collective institutions that rest on aspiration for the future;' he directly relates this phenomenon to an 'obsession' with memory and a swift rise of a melancholic relation to the past.10 To put it briefly: would it not be good if, on the basis of their scientific contemplation, historians could still point out the precise temporal demarcations separating present, future and past and thus still tell with certainty when social, cultural and political phenomena turn from present into past?

Historicizing and transitional justice: constraints and risks I dwell upon this point because I am not convinced that this would be a desirable type of knowledge. Let us return once more to Rousso's plea to study the past where it belongs [i.e. in the past] and from the temporal dimension to which we [historians/contemporaries] belong and to De Graaff's citation that 'it [is] about time to put the past in its place.' I want to raise three questions on this issue. First, I wish to ask Rousso and De Graaff whether historians can simply 'observe' the borders between past and present and thereby, in Rousso's words, determine the place where they belong, on the one hand, and the place where their subject of study belongs, on the other (e.g. in academic historiography, the archive, the historical museum, etc). Can we claim to ‘know’ the proper place of the

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past, or is this place rather the product of an act of 'putting in its place' and thus constituted performatively?11 This question may seem sophistic. However, since the historical present can never be reduced to a single point in time, its definition will always, as pointed out by French historian Jacques Le Goff, remain a basic problem for historians, whether they recognize this or not. The definition of the present, Le Goff argues, is always bound up with ideology.12 This is certainly the case in truth commissions which are created in contexts of profound political, social and cultural transitions. In the context of transitions, the borders between present and past are often vague. Because truth commissions make up an important part of these transitions, I have previously argued that truth commissions should not be considered as mechanisms which merely reflect on the past retrospectively, but rather as mechanisms which actively constitute and regulate the categories of past and present.13 The use of historical discourse in truth commissions and in so-called 'new' democracies in general form part of the broader politics of time and historicity in which these countries attempt to exorcise the ghosts of the past by actively positing what belongs to their (judicial, political, social, cultural, etc.) present and what cannot or should not be considered part of this present. Historical discourse establishes what can be considered 'timely' or part of 'contemporaneity' and what should be considered anachronistic, old, 'over' or 'definitely lost' or 'downfallen.' In order to understand this phenomenon and its important political and social effects, I advocate an analysis which interprets the use of historical discourse in transitional justice, not just as a type of constative language, but also as a type of performative language.14 I agree with French historian Michel de Certeau’s claim that the differentiating division between past and present is not merely an absolute axiom of historiography but even the result of an 'act of separation' [le geste de deviser] that conditions the very possibility of (modern, Western) historiography.15 De Certeau has a point when arguing that the idea of a strict division between present and past, which most historians take for granted, is founded on socio-political logic and in its turn has important political implications. The following citation about the practice of historiography also applies to the use of historical discourse in truth commissions: Within a socially stratified reality, historiography defined as ‘past’ (that is, as an ensemble of alterities and of ‘resistances’ to be comprehended or rejected) whatever did not belong to the power of producing a present, whether the power is political, social, or scientific. (...) Historical acts

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transform contemporary documents into archives, or make the countryside into a museum of memorable and/or superstitious traditions. Such acts determine an opposition which circumscribes a ‘past’ within a given society (...).16

Our knowledge of the general efficiency of the use of historical discourse in truth commissions is limited. While historical discourse might help transitional countries in their search for social closure, it can also introduce an 'allochronist' practice (a term used by Johannes Fabian): in transitional countries a tendency is often found to (symbolically) allocate into another time or treat as living anachronisms those people who refuse to participate in the process of reconciliation or nation building. In South Africa and Sierra Leone, for example, forgiveness and reconciliation are often represented as defining characteristics of the present, while rancor and revenge are represented as belonging to the past. Due to this tendency, people who do not want or are not able to forgive or reconcile are often considered as not fully 'contemporaneous' with the rest of the nation. A similar mechanism is at play, for example, in Demond Tutu's famous slogan 'no future without forgiveness’.17 This is a powerful formula, because it implicitly accuses those unwilling to forgive not merely of obstructing one specific future but the future in general, as if they were threatening to bring time itself to a standstill. Likewise, Kader Asmal, one of the intellectual fathers of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), hoped that this commission would bring 'proper historical consciousness' to those who clung to the past. After the TRC, he argues, only 'ahistoric hermits' could still deny the new reality, 'looking backwards at ghosts, unaware of the exorcism so decisively under way.' 18 The allochronic property of modern historical discourse allows Asmal to pose the following rhetorical question: Exactly where (and when) are those few people living who still carry the old South African flag to sporting events in the new South Africa? Where (and when) are those (...) living, still oblivious that the old H. F. Verwoerd dam (...) is now called the Garieb in honour of the area’s inhabitants. Where (and when) are those people living (...) What time are some of us living (...)?19

Besides the allochronistic tendency described above, the use of historical discourse – or more specifically, the stress on the (quasi-spatial) separation between past and present – can have two other negative effects, which are each other’s exact opposites: the first effect can be described as

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Chapter One

a sort of 'temporal Manichaeism', which can lead to 'hyper-moralism', whereas the other can be described as 'temporal relativism which can lead to a 'hypo-moralism' or an incapacity to form ethical judgments. A type of criticism often formulated against truth commissions and historical commissions is that they pay little attention to the continuity of certain phenomena because they focus on a strictly delimited period of the past. Thus, they do not sufficiently combine their retrospective focus with a critical analysis of the present. The South African historian Colin Bundy, for example, strongly criticized the TRC in his country because, according to him, it focused too strongly on the strictly delineated period of Apartheid, which it described as the 'beast of the past', while it took hardly any notice of continuities with the periods before and after.20 Other commentators too deemed the strict focus of the truth commission a missed chance to conduct a more critical analysis of the 'new' South Africa.21 The lack of critical scrutiny of the present can indeed result in the emergence of ethical double standards, whereby a sometimes moralistic condemnation of past injustice is combined with inertia or even blindness to presenting injustices. Worse even, the past can come to function as a 'storehouse' for all evil, which consequently no longer seems part of the present, or in comparison with which contemporary evil seems to belong to the class of featherweights. When this is the case, a tendency toward 'temporal Manichaeism' emerges, which unburdens the present by burdening the past, and which could be described using the following formula: 'the past is evil/evil is past.' Richard Wilson formulated such a critique, although without naming it so, against the South African TRC, which he criticized for condemning violence of the past while identical violence still continued in prisons only a few miles away.22 The limited attention paid to the continuation of the past in the present and the related tendency toward temporal Manichaeism can partly be explained by referring to the specific political and ideological contexts in which most truth commissions function. Yet, the postulate of the division of past and present and the taboo on presentism that underpins the dominant currents of Western historiography also play a central role here. Moreover, temporal Manichaeism is reinforced by a series of widespread tendencies in contemporary historiography which, as Pieter Lagrou appropriately remarks, increasingly focuses on horror and crime in the past and tends to evolve from a 'histoire du temps present' [history of the present] into a 'histoire des autres' [history of the other].23 Paradoxically, the logic of historicization can also lead to moral relativism and an incapacity for ethical judgment. This especially is the case when the absolute particularity and singularity of historical events

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and context are stressed. In order to formulate an ethical judgment, we need a set of a-historical standards which transcend the case to be evaluated. A radical emphasis on the unicity of each historical situation can lead to a 'hypo-moralism.'24 Most historians will not consider this a problem, but in the context of truth commissions and historical commissions this can be highly problematical. This certainly is the case if we agree with Antoon De Baets that even if historians qua historians should not judge, at least their insights should enable others to do so in an informed way.25 The problem of hypo-moralism by historicization occurred, for example, in the parliamentary commission which had to inquire into the Belgian responsibility for the murder of the first Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. When writing their final report, the Belgian MPs fell back on research that was conducted by an appointed team of experthistorians and also took over the their taboo on 'presentism'. This taboo on presentism, or as the MPs phrased it, the fear to 'analyse and comment the facts from a present-day worldview', resulted in a great reluctance among the politicians to formulate an ethical judgment. This eventually lead to a situation in which the Belgian role in the murder of Lumumba was morally condemned in a nominal way, but whereby a series of disclaimers about the difference between 'norms concerning public morality of today' and 'personal moral considerations at that time' immediately 'defused' or even canceled this nominal condemnation on a political level.26 For another example of hypo-moralism by historicization, I want to turn for a moment to the Minority Position in which the Afrikaner member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Wynand Malan, turned against the conclusions, especially concerning the moral condemnation of the reprehensibility of Apartheid, which his colleague commissioners formulated in their final report. Malan criticizes the report of the TRC on a methodological level, because according to him, the commission made too much use of oral history, a type of history which he regards as untrustworthy. More interestingly, however, he also set up a historiographic argument against what he considered to be the commission’s far too moralist approach. He did this by interpreting the commission’s moralist approach as the result of the absence of a profound historical analysis or, as he phrased it: the lack of a 'real historical evaluation.' Whoever engages in a 'real historical evaluation of Apartheid, according to Malan, cannot but recognize this existence of historical perspectivism: i.e. the fact that each historical phenomenon can become the subject of different legitimate perspectives which should all be integrated if a 'shared history' is the target

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aimed at. Malan therefore criticizes the fact that in its report, and in line with a previous decision by the UN, the TRC refers to Apartheid as a crime against humanity. For Malan this clearly is a continuation of an old historical narrative and a 'battle of the past', since the UN took this decision back in 1973, while Malan stresses that in line with his historicist approach, 'moral imperatives are phenomena of their times and locations.'27 The appellation as crime against humanity is of great practical importance, because criminal prosecution then remains a possibility, due to the imperceptibility of that specific type of crime. Malan regrets that his colleague commissioners do not reject this and therefore implicitly argues that they are obsessed with the past. He poses the rhetorical question 'whether an investigation of apartheid under international law would have any present or future legal or political value'. This might possibly have been the case if genocide had been involved, because genocides remain a potential threat for many societies, but 'apartheid as a system is dead and buried forever.'28 He therefore concludes that attempts to prosecute war crimes retroactively can only be considered as an anachronistic and senseless stirring up of the past.29 The question might be asked of Rousso, de Graaff and Malan why historians should have the authority to 'put in its place' or 'close off' something of such great weight as the past, and merely on this basis of academic contemplation. Would it not be a matter of great concern if historians would then only need to demonstrate their skill of measuring time? And what should we think of the relationship between the professional duty of historians to historicize and 'close off' epochs by demonstrating their 'entirely particular/typical character'30 and the social justification of this act of closure? Can these two approaches actually be differentiated, and if so, is it not often the case that historians tend to see closed, bygone or definitely 'lost' and clearly identifiable epochs where this is deemed socially desirable? Certainly, historians have at their disposable a reasonable margin for demarcating one period in relation to the other. This margin blurs the distinction between 'observing' or 'recognizing' different epochs. It should be pointed out that several researchers have argued that historical periodization, rather than merely being a heuristic device or merely resulting from academic observation is often thoroughly political, primarily legitimating claims for autonomy and sovereignty. These researchers therefore speak about 'periodization politics.'31 This is highly relevant in the case of so-called transitional countries or new democracies, which often base their national identity and international legitimacy on an (alleged) break with a dictatorial or violent past, in other words a

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'discontinuous historicity.'32 The choice for a particular temporal demarcation is never neutral but can contribute directly to the legitimacy of the new regime.33 I want to return for the last time to the citation 'the time has come to put the past in its place' in order to raise a last question about this: how do we know that this time has come? Can a historian say something about such an inherently ethico-political or even quasi-religious question?34 Even when we are convinced that at some point in time a line has to be drawn under the past, does the central question not still remain at which point in time exactly this line has to be drawn? It can hardly be denied that it is socially necessary to make a certain distinction between victimship and 'former victimship', as suggested by de Graaf. This also seems to be true for the distinction between perpetratorship and former perpetratorship. The question is, however, whether this distinction between victims or perpetrators and former victims or perpetrators is not primarily an ethico-political difference, rather than a historical or chronological difference. When historians make this sort of demarcations, they force us to make the leap from a chronological, descriptive time to an imperative, prescriptive time. Such a leap is problematic because each chronological moment can be appointed by anyone as the time to draw a line under the past; the 'good historian' as well as the perpetrator or the politician with less noble intentions may do so. This is indeed the logic which underpins many pleas for amnesia and amnesty: a logic positing that there will never be a more timely moment to draw a line under the past than the moment when it is still present. How then do we reassure ourselves that we are not prematurely closing off the past?35 On previous occasions I have referred to the so-called Documento Final issued in 1983 by the Argentine military Junta as a perfect example of this perverted use of the logic of historicization for prematurely closing of the past.36 Although the Documento Final was essentially concerned with self-amnestying, and although the propaganda piece was televised during the military dictatorship and before the transition to democracy, it was conceived as a historical documentary. The military leaders referred to the piece as a 'historical synthesis of the painful and still recent past.' The viewer hears that the moment has come to heal the wounds [...] to enter with a Christian spirit to the dawning of a new epoch, and to look with humility to the day of tomorrow. 37

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At the end of the documentary, the military leaders proclaim the end of the dirty war and grant themselves an extensive amnesty. The entire documentary can be seen as a drama of closure which has to lead to one central conclusion: that the dirty war was bitter, but that now it is history and the nation should look forward to better times. It is clear that many (ex-) dictators and war criminals are suspiciously fond of making use of such historical discourse. The issue of the proper time to close off the past is not restricted to the perverse or cynical cases of self-amnestying, however. Hamber and Wilson remark that governments often want to close off pasts far earlier than the individuals involved are willing or able to do: 'For survivors, the state’s desire to build a new post-conflict society often means sloughing off the past too easily, and asking survivors to engage in a premature closure before all the psychological processes of truth and recompense are fully internalised.'38 It is therefore important that chronology or the fact that events belong to the chronological past is not instrumentalized as an alibi for claiming that these events also belong to the past in a more substantive sense, that they are passé or history. This is the danger that often lurks in the use of historical discourse by truth commissions. The mechanisms of the politics of time described above do not remain uncontested, however. In South Africa for example, the Khulumani Support Group – a member organization which represents over 55,000 victims and survivors of Apartheid violence – very explicitly criticize the politics of time used by both the TRC and the ANC-government. They criticize the 'unfinished business' of the TRC and the 'folly to think that the demand for accountability will fade with time.' 'It is not perpetrators who should be announcing that it is time to move on from the horrors of a past that continues to live in the present,' they argue, 'it is victims who should announce that time.' While they are not rejecting the aims of nation building and reconciliation in principle, they 'declare that the past is in the present' and call on all South Africans to accept 'that the past is not yet past.'39 The most radical and fascinating resistance against the logic of historicization and against chronological notions of time can undoubtedly be found with the Argentine Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo. The Madres have a perfect insight into the functioning of historical discourse and its potential effects on dealing with injustice. Because they fear that this logic of historicization will indirectly legitimize a situation of impunity, they radically resist every metaphor that refers to an absent, distant or dead past. The madres' best-known strategy is their emphasis on the ghostlike figures of the desaparecidos (disappeared) who are neither

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alive nor fully dead, and who are blurring the borders between past and present. Despite the more than thirty calendar years that have passed since the disappearance of their children, the Madres are denying the 'pastness' of this event.40

Conclusion The debate about the possibilities, limitations and desirability of the contribution of historians and historiography to transitional justice up to now has primarily focused on the aspects of 'truth' and the contrast between remembering and forgetting. Both proponents and opponents of the use of history in the context of transitional justice have primarily focused on the tenability of popular transitional justice-claims as regards reconciliation by truth telling, and remembrance as an alternative form of justice. They have therefore conceived of the use of historiography in terms of a search for an 'objective truth' or as a struggle against 'forgetting'. This approach is important and also yields a number of very interesting questions. The focus on the process of establishing truth and the tension between remembering and forgetting remain limited if we want to understand the ethical implications of the use of history in transitional justice and in Vergangenheitsbewältigung in general. Attention should therefore also be paid to another aspect of the relationship between historiography and transitional justice: that of the politics of time as it manifests itself in the practice of historicizing. The role of historiography and historical discourse within the field of transitional justice should not merely be related to its traditional functions of representing the past, of searching for truth or even of generating meaning or identity; its concept of time and the specific way in which it conceptualizes the relation between present and past should also be included. Historical discourse and the logic of historicization can be attractive in the context of transitional justice and truth commissions because of its ambivalent tendency to divide present and past merely by 'diagnosing' this 'division'; in other words, its alleged capacity to put the past in its place simply by recognizing or acknowledging this place. While the logic of historicizing can be of great importance in dealing with historical injustice, it can also have a series of negative consequences. For example, it can tend towards hyper-morality as well as hypo-morality and can be abused to prematurely close off the past or even legitimize impunity. Does this mean that there is no ethical mandate for historians, or that historians should not engage with transitional justice or truth and historical

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commissions at all? No, they should certainly do so, because historical discourse and the logic of historicization are already used in transitional justice without historians being present. Historians can and even should play an important ethical role, but primarily an indirect one. They should not claim that they can solve complex ethical or political dilemmas simply on the basis of their expertise in measuring time and determining the 'hierarchy of time'. If so, chronology would indeed serve as an alibi for escaping ethico-political responsibilities. However, historians can play a critical role precisely by reflexively pointing out the use and abuse of historical discourse and politics of time in such a way that ethical and political dilemmas are sharpened, and the need for taking responsibility is made manifest.

Notes 1

Antoon de Baets, "Na de genocide: Waarheidsstrategieën van rechters en historici," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 116, no. 2 (2003), 2: 212-230, 212. De Baets himself refers to Timothy Garton Ash as a source of inspiration here: Garton Ash T.,The truth about dictatorship, In: New York review of books, (1998), 35-40 2 Henry Rousso, La hantisse du passé: entretien avec Philippe Petit (Paris: Les éditions Textuel, 1998), 54. 3 Maurice Papon was a civil servant in de Vichy-regime during the Second World War. In the early 1980s it was revealed that he was responsible for the deportation of a large number of Jews. After a very lengthy prosecution process, Papon was convicted in 1998. During the trial, historians were engaged as expert witnesses. This provoked a heated debate as to whether or not it was appropriate for historians to engage in this type of judicial context. See: R. J. Golsan, ed., The Papon Affair. Memory and Justice on Trial (New York: Routledge, 2000). 4 Philippe Petit in: Rousso, La hantisse du passé, 10. (‘Pour accepter l’irréparable, il s’est fait historien du temps présent’) 5 Bob de Graaff, Op de klippen of door de vaargeul: De omgang van de historicus met (genocidaal) slachtofferschap (Amsterdam, 2006). 6 Rituals of mourning differ from culture to culture, but in most cultures religious or other traditions prescribe that close relatives of a deceased person have to observe a period of grieving during which they often withdraw from public events, wear particular clothing (often black, but sometimes also white), observe certain practices and abstain from others (e.g. having a new partner). Several religious traditions prescribe strictly defined periods of mourning – regulating what has to be done and for how many days after the funeral – and also include specific dates for memorial events. 7 This was forcefully illustrated for the context of Latin America by Elisabeth Jelin in her work: Los trabajos de la memoria (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2002). Ruti Teitel too remarks that the call for justice does not necessarily decrease with the passing of time. For example, she claims that transitional justice implies a non-linear

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notion of time. Ruti G. Teitel, "Transitional Justice Genealogy", Harvard Human Rights Journal, 16, 86. See also Berber Bevernage, History, Memory and StateSponsored Violence: Time and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2012). 8 Luc Huyse, Alles gaat voorbij behalve het verleden (Leuven: Van Halewyck, 2006). See also: Michael Ignatieff, "Articles of faith", Index on Censorship 5, (1996), 110-122. 9 John Torpey, Making Whole What Has Been Smashed. On Reparations Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 6. 10 Charles S. Maier, "A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy, and Denial," History and Memory 5, no. 2 (1993), 136-151, 147. 11 This question was the central question of a collective volume which I co-edited with Chris Lorenz: Chris Lorenz & Berber Bevernage (eds.), Breaking up time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). 12 Jacques Le Goff, Histoire et Mémoire (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1988), 31. 13 Bevernage, History, Memory and State-Sponsored Violence; Berber Bevernage, "Writing the Past Out of the Present: History and the Politics of Time in Transitional Justice", History Workshop Journal, 69 (2010), 111-131. 14 The difference between ‘constative language’ and ‘performative language’ was introduced by the British philosopher of language, J. L. Austin. See: J. L. Austin, How to do Things with Words (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962). 15 Michel de Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1975), 16. 16 Michel de Certeau, "History: Science and Fiction." In Michel Certeau, Heterologies. Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), 216. This essay was originally published in French as: Michel de Certeau, "L’histoire, science et fiction," Le genre Humain, 7-8 (1983). 17 D. M. Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999). 18 Kader Asmal, L. Asmal & R. Suresh Roberts, Reconciliation Through Truth. A Reckoning of Apartheid’s Criminal Governance (Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 1996), 52. 19 Ibid, 209. 20 Colin Bundy, "The Beast of the Past. History and the TRC," In: After the TRC. Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. W. James & L. van de Vijver L. eds. (Claremont: David Philip Publishers, 2001), 9-20. 21 Jacobus A. Du Pisani & Kwang-Su Kim, "Establishing the Truth about the Apartheid Past. Historians and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission," African Studies Quarterly 8, No. 1 (2004), 77-95. 22 Richard A. Wilson The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 23 Pieter Lagrou, De l’histoire du temps présent à l’histoire des autres: Comment une discipline critique devint complaisante”, Vingtième Siècle: Revue d'histoire, 118 (2013), 101.

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This is most probably the type of mechanism Hayden White is referring to when claiming, rather enigmatically, that ‘In a sense, ethics ended with the historicisation of human life’. Hayden White, The Practical Past, Historein 10 (2010), 10-19, 15. 25 De Baets, Na de genocide, 225. 26 Berber Bevernage, “Geschiedenis in overheidsopdracht: wetenschap, ethiek en politiek in de Belgische Lumumba-commissie,” Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis 125, no. 1 (2012), 81-96. 27 TRC, Report (Volume 5), 448. 28 TRC, Report (Volume 5), 449. 29 TRC, Report (Volume 5), 445. 30 De Graaff, Op de klippen of door de vaargeul, 29. 31 See for example: Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983); Kathleen Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia Press, 2008); Olivia Harris, “‘The Coming of the White People’: Reflections on the Mythologisation of History in Latin America," Bulletin of Latin American Research 14, No. 1, (1995), 9-24; Matt Hodges, "The time of the interval. Historicity, modernity, and epoch in rural France," American Ethnologist 37, No. 1 (2010), 115-131; Constantin Fasolt, The Limits of history (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2004). 32 The expression ‘discontinuous historicity’ is borrowed from Richard Wilson: The politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Legitimizing the PostApartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 16. 33 The logic of historicizing can function via a periodization politics which legitimizes a new, sovereign state. The legal scholar Mark Osiel warns that this might contribute to the delusion that the past no longer effects the present. Mark Osiel, Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory and the Law (London: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 166. 34 See for example the South-African religious group KAIROS which, argues in their manifesto “Now is the Time” that it is high time to end Apartheid. Eric Doxtader, "Making Rhetorical History in a Time of Transition. The Occasion, Constitution, and Representation of South African Reconciliation", Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4, No. 2 (2001), 223-260. 35 This is one of the central questions posed by for example Brandon Hamber and Richard Wilson in their analysis of a recent handling of the experience of violence and injustice of Apartheid. They argue that: "For survivors, the state’s desire to build a new post-conflict society often means sloughing off the past too easily, and asking survivors to engage in a premature closure before all the psychological processes around truth and recompense are fully internalised." Brandon Hamber & Richard Wilson, "Symbolic closure through memory, reparation and revenge in post-conflict societies", Journal of Human Rights 1, No. 1 (2002), 35-53. 36 Berber Bevernage, History, Memory and State-Sponsored Violence. 37 Documento Final, quoted from Berber Bevernage, History, Memory and StateSponsored Violence.

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23

Brandon Hamber & Richard Wilson, "Symbolic closure through memory, reparation and revenge in post-conflict societies," Journal of Human Rights 1, No. 1 (2002). 39 The press releases and charters of the ‘Khulumani Support Group’ can be found on the website: http://www.khulumani.net/ 40 Berber Bevernage & Koen Aerts, "Haunting Pasts: Time and Historicity as constructed by the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo and radical Flemish nationalists," Social Time 34 (2009), 4, 391-408.

CHAPTER TWO MOURNING A WAY OF LIFE: JUSTICE AND JUSTIFICATION IN JUST WAR MAREN LYTJE

In a newspaper article from 2006 published in the Danish newspaper Kristligt Dagblad, former US defense minister Donald Rumsfeld claimed that a media story could be as damaging to the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq as a regular military attack. Rumsfeld believed that this fact had been fully exploited by America’s enemy number one, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. The terrorists had managed to “capture the hearts and minds” of Muslims on a global scale by their cunning use of net-based media. While the terrorists had learned the media lesson well, Rumsfeld said, the US and its allies were lacking in this respect;1 or put more bluntly: The United States had managed their public diplomacy – their propaganda apparatus – poorly and had failed to make the just cause of their war efforts clear, while al’ Qaeda had taken full advantage of the media landscape of the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the article, Rumsfeld referred to two significant problems concerning the justification and mediation of war in the western world. The first problem pertains to the just cause of the political community or state engaged in warfare, the other to the media’s complicity in the war effort itself. Scholars interested in the former question often have a background in the just war tradition of moral and political philosophy, whereas scholars interested in the latter question work within the framework of media studies. The just war tradition primarily focuses on the moral problem of killing; within this tradition, it is generally assumed that killing is legitimate in war if the war is fought for a just cause (for example in self-defense or to prevent a genocide), by just means (for example without deliberately targeting civilians) and by a legitimate authority (for example a state recognized by the international community.)2 While just war theory is primarily concerned with

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stipulating practical guidelines for the right to war, jus ad bellum, and for the rights in war, jus in bello, it is underpinned by assumptions about the justice of the way of life of the state or political community engaged in a just war. For example, a genocidal state is generally assumed not to have the right of war. In fact, rebellion or war against such a state would be considered just by most just war theorists.3 Scholars working within the tradition of media studies, on the other hand, often focus on the relationship between media stories, media images or media technologies and the public’s support or lack of support for the war effort. For example, they might investigate the relationship between political decision makers and journalists; they might study the relationship between aesthetics and warfare; or they might consider how the internal workings of media networks or media technologies influence our perception of war.4 While the question of justice certainly figures as a significant topic in the literature on media and war, it is often posed as a question of rhetorical strategies and framing rather than as a question of the justice of the political community or state engaged in war. We might also say that the just war tradition focuses on justice, whereas media studies focus on justification. The just war tradition and media studies have contributed to our understanding of war in some important respects. For example, scholars working within the just war tradition have elaborated a critical vocabulary, which can be used to evaluate the rightfulness or wrongfulness of a specific war effort;5 and scholars working within media studies have pointed to the importance of the relationship between the political establishment and media networks in gathering support for war; they have also developed methodological tools which can be used to understand and evaluate the role of the media in war. Still, the division of labor between the two areas of study results in a split between justice on the one hand and justification on the other: justice is considered an ethical and legal problem pertaining to the justice of the state or the political community engaged in warfare, whereas justification is understood as the more or less suspect communication strategies of political decision makers and other public figures. As a consequence, the media’s involvement in processes of justification on the one hand and the assumed justice of the way of life of the state or political community engaged in a just war on the other have been pursued as independent areas of study. It may be possible, however, to bring the two areas of study together; this might be done by defining justice as the right way of life of the political community defended in a just war and by defining justification as the processes by which different media frames make this life visible. This

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definition allows us to focus on the ways in which media outlets frame the way of life of the state or political community engaged in warfare. Pursuing this thread means asking the question: how does the media frame the just way of life which is worth sheltering, and how does it separate this from the lives that can be lost without the need for justification or mourning? In answering this question, the article develops three analytical concepts: way of life, frame of justice and mourning. These three concepts will be developed in order to bring together the justice of just war theory and the justification of war provided by media analysis. This is done by suggesting that media frames which can be said to justify warfare are made of what the article refers to as collective memory imprints such as iconic photos or footage embedded in the collective unconscious. The media might use these memory traces to establish what the article refers to as frames of justice, which allow the way of life of the political community engaged in warfare to stand out against an unjust attacker. The article suggests that the process of framing the way of life of the political community resembles a mourning process through which the identity of the political community is reasserted in the face of a perceived loss. The reassertion of identity, the article suggests, is equivalent to the assertion of the justice of the political community itself. Finally, the article shows how the conceptual framework may be used in an analysis of television news. The first concept, way of life, is based on a reading of just war theorist Michael Walzer’s theory of justice.6 Walzer suggests that the justice of the state depends on its ability to balance the different spheres of people’s lives. These spheres are historically contingent and rely on the concrete experience of the political community embedded in the state. The historical experience therefore defines the way of life of the political community and suggests who might belong to it. The prerogative of the state is to defend the way of life of the political community against attacks from the outside in the same way as it is supposed to protect the integrity of the different spheres of justice inside the community. Such defense constitutes a just war according to Walzer; we could also say that the state’s ability to uphold the way of life of the political community determines the justice of the state engaged in warfare. In the context of justifying war, the article suggests that the way of life of the political community might become visible through different media frames. These frames allow us to recognize an already established way of life in need of defense and shelter. The article refers to these frames as frames of justice because they assume the justness of already established political communities. To develop the concept frame of justice, the article

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draws on Judith Butler’s concept frame of life.7 Butler suggests that life is characterized by its mournability. According to Butler, our ability to recognize the life which is worth mourning depends, at least partly, on our a-priori, historical schemata, which found the hegemonic norms of already established communities. In order to be intelligible, frames of life must function in accordance with these normative standards, thereby reasserting the hegemonic order of the community. Even though the frame works in favor of the powers that be (at least in Butler’s definition), it might still offer an escape: in order to assert its hegemony, Butler suggests, the frame has to repeat itself; in this repetition, another life not yet qualified by our historical schemata might escape the frame and offer alternative ways of belonging. The article then proposes that framing justice in the context of war might be likened to a Freudian mourning process. According to Freud, the experience of loss triggers a mourning process in which the memory of the lost object will repeat itself in different guises before it is put to rest in a chronological structure which narrates the identity of the subject. The article suggests that the perceived act of violence against the political community functions in a similar way: it affects a loss that is inscribed in the collective unconscious, for example, in the shape of an icon. Initially, the media repeats the icon in different guises; however, gradually the icon is placed in relation to other memory traces already embedded in the collective unconscious: it finds its place in a chronological structure, which reestablishes the identity, the way of life, of the political community. The article exemplifies the theoretical framework through an analysis of a number of news frames used by the Danish Public Broadcasting Network, DR, at the beginning of the War on Terror in 2001. The analysis suggests that the loss affected by the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was repeated through the media’s processes of amplification, causing the footage of the attack to be continuously replayed. Gradually, however, the media’s processes of containment worked towards establishing different frames, which placed the footage of the attack in relation to other events and helped explain it. The analysis shows that the media’s processes of amplification and containment resemble a mourning process whereby the repetitive nature of the loss is put to rest in a chronology which narrates the way of life of the political community to be defended in the War on Terror. The purpose of this paper is therefore to develop a conceptual framework based on the concepts way of life; frame of justice and mourning in the context of the relationship between justice provided by

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just war theory and justification provided by media analysis literature. In doing so, the paper postulates a theory of the relationship between justice, justification and just war. The central argument of the theory is that just war theory and media studies can be brought together by focusing on the media’s frames of justice. These frames function as modes of justification insofar as they frame the justice of the way of life of the political community engaged in warfare.

Way of Life Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars (1977) is one of the central works in modern just war theory. In this work, Walzer suggests that the concept of just war can be based on a domestic analogy: we have to assume the existence of sovereign states with state rights analogous to individual rights. Consequently, military violation of a sovereign state is equivalent to an aggressive attack on the individual in civil society, and just war parallels law enforcement and brings justice to the victims of aggression by reaffirming the order of the political community.8 In Walzer’s scheme, the justice of just war is located in the domestic analogy and therefore presupposes the justice of the political community of the sovereign state. In his later book, Spheres of Justice (1983), Walzer modifies this definition of justice: a rights-based definition of justice, such as that suggested in Just and Unjust Wars only applies to the international community of sovereign states where the discourse of rights “does real work.”9 The justice of the sovereign state itself, however, is related to distributive principles according to which the political community distributes social goods. According to Walzer, distributive justice does not pertain to a single sphere such as the sphere of production; rather, it pertains to a number of different spheres, most importantly the sphere of membership and the sphere of political office.10 Ideally, each of these spheres has its own autonomy, which should be upheld by people in office, by the state.11 According to Walzer, the state’s ultimate prerogative is therefore to defend the way of life of the political community embedded in its distributive principles. While Walzer suggests a generalized theory of justice, the spheres of justice are neither founded on universal principles nor do they follow predetermined laws. Rather, the justice of different distributive systems resides in the historically produced social meanings that the political community assigns to social goods.12 We could also say that, according to Walzer, justice resides in the history of the given political community, insofar as the historical process constitutes the way of life of that

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community. Membership of a political community, then, signals a transition: from being merely a living human being who is not a member and therefore not a part of the spheres of justice which is particular to a given community, to becoming the political subject who is endowed with the historical insignias of belonging. Consequently, justice is established as a history which illustrates the way of life of the community. For the most part, the way of life of the political community would seem to function at the subconscious level as a practical way of going about things. However, situations might exist in which the political community would be likely to bring its way of life to consciousness, thereby reiterating its justice. This might happen due to internal resistance, or it might happen as a consequence of external pressure such as an act of aggression. In this case, the way of life of the political community can be made visible through different frames.

Frames of Justice The concept of the frame pervades a large array of academic disciplines from art history and film studies to cognitive and computer science. However, there is general agreement that the frame is somehow involved in organizing our visual experience:13 the frame makes something visible by marking its boundaries, in the same way as a picture frame makes the work of art stand out against the wall. In her book Frames of War (2005), Judith Butler takes this general definition as her starting point for investigating how the frame determines our ability to see “life”; not life understood in a biological sense as merely living; but rather in the sense of the being of the subject whose identity has already been ontologically defined.14 In this context, however, the being of the subject is not to be understood in an essentialist sense: frames of life do not reveal or conceal the true nature of the human being; rather, they offer access to what we might think of as different forms of historical ways of life which already exist and constitute the subject a priori. Butler relates the frame of life to three other terms: apprehension, recognition and intelligibility. In Butler’s terminology, apprehension is an ontological category which primarily refers to the anxiety of losing another being; this life is perceived as precarious and therefore in need of shelter. In other words, life is grievable. According to Butler, the purpose of the frame is to discriminate between apprehensible and inapprehensible lives, thus working towards establishing the ontologies of the subject.15 In Butler’s view, the ontological status of apprehension is closely linked to the epistemological problem of recognition. This is to say that in order for

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us to apprehend a life, this must somehow conform to normative standards of the ontology of the subject. These standards would seem to set “life” apart from merely living. Hence, Butler argues that the frame functions in accordance with a set of intelligible standards grounded in the a-priori historical schemata that order our understanding, offering us access to different forms of historical life. The historical schemata are therefore crucial for determining whether or not we recognize what is framed as life.16 The intelligibility of the frame which allows us to recognize life as worth mourning and sheltering causes the frame to function within a closed system; it functions as a set-up which is always already there, embedded in our norms and values. We might also say that the frame of life lingers in our minds as a subconscious memory trace. However, in order for us to assert its normative order, the frame needs to be circulated and reproduced, i.e. to be brought to consciousness. This circulation reiterates the historically established ontology of the subject and confirms the normative order of a particular historical way of life. Nevertheless, Butler argues that in the process of reiteration, something might escape the frame and open up for the possibility of another life not entirely recognized but nevertheless apprehended.17 We might pair Walzer’s definition of justice and Butler’s definition of the frame of life to develop a third concept, namely frames of justice: frames of justice set up the political being by showing the insignias of belonging; this is to say that the frame of justice generates the being of the political subject who belongs to an established way of life that marks him or her off from the simply living human being; and insofar as justice relies on historically grounded ways of life, the frame of justice sets up a history particular to the political subject. The frame of justice therefore has a temporal dimension in two senses: on one hand, it is always already there as a cognitive, a-priori category which orders the visual world and refers to an experience, which has already been lived. Therefore, it is repeated in the present, not as a temporal unfolding, but as a subconscious memory trace, which sneaks in through the backdoor. In contrast, through the process of framing, the content of the frame is brought to consciousness by a temporal unfolding which establishes a narrative of the political community. The frame might therefore be understood as memory in the sense of an imprint and in the sense of recall.

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Mourning We might refer to this memory imprint as collective memory understood as subconscious memory imprints which are shared by many;18 and we might refer to the process of recall as an act of historical remembrance through which these memory imprints are placed in their right chronological order. This is to say that the process of framing justice is also a process of transferring the temporally undifferentiated subconscious memory traces of the frame to a consciousness of time. Some scholars have argued that the process of historical remembrance which takes place at the level of the collective resembles the process of remembrance which takes place at the level of the individual;19 and some scholars have further suggested that when faced with collective violence, the process of historical remembrance resembles a Freudian mourning process through which the collective might come to terms with a violent past.20 According to Freud, mourning is a temporal process through which the memory trace of the lost object is woven into a story of the temporal unfolding of the identity of the subject and placed in its right place in the past.21 If mourning were completely successful, we would be able to draw a firm line between present and past, thus differentiating between the subject and the (lost) object. This process would reestablish the identity of the subject. However, in the process of mourning, the lost object which belongs to the past is always at risk of repeating itself in the present in different guises, thus collapsing the temporal unfolding of past, present and future. Therefore, past losses might haunt the mind of the mourner and slowly erode his or her identity.22 Intellectual historian Dominique LaCapra has suggested that the work of mourning which takes place at the level of the individual might be likened to the process of historical remembrance which takes place at the level of the collective. The process of historical remembrance might be brought about by traumatic events experienced by the collective, such as the Holocaust. According to LaCapra, the experience of trauma which triggers the collective mourning process is always at risk of “acting out” in much the same manner as the lost object threatens to repeat and reappear in the mourning process of the individual. In other words, in the face of loss, there is a risk that the process of remembrance will be disrupted by the lost object, which is felt as an uncanny presence. We could invoke Judith Butler’s terminology here and say that the loss is apprehended. To sum up, the article has so far proposed a conceptual framework which brings together three concepts: way of life, frame of justice, and mourning, suggesting that these three concepts might bring together the

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justice provided by just war theory with the justification provided by media analysis literature. The article suggested that just war theory assumes the justice of the political community or state engaged in a just war; this justice is embedded in a historical way of life which grounds the political community. The article further suggested that this way of life is differentiated from what is simply living and becomes recognizable through frames of justice. The frame of justice establishes ontologies of the political subject and is equivalent to a set-up which captures the individual and invests him or her with insignias of belonging. This set-up may function subconsciously as a collective memory imprint which is always already there; or it may function consciously as a process of historical remembrance that repeats the temporal unfolding of the memory traces of the frame of justice. In the case of a perceived act of aggression against the way of life of the political community, the process of historical remembrance resembles a mourning process through which the loss is integrated into the frame of justice, thus reiterating the justice of the political community perceived to be under attack. However, it was further argued that the loss leaves an uncanny surplus, which is not completely recognized but only apprehended. The next part of the article exemplifies this conceptual framework through an analysis of DR’s daily evening news at nine p.m., beginning with the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, and ending with the proclamation of the Danish parliamentary election on October 30th, 2001.23 The analysis suggests that the footage from the attack on the World Trade Center functions as a loss to the political community, which was primarily imprinted in the shape of the footage of the collapsing Twin Towers. Initially, the loss represented by this footage was continuously repeated through the news media’s processes of amplification. In the course of a week, however, the footage was being woven into a coherent story about Islamist terrorism versus the westernized way of life which was under attack. This story, the article argues, reiterated the identity of the political subject through a temporal unfolding of collective memory traces, thus reestablishing the justice of the political community which had come under attack.

Amplification and Containment; Collective Memory and Historical Remembrance It is commonplace to say that war sells (or at least the wars in which we ourselves are engaged do),24 especially if it is accompanied by spectacular footage or imagery which can be continuously repeated.25 Some of these

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images might gradually gain the character of collective memory, especially if they are portrayed as radical events which clearly mark a before and an after.26 Within media studies, this process is sometimes referred to as amplification.27 However, television news also serves the opposite function: it is supposed to clarify events by relating them to other similar phenomena, thus explaining how the event could occur and what the likely outcome might be. Within media studies, this process is referred to as containment.28 An obvious example of the process of amplification and containment is the footage of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. In the week following the attack, the event was amplified: the footage of the airplanes flying into the two towers was continuously being replayed along, including footage of people running away from the ash cloud blasting from the imploding building; of “the butterflies,” the two human figures hurled desperately from the collapsing towers; and footage of rescue workers trying to find survivors in the pile of rubble to which the World Trade Center had been reduced. This footage was accompanied by the anchor referring to the event as “the worst terrorist attack ever” and as an event which would change the world and divide it into before and after.29 Moreover, political commentators and politicians referred to the attack as an event which marked a fall from innocence and into the dark world of the real: it was assumed that Islamist groups were behind the attack, and while Islamist terror was not new, a number of commentators suggested that the leaders of the democratic world, in particular the United States, had shut their eyes to it and had now been brutally awoken to its harsh realities.30 Once again, the United States and its associated countries were at war. One of these associated countries was Denmark. While no one had actually been hurt in Denmark and very few had any direct association with the event, the Danish people were nevertheless framed as victims of the attack. For example, two news reports on consecutive days in September presented interviews with a pre-school teacher who told the viewers how pre-school children had been traumatized by witnessing the event on television. Similarly, in October, after the war in Afghanistan had begun, a news report presented a kindergarten project whose purpose was for children to come to terms with the traumatic experience of war through drawing and other artistic expressions.31 DR news also presented Danish perpetrators in a similar way. For example, a news report on September 16th, 2001 revealed that Abu Laban, a radical imam located in Copenhagen, was an affiliate of the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

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Consequently, Abu Laban was also an affiliate of Osama bin Laden, who was probably behind the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. A news report about the said link between Abu Laban, Omar Abdel-Rahman and Osama bin Laden was accompanied by footage of the World Trade Center after the bombing in 1993 and by footage of the falling Twin Towers. The journalists behind the report had received their information from a Scottish researcher; in a featured telephone interview he suggested that Denmark had been too soft on terror. This statement was accompanied by footage of the falling Twin Towers, suggesting a link between the softness of the Danish government and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.32 The news reports described above are examples of amplification in two respects. First, the continuous replay of the falling Twin Towers accompanied by commentaries which divided the world into a before and an after highlighted the substantial and deadly threat posed by Islamist terror. Secondly, the event was amplified with respect to those involved: not only individuals in the imploding buildings and the sovereign rights of the United States had suffered harm; the harm extended to the entire westernized world and what it represented. This point was made in press conferences and public speeches by state leaders, most significantly by George W. Bush; but it was also made by DR itself, for example in the reports displaying Danish children as traumatized victims of the attack and Danish perpetrators comparable to Osama bin Laden, such as the Copenhagen-based imam Abu Laban. The amplification processes continuously repeated a loss suffered by the political community of the western world; the loss of lives, of course, but perhaps most significantly the loss of a child-like innocence, which had come under attacked. To explain an event of such a scale, DR used what might be termed historicizing containment strategies. For example, on September 12th, DR ran a feature presenting a brief history of the Islamic group which was said to be behind the attack. The feature opened with a minute reenactment of the attack itself, supported by footage and computer animations and with a slightly altmodish voiceover explaining the details of the event. The feature then portrayed the likely perpetrator, Osama bin Laden, and what was referred to as “the network.” The network consisted of different Islamist groups, which were shown by way of different footage; the feature showed footage of Soviet tanks leaving Afghanistan after they had been driven out by the Afghani Mujahedeen with support from the Reagan administration; it showed imprisoned members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1981 prior to the assassination of Anwar Sadat; it showed the body of an American soldier being pulled through the streets

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after a US helicopter was shot down over Mogadishu in 1993, and it showed footage from the bombing of the World Trade Center the same year; it showed footage from the conflict in Chechnya and Algeria, and finally it showed footage of members of Hamas and Hezbollah burning the Israeli flag. Though the events represented by the footage were not necessarily related to one another, they were drawn together in a coherent story which depicted the rise of radical Islamism beginning with the Afghani Mujahedeen in the 1980s and ending with the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. The next day, on September 13th DR news showed a documentary produced by CBS which historicized the attack on the World Trade Center in a similar way. The documentary had been made before the attack on the World Trade Center and focused on the relationship between the United States and Islam in the face of the bombing of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998. It opened with footage illustrating the war-like condition between the two parties, such as the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. This footage was followed by interviews with Muslim dissidents living in the United Kingdom; through their comments, the documentary tracked Osama bin Laden’s path; it followed him through his financial involvement with the Afghani Mujahideen in the 1980s to the Gulf War in 1991 when he had offered his holy warriors to the Saudi king and had been turned down in favor of the Americans. The documentary suggested that bringing American troops into the holy land had been crucial for generating hatred against the United States. The documentary then followed bin Laden from Saudi Arabia to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, into Sudan, where he helped plot the attacks on the American Embassies in 1998, and from where he was extradited at the request of the Clinton administration. In the week after the attack on the World Trade Center, the media’s processes of amplification and containment worked towards establishing the footage of the collapsing Twin Towers as a collective memory imprint. The footage was continuously replayed, indicating the magnitude of the event which divided the world into a before and an after; moreover, the event was repeated in different guises, for example in the guise of the Afghani Mujahedeen, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Hezbollah. This repetition was part of a historical containment strategy which configured the memory imprint of the loss in different ways. One configuration indicated a traumatized West, whose innocence had been lost, the other a deteriorating and war-like relationship between Islam and the West.

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These two story-lines were repeated in the weeks following the attack, and new events were placed in relation to them. For example, a week after the attack on the World Trade Center, letters containing anthrax spores were sent to two American senators and news media offices. The attacks were framed as a potential means of biological and chemical terror, which might be used by radical Islamist groups in their battle against the West.33 On October 10th, immediately after the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, a renewed anthrax attack in the United States prompted DR to put together a news feature about the dangers of biological and chemical warfare. The feature was introduced by the studio anchor; he was sitting in front of the blue background with images of Osama bin Laden and the collapsing Twin Towers in the top left corner. The images bore the headline: “The War on Terror.” The feature opened with footage of the clearing of the mail office in the United States after one of the first anthrax attacks. It also contained a number of historical images such as Saddam Hussein’s massacre on the Kurds in 1988, American planes dropping Agent Orange over the Vietnamese Jungle in 1973, images of the trenches of the First World War after the German use of mustard gas, images of poisoned people after the Aleph attack on the Tokyo subway with nerve gas in 1995, and finally images of chemical production plants in North Korea. Thus, the feature contained a mix of old and new memory traces of chemical and biological warfare which DR had drawn from its own or other broadcast networks’ archives. First, footage from the anthrax attack appeared. The footage contained visuals of protection-clad medical officers and of paramedics carrying individuals who had been in contact with the anthrax spores out of the building on stretchers. There was a brief cut to North Korean chemical production plants, followed by a cut to dead victims of Saddam Hussein’s massacre of the Kurds. A voiceover informed the viewer that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq had used chemical weapons against its own citizens in what was later recognized by Sweden, Norway and Great Britain as genocide. Saddam Hussein’s massacre of the Kurds was used as an example of chemical and biological warfare, and while they had nothing to do with the anthrax letters, the chemical production plants in North Korea, Osama bin Laden or the attack on the World Trade Center, all these visuals were used to exemplify the same thing: the threat of biological terror, which killed indiscriminately without distinguishing between a qualified way of life that might warrant attack and what was simply living. The feature then cut to American planes dropping Agent Orange over the Vietnamese jungle. Unlike Saddam Hussein’s massacre of the Kurds,

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which was compared to the anthrax letters as an example of the indiscriminate use of biological and chemical warfare, the footage of the American planes was introduced as a painful memory for the American people. In contrast to al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-il and the people responsible for the anthrax attacks, the voiceover told us that the Americans were “traumatized.” The feature then showed images from the trenches of the First World War after the German use of mustard gas. A voiceover introduced these images with the words: “even in Europe, we once used…” Afterwards an excerpt from George W. Bush’ “either-youare-with-us-or-you-are-against-us” speech appeared, and finally an interview with the leader of the Danish microbiological research institute, who explained what anthrax was, and why it is unlikely to reach Denmark. The feature drew on the two threads developed in the week after the attack on the World Trade Center and told the story of a traumatized West versus the radicalism of Islam. According to this story, the United States and Europe had been traumatized in two ways: first by the evil they had perpetrated in the past, such as the use of chemical weapons in the First World War and the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War; secondly by a similar evil currently incurred on them by others. The first type of traumatization was shown as memory traces of anomalous immoral acts which had caused a meaningless loss of lives: The use of mustard gas was portrayed as a remnant of the past with which the West had come to terms, whereas the use of Agent Orange was portrayed as an uncharacteristic immoral act with which the Americans were coming to terms. To use the Freudian vocabulary, the trenches of the First World War had been properly mourned, whereas the use of Agent Orange was in the process of being mourned. The second type of traumatization was shown as the potential indiscriminate use of biological and chemical weapons in the present were they to fall into the hands of terrorist groups. In the news feature, these groups took different shapes, for example that of the Iraqi and North Korean regimes; or, to use the Freudian vocabulary, the loss perpetrated by biological and chemical warfare was still repeating itself in different guises in the present. The stated purpose of the feature was to explain the use of chemical and biological weapons from a chronological-historical perspective, thus contextualizing the present anthrax attacks. Nevertheless, it operated with a disjointed sense of time. On the one hand, the evil of chemical and biological warfare which killed without distinguishing between a qualified life and the simply living was in the past: it had been properly mourned, and the mourning process had separated simply living from the present way of life and had left it in the past. The ontological separation between

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an evil past and a good present allowed the political community to separate itself from the evil it was fighting. On the other hand, the evil of the past was still present in different guises such as the anthrax perpetrators, Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein, members of Aleph, and Osama bin Laden. These figures represented the same phenomenon and appeared outside the boundaries of time or place, defying the chronological structure of mourning. Like an uncanny remainder of a ghost from the past, they had come back to haunt the just way of life in the present by killing indiscriminately; and they had brought back the simply living, who were once again to be protected from the recurrence of evil. Like the evil against which they were to be protected, the simply living did not quite fit the chronology of the frame; they appeared unbound by time and place. While the news feature responded to the renewed anthrax attacks, it was not driven by them; rather, it was driven by the memory traces of the use of biological and chemical weapons during the First World War and the Vietnam War, which were already there, framing the history of the political community engaged in the war against terror.

Conclusion: A Theory of Justice, Justification and Just War? So how does the media frame the just way of life which is worth sheltering, and how does it separate it from the lives that can be lost without the need for justification or mourning? First of all, the article has suggested that the media’s frame of justice might function in two ways: as a process of collective memory making, and as a process of historical remembrance. The process of collective memory making happens through the media’s processes of amplification, whereby images are repeated to the point of gaining the character of collective memory. An example of this is the image of the imploding Twin Towers. The process of historical remembrance, on the other hand, takes place through the media’s processes of containment, whereby the media is seeking to explain and thereby confine events. Perhaps media have even become indispensable to the process of collective memory making, insofar as collective memory has become bound up with media memory. In the case of an act of war, the media’s processes of amplification and containment might produce what this article has referred to as frames of justice. These frames separate the way of life which is worth mourning and sheltering from the lives which can be lost without the need for justification or mourning. For example, in the news frame discussed above, the way of life of the political community to be engaged in the war

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on terror is a life that mourns and through the mourning process relegates evil to the past and separates the simply living off from the just way of life as a symbol to be protected. The frame of justice therefore marks a border between an inside and an outside: between the present way of life and a past which has been left behind. In the context of DR’s evening news analyzed above, this frame emerges from the trenches of the First World War and from the Vietnamese jungle; it repeats a past which we ought to have left behind; but it also evokes the ghost of the simply living who fell victims to the process of mourning and were left behind at the expense of establishing the way of life of the political community. They too are there, escaping the frame and reminding us of an almost animal-like existence, which is neither a way of life, nor the perpetrator against it, but the human creature residing in the gap between the two.

Notes 1

Donald Rumsfeld, ”Mediernes krig mod terror,” Kristeligt Dagblad February 27, 2006. 2 See, for example, Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse and Endre Begby, The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) and Helen Frowe, The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2011). 3 Ibid. 4 See Douglas Kellner, The Persian Gulf TV War (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992) and Hamid Mowlana, George Gerbner. (eds.), The Triumph of the Image: The Media’s War in the Persian Gulf (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992) for examples of the relationship between journalistic practices and the communication strategies of the military and the political administration. See also Susan Carruthers’ The Media at War (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan), 2011, 9, where she suggests that “media outlets often appear positively eager to act as war’s cheerleaders.” For a critical review of the relationship between war and photography, see Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2004), where she notes a curious overlap between photography and war and argues that photography is crucial to the public perception of war as well as to the war effort itself. See also Francois Debrix, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture and Geopolitics (London: Routledge, 2007) in which he maps the relationship between the American tabloid press and the Bush administration’s communication strategy in the War on Terror. See also W.L. Bennet, R.G. Lawrence and S. Livingston, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), which suggests that the internal workings of media networks often favor the perspective of the political elite and thereby challenge democracy. As regards the relationship between war and media technologies, Andrew Hoskins, Ben O’Loughlin, War and Media: The Emergence of Diffused War (Cambridge: Polity Press), 2010, suggest that our memory of war

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and conflict in the twentieth century is closely connected to documentary evidence of photography and film. Photo technologies, they argue, have caused a change in war and our perception of it and have forced the military to incorporate the media into their organizational practices. 5 See for example Andrew Fiala, The Just War Myth: The Mora Illusions of War (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008). 6 Michael Walzer developed his theory of justice in two key works Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations New York: Basic Books, 2006 [1977]) and Spheres of Justice: a Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Oxford: Basic Blackwell, 1983). Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars is considered foundational to modern theories of just war. The American moral philosopher Jeff McMahan, for example, refers to Walzer’s theory as the “tradition.” See Jeff McMahan ‘rethinking the just war’ New York Times Opinionator, November 11, 2012 on http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/rethinking-the-just-warpart-1/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0. 7 Judith Butler develops this concept in Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grivable (New York: Verso, 2010). 8 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 58-62. 9 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, xv. 10 Ibid., 60-2 and 15. 11 Ibid., 15. 12 Ibid., 313-14. 13 See for example Anne Freidberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2009). 14 Judith Butler, Frames of War, 2. 15 Ibid., 5. 16 Butler herself identifies these historical schemata as equivalent to Foucault’s epistemes. See Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Amazon: Kindle Edition), loc. 394-403, where he suggests that the episteme is that category which “makes manifest the modes of being of order [and] can be posited as the most fundamental of all: anterior to words, perceptions, and gestures, which are then taken to be more or less exact expressions of it.” 17 Judith Butler, Frames of War, 10. 18 For this definition of collective memory see for example Edward Casey, “Public Memory in Place and Time” in Kendall Phillips (ed.), Framing Public Memory (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 17-45 and Martin Conway Flashbulb Memories (Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995). 19 The work of American historian Dominick LaCapra, for example, is suggestive of the historian functioning as the psychoanalyst of the political community of the state and indicates that he or she should work on the symptoms of the collective. See for example Dominick LaCapra, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004) and History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009). 20 See for example Dominick LaCpara, “Revisting the Historians’ Debate: Mourning and Genocide,” History and Memory 9, No. 2, 80-112, where LaCapra

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suggests that historical writing might be structured like a mourning process through which the historian works through the symptoms of trauma. In a similar manner, the German historian Jörn Rüsen suggests in ’Mourning by History –Ideas of a New Element in Historical Thinking,’ Historiography East & West (2003) that the relationship to the past can be compared to the relationship with deceased persons or objects in a Freudian-like mourning process. See also Berber Bevernage, History, Memory and State-Sponsored Violence: Time and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2012), 165, who suggests that “a close relationship exists between the way we think about time and historicity, on one hand, and the way we think about mourning and death, on the other. For the relationship between myth and history, see Frank Ankersmitt, “Presence and Myth,” History and Theory 43 no. 3 (2006): 328-336. 21 Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia [1917]” in Sigmund Freud, On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin Books, 2005), 201-218. 22 Freud’s theory of mourning is related to his theory of trauma’s compulsion to repeat. Freud based his explanation of the latter on his theory of the division between the unconscious/menmic part and the conscious/receptive part of the psychic apparatus. According to Freud, physical sensations produce memory traces which pass through the conscious-receptive part of the psychic system and are stored in the unconscious/mnemic part of the psychic system. Memory traces which have passed through the conscious/receptive part of the psychic system are directly available to consciousness. When we bring memory traces back to consciousness in the right chronological order, we remember because consciousness recognizes the memory traces of the past. The traumatic event, however, evades the conscious-receptive part of the psychic system and embeds itself directly into the unconscious. Therefore, it cannot be recognized by consciousness; it can only be apprehended as an uncanny presence which demands to be represented. See Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XVIII [1920-1921] trans. James Strachey (London: Vintage Books, 2001), 7-64. 23 With the beginning of the Danish parliamentary election campaign, the war in Afghanistan more or less disappeared from the “mind” of DR’s news broadcast. This can be shown by a survey of the entry dates in Stefan Birkebjerg Andersen and Martin Lindø Westergaard, Avisårbogen 2001 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 2001). Avisårbogen (the newspaper yearbook) offers brief summaries of the content of the most important Danish news outlet on a daily basis. 24 See for example Susan Carruthers’ The Media at War 25 See for example Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pains of Others. 26 See for example Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin, War and Media and Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others. 27 See, for example, Andrew Hoskins and Ben O’Loughlin Television and Terror, 14-16. 28 Ibid.

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DR news at 21:00, September 12, 2001. DR news at 21:00, September 11, 2001 and September 12, 2001. 31 DR news at 21:00, September 12, 2001 and September 13, 2001. 32 DR news at 21:00, September 16, 2001. 33 DR news at 21:00, September 19, 2001. 30

CHAPTER R THREE THE “STO OLPERSTE EINE” BE ETWEEN CO OMMEMO ORATION AND BIO OPOLITICS S LARS ÖSTMAN S

Fig. 3.1 (www w.stolpersteine..eu, accessed 15 5 March 2015)

In the 1990ss, a peculiar monument m forr the victims oof the Third Reich R saw the light of day: the Stollpersteine. Th hey are said too be ‘ein Kun nstprojekt für Europa’,, as we read on o their homep page (www.sttolpersteine.co om); they are designedd and produceed by the Gerrman artist G Gunter Demnig g, who in 1992 installled the first Stolperstein S in n front of Coologne’s town n hall, ‘in

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einer Kunstaaktion an die Deportation der d Sinti und R Roma’.2 Of co ourse, the Stolpersteine commemoraate not only th he Sinti and R Roma victims, but also Jews, the poolitically perssecuted, homo osexuals, Jehoovah’s Witneesses, and victims of thhe Euthanasia programme (cf. Fig. 3.1). In short:: ‘Der Künstleer Gunter Dem mnig erinnertt an die Opferr der NSZeit’ (cf. Fig. 3.2), thus display ying an unpprecedented level of commemoraative inclusiveeness. Any vicctim who in oone way or an nother can be related too the governm ment of the Third T Reich inn the years 19 933-1945 may have a Stolperstein innstalled for hiis or her memo mory.

Fig. 3.2 (www w.stolpersteine..eu/start, accesssed 15 March 20015)

Today, Dem mnig still travvels all over Europe layinng down Stolp persteine, replacing oone or moree of the sttandard, usuually smaller,, granite cobblestones. The Stoolpersteine stand s slightlyy above th he other cobblestones, making peedestrians “stu umble” in thee sense of: ‘W Wer nicht stolpert, gehht nicht’, as one research her put it.3 The Stolpersteine are installed in ffront of the laast self-chosen n residence off the victim in question, although som metimes the stone s can be laid l at the locaation where th he victim worked. Onne Stolpersteinn measures 96 9 × 96 × 1000 mm and costs c 120 Euros as off March 20155, whereby the German sstates ‘akzepttieren die Stolpersteine als Geschennck […].’4 Altthough in theoory, the stateccould also purchase thhese monumeents, the projject aims in particular to o address

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different typpes of NGOss, Jewish com mmunities, grooups of conteemporary neighbours, inhabitants of the respeective streets etc., or sim mply any individual ciitizen. The Stollpersteine hom mepage inforrms us that, aas of Decemb ber 2013, 43,500 stonnes will have been installed d at approxim mately 1,000 locations. l The Stolperrsteine are foound in Germ many (about 55,000 of whicch are in Berlin), butt also in Auustria, Hungaary, Holland, Belgium, th he Czech Republic, R Russia, Croattia, France, Poland, Slovvenia, Italy, Ukraine, Switzerland, Slovakia, annd Luxemburg g (cf. Fig. 3.3) .

Fig. 3.3 (www w.stolpersteine..eu/technik, acccessed 15th of M March 2015)

Norway is thhe only Scanddinavian country to have thee monument— —in Oslo, Trondheim aand Larvik.5 In I terms of both duration annd covered urb ban space (currently 4435 sq. m.), the Stolpersteeine constitutte one of thee world’s largest and m most ambitiouus monumentss for victims oof the Third Reich, R and numbers aree continuouslly increasing and crossing nationalities,, nations, cities, languuages, religionns, political convictions, andd sexual orien ntation. In this aarticle, I will discuss the monument’s m reeference to th he time in which the viictims were deported d and exterminated. e The questions I intend to discuss arre: what kind of uses of history do we finnd in the Stolp persteine, and is there a discrepancyy between thiss commemoraation of the vicctims and the facts thaat surrounded their deportaation and exteermination? In n order to

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find an answ wer to these questions q (in section s 4), wee must first in nvestigate the status off the law betw ween 1933 and d 1945 (sectioon 2), and thee position of the citizeen as both thee body and su ubject of law (section 3). But B let us first reflect iin more depthh on some detaails concerningg the Stolperssteine.6 The stonne is made of cement with an a engraved bbrass plate dissplaying a short text bbeginning witth ‘hier wohn nte’ and folloowed by the victim’s name, addreess, deportatioon details and d fate. The fir irst points do not pose any consideerable problem ms. The last point, p the inddication of faate, is the most interessting and thee core in the Stolperstein monument, since s this point is morre directly connnected with that t which is being commeemorated. The homepaage explains thhat the follow wing five fates are available:: Als Schiccksalsangabe istt möglich TOT oder o ERMORDETT; für ein unbek kanntes Schicksall drei Fragezeicchen ???. Statt Selbstmord S schhreiben wir FLUCHT IN DEN TOD. Den Begriff “verschollen” “ verwenden wir nnicht, genauso wenig wie den B Begriff “TOD”, da d dieser einen n natürlichen Tood suggeriert. Ebenso E wenig veerwenden wir den d Begriff: Emigration E = A Auswanderung. Dafür steht FLUC CHT + Jahr + da as Zielland (cf. Fig. F 3.4).

Fig. 3.4 (www w.stolpersteine..eu/technik, acccessed 15 Marcch 2015)

Let us preseent two Stolpeersteine: the first f Stolpersteein is the quitte famous stone of thee German philosopher Ediith Stein, assiistant of the founding father of phhilosophical phenomenolo p gy Edmund Husserl. Her stone is

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installed in Freiburg (a seecond version n of her stonee appears in th he gallery on the Stolppersteine homeepage, cf. Fig.. 3.5):

Fig. 3.5 (via w www.google.coom, accessed 15 5th of March 20015)

As we read on the sympttomatic engrav ving on the Sttolpersteine, Stein S was murdered. H However, succh a statement requires thaat in the period 19331945, Germ many was a staate of law wh hich regarded its citizens ass subjects of law; butt was the piillar of the Third T Reich really the laaw, i.e. a constitution?? If not, this complicates matters. m For iif victims of the t Third Reich depoortations and extermination ns such as S Stein were eliminated beyond the limits of law, what happen ned to them? A And under wh hich form of governm ment did thiis happen? The T second Stolperstein is Else Liebermannn von Wahlenddorf’s (cf. Fig g. 3.6), installeed in Berlin. Is it really accurate orr even sufficcient to say that Lieberm mann died, and was humiliated aand defamed?? Did not som mething far moore extreme happen h to her?

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Fig. 3.6 (licennse: www.berlinn.de/ba-charlotttenburg-wilmerrsdorf/bezirk/ lexikon/budappester45.html, accessed a 15th off Marc 2015)

Article 488 and the State S of Excception The status oof the Germann Rechtsordnu ung during thee Third Reich is one of the toughestt questions in modern Euro opean scholarsship, spanning g German history, jurissprudence, heermeneutics, and a philosophyy. This is of interest i to us because bby way of theiir engravings, the Stolpersteeine reflect the opinion that the Thirrd Reich was, in fact, a statee of law. In the homo sacer-prroject, begun in 1995 by tthe Italian ph hilosopher Giorgio Agaamben, we finnd one of the most m sophisticcated attemptss in recent years to invvestigate the reelation between Reich and law. Toward ds the end of his Homoo sacer. Il pootere sovrano e la nuda vitta, Agamben poses p the “correct queestion”—darinng and even ou utrageous for some: The correect question reggarding the horrrors committedd in the camps is not, in particuular, the one hyypocritically ask king how it waas possible to commit so atrocioous crimes against human bein ngs. More honeest and certainly y more useful w would be to attentively inv vestigate throuugh which ju uridical procedurees and politicaal dispositives human beings could have beeen so deprived of their rights and prerogativees until the poiint where comm mitting

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whatever action against them would not appear any longer as a crime (at this point, in fact, everything had truly become possible).7

To Agamben, Carl Schmitt is a key figure when wishing to investigate the National Socialist juridical procedures and political dispositives. “Der geltende deutschen Verfassung von 1919 wird nach Artikel 48 der Ausnahmezustand vom Reichspräsidenten erklärt,” Schmitt writes in his 1922 Politische Theologie.8 Agamben regards this to be so important that he even asserts that the ‘history of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution is so tightly woven into the history of Germany between the two wars that one cannot understand Hitler’s rise to power without first analysing the uses and abuses of this article in the years between 1919 and 1933.’9 In art. 48 we read: Der Reichspräsident kann, wenn im Deutschen Reiche die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung erheblich gestört oder gefährdet wird, die zur Wiederherstellung der öffentlichen Sicherheit und Ordnung nötigen Maßnahmen treffen, erforderlichenfalls mit Hilfe der bewaffneten Macht einschreiten. Zu diesem Zwecke darf er vorübergehend die in den Artikeln 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 und 153 festgesetzten Grundrechte ganz oder zum Teil außer Kraft setzen.10

On more than one occasion, Reichspräsident von Hindenburg had dealt with the wishes of different governments to use art. 48. “The Ausnahmezustand had become a common recurrence,” Joseph Bendersky writes in his book on Schmitt.11 Taking a relative pause between 1925 and 1929, the Weimar Republic made continuous use of art. 48 in order “to proclaim a state of exception issuing decrees of necessity on more than 250 occasions.”12 In the parliamentary elections of 6 November 1932, Hitler and the NSDAP were democratically elected to parliament. With 33.5% of the votes, this was now the largest party in the Reichstag.13 This was only a small decrease compared to the results four months earlier; at that time the NSDAP received 37.8% of the votes and via special requirements in the electoral law increased their number of seats in the Reichstag from 230 to 608 out of 661.14 On 30 January 1933, Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reichskanzler. “Nur über Hitlers Ernennung zum Kanzler,” writes HansUlrich Thamer, “führe ein Weg aus der Sackgasse und zu einer verfassungsmäßigen Mehrheitsbildung.”15 The irony is that Hindenburg appointed Hitler because he would not let Kurt von Schleicher lead the government, as this would have required the continued use of art. 48 and a state of exception, Funke explains:

50

Chapter Three Hindenburg selbst schien sich nach fast dreijährigem erfolglosen Ausnahmezustand, geschwächt durch den Streit um die Reichsexekutiv gegen Preußen und in Sorge wegen eines möglichen Vorwurfs des Verfassungsbruch im Falle von Prolongationen der Notverordnungen zugunsten Schleichers, endlich auf den Boden des Parlamentarismus zurückbewegen zu wollen.16

If we wish to fully understand the period of 1933-1945 in which the deportations and exterminations of millions of people took place and whose victims the Stolpersteine wish to commemorate, we must not forget that Hitler and the NSDAP did not take power by force. There was no “Machtergreifung”. “Für manche Phasen und Aspekte,” writes Horst Dreier, “spricht man wohl besser von “Machtübergabe.”17 The NSDAP were part of a democratically elected parliament in which they formed a government; no one else was able to do so. The paradox is, of course, that Hindenburg’s decision to end the Notverordnungspolitik and the use of a state of exception turned out to be the end of the very democracy he was at least trying to save. Three months after he took office, Hitler requested that Hindenburg issued a decree for the Verordnung zum Schutz von Volk und Staat, Auf Grund des Artikels 48 Abs. 2 der Reichsverfassung wird zur Abwehr kommunistischer staatsgefährender Gewaltakte folgendes verordnet: §1 Die Artikel 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 und 153 der Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs werden bis auf weiteres außer Kraft gesetz. Es sind daher Beschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit, des Rechts der freien Meinungsäußerung, einschließlich der Pressefreiheit, des Vereins- und Versammlungsrechts, Eingriffe in das Brief-, Post-, Telegraphen- und Fernsprechgeheimnis, Anordnungen von Haussuchungen und von Beschlagnahmen sowie Beschränkungen des Eigentums auch außerhalb der sonst hierfür bestimmten gesetzlichen Grenzen zulässig.18

By using article 48, Agamben writes in accordance with Schmitt and the historians we quoted above, this decree ‘without a doubt amounted to a declaration of the state of exception’, and Hindenburg was the only person who possessed the authority to proclaim this.19 The state of exception was never annulled, which is why the Third Reich from a juridical point of view can be considered “one long state of exception lasting 12 years.”20 With the Ermächtigungsgesetz of 24 March 1933 (Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich), Hitler obtained plenary authority. Laws, or rather decrees, could be passed by him autonomously, thus bypassing the Reichstag. Nonetheless, contrary to the wording of article

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48, the plenary powers contained no constitutional backdoor. What was so dangerous with the National Socialist form of government developing in this period was not so much the circumstance that it could issue laws despite Hindenburg and the parliament, but rather that a type of dual state was about to take form which was based on the state of exception, whose only bond to the constitution was Hindenburg.21 Thus, when the Reichspräsident died on 2 August 1934, there was nothing to prevent Hitler from creating a completely new office: that of the Führer.

Carl Schmitt and the Conceptualization of Article 48 The locus classicus of a discussion of the state of exception is found in Carl Schmitt’s 1922 Politische Theologie, to which we have already referred, and in his 1921 Die Diktatur.22 Schmitt’s ambition in both books is to constitutionally justify the state of exception: first in the form of the dictatorship and later in the sovereign. Schmitt’s logical dilemma is how to make the exception (the situation, that which is singular) comply with the rule (the norm, the law). Agamben also mentions this, but strange as this may seem, he pays no further attention to an important passage concerning art. 48 of the German constitution in Schmitt’s book on dictatorship;, even though both Schmitt and Agamben himself identify art. 48 with the state of exception.23 As a constitutional lawyer, Schmitt took a professional interest in art. 48, which he addresses in the 1928 appendix to Die Diktatur. Schmitt’s main question is “wie weit die Ermächtigung des Art. 48 Abs.2 reicht.”24 Despite the parliamentary control, art. 48 contained no restrictions at all, and the Reichspräsident could therefore dissolve the very institution which ought to protect the constitution. The Reichspräsident hence formed “eine grenzenlose Machtvollkommenheit.”25 Schmitt specifically questions the absurdities of the formulation of art. 48: as we remember, the first sentence declares that the Reichspräsident can in fact do whatever he wants, i.e. that he may take any “nötigen Maßnahmen,” while the second sentence specifies which rights he may (darf) suspend. Schmitt estimates, wenn der Reichspräsident in solcher Weise nach Satz 1 über Tod und Leben verfügt, wird die aus Satz 2 gefolgerte Schranke eine leere Formalität und in der Sache bedeutungslos; wenn er vi armata alle Redakteure, Setzer und Drucker einer Zeitung erschießen und die Druckerei dem Erdboden gleichmachen kann, so brauchte man ihn eigentlich nicht darüber zu beruhigen, daß er die Zeitung verbieten darf. […] In der Befugnis, alle nötigen Maßnahmen zu treffen, ist die zweite Befugnis, Grundrechte außer Kraft setzen, nicht ohne weiteres enthalten.26

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The first sentence in the Weimar constitution’s art. 48 really is nothing but a “schrankenlosen Ermächtigung”, Schmitt concludes.27 Equally importantly, what Schmitt has underlined is that the state of exception implies the most crucial of all legal referentialities: not only the rights of the citizen, but his very life. It is important to underline that the exception does not create itself. The exception is the effect, and not the cause. Instead, the nómos steps aside, thus creating the exception; by suspending itself, it allows the exception to come to light: The exception does not subtract itself from the rule; rather, the rule suspends itself, gives room for the exception and only because it maintains itself in relation to the exception, does it constitute itself as a rule. The particular “force” of law consists in this capacity of law to maintain itself in relation with an exteriority […]. The state of exception is not, thus, the chaos which precedes order, but the situation resulting from the suspension of the order.28

But what is this exteriority? From Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty, Agamben knows that the state of exception does not concern a decision regarding the licit and illicit, “but on the original inclusion of the living in the sphere of law,” and it is precisely this last aspect that Agamben develops further.29 To Agamben, life is simply the exception to which law refers. “The life, which is thus ob-ligated,” Agamben explains, “can in the last instance only be implicated in the sphere of law only through the presupposition of its inclusive exclusion, only in an exceptio.”30 Since a close affinity seems to exist between the state of exception and the living, let us seek a closer understanding of the state of exception by turning to Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics and subsequently examining Agamben’s use of that notion.

Biopolitics and Naked Life The concepts of biopolitics and biopower were developed in the last and most interesting phase of Michel Foucault’s authorship.31 Until around 1976, Foucault had been performing his archaeology by describing different dispositives of power, such as the mental institution, the hospital, and the prison. Descriptions are found in his 1961 Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique, in Naissance de la clinique from 1963, and in Surveiller et punir from 1975. Having written these books, Foucault directed his investigations towards “the growing inclusion of man’s natural life in the mechanisms and calculations of power” Agamben explains.32. “Il faut

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bâtir,” writes Foucault in the last chapter of the 1976 La volonté de savoir, “une analytique du pouvoir qui ne prendra plus le droit pour modèle et pour code.”33 Foucault explains the reason in one of the most famous aphorisms in the book: “On pourrait dire qu’au vieux droit de faire mourir ou de laisser vivre s’est substitué un pouvoir de faire vivre ou de rejeter dans la mort.”34 To Foucault, the transformation is radical: L’homme, pendant des millénaires, est resté ce qu’il était pour Aristote : un animal vivant et de plus capable d’une existence politique ; l’homme moderne est un animal dans la politique duquel sa vie d’être vivant est en question.35

Foucault’s notion of biopolitics would seem to appear relevant for a biopolitical interpretation of the Third Reich’s Rechtsordnung, since, as we argued above, the state of exception is, in the last analysis, an inclusion of life in the law. However, a closer study reveals some problems. Although Foucault promised to conduct an analysis of the transition of the concept of war “jusqu’à l’apparition du racisme d’État au début du XX siècle”, hardly any thoughts are given on the Third Reich.36 Foucault mentions the Final Solution and Hitler, but only five times, and indicates that not only Jews but many others were exterminated as well. Foucault defines rather hastily the Third Reich as a biopolitical form of government, but remains in fact quite silent on the matter.37 Foucault does not even mention the death camps or the concentration camps. This is peculiar, as these seem to be obvious topics for a Foucauldian and biopolitical analysis. But his discussion of the biopolitics of the Third Reich remains on a very general level, and only in the last lesson in Il faut défendre la societé does he address the Third Reich directly. However, this occupies no more than ten pages in a 200-page book. Why does Foucault refrain from such analysis? Why is Foucault silent about the Third Reich, although his biopolitical analyses seem to equip him perfectly with all the tools necessary to comprehend this? Perhaps Foucault realised that certain limits exist in his theory of biopolitics. Even after 1976, his biopolitical analysis never leaves the sphere of the institution and the law. The basic presumption of Foucault’s biopolitical l’art de gouverner is the functionality and existence of the state of law, i.e. the hospital, the prison etc.— as is the case of Schmitt’s theory of the state of exception—and along with this, clearly marked limits between friend and foe, legitimate and illegitimate, private and public. According to Foucault, power incorporates still larger spheres of private life into the state calculus and bureaucracy, which in the end becomes omnipresent. However, we never leave the sphere of law. The Third

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Reich, on the contrary, cannot be understood in these terms, as we demonstrated above. Through the suspension of the constitution in a durative state of exception lasting 12 years, there is no state, but an exception; there is no law, but a suspension of the law. In the Third Reich the law does not incorporate still larger parts and spheres of the citizen and his world; on the contrary, the exception does so. Everyone is, in principle, a foe, in the same way as everyone is, in principle, a friend. With such circumstances at hand, Foucault’s interpretative machine breaks down alongside Schmitt’s. If biopolitics is relevant for a deeper analysis of the extermination of the victims of the Third Reich, this needs somehow to be tied in with the state of exception. Defining both the death camp and the concentration camp as a camp (‘campo’), both signifying the biopolitical space of the state of exception par excellence, Agamben underlines our critique: The link between localization (Ortung) and ordering (Ordnung) that constitutes the “nomos of the earth” (Schmitt, Das Nomos, p.48) is therefore even more complex than Schmitt describes it and contains a fundamental ambiguity at its centre, i.e. a zone without location, a zone of indistinction or exception that, in the final analysis, necessarily ends with acting against the link as a principle of infinite dislocation. […]. When our age tried to grant a permanent and visible localization to what could not have such one, the result was the concentration camp. Not the prison but the camp is actually the space that corresponds to this original structure of the nomos. This is shown, for instance, by the fact that while prison law is not outside the normal order—but only constitutes a particular sphere of penal law—the juridical constellation that guides the camp is, as we shall see, martial law and the state of siege. This is why it is not possible to inscribe the analysis of the camp in the trail opened by Foucault‘s work— from Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique and Surveiller et punir. Being the absolute space of exception, the camp is topologically different from a simple space of confinement. This space of exception, in which the link between localization and ordering is definitively broken, is what has determined the crisis of the old “nomos of the earth.38

Foucault sees biopolitics as the law’s almost indefinite expansion into the human bìos. To Agamben, however, the state of exception in the Third Reich leaves its Schmittian ground and expands beyond a temporal and local limit of the exception, and leads to the “immediate biopolitical meaning of the state of exception as the original structure in which law through its own suspension includes the living in it […].”39 Hence, the difference between Foucault’s and Schmitt’s theories and Agamben’s analysis of the biopolitical state of exception is that while the

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two former thinkers base their theories in the realms of the constitution and of law, the latter defines it as non-constitutional beyond the realms of the law. Agamben can therefore describe the event of the camp in terms which would have been impossible for both Foucault and Schmitt to accept: What happened in the camps indeed exceeds the juridical concept of crime to the extent that often one has simply omitted to consider the specific juridico-political structure in which these events were produced. The camp is merely the place where the most absolute conditio inhumana ever given upon earth was realized: in the last analysis this is what counts for the victims as well as for those who come after.40

How is it then possible to commemorate the victims of this conditio inhumana? In any case, the Stolpersteine—and any such monuments— must try to solve the challenge of commemorating a zone in which humanity (the victims) as well as inhumanity (the camp) are acknowledged. But how is one to describe the victims in terms of biopolitics, given that their circumstances fundamentally break with what Foucault described in Surveiller et punir, where a criminal is convicted for a felony? As we pointed out with reference to Agamben above, the camp is not a prison, and the Jews and millions of others were not sent to the camp on the basis of a sentence.

The Victims Since the middle ages, Jews have on different occasions been forced to wear identification marks. Yet the Third Reich had a range of classification systems developed to suit each “un-German” category, not just Jews. However, the classification system for the Jews was the only one to also be applied outside the specific camp facilities.41 In his book the 1946 LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen, which is now a classic, Victor Klemperer reflects on precisely this issue. The book was written during Klemperer’s time in the Third Reich, and among other topics, the Jewish Romance philologist wrote about one of the clearest signs of National Socialism: ‘der Stern’.42 Klemperer’s thoughts on the star are clear: with the Star of David, he was no longer a citizen. He was a human being who had lost all of his humanity and dignity, ‘denn jeder Sternjude trug sein Ghetto mit sich, wie eine Schnecke ihr Haus.’43 Naturally, the question jumps at us: who—or worse, what—was Klemperer? What is this reduction, this stripping of humanity which left him naked—ethically, humanly, and legally?

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In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt takes Klemperer’s words one step further: The real horror of the concentration and extermination camps lies in the fact that the inmates, even if they happen to keep alive, are more effectively cut off from the world of the living than if they had died, because terror enforces oblivion. Here, murder is as impersonal as the squashing of a gnat. Someone may die as the result of systematic torture or starvation, or because the camp is overcrowded and superfluous human material must be liquidated. Conversely, it may happen that due to a shortage of new human shipments the danger arises that the camps become depopulated and that the order is now given to reduce the death rate at any price. David Rousset called his report on the period in a German concentration camp “Les Jours de Notre Mort”, and it is indeed as if there were a possibility to give permanence to the process of dying itself and to enforce a condition in which both death and life are obstructed equally effectively.44

Some ten years later, in 1961, Hilberg published his account of The Destruction of the European Jews. In his memoirs from 1992, he reflects on some of the reasons for his terminological choices: “My training in the social sciences took place in the 1940s. The methodological literature that I read emphasized objectivity and neutral or value-free words,” Hilberg writes and concludes: “To this end I banished accusatory terms like “murder,” as well as such exculpatory words as “executions,” which made the victims into delinquents, or “extermination”, which likened them to vermin.”45 In Burleigh and Whipperman’s 1991 standard reader, The Racial State, we encounter once again this description of a life that has been politically transformed into a nonlife, becoming instead a process towards dehumanisation, delegalisation, and finally deportation: The Jews were discriminated against; their human rights were abrogated; they were physically isolated from the non-Jewish population, and totally eliminated from economic and professional life. It did not require much more bureaucratic ingenuity to summon, detain in collection points, and finally deport people who had no rights, and virtually no money to call their own.46

Agamben tries to develop a concept for identifying this kind of life, which Klemperer, Arendt, Hilberg, and Burleigh and Whipperman had tried to describe, each in their own way. In his attempt, Agamben uses a strange figure from Roman law mentioned by the Roman grammarian Festus:

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The sacred man [homo sacer] is he whom the people has convicted for a felony; and it is not licit to sacrifice him, yet he who kills him will not be condemned for homicide. In fact, in the first tribunitian law it is noted that “if someone kills he who is sacred according to the plebiscite, it will not be considered as a homicide”. This is why a bad or impure man is usually called sacred.47

Not only did the killing of a homo sacer not constitute homicide, it was equally withdrawn from the realms of religion, leaving his killing beyond the court and of any rituality. In fact, Hindenburg’s power to proclaim a state of exception via the use of art. 48, and to take the “nötigen Maßnahmen”, would also imply that the killing of a citizen did not constitute murder, as we underlined with Schmitt above. In accordance with Schmitt, Agamben stresses that: “Sovereign is the sphere in which one can kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life—i.e., life that can be killed, but not sacrificed—is the life that has been caught in this sphere.”48 A sacred man is he who is abandoned through the sacrament of language: sacer esto. Hence, sacer esto is the formulation of a political malediction, a curse in which we see a collapse between fact and law, legality and illegality.49 However, it is not a formula of religious malediction which sanctions an unheimlich character, i.e., both the august as well as vile character of something: the formula is instead the original political formulation of the imposition of the sovereign bond.50

Thus, in the Third Reich, being Jewish was suddenly an attribute which could be simply proclaimed, as in the 1935 Reichbürgergesetz. According to this, a Mischling was a full Jew if born after either 15 September 1935 (if his or her parents were married) or after 13 July 1936 (if they were not married).51 Jewish was not simply a person’s identity or at least one that the person decided to adopt. In the same way as the homo sacer was produced by the linguistic sacrament of sacer esto, a person could literally be proclaimed to be a Jew (and, in fact, also a communist or a political opponent), and thus a homo sacer. From Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘das bloße Leben’ from his 1921 Zur Kritik der Gewalt, Agamben develops an idea of a secularised version of homo sacer: naked life (‘nuda vita’):52 If we give the name naked life or sacred life to the life that constitutes the primary content of sovereign power, we also predispose to a principled answer to the Benjaminian question concerning “the origin of the dogma of

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Chapter Three the sacredness of life”. Sacred—i.e. life which can be killed but not sacrificed—is originally the life which is caught in the sovereign ban, and the production of naked life is, in this sense, the originary performance of sovereignty.53

Thus, the descriptions of life in the camp quoted above by Arendt in particular testify to a life residing in this extreme zone of biopolitical sovereignty. Viewed in this light, the exterminations of the Third Reich did not constitute murder; neither did they constitute a mad nor insane action, according to Agamben. Jurisprudence is unapt to explain this fact. Instead, we are confronted with a technically skilled form of biopolitical government: The Hebrew during Nazism is the privileged negative referent of the new biopolitical sovereignty and is, as such, a flagrant case of the homo sacer, in the sense of a life that can be killed but not sacrificed. Thus, his killing constitutes [...] neither capital punishment nor a sacrifice, but simply the actualization of a mere “capacity to be killed” inherent in the condition of the Hebrew as such. The truth—which is difficult for these victims to face, but which we must have the courage to not cover with sacrificial veils—is that the Hebrews were not exterminated in a mad and giant holocaust but, literally, like Hitler had announced, “as lice”, which is to say: as naked life. The dimension in which the extermination took place is neither religion nor law, but biopolitics.54

A conclusion that would support Agamben’s account of the exterminations would render these as something that by far exceeds the definition of murder: the victims were exterminated as naked life.

The Five Fates and the Conflict between History and Memory The exterminations and deportations (the ‘Schicksal’, cf. Fig. 3.4) of victims of the Third Reich such as Stein and Wahlendorf, whose Stolpersteine we saw above, followed in every aspect the Third Reich ideology of eliminating everything non-German, as defined by National Socialism. Whatever led to the death of these victims, it was the result of a reduction to a life which could be disposed of as the Third Reich pleased and which Agamben defines as naked life. This is the complex reality upon which the Stolpersteine stand. Thus, how are we to interpret the engravings stating that the victims were murdered? Of all the fates the Stolpersteine list ‘ERMORDET’ is the most problematic one as it

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underestimates, eases and calms the horrific reality constituted by the state of exception and the biopolitical space. In order to be murdered (‘ERMORDET’), the victims would have had to be considered as subjects of law and, moreover, a state of law would have had to exist. However, as we have analysed above, this was far from the case in the Third Reich. Not alone the biopolitical and durative state of exception deprived Stein and other Jews, communists etc. of their status as subjects of law, as well as of their German citizenship, leaving them stateless, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 had long since accomplished this. Whatever might happen to these victims could no longer be described in any legal terms, nor did it have any juridical meaning or value. Moreover, the use of this particular category of murder requires that a perpetrator is at least theoretically recognised. But since the exterminations were conducted by the National Socialist government, such recognition cannot be established. Nor does the term murder make sense, because this terminology can only apply in civil law, not in constitutional law; it is simply too vague and inaccurate to render what happened to Stein and millions of other victims. Something far worse than murder happened! The victims were produced as naked life and later exterminated as if they were not human. This goes far beyond a merely illegal act. Believing that this can be grasped by jurisprudence seems to set aside or even reduce the fact itself and to set aside its reality. The praiseworthy idea that the Stolpersteine should not determine the exterminations by group belonging (Jewish, communists, homosexuals etc.) is replaced by an equally unfortunate juridical mass identification which appears problematic: it seems that the Stolpersteine are trying to propagate the belief that the delegalisation and dehumanisation ending in extermination is a rather straightforward and simple crime that can therefore be grasped in the ordinary terminology of the law. But there was nothing normal or ordinary about the exterminations. Engravings such as ‘ERMORDET’ thus might serve to present the Third Reich as a much sounder juridical system than it ever was—than it ever wanted to be. Not only is it far from obvious that neutral and scholarly vocabulary such as that of the law is suited for commemoration. Moreover, as regards the victims of the Third Reich, not only is a juridical vocabulary inappropriate, there is a risk it might even tone down the historical reality. Other problems exist which are likewise captured in the zone between describing a reality and commemorating a fate, and a conflict is found when we turn to take a closer look at the five fates mentioned above. Even though it might be argued that Stein was “directly exterminated”, while Anna Frank, for instance, was left to die since she died of typhoid fever,

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such a line of argumentation might evoke certain unease. First of all, typhoid fever was a disease that could be cured with a rather simple vaccine invented in 1930 by the Polish biologist Rudolf Weigl.55 Nonetheless, Frank was left to die. Might it not seem more reasonable to argue that even though Frank was not gassed, she was exterminated no less than Stein? Following this brutal logic, it is not unlikely that such reasoning lay behind the idea of leaving typhoid untreated in Frank’s camp, Bergen-Belsen, and in many other camps as well. The extermination of both Stein and Frank was a direct consequence of Third Reich biopolitics. Any difference in method is irrelevant and beside the point.56 The five fates that determine the central scope and idea of commemoration in the Stolpersteine monument raise central questions which can all be described as an attempt to create a hierarchy of deaths. Nevertheless, they appear rather random. This is what the difference between for instance ‘TOT’and ‘ERMORDET’ amounts to. On the basis of the Stolpersteine, why is the “direct extermination” of Stein, in comparison with the more “indirect extermination” of Frank, described by the same term (“ERMORDET”)? Would it not have made more sense—if such a hierarchy really could be made persuasive—to describe Frank’s death as ‘TOT’, because she was left to die, and only Stein’s as ‘ERMORDET’, since she was gassed? The Stolperstein for Max Bloch describes that he died (‘TOT’), even though, as Marlis Meckel writes in her 2006 book about the Stolpersteine in Freiburg, Bloch’s death was the result of severe torture: ‘Beim Verhör wurden ihm unter anderen beide Augen ausgestochen. Er starb am 14. Dezember 1943 im Alter von 49 Jahren in Nizza an Folgen dieser Mißhandlungen.’57 What is the actual difference between ‘TOT’ and ‘ERMORDET’? Why is it necessary at all to distinguish between torture leading to the death of a victim, as somehow opposed to gassing a victim to death? The Stolpersteine are trying to give the impression of historical accuracy, but the principles behind are in the end historically dubious, leaving commemoration in a blindfold: the historical description of fact as well as the ethical obligation to commemorate the victim remain unfulfilled. This critique can also be extended to the other fates described by the Stolperstine. Let us consider Hans Pollack’s Stolperstein.58 Pollack’s suicide is rendered by the euphemism “FLUCHT IN DEN TOD.” But is this an understatement in line with the terminology used of Stein, Frank and Bloch? Pollack was an “Opfer der NS-Zeit,” a fact ascertained by the Stolpersteine project. Nevertheless, it seems fairly inarguable that the possibility of suicide did in fact exist. However, could it not also be argued that victims such as Pollack—and, in fact, every victim—had been

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deprived of such an option? In this view, the primary reason for Pollack’s death was not suicide. Whatever the specific reason was for the 53-yearold man to choose to end his life, it must be admitted that this was more closely linked to the Third Reich, i.e. to a specific government, than would normally be the case in a suicide. Especially considering the fact that he was being kept in a Dresden detention cell at the time when he killed himself. Nonetheless, in contrast to Stein, Frank, and Bloch, Pollack died by his own hand. It is not impossible that via “FLUCHT IN DEN TOD”, the Stolpersteine are trying to describe the horror of death as a continued process. More than Pollack’s killing himself can be regarded as a case of proper suicide it was, rather, an escape. Such an engraving is hinting at a more sophisticated attitude towards representing the humanity of the victims in the midst of the inhumanity under which they lived. First of all, the description of Pollack’s humanity is captured in neither juridical nor ethical terms but instead in quite poetical terms. Furthermore, the horror of the circumstances under which he spent his last days, is expressed to the full by stating that he preferred death over life; he “escaped.” Naturally, answering the question of who actually killed Pollack is not easy. The Third Reich, having produced the victims as naked life, had indeed taken the proper life and proper death away from the victims, as demonstrated above. However, one of the few things of which the Third Reich could not deprive the victims was the moment in which they chose to kill themselves. If anything, this expresses the horror of the Third Reich: the victim’s last attempt to catch a glimpse at humanity is constituted by the moment in which the victim makes the ultimate decision to kill himself. At this point, the challenge of the Stolpersteine seems clear: they are confronted with the difficult task of commemorating the victim’s humanity, while at the same time referring to the inhumanity of the camp as the biopolitical space in which the victims were exterminated, by one method or another. The fate is somehow meant to contain all of this, that is, to both commemorate and be historically correct. The solution to this delicate problem on the part of the Stolpersteine has so far been to disregard the latter (the camp) in favour of the former (the victim) leaving the most successful fate to be “FLUCHT IN DEN TOD”. As regards the fates “???” (fate unknown) and “FLUCHT” (instead of emigration), the explanation is reasonable, however: “Ebenso wenig [as dead (Tod)] verwenden wir den Begriff: Emigration = Auswanderung. Dafür steht FLUCHT + Jahr + das Zielland’ (cf. Fig. 3.4).” Here, the Stolpersteine are more true to historical fact than any other possible indication of fate. To a certain extent, the three questionmarks (“???”) might be described as yet another poetical formulation similar to that of

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“FLUCHT IN DEN TOD”. The formulation certainly appears to stay as true as possible to the historical reality and to our ethical obligation to commemorate appropriately. Our knowledge of victims who managed to escape and thus rendered by “FLUCHT” is likewise unproblematic. Nonetheless, the Stolpersteine are attempting to refrain from vocabulary such as “Selbstmord,” “verschollen,” “Tod,” and “Emigration” because they suggest a normality, i.e. “einen natürlichen Tod” or “Emigration = Auswanderung” (cf. Fig. 3.4). However, why can the Stolpersteine then use “ERMORDET,” which is engraved on so many stones? Does this term not likewise suggest this very same existence of a normality, namely the existence of a state of law? This particular juridical term presupposes a form of normality. However, this is exactly what the Stolpersteine have proclaimed does not exist, and which has justified the use of nonjuridical or poetical formulations such as “FLUCHT IN DEN TOD” and “???”. The Stolpersteine are propagating that murder simply designates the killing of a human being, even though this is an immense simplification in the case of the exterminations in the Third Reich. The fundamental problems in these examples are that the Stolpersteine: 1) believe that a distinction can be established inside the realms of extermination itself, which is what the five different fates are trying to state; 2) refer to a condition of normality as if the exterminations were just another branch of an enlarged or gigantic murder that somehow left the normality of the state of law intact. The order assumed by these memorial stones is normative to the extent that the Third Reich is referred to as a state of law in which also ethics could be applied, as is the case with von Wahlendorf. This ceremony has the modern state of law as its model, and is endlessly repeating its terms, concepts, and ideas. It is an order that no logical arguments whatsoever can be used to search for an understanding of what the Third Reich was, who it deported, who it exterminated, and why. As a result, the Stolpersteine are caught between describing a fact (the deportations and exterminations) and commemorating a human being (the victim). The paradox is that in the same way as the Third Reich transformed the Weimar Republic and its constitution into a “gewollte Ausnahmezustand”, so too do the Stolpersteine mythologize this fact back into the myth that this was nonetheless a state of law.

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Notes 2

NS-Dokumentationszentrum der Stadt Köln, Stolpersteine. Gunter Demnig und sein Projekt (Berlin, 2007), 12. In the following all translations of the Italian are mine; German and French, being European main languages, are left in their original tongue; sharp brackets [...] indicate my insertions in the quoted text. 3 Rönnerper, Joachim (ed.), Vor meiner Haustür. ’Stolpersteine’ von Gunter Demnig. Ein Begleitbuch (Gelsenkirchen: Arachne Verlag, 2010), 7. 4 NGBK: Stolpersteine. Dokumentation, Texte, Materialen. Für die von den Nazis ermordeten ehemaligen Nachbarn aus Friedrichshain und Kreuzberg. Berlin: Neuen Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst e.V. Demnig, Gunter; Düspohl, Martin; Endlich, Stefanie; Hallen, Andreas; Lieser, Helga (hersg.) , 2002: p.19. 5 Slettholm, Andreas: ‘Holocaust i nabolaget’, in: Aftenposten, 9 September 2011. 6 Elsewhere I have discussed the relation between a commemoration of the past and a history of the past in: Östman, Lars: ‘Philosophical Archaeology as Method in the Humanities. A Comment on Cultural Memory and the Problem of History’, in: Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, No.46 (2011), Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2013, esp.pp.91-101. 7 Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2005), 191. 8 Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre von der Souveränität (Berlin: Dunker & Humbolt, 1994), 17. 9 Giorgio Agamben, Stato di eccezione. Homo sacer, II (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2004), 24. 10 ‘Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches’, cit. in: LeMO (http://www.dhm.de/lemo/html/dokumente/verfassung/index.html), italics added. 11 Joseph W Bendersky, Carl Schmitt. Theorist for the Reich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1983), 38. 12 Agamben, Stato di eccezione, 25.. 13 Martin Vogt, “Parteien in der Weimarer Republik,” in: Karl Dietrich Bracher, Manfred Funke & Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (eds.), Die Weimarer Republik 1918-1933. Politik. Wirtschaft. Gesellschaft (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1987), 153–155. 14 Manfred Funke, “Republik im Untergang. Die Zerstörung des Parlamentarismus als Vorbereitung der Diktatur” in: Bracher et al., Die Weimarer Republik, 515. 15 Hans-Ulrich Thamer, Verführung und Gewalt. Deutschland 1933-1945, Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag,1994), 224. 16 Manfred Funke, ‘Republik im Untergang,’ p.518. 17 Horst Dreier, ”Die deutsche Staatsrechtslehre in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus” Veröffentlichungen der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtslehrer, No.60 (2001): 10. 18 RGBL, February 28, 1933, No. 17, 83 in ALEX, Historische Rechts- und Gesetzestexte Online (Deutsches RGBL. 1922-1945 Teil 1 & 2): http://alex.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/alex-iv.pl. 19 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 187 (italics added) 20 Giorgio Agamben, Stato di eccezione, 11.

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See for example Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1941). 22 Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur. Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Berlin: Dunker & Humbolt, 1994), 133f; Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 14-20. 23 Giorgio Agamben, Stato di eccezione, 45-50. 24 Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur, 216. 25 Carl Schmitt, Politische Theologie, 18. 26 Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur, 221, 226 (italics added). 27 Ibid., 227. 28 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 22. 29 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 31. 30 Ibid., 32. 31 See for example Andrea Cavalletti, “Dal nemico politico al nemico assoluto. Sul razzismo di stato,” in: Clemens-Carl Härle (ed.), Shoah. Percorsi della memoria (Napoli: Cronopio, 2006), 127-154. 32 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 131. 33 Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité I: La volonté de savoir (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 119. 34 Michel Foucault, La volonté de savoir, 181. 35 Ibid., 188. 36 Michel Foucault, Il faut défendre la société: Cours au Collège de France 1976 (Paris: Seuil/ Gallimard 1997), 53. 37 Ibid., 49, 72, 232-234. 38 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 24. Here, Agamben refers to Schmitt’s 1950 Der Nomos der Erde. 39 Giorgio Agamben, Stato di eccezione, 12. See also Anke Snoek, “Agamben’s Foucault: An overview,” in: Foucault Studies 10 (2010), 48. 40 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 185. 41 Abraham J. Edelheit, Hershel Edelheit, History of the Holocaust. A Handbook and Dictionary (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1994), 262f. See also RGBL, September 5, 1941, p.547, in: ALEX. 42 Victor Klemperer, LTI. Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag,1975), chapter xxv. 43 Victor Klemperer, LTI, 180. 44 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1994), 443. (the reference to Rousset, himself a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is to his Les Jours de Notre Mort published in 1947). 45 Raul Hilberg, The Politics of Memory. The journey of a Holocaust Historian (Chicago: Ivan D. Ree, 1996), 87f. 46 Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Whippermann, The Racial State. Germany 1933-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 96. 47 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 79. 48 Ibid., 92.

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Giorgio Agamben, Il sacramento del linguaggio. Archeologia del giuramento. Homo sacer II,3 (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2008), 52. 50 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 94f. 51 RGBL, 14. November 1935, Teil I,1334, in: ALEX. 52 Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 74f. Cf. Benjamin, Walter: “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” (1921), in: Id., Zur Kritik der Gewalt und andere Aufsätze, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1965. In his 1998 Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L'archivio e il testimone. Homo sacer III, Agamben investigates the particular life of the victim in the camp. We shall not engage in any further discussion with that book since this article is limited for an analysis of the juridical and political structures belonging to the Third Reich, the camp, and the victim. I have elsewhere dealt with naked life in relation to Quel che resta di Auschwitz, cf. Lars Östman: “Agamben. Naked Life and Nudity”, in: Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums Forlag, No. 45, 2010, 71-88. 53 Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 92f. 54 Giorgio Agamben, Il potere sovrano, 126f. 55 USHMM: ‘Anne Frank’, in: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005210 (accessed 7 May 2014). 56 USHMM: ‘Bergen Belsen’, in: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224 (accessed 7 May 2014). 57 Marlis Meckel, Den Opfern ihre Namen zurückgeben. Stolpersteine in Freiburg (Freiburg: Rombach Verlag 2006), 210. 58 Cf. http://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/biografie/3032.

CHAPTER FOUR SHORT-TERM MEMORY LOSS? MEDIA STRATEGIES IN TIMES OF TRANSFORMATION EHAB GALAL

With the Egyptian uprising in 2011 and the subsequent fall of President Mubarak (in office 1981 – 2011), the political space of the Egyptian nation opened for negotiation and transformation. A key participant of the uprising and the following negotiations over power were the Egyptian media. Having gone through a period of increasing liberalization over the previous fifteen years,1 at the time of the 2011 uprising, the Egyptian media was relatively pluralistic and free. As for television, state channels were in strong competition with privately owned channels with different political stances, from strongly secular and neoliberal channels to channels promoting conservative Islamism.2 During the uprising and fall of Mubarak, the different TV channels had to navigate in a field where political power was fluid and under negotiation. Since then, the political power has changed hands from transitional government to the Muslim Brotherhood with Mohamed Morsi (in office June 2012 – July 13) as president, back to another transitional government supported by the military and now with the former field marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as president. He was elected in May 2014 and took office on June 8, 2014. The changes between these political extremities raise the question of what became of the 25 January revolution of 2011. Did the Egyptian people forget what they were struggling for at the Tahrir square so soon? How is it possible to explain the seeming return to a discarded former political model? In this article, I discuss the media’s role in producing what I have chosen to name ‘short-term memory loss’. When looking at media’s contribution to narratives and discourses, the focus is on the survival and

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reproduction of such narratives, e.g. the ways in which memory produces history and continuity. However, as stated by many historians, the construction of history also presupposes the omission of parts and pieces influenced by the understanding of the present.3 My question is then how in a transformative period of Egyptian history the media produce memories and omissions, thus taking part in the struggle over political power. Although, as argued by Gadi,4 media do not make political changes, they still participate and can be said to produce the ‘first draft’ of memory.5 So how did the Egyptian media, and particularly TV, respond to the political upheavals, and what did they do to navigate (safely) in a terrain of quickly changing regimes and memories? In order to answer these questions, I begin by placing my discussion within a theoretical framework. Then follows a short introduction to the Egyptian media landscape. Thirdly, in order to analyse the role of the media in the political transformations in Egypt, I examine some of the structural tools used by political actors used to control media. Finally follows an analysis of the discursive strategies of the media during the transformations.

Theories on media, memory and political conflict At first sight, the 2011 uprisings seemed to erupt unexpectedly. In the beginning, the role of social media as a mobilising tool attracted most of the attention. Since then, many observers and researchers have pointed at the importance of existent political movements, but also at the influence of TV with its instant and global news coverage.6 The discussions following the 2011 revolution reflect a general concern with media’s role in political changes, and particularly television has been an important site for selfreflections and self-evaluation of the coverage. In his work on media–mainly television–and political conflict, Gadi Wolfsfeld raises the question whether the media has an influence on the political process, or whether the political process has an impact on the media.7 He suggests a political model based on five main arguments for exploring the role of news media in political conflicts. Firstly, he argues that it is more likely that the political process has an impact in news media than the other way around. The media rather respond to than initiate political events. Secondly, the extent to which the regime controls the political environment largely defines the news media’s role. Thirdly, the role of the media varies depending on time and circumstances. Fourthly, the role of media relates to the competition between political opponents competing for access to the media and control over the media framework.

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Finally, political regimes have the advantage of being more exposed.8 This is not to deny that media can put pressure on those in power and force them to change their policy. However, what I want to emphasise here is the way in which the ruling Egyptian elites’ political and economic alliances and priorities have influenced the shaping and orientation of the Egyptian media’s coverage of the political debates since 2011. Within this perspective, the television programmes are the result of political interests and agendas that reflect patterns of elite ownership and control. Political actors who want a change of policy can use the critical media coverage to achieve space for negotiations as regards other members of the elite. Consequently, none of Wolfsfeld’s five arguments produce a linear or constant process. On the contrary, the competition between rulers and opponents is unpredictable, as is policy.9 The period from the beginning of the Egyptian uprisings until today can be seen as such an unpredictable competition over power, and so can the media’s role in this. Wolfsfeld makes a distinction between the structural and cultural dimensions of media power. As for the structural dimension, he refers to the degree of interdependence between political actors and each news media outlet, thus examining why some political actors have easier access to some of these than others.10 Accordingly, the structural dimension is about ownership, for instance. However, it is also about the access to using legal intervention directly, for instance by banning a TV-station from transmitting, or indirectly taking out lawsuits against journalists or exposing them to police harassment.11 The cultural dimension focuses on the impact of norms, beliefs and practices on the media's construction of a framework for conflict.12 Thus, as argued by Laclau and Mouffe, political competition is also about promoting and legitimising specific discourses in an attempt to obtain discursive or hegemonic power.13 Easy access to media helps to ensure the hegemonic and thus defining power. TV’s role in producing cultural or collective memory is an important aspect of the cultural dimension. Jan Assman emphasises that cultural memory is characterised by a certain degree of stability because of the objectifications of culture and discusses the horizon of memory, which does not change over time.14 Television may be seen as part of the organisational structure which, according to Assman is necessary for cultivating memory. “(…) “cultivation” serves to stabilise and convey society’s self-image.”15 Seen in this perspective, Egyptian state owned television has performed the function of telling the story and constructing the memory of the nation that supports the regime’s political strategy, as also argued by Abu-Lughod.16 The question is what to do with this cultivation of memory when a revolution disrupts the self-image of the

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society? How does television participate in the reconstruction of memory within its contemporary frame of reference, which is a crucial capacity according to Assman?17 As memory is dynamic, it will always be subject to contestations. These are embedded in interpretations of the present and hopes for the future, as argued by Mieke Bal: “(…) cultural memory, for better or for worse, links the past to the present and future.”18 As stated by Wolfsfeld, the position of the rulers and their opponents in a conflict is different. Compared to the opposition, the rulers have a privileged access to the media. This is even more prevalent in a country where parts of the media are loyal towards the regime. These different positions influence the way of responding during conflict. In this context, it makes sense to use Michel de Certeau’s distinction between strategy and tactic.19 Certeau sees strategy as a way of acting directed by more longterm goals. According to Certeau, the control over ‘place’ is a key factor of the strategy displayed. The power to define and organise the place ensures the adequate knowledge to master this, and on basis of this to define strategies for keeping the power over an extended period. Tactics, on the other hand, belong to those who do not control the power of definition over place, and are therefore used on a short-term basis. Tactics are about navigating on the terms of power, trying to manipulate or change the significance of the place. Consequently, tactics are effective because they operate on in the short term and are, therefore, not the instruments of the powerful.20 In this perspective, the erosion of the political landscape within a short period like the 2011-revolution’s 18 days may be seen as tactics winning over strategies. Accordingly, the return of the old regime in the disguise of president el-Sisi might tell the story of strategy winning over tactics. Nevertheless, “(…) real-time television influences not only policy and government, but also audiences’ understandings of and reactions to major events of historical importance.”21 Locations revive and reconstruct memory and are, as for their concrete materiality, necessary for the collective memory, as are persons and events.22 There is no doubt that the Tahrir square as a place has achieved a new social meaning in the Egyptian memory after the 2011 revolution, but the TV coverage of the uprisings illustrates the negotiations of this meaning. It is the act of assigning meaning to Tahrir and the events taking place there that construct the Egyptian revolution as a place of memory as time passes. In the context of this article, the interesting part is how the antagonists used media, and particularly television, as strategic and tactic instruments in constructing understandings and thus potential memories of the events. Needless to say, access to legal means to regulate structural dimensions

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gives the political actors in power a strategic advantage, while the political opponents have to navigate tactically in accordance with the rules and regulations of the State.

Introducing the Egyptian media landscape anno 2011 As mentioned in the introduction, the Mubarak regime had gradually liberalised the media in Egypt up to the events of 2011. The result was the emergence of a pluralistic media landscape with the removal of state monopoly over television as the largest change. It is possible to divide the TV-channels into three groups as regards their interdependence with political actors. Since national independence, the regime in power has owned and controlled Egyptian state television. Thus, state television has been loyal and had the role of promoting a national narrative as well as mobilising the population for the state policy.23 Thus, the first group of channels is that owned by the State. ERTU (The Egyptian Radio and Television Union) includes two big television networks with several channels, e.g. ESC (Egyptian Satellite Channel) and Nile TV. The second group is the privately owned TV channels that have a secular and liberal profile. These are Dream TV (2001), On-TV (2009) and CBC (2011), for instance. These channels are owned by successful Egyptian businessmen with close connections to the regime. The third group includes the so-called Islamic channels. Inspired by transnational Islamic channels like the privately owned Saudi Iqraa TV (1998) and al-Majd TV (2003), Islamic channels such as al-Nas (2006) and al-Rahma are officially headed by Egyptian religious scholars promoting an Islamic way of life, while they are sponsored by businessmen. They present themselves as mainly apolitical in relation to internal political affairs. Instead, they claim to promote an Islamic life style.24 The process of liberalisation did not include the abolishment by the regime of all instruments for controlling the media. State censorship still played an active part in media policy, very often legitimised by the protection of cultural, religious and family values.25 In addition, the regime banned or restricted by law TV-channels and other media on a regular basis. Since the states cannot ban all of the more than 1,320 satellite channels,26 they can instead impose a moral code of conduct, which the Arab ministers of information did at a meeting in Cairo in 2008. They adopted a new charter entitled: “Suggested Guidelines and Principles for Organizing Satellite TV in the Arab World”. This may be analysed as part of the organisational cultivation of collective memory, since it

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specifies the cultural protection of the Arab leaders, the nation, religion, tradition, public order and Arab identity from the harmful effects of globalisation.27 The potential sanction against the channel that offends the charter is to withdraw their license of transmitting via an Arab owned satellite. Thus, despite of increasing liberalisation, Egypt withdrew several Nilesat licenses in 2008, 2010 and again in 2013.28

Navigating the structural dimension Obviously, a classical strategy for staying in power is to use any available means to control the media. Although these also depend on a general acceptance of their legitimacy, the political actors in power are able to rule and regulate the media to a higher extent than are their opponents. During the last three years of political transformation in Egypt, all the successive governments made use of such strategies of controlling and restricting the media. As a long-term policy it is institutionalised and thus, to a large degree hegemonic, as already argued. In times of rapid changes, such as during the 18 days of uprising in January-February 2011, the regime will try to use structural interventions more tactically without much success. The first step was to close down the mobile phone net when the announced demonstrations took place on 25 January. As the demonstrations escalated, leading to violent clashes and deadly casualties, the regime partly shut down the access to the internet on 26 January, and on 27 January it was shut down completely, together with the mobile net. The development culminated on 28 January with the imposition of a state of emergency and a curfew. As the protests continued, the regime deployed military units in the streets on 30 January, the same day as al-Jazeera was banned from transmitting via the Egyptian satellite Nilesat. By 1 February, all traffic was stopped in order to prevent people from all over the country to get to Tahrir. The overall strategy was to withhold information by controlling the media and to restrict people’s possible participation by physical limitations, while promoting a specific image of what was going on.29 The lack of monopoly over information was the main reason why the strategy failed. Thus, while the state TV-channels ignored and silenced the demonstrations that took place at Tahrir on 25 January, satellite channels like al-Jazeera and other transnational TV channels transmitted directly from Tahrir. Moreover, over the days from 26 to 28 of January, state TV presented pictures from parts of Egypt, claiming that everything was quiet and peaceful, al-Jazeera’s direct streaming of pictures from the mass demonstrations showed otherwise. With Mubarak’s resignation, the state TV channels were forced to make a U-turn in order to maintain credibility.

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Symbolically, this U-turn became very visible on Egyptian national TV with the replacement of newsreaders and programme hosts by completely new journalists. The previous journalists became symbols of an unreliable coverage. Suddenly ESC also introduced a journalist broadcasting permanently from the previously either silenced or slandered Tahrir Square. By making the U-turn, the regime adapted the media policy to their own policy, and in this regard, the U-turn reflects that even without Mubarak, the regime still controlled the media. However, the fall of Mubarak did force the transitional government to make some concessions to the media. In September 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood therefore launched a new TV-channel called Misr25, which provided them with a new platform. Coming into power, the Muslim Brotherhood with Mohamed Morsi as president got access to regulating media. They were also forced to navigate in a media field in which the dominant state media had previously positioned the Islamists as an illegitimate opposition in accordance with regime politics, while private liberal media had criticised Islamisation. As a result, the Muslim Brotherhood was still in a situation where its power was not fully institutionalised, despite having become the new ruling elite. In this situation, they made use of legal intervention. Thus, the minister of information prohibited Dream TV from transmitting from the studio in Dreamland, claiming that by law, they had to transmit from the media city where they only had a very small studio.30 This meant that the channel was closed down from one day to the other. By doing so, the new regime used the strategy of the former regime in order to limit the programming by referring to bureaucratic regulations when politically opportune.31 Another strategy was to lead a biased employment policy. Hence, the new minister of information and several top leaders within state media institutions in Egypt emerged among members of the Muslim Brotherhood or their sympathisers. However, the biggest challenge for the new regime was to obtain loyalty from state media. Since closing the state channels was not really an option, the alternative was to force critical journalists from their position or pushing them to loyalty. Thus, during the presidency of Morsi, the new regime accused individual TV personalities, mostly presenters, from both state and private non-Islamic TV for diverse offenses. The police interrogated some of the more progressive presenters from the state TV. Alternatively, they were reported to the police for humiliating the president. The stations removed others from the programme, a move which, at the beginning of Mubarak’s regime, had made this type of individual intimidation particularly well known.32 The regime’s attempt was to discipline the state TV employees and to teach them the new limits

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to freedom of speech in accordance with the interests of the regime. In the end, the aim was to make state TV conduct self-censorship. Once again, power shifted when the military took over power by removing president Morsi on 3 July 2013. The military did not hesitate to use its power to limit the media. Hence, it closed the Islamic channels Misr25, al-Nas, alHafiz and al-Rahma in the early evening of 3 July. Evidently, all the successive regimes used their privileged access to controlling and restricting the media. However, they were facing different challenges during the time of transformation. The regime and state TV ultimately had to succumb to the success of the popular uprising in 2011, and Morsi’s regime had to combine long-term strategies with short-term tactics in the attempt to win some loyalty of the state TV. State TV, on the other hand, had to accept Morsi as the new president, finding itself squeezed between old and new loyalties. Obviously, when loyalties are at play, the use of legal intervention is not the only aspect of the political competition. On the contrary, it might be argued that with access to diverse media locally, nationally and transnationally, the attempt to control information by limiting these media will be facing difficulties; the struggle over differences becomes a struggle over representation, as argued by Siapera.33 This is where political actors’ access to–and control of–specific media becomes crucial in order to promote particular discourses. Winning discursive hegemony becomes more essential when you cannot completely close down alternative discourses. In the following, I examine some of the discourses of transformation used through the first three and half years after the 25-January-2011 Revolution in Egypt and the ways in which the regime in power adapted them.

The meaning of place: controlling Egyptian places According to Certeau, defining and organising ‘place’ is a key concept when it comes to displaying a strategy. Likewise, ‘place’ is important in any struggle over national power. The nation as a political entity and the nation as an idea are defined by the nation’s territory and the imagined community within this territory.34 Thus, having power to define the imagined community is crucial to mastering the national place and “keeping the power over a longer period of time”, as Certeau stresses. The importance of controlling the national place becomes unmistakable in the Egyptian media coverage of the transformations. The media displayed and silenced symbolically the struggle over the control of Tahrir square during the eighteen days of uprising in 2011 in ways that emphasise its

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importance. There is a difference in presenting the protesters at Tahrir as representatives of the freedom-loving Egyptian people or as troublemakers in alliance with foreign interests. Only if the protesters are able to convince the public that they are representing the people, do they have the legitimate right to control the national place of Tahrir. The question is how diverse TV channels responded to the erosion of regime power over national place that limited the regime’s possibility to act strategically.

Picturing politicised public places The government-loyal TV coverage of the uprising in 2011 reflects the importance of place. While the national media passed by the demonstrations at Tahrir on 25 January in silence, the TV-channels had to respond with more than silence in the days that followed. Among others, a local mayor was quoted saying: “Here, in Port Said everything is peaceful. Nothing happens. This is Egypt, this is how Egyptians behave. Egyptians are quiet and peaceful people.” Thus, by picturing public places in Egypt as peaceful and inhabited by ‘Egyptians’, TV challenged the claim of the protesters at Tahrir that they were in control over public place and representing the Egyptian people. The Egyptian state television continued telling a story of the history, inscribing the events in the collective memory of the nation. By using a classic montage, the state TV reconstructed the national discourse of unity, sidestepping the conflict. As Nora points out, “Perhaps the most tangible sign of the split between history and memory has been the emergence of a history of history (…) History, especially the history of national development, has constituted the oldest of our collective traditions”.35 State TV also changed its strategy as the demonstrations went on with the same strength and Mubarak made concessions to the protesters by, for the first time during his presidency, appointing a vice president and a new prime minister on 29 January. Loyal to the regime, the strategy was to discredit the legitimacy of the protesters’ claims. The state TV-channels presented the numbers of protesters as very low, while they were depicted as young troublemakers or even traitors who had been bought by foreign powers to destroy Egypt. By introducing a hegemonic discourse saying that external political actors were behind internal national conflicts,36 the media was not only slandering the protesters, but also suggesting that with the help of foreign media, foreign media were trying to take control over Egyptian land. By connecting foreign media with an illegitimate ‘occupation’ of an Egyptian place, the state TV challenged and threw

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suspicion on the more celebrative coverage of the uprisings–so very different from their own–in an attempt to uphold defining power. Thus, on 3 February 2011, the ESC was referring to a clip from the American satellite channel in Arabic, al-Hura, depicting an officer at Tahrir Square who was seen in friendly interaction with demonstrators, giving the impression that he might have joined forces with the protesters. The ESC presenters encouraged the audiences to challenge this interpretation, suggesting that the soldier was not a real soldier, while a moment later pointing at what looked like foreigners among the protesters. In a telephone interview, General Husam Suilam accused ‘these channels’– referring to transnational channels–of staging the picture in order “to tell the world that some members of the army have united now with the Muslim brotherhood and demonstrators.” Moreover, a manager of a hospital was interviewed by telephone. He suggested that injured patients, foreign powers and protesters were connected. The female presenter of the programme responded to the interviews by saying, “It is the people at the Tahrir Square who say that”. The male presenter continued defending the position of the channel by saying, “The TV is only transmitting what is happening, transmitting what happening. We are not pointing in a particular direction”. The female presenter added subsequently, “We have showed a lot of pictures with foreigners at Tahrir”. The mentioned examples illustrate how, being a top-down institution, the Egyptian state television was collecting testimonies ‘from below’ among so-called ordinary Egyptians in order to legitimise a certain interpretation of the events. The message of the testimonies invites the audiences to remember past events with former colonial powers and retrieve memories into the present, reviving discourses of foreign dominance. In other words, “our understanding of personal and public histories is structured through what José van Dijck has termed ‘mediated memories’.”37 In addition, the next interview included a reference to a TV channel. This time, al-Jazeera English was accused of offering 200 dollars to each person in Thailand who was willing to demonstrate in front of the Egyptian Embassy. Both state TV and some of the private liberal channels circulated the rumours of al-Jazeera working at destroying Egypt.38 While the widely broadcasted ’camel battle’ on 2 February could be seen as the regime’s desperate attempt to keep up control with public space by creating chaos followed by physical intervention, the mass demonstration of Friday 4 proved differently. Obviously, the Egyptian state TV was just as bewildered as the regime, forced to tactical motions in the attempt to maintain the status quo. Although throwing suspicion on ‘outsiders’ was not a new strategy in

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Egyptian politics, the staging became increasingly unreliable in the light of the extensive public demonstrations taking place. The old strategy seemed less workable in the new political situation. Furthermore, when the journalists tried to defend their coverage by referring to eyewitnesses as undeniable evidence, this was an attempt at tactical navigation in an unclear political reality, while disowning it.39

The meaning of legitimate representation: Who represents the people? On 11 February, the army committee made several concessions to the opposition and demonstrators. In the afternoon, the appointed vice president Suliman gave a speech, announcing the acceptance of Mubarak’s stepping down from his post as president. The Army Committee temporarily took over power. Despite the U-turn taken by the state, the contestation of who were the ‘true Egyptians’ continued. Whereas in the beginning, any attempt of revolt was delegitimised as against ‘Egyptianness’, the discourse now changed. Rather than being depicted as the diverse crowd they had actually been, the younger protesters now became the ideal typical protesters in the state media. Praised for their courage, they became ‘sons of the revolution’ (Awlad al-Sawrah). Concepts like revolution and revolutionary replaced the previously used concept of traitor (‘amil’). The studios invited young people supporting the revolution to tell the viewers about their claims, expectations and hopes. Hence, the TV-coverage reflected the basic shift in the struggle over history. The fall of the Mubarak regime left national television in a situation where old strategies of loyalty towards the regime were no longer straightforward, since no one knew who would win the political competition. However, looking at the TV coverage in the following period, at least reminiscences from former strategies were still alive. On the one hand, attempts at controlling the media were still very much in use in general, and on the other, national TV was still making active use of well-known recipes of national discourses, at the same time as trying to size up the situation of the power balance. At the time, tactical coin tossing seems almost to be the best metaphor of state TV. Until the election of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi as president in June 2012 ended the period of the transitional government, almost all stations were caught between the traditional role of supporting the autocratic regime, which was still trying to hold on to power, and to prove that they were not as biased as their coverage of the

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uprisings suggested. Thus, the television appeared to be trying to make space for different opinions by making access to national TV easier. On the discursive level, however, there were still limitations, as the dominant discourses of foreign interference and treason were used to delegitimise opponents. Consequently, during the second half of July the new ruling power in Egypt accused the April 6th youth movement which was one of the driving forces of the January 2011-uprisings, of being traitors because they had received economic support from foreign countries and had sent members for training in Serbia. The accusation came when the movement were still demonstrating, protesting and standing by their claims, maintaining that they still had not obtained their goals. By referring to foreign influence, the programmes cast the movements’ motives as suspicious. In debate programmes, a general accusation that receiving financial support from abroad amounted to treason further strengthened this discourse. However, the studio invited members of the movements and sympathisers to discuss the accusation. The channels still allocated more time to talking to people whose agenda was the same as that of the new regime (the ruling military council). Moreover, the same argument was put forward in a Friday sermon transmitted two days after the head of the ruling military council had raised the issue. The constitution is another key symbol of the national imaginary. Thus, when a new constitution was drawn up in the autumn 2012 through negotiations between very diverse political positions, the question of representativeness and legitimacy came up in television debates. Rather than discussing the small details of what became a legally very complex constitution, the antagonists concentrated on questioning the legitimacy of their opponents being supported by the different TV channels. In the liberal spirit of the revolution, Egyptian TV, both the Islamic and secular TV channels, devoted special attention to images and voices of dissent from both political wings. However, this apparent pluralism soon turned into struggles over legitimacy, which dominated the media coverage of the Islamists’ own TV channels (e.g. Misr 25, al-Nas and al-Rahma), of privately owned liberal TV channels (e.g. Dream 2, CBC, al-Hayat TV), and of state TV (ESC). Islamists and journalists accused each other of misrepresentation. These struggles reflected how the media and the rulers, respectively, navigated in the media landscape in a situation with radical change of power relations. Islamist parties created not only new alliances and positions while achieving new and easier access to media, due to their new power position. They still had to prove their legitimacy, not only in

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relation to the population, but also in relation to the state TV. Thus, during the constitution debate, the political, mainly secular, opposition and people demonstrating in the streets of Egypt continued to challenge the Islamist regime. As the internal and external pressure on the Islamist regime to adopt certain policies intensified, Egyptian TV channels covered the debate in accordance with the interdependence between them and the new regime.

Contesting secular opponents The general claim by the Islamic channels was that the constitution was democratically defined and representing all parties, and that a constitutional referendum was legitimate. While also inviting members of the secular opposition to take part in debates, the representatives of the Islamists were presented as the sensible and dialogue-seeking part. In general, the Islamic media encouraged secular groups in society to see and learn from how Muslim politicians governed a Muslim country while living as Muslims as under the Prophet Mohammad. By referring to the time of Mohammad, they were promoting the idea that in order to live as a true Muslim, people must live by God’s law, which does not distinguish between religion and politics. By constructing your own law, you place yourself in the position of God, which would be shirk (polytheism). By this type of argumentation, the Islamists did not only defend the Islamic elements of the new constitution, they also tried to delegitimise the seculars as not being true Muslims. Despite al-Nas and al-Rahma TV-channels being allegedly apolitical, their channelling of emotions and mobilisation supporting the Arab Spring showed that they played a political role. Contesting the secular interpretations of Islamic positions, they reached out for viewers all over Egypt by offering a national position on which to reframe the Muslim identity. Thus, well-known figures from Islamic television, such as the very famous and popular Mohammed Hassan, obtained new momentum for influencing the debate. The Islamic channels, but also some of the secular and transnational Arab channels, broadcasted Hassan’s speech at a big demonstration on 2 December 2012. At the square ’Nahdit Miser’ (Egypt’s reformation) outside Cairo University, he was shouting in a microphone about the desire of the Egyptian people to follow Allah and his law: “We declare to the Egyptian people that here are the Muslims, here are the Islamists. They love their religion; they love the book of Allah and the

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tradition of the Prophet. And they are ready to sacrifice their lives to achieve the law of Allah.”

After the speech, demonstrators shouted: “with our soul and blood we sacrifice ourselves for Islam”, converting the patriotic slogan normally referring to the sacrifice for the country into an Islamic slogan. Despite the political victory for Islamism as well as the biased employment strategy previously mentioned, the Islamic debaters very often fell back on a long institutionalised discourse of victimhood, combined with a populist discourse of throwing suspicion on their political opponents, as was seen in the state media during the 2011-revolution. When confronted, Islamists argued that they were still suffering under the position of the powerless. The Islamic ruling power explained its behaviour by stressing the unjust pursuit as a historically given position that had resulted in jail and torture and lead to the ousting of the Islamists by the regimes of Nasser and Mubarak. They implemented the rhetorical discourse about being victims of persecution, not only in a radical version, but also in a version encouraging dialogue. They presented dialogue as an essential part of Islam; Islam being the true civilisation, while the seculars and liberals were blamed for all troubles. The consequence of this perspective was that liberal TV was positioned as a potential threat to the new democracy. Besides being difficult to control, having a large amount of secular TV channels, it was also a threat against the democracy as conceptualised by the Islamists. As for the discourse on victimhood, Islamist representatives complained of shortages of invitations to participate in TV and other media to present their standpoint during the constitutional debate. Instead, the media presented the bogey that had dominated since Mubarak because of the fact that many Mubarak followers were still holding top positions in the media institutions. Confronted with being invited to the programme although they were Islamists, they once again positioned themselves as victims, claiming that they were not given the same amount of time and place in the media as the secularists. By using this discourse of victimhood,– contrary to the previously mentioned preacher Hassan–they positioned themselves as the weaker part, which might potentially lead to some sympathy. However, this also revealed that winning the formal political power of the presidency did not reset the discursive hegemony to zero point. In spite of having access to long-term strategies, for instance those of employing policies within the media, the Islamist couldn’t change the media discourses from one day to another. In the short term, the Islamic debaters thus continued the tactics of the weaker antagonists. To get media

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attention, the weaker antagonists must “provide some form of drama or novelty”.40 One variant was to hint at hidden agendas, suspicious personalities and politically illegitimate allies. Thus, the typical rhetorical strategy was to throw suspicion on their opponents by hinting that something was completely wrong, without directly accusing the opponent. Thus, in the alNas TV channel, the presenter Khaled Ab Allah used phrases such as: “I will certainly not say more” – “You can guess what this actually means” – “They have said so, but I will not mention any names, but you know him very well”

Another accusation against the seculars by Islamists was that they were the right-hand men of imperialism and Zionism. Islamists often also accused the liberalist al-Baradei41, referring to his work in western countries, his fraternisation with Israelis, and his residence in Austria. The well-known discourse on accusations of fraternisation with Western powers was thus reproduced in order to discredit political opponents.

Contesting Islamist legitimacy The privately owned TV channels with a secular and liberal profile upheld the same strategy as the Islamic channels by turning their claims on their heads. They argued that the Islamists had not outlined the constitution democratically, since not all voices had been given equal space; the referendum was not legitimate due to shortage of time to draw up a balanced constitution and to prepare the people to vote for the constitution. Furthermore, the commercial channels accused the Islamist opposition of using a scare campaign threatening that political and economic chaos would erupt if the citizens did not adopt the constitution. As on the Islamic channels, the private stations invited both parties to take part in debates. Ridiculing the Islamists, the stations presented the secular representatives as sensible and democratic. Thus, the privately owned channels contested representativity and hence the legitimacy of the power of the Muslim Brotherhood. The channels further supported this view by depicting Morsi as an incompetent and weak president whose efforts had failed because of his sole agenda of promoting the Muslim Brotherhood.

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Defending pluralism at the surface The mutual positioning of the Islamic and secular channels during the constitutional debate was not surprising, as they represented two main opponents since the fall of the Mubarak regime. More interesting is how the state-owned channels, as the third group, navigated in this new political landscape. How to navigate in the wake of an institutionalised loyalty toward the Mubarak regime that continued until his fall? During the constitution debate in October – December 2012, the ESC was trying to look more ‘balanced’ in their coverage than both the Islamist and private liberal channels. While sometimes the presenters seemed to prefer one party, they were trying to give equal say to both parties. However, as regards the critical approach towards the Islamists, rare cases prevailed, as for instance the coverage of the preaching of Mohammed Hassan at the mentioned demonstration on 2 December 2012. In the programme “Ahdath 24 sa‘ah” (24 hours’ events) the presenter, Buthaina Kamel, welcomed the viewers back after a short break with the words: “We are still with the brotherhood’s news programme, in which the Muslim Brotherhood’s organisation denies the report that its members are going to circulate in the constitutional court tomorrow …”

A general critique of the new regime was reflected in her use of the term ‘Akhwanit al-Dawla’, which literally means ‘brothering the country’, when referring to the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) as an organisation that was trying to change the whole nation to become (Muslim) brothers, thus colonising the state by making it a part of the movement. What the Muslim Brotherhood supporters should do instead, according to the channel, was to become Egyptians, rather than turning Egyptians into Muslim brothers. Thus, despite their attempt to appear balanced, the state channels’ coverage did not really change the general picture of two main antagonists, since holding the microphone for the two opposing discourses did not result in dialogue or room for new interpretations. Hence, the strategy of the state TV primarily reflected the Islamists’ failure, so far, to win hegemonic power on the discursive level, suggesting that would do better to adhere to well-tested strategies. The invitation of participants from both political wings reflected the recognition that it was no longer possible to silence the voices of their opponents. Instead, the strategy was trying to control the voices. To the degree that this was not possible, the strategy was to ridicule their opponents. The analysis of the constitution debates illustrates that no real dialogue between the political wings took place in the media. When the

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media invited representatives from the opposition, this was mostly with the purpose of trying to undermine their legitimacy. Only on the surface did the coverage of the events by Egyptian TV channels appear to be fully mediating the engagement of the Egyptian people with their history, while picturing the media as playing a main role in constructing a meeting ground between different voices.

Securitisation outplaying democracy While in power, the Muslim Brotherhood upheld their legitimacy by referring to democratic principles, stating that a majority had elected them and that some Islamic principles were democratic. Their opponents also referred to democracy, arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood did not work for true representativeness, neither in their political practice nor in their ideology. The use of the results of the referendum on the constitution demonstrated how these supported both claims. The Islamists claimed they won hegemony, since 63.8% voted yes and 36.2 voted no. As opposed to this, the seculars claimed that the Islamists did not win hegemony, since only 32.9% of the electorate actually voted.42 With the coup or revolution in July 2013, which lead to the removal of Morsi from presidency, the discourse by the new rulers gradually changed from claims about legitimate democracy to securitisation. Not surprisingly, Morsi’s supporters would argue that the removal of Morsi was a military coup and therefore illegitimate, while the supporters of the military and field marshal el-Sisi argued that it was a people’s revolution and thus legitimate and in accordance with democratic principles of the people’s voice. Regardless of this discussion, it soon became clear that part of the new regimes’ alleged legitimacy built on a complete delegitimisation of the Muslim Brotherhood. The state TV followed the military without much protest, and it might therefore be claimed that the military played its cards well and never gave up their control over the Egyptian public sphere, including state TV. State and liberal media quickly adopted el-Sisi’s securitisation policy of legitimising death sentences to Muslim Brotherhood members for terrorism, closing down Islamic channels, putting journalists on trial, and in the spring of 2014, also banning the 6th of April movement, which is one of the leading liberal youth movements behind the 2011-revolution. By defining the public sphere in Egypt as one characterised by instability, insecurity, threats of terrorist attacks etc., the military fed the securitisation discourse and consequently legitimised its control over the public sphere. Well-known discursive strategies were also revived, such as

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using the Friday prayers to preach support for the new policy, or reviving the popular TV preacher from the 1990s, Sharawi, as the legitimate representative of Egyptian Islam. Parallel to positioning themselves as the protectors of Islam, state and liberal TV channels transmitted pictures of terror attacks on the one hand, and national songs on the other. Furthermore, since el-Sisi announced his candidature for presidency, he has been able to construct himself as the revolutionary hero of 30 June 2013, and as the saviour of his country.

Conclusion This analysis of the strategies and tactics of Egyptian television during the political changes in Egypt in the first three and a half years after the 25 January 2011 revolution shows that, as argued by Wolfsfeld, the role of the media in a process of transformation is neither linear nor invariable.43 Rather, the competition over media between rulers and opponents is unpredictable and must be examined in accordance with its specific time and place. Until the uprisings in 2011, Egyptian state TV had played a clearly defined role, which, during the uprisings and resulting political changes, was eroding with the erosion of the regime. Not surprisingly, the state TV did not mobilise or accelerate the revolution. On the contrary, it rather seemed to respond–sometimes rather late–to the revolution. At the same time, these responses or the lack of such initiated or mobilised particular discourses available. The media functioned as the mouthpiece of the regime by silencing ongoing news and events. The responses of the state TV show how structural and cultural dimensions of the media’s role are challenged during times of conflict. Simultaneously, media negotiate and (re)produce discourses by inscribing them in already existent hegemonic discursive orders and collective memories. In the words of Garde-Hansen, media have become the Egyptians’ main sources for–recording, constructing, archiving and disseminating their own histories. She emphasises that the divide between history and media is impossible to maintain. “(…) media witnessing is produced through the complex interactions of three strands: ‘witnesses [memory] in the media, witnessing [memory] by the media, and witnessing [memory] through the media’.44 The strategies of different TV channels show how TV becomes an opportunity and an instrument for new elites participating in the struggle for power, but also how TV does not really change much. While covering the constitution debate, neither Islamic nor secular TV channels offered space for interpretation and negotiation. Instead, they stuck to antagonist

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discourses. As for the state TV, it might be argued that the Muslim Brotherhood did not succeed within time to control the state TV. Consequently, despite social media’s relative success in mobilising people for protest, there are few signs of a positive development of liberal institutions and no facilitation of lifting the control over free opinion formation in Egypt. If we are to believe the promises of the new president el-Sisi, this will not be the case in the near future either. Rather, the interdependence between the regime and state TV seems to be back where it started. The only difference is two ‘revolutions’ and tightened control by the regime with the public sphere, which also offers a sobering new reality regarding the revolutionary potential of social media versus ‘old’ media. The question is if the short-term memories have left the discursive repertoire of the two revolutions in the hegemonic hands of el-Sisi only, or if they may be mobilised tactically in the future for other types of transformation. Time will tell.

Notes 1

Samia Mehrez, Egypt’s Culture Wars. Politics and Practice (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2010). 2 Ehab Galal, “Medier I Den Arabiske Verden,” in Mellemøsthåndbogen, ed. Lars Erslev Andersen, Søren Hove, and Maj Vingum Jensen (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2005); Ehab Galal, “Identiteter Og Livsstil På Islamisk SatellitTv: En Indholdsanalyse Af Udvalgte Programmers Positioneringer Af Muslimer” (Ph.D., University of Copenhagen, 2009). 3 Benedict Anderson, Forestillede Fællesskaber. Refleksioner over Nationalismens Oprindelse Og Udbredelse (Roskilde: Roskilde University Press, 2001). 4 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 5 Joanne Garde-Hansen, Media and Memory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 3. 6 Sean Aday et al., New Media and Conflict after the Arab Spring, Peace Works (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 2012); Fadi Salem and Racha Mourtada, The Fourth Arab Social Media Report: Influencing Societal and Cultural Change?, Arab Social Media Report (Dubai: Dubai School of Government, 2012); Taylor Dewey et al., The Impact of Social Media on Social Unrest in the Arab Spring. Final Report Prepared for Defence Intelligence Agency (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). 7 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.

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William Rugh, Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio, and Television in Arab Politics (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2004). 12 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East. 13 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London, New York: Verso, 1985). 14 Jan Assman, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” New German Critique, No. 65 (1995): 129. 15 Ibid., 132. 16 Lila Abu-Lughod, Dramas of Nationhood. The Politics of Television in Egypt (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2005). 17 Jan Assman, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” 135. 18 Mieke Bal, “Introduction,” in Acts of Memory. Cultural Recall in the Present, ed. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe, and Leo Spitzer (Hannover, London: University Press of New England, 1999), vii. 19 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 20 Ibid., 34–37. 21 Joanne Garde-Hansen, Media and Memory, 4. 22 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 199–200. 23 Lila Abu-Lughod, Dramas of Nationhood. The Politics of Television in Egypt; William Rugh, Arab Mass Media: Newspapers, Radio, and Television in Arab Politics. 24 Ehab Galal, “Where Has the Authority Gone? New Imperiatives and Audience Research,” in Arab TV-Audiences: Negotiating Religion and Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 2014). 25 Ehab Galal, “Identiteter Og Livsstil På Islamisk Satellit-Tv: En Indholdsanalyse Af Udvalgte Programmers Positioneringer Af Muslimer”; Samia Mehrez, Egypt’s Culture Wars. Politics and Practice. 26 Itihad iza‘at al-Dewwal al-‘Arabiya / Arab States Broadcasting Union, Al- Bath Al-Fada`iy Al-‘Arabi: Al-Taqrir Al-Sanawi 2012- 2013 / Arab Satellite Broadcasting: Annual Report 2012-2013 (Arab States Broadcasting Union, 2013), 20–22. 27 Cf. Al-Tahhawi, Amira: “Arab Ministers finally agree – on limiting press freedom”, in Menassat, 15th of February 2008. URL: http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/2968-arab-ministers-finally-agreelimiting-press-freedom (accessed 06-04-2008). 28 Ehab Galal, “Where Has the Authority Gone? New Imperiatives and Audience Research.” 29 Ehab Galal, “Nationale Tv-Strategier under Det Arabiske Forår,” Tidsskrift for Islamforskning 7, No. 1 (2013): 53–68. 30 http://www.elgomaa.com/article.php?id=81803 (accessed 27-04-2014). 31 About the Mubarak regime’s media strategy after the liberalization, see Galal (2009, 2011), Mehrez (2010).

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32 Robert Springborg, Mubaraks Egypt. Fragmentation of the Political Order (Boulder, London: Westview Press, 1989). 33 Eugenia Siapera, Cultural Diversity and Global Media. The Mediation of Difference (Malden, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). 34 Benedict Anderson, Forestillede Fællesskaber. Refleksioner over Nationalismens Oprindelse Og Udbredelse. 35 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989): 9. 36 Lise Paulsen Galal, “Coptic Christian Practices: Formations of Sameness and Difference,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 2, No. 1 (2012): 45–58. 37 Joanne Garde-Hansen, Media and Memory, 7. 38 The rumours are broadcasted, for instance, in the programme ‘48 hours’ by the channel al-Mihwar owned by the Egyptian businessman Hassan Raatib. 39 In 2013 the Muslim Brotherhood’s sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya square as a protest against the removal of Morsi was equally contested and a topic of media coverage. However, it never assumed the same symbolic meaning as Tahrir, because it was not constructed as ‘the peoples’ place’, but as ‘the Islamists’ place’. The divide made it possible to dismiss their demands as illegitimate. 40 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East, 142. 41 He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Vice President in Egypt 14 July - 14 August 2013. 42 Votes for the constitution 10,693,911 (63.8%). Votes against 6,061,101 (36.2%). Turnout 32.9% (17,058,317 votes including 303,395 declared invalid). 43 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Media and Political Conflict: News from the Middle East. 44 Ibid., 3.

II: HISTORY

CHAPTER FIVE EPOCHALISM AND THE “SOCIETY OF SECURITY”: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN SELF-DEFENCE CULTURE FRANCIS DODSWORTH

In the summer of 1973 Enter the Dragon hit cinema screens around the world, making its recently-deceased star Bruce Lee an international cultural phenomenon and driving the ‘Kung Fu craze’ that was such a central part of 1970s and 1980s popular culture.1 Enter the Dragon was the first Asian martial arts film with backing from a major Hollywood studio, which gave it increased prominence, but it was only the most obvious symbol of a growing interest in Asian martial arts across the Western world. Judo was already well established as a competitive sport by the 1960s, and Karate was growing in popularity, while British television audiences had already been introduced to Kung Fu through the character of Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg, in the popular series The Avengers (1961-9). American television audiences had likewise already encountered Bruce Lee in the series The Green Hornet (1966-7), and the interest in Kung Fu was enormously increased by the hugely popular TV series Kung Fu (1972-5) starring David Cannadine, while Asian martial arts also featured prominently in several James Bond films, most notably You Only Live Twice (1967). From the mid-1970s through to the early 1980s, students wishing to study Asian martial arts were presented with ever more options to choose from: Karate, Judo, Taekwondo and Aikido were perhaps the most popular, not least because the first three were, by that time, quite focused on competitive sport. However, there was also a burgeoning world of what would later come to be called ‘traditional martial arts’, which filled a rather different niche in the martial arts market and promoted themselves in rather different ways. Kung Fu in particular was being marketed by its

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promoters not only as the repository of “the most refined self-defense [sic] techniques in the world” but also as a “radically different philosophy of life” to that of conventional Western materialism.2 Learning Kung Fu was a matter of spiritual and emotional as well as physical development: “Kung Fu must be thought of, in its final form and spirit, as an expression of man’s indomitable will to survive adversity in the most direct, selfreliant manner possible”. 3

In Kung Fu, the development of the mind and the body were integrated into a system “which begins on the physical level and gradually deepens to a pervasive philosophy influencing the totality of one’s behaviour.”4

Popular instruction manuals like the one quoted here, Chow and Spangler’s Kung Fu (1977), outlined a set of self-defence techniques underpinned by mysterious, formerly secret, training methods and the cultivation of a mysterious form of energy,”Ch’I”, which raised the ability of the individual to almost superhuman levels, teaching the adept “How to walk up the side of a wall. How to walk on sand without leaving footprints. How to incapacitate an enemy with the flick of a finger. The delayed death-producing Red Sand Palm. These will be explained as supernormal abilities available to anyone who wishes to invest the necessary years of training”.5

With more Americans looking “for more physical protection and domestic tranquillity”, as they put it, the authors felt that “general knowledge of the Chinese martial arts would help diminish violence in the streets”, both by enabling the weak to defend themselves and by developing a culture of personal discipline and confidence, thus reducing the frustration that breeds violence amongst young men.6 It is perhaps no coincidence that these words were written during the “mugging crisis” that gripped the US and the UK in the early 1970s.7 Although the fortunes of particular martial arts styles have waxed and waned since the 1970s, with an upsurge of interest in Ninjutsu and Wing Chun in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by a more recent craze for “realistic self-defence” and Krav Maga, there remains a flourishing martial arts and self-defence culture in almost every town.8 Indeed, the explosion of interest in Asian martial arts in the West has been so pronounced that some have denounced the current martial arts scene for its mass

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commercialisation, characterised by the “McDonaldisation” of selfdefence, with “McDojos” offering superficial instruction in often useless but mysterious-looking techniques, with more emphasis on extracting profit from students by locking them into long term contracts, expensive training courses and grading systems than teaching them a useful means of personal protection.9 Whatever the truth or otherwise of these assertions, there is no doubt that the martial arts, particularly Asian martial arts, have become big business and a central part of the commercialisation of self-defence and personal security and perhaps, more importantly, one of the key points at which wider public concerns about security and fear of crime intersect with particular practices of self-shaping. In this sense it is easy to see the proliferation of the martial arts as one element in the twin processes of “responsibilisation” and commercialisation that seem to have displaced responsibility for crime prevention away from the state and onto individuals and communities through an array of crime prevention and community safety programmes, a focus on practices of everyday life, and direction towards market solutions to anxieties about crime.10 David Garland argues that this drive towards “responsibilisation” and the focus on practices of everyday life is a novel phenomenon that would have greatly surprised criminal justice practitioners of the 1950s and 1960s. Driven in part by a loss of confidence in the ability of the criminal justice system to affect crime rates, and in part by the “new right” or “neoliberal” movements that have dominated thinking about government policy since the 1970s, this marks a radical break with the well-established “penal-welfare complex” that preceded the neo-liberal era and which was focused on the reduction and perhaps elimination of crime through the deterrence and reform of offenders, and its replacement by a “control society” in which crime was treated as a normal, everyday risk to be managed by reducing the likelihood of its occurrence.11 The simultaneous development of the security industry, enhanced security measures at many places of normal social interaction, high-tech surveillance and the universal presence of uniformed security personnel constitute a huge social, political and commercial investment in the idea of “security” as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the existing governmental apparatus at delivering social order, something which has been termed the development of a “security society.”12 Security, it seems, has become one of the organising principles for individual and communal self-government, a central figure in our governmentality and a central element in the liberal ideology of order; some scholars have suggested that security is not simply hegemonic, it is hegemony.13

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The Genealogy of Security In 1977 Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish first appeared in English translation and introduced the idea of a “disciplinary society” into the English academic lexicon, drawing out the ways in which the liberal societies that emerged during the nineteenth century depended upon the diffusion of an array of disciplinary practices and institutions that gave shape to a particular kind of social body.14 However, at the very moment that the idea of a “disciplinary society” was beginning to take hold of Anglophone social science, Foucault himself was already beginning to wonder if the era of the “disciplinary society” had not passed and if we were in the process of moving from a “disciplinary society” to a “society of security”; was it possible, he asked his audience at the Collège de France, to see our society as one in which “the general economy of power in our society is becoming a domain of security?”15 Within a few weeks, Foucault shifted the focus of this course of lectures away from security towards the theme of “governmentality” that went on to have such a profound impact on social science in the 1990s and continues to be a central part of the sociological curriculum today.16 This, and the focus of Foucault’s own interests in the history of sexuality, meant that this approach to risk and security and the idea of a “society of security” remained dormant for more than a decade before being revived alongside the renewed interest in his work on governmentality in the early 1990s, which developed as a way of understanding the constellation of developments that scholars were coming to call “neo-liberalism”.17 In parallel with Foucault, by the late 1970s criminologists were also noting specific changes taking place in the government of law and order. The 1960s had seen new engagement with public fear of crime, with the development of the crime survey in the US following the inner city riots of 1964-6, a process that arrived in the UK in 1982 with the first British Crime Survey, perhaps not coincidentally in the period immediately following inner city riots across the UK.18 The 1960s also saw the 1965 Cornish Committee on Crime Prevention and the establishment of Crime Prevention Officers throughout UK police forces, and by the 1980s and 1990s crime prevention and community safety had become a central element of social ordering.19 From the 1970s onwards, this focus on situational crime prevention and the practice of everyday life was complemented by the development of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.20 The 1960s and 1970s also saw the beginning of long-term growth in private policing and security, particularly notable by the late 1980s and early 1990s.21

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At that time, along with the rediscovery of Foucault’s work on governmentality, two other strands of work on risk and its role in ‘late modernity’ were emerging from Anthony Giddens in The Consequences of Modernity in 1990 and Ulrich Beck in Risk Society, which, although it was published in German in 1986, did not appear in English until 1992.22 Like the Foucauldian work on governmentality, both sought to develop a broad perspective on the transformation of government occasioned by what was variously termed “neo-liberalism”, “late capitalism” or “late modernity”. None of these texts dealt explicitly with questions of social order or policing, but they seemed to provide some broader context within which the specific changes in criminal justice and social ordering might be understood, and from the early 1990s several important studies sought to locate the transformations in policing and punishment they were observing around them with these broad brush arguments about “risk society”, “security” and “late modernity.”23 Around the turn of the millennium, a number of significant works built on these accounts of radical transformation to argue that the dominance of the new right and neo-liberalism had created a “culture of insecurity” or an “age of anxiety” in which “security” played a central ideological role in our concept of social order in a manner distinctive to late or liquid modernity. As Adam Crawford pointed out, “crime and insecurity have become essential aspects of the social and political discourse of individuals, communities, non-governmental organisations, businesses, governments and international bodies. We are increasingly governed through crime and insecurity.”24 The language of risk had emerged to become the key term through which we engage with the future, so that elements identified as threatening or harmful to the liberal imaginary become subject to intensified control and even criminalisation.25 Neo-liberalism is identified in this literature as a politics that is “obsessed with uncertainty”; it is a kind of politics in which ‘Catastrophic imaginations are fuelled, precautionary logics become persuasive, and extreme security measures are involved in frantic efforts to pre-empt imagined sources of harm.’26 It is a worldview in which people’s lives are to be fulfilled through enterprise and consumption, the crafting of a “lifestyle” in which the management of risk plays a central role in how we understand ourselves and our society.27At the same time, neo-liberal social, welfare and employment policies have deliberately undermined the securities provided by the welfare state in the name of “flexibility” and “competitiveness” in the face of the challenge of “globalisation”, rendering life increasingly uncertain and precarious and threatening those who fall outside the mainstream with a high likelihood of becoming

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criminalised.28 Jock Young has gone so far as to argue that we have moved “from an inclusive society of stability and homogeneity to an exclusive society of change and division” in which “our everyday existence is experienced as a series of encounters with risk either in actuality or in the shape of fears and apprehensions”, which leaves us feeling both “materially insecure and ontologically precarious.”29 These late modern anxieties and insecurities “tend to be conflated and compressed into a distinct and overwhelming concern about personal safety”.30 This climate of anxiety and insecurity is said to have led to the proliferation of crime prevention and community safety programmes, gated communities and surveillance technologies which have reshaped our urban environments and the ways in which they are used, producing a series of securitised spaces from which many people are marginalised or excluded. This “architecture of fear” is itself said to be productive of insecurity and anxiety.31 These spaces are patrolled by the new private security forces noted above, who represent one aspect of the increasing “commodification” and consumption of security.32 Like other commodities, security seems to be “fetishised”, inflated to a central element of bourgeois ideology, so that the security industry “both feeds on and feeds the ideology propagated by the security state” and the culture of (in)security becomes “a means of modelling the whole of human society around a particular vision of order”, extending authority deep into the human experience.33 Not only, then, is neo-liberalism said to have excluded, marginalised and criminalised many of the urban poor, creating real social tensions and division, but it has generated a “culture of fear” and widespread insecurity which finds specific expression in fear of crime and violence.34 Indeed, so central has “security” become to our social lives today that Mark Neocleous suggests it ‘has come to shape our imaginations and social being.”35 Clearly security is a very prominent concern in contemporary society, and it is also the case that the language of risk is a relatively novel addition to our governmental vocabulary.36 Nevertheless, it is difficult not to be struck by the millennialism of much of this work. Loader and Sparks identify this as part of a wider trend towards what they call “endism” in criminology.37 As they point out, there is a tendency in much of this work to assume that one can deduce the nature of our culture of crime control from the wider political and cultural context of “late capitalism”.38 This seems to form part of a wider pattern of what Mike Savage has termed “epochalism”, which he sees as particularly characteristic of contemporary British social science. In such work, the past seems to stand only as a

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means of rather superficial contrast to apparently novel features of the present, with a lack of recognition of repetition, recurrence and continuity.39 Savage suggests a return to the more evolutionary vision of change in traditional sociology, in which the future was seen as an elaboration of the conditions of the past, as a self-elaborating and deepening of existing processes, occasionally disrupted by external interventions.40 Such reflections strike a chord in the area of in/security. It is clear that crime prevention and the language of security are central aspects of our current governmentality, but is this really such a marked break from the past? Was Britain before neo-liberalism really ‘an inclusive society of stability and homogeneity’ in which people were largely untroubled by the fear of crime or more general forms of anxiety?41 Criminologists should hardly need reminding of the work of Geoffrey Pearson, who more than thirty years ago detailed the ways in which generation after generation of anxious Britons have configured the present as “extremely tense” and in a period of moral decline and uncertainty, in contrast to a past that was configured as “a ‘golden age’ of order and security.”42 To date there has been limited historical research into either popular attitudes towards crime, or to personal or private practices of self-defence or protection.43 However, Pearson’s work is supported by an array of recent scholarship that demonstrates the extent to which anxieties about crime have been a persistent feature of British public debate, albeit the contours of that debate and the conclusions to which it led are significantly different from those of the present day.44 This is not to suggest that there is no insecurity, division, uncertainty or anxiety in contemporary society, or to deny that we are governed through in/security, simply that they are phenomena that have been recurrent features of life in the past, which was also marked by violence, discrimination, political and social strife and real conditions of material insecurity.45 In fact, I would argue that if “security” has been able to secure such a prominent position in our social life, it is precisely because security concerns have pervaded popular culture for centuries and were, as a consequence, available for politicians, moral entrepreneurs and commercial operatives to tap into. As Mark Neocleous reminds us, Karl Marx was already able to identify security as “the supreme concept of civil society’ in 1843.46 For Neocleous and Rigakos, the development of the ideology and practice of security is a fundamental element of the policing project that has seen the modern state develop as a means of pacifying the population in the name of capitalist extraction.47 However, Neocleous also points out the link to Elias’ work on the relationship between state formation, the civilising process and the history of manners, which draws

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our attention to the extent to which the history of in/security is a history of practices of the self and social relations as much as it is a history of the imposition of state power. Security would appear to be one of what Graham Burchell terms the “contact points” at which techniques of domination intersect and interact with techniques of the self.48

The Martial Arts Manual One of the most obvious points at which techniques of the self intersect with wider security anxieties is, of course, in the field of self-defence, with which this chapter began. This would seem an obvious entry point through which to address the relationship between in/security and popular culture; as yet, however, Emelyne Godfrey has been alone in addressing this subject.49 Martial arts manuals of the kind cited in the introduction offer the prospect of learning particular defensive techniques which, if internalised and rendered automatic, or habitual, through continuous (and correct) repetition, enable the practitioner to overcome larger or stronger, but less skilful aggressors. As we saw above, the Kung Fu manual opens up the prospect of a totalising transformation in which spiritual and emotional development accompany advanced self-defence techniques, rendering the practitioner who works on themselves in a dedicated fashion over many years capable of supernormal feats, and the possessor of a distinct, calm and aware persona liberated from the narrow anxieties surrounding Western materialism and commercialism. However, if this emphasis on Asian spirituality and the mysteries of the Orient has a distinct 1970s counterculture feel to it, and the idea of surviving adversity through self-reliance seems to capture the spirit of neoliberalism, the martial arts manual itself is not a product of the 1970s. Training manuals for self-defence have a long history, dating back in German-speaking culture to the Middle Ages in the form of fighting books containing descriptions and images of the weapons of the day and techniques of their use, alongside unarmed combat. Britain does not have such a lengthy tradition of such manuals, but they are not of recent provenance either. Indeed, not only were there training manuals, but there were early modern organisations for training in self-defence, such as the “The Company of Maisters of the Science of Defence”, which taught the use of the rapier, quarterstaff and the broadsword throughout the sixteenth century, alongside a number of other fencing schools. It was in fact the fencing schools that seem to have given rise to the first manuals of defence.50

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The first fencing manual produced in Britain was George Silver’s Paradoxes of Defence in 1599.51 There were further fencing manuals from Joseph Swetnam, The Schoole of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence in 1615 and Richard Peeke in 1625. The end of licensing in the 1690s saw a wealth of new publications on the subject emerge over the course of the eighteenth century, part of the developing literature on polite conduct that was such a feature of what contemporaries called ‘commercial society’.52 At the end of the century, the fencing manual was complemented by a new genre, the boxing manual, which emerged in the 1780s.53 Of course, both the fencing manual and the boxing manual were rather different from contemporary martial arts manuals in focus, albeit clearly related in content. The fencing manual was one of the many publications targeted at those aspiring to the status of “gentleman”, essentially those on the fringes of the sphere of gentility who had no access to that status by birth and education, but by new wealth or acquired learning.54 The fencing manual became popular in an age when the category of “gentleman” was relatively fluid, with an array of tradesmen aspiring to that status, and knowledge of fencing might be important for them to acquire if they were to pass in polite company despite their lack of a “gentlemanly” education.55 To enter into the circles of gentility was, of course, to enter into an honour culture, and one of the principal signs of membership of that culture was one’s willingness to place one’s honour higher than one’s life, epitomised by the culture of duelling. Although pistols were beginning to replace swords as the principal means of combat, the sword was probably, in fact, more deadly, and it remained an essential skill to master in order to defend one’s honour and position.56 Participating in a duel was a way of demonstrating not only one’s conviction and honour, but also one’s courage and contempt for death and the mortal realm. At the same time, however, it is worth noting that the duel itself has been identified with the “civilising process”, acting as a means of formalising the resolution of disputes and preventing the larger-scale violence that characterised the medieval vendetta.57 In many respects, the development of the boxing manual marked the extension of this process one stage further, encouraging “gentlemen” to settle disputes of honour in ways that were not threatening to life. Like the fencing manual, the boxing manual set out directions for training with a friend, and like the fencing manual, the principal threat to one’s security was associated with honour. As the author of The Modern Art of Boxing put it: “a knowledge of the science is both useful and necessary to every man of spirit, if for no other reason, to protect himself when insulted … it enables

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him to walk the streets with an idea of greater security; and if he does not chuse to resent an insult, he has the satisfaction that it is within his power”.58

Security in this sense lay in the capacity of the “gentleman” to assert his honour and manhood against the potential for insult from the lower classes, whose legendary rudeness, wrote the author of The Art of Manual Defence, stemmed from “the readiness that the vulgar feel for engaging in a boxing match, and the idea that they entertain of exciting fear by the assistance of so mean an advantage, and of being able on this account to insult their superiors with impunity.” 59

The lower classes, it was felt, could insult their “superiors” without fear of physical reprisal due to the physicality conferred by their work and fighting experience. The only solution, the author felt, was “personal chastisement”, to which end it was necessary for the “gentleman” to learn boxing “in order to defend himself against such rudeness, and to protect those whose weakness, age, or sex, renders them liable to the insults of the rabble, and deprives them of all power of effectual resistance.” 60

The more a knowledge of boxing spread through the gentry, it was argued, the less often the lower classes would “seek for gratification in mortifying all whose dress and manners mark them out as their betters.”61 If we follow Arditi’s argument that conduct manuals like these mark out particular “infrastructures” of social relations, we can see that the fencing manual sought to provide a man on the fringes of the gentry with a means of engagement in polite culture, a sphere from which threats to honour might expect to be encountered.62 The ability to fence constituted a way of inhabiting gentility, in particular by practising one of the most prominent means of performing one’s gentility: defending one’s honour. The boxing manual presumed a very different form of social relationship and constituted a different mode of engagement. Once again, the boxing manual, like its forebear, sought to outline the skills and informal rules of engagement that marked out an equally custom-bound mode of resolving disputes over honour. However, in this instance it was targeted at enabling the “gentleman” to engage in a wider, to his eyes “lower”, public culture, from which he was previously excluded, enabling him to defend his honour in a second way by ‘disciplining’ the populace.

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A subtext to this, of course, is clearly that fist fighting was something generally associated with the lower classes and not something that a “gentleman” might normally resort to. A second purpose of the boxing manual, then, was an attempt to render boxing respectable. One of the ways this was done was by developing a patriotic association with supposedly ‘English’ values of restraint, something that simultaneously tied the promotion of boxing into the development of civility. This was something emphasised by Henry Lamoine in Modern Manhood: “the English are singular in their use of the Fist, and are curious in this manner of settling disputes, which, among foreigners, are often terminated in dangerous wounds, and sometimes in death itself”. 63

He continued “Of all methods of self-defence, it is certainly the least dangerous and the most ready on any sudden occasion. Politeness and good manners forbid the frequent exercise, but it is not altogether unnecessary to know somewhat of self-defence in this way, particularly to correct the impudence of over-bearing and insolent fellows, who push themselves forward, where their presence is not wanted; or to chastise the insolence of aggravated and pointed remarks, which reflect upon character”.64

Boxing, then, provided a way of satisfying honour without deadly force, and we might see the growth of interest in boxing as an aspect of the “civilising process” in which violence was increasingly being problematised and regulated, something which had already begun to transform attitudes to duelling itself. In the 1850s and 1860s, however, the primary concern shifted from the satisfaction of honour to a recognisably modern concern with the threat posed by strangers in the rapidly expanding industrial cities of the age, with media-fuelled panics about “garrotting”, a particular form of mugging by strangulation, which captured the public imagination.65 Boxing manuals from the second half of the century draw attention to the importance of learning the “science” of self-defence as a means of defence against “ruffians” or street robbers, alongside its sporting significance.66 The 1890s saw a renewed media-driven panic around the problem of “hooliganism” and street gangs.67 It was also at this moment that Britain saw the first flowering of interest in Asian martial arts. The late 1880s and early 1890s saw exhibitions of “Japanese wrestling” and lectures on ju-jitsu by Takashima Shidachi, who arrived in 1892 to work in London as a banker. Then in 1898, Edward Barton-Wright

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returned to London from Japan, where he had learned ju-jitsu, and he began to teach his own composite art he called “Bartitsu”, which combined Asian and European martial arts expertise and was targeted at providing the public with means to defend themselves against street robbers. Bartitsu was shortlived, but his assistants went on to found their own training schools, and they continued to instruct considerable numbers of people in the art of ju-jitsu, not least Edith Garrud, who went on to train suffragette “bodyguards” to resist the police, while the police and the army were themselves trained in the art.68 The early years of the twentieth century saw something of a craze for publications on, and interest in jujitsu, particularly in the modified form developed by Jigoru Kano that became modern Judo.69 There were a number of dojos in operation, including the London Budokwai, founded by Gunji Koizumi in 1918, and which continues operating to this day. Although it rapidly developed into a popular sport, it is important to recognise that “Kano ju-jitsu” was promoted as a means of self-defence against attack in a way immediately recognisable today. In his “Tricks of Self-Defence”, which was published in 1936 and still being published in revised form as late as 1958, W.H. Collingridge, who had worked alongside Tani and Miyake in London, sought to outline a volume “dealing simply with self-defence features”.70 The idea was to equip people with skills that could be easily and quickly learnt, because “a practical acquaintance with self-defence gives a peculiar feeling of security to the possessor, who is confident in the knowledge that he is prepared.”71

When Kung Fu came to Britain in the 1960s, then, it was building on more than half a century of interest in the use of Asian martial arts for selfdefence, almost two centuries of publications on unarmed combat and three centuries of instruction manuals in self-defence more generally.

Conclusion There is no doubt that the mass commercial martial arts culture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in many respects reflects aspects of the wider culture of commerce and the general cultural inflexion of in/security in popular culture. However, it is also clear that self-defence training in general, the habituation of the body into instinctive responses to threat through repetitive training and sparring, and the sale of training in these skills, either in the form of personal instruction or through instruction manuals, is a longstanding phenomenon, perhaps as old as

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commercial culture itself. This is not to say that the history of self-defence or in/security is one of continuity. There have been significant changes of emphasis on what is being defended, from honour to the physicality of the body, although both have clearly been, and remain in play, closely bound up together. At the same time, there have been considerable changes in the methods of defence, from the use of weapons (of which we have only had the briefest glimpse here) to the Victorian ‘science’ of unarmed combat and interest in the mysterious possibilities of the Orient. However, it is clear that neither fear of crime, nor a desire to defend oneself against it are products of neo-liberalism per se, although the period since the 1970s has certainly witnessed the massification and mass commercialisation of selfdefence. Nevertheless, although empirical research suggests that recent emphasis on the novelty of securitisation is misplaced, its prominence in the present day and its centrality to academic debate have opened up interesting new areas for historical and sociological research into aspects of our societies, past and present, which have hitherto been neglected by scholars.

Notes 1

On the Bruce Lee phenomenon see Paul Bowman, Theorising Bruce Lee: Film, Fantasy, Fighting, Philosophy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010) and Beyond Bruce Lee: Chasing the Dragon through Film, Philosophy and Popular Culture (Chichester: Wallflower / Columbia University Press, 2013). 2 D. Chow and R. Spangler, Kung Fu: History, Philosophy, Technique (Orange CA: Unique Publications, 1982, originally Doubleday, 1977), x, 199. 3 Ibid., x. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 205-6. 7 For the mugging crisis of the 1970s-1980s see S. Hall, C. Critcher, J. Clarke and B. Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (London: Macmillan, 1978) and G. Pearson, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears (London: Macmillan, 1983). 8 Classic outlines of these systems are S.K. Hayes, Ninja: Spirit of the Shadow Warrior (Ohara, 1980) and The Ninja and their Secret Fighting Art (Tuttle, 1981); S. Radcliff, Simply ... Wing Chun Kung Fu (Marlborough: The Crowood Press, 2003, this impression 2010); D. Levine and J. Whitman, Complete Kkrav Maga: The Ultimate Guide to over 230 Self-Defense and Combative Techniques (Berkeley CA: Ulysses Press, 2007). 9 On the growth of the martial arts industry in the United States, see B. Orlando, Martial Arts America: A Western Approach to Eastern Arts (Berkeley CA: Frog Press, 1997). The web portal Bullshido (www.bullshido.net ) is dedicated to the

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exposure of both unworkable traditional martial arts and the commercial ‘McDojos’ which place profit above quality, authenticity and effectiveness. Equally critical of both the traditional martial arts and the sports fighting promoted by the Bullshido community is the entertaining website of Marc ‘Animal’ MacYoung www.nononsenseselfdefence.com 10 D. Garland, ‘The Limits of the Sovereign State: Strategies of Crime Control in Contemporary Society’, British Journal of Criminology, 36 (4) 1996: 445-71; M. Lee and S. Farrall, eds., Fear of Crime: Critical Voices in an Age of Anxiety (London: Routledge, 2008), 5. See also A. Crawford, Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Politics, Policies and Practices (London: Longman, 1998) and D. Gilling, Crime Prevention: Theory, Policy and Practice (London: UCL Press, 1997). 11 D. Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 12 L. Zedner, ‘The Pursuit of Security’, in T. Hope and R. Sparks, eds, Crime, Risk and Insecurity: Law and Order in Everyday Life and Political Discourse (London: Routledge, 2000), 200-14, at 200-1; for a general guide to the field see Lucia Zedner, Security (London: Routeldge, 2009). 13 M. Neocleous, Critique of Security (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); M. Neocleous, ‘Security as Pacification’ and G. Rigakos, ‘“To Extend the Scope of Productive Labour”: Pacification as a Police Project’, in M. Neocleous and G. Rigakos, eds., Anti-Security (Ottawa: Red Quill, 2011), 23-56, 57-83. 14 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (London: Allen Lane, 1977) 209, 216, 218, for the references to a ‘disciplinary society’; for the relationship between ‘disciplinary society’ and liberal government see Nicholas Gane, ‘The Governmentalities of Neo-Liberalism: Panopticism, Post-Panopticism and Beyond’, The Sociological Review 60 (2012): 611-34. For a recent study of the subject see Philip S. Gorksi, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (London: Chicago University Press, 2003). 15 M. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977 – 1978, ed. M. Senellart, trans. G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 5-6, 10-11. 16 On which see M. Valverde, ‘Police, Sovereignty and Law: Foucaultian Reflections’, in M.D. Dubber and M. Valverde, eds., Police and the Liberal State (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2008), 15-32, at 29. Important recent surveys of the field include Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krasmann and Thomas Lemke, Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges (London: Routledge, 2010); Mitchell Dean, The Signature of Power: Sovereignty, Governmentality and Biopolitics (London: Sage, 2013); Majia H. Nadesan, Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2011); William Walters, Governmentality: Critical Encounters (London: Routledge, 2012). 17 The “society of security” re-emerged in R. Castel, ‘From Dangerousness to Risk’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies

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in Governmentality (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester, 1991), 281-98, but see throughout this volume generally. This was followed by M. Gane and T. Johnson, eds., Foucault’s New Domains (London: Routledge, 1993) and A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose, eds,. Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, NeoLiberalism and Rationalities of Government (London: UCL Press, 1996). 18 On which see E.A. Stanko, ‘Victims R Us: The Life History of “Fear of Crime” and the Politicisation of Violence’, in Hope and Sparks, eds., Crime, Risk and Insecurity, 13-30; M. Lee, Inventing Fear of Crime: Criminology and the Politics of Anxiety. Cullompton: Willan, 2007). 19 See Crawford, Crime Prevention and Community Safety and Gilling, Crime Prevention. 20 T.D. Crowe, revised by L.J. Fennelly Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (third edition, Kidlington: Elsevier, 2013). 21 M. Button, Private Policing (London: Routledge, 2002); A. Wakefield, Selling Security: The Private Policing of Public Space , 2nd edn (London: Taylor & Francis, 2012). Other classic studies are L. Johnston, The Rebirth of Private Policing (London: Routledge, 1992); T. Jones and T. Newburn, Private Security and Public Policing (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); C.D. Shearing and P.C. Stenning, Private Policing (London: Sage, 1987); N. South, Policing for Profit: The Private Security Sector (London: Sage, 1988); S. Spitzer and A. Scull, ‘Privatization and Capitalist Development: The Case of the Private Police’, Social Problems, 25(1) 1977: 18-29. 22 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter, introduced by Scott Lash and Bryan Wynne (London: Sage, 1992), published in German in 1986; see also his World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity, 1999) and World at Risk (Cambridge: Polity, 2009). See also A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). 23 Some of the most important are R.V. Ericson and K.D. Haggerty, Policing the Risk Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997); M. Feely and J. Simon, ‘The New Penology: Notes on Strategy of Corrections and its Implications’, Criminology, 30 (4) 1992: 449-74; M. Feely and J. Simon, ‘Actuarial Justice: The Emerging New Criminal Law’, in D. Nelken, ed., The Futures of Criminology London: Sage, 1994), pp. 173-201; Garland, ‘The Limits of the Sovereign State’; P. O’Malley, ‘Risk, Power and Crime Prevention’, Economy and Society, 21 (3) 1992: 252-75. 24 A. Crawford, ‘Introduction: governance and security’, in A. Crawford, ed., Crime and Insecurity: The Governance of Safety in Europe (Cullompton: Willan, 2003), 1-23 at 1. 25 R.V. Ericson, Crime in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 6-7, 14. For an overview of studies on risk see Deborah Lupton, Risk (London: Routledge, 1999). 26 Ibid., 1. 27 Ibid., 6. 28 L. Wacquant, Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality (Cambridge: Polity, 2008) and Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (London: Duke University Press, 2009); see also

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G. Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). 29 J. Young, The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity (London: Sage, 1999), vi. See also J. Young, The Vertigo of Late Modernity (London: Sage, 2007). 30 A. Crawford, ‘The governance of crime and insecurity in an anxious age: the trans-European and the local’, in Crawford, ed., Crime and Insecurity, 27-51, at 30. See also I. Taylor, ‘Crime, Market-Liberalism and the European Idea’, in V. Ruggerio, N. South and I. Taylor (eds.) The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe (London: Routledge, 1998), 19-36 and Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). 31 S. Body-Gendrot, Globalization, Fear and Insecurity: The Challenge for Cities North and South. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); N. Ellin, Architecture of Fear. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997; A. Minton, Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City, second edition. London: Penguin, 2012). 32 For developing work on security as commodity and its consumption, see B. Goold, I. Loader and A. Thumala, ‘Consuming Security?: Tools for a Sociology of Security Consumption’, Theoretical Criminology 14 (1) 2010: 3-30 and I. Loader, ‘Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Security and Policing’, Sociology, 33 (2) 1999: 373-92. 33 M. Neocleous, Critique of Security (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 4, 159; R.P. Datta, ‘Security and the Void: Aleatory Materialism contra Governmentality’, in M. Neocleous and G. Rigakos, eds., Anti-Security (Ottawa: Red Quill, 2011), 217-41. 34 On the culture of fear see F. Furedi, The Culture of Fear: Risk Taking and the Morality of Low Expectation (London: Continuum, 2002). 35 M. Neocleous, Critique, 3. See also K.F. Aas, H.O. Gundhus and H.M. Lomell, Technologies of InSecurity: The Surveillance of Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2010) and Vida Bajc and Willem de Lint, Security and Everyday Life (London: Routledge, 2011). 36 Ericson, Crime, 6; in contrast, however, see E. Freedgood, Victorian Writing about Risk: Imagining a Safe England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 37 I. Loader and R. Sparks, ‘For an historical sociology of crime policy in England and Wales since 1968’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 7 (2) 2004: 5-32. 38 Ibid, 17. 39 Mike Savage, ‘Against Epochalism: An Analysis of Conceptions of Change in British Sociology’, Cultural Sociology, 3/2 (2009): 217-238, particularly pp. 21820. 40 Ibid., 221-2. 41 I am not the first to ask this question: see I. Wilkinson, ‘Where is the Novelty in our Current “Age of Anxiety”?’, European Journal of Social Theory, 2 (4) 1999: 445-67; Ian Wilkinson, Anxiety in a Risk Society (London: Routledge, 2001). See

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also J. Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (London: Virago, 2005); C. Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 42 G. Pearson, Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears (London: Macmillan, 1983), 7 and throughout, but see also Stephen Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working Class Childhood and Youth, 1889-1939 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981); G. Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971). 43 A rare example is A. Vickeray,‘An Englishman’s Home is his Castle? Thresholds, Boundaries and Privacies in the Eighteenth-Century London House’, Past & Present, 199 (2008): 147-73; see also the forthcoming T. Hitchcock and R.B. Shoemaker, London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 44 L. Bertelsen, ‘Committed by Justice Fielding: Judicial and Journalistic Representation in the Bow Street Magistrates Court’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 30 (1997): 337-63; S. Deveraux, ‘From Sessions to Newspaper? Criminal Trial Reporting, the Nature of Crime and the London Press, 1770-1800’, London Journal, 32 (2007), 1-27; J. Flanders, The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime (London: Harper Press, 2011); P. King, ‘Newspaper Reporting and Attitudes to Crime and Justice in Late-Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth-Century London’, Continuity and Change, 22 (2007): 73-112; P. King, ‘Making Crime News: Newspapers, Violent Crime and the Reporting of Old Bailey Trials in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 13 (2009): 91-116; D. Lemmings and C: Walker, eds., Moral Panics, the Media and the Law in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009); G. Morgan and P. Rushton, ‘Print Culture, Crime and Transportation in the Criminal Atlantic’, Continuity and Change, 22 (2007): 49-71; J. Rowbotham and K. Stevenson, eds., Criminal Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic and Moral Outrage (Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press, 2005); R.B. Shoemaker, ‘The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in EighteenthCentury London’, Journal of British Studies, 47 (2008): 559-80; R.B. Shoemaker, ‘Print and the Female Voice: Representations of Women’s Crime in London, 16901735’, Gender & History 22 (2010): 75-91; ; E. Snell, ‘Discourses of Criminality in the Eighteenth-Century Press’, Continuity and Change, 22 (2007): 13-47. 45 For recent work on the history of violence see J. Archer, The Monster Evil: Policing and Violence in Victorian Liverpool (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011); R. Crone, Violent Victorians: Popular Entertainment in NineteenthCentury London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012); C. Emsley, Hard Men: The English and Violence since 1750 (London: Hambledon, 2005); R.B. Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Hambledon, 2004); H. Shore, ‘Criminality and Englishness in the Aftermath: The Racecourse Wars of the 1920s’, 20th Century British History, 22 (4) 2011: 474-97; D. Taylor, Hooligans, Harlots and Hangmen: Crime and Punishment in Victorian Britain (Praegar, 2010); N.A.J. Taylor, ‘Football Hooliganism as Collective Violence: Explaining Variance in Britain Through

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Interpersonal Boundaries, 1863-1989’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 28 (13) 2011: 1750-71; M.J. Wiener, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); J.C. Wood, Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England: The Shadow of our Refinement (London: Routledge, 2004). 46 M. Neocleous, ‘Theoretical Foundations of the “New Police Science”’, in M.D. Dubber and M. Valverde, eds., The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 17-41, at 36. 47 M. Neocleous, ‘Security as Pacification’ and G. Rigakos, ‘“To Extend the Scope of Productive Labour”: Pacification as a Police Project’, Neocleous and Rigakos, eds., Anti-Security, 23-56, 57-83. 48 G. Burchell, ‘Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self’, in Barry, Osborne and Rose, Foucault and Political Reason, 19-36, at 20. 49 E. Godfrey, Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); idem, Femininity, Crime and SelfDefence in Victorian Literature and Society, from Dagger Fans to Suffragettes (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); idem ‘Urban Heroes Versus Folk Devils: Civilian Self-Defence in London (1880-1914), Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 14 (2) 2010: 5-30; idem ‘The Self-Defence Scenario and Middle Class Physical Prowess in English Literature, 1851-1914’, PhD Thesis, Birkbeck, University of London, 2008. 50 J.C. Amberger, The Secret History of the Sword: Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts (Unique Publications, 1999); T. Brown, English Martial Arts (3rd edn: AngloSaxon Books, 2010); W.M. Gaugler, The History of Fencing: Foundations of Modern European Swordship (AbeBooks, 1998). 51 P. Wagner, Master of Defence: The Works of George Silver (Boulder CO: Paladin Press, 2008). 52 Domenico Angelo, The School of Fencing … (London, 1787); Henry Blackwell, The English Fencing Master … (London, 1702); John Godfrey, A Treatise Upon the Useful Science of Defence (London, 1747); William Hope, The Compleat Fencing Master, 3rd edn (London, 1710), Hope’s New Method of Fencing … (Edinburgh, 1714), A Vindication of the True Art of Self-Defence (Edinburgh, 1724); Robert Howlett, The School of Recreation … (London, 1701); Mahon’s translation of Labat, The Art of Fencing (London, 1737); Charles Roworth, The Art of Defence on Foot (London, 1798); James Underwood, The Art of Fencing (Dublin, 1798); Zach. Wylde, The English Master of Defence (York, 1711), which also included sections on wrestling. See also Thomas Parkyns, The Gymnasticks Inn-Play, or Cornish-Hugg Wrestler (Nottingham, 1713). 53 See, for example, ‘An Amateur of Eminence’, The Complete Art of Boxing (London, 1788); Thomas Fewtrell, Boxing Reviewed, Or The Science of Manual Defence (London, 1790). 54 J. Arditi, A Genealogy of Manners: Transformations of Social Relations in France and England from the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London:

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University of Chicago Press, 1998), 15 and 155-220. Some publications sought to instruct in a variety of useful knowledge, such as Howlett, School of Recreation. 55 On the fluidity of status in this period, particularly for the middling sort, see J. Hoppitt, A Land of Liberty? England, 1689-1727 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 73-77; P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 61-121. 56 J.H. Low, Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); M. Peltonen, The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 57 Arditi, Genealogy of Manners, 62-8; S. Banks, A Polite Exchange of Bullets: The Duel and the English Gentleman, 1750-1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010); R.B. Shoemaker, ‘The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual Violence in London, 1660-1800’, Historical Journal 45 (3) 2002: 525-45; Wood, Violence and Crime. 58 The Modern Art of Boxing (London, 1789), iii-iv. 59 The Art of Manual Defence; or, System of Boxing: Perspicuousley Explained in a Series of Lessons, and Illustrated by Plates. By a Pupil of both Humphreys and Mendoza, 3rd edition (London: G. Kearsley, 1789), xv. 60 The Art of Manual Defence; or, System of Boxing: Perspicuousley Explained in a Series of Lessons, and Illustrated by Plates. By a Pupil of both Humphreys and Mendoza, 3rd edition (London: G. Kearsley, 1789), xvi. 61 The Art of Manual Defence; or, System of Boxing: Perspicuousley Explained in a Series of Lessons, and Illustrated by Plates. By a Pupil of both Humphreys and Mendoza, 3rd edition (London: G. Kearsley, 1789), xiii-xvi. 62 Arditi, Genealogy, 6-13, 221-8. 63 H. Lemoine, Modern Manhood; or the Art and Practice of English Boxing. Including the History of the Science of Natural Defence; and Memoirs of the most Celebrated Practitioners of that Manly Exercise, London, 1788, iii?V?B? Pages mis-marked. 64 H. Lemoine, Modern Manhood; or the Art and Practice of English Boxing. Including the History of the Science of Natural Defence; and Memoirs of the most Celebrated Practitioners of that Manly Exercise, London, 1788, iii?V?B? Pages mis-marked. 65 See Godfrey, Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence and Pearson, Hooligan. 66 See Ned Donnelley, Self-Defence; or, the Art of Boxing (London: Weldon and Co, fourth edn, 1881), 14, 18; Robert Fitzsimmons, Physical Culture and Self Defence (London: Gale and Polden Ltd, 1906), 28-9, 44. 67 See Pearson, Hooligan, 74-116. 68 This is well detailed in Godfrey, Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence, 128-59 and Femininity, Crime and Self-Defence, 86-106; I will not expand on it here. 69 There are too many to note here, but early examples are Harry Hancock, JiuJitsu Combat Tricks (1904) and The Complete Kano Jiu-Jitsu (1905); Yae Kichi Yabe, A Course of Instruction in Jiu-Jitsu (1904); Percy Longhurst, Jiu-Jitsu and other Methods of Self-Defence (1906); Henry H. Skinner, Jiu-Jitsu (1904).

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W.H. Collingridge, Tricks of Self-Defence (London: Health and Strength Ltd, 1936), 7. 71 Ibid., 9.

CHAPTER SIX GENEALOGIES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AS GOVERNMENT NICOLAI VON EGGERS

In the existing analyses of the emergence of political economy, the historical semantics of the word “economy” is often overlooked. Instead, a simplified etymology of the word is found, which states that economy originates from the Greek word “oikonomia”, coming from oikos: house, and nomos: order, law, distribution, division; therefore political economy is simply to be understood as the wise management of the political household, the state. Versions of this argument can be found in both conceptual history1 and economic history.2 Tony Aspromourgos, for example, uncritically asserts that the ancient Greek conception of economy as management of a household or a large estate “persisted right through until the eighteenth century” and that it is this conception of “economy”, which informs the early thinkers of political economy.3 This is not entirely correct, since, as I will show in this article, the word “economy” has a much richer semantic heritage, owing to its usage in theology and natural history. Political economy emerged as a technical term in France in the midlate 18th century.4 Although the term is also used by other authors,5 the key text here is Philosophie rurale (1763 or 1764)6 written by the father of physiocracy, François Quesnay, in collaboration with Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau. The full title of the work is: “Rural philosophy, or General and Political Economy of Agriculture, reduced to the immutable physical and moral Laws that assure the prosperity of Empires.”7

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As the title indicates, we are dealing with a work that seeks to display the general laws – physical and moral – that govern nature and societies. The authors do so by describing first the natural laws (what they call “the economic Order”8) of production and distribution of foodstuffs and value as such (what they call output [dépenses], and what we would call capital), second, by describing how the surplus produced circulates in an advanced society. It is of course with the aim of discovering how both production and circulation may be optimized through political administration that the physiocrats describe the process of surplus production (output, capital) and the circulation of surplus. All of their works are explicitly presented as policy recommendations, including Philosophie rurale. Thus, the laws pertaining to the natural or general economy are investigated in order to inform and optimize the political economy, i.e. the science of governing a State and making an empire prosperous. Or, to put it in more modern terms, the aim of political economy is to maximize capital accumulation for society as a whole, seen from the perspective of State administration and through governmental policies and apparatuses. Hence, political economy is not simply a description of economic laws, but also a theory of how to govern a State, i.e. a strategy for employing political power. From where does this notion of political economy derive, and what does it signify? It is important to note that economy is the defining term of the compound, whereas political is an adjective, qualifying the specific form of economy in question. As we shall see, in the middle of the 18th century, we also find other forms of economy, such as animal economy, divine economy, natural economy, and possibly others. Following Aristotelian logic we may say that economy is the genus, whereas animal, divine, natural, and – from 1763 – political, are all differentia specifying the exact kind of economy in question. The political economy is thus a contribution to an existing tradition of thinking about economy. One way of understanding political economy is to work out a genealogy of its concepts.9 Thus, to understand the significance of the compound ‘political economy’, and the reason why the early writers of political economy such as Quesnay and Mirabeau found this notion useful, we would need to investigate the meaning of both ‘political’ and ‘economy’. This article will deal (almost) exclusively with the latter. New investigations will be required to outline the meaning of the former, ‘the political’, but for the time being we will define as that which pertains to the exercise of public powers, i.e. to the State. This is most likely what writers such as Quesnay had in mind when he used the concept as part of the compound ‘political

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economy’. Testing this definition will require further study, but is suffices for the purpose of this article, which deals with economy. The genealogy of economy expounded in this article is not so much a genealogy in its own right as a synthesis of three already existing genealogies: Michel Foucault’s genealogy of economy in Security, Territory, Population, Giorgio Agamben’s genealogy of economy in The Kingdom and the Glory, and Bernard Balan’s genealogy of economy in “Initial Studies on the Origin of the Formation of the Concept Animal Economy”. Though these three investigations follow the concept of economy along three different paths–Foucault being preoccupied with the political roots of the concept, Agamben with the theological roots, and Balan with those pertaining to the natural sciences–there are nevertheless at least two good reasons for synthesizing them. First, they all conclude their genealogies in the mid-late-18th century. Balan starts with the concept of animal economy in the late 18th century and works his way backwards. Agamben begins in ancient Greece and focuses on early Christianity, but, in the Appendix, he applies his findings to economic theories of the 17th and 18th centuries. Finally, Foucault’s investigations begin and conclude with economy as an element of political and governmental thought of the 18th century. In other words, we are not simply dealing with three genealogies of economy, but with three genealogies that all culminate, in historical time, with the mid-late-18th century. Their implicit teleology takes them to the time of Quesnay and Adam Smith, the two most influential theorists of the emerging discipline of political economy. Consequently, Agamben, Balan, and Foucault all explain the im- and explicit semantics of the word economy, i.e. economy as it was understood in Quesnay’s and Smith’s time and not necessarily in ours (even though it may be argued, as many have done, that in many ways the mid-late-18th century invokes the modern period, and that the breakthrough of sciences and the general way of thinking emerging throughout the 18th century provides the basic intellectual framework for a world to which we still belong).10 Second, they all emphasize the relation between economy and government: government of a household and a State in Foucault’s genealogy; God’s government of the world and the Christian churchly government of people in Agamben’s genealogy; the body’s government of itself in Balan’s. In a way, we are dealing with the economy of the State (or statehood), the economy of creation and preservation, and the economy of the body. We are thus dealing with first principles, or general laws, of certain phenomena as well as with the logics and strategies that sustain them. As Agamben has emphasized in a recent lecture, the word economy

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relates closely to the Christian idea of creatio continua. That is, God created the world through general laws (creatio), but afterwards he still has to sustain, i.e. to govern that which he created (continua).11 In other words, there is an economy of the world; the world is governed by general laws, meaning that there is a continuum between general laws and government, and that economy signifies precisely this continuum. Some thing exists as this thing due to general principles or laws, and is maintained through the continuous maintenance of these very laws. Here, laws should be understood in opposition to arbitrariness. The world operates on the basis of general laws as opposed to arbitrary interventions. In economic thinking, creation is therefore not understood as an arbitrary creatio ex nihilo but rather as a creatio continua in which general laws are continuously being sustained. Similarly, Quesnay speaks of legal despotism as a form of government in which the despot continuously reigns according to general laws, as opposed to the arbitrariness of the tyrant, who governs according to his whims. Therefore, economic thinking insists on discovering general laws instead of relying on explanations that stress the arbitrariness of personal interventions. This is what forms the principal question of the economy of the State, the world and the body: What are the general laws of statehood, and how is the State maintained? What are the general laws of the divine creation, the world, and how is it maintained? What are the general laws of the body, any body, and how is it maintained? As we shall see, these are the questions reflected in the word economy. One section is dedicated to each of the three genealogies, starting with Foucault and the State and finishing with Balan and the body, before we return to the question of political economy in the conclusion.

Economy as Government of the State Etymologically, economy derives from the Greek oikonomia, which means the management of the household, deriving from the words oikos: house, and nomos: order, law, or distribution. The Greek oikos is more than just the house. According to Aristotle, the management of the household consists of three spheres with three forms of relations: the relation between man and woman, the relation between the man and his children, and the relation between the man and his estates and tools, including slaves, which are “animate instruments” [organon empsycha].12 As Aristotle explains, “the manager of the household [oikonomiko] must have his tools, and of tools some are lifeless and others living.”13 Thus, economy, the management of the household, consists of three elements: mastership

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[despotike] over property (land, slaves and inanimate tools), marriage, and “the progenitive relationship.”14 However, when it comes to politics and the government of the polis, or the State, we are no longer simply dealing with a sort of large-scale oikonomia, but with a different kind of logic, different kinds of relationships and a different kind of dominance. In Aristotle’s words: “Those who think that the natures of the statesman, the royal ruler [basilikon], the manager of a household [oikonomikon], and the master of a family [despotikon] are the same, are mistaken; they imagine the difference between these various forms of authority as one of greater and smaller numbers, not a difference in kind.”15 Politics and the government of the State are not simply the continuation of oikonomia on a larger scale. Instead, Aristotle treats the sphere of politics and the State as one, with its own logic operating according to its own specific laws. One must be aware, as Aristotle puts it, that there is a difference between “a large household and a small city”16 – an argument we find reiterated in the opening sentence of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise Oikonomikos, in which it is stated that “the economical [he oikonomike] and the political differ from one another in the same way that the house differs from the polis.”17 Thus, in the Aristotelian legacy, which would dominate the middle ages, oikonomia and politics – the government of the State – are clearly separated.18 We can now turn to Michel Foucault’s genealogy of economy and its relation to the modern theory of the State, and, more specifically, to the modern theories about government by way of the State. According to Foucault, a science of government only emerges once the economic logic is applied to public power. According to Foucault, this happens in Continental Europe of the 16th and 17th centuries. Here, the central texts are Niccolò Macchiavelli’s The Prince (1513), Antoine de Montchrétien’s Traité de l’œconomie politique (1615)19 and François de La Mothe Le Vayer’s L’Œconomique du Prince (1653). In the French texts in particular, we witness a development of a theory of continuity between the government of a household and the government of the state. Consequently, where Aristotle emphasized the discontinuity between oikonomia and politics, these writers dissolve the separation between private and public powers.20 The State can be seen as the prince’s possession, the king’s Estate, which he mostly governs according to the logic of household management, that is, oikonomia. A continuity stretching from economy to politics thus arises. As Foucault puts it: “The central element in this continuity [...] is the government of the family, which is called precisely “economy.” The art of government essentially

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appears in this literature as having to answer the question of how to introduce economy – that is to say, the proper way of managing individuals, goods, and wealth, like the management of a family by a father who knows how to direct his wife, his children, and his servants, who knows how to make his family’s fortune prosper, and how to arrange suitable alliances for it – how to introduce this meticulous attention, the type of relationship between father and the family, into the management of the state? The essential issue of government will be the introduction of economy into political practice.21”

Thus, according to Michel Foucault, “a science of government” only emerges as a “re-focusing of the economy on something other than the family,” namely the State.22 What, then, is the State? In Machiavelli’s thought, as pointed out by Quentin Skinner, the term state (lo stato) almost always refers to the fact that the Prince should mantenere lo stato, that is, he should maintain his state: he should keep his composure, always be in control, and assess the situation.23 According to Machiavelli, the Prince is caught up in a tactical game in which he must act wisely and be opportunistic if he wishes to gain and hold on to power. It is in accordance with the rules of this game that he should maintain his state. However, for the political theorists working in the trajectory of Machiavelli, this stato is increasingly interpreted as a form of possession. The Prince has a State, and he should maintain it by securing it and by optimizing the resources found in its territory, which encompass everything from crops and metals to the population itself. Thus, a radical shift in thinking about political power occurs in the reception of Machiavelli, in which the State rather than the Prince becomes the object of analysis. This is the tradition which became known as raison d'État from the Italian thinker Giovanni Botero’s Della ragion di Stato (1589) and onwards. Whereas Machiavelli highlights the strategic manoeuvers of the Prince and emphasizes that the Prince must always assess the terrain to be aware of advantageous spots for attack or retreat, Botero instead wishes to draw the Prince's attention to the potential ways of optimizing the land through irrigation, road building, etc. In other words, the State is increasingly being treated as an estate in the sense of a family-owned business, which must be thoroughly studied if it is to be optimized with the aim of maintaining its state and maximizing its produce. Against this background, a number of treatises appear in France revolving around the Prince's government of his State. Montchrétien, for instance, divides his guidebook to the Prince, Traité de l’œconomie politique, into four different areas (manufacture, commerce, navigation, and the Prince's cares) which must be maintained. The treatise is thus a

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Treatise on Political Economy, in the sense that political economy is understood as the Prince’s political household management: the government of his State. However, as Foucault points out, this kind of literature and the effective use of it were ill designed. This way of thinking about political dominion was ultimately tied to a theory of absolute, despotic power, as the State was the possession of the Prince. The result was, in Foucault’s words, that “the art of governing was caught between an excessively large, abstract, and rigid framework of sovereignty on the one hand, and, on the other, a model of the family that was too narrow, weak, and insubstantial.”24 In other words, a governmental framework relying on despotic decision-making is a poor administration of the large and complex structure that is the government of an entire State. In politics, a much more dynamic, semi-autonomous and less rigid governmental apparatus is needed in order to govern the State effectively. According to Foucault, the successful introduction of the economy into political practice took place in the 1750’s and 1760’s with François Quesnay and the physiocrats, or, as they were also called, les économistes. Thus, as Foucault shows, the conception of the economy as a form of logic of the household is clearly operative, when Quesnay and the other économistes, and a little later Adam Smith, begin to speak of a political economy. However, as we shall see in the following, the decisive meaning of the word ‘economy’ is not as much household as it is ‘the search for general laws’. Let us therefore turn first to Agamben’s and later to Balan’s investigations of the genealogy of the word economy in order to extract the complex historical semantics of the concept.

Economy as Government of the World Whereas Michel Foucault conducts his research in a predominantly secular sphere, Giorgio Agamben emphasizes the Christian legacy of the concept of economy on the emerging political economy in the 18th century in his genealogy. Although Foucault dedicates a rather large part of his research to the Christian predecessors of the modern theories of government, he never treats the concept economy as it is used in the Christian tradition. Instead, Foucault focuses solely on the idea of economy as used by the early modern political writers, who attempted to transfer the doctrines of governing a household to the new powerful instrument that is the State. This is the lacuna Agamben is seeking to rectify in The Kingdom and the Glory, but, as he argues in the preface, such genealogical rectification will

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also open a completely new perspective on political power, including political economy. In his analysis of oikonomia, Agamben wishes to break down the traditional ways of understanding the divide between the theological and the secular. He does so by showing that the Church and its Christian theology represented a theory about the government of man and the administration of the Earth from the very beginning. Thus, he does not simply accept Carl Schmitt’s famous thesis from Political Theology about the connection between the theological and the political.25 Instead, Agamben shows how Christian theology has always been political: it is ‘always already’ a theory and praxis of worldly government. Let us follow Agamben’s line of argumentation here. As we have seen, the word oikonomia designates, in the writings of Aristotle, the administration of the household, including parent-children, husband-wife, and master-slave relations (comprising the management of farming businesses). According to Agamben, both Xenophon and Aristotle make it clear that in the case of oikonomia, we are not dealing with a science proper, but rather with a completely practical and administrative way of reflecting and acting. It is in this sense of the word that the concept wanders into the writings of the Romans of the first and second centuries AD such as Quintilian and Marcus Aurelius. Here, in the words of Agamben, economy signifies “a practice and a non-epistemic knowledge that should be assessed only in the context of the aims that they pursue, even if in themselves, they appear to be inconsistent with the good.”26

In other words, oikonomia is a form of administration which is solely concerned with achieving the ends for which it is employed; consequently, it comes to actually designate a suspension of the ethical and the political. It is not necessarily un-ethical or a-political, but the ethical and political spheres have no saying on the way in which an oikonomia is, or is supposed to be, conducted. Besides the administration of the household, some of the examples of oikonomia – or dispositio in Latin – given by the ancient authors, concern storing methods of commercial goods on a ship or how to compose a text. As a worldly power, Christianity functions as an oikonomia. In the writings of Paul, Christ “is always defined with the term that designates the master of the oikos (that is, kyrios or dominus in Latin) and never with terms that are more openly political such as anax or archon.”27

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Likewise in Timothy, the Christian community is defined as oikos theou (the house of God), and the construction of community is referred to as oikodomeo, meaning: constructing a house.28 But economy also designates the way in which God himself governs his creation. Especially in the writings of Tertullian, economy is the term used to explain how God may be one and three at the same time. God, says Tertullian, has chosen to do so by way of his administration. This godly administration is “that economy that disposes the unity into trinity, setting forth Father and Son and Spirit as three, three however not in condition but in degree, not in substance but in form, not in power but in species. [...] The Father and the Son are two, and this is not a result of separation of substance, but as a result of an economic disposition.”29

In other words, God has decided to govern his world in such a way that, through the trinity, he reveals himself to mankind, and from this stage on, man will know the secret of the world, its mystery, and will potentially be able to govern the world as God would have wanted. In this way, says Agamben, what was originally the mystery of the economy: the mysterious ways in which God governs his world, is transformed into the economy of the mystery: the administration of revelation. We should note here the emphasis Agamben puts on Tertullian, who is, in many ways, the central figure of the Christian doctrine of economy understood as the way in which God disposes and governs his creation. Tertullian, who lived in the second and third centuries AD, tried to solve the problems of the trinity in a particularly economic way. It may be that God is one and three at the same time, but he is so, Tertullian explains, by way of his economy.30 The economy is thus the way in which God has set up himself, governs himself, so that he may govern the world. In other words, with Tertullian, economy comes to signify the paradigm of government as such. It is a particularly practical and administrational doctrine. For Tertullian, “the Trinity is not an articulation of the divine being, but of its praxis,” as stated by Agamben.31 The sole purpose of economy is to find the means to an end: for God it is a question of how to govern the world and how to reveal himself; for the Christians it is a question of how to protect and administer divine revelation, and, consequently, how to govern themselves and the world in a way which will protect this revelation.32 Christians are thus endowed with a vocation which renders it necessary to develop a doctrine of administration that cuts across the seculartheological divide. This doctrine is called economy. Summing up his investigations, Agamben writes:

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“We can then understand in what sense it is possible to say that Christian theology is, from its beginning, economic-managerial and not politicostatal [politico-statuale] [...]. The fact that Christian theology entails an economy and not just a politics does not mean, however, that it is irrelevant for the history of Western political ideas and practices. On the contrary, the theological-economic paradigm obliges us to think this history once more and from a new perspective, keeping track of the decisive junctures between political tradition in the strict sense and the “economic-governmental” tradition [...]. The two paradigms live together and intersect one with another to the point of constituting a bipolar system whose understanding preliminarily conditions any interpretation of the political history of the West.”33

Consequently, according to Agamben, the tension between economy and politics, between apolitical and political forms of domination and administration of men, is a constant tension present in the entire history of the West. Due to its Christian legacy, economy is a form of governmental paradigm, that is, economy is always available to dominant classes of the West whenever they need to consider ways of maintaining their dominion, or ways of maintaining their state. In the economic paradigm of government, there is no room for political processes, but only for an administration of the revealed truths in accordance with dogmatic teaching. Agamben makes a case for this claim in the Appendix, where he moves away from the investigation of the history of Christian thought and instead ‘applies’ his findings to theological, political and economic thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Malebranche, Leibniz, Linné, Rousseau, and, notably Adam Smith and Quesnay–the two most important forerunners of the discipline of political economy, which established itself in the early 19th century. Agamben’s argument here is that the first explicit and later implicit economic theology at work in these modern thinkers informs their ways of thinking about political economy and political power. According to Agamben, especially Smith and Quesnay are responsible for importing the Christian doctrine of economy into the core of political governance,. Thus, Agamben concludes his book by claiming that “[m]odernity, removing God from the world, has not only failed to leave theology behind, but in some ways has done nothing other than to lead the project of the providential oikonomia to completion.”34 In other words, in Agamben’s view, with the emergence of political economy, the purely administrative paradigm has conquered the entire logic of politics and political power. If we compare Agamben’s genealogy to Foucault’s, we see that Agamben largely adopts Foucault’s narrative about political power and

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political government: “the essential issue of government will be the introduction of economy into political practice.”35 However, in Agamben’s genealogy of economy, it is the Christian doctrine of economy that is introduced to the political sphere by way of an implicit political theology, and not, as Foucault claimed, economy understood as the theories and strategies of governing a household. In other words, whereas Foucault emphasizes political economy’s connection to absolutism and the king’s possession of the State, which he should administer as one administers a giant household, Agamben emphasizes the way in which the administrators of the State should administer the revelation, i.e. the Truth that has been revealed to them by God in the general laws of the world. This is how Agamben interprets Adam Smith’s concept of “the invisible hand”. God governs the world through general laws such as the laws of the market, and the good State administration will make sure that the laws of the market reign.36 However, the link Agamben provides between the early Christian economic theology and the modern economic “political theology” of political economy is very weak. It seems to rest almost solely on a certain concept: economy. Whereas Foucault is careful to describe the merger between economic and political doctrines of the early modern period, Agamben rests his case on what can almost be described as intuition. As will be shown in the next chapter, the link between economic theology and the political theory of State administration is not direct; it is mediated through natural history and theories of animal economy. This is where we need to turn to Bernard Balan’s genealogy of economy.

Economy as Government of the Body Before we turn to Bernard Balan’s genealogy of economy as part of the compound animal economy, let us first look at the theory of animal economy as it was explained in the mid-late-18th century. Ménuret de Chambaud defines it in his article “Animal Economy” from the Encyclopédie as “the order, mechanism and overall set of the functions and movements which sustain life.”37 In other words, economy is the general governmental principle of a given body. It may signify the workings of a singular as well as a common body, one animal as well as a community of animals. Hence, in animal economy, it is unimportant whether economy relates to a single body and its body parts, or to a flock of birds, for instance. As Ménuret de Chambaud says in his article on “Observation”:

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“One could […] compare man to a flock of cranes which fly together, in a particular order, without mutually assisting or depending on one another. The Physicians or Philosophers who have studied and carefully observed man, have noticed this sympathy in all animal movements – this constant and necessary agreement in the interaction of the various parts, however disparate or distant from one another; they have also noticed the disturbance of the whole that results from the sensory disagreement of a single part”38

In other words, to Ménuret, it is the economy (the wise disposition of things) which allows for a given corpus or corporation to do what a single element cannot do. If a single element performs its functions, it may, as part of a collective or corporation, achieve what it could never dream of achieving on its own. An organ may help sustain a larger body in the same way as a bird or a bee may help sustain a larger collective or corporation. Thus, economy is understood as the disposition or the government of a body or corporation which allows the entire body to thrive and to achieve what any single part, or a mere sum of the parts, would never have been able to achieve. Through the 18th century, this way of thinking about the economy of the animal was increasingly applied to the theories of the body politic. Bernard Balan begins his genealogy of the animal economy with the overlap of theories about the economy of the body natural and the economy of the body politic (political economy) in the late 18th century. More specifically, he begins with Adam Smith’s famous analysis of the division of labour. Smith argues that if one man can make one needle per hour, one would think that four men could make four needles per hour. However, through the division of labour, it turns out that four men can actually produce ten or maybe even a hundred needles per hour. In other words, the production of needles has been separated into different parts that all work together through an economic disposition of needle manufacturing. The government of the factory thus functions like the government of a body, and the optimization of the body will yield the largest output. This wise government is what we may call the economy insofar as it is a discovery of natural laws – the natural laws of the division of labour – as well as an administrational paradigm according to which the best form of administration allows the natural laws to do their work. Smith’s point about the factory had already been made by Ménuret about the natural body and by the physiocrats about society at large. The concept of animal economy can be traced back through 18th and th 17 medical and physiological thought, and even back to the 16th century, as is meticulously done by Balan. Here, it is probably used for the first

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time in 1531 by the theologian and natural philosopher Miguel Servet, who was the first early modern thinker to render the Greek Ƞ‫ݧ‬țȠȞȠȝȓĮ as the Latinized oeconomia. As Balan notes, Tertullian was the only church father and representative of ancient Latin writers who kept the Greek phrase untranslated in his Latin writings, turning it into a stringent, technical, theological concept.39 Other Latin writers translated the term into distributio, dispensatio, administratio or gubernatio – words that would have profound influence on Western political thought, but which do not have their etymological roots in the modern concept of economy. Instead, at some point in history, the Greek Ƞ‫ݧ‬țȠȞȠȝȓĮ was simply transcribed in Latin letters, turning it into a Latin counterpart of the Greek Ƞ‫ݧ‬țȠȞȠȝȓĮ. Servet follows Tertullian’s spelling as well as the crux of Tertullian’s theological works, which were edited and published in 1521 and 1528.40 Servet’s concept of oeconomia is largely a continuation of Tertuillian’s theology. Unlike scholars who would explain the Trinity as a form of personification in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit act as three different persons with their own individual wills and individual faculties, Tertullian had argued that God was one in substance and only three in form. This was part of God’s oikonomia, i.e., his disposition of the way in which he governs the world. In his De Trinitatis Erroribus from 1531, Servet uses the word oeconomia in two different senses: 1) as the internal division of God, and 2) as the way in which God governs the world (through revelation).41 For Servet, the ultimate theological problem is the trinity, of which he develops an alternative interpretation. According to Servet, the trinity corresponds to three different states of the divine being. These three states can be identified as the state in which the word was with God, i.e., the state in which God created the world simply by speaking it; the state in which God enters the world in the guise of Christ; and finally, the state in which God again leaves the world in order to reappear as the father in heaven. God is thus never three, but always one, though in different states, or, we could say, in different modes of being (as word, as man or son, and as God or father). According to Servet, this shifting of being, changing from one mode to another and never being in different modes at the same time, is all part of God’s plan for the world; it is his economy. In other words, Servet does not accept the doctrine of the unitarian ontology of God. This attack on the Trinitarian orthodoxy is reflected in Servet’s transcription of the Greek ȠੁțȠȞȠȝȓĮ into oeconomia. In thinking about the economy, one thinks about the way in which a given being governs itself, and the way in which it may optimally be governed, beyond whatever dogmatic teaching might have to say on the issue. In

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other words, government or economy receives primacy over being. What matters is not the continuation of being but the continuation of the divine plan, God’s government, the oeconomia. From Servet, the Latin word oeconomia would be taken up by Louis Duret and Petrus Severinus, writers on Hippocratic and Paracelsic medicine and theology. Unlike much medical thought of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, which revolved around personification of the devil or witches or other sorts of ill wills who were considered to be the reasons for illnesses, the theories of animal economy and the lines of medical thought which would adopt the term oeconomia rejected any such principles. They would instead focus on the natural laws of bodies and the world. The function of oeconomia thus explains nature and natural laws of bodies without succumbing to personalized explanations. Economic theology and medicine attempts instead to understand the general laws through which God governs the world. According to Balan, this particular form of metaphysics was embodied in the word oeconomia as it spread and increased its influence from the 16th to the 18th century.42 Thus, the writers of the 16th century began to speak about the animal economy, the economy of the universe, and later about the economy of nature. When explaining the economy, natural philosophers and scientists from the 16th to the 18th centuries were preoccupied with discovering the general laws through which God governs the world, and, by default, with understanding how human government could be brought in accordance with the divine laws. By discovering the laws of the human body, humans could learn how to govern the body according to divine principles. François Quesnay was himself part of this tradition. In 1736 he published his first book with the title Essai physique sur l'oeconomie animale. When he began to work on political and economic questions in the 1750’s, he simply applied an economic way of thinking to a new material; something which was also observed by a contemporary who said that “[a]fter having finished his work on The Animal Economy, Quesnay was naturally led to occupy himself with the political economy.”43 Not that Quesnay was the only or even the first to make a connection between natural philosophy and questions of politics, but he was arguably one of the primary forces in creating the tradition of political economy, something he did by transferring the logic of economy to the sphere of the political.

Conclusion In the mid-late-18th century, a series of different meanings of the word economy are brought together: economy as the administration of the

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household, economy as God’s government of the world through natural law, economy as the natural laws of bodies and the principle through which a given body sustains itself. These different conceptions of the word constituting its complex semantic core are beautifully summarized in the entry “Économie” in the 1762 edition of Dictionnaire de l’Académie: ECONOMY The order, the rule one applies in conducting a menage, in the expenditure of a house. To have economy. Understand economy. Live with economy, with a great economy. He has economy in his expenditure. He has no clue of economy. [...] ECONOMY that is figuratively the order through which a political body primarily subsists. It overthrows the entire economy of the state, of a republic. The animal economy. It is also figuratively the harmony that is between different parts, the different qualities of a physical body. The disorder of the sentiments troubles the entire economy of the temperament.44

In the Encyclopédie, which was written in the same years, we find similar conceptions and an entry for oeconomie (politique) as well as an entry for oeconomie (théologique). The household conception, the theological conception and the natural philosophical conception all come together in constituting a relatively new understanding of economy with a much broader application than their primary objects: the household, the world and the body. A synthesis of Foucault’s, Agamben’s and Balan’s respective genealogies of economy provides us with a way of understanding the complex etymological roots that lie at the semantic core of the word “economy” as it is coupled with ‘the political’ to form the modern concept of ‘political economy’. What is at stake in the modern concept of economy is not simply a continuation of the Greek conception of the government of a household transferred to the sphere of the State. Instead, what we have seen in this article is that the word economy is imbued with a series of political, theological and natural historical conceptions of the natural laws of the world at the moment it is coupled with ‘the political’. This was the case the case with Quesnay’s work, in which the word economy was used in all its complexity. Quesnay uses it to explain the general laws of animals, the world and diseases in Essai physique sur l’oeconomie animale. He uses it in his rationalist theology, following thinkers such as Nicolas Malebranche and G. W. Leibniz, who found and praised God by describing the general and natural laws of the world. In this kind of

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theology, to discover and appreciate the general laws was to discover and appreciate God and the way in which he governed his creation. Finally, he uses it in “Des Œconomies royales de M. de Sully” (his tribute to the Duc de Sully, one of the creators of French State centralism), and in his concept of legal despotism, which meant that the King should govern his State in the same way as one wisely governs a household, i.e. by observing the general, natural laws and governing accordingly. In other words, what Quesnay reflects, and what is explained by synthesizing the genealogies of Foucault, Agamben and Balan, is that the new science of political economy emerging in the 18th century draws on a long and complex, metaphysical tradition that moves far beyond the administration of a household. We should therefore bear in mind the complex semantics of economy when we seek to understand the implicit and explicit theoretical and metaphysical underpinnings of the emergence of political economy that may still remain operative within the semantic core of modern economics.

Notes 1

Johannes Burkhardt, “VI. Die Vermittlung des Begriffs ‘Ökonomie’ (18. Jh.)”, under the entry “Wirtschaft” in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze & Reinhart Koselleck (eds.): Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004) and Otto Brunner, “Das ‘ganze Haus’ und die alteuropäische ‘Ökonomik’” in Neue Wege der Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1968). 2 Peter Groenewegen, “Political Economy” in John Eatwell et al. (eds.): The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987) and Tony Aspromourgos, The Science of Wealth (London and New York: Routledge, 2009). 3 Tony Aspromourgos, The Science of Wealth, 17. 4 Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique (Paris: Éditions de l’ÈHESS, 1992), 67. 5 Most notably the phrase is used by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the title of the 1763 edition of his article “Discourse sur l’économie politique”, a second edition of his article “Œconomie (politique)” published 1755 in l’Encyclopœdie of Diderot and d’Alembert. However, political economy, as it would develop as a science, clearly owes more to the economic writings of the physiocrats than to the more strictly political considerations put forward by Rousseau. It is beyond the scope of this article to provide detailed proof for this argument, so for the time being it remains a hypothesis.

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For the precise dating see the editor’s note to the text in François Quesnay, Œuvres économiques complètes et autres textes, vol. 1 (Paris: À l’institut national d’études démogrqhiques, 2005), 639. 7 François Quesnay and Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale (Amsterdam: Les libraires associés, 1763), title page. (My translation, as is the case with all works figuring in French in the bibliography). 8 Quesnay and Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, 1. 9 For arguments about the scientific contributions of genealogy as a method, see Freidrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral (Leipzig, C. G. Naumann, 1892), Michel Foucault, ”Nietzsche, la généalogie, l’histoire” in Hommage à Jean Hyppolite (Paris: PUF, 1971), Giorgio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method (New York: Zone Books, 2009), Martin Saar, Genealogie als Kritik (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2007), and Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of Indebted Man (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012). 10 See for example Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschictlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973) and Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 11 Giorgio Agamben, ”What is a commandment?” (2011). 12 Aristotle, Politics (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1944), 14. 13 Ibid, 15. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., 3, translation modified. 16 Ibid. 17 Aristotelous (Pseudo-Aristotle), Oikonomikos (Sumptibus C. H. Walzii, 1830), 3; my translation. 18 However, it must be added that Aristotle acknowledges the existence of an extra fifth type of kingship added to the four types initially lists. This fifth type of king is the absolute king [pambasileus]. He is the king of a sort of economic kingship or reign [oikonomike basileia], in the sense that the absolute king treats, or is allowed to treat, the state as a master treats his household, that is, as an absolute ruler: “this monarchy ranges with the rule of a master over a household, for just as the master’s rule is a sort of monarchy in the home, so absolute monarchy is domestic mastership over a city, or over a race or several races” (Aristotle, Politics, 255). Consequently, in the case of absolute monarchy, the clear distinction between oikonomia and politics, between private and public powers, seems to implode, in the political theory of Aristotle. 19 Even though Antoine de Montchrétien used the phrase as early as 1615 in his Treatise on Political Economy, as a concept and as a discipline ‘political economy’ did not spread from there and it had little impact on political thought, as demonstrated by both Johannes Burkhardt (“VI. Die Vermittlung des Begriffs ‘Ökonomie’ (18. Jh.)”, 567f) and Jean-Claude Perrot (Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique, 67f).

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For the application of the logic of private domination to the exercise of public powers in the emergence of the modern State, see Daniel Lee, Civil Law and Civil Sovereignty (Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2010). 21 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillian, 2009), 94f. 22 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 104. 23 Quentin Skinner, ”How Machiavellian was Machiavelli?” (2013 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH-NxQmf87k). 24 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 103. 25 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology , trans. George Schwab..(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 36. 26 Giorgio Agamben, The Kingdom and the Glory, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa and Matteo Mandarini(Stanford: Stanford University Press 2011), 19. 27 Ibid., 24. 28 Ibid., 25. 29 Tertullian quoted in Agamben, The Kingdom, 40. 30 Agamben, The Kingdom, 41. 31 Ibid. 32 Tertullian’s doctrine of economy can thus be seen as an answer to the Christian issue of paratheke, i.e. revelation as a form of deposit that has been transferred to the Christians, who must then take good care of it. For instance 2 Timothy 1:14: “Guard the good deposit [paratheke] by the holy spirit that indwells us”. For the administrational issues lodged in the notion of paratheke, see Mathias Hein Jessen, “De retslige, administrative og normative dispositivers autonomi”, interview with Paolo Napoli in Slagmark: Michel Foucault 66 (2013), 109-127. 33 Agamben, The Kingdom, 66. 34 Ibid., 287. 35 Foucault, Security, 95. 36 By extension, we may note that Edmund Burke, who was in perfect agreement with Adam Smith and also one of the early theorists of political economy, followed the same logic when setting up the following equation: “laws of commerce, which are the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God” – a quote which might as well have been found in any Physiocratic publication (Edmund Burke, “Thoughts and Details on Scarcity” in Collected Works (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), 52). 37 Jean-Joseph Ménuret de Chambaud, “L’Oeconomie animale” in l’Encyclopédie vol. XI (Paris: Briasson, 1765a), 360. 38 Jean-Joseph Ménuret de Chambaud, “Observation” in l’Encyclopédie vol. XI (Paris: Briasson, 1765b), 318. 39 Bernard Balan, “Premières recherches sur l’origine de la formation du concept d’économie animale” in Revue d’histoire des sciences 28, 4 (1975), 303. 40 Balan, “Premières recherches”, 311. 41 Ibid.. 42 Ibid., 304.

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comte d’Albon, Claude-Camille-François, Eloge historique de François Quesnay, Paris: Cailleau, 1775), 33. 44 Dictionnaire de l’Académie, “Économie” (1762).

CHAPTER SEVEN X MARKS THE SPOT: ARCHIVES AND THE PROFANITIES OF HISTORY JOHAN HEINSEN

In the spring of 2012, I was researching an English voyage to the Pacific that took place in 1689-90. It was a merchant and privateering voyage headed by Captain John Strong. Historians have since pondered whether it might really have been an act of imperial espionage.1 England was at war with France but at peace with the arch enemy, Spain. This proved an opportunity to reconnoitre the fabled “Spanish Lake” by chasing French pirates off the coast of South America. However, this was not what interested me. I was interested in the world that Strong became a part of as he plied waters that had previously been traversed by pirates. He explored a geography tied to the desires of men of both high and low birth. Similar voyages were riddled with mutinous threats from below and futile exercises of spectacular law from above. The prospect of telling tales of shipboard antagonisms attracted me. I had already read a journal by one of Strong’s officers whose narrative suggested a voyage plagued by shipboard strife. Inspired by social and cultural historians, I wanted to tell the story of a ship in conflict.2 I was excited when I received a scan of Strong’s own narrative from the manuscript collection in the British Library. However, I was to be disappointed. What I received seemed to be a dead end. Instead of the fleshed out narrative of shipboard conflicts that I had hoped for, Strong himself had written a very different type of text. Maintaining a very succinct style, it resembling the type of logbook kept aboard almost all ships of the period. The practices surrounding the production of such logs varied slightly, but the logs were often open for the shipboard crew to peruse, and hence I expected to find very little variance. My initial assessment proved correct. The narrative contained none of the dissonances I had hoped for, instead effacing the political space of the ship itself.

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Nevertheless, there was something intriguing about this narrative. I felt the scans murmuring from my hard-drive just as I had imagined Strong would have felt his crew’s discontentment in the ship. The journal seemed to be mocking me, challenging me by insisting, “I do not want you to know!” Perhaps it was the text’s authoritative register that led me to project such bad intentions onto this seemingly harmless pdf. Or perhaps I was simply feeling the obvious disconnect between two processes of knowledge production — Strong’s and my own. Regardless, I stubbornly decided to engage with this narrative and its poetics of observation. As a result, I was forced to ponder questions about the muddled relations between the writings in archives and the writing of histories.

Forgotten forgetting My initial approach was to follow a fairly recent trend of reading archives “along the grain.” This is a form of reading most powerfully theorized by Ann Laura Stoler.3 It asks for historians to consider the colonial archives less as monuments to epistemic reason and more as open-ended testaments to anxieties and uncertainties steeped in their own specific histories. Such a reading configures the sources and the archives that hold them as part of processes pointing towards the improvised and unfinished character of colonialism. Stoler has formulated a challenge that resonates with my own discontentment with Strong’s writing: according to Stoler, “the issue of official ‘bias’ opens a different challenge: to identify the conditions of possibility that shaped what warranted repetition, what competencies were rewarded in archival writing, what stories could not be told and what could not be said.”4 Strong’s succinct and stylized narrative seemed comparable to the register analyzed by Stoler. The goal of my reading was thus to ask how this text could imply and rely on what Stoler calls a “common sense” that is at once “historical and political.” 5 I thus started by asking how Strong’s narrative as an archive of the voyage could allow itself not to speak of the social world of the ship. How was the silence produced, and what were the necessary assumptions for such a silence to be tenable? Stoler’s reading of colonial archives is thoroughly deconstructionist. Famously, Derrida began his meditation on archives by reflecting on the etymological root of the word “archive” itself. This led him to the Greek word “arkhe,” meaning at once “commencement” and “commandment.” We are confronted by “two orders of order: sequential and jussive.” According to Derrida, the archive shelters this double origin, yet also shelters itself from it by forgetting it.6 This commandment to forget seems

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to have been lost on Strong’s journal. Instead, it seems to insist quite vigorously on a link between the sequential and the authoritative. Strong’s journal begins by displaying its own mandate to observe. The journal is prefaced by Strong’s commission, which gives Strong command of the ship and of the word. Strong is allowed to go on his privateering voyage provided: .

“alwayes that the said John Strong keep ane exact Journall of his proceedings and therin particularly take a notice of all Prizes which shall be taken by him the nature of such Prizes the times and places of their being taken and the values of them as nigh as he can judge as also of the station motion and strength of the enemy as well as he or his Mariners can discover by the best intelligence he can get and also of whatsoever else shall occur unto him or any of his officers or Mariners or be discovered or declared unto him or them or found out by examination or conference with any Mariners or Passingers of or in any the Ships or vessells taken or by any other person or persons or by any other wayes or means whatsoever tuching or concerning the design of the enemy or any of their fleets ships or parties and of their Stations Ports and places and of their intents therin and and of what merchants ships or vessels of the enemys bound out or home or to any of the enemys bound out or home or to any other place as he or his officers or Mariners shall hear.”7

These are the commandments of an inquisitive state which wants to know the strength of a likely future enemy. The commission goes on with a series of similar imperatives detailing everything that Strong’s journal is to report. He is to observe almost everything that might be of use to the power that has instituted the voyage. While these commands summon him as a speaker, they also precisely delineate his mandate to speak. In other words, the chronological register of observation is speaking in the presence of power. The concise, disciplined nature of Strong’s narrative reads like a performance of the principle that institutes his speech. There are no anecdotes, no moral instructions, no diversions and no resonances. Strong writes because he has been issued a mandate to write that is directly tied to his mandate to govern. He is giving his “account” to a power that comes from without, ordering him to narrate the voyage and to govern it at the same time. The power to write and to govern are both derived from somewhere else, somewhere that is literally out of sight and out of reach, constituting the ship as a closed economy of words. Remembering the “arkhe” at the root of the word “archive”, we might thus call the mode of Strong’s text autarchival — the text claims to operate in a specific context, speaking on a mandate which is clearly explicated.

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As a result of Strong’s deference to the principle that has given him a mandate, his narrative is almost impenetrable. Its speech will share the world with the power that has constituted it — but with nobody else. The text seals itself off while simultaneously sheltering the reader from the common world of shipboard discourse. Further, the tight link between the order of commencement and commandment — equating narrative mastery with hegemony over shipboard relations — means that Strong’s silence on the ship itself comes to imply a precise meaning. It leads us to project silence onto life on the ship itself. We hear no muttering voices, and this silence is an implicit result of Strong’s authority. It appears to be the fulfillment of the power vested in him. That is the frame in which Strong’s performative text puts the ship. The ship is silent because Strong brings it to silence in a double sense - because he commands the story of the voyage and because, as captain, he has now been given the power to silence any disobedience. The contiguity between the principle governing the story and the principle governing the ship suggests that silence means that there was no unrest, no mutterings, because our narrator is the guarantor both of order on the page and on the deck. The two are constituted by the same performative. Of course these are more than fanciful projections. In their very materiality, commissions like the one issued to Strong were part of the repertoire of power exercised aboard early modern ships. Articles and instructions were often read out loud and posted for everyone to see. Thus, as Miles Ogborn has suggested, the written word was itself constitutive of authoritarian shipboard relations. Writing was part of an attempt to create what Ogborn calls a “controlable space.” 8 As the journal fulfills the commission, it confirms a power tied to forms of writing which played a part in the social world of shipboard relations.9 Strong’s journal demonstrates its own logos. The commencement/command of the narrative is a claim that produces a succinct context. It puts on display the principle governing both the written word and the world narrated by the word, offering us a closed economy in which only select utterances are to circulate. Thus, it states an image of an orderly space which itself becomes the very context in which the narrative is read as a successful answer to a sovereign call.

X marks the spot Nevertheless, something is uncertain, even here. Although the physicality of writing was itself constitutive of order, it is in the physicality of the paper that we find Strong’s sealed off surface to be inherently unstable.

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The text may be structured like the instrumental writings demanded by a state unfolding a colonial panoptic, yet there is something awry that leads me to suggest that we may see this self-presence as what Stoler has called a “frail conceit.” 10 This frailty is marked on the paper in at least three instances. 1. The entries from the 18th to the 21st of January 1690 are in a different hand than the rest of the narrative. Certain abbreviations change. For instance, “ditto” simply becomes “Do.” One page later, we find the original hand once again. Furthermore, the date is set back to the 18th. Some of this page has been torn off. This suggests that, at some point, the original page containing the entries from the 18th to the 21st was torn out and then copied. The copy was then inserted in the manuscript. 2. The margin of the entry for September 28th 1690 contains a large “X” written in ink. At first, I thought that this “X” was written in the same hand as the narrative itself. Later, however, I realized that I had already seen the same “X” in the margins of Simson’s narrative. However, the dates marked by this X do not correspond across the two narratives. I have not managed to detect any system in these markings. 3. The margin beside the entry on January 28th 1690 contains a note. It is written with a pencil in another hand and states: “Vide Cowley p. 7 Catal. no. 54.” The following page contains “now called Cape Percival”, written in ink, in a third hand. In their different ways, these markings point beyond the self-presence of the narrative and its closed structure of command/commencement. They signal a break in the performance of context through which the text becomes meaningful as an answer to a call. This break is tied to writing and to the way in which writing cannot in itself guarantee the context in which the narrative will be read. As Derrida remarked in his famous discussion of speech acts:  “To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read to be rewritten”.11

Hence, the text carries a force that makes it able to communicate (as observation but also as source) and, at the same time, has the potential to pull it away from its own presence and time: “At the same time, a written sign carries with it a force that breaks with its context, that is, with the collectivity of presences organizing the moment of its inscription. This breaking force [force de rupture] is not an accidental

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 The text communicates in spite of (or even because of) the possibility of decontextualisation. This becomes obvious in these three marks in the narrative. To examine these markings is to ponder how this text can be legible in different ways in spite of its vigorous insistence of being read only as the succinct account summoned by the sovereign with the mandate to command and commence. The change in the hand of the four entries of January 18-21 signals this structure quite clearly. Derrida was suggesting that texts will continue communicating despite the absence of the author. The text repeats itself in new contexts, and so it is open to (mis)appropriation. This is literally the case here. We do not know when the tearing took place that prompted this act of copying. The hand seems to be contemporary with Strong’s own, but we have no way of knowing who made these copied entries and under what circumstances. This change only signals one thing with certainty: the text was read and was of some use to someone. It thus shows how even a text that performs its own context is tied to time. It is not strictly dependent upon the nexus of power and the speaking subject conjured by that power. In their iterability, the words can be copied by anyone. The context shows itself as strangely replaceable, exactly at the point where the author is no longer himself the guarantor of the words on the page. And of course it is at this exact point that we find slight mutations of the text. New abbreviations are introduced as if to remind us that such interchangeability is also the condition of difference. The “X” in the margin promises a similar break. This is writing by someone else who, again, is ultimately unknowable. It shows that we can

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take Homi Bhabha quite literally when he writes that “The sign of colonial government is cast in a lower key, caught in the irredeemable act of writing.”13 Steeped in the distance of both time and space, the colonial project was quite literally dependent on writing in order to “know.” This in turn ties the governing practice (as signaled by Strong’s text) to a structure of “deferral” which “opens up a space of interpretation and misappropriation that inscribes an ambivalence at the very origins of colonial authority.”14 As the written mark left by an act of reading, the “X” signals exactly such a “space of interpretation.” The mark “X” suggests something meaningful, although this meaning is lost to us. Anyone who has visited early modern archives will recognize this phenomenon, in which the margin — the site where writing is supposed to stop — is where writing in a different sense begins. By pointing towards iterability, these marginal markings indicate that the text works in spite of itself — in spite of its insistence on operating within a closed economy. In part, of course, this is possible because this text is not alone. Despite the performance of having been interpellated, it is also clear that Strong wrote in a form invented neither by him nor by the sovereign power calling him forth. As a speech act, his text depends upon conventions.15 If no such conventions had existed, his narrative would not have been able to imply that silence meant that the ship was being masterfully governed by his own words. This is only possible because his readers are familiar with the formula in which the inner workings of shipboard relations are usually only described when something has gone wrong. In such places, one expects eruptions of discontentment. Hence, Strong takes advantage of writing conventions that confer meaning upon the silence marking his narrative. The lack of such eruptions is transformed into a lack of contention. Yet, this tradition itself puts him shoulder to shoulder with much less disciplined pens. Derrida tied these two notions of iterability together when he asked: “Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a “coded”or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way as a “citation”?”16

In using the conventions, Strong himself both “cites” and becomes open to future acts of citation. Thus, his narrative draws upon the past and looks towards the future — in spite of its insistence of a closed context and circularity. The “X” marks the spot of this convergence; at the same time it

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is a place of uncertainty that puts his own display of circularity in parenthesis. I have already mentioned that I found the same “X” in the margin of a narrative by Strong’s purser Richard Simson. The “X” therefore seems to indicate a link, suggesting that in spite of his own creation of a pure surface, Strong is also involved in a world of words. Simson’s narrative is all too full of words, some of them bordering on the blasphemous. We find Simson among the men on the deck, so far from home that the outside power ultimately governing shipboard speech seems truly forgotten. One man is said to have addressed his officer in a tone that is unimaginable in the context of Strong’s sealed off ship. He “called him Dogg and most pathetically devoted him with his Soul to the pitt of Hell; saying he belonged to the Divel.” 17 The men on the deck also give problematic names to the landscape which Strong is supposed to observe and narrate as useful knowledge to the state. They are “In the Divills hole as they called it,” and it is not only the common sailors who share this language. 18 Simson seems to include himself as he admits: “we weare a little Israelitish in that Wilderness; then it was, I prayd God that we should not pay for it as they did afterwards.”19 He prefaces his narrative by saying that he has traveled “with Monsters of both Men and Beasts.”20 All of this noise is nowhere to be found in Strong’s account and its claim to a clearly demarcated language. It is the margins that give the game away by tying the narrative to a tradition upon which Strong implicitly draws. This places Strong, despite his written performance, in the company of men, who have not been called upon to speak by an inquisitive state but who speak without having been asked to. The only link to this shared world of appropriated stories is the third marking in the margins: “Vide [as in “look”] Cowley p. 7 Catal. no. 54”. This is a graft fixing this narrative to another within the same manuscript collection. What does one find if one seeks the site indicated by this parasitic marking? The marking refers to the narrative of a pirate, Ambrose Cowley, whose journal can also be found among the Sloane papers in the British Library. Cowley’s narrative contains a similar marking pointing the other way: “Vide Strong Catal. no 3295 Fol. 23.”21 I cannot say who made these connections. They seem to belong to the present and could well have been left by a historian.22 Cowley has more in common with the rough talking men described by Simson than with the disciplined pen of Strong. He has the pride to call an island “Cowley’s Enchanted Island” and he seems to have blurred the fictional and the real on several occasions, inventing geographies that have no place on modern maps. His narrative is to be

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found in several different archives around the world, and one version was even printed (an honor not bestowed upon Strong). Cowley tells many stories, but one is particularly striking because it ridicules the kind of command vested in captains like Strong. On his return voyage Cowley sailed on a Dutch East India Ship. One night during a feast, some men heard a distant voice crying out: “Come help, come help, a Man over Board.”23 This put the ship in a commotion, but no one could see the man in the waves, and no one seemed to know who had cried out. At last the officers decided to count the crew, finding no one missing, “which made them all to conjecture, that it was the Spirit of some man that had been drowned in that Latitude by accident.”24 The ironic tone of the narrative may suggest that the whole thing was a prank — a practical joke by the common sailors.25 In another version of his narrative, Cowley himself is the object of a trick, having been fooled aboard a private ship by the common sailors who “pretended that they wanted a Master.”26 Hence, like Simson, he presents us with a world in which speech is radically misappropriated. The self-contained order claimed by Strong appears to be a deception that effaces its own links to a world of writing in which the appropriation of the word always threatens the social and political difference among speakers — a world shared by Strong and the men on his deck. This seems to support Jacques Rancière’s assertion regarding the threat of writing: “That is what the democracy of writing consists in: its garrulous mutism cancels the distinction between men of speech-in-action and men of noisy suffering voice.”27

Conclusion: history as pillaging My suggestion that the link between Strong’s and Cowley’s narratives is the work of a historian indicates a strained relationship between the archive and the process of writing history. Hence, we are left with a question of the state of history itself. If, as they might easily be, these marks are the work of a historian, what is it that history really does to texts like Strong’s? For the last half decade, historians have taken cues from literary theory to question their own poetics. “All of history is poetry” seems to be the lesson. Yet, such an idea suppresses an older and much more radical conception of history, as a form of writing lacking a poetics proper. Aristotle formulated this issue most succinctly in his own meditation on poetics. He thought that history was conceptually opposed to poetics proper (not poetry). Aristotle saw history as the lesser of the two terms. Whereas history merely recounted what had happened, poetics was

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something much more serious, pointing to the future by describing what could happen in a given situation according to “likelihood and necessity.” Hence, poetics addresses the kind of universals that dictate what “a certain kind of person tends to say or do.”28 Strong’s narrative is highly poetical. What I have called “context” could easily be reformulated to mean “poetics” in this sense. Strong is constituted as a specific kind of subject and delineates what is appropriate for such a subject to say and do. Hence his autarchive unfolds a very explicit poetics of power over words and men — the power to commence and command. History opposes any such order. I do not propose to say that history merely says it “like it was.” I am aiming at something much more precise. History is a mode of storytelling that, often unknowingly, calls poetics into question by desecrating the surface constituted by the archive. It is a mode of reading that is ultimately disrespectful, interrupting the monologue of writers like Strong. Hence, even though history is always dependent upon poetics (and Aristotle acknowledged that the best of histories were highly poetical), its practice is to pillage the archive of its claim to command and commence. While historians still often strive towards an antiquated ideal of exhaustive completionism, their practice hinges on a deconstructive opening. What I have found in the margins of Strong’s self-contextualizing autarchive is history displaying its disregard of Strong’s poetics as different narratives jostle in the crammed marginal space of the archival text; this is history as a form of decentering play that produces new contexts by exploiting the excess of writing. What we find is something similar to the men mocking their superiors onboard Cowley’s ships. By being inscribed in the margins of the archive, history breaks up the archive’s claim to self-presence. It is the materiality of the paper itself that signals this break where that which claims to be its own beginning and end is grafted onto a process of reading and misappropriation that is (often in spite of itself) seemingly without beginning and end. We may go one step further and state that it is impossible to say where this desecration itself really begins. In a sense it is already inscribed within the materiality of the archive itself. Strong’s implicit denial of any kinship with the writings of people like Cowley is betrayed by the very physical ordering of the manuscript collection. Strong may claim to perform his own context but we find him somewhere else, somewhere out of place. In the British Library, he shares shelves with names such as Ambrose Cowley (and an entire ensemble of pirates with him). They share this space because they both caught the attention of one man — Sir Hans Sloane, whose collection was later handed over to King George II. Subsequently, it became the founding collection of the British Museum.

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Somewhere in this process, the difference between men of action and men of noise became lost as the manuscript collection did not group the narratives held within it into separate categories. Sloane himself may have seen no significant difference between the two. He was a man of the science of his day, and he valued these narratives because their authors related the world as they had experienced it: Strong and Cowley shared a world because they had seen it with their own eyes. Hence, in a sense, the ordering of the archive that holds Strong’s autarchive already pillages its poetics. The “X” in the margin marks a convergence between the two profanities — that of history and that of the archive against itself — as it is impossible to know when this “X” was written or what it was meant to signify. We cannot determine whether these are marks left by historians or whether they are part of the text itself. Instead, they come to signify the status of the text as such, its iterability, its having been read. Thus, these traces signify the sharing of a language steeped in alterity. “X” marks the spot.

Notes 1

Glyndwr Williams, The Great South Sea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 2 A style of maritime and colonial history perfected by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh in their The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London: Verso, 2000). 3 Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). 4 Ibid., 34. 5 Ibid., 38. 6 Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1. 7 Strong’s Voyage to the South Seas (1689), folio 2, Sloane ms. 3295, manuscript collection, British Library, London. 8 Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink : Script and Print in the Making of the East India Company (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 102. 9 Stoler suggests that in their materiality, writings like these were constitutive of order in a different yet not unrelated sense: “If it is obvious that colonial archives are products of state machines, it is only now that we are seeing them, in their own right, as technologies that reproduced those states themselves.” Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 28.

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10 Ann Laura Stoler, “Epistemic Politics: Ontologies of colonial common sense,” The Philosophical Forum 39, 2008 (3): 349-361 (quote from 356). 11 Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 8. 12 Ibid., 9. 13 Homi, Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 132-133. 14 Ibid., 135. 15 J.L. Austin, Ord der virker [How To Do Thing With Words] (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1997), 33-53. 16 Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 18. 17 Voyage to the South Seas, 82 (original pagination), Sloane ms. 86, manuscript collection, British Libary. 18 Ibid., 90. 19 Ibid., 83) 20 Ibid., preface. 21 “Cowley’s Voyage Round the World (1683-1686)”, Sloane ms. 54, Manuscript collection, British Library, London. 22 As an example, Glyndwr Williams (1997) discusses the parallel between the two concerning sightings of certain islands. Glyndwr Williams, The Great South Sea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). 23 “The voyage of Capt. Cowley, a Papist,” Ms. 642, Miscellany, mainly concerning parliamentary proceedings, pp. 441-485, Manuscript Collection, Lambeth Palace Library, London. 24 “The voyage of Capt. Cowley, a Papist,” Ms. 642, Miscellany, mainly concerning parliamentary proceedings, pp. 441-485, Manuscript Collection, Lambeth Palace Library, London. 25 Brian J. Rouleau suggests that ghost stories told aboard ship often carried subtle critiques of shipboard power. Cowley’s story reads as a variant of this theme. Brian J. Rouleau, “Dead Men Do Tell Tales: Folklore, Fraternity, and the Forecastle,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5, 2007 (1): 30-62 (specifically 60). 26 “The voyage of Capt. Cowley, a Papist,” Ms. 642, Miscellany, mainly concerning parliamentary proceedings, pp. 441-485, Manuscript Collection, Lambeth Palace Library, London. 27 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Literature (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 13. The antagonism of the archive towards any sort of stable appropriation suggests a parallel opening through discrepancy. Arlette Farge has expressed this in emphatic terms: “The archives bring forward details that disabuse, derail and straightforwardly break any hope of linearity or positivism. This eruption of words and actions shatters established models, broadens the norm, displaces conventional wisdom once and for all, and often adds a certain confusion to things that had been

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previously considered simple.” Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), 42. 28 Aristotle, Aristotle’s Poetics (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 81.



CHAPTER EIGHT PROFESSIONAL INTERVENTIONS AS A STATE-CRAFTING GRAMMAR: USING A SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF STATE IN HISTORICAL RESEARCH CHRISTIAN YDESEN AND TRINE ØLAND

“In regular historical works (…) the scaffolding of theory is perhaps best kept in the background. But the historical reader and critic should always have the sense that the historian has thought clearly and well about these issues, even if she chooses to offer only hints of the conceptual thinking that has gone into the construction of the historical work in question.”1

The opening quotation from American Professor of History Allan Megill reflects the somewhat ambivalent role played by theory in historical research: it should be kept in the background but at the same time it is indispensable if history is to be well-founded and qualified to wear the badge of science. However, there is still a strong tendency among historians to be awestruck by comprehensive and new empirical (i.e. archival) sources, while the explicit use of theoretical concepts and theoretically informed methodologies is often frowned upon. Some historians would even call the use of theory “counterproductive intellectual games”. 2 In other words, “closet positivism” still haunts historical research to some extent. One explanation is the historian’s fear that the social sciences may colonize historical research and challenge professional boundaries.3 On the other hand, a brief survey of books on the philosophy of history reveals numerous calls for the use of theory in historical research.4 This trend is also evident in the well-attended annual conferences of the American “Social Science History Association” and its European equivalent. The trend essentially reflects Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804)



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famous statement: “Concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind”.5 Although some of the divisions and antagonisms might be explained by a clarification of what precisely historians mean by “theory”, “concepts” and “methodology”, these observations testify to a somewhat muddy picture of the relations between theory and historical research. In this article, however, our point of departure is that using theoretical constructions in historical research is inevitable. This article is based on the premise proposed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) that the construction of the research object is the most fundamental scientific act: “(…) you don’t move to the real without a hypothesis, without instruments of construction. And when you think you are without any presuppositions, you still construct without knowing it and, in that case, almost always inadequately”. 6 Even if you think you do not construct, you do! Essentially, it is a question of the ability and willingness to define and lay bare to the research community what one investigates and how one does it, under which assumptions, etc. According to Norwegian Professor of History Knut Kjeldstadli, theories in historical research serve the purpose of “(…) placing and explaining certain historical phenomena and sources, which cannot be summarily and fully deducted from the sources.”7 While Kjeldstadli’s point implies a hierarchy between sources and theory, it also assigns a necessary role to theory, and this role might form the basis of a fruitful merger between history and sociology as called for by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (18581917): “Sociology and history are destined to merge into a common discipline where the elements of both become combined and unified.”8 Thus, from the sociological perspective, sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu emphasizes that every social object must be understood as historical and that it is imperative to historicize the research object in question in order to achieve understanding. 9 In a wider perspective, historicizing is at the very root of the critical thinking which seems to be a hallmark of much sociological work: “(…) there is no more potent tool for rupture than the reconstruction of genesis: by bringing back into view the conflicts and confrontations of the early beginnings and therefore all the discarded possibles, it retrieves the possibility that things could have been (and still could be) otherwise.” 10 In view of this strong inclination to include a historical gaze in sociological investigations, it is relevant to use a Bourdieusian theoretical framework when doing historical research. 11 We will dig into which insights might be gained and which might be lost in using sociological frameworks to do historical research using various methods and empirical sources.



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The background, aim and structure of the chapter This article is written in connection with a joint research project which adopts a comparative outlook in investigating post-war Danish professional interventions aimed at immigrants. Specifically, these interventions are investigated as a state-crafting grammar. One project primarily focuses on Danish professionals. It is based on a large-scale interview study and is titled “The space of professional interventions and agents addressing ‘the immigrant’ 1970-2012” 12 . The other project is designated “Professional categorisations of normality and deviation, 1945-1970”. Addressing a Danish case and an English case, it is primarily based on archival studies. Both projects share the same theoretical orientation. The joint research interests of the two projects are how professional interventions addressing “the immigrant” have appeared, been legitimized and been transformed, and how professionals and their practices have related to the state and acted on its behalf. In essence, what the projects seek to understand is two-fold. First, they address the boundary work of the professionals in defining both professional work and “the immigrant”. The aim is to capture the way in which professionals symbolically participate in (re)identifying and (re)problematizing “the immigrant”. The second aim is to understand the state’s complex work of group-making and how it targets “the immigrant”, continually re-constructing the politics of belonging in the state-crafting activities of professional intervention. This research endeavor calls for a sociological theoretical framework, and in this connection we have found help in Bourdieu’s and Wacquant’s concept of state as a bureaucratic field and their concept of state-crafting.13 The aim of this article, then, is to show how it is possible to use Bourdieu’s and Wacquant’s sociological concept of state in historical research and to put it to work empirically. This purpose accounts for the structure of the article. Under the headline ”Theory and the construction of the research object”, the first part of the article will clarify our concept of theory. It will explain the Bourdieusian and Wacquantian way of working with theory and theoretical constructions when doing empirical and historical work. This will provide a basis for the chain of reasoning evident in the rest of the article. The second part is entitled “Theoretical concepts: State, Profession, Immigrant”. It sets out to present and clarify the “state–profession– immigrant” triad through the conceptual lens of state-crafting and of state as a bureaucratic field.



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The third part is designated “Working with historical sources” and consists of three subsections. The first subsection briefly addresses the question of putting the theoretical model to work empirically. The focus is on the concept of field and the question of how to avoid determinism and presentism when working with a comprehensive theoretical framework. The second and third subsections takes the reader into the very ‘engine room’ of historical research where the work with interview data and archival data occurs, although actual research findings are left out. The conclusion sums up the findings of the article and communicates the lessons learned from this research endeavour.

Theory and the construction of the research object Theory can generally be described as a system of relations between concepts that express assumptions and hypotheses about relations, correlations and associations in the world, including concepts about the world in ontological and/or epistemological terms. The purpose of theory is to contribute to understanding and reflection in a way that is not obtainable or possible without the theory.14 In this respect, theory sharpens focus on relevant parts of the world in relation to the research object or research question. To put it differently, the use of theory is necessary simply because it is absurd to attempt to describe or understand the world exhaustively on a 1:1 scale; every research endeavour needs a focus that sorts the relevant from the irrelevant. This is especially important in a historical sociology that uses a sociological concept of state where state formation is seen as a concentration of power relations in society made up of relations between social groups. Practice, power relations, social structures and relations have a tendency to disappear in spontaneous and everyday human thinking, as well as in much scientific thinking. Bourdieu constructed what were to become his leading theoretical concepts as a consequence of challenges in understanding practice. In a discussion of the “craft” of the scientist, he says: “Practice is always underestimated and under-analysed, and yet understanding it requires much theoretical competence, much more, paradoxically, than understanding a theory. One has to avoid reducing practices to the idea one has of them when one’s only experience of them is logical.”15 Since his first and concurrently performed complex studies of Bèarn in the south of France and the native population of Kabylie in the northern part of the then French colony Algeria, which he cross-analysed, he has been interested in the universally “prelogical logic of practice” in most of his



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subsequent studies.16 He devoted much of his theoretical work to outlining the object of research in this sociological sense. This involves theoretically constructing the object and its relational structure in order to investigate it systematically. Otherwise, the object of research will dissolve and slip away in logical theory, appearances and common sense thinking. The meaning of theoretical competence can be elaborated by looking into what Bourdieu terms the theoretical model 17 of the social. It is characterised: “(…) by its capacity for breaking with appearances and its capacity for generalization, these two qualities being inseparable. It is a formal outline of the relations among relations that define constructed objects, which can be transposed to phenomenally very different orders of reality and suggest, by analogy, new analogies that can give rise to new object constructions”.18 The construction of a theoretical model makes it possible to handle different social forms as realizations. The model can disclose properties which only emerge when realizations are interrelated and the whole system of relations between realizations is expressed. For example, the underlying principles of structural homologies can be observed. Concepts are considered “open concepts” (to reject positivism),19 but they are also and most importantly considered “systemic concepts”. This is a reminder that “concepts have no definition other than systemic ones, and are designed to be put to work empirically in systematic fashion”.20 This being “put to work” will be indicated in the latter sections of the article, and we will show how the workings of systemic concepts in the present historical research are distinct from “operational concepts” which are aimed at narrow empirical measurement.21 To allow the theoretical model to do the job of breaking with appearances and pre-thought objects and constructing the scientific object, nothing less is needed than: “(..) a terrific energy, an iconoclastic violence that you find more often in writers like Bernard or artists like Hans Haacke than in professors of sociology, however “radical” in intention”. 22 However, this energy is especially important in sociology because preconstructed objects such as official statistics and categories or national archives impose themselves as scientific objects and are pointed out to the researcher as objects and problems to be studied. These are frequently, problems of social order, and the categories used to describe such problems are pre-constructed, corresponding to divisions between the concerns of different ministries, such as “(..) the “elderly”, the “young”, “immigrants”, “semi-professions”, or the “poverty population” and so on”23. The antidote to all these pre-constructions is constant attention to all details of the research procedures, and, as we will elucidate in the next two



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sections, the notion of field will guide us as shorthand or as a memory jogger, as Bourdieu puts it.24 This notion is intended to guide us to think relationally about state, professions and immigrants, and thus to help us resist the tendency to think in substantialist ways according to the preconstructions with which the terms state, professions and immigrants are endowed. The necessity of avoiding substantialist ways of thinking becomes even more evident in light of an example provided by Bourdieu: “State bureaucracies and their representatives are great producers of ‘social problems’ that social science does little more than ratify whenever it takes them over as ‘sociological” problems’”. 25 Thus, there is a danger that research will reproduce societal problems that are of an inherently political nature or that are associated with a certain worldview or order of things. As a result, research results may not create genuinely new knowledge; they will be tied to a certain agenda or episteme. In our specific research projects, this is particularly important. As the state has socialized us, it is difficult to take the state as a scientific object of study: “(…) one of the major powers of the state is to produce and impose (especially through the school system) categories of thought that we spontaneously apply to all things of the social world – including the state itself”.26 Theoretical constructions are thus a means to define the scientific object of study in a rational manner; they determine how we study the object and what the object becomes when studied in this way. In general, this means that the provision (construction) of empirical material/data is subordinated to the sort of discipline that follows from determining the theoretical construction of the study. This does not mean, however, that theory determines the provision of data. Rather, the theoretical constructions should help to select, filter or cleanse the data; in turn, the data can confirm, dismiss, weaken, change or supplement the assumptions and hypotheses that were embedded and put to work empirically due to the theoretical construction. The theoretical construction allows researchers to pose theoretically informed questions and to define the object of study in a general sense - in this case in a sociological sense. We will exemplify this process in the later section entitled “Working with historical sources”. Other researchers have taken similar stances on these issues. Another way of putting it is to conceive of research practice as neither deductive nor inductive, but both at the same time, i.e. abductive. The German professor of science sociology Jo Reichertz describes “abduction” as a mental leap that researchers need to take in order to “bring together things which one had never associated with one another”.27 Another useful term



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is orienting concepts, introduced by Professor Emeritus of social theory Derek Layder. Layder uses the term to focus on the way in which the researcher finds it valuable and relevant to approach the research subject;28 i.e. with a concept but in an open and flexible way. We have argued that the scientific object needs to be constructed; in other words, knowledge is constructed. The implication is that scientifically constructed knowledge is fabricated due to the researcher’s operations between theory and data. As the English sociologist Nikolas Rose has pointed out, this stance contrasts with Anglo-American constructivist analysis, which reveals the constructed character of scientific knowledge in order to deconstruct it or to make ironic remarks.29 Rose refers to the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962), pointing out that such an endeavour is a paradox because it signifies both an empiricist and a positivist ideal of truth. It might be a surprise to some philosophical and psychological approaches that knowledge is constructed and that what appears natural and true is socially, culturally and historically produced, but it is not a surprise to most sociologists. Here, the main idea is to develop a scientific object that is based on a systematic approach and a chain of argumentation that can be followed in all phases of the research process so that the research community will accept knowledge production as legitimate. 30 Consequently, pointing out the constructed nature of scientific objectivity is intended to help us define its historicity, not to deconstruct the effort to objectify. Following these musings on theory and the construction of the research object, it is time to dig into our research projects. We take our point of departure in our joint theoretical framework, presenting the tools and possibilities that this framework offers as well as the implications associated with such a framework.

Theoretical concepts: State, Profession, Immigrant As mentioned in the introduction, our main point of reference is Bourdieu and Wacquant’s concept of the state.31 In this framework, the state is “(…) an X (to be determined) which successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical and symbolic violence over a definite territory and over the totality of the corresponding population. If the state is able to exert symbolic violence, it is because it incarnates itself simultaneously in objectivity, in the form of specific organizational structures and mechanisms, and in subjectivity in the form of mental structures and categories of perception and thought”. 32 As implied earlier and by the parenthesized “to be determined”, the state is a structure that needs to be



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historicized: “The state is the culmination of a process of concentration of different species of capital (…)”.33 Inspired by Max Weber, Bourdieu and Wacquant think of the state as a bureaucratic field. In other words, they see the state as a structure of institutions and agents using symbolic power in the struggle to define and distribute ‘the public good’ or ‘the collective’.34 In the words of Arnholtz and Hammerslev, the bureaucratic field is “(…) a field of activity relatively independent of economic and social forces in which actors with heterogeneous and often – at least partially – conflicting backgrounds, life stories, interests, capital composition (especially in terms of education), and skills meet each other and confront each other in the question of the very definition of public affairs and the state’s services, while they at the same time, often unconsciously, share a number of bureaucratic contributions, categories, and methods”. 35 Thus, the state may be described as a collective illusion, but a well-founded illusion with very real effects.36 A bird's eye view of the state anatomy reveals the existence of numerous fields, such as the educational field or the judicial field. To identify and analyse the struggles and relative strengths of different fields within the state anatomy, Bourdieu introduces the concept of ‘the field of power’. He argues that “the construction of the state proceeds apace with the construction of a field of power, defined as the space of play within which the holders of capital (of different species) struggle in particular for power over the state, i.e., over the statist capital granting power over the different species of capital and over the reproduction (particularly over the school system)”.37 This perspective implies that the state is fundamentally multidimensional and ambiguous, and the theoretical framework thus opens our eyes to the oppositions, links, resistances, inertias, and modifications within the state anatomy. The concept of field refers in general to: “a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions”,38 and this concept works as a constant reminder that: “the real is the relational: what exist in the social world are relations – not interactions between agents or intersubjective ties between individuals, but objective relations”39, and these relations must be constructed scientifically. Bourdieu chooses to use the term ‘field’ very consciously as opposed to terms such as apparatus or system, because field (champ in French) to him signals “struggles, and thus historicity”,40 and he thus thinks of the separation of sociology and history as a “disastrous division, and one totally devoid of epistemological justification”. 41 Furthermore, the bureaucratic field may be understood as a field where positioning takes place along two axes. One axis concerns the volume of



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statist capital in terms of a “higher state nobility” (the political elite) versus the “lower state nobility” (agents carrying out policies). The other axis concerns the composition of statist capital, plainly described as the “left hand” (state departments and agencies offering support such as public education and health services) versus the “right hand” (state departments and agencies offering discipline).42 We identify the welfare work on which we focus as situated within the bureaucratic field because the work of the professionals is funded and facilitated by the state in one way or another, but the central focus is on the symbolic boundaries of and between the professions understood as a field.43 From Durkheim’s ambiguous work, we know that professions can be thought of as state answers to anomie in modern society and that Durkheim advised the state to professionalise education through a particular occupational group and its moral system, i.e. “secondary cadres to interpose between the individual and the State”. 44 This may be the reason why Bourdieu “[does] not like professorial definitions much”.45 He thinks of them as pre-constructions and bureaucratic conceptualisations; he regards “profession” as a “folk concept which has been uncritically smuggled into scientific language”, disregarding the fact that “profession” is the “social product of a historical work of construction of a group and of a representation of groups”.46 He argues that the concept of professions must be replaced by the concept of field.47 This takes into account the symbolic and social work needed to produce the boundaries of a profession or the domains of a profession,48 and our projects take this way of viewing the professions into consideration. In addition, Bourdieu’s sociology of the state directs attention towards agents speaking and acting on behalf of the state, which is relevant in our context because it connects to the concept of state-crafting and to professionals and their practices. State-crafting is a theoretical concept which implies that institutions and agents, wanting to do something on behalf of the collective, add to a state logic through their actions: “As soon as consideration of ‘the public’ or ‘the public good’ manifests itself in a field, the state is in a certain sense also manifest in that field.”49 However, this also means that professionals can be seen as people who want to do something legitimately on behalf of the collective and who show the competence to do so by virtue of their ability to draw on the symbolic capital of the state. This fits Woolford & Curran’s understanding of nonprofit social services as “… an area of paid and voluntary employment in which many actors are inspired by, or at least profess, a desire to contribute to the public good through the amelioration of pressing social problems”. 50 In short, professionals manage and conquer statist capital,



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and, for example, they do so in their boundary work with the immigrant. Theoretically speaking, boundary work can be understood as energized by the social agents; by the professionals’ open systems of dispositions (habitus), subjected to and affected by experiences and therefore constantly modified by history.51 An example is the social care worker who identifies a problem family and initiates an intervention. From the state-crafting perspective, this social care worker personifies, reproduces and shapes the state, and, at the same time, she draws her authority from the state through a legislative framework and state sanctioned knowledge, thus testifying to the symbiotic relationship between the professional and the state. As Bourdieu points out: “It is the state, acting in the manner of a bank of symbolic capital, that guarantees all acts of authority – acts at once arbitrary and misrecognized as such”.52 In other words, the practices and interventions of professionals are a necessary condition for the reproduction of the state. In this respect, the theoretical framework helps us to transcend the state intervention/professional autonomy controversy and to make the point that professions should be analysed as an integrated part of the state itself.53 This also serves as an example of how the theoretical framework helps researchers to take a stance and to position themselves in the research field. On the receiving end of the state-sanctioned practices and interventions, we find the immigrant/ the other/ the deviant. This is the very heart of boundary work, where the lines of acceptable and unacceptable otherness are constantly negotiated. In much the same way as professionals and the state form a symbiotic relationship and need to be brought into a single analytical field, the professional and the immigrant form a similar relationship. The professional needs an “other”, and the identification of a problematized “other” is a prerequisite for intervention. We focus on the immigrant because from a state perspective the immigrant is potentially viewed as the bearer of unacceptable and therefore problematized otherness. Professional-immigrant relations are thus a favoured locus for state boundary work. Consequently, the term ‘state crafting’ in our work focuses on the way in which the state crafts itself through its professional work when addressing ‘the immigrant’, continuously remaking and rethinking itself through social and symbolic power. 54 “Crafting” thus points to the skillful technological practices by which professionals take part in state formation processes. In brief, our theoretical construction is sensitive to both structure and history and is based on a two-fold dynamic: on the one hand, professional interventions and their transformation feed into the transformation of the



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state, and on the other hand, the transformation of state logic and practice feeds into the transformation of professional interventions. 55 “Professionals” are understood as an empirical category including those who appear knowledgeable and competent and are entrusted to manage “the immigrant” on behalf of the public. Whether they call it integration, enlightenment, treatment, teaching, mobilisation, care or discipline, professionals want to improve the situation of “the immigrant” using practices, categories, assumptions and forms of knowledge.

Working with historical sources – putting the theoretical model to work empirically The theoretical model is now to be put to work empirically. This means that the selection of interviewees, the production of interview data, the search for and selection of sources and the way in which sources are read are subordinated to the discipline that follows from the chosen theoretical understanding of the object of study. This understanding determines the way in which theoretically informed questions are posed, and it defines our object of study in a general sense. The theoretical approach does not determine the data and the sources themselves, of course, but we do make sure that the data and the reading of sources make sociological sense. In this process, the notion of field is the most important tool in our efforts to write a relational structural history. This means that in both projects, every professional intervention, every professional position-taking and legitimization, every observed construction of “the immigrant” and every construction of the professional task and method must be placed in a structure of position-taking, agents and institutions which must all be classified systematically. In every choice we have to make –hroughout the research process, we aspire to think relationally. In the following, we will describe our work with interview data and sources.

Working with historical sources - producing interview data The project titled “The space of professional interventions and agents addressing “the immigrant” 1970-2012” was carried out as a sociological interview study,56 and the professionals were investigated as social agents from a broad socio-historical perspective within the joint research focus on professionals’ boundary work. 57 The interviews were ‘qualitative’ and were supplemented with a structured interview questionnaire to gain homogeneous data for the theoretically underpinned analysis.



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Before the theoretical model could be put to work, a preliminary list was made of welfare professionals who gained territory within their profession when addressing the immigrant in Denmark since 1970. The list was based on a literature search using terms such as “foreign worker” combined with “health”, “education”, “integration”, and pursuit of the references. The relevant professionals were identified as individuals who were specialised or professionalised in different ways to address ‘the immigrant’ – through experience, qualifications, a particular knowledge or background, or by virtue of a particular function. During selection of the 48 interviewees, the theoretical model worked in the following way. The theoretical idea of field (the idea of the social world as a structured world of objective relations) turned into a general focus on making sure that the selected interviewees represented as much structural and historical diversity as possible. This was accomplished gradually. A list of possible interviewees was made on the basis of preliminary explorations of professional associations and societies, projects, educational institutions and resource persons. A “chain-search” followed chains of persons and overlapping projects in which various professionals had been involved in. For instance, these projects included collaborations between schools, the social services and the police force. The list was developed gradually, and when the interviews began, the interviewees were also asked if they could recommend another interviewee; either one close to or different from, and even in opposition to themselves. This was another way of working with the concepts of field and struggles, and reality as relational. Here, diversity was treated as material from which to extract possible points in a relational structure that was to be formed through analysis of the interview data. Consequently, the selection of interviewees was made in relation to which variables proved to be relevant. The 48 professionals interviewed represent an appropriate variation in terms of profession, education, positioning within the profession (if evident), year of birth, year of graduation, institutional anchorage (ranging from small-scale NGO projects to well-established institutions such as a hospital or a school), and location of the institution. The actual interviewees were preschool teachers, psychologists, social workers, police officers, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, nurses, health visitors, job consultants, midwifes, teachers in adult education, ‘street level workers’ and consultants specialising in ’youth‘, ’housing‘ and ’integration‘. This relatively comprehensive and elaborate specification for the selection of interviewees contributes to the construction of the object. Its purpose is to facilitate an understanding of professional interventions not



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as a range of individual or isolated instances, but as a structure and a structural history of general interest. The interviews were designed to ensure that the data they produced was useable in a way that would make it possible to understand the professional interventions sociologically and as a state-crafting grammar. Before each interview, to enable the interviewer to ask appropriate questions and thus trigger answers that were interesting and useable, the interviewer sought information about the work done by the sort of professional that was to be interviewed.58 This entailed the reading of relevant research literature. An interview guide was made. It served as a horizon for questions and possible answers. In other words, it laid bare the elements of construction and was used in a flexible way to fit the professional interviewed. The questions asked in the qualitative interviews primarily concerned the elements and dynamics of position-taking: educational and employment history; professional responsibilities and tasks; economic and structural conditions for executing the welfare work; activities and methods used in interventions; professional viewpoints and forms of knowledge; conception of normality; and, finally the purpose of the interventions and arguments used to promote preferred interventions. In general, the qualitative interviews were conducted with the aim of getting the interviewees to make boundaries; to position, contextualise and historicize their answers to get a sense of the diversity of practical logic in the field and the way it had been transformed. Furthermore, a structured interview questionnaire was used. In order to gain a more homogeneous layer of data compared with data from the qualitative interviews, the structured interviews primarily concerned dispositions in terms of potent capitals as a way to grasp the interviewees’ social, cultural, economic and general symbolic “configuration”, energy and history: their educational and employment history; their social and geographical background; their involvement in philanthropic and other associations, commissions, publications, etc.; their civil status; their social and geographical status; and the history of their partners and grandparents. In addition, a few questions probed their stances on “welfare work” and “immigrants”. The analysis of all this material is about to be done. The challenge is to convert the diversity, the oppositions and the boundary making into explicit and coherent systems of relations, for instance between positiontakings. First, it involves exploring the interview data rather than defining it theoretically, making space for data to make marks and ‘communicating’ specific and nuanced results to the general theoretical construction. The interview data will be inductively analysed and interpreted using the concept of symbolic boundary-making, 59 focusing on the symbolic



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resources that the boundaries draw on in encircling the professional task, the methods, “the immigrant”, etc., using different constructions and interpretative strategies. The symbolic boundary approach calls attention to the inductive search for symbolic boundaries between and across the professions and for the relationship of the symbolic boundaries with group structures: it clarifies principles of classification and identification, such as the way in which the professionals’ moral evaluation criteria function (in data) as distinctions based on race, citizenship status, class, place, nationality and gender in defining legitimate communities in the territory of the state.

Working with historical sources – archival data When working with archival resources, one necessarily notes that an archive already has a symbolised order. As sites for the accumulation and storage of administrative records, some archives even have their roots in the emergence of the modern nation-state. In this context, many archives are both the site of the nation’s memory and the structure of its content. Inevitably, an archive erases certain kinds of knowledge, valorises other kinds of knowledge, and privileges the national perspective. These points are particularly important because the archive is a key repository from which historical narratives are constructed. Therefore, reflecting upon the strengths and weaknesses of the sources provided by the different types of archives is warranted.60 In this section, we present the actual reflections and steps used in researching an English case in the project “Professional categorisations of normality and deviation, 1945-1970”. The main questions treated in relation to putting the theoretical model to work empirically, as presented above, are the selection and use of sources and the production of research results. The Birmingham Local Education Administration (LEA) provides an empirical and historical case based on an extensive education archive. The archive contains the documents, reports, minutes and selected correspondence of the Birmingham School Board and the various committees forming the backbone of the Birmingham Corporation. The archive also contains school records covering the 19th and 20th centuries, including photographic sources, and a variety of other documents from collections including sources from the immigrant reception centres established in post-war Birmingham. The British Nationality Act of 1948 and the Immigration Act of 1971 serve as demarcations of the period treated because these acts frame a historical state formation, including all



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its fields and struggles within the state anatomy; namely that of the emerging English welfare state. When work on the project began, there were no stipulations of which cases were to be used. The frame of the joint research project only dictated that there should be an English case in the period 1945 to around 1970. In the light of discussions with leading historians of English education, Birmingham quickly stood out as an excellent case because Birmingham enjoyed a trendsetting status in English education,61 not least with regard to immigration issues, and because Birmingham has an accessible and comprehensive archive with a vast collection of material that is relevant to the research questions pursued. The next step was to become acquainted with the research literature (and its references) on immigrants and professionals in English educational history in general and in Birmingham in particular. This step helped create a platform from which it was possible to enter into dialogue with the theoretical framework to decide which angles were worth pursuing and which angles had already been sufficiently treated in the existing literature. This platform has also served as a precursor for the creation of a position within the research field. Although the literature on immigration in England is extremely rich, it became apparent that there was no precedent for the idea of bringing the triad of state-professionalimmigrant into the same analytical field with a specific focus on practices and interventions. The third step was to set up an appointment with the chief archivist at Birmingham city archives and inform her of the research questions. She found a number of relevant archival sources, such as the education committee minutes including the ‘reception centres for immigrant children’ and the ‘registration and medical inspection of immigrant pupils’. During inspection of this material, a number of entries to other documents and collections in the archive presented themselves. These entries pertained to the active groups of professionals, their correspondence with stakeholders (parents, other professional groups, the municipal agencies, state agencies and individual politicians), reports, and the fora in which they took active part. In total, we photographed some 3,500 documents. In the overall research process, there were elements of serendipity in the search for sources: chance factors included the archivists, historians, sociologists and other relevant people with whom it was possible to make contact, the archives which were found and could be accessed, the sources that were stumbled upon in the search for other sources, the esoteric notes and references that attracted attention and the extent to which it was



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possible to procure them. However, it is important to note that this was not pure serendipity. During the course of the work, an increasing awareness of what was important in making sense of the sources was established in dialogue with the theoretical model in general and in particular with the notion of field and the relational mode of thinking. Most of all, this meant that attempts were made to place evidence and expressions in a structure in relation to other evidence and expressions of the same nature, and these structures were then related to other groups of evidence and expressions. While we cast the net widely in the attempt to uncover sources, this does not guarantee an all-exhaustive search. The possibility that chance may play a part will inevitably affect the research.

Conclusion In this article, we have argued that doing historical research demands that the research object be constructed. This in turn calls for the use of theory accompanied by critical reflections on the implications of the choice of theoretical framework: how might the research object be studied and what does the object become when studied in this manner? The underlying implication of such a stance is that historical research can benefit immensely from sociological approaches, not least because compared to the field of history, sociology is far more oriented towards theoretical reflections on the workings of the social. In a wider sense, the sociological approach will immunize historical research from the ‘closet positivism’ that still haunts the field. Furthermore, it will put forward propositions to transcend oppositions between statics and dynamics, between structure and history. Bourdieu goes all the way when he offers the following advice: “What we need, in effect, is a form of structural history that is rarely practiced, which finds in each successive state of the structure under examination both the product of previous struggles to maintain or transform this structure, and the principle, via the contradictions, the tensions, and the relations of force which constitute it, of subsequent transformations”62 This is a major demand: for instance, it would require a tremendous (and perhaps impracticable) amount of energy to compare structure by structure and field by field through time. While this change may seem provocative to some historians, the field of historical research inherently contains the anchor chain and justification for making such a move. In modern historical research, sources are not viewed as ‘windows to the past’ but as containers of contingent information. Information can only be retrieved from sources on the basis of the questions constructed by the historian, and different questions lead



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to different information. In this respect, the use of interviews and the use of written archival sources share an important common denominator. Moreover, sources may be used in a variety of contexts and in relation to various other types of sources; this is another similarity between interviews and written archival sources. Finally, sources used in historical research should always be weighed in relation to other sources, just as selecting interviewees in a field of possible interviewees should. The scales of this weighing process will depend on the research questions posed and the theoretical model used. These features of the use of sources in historical research support our main argument in this article; the research object needs to be constructed before empirical research can be undertaken and must be continually updated while it proceeds. This entails the inevitability of using theory and concepts, but in the open and flexible way proposed in this article. Even when history is being written, the object still needs to be constructed so that the “real” is not confused with the object of knowledge.63 Although the actual research conclusions have been omitted here because we are still in the process of analysing and writing, the article has been structured as a journey of historical research starting with our musings on theory and ending with glimpses into the ‘engine rooms’ of our two research projects. Mapping this journey has made it clear that the use of theory in historical research provides a substantiated foundation that explains the insights we gain and the insights we lose. Hopefully, our reflections on this journey will enable us to continuously sharpen our theoretical questions and produce theoretically grounded knowledge about how professional interventions functioned in group-making and state craft in England 1948-1971 and in Denmark 1970-2014. The implication, however, is that we do not gain insights into the ideology of professions or the professionals’ motives for doing welfare work per se. The question of ‘source cooperation’ may be addressed by reshaping theoretical questions if they call for different sources or a different use of the sources. We have provided examples of some of the differences between using interviews and using written archival sources for historical research. While there are some similarities, as pointed out above, the main difference is that interview sources must be produced by researchers in collaboration with interviewees in real time, while written archival sources are produced by others. The question is whether the type of source affects what “history” becomes as an object of study – even though the same theoretical model of the workings of the social is used.



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Notes  1

Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), 150. 2 Jim McPherson, “Theory in History May Have Uses — But Not Many,” American Journalism 22, no. 1 (2005): 139. 3 E.g Jim McPherson, “Theory in History May Have Uses — But Not Many.” 4 Per H. Hansen and Jeppe Nevers, “En Teoretisk Udfordring Til Historikerne,” in Historiefagets Teoretiske Udfordring, ed. Per H. Hansen and Jeppe Nevers (Odensen: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2004), 7–18; Lars Bo Kaspersen and Flemming Mikkelsen, “Indledning,” in Historisk Sociologi, ed. Lars Bo Kaspersen and Flemming Mikkelsen (Frederiksberg: Forlaget Sociologi, 2004), 7–14; Knut Kjeldstadli, Fortiden Er Ikke Hvad Den Har Været (Roskilde: Roskilde Universitetsforlag, 2002); Allan Megill, Historical Knowledge, Historical Error. 5 Immanuel Kant, Kritik Der Reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), ed. R. Schmidt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990), A51/B75f. 6 Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 248. 7 Knut Kjeldstadli, Fortiden Er Ikke Hvad Den Har Været, 138 (Our translation). 8 Émile Durkheim, “Préface,” Année Sociologique 2 (1899): III. 9 George Steinmetz, “Bourdieu, Historicity, and Historical Sociology,” Cultural Sociology 5, no. 1 (2011): 46. 10 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” in State/Culture – State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz (London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 57. 11 E.g. Christian Sandbjerg Hansen and Trine Øland, “The Social Making of Educational Theory: Unraveling How to Understand the Content, Emergence and Transformation of Educational Theory,” Nordic Journal of Educational History forthcoming (2014). 12 This means that they work as professionals in Denmark, but 12 out of 48 interviewed professionals are brought up, educated or professionalized in other social spaces and other nation states prior to their professionalization in Danish society and the Danish nation state. 13 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field”; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity,” Sociological Forum 25, no. 2 (2010): 197–220. 14 Lars Jakob Muschinsky, “Teoretiske Konstruktioner Af Barndom,” in Børns Liv Og Læreprocesser I Det Moderne Samfund, ed. Peter Ø Andersen and Hans Henrik Knoop (Billesø og Baltzer, 2002), 290. 15 Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 39. 16 Staf Callewaert, Bourdieu-Studier (Amager: Københavns Universitet: Institut for filosofi, pædagogik og retorik, 1997), 105–112; Loïc J. D. Wacquant, “Following Pierre Bourdieu into the Field,” Ethnography 5, no. 4 (2004): 389. In both Bèarn and Kabylie, Bourdieu for instance observed that ethnology’s structural model



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 about rules for marriage and the peasants’ marriage strategies did not correspond: the practices did not follow rules; they were shifting and not predictable, but they showed regularities in relation to the (dramatically changing) social, cultural and economic structures in which the marriages took place. 17 Bourdieu uses this term and thinks that a model may be granted the functions and properties often granted to theory, but ”only on condition that one refuses the definition given of the term [model] by the positivists, who make so much use of it” (Bourdieu et al. 1991, 52). 18 Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries, 54–55. 19 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 95. 20 (italics in original) ibid., 96. 21 Ibid., 96, 244. 22 Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries, 249. 23 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 229. 24 Ibid., 228. 25 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” 55. 26 Ibid., 53. 27 Jo Reichertz, “Abduction, Deduction and Induction in Qualitative Research,” in A Companion to Qualitative Research, ed. Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardoff, and Ines Steinke (London: Sage, 2004), 307. 28 Derek Layder, Sociological Practice. Linking Theory and Social Research (London: Sage Publications Inc., 1998), 101. 29 Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 52. 30 Pierre Bourdieu, Science of Science and Reflexivity, 72–73; Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries, 33–55. 31 Pierre Bourdieu, “I Statens Ånd. Det Byråkratiske Feltets Opprinnelse Og Struktur,” in Symbolsk Makt. Artikler I Utvalg, ed. Pierre Bourdieu and Annick Prieur (Oslo: Pax Forlag A/S, 1996), 48–77; Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field”; Loïc J. D Wacquant, Punishing the Poorࣟ: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2009); Loïc J. D Wacquant, “Crafting the Neoliberal State: Workfare, Prisonfare, and Social Insecurity”; Loïc J. D Wacquant, “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism,” Social Anthropology 20, no. 1 (2012): 66–79. 32 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” 56. 33 Ibid., 57 (Our italics). 34 Pierre Bourdieu, “I Statens Ånd. Det Byråkratiske Feltets Opprinnelse Og Struktur.”



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35 Jens Arnholtz and Ole Hammerslev, “Transcended Power of the State: The Role of Actors in Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of the State,” Distinktion: Scandinavian Journal of Social Theory 14, no. 1 (2013): 52. 36 Ibid., 45. 37 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” 58. 38 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 97. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 102. 41 Ibid., 90. 42 Andrew Woolford and Amelia Curran, “Community Positions, Neoliberal Dispositions: Managing Nonprofit Social Services within the Bureaucratic Field,” Critical Sociology 39, no. 1 (2013): 47. 43 Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, & Manners. The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992). 44 Émile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (London, New York: Routledge, 1992), 96. 45 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 95. 46 Émile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, 242–243. 47 Ibid., 242. 48 Marianne Brodersen, “Fra ’professioner’ Til ’felt for Velfærdsarbejde’,” Tidsskrift for Arbejdsliv 11, no. 3 (2009): 32–48; Thomas Brante, “The Professional Landscape: The Historical Development of Professions in Sweden,” Professions & Professionalism 3, no. 2 (n.d.): 1–18. 49 Jens Arnholtz and Ole Hammerslev, “Transcended Power of the State: The Role of Actors in Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of the State,” 54. 50 Andrew Woolford and Amelia Curran, “Community Positions, Neoliberal Dispositions: Managing Nonprofit Social Services within the Bureaucratic Field,” 46. 51 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 115–140. 52 Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field,” 66. 53 Vibeke Erichsen, “State Traditions and Medical Professionalization in Scandinavia,” in Health Professions and the State in Europe, ed. Terry Johnson, Gerald Larkin, and Mike Saks (London, New York: Routledge, 1995), 187. 54 Bolette Moldenhawer and Trine Øland, “Disturbed by the ‘Stranger’: State Crafting Remade through Educational Interventions and Moralisations,” Globalisation, Societies & Education 11, no. 3 (2013): 401. 55 Émile Durkheim, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals; Pierre Bourdieu, “I Statens Ånd. Det Byråkratiske Feltets Opprinnelse Og Struktur”; Bolette Moldenhawer and Trine Øland, “Disturbed by the ‘Stranger’: State Crafting Remade through Educational Interventions and Moralisations.”



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56 The interviews were carried out in collaboration with student research assistant, Anne Sofie Trangeled Larsen, who contributed greatly to the following discussion. 57 Francine Muel-Dreyfus, “Folkskollärare Och Socialarbetare. Metodologiska Kommentarer till Den Historiska Sociologin” (Högskolan för lärarutbildning, Stockholm, September 9, 1986); Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries; Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field”; Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, & Manners. The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. Michèle Lamont and Francine Muel-Dreyfus have both done interview studies in continuation of the work of Pierre Bourdieu and elaborating on it. – Lamont in particular focuses on the concept of symbolic boundaries. 58 Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Craft of Sociology: Epistemological Preliminaries; Pierre Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field.” 59 Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, & Manners. The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class. 60 Joan M. Schwarts and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2, no. 1 (2002): 1–19. 61 Roger Smith and Anthony Sutcliffe, History of Birmingham, vol. 3 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 332f. 62 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc J. D Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 91. 63 Gerard Noiriel, “Foucault and History: The Lessons of a Disillusion,” The Journal of Modern History 66, no. 3 (1994): 554.



CHAPTER NINE BACK TO THE FUTURE? A CALL FOR A GENEALOGY OF THE SEXUAL HYGIENE REGIMES IN UN MILITARY INTERVENTIONS MARTIN OTTOVAY JORGENSEN

After a pause in the establishment of new UN interventions during the last decades of the Cold War, the UN launched numerous military operations following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the end of the Cold War. With increasingly broader mandates and stronger regulatory powers, these interventions have intruded into the realms of internal economic and political governance in former colonies in the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia. The neoliberal focus on internal governance and economic stability also made it into the sphere of ‘peacekeeping’, reflecting also how for instance the UN Centre for Transnational Corporations that aimed at some level of regulation at least effectively perished with its integration into another organisation after pressure from especially American public and private actors.1 As a reflection of the mounting number of operations, the number of troops deployed has also increased dramatically.2 With the growing number of operations, both local and international media have taken an interest in the operations and thus uncovered ‘peacekeeping economies’, or how local female residents in the ‘mission areas’ or neighbouring countries are often sexually available to international actors through prostitution markets in restaurants, clubs, bars, and brothels as well as on the street.3 In Cambodia, for instance, the number of women working in prostitution more than tripled from approximately 6.000 to almost 20.000 women during the UN operation. In Haiti, UN soldiers brought venereal diseases to the already struggling country. The increased visibility of the problems has subsequently forced the UN to deal with the phenomenon,

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albeit with little success. Following a steady stream of scandals and corresponding attention by the UN, local NGOs (rather than governments) and the troop-contributing countries, researchers began to take an interest in the connections between interventions, sexual violence and prostitution. After a decade, research now shows that with well-organized prostitution regimes run by organised crime, sexually transmitted diseases, sexual enslavement, trafficking and sexual violence are increasingly common outcomes of the combination of the presence of UN military forces, a destroyed local economy and a neoliberal paradigm of governance. Researching these problems exclusively in post-Cold War operations, several researchers implicitly or explicitly assign these problems to the neoliberal sway over the global political economy and the institutions of global governance.4 Others see the problems merely as the unintended consequences of complex emergencies and organisational activities.5 While the global reign of neoliberalism is undoubtedly important, I argue that these problems and their local and global dynamics reflect continuities with imperial modes of governance, their combined accumulating impacts on local ideas of race and gender, and the global widening and local deepening of the global market economy. This calls for a Foucauldian genealogy of the international system, the prostitution markets and military hygiene regimes of the UN operations that centres the imperial. Given the scope of this genealogy, I will focus here on how the UN intervention in Egypt from 1956 and in the Gaza Strip from early 1957 to 1967 connected to the local prostitution markets, and how the UN military hygiene regime responded to the rise of sexually transmitted diseases against a backdrop of British and French imperialism. Although the UN intervened militarily in Korea, Congo, New West Guinea, Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt and the Gaza Strip during the Cold War, the operations of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) in Egypt and the Gaza Strip from 1957 to 1967 constitute the most interesting point of departure. Not only is this intervention the first so-called ‘peacekeeping’ operation of the UN, it is also one of the most highly praised UN operations. For instance, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lester Pearson received a Nobel Peace Prize for promoting the intervention in the UN. Glorified by the UN, the troop-contributing states and veterans alike, the operation thus makes for an ever more unsettling point of departure for a genealogy.6 The paper is organised in two parts. Initially, I outline the emergence of large-scale colonial prostitution associated with the French and British military and economic expansion into the Ottoman part of the Mediterranean. In the second part, I focus on the prostitution regimes in Cairo and Beirut

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sustained by the 70.000 UN soldiers from the UN force deployed in Egypt and the Gaza Strip from 1957 to 1967, and I explore how the UN responded with two particular military hygiene regimes.

The Rise of Colonial Prostitution and Imperial Military Hygiene Against the backdrop of the expanding formal and informal imperial frontiers of Europe and the US around the world in the 19th century and the role of the unmarried man as the main vehicle of these expansions, prostitution soon became a large-scale problem for the imperial and colonial military forces and administrations. There was often considerable tension with local communities, but the imperial and colonial officials and military commands were concerned neither with this tension, nor with the generation of spaces of gendered insecurity that followed the development of these regimes of large-scale prostitution. Due to the increase in venereal disease and the growing metropolitan criticism of the moral shortcomings in the services and the way in which they represented ‘the empire´, the upper echelons were mainly concerned with maintaining the operational capabilities of their forces through the prevention of diseases and with maintaining the racialised power regime undergirding the imperial and colonial projects. Subsequently, the British passed the Contagious Diseases Act, which sought to counter the rise in venereal disease in the colonies all over the world in the 1860s. Britain was the dominant imperial power, and other empires soon followed the British legislation with regulations that often had women with venereal diseases undergo humiliating and painful medical examinations, registration, detention and forced treatment. However, the colonial regimes did not seek to enforce the ‘hygiene regimes’ everywhere. Regulation was only enforced in areas that hosted European, American and Japanese colonial and imperial security forces or ports that were in the process of becoming trading hubs. These were nodal points in the imperial and capitalist webs. While legitimated by moral sentiments, this selective implementation indicates the less than altruistic motives behind the regime. Rather, the emphasis was imperial self-preservation.7 This was also the case in the eastern Mediterranean as the British and French imperial powers gradually impinged on the Ottoman territories, especially in Egypt. Prostitution had been common under the Ottomans, but the French and British Suez Canal project saw the canal cities of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia grow to become hotspots for gambling, drink and prostitution. With soldiers and sailors passing through in growing numbers

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from the 1860s, this development ensured that problems associated with prostitution and venereal diseases exploded. Accordingly, the authorities began to monitor and regulate female sexualities, mobilities and visibilities in these places.8 After the British occupied Egypt in 1883, the Egyptian cotton-based economy shifted further towards the industrial and Western dominated global market economy. Subsequently a process of urbanisation began. Men became mobile wage labourers, families split up, and the lack of job options for urban-based women grew due to the influx of European goods. Accordingly, sexual exploitation rooted in gendered power relations and urban prostitution increased at the turn of the century. The problem took on another level of political significance when more than 200.000 soldiers from Great Britain, India, New Zealand and Australia were deployed to Egypt during the First World War. Prostitution in general and in particular the British military brothels in Cairo and the canal cities became a sensitive topic just as the emerging Egyptian political elite was developing a national consciousness involving the intersection of ideas of nation, sovereignty and gender. Moreover, Egyptian women were entering politics and establishing a handful of feminist organisations, newspapers and periodicals. This gendered the political nationalist agenda, and the use of prostitution by both Egyptians and foreigners met fierce criticism. The involvement of Egyptian conservatives added further impetus, and the Egyptian and British authorities were under pressure to work discernibly harder to prevent diseases by using medical checks, the monitoring and policing of troubled urban areas and the prosecution of crimes relating to prostitution. The political climate thus forced revision of the legislation on rape, adultery and prostitution several times before formal independence in 1922. However, the presence of British troops and their impact on the gender order via state-licensed prostitution continued to be a delicate issue in an increasingly tense atmosphere.9 Reflecting the significance assigned to the issue, Egyptian nationalist politicians revived the negative historical discourses concerning Western soldiers in the late 1920s. As the global crisis hit Egypt in the 1930s, more women sought to survive on prostitution despite a marked increase in violence and murder perpetrated against female relatives who had become pregnant outside marriage. Nationalist sensitivities were further fuelled during the Second World War. A 30% increase in the number of women surviving by resorting to prostitution followed the arrival of rising numbers of imperial troops and the regional integration of the Egyptian economy under the western Middle East Supply centre that had assumed partial command of the Middle Eastern economies.10 In 1943, caught

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between the ‘needs’ of the British military force and the political pressure from the nationalists, the Egyptian king made prostitution illegal nationwide, save in Cairo and the canal cities where the British had amassed their troops.11 Against the backdrop of the broader post-war frustrations with the monarchy that eventually resulted in the military coup in 1952, the last state-licenced brothels in these cities were closed in 1949, and all forms of prostitution were made illegal in 1951. Although it was realised that clandestine prostitution, ‘street walkers’ and venereal diseases were not going to disappear, the new military regime in 1952 did not reverse the illegality of prostitution. Prostitution was therefore both illegal and a highly political issue when the first UN soldiers arrived in Cairo and Alexandria for their leave in 1957 or 1958.12 Prostitution was as common in Ottoman-era Lebanon as in Egypt. As in Egypt, however, the gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire and integration within the French imperial frontier changed the situation for the worse during the second half of the 19th century. Beirut was still the Ottoman provincial capital, and here the number of brothels mushroomed due to the civil war in 1860, the ensuing influx of refugees increasing the population from 50.000 to 70.000 and the arrival of French soldiers whose sexual demands shocked contemporary Beirut. Additionally, the economic orientation towards the global market economy changed socio-economic conditions, pushing thousands of people from the countryside to the city in search of work. To cope, many families forced their young and unmarried daughters to the cities to work in textile mills and factories, thus bringing in more potential bodies for the urban brothels. With the expansion of the harbour in the 1890s, the number of sailors and soldiers increased once again, as did the demand for prostitution. The brothels accordingly shifted to the centre of the city after multiple peripheral relocations, indicating the strong nexus between the international influence, the local brothels and prostitution dynamics.13 With the formal French takeover of Syria and Lebanon mandated by the League of Nations after the First World War, the French military presence once again caused a rapid increase in the number of women in prostitution and in the prevalence of venereal diseases. This resulted in a strict French regime of imperial military hygiene that came to entail monthly medical examinations for the women working in prostitution (rather than for soldiers) and distinctions between brothels with younger and older women. These regulations lasted until formal independence in 1943. However, regulation, independence and the withdrawal of the French forces after the Second World War failed to curtail prostitution. By

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1968, 75 licensed brothels in Beirut alone ‘catered’ for locals and internationals. The latter included tourists and the UN soldiers who began frequenting the brothels in Beirut in 1957.14 During the UN deployment, the UN soldiers became an integrated if militarised part of the private sector colonisation that was sweeping the shores of the eastern and southern Mediterranean countries. Primarily, this took the form of Westerners enjoying standardised beach holidays of ‘sun, sea and sand’, with a tenfold increase in tourists from 200.000 in 1950 to 2.400.000 in 1965.15 While prostitution was part of the Lebanese public debate, it was less politicised than in Egypt both because male nationalists and religious elites sidelined feminists in the 1930s and because of the religious and ethnic composition of Lebanon. This combination appears to have disabled the articulation of a connection between Lebanese women and the Lebanese nation in the way that had occurred in Egypt.16 This was also the case in Palestine, where the lower number of institutions of education and outlets for public opinion, the riots of the 1920s and 1930s and the establishment of Israel had gradually marginalised Palestinian female political voices.17 As in Egypt and Lebanon, the European military presence in Mandate Palestine from 1917 increased the demand for prostitution. More than 1.000 young Jewish girls went into prostitution once the destruction of the war had left them alone or had left their families with no other means of support. Demand was high, with a market of 20.000 British troops in Jerusalem alone. Although the troop relocation in 1919 reduced demand significantly, the new city of Tel Aviv saw the establishment of an area of brothels, licensed and medically supervised by the colonial authorities to cater for the British military presence. Registration of the women, however, never took place. The British imperial military hygiene paradigm ensured a stronger concern with the health of the troops than with the Jewish communities’ protests, which were rooted in intersecting ideas regarding nation, gender and sovereignty. With the arrival of a Jewish Commissioner in 1921, however, prostitution was banned. Nonetheless, the 1920s and 1930s saw a steady increase in the number of ungoverned brothels in expanding Tel Aviv, where growing numbers of British soldiers went when off-duty from confronting the riots in Palestine. By 1927, brothels were outlawed, and in 1936 prostitution was made illegal altogether. Consequently, Jewish women with no other means to support themselves or their families were forced to continue on their own and unprotected. Concerned about the health of its troops, or rather their ability to perform their duties, the British military authorities argued for the right to conduct searches to

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identify individual women causing infections and to carry out medical examinations. The aim was to remove infected women to towns without soldiers or even to deport them. The failure to acquire this regulatory authority became a concern for the British military during the war as more than 210.000 British troops spent their leave in Israel, particularly in Tel Aviv. Prostitution remained illegal until 1949, when the new Jewish settler colonial state re-legalised it.18 As for Palestine, the British Colonial Office feared that it was a recruiting area for the Egyptian prostitution market and that Palestinian women were therefore potential prostitutes.19 The establishment of Israel forced approximately 200.000 Palestinians into the province that would become the Gaza Strip. The war had not only ruined the area’s economy; the exiled Palestinians living as refugees with few material possessions provided a large mass of people with no income. The Israeli policy of not compensating losses due to dispossession until the late 1950s only served to reinforce the misery. Beginning in 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provided basic services for those who could be defined as refugees, although many of the original Gaza residents were almost as poor. It was probably amongst these Palestinians as well as among the poorest of the refugees that the brothels of Gaza found a supply of bodies to cater for incoming middle and upper class Egyptians buying luxury goods from Lebanon.20 By 1956, European imperialism, rising poverty levels and broken families following the region’s integration into the global market economy ensured that prostitution regimes were well established. Prostitution and venereal disease were at the heart of intersecting discourses of nation, gender and sovereignty.

The UN Military Force, Prostitution and Venereal Diseases in the Middle East Parallel to the expansion of the US and its model of capitalism, the UN and its military operations came to constitute “(…) a system of imperial multilateralism”21 in which the “functions of imperial ordering once carried out by colonial empires were internationalised as UN peacekeeping tasks”.22 In this sense, the intervention of the UN in 1956 represented more than a significant penetration of Egyptian national space. It also reflected the expanding Western frontier of imperial multilateralism in much the same way as the deployment of British and French forces in the Middle East had reflected expanding British and French imperial frontiers. Indeed, the UN

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‘top brass’ and white Commonwealth states had hoped to ‘internationalise’ the Suez Canal to safeguard Western access since 1951. The countries of Western Europe were not far behind because the canal served as the fastest route for the supply of American oil from Saudi Arabia on which they had become dependent.23 The joint British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in late October 1956 provided the occasion for the internationalisation of the canal to materialise. American UN diplomats and the UN Secretary General not only sorted out the composition of the force in confidential discussions away from the Security Council and the General Assembly.24 The UN Secretary-General also ensured that the UN took over the responsibility of reopening the Suez Canal, which Egypt had closed immediately before the British-French-Israeli invasion. This had less to do with the Egyptian economy, which had just reached a new low, than with the impetus to re-establish the flow of American oil from Saudi Arabia to Western Europe and the Commonwealth trade. The executive committee of the UN, which mainly consisted of Western and Commonwealth members, not surprisingly assigned these trade routes importance. Accordingly, the largest canal users, all Western states, lent the UN 99.93% of the funds necessary to clear the canal.25 The clearing of the canal and the deployment of a UN force on the edge of the Gaza Strip and the international frontier between Israel and Egypt thus served two functions. Firstly, it fortified the Western control of Middle Eastern oil, rather than letting the Soviet Union gain influence. In doing so, the UN intervention both kept the economies of Western Europe and therefore also the global market economy which Western Europe was a significant part of afloat, and denied the Soviet Union regional influence. The purpose, in short, was to attend to the strategic interests of the West. Given the aforementioned connections between the regional integration into the global market economy and the rise of prostitution regimes, the UN force would also come to sustain the imperial regimes of military prostitution and imperial military hygiene regimes, manoeuvring in a highly sensitive political space while seeking to regulate the bodies of women caught up in prostitution. Soon after its establishment in the Gaza Strip in March 1957, the UN force began organising weekly leave trips to Cairo. As one week of leave was ‘earned’ after each two months of service, most soldiers took one leave in Cairo and another in Beirut. From the moment they left their camps to the moment they returned, the 2-300 soldiers who went on leave each week were subject to the extraterritorial military command of the UN rather than Egyptian law – just as their imperial predecessors had been beyond local law. Upon arrival, contingents would ‘invade’ separate hotels

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to the extent possible letting for example Canadian, Danish and Indian soldiers establish a ‘colony’ although the officers ‘colonised’ a separate hotel of a higher standard.26 Egyptian female tour guides in Western dress took the soldiers on tours organised by the Egyptian regime to nightclubs such as the Auberge de Pyramides, the former king’s favourite venue in the nightlife of Cairo. Other nightclubs such as Spiro and Champagne were places of organised prostitution and thus not the destination for organised trips, yet the soldiers apparently found them without problems. The soldiers probably frequented them from the first leave trips. The UNEF Leave Administration Unit was aware of the issue of venereal diseases, but like the French and British imperial military forces before them, it was not overly concerned until the medical staff began reporting a rise in the number of registered cases of venereal disease in 1960. With an interest in letting the UN soldiers relieve themselves of as much foreign currency as possible due to a poor trade balance, the Egyptian military regime then reintroduced colonial style medical cards for women working in the nightclubs frequented by UN troops, and allowed white UN medical officers to examine these cards However, the ‘sources’ of the infections, as it turned out, were not the women in the clubs, but the so-called ‘taxi girls’, ‘street walkers’ and ‘Nile boat girls’ in the ‘dirty’ Nile River areas. Although these women were considered impossible to monitor due to their high degree of mobility and lack of presence, the military police patrols were nonetheless occasionally ordered to check the ‘dirty’ Nile River area to ‘keep them away’ from the soldiers, just as the imperial military forces of former times had ‘needed protection from the dangerous local women’.27 This expansion of UNEF extra-territorial authority thus further pierced Egyptian national space. The situation was similar in Beirut, where along with medical officers, administrators and military police for each contingent, 200 to 300 UN soldiers, would ‘invade’ Beirut each week, initially on cruise boats and later by plane. The activities included heavy drinking and, as in Egypt, visits to nightclubs such as Kit Kat and shows in Casino du Liban. The political situation in Lebanon was unstable, with people carrying concealed weapons and security forces placing barbed wire around the city. Nevertheless, Beirut, known as the ‘Paris of the Middle East’, seems to have offered more ‘temptations’ to the soldiers than ‘oriental’ Cairo. The Leave Administrative Unit attempted to organise dance parties with ‘girls’ from the American University in Beirut, from the hospitals of the city and from UNRWA, and they even arranged bi-weekly events at the Casino du Liban.28

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Once again, however, the UN was not concerned with Lebanese sensitivities regarding gender and politics, but only with the increasing number of cases of venereal disease. As in Cairo, the Leave Administrative Unit placed the ‘Red Light District’ out of bounds for the UN soldiers. Additionally, the UN military police began conducting day patrols in parts of the Beirut beach area and night patrols of the city, most likely in the area around the ‘Red Light District’. As reports mention, officers could easily gain access to the ‘Red Light District’ with their wives to show them the area, so the patrol regime of the UN police would hardly have kept the lower ranks out. In placing permanent military police outside the main hotels to avoid drunks gaining access, to prevent fights, and to prevent soldiers bringing ‘dirty’ women into the hotels, the UN force penetrated the national space of authority of the new state of Lebanon just as the French had done earlier.29 Far from content with the UN force and less pressured by the Lebanese government than their Egyptian counterparts because there was less need for foreign currency, the hotel managers of nine high-end Beirut hotels catering to the UN force complained to the UN. Soon afterwards, the services of the hotels deteriorated, and the UN Leave Administration unit in Beirut had to find new hotels for the following leave season.30 In the “area of operations”, the UN officers established an officers’ mess with a sea view in Gaza City to enjoy off-duty drinks, much like in colonial era Tel Aviv and probably also Cairo and the canal towns. Reflecting the military hierarchy, however, regulations banned the soldiers from having off-duty drinks in the officers’ mess, on the beach proper or in hotels or restaurants in the larger towns of Khan Yunis, Rafah and Gaza City. They could only drink beer sold in their camps when off-duty. That the sale of beer to ‘grunts’ was allowed only in the camps and thus away from civilians indicates that the higher ranking UN military officials were well aware that drunk soldiers often got into trouble with local Palestinian women from both the towns and the refugee camps. The main off-duty activity of the soldiers was resting in sun chairs on the Gaza beach or paddling along the shore in small boats purchased by the UN force. Some UN soldiers did nonetheless manage to get drunk and cause trouble outside the camps. In a striking case in August 1957, only a few months after the UN force was established, some soldiers got drunk outside their camp and then, on their way home, got into a fight with a handful of male villagers during what appears to have been a search for ‘girls’. Soon afterwards, a full platoon of aggravated soldiers was knocking down doors to find the villagers that had defended their daughters.31 The pattern of soldiers getting drunk outside the camps continued until 1967. On various

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occasions, soldiers got drunk on the infamous ‘Gaza Strip’ drink containing 2 decilitres of 14 different undiluted alcohols. This happened in restaurants such as the El-Andalus or El-Almal, or in hotels such as the Ramses Hotel where they were not allowed to drink, according to UN regulation. Soldiers also engaged in physical struggles with members of the UNEF military police as well as with Palestinian taxi drivers and women passing by in front of restaurants and hotels, both during the day and night.32 Whether or not soldiers from other contingents did similar things is uncertain, but it seems probable. Regardless of their actions, however, the soldiers were not subject to local law, but those of their mother countries; this was another practice continued from the imperial legal system of the British Mandate era.

Back to the future? As has been made clear, the soldiers of the first UN ‘peacekeeping’ force not only sustained the racial hierarchies of the British and French imperial forces in Cairo and Beirut when they went to purchase sex, but they also sustained the highly sensitive bodily politics of nationalism. Moreover, the UN force also reproduced the hygiene regimes of the French and British imperial forces in the attempt to maintain its capabilities as a military force. The archival records used here show that while the UNEF contingent commanders, the UNEF force commanders, the top UN leaders and the ministries of defence of the troop-contributing countries were aware of the problems, they merely settled for a ‘boys will be boys’ response, as had their imperial predecessors. For many Palestinians, Egyptians and Lebanese, however, the practices of military forces in sustaining prostitution regimes and extra-territorial rights may have been practically indistinguishable from the earlier practices of the British and French imperial forces. Further research will undoubtedly show that other Cold War operations were little different, as they were part of the same Western structures of imperial security that were “(…) not merely the historical overhangs of old empires but are reproduced as part of an imperial security system in the present”.33 The end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War gave way to the broader and deeper hold of capitalism and American global hegemony, as well as a dramatic expansion in both the numbers of UN operations and their mandate. Accordingly, the problems have worsened as the number of international military operations and troops deployed has increased and as neoliberalism has secured its grip on the Third World. Despite UN attempts to superficially gender-mainstream its operations and regulate

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access to red light districts in or near ‘mission areas’, UN military forces are today associated with prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, large scale sexual harassment, rapes, trafficking and the sexual enslavement of women and children.34 On a broader and more challenging scale, we therefore need to address the connections between capitalism, the imperial modes of governance and the modes of what we today call global governance as well as their combined influences on local ideas of race and gender. Big problems, as Frank Ankersmit points out, “(…) have long histories; and as long as we remain in the dark about these histories we shall be unable to deal with them”.35 A first step is to challenge what cultural anthropologist Walter Mignolo terms ‘coloniality’, the embedded Western control of global authority, knowledge and subjectivities and of the public sphere and economic life.36 For historians of gender, international organisations and global governance, this should be a call to arms. As Frank Ankersmit argues, such analytical political histories “(…) may show the historian how his or her professional knowledge of the past can be used to improve our contemporary political systems and overcome the dangers threatening our social and political future.”37

Notes 1

Richard Kareem Al-Qaq, Managing World Order: United Nations Peace Operations and the Security Agenda (London; New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2009), 49–69; Laura Zanotti, Governing Disorder: UN Peace Operations, International Security, and Democratization in the Post-Cold War Era (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), 14–58. 2 Philip Cunliffe, Legions of Peace – UN Peacekeepers from the Global South (London: Hurst, 2013). 3 Kathleen Jennings, “Unintended Consequences of Intimacy: Political Economics of Peacekeeping and Sex Tourism,” International Peacekeeping 17 (2010): 229– 43. 4 Kate Grady, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN Peacekeepers: A Threat to Impartiality,” International Peacekeeping 17 (2010): 215–28; Carol Harrington, “Governing Peacekeeping: The Role of Authority and Expertise in the Case of Sexual Violence and Trauma,” Economy and Society 35, no. 3 (2006): 346–80; Paul Higate, “Peacekeepers, Masculinities and Sexual Exploitation,” Men and Masculinities 10, no. 1 (2007): 99–119; Adibeli Nduka-Agwu, “’Doing Gender’ After the War: Dealing with Gender Mainstreaming and Sexual Exploitation,” Civil Wars 11, no. 2 (2009): 179–99; Ray Murphy, “An Assessment of UN Efforts to Address Sexual Misconduct by Peacekeeping Personnel,” International Peacekeeping 13, no. 4 (2006): 531–46; Oliver Simic, “Does the Presence of

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Women Really Matter? Towards Combating Male Sexual Violence in Peacekeeping Operations,” International Peacekeeping 17, no. 2 (2010): 188–99. 5 Vanessa Kent, “Protecting Civilians from UN Peacekeepers and Humanitarian Workers: Sexual Exploitation and Abuse,” in Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping Operations, ed. Chiyuki Aoi and Ramesh Thakur (Tokyo: University of United Nations, 2007), 44–66; Shukuko Koyama and Henri Myrttinen, “Unintended Consequences of Peace Operations on Timor Leste from a Gender Perspective,” in Unintended Consequences of Peacekeeping Operations (Tokyo: University of United Nations, 2007), 23–43. 6 The intervention was glorified in its active years in the UN General Assembly and later in scholarship as well as by the UN. See for instance United Nations et al., Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations. Vol. 3 (New York; London: Columbia University Press, 1973); United Nations et al., Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations. Vol. 4 (New York; London: Columbia University Press, 1975); United Nations et al., Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations. Vol.7 (New York; London: Columbia University Press, 1976); Kofi A. Annan and Nader. Mousavizadeh, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace (New York: Penguin Press, 2012). 7 Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race & Politics – Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, n.d.); Richard Philips, Sex, Politics and Empire: A Postcolonial Geography (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); Isabelle Tracol-Huynh, “Between Stigmatisation and Regulation: Prostitution in Colonial Northern Vietnam,” Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Interventions and Care 12, no. 1 (2010): 578–87; Song Youn-ok, “Japanese Colonial Rule and State-Managed Prostitution: Korea’s Licensed Prostitutes,” Positions 5, no. 1 (1997): 172–217. 8 Valeska Huber, “Colonial Seas: The ‘International’ Colonisation of Port Said and the Suez Canal and Beyond, 1869-1914,” European Review of History: Revue Européenne D’histoire 19, no. 1 (n.d.): 141–61; Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 9 Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Khaled Fahmy, “Prostitution in Nineteenth Century Egypt,” in Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene Rogan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002); Mario M. Ruiz, “Manly Spectacles and Imperial Soldiers in Wartime Egypt, 1914-1919,” Middle Eastern Studies 45, no. 3 (2009): 351–71; Irvin Cemil Schick, “Print Capitalism and Women’s Sexual Agency in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 31, no. 1 (2011): 196–216. 10 Hanan Hammad, “Between Egyptian ‘National Purity’ and ‘Local Flexibility’: Prostitution in Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra in the First Half of the 20th Century,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (2011): 751–83; Martin W. Wilmington, “The Middle East Supply Center: A Reappraisal,” The Middle East Journal 6 (1952): 144–66.

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11 Hanan Hammad, “Between Egyptian ‘National Purity’ and ‘Local Flexibility’: Prostitution in Al-Mahalla Al-Kubra in the First Half of the 20th Century.” 12 Ibid. 13 Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Jens Hannsen, “Public Morality and Marginality in Fin-de-Siécle Beirut,” in Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene Rogan (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 183–211. 14 Jens Hannsen, “Public Morality and Marginality in Fin-de-Siécle Beirut”; Samir Khalaf, “Correlates of Prostitution: Some Popular Errors and Misconceptions,” The Journal of Sex Research 4, no. 2 (1968): 174–162; Sherifa Zuhur, “Criminal Law, Women and Sexuality in the Middle East,” in Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East: Challenges and Discourses, ed. Pinar Ilkaracan (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Group, 2008), 17–40. 15 UN World Tourism Organization, Historical Perspective on World Tourism (UN World Tourism Organization), accessed September 24, 2014, http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/pdf/historical/ITA_1950_2005.pdf; Reinar Jaakson, “Globalisation and Neocolonialist Tourism,” in Tourism and Postcolonialism: Contested Discourses, Identities and Representations, ed. Colin Michael Hall and Hazel Turner (London: Routledge, 2004), 169–83. 16 Irvin Cemil Schick, “Print Capitalism and Women’s Sexual Agency in the Late Ottoman Empire.” 17 Lauren Banko, “The Creation of Palestinian Citizenship under an International Mandate: Legislation, Discourses and Practices, 1918-1925,” Citizenship Studies 16 (2012): 641–55; Ellen L. Fleischmann, “The Emergence of the Palestinian Women’s Movement”, 1929-1939,” Journal of Palestine Studies 29 (2000): 16– 32; Ela Greensberg, Preparing the Mothers of Tomorrow: Education and Islam in Mandate Palestine (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). 18 Deborah Bernstein, “Gender, Nationalism and Colonial Policy: Prostitution in the Jewish Settlements of Mandate Palestine, 1917-1948,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 1 (2012): 81–100; Margalit Shilo, “Women as Victims of War: The British Conquest (1917) and the Blight of Prostitution in the Holy City,” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 6, no. 1 (2003): 72–83. 19 Gorman, D. “Empire, Internationalism and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s.” Twentieth Century British History 19 (2008): 205. 20 Supplement to the twelfth progress report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, 24/11/1952 (A/2216/Add. 1), the fifteenth progress report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine, 4/10/1956 (A/3199), the Special Report of the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, 15/12/1956 (A/3212/Add.1), Paul Cossali and Clive Robson, Stateless in Gaza, (London: Zed Books, 1986) 19-20 and Shachar, Nathan: “The Gaza Strip: Its History and Politics”, Sussex Academic Press, 2010, p. 67. 21 Philip Cunliffe, Legions of Peace – UN Peacekeepers from the Global South, 2.

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Ibid., 249. “Memorandum for the maintenance of peace and security – Suez Canal Area” 14 December 1951, Suez Canal Area, Office for Special Political Affairs, S-10660001-0007, UN Archives. 24 “Memorandum of a Conversation, Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s Office, UN Secretariat Building, New York”, Suez Crisis, July 26–December 31, 1956, 1955–1957, Volume XVI, Foreign Relations of the United States. 25 “Meeting for Advisory Committee of UNEF” 4 January 1957, Advisory Committee Verbatim Records on the United Nations Emergency Force, Microfilm of Andrew Cordier Papers, Missions and Commissions - Middle East, United Nations Commissions, Committees and Conference Files of the Secretary-General Trygve Lie, S-0848-0001-0001, UN Archives and UN A/3719. 26 “Commandant LAU Cairo to Chief Administrative officer” 2 December 1960, Cairo Leave Center, 1960-1962, Additional CAO Files, UNEF, S-1773-00000043, UN Archives (UNA), “Periodical report from LAU Cairo to Chief Administrative Officer” 3 February 1961, Cairo Leave Center, 1960-1962, , Additional CAO Files, UNEF, S-1773-0000-0043, UNA, “Instructions on leave trains from Movement Control Detachment Cairo to HQ Military Personnel Gaza” 24 December 1964, Leave Centre, Cairo 1964-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0013-0001, UNA, “Message from Commander UNEF Major General I. J. Rikhye to UnderSecretary of Special Political Affairs Ralph Bunche on leave centres“ 13 October 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNA, “Weekly Leave Report from LAU Cairo to Chief Military Personnel” , 8 April 1967, Leave Centre, Cairo 1964-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0013-0001, UNA and Kjeldsen, Niels, Fredens Soldater ( Hjemmeværnsfonden, 1958, pp. 12-47. 27 “Letter on nightclubs from LAU to Chief Admin. Officer” 16 November 1960, Cairo Leave Center, 1960-1962, Additional CAO Files, UNEF, S-1773-00000043, UNA and “Periodical Administrative Report from LAU to Chief Administrative Officer”5 May 1961, Cairo Leave Center, 1960-1962, Additional CAO Files, UNEF, S-1773-0000-0043, UNA. 28 “Chief of Military Personnel to Chief Finance Officer, Chief Procurement Officer, Chief Logistics Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Provost Marshal and Movement Control on Organization of Leave Season in Beirut” 5 March 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNA, “Message on Planning of leave season from Chief of Military Personnel to Chief of Staff“ 1 March 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNA and “Chief of Military Personnel to Chief Finance Officer, Chief Procurement Officer, Chief Logistics Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Provost Marshal and Movement Control on Organization of Leave Season in Beirut” 5 March 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNA. 29 “Charter of Duties for LAU Beirut” 1 December 1958, Beirut - Leave Centre, Beirut 1957-1963, UNEF Related Offices, UNEF, S-0530-0011-0011, UNA, “Report from Commandant LAU Beirut to DANLO” 29 August 1962, Beirut Leave Centre, Beirut 1957-1963, UNEF Related Offices ,UNEF, S-0530-00110012, UNA, “Leave Planning Message on 17th Group from Chief of Military 23

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Personnel to LAU Beirut” 20 September 1963, Beirut - Leave Centre, Beirut 19571963, UNEF Related Offices, UNEF, S-0530-0011-0012, UNA and “HQ Welfare Officer to Chief of Staff UNEF” 3 June 1961, Beirut Leave Center, 1960-1962, Additional CAO Files, UNEF, S-1773-0000-0042, UNA . 30 “Hygiene Inspection Report from LAU Beirut to HQ UNEF”, 17 July 1963, Beirut 1957-1963, Beirut - Leave Centre, UNEF Related Offices, UNEF, S-05300011-0013 UNA, “George Awad Hotel Manager at Anglo Suisse to LAU Commandant” 8 May 1963, Beirut 1957-1963, Beirut - Leave Centre, UNEF Related Offices, UNEF, S-0530-0011-0013, UNA, “Message on Planning of leave season from Chief of Military Personnel to Chief of Staff“ 1 March 1966, Leave Centre Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNA, “Chief of Military Personnel to Chief Finance Officer, Chief Procurement Officer, Chief Logistics Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Provost Marshal and Movement Control on Organization of Leave Season in Beirut” 5 March 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, UNA, “Annex a to contract between UNEF and Lebanon transport” Un-dated 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, Leave Centre, Beirut, 1965-1967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNEF and “Message from Commander UNEF Major General I. J. Rikhye to Under-Secretary of Special Political Affairs Ralph Bunche on leave centres” 13 October 1966, Leave Centre, Beirut, 19651967, UNEF, S-0530-0012-0003, UNA. 31 “Lease contract LA 78”, Beach Club 1964-1967, Legal and Political Adviser, S1774-0000-200, UN Archives, “Investigation report from UNMO to Chairman, Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission“ 27 July 1957, EIMAC, Complaints and Investigations July 1957 to December 1957, Area Files - Gaza Strip, Political Affairs, EIMAC, S-0375, UNA and Kristiansen, Preben, Danske Soldater i Gaza og Congo (Fremad, 1962), 19-48. 32 “Investigation Report from UNEF Military Police Company to Chief of Military Personal HQ UNEF” 11 November 1963, DANOR-Bataljonen i Gaza, F. Afhøringsrapporter 1963-1965, Pakke F1, Arkiv Nr. 280-163, FN-Afd., “Incident Report from COY 5 to DANO BN XV” 6 December 1963, DANOR-Bataljonen i Gaza, F. Afhøringsrapporter 1963-1965, Pakke F1, Arkiv nr. 280-163, FN-Afd., “DANOR BN Afhøringsrapport”, 4/1/1964, DANOR-Bataljonen i Gaza, F. Afhørings-rapporter 1963-1965, Pakke F1, Arkiv Nr. 280-163, FN-Afd., “DANOR STAFF COY Interrogation Report” 5 May 1965 and DANOR BN Interrogation report 21/9/1965, DANOR-Bataljonen i Gaza, FN-Afd., Arkiv Nr. 280-163, F. Afhøringsrapporter 1963-1965, pakke F1 and “United Nations Emergency Force Offence Report” 27 April 1965, F. Straffesager 1963-1966, Pakke F1 Arkiv, Nr. 280-161, FN-Afd. 33 Philip Cunliffe, Legions of Peace – UN Peacekeepers from the Global South, 29. 34 Kate Grady, “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by UN Peacekeepers: A Threat to Impartiality”; Carol Harrington, “Governing Peacekeeping: The Role of Authority and Expertise in the Case of Sexual Violence and Trauma”; Paul Higate, “Peacekeepers, Masculinities and Sexual Exploitation”; Ray Murphy, “An Assessment of UN Efforts to Address Sexual Misconduct by Peacekeeping

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Personnel”; Adibeli Nduka-Agwu, “’Doing Gender’ After the War: Dealing with Gender Mainstreaming and Sexual Exploitation.” 35 Frank Ankersmit, “A Manifesto for Analytical Political History,” in Manifestos for History, ed. Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, and Alan Munslow (London: Routledge, 2007), 186. 36 Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledge and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 37 Frank Ankersmit, “Manifesto for An Analytical Political History,” in Manifestos for History, ed. Keith Jenkins, Sue Morgan, and Alan Munslow (London: Routledge, 2007), 194.

CHAPTER TEN DAMÜLS, VORARLBERG: 100 YEARS OF TRANSFORMATION FROM MEADOWS TO SKI-ROUTES IN AN ALPINE ENVIRONMENT ROBERT GROǺ

John K. Walton has labelled tourism “an outstandingly significant current phenomenon, the world's largest and most dynamic industry, a leading sector both in continuing globalisation and the generation of cultural resistance to its implications, with the capacity to create enormous environmental footprints and to transform cultures in ways that are hard to predict (…).”1 Tourism produces global flows of capital, people, and knowledge and thereby fundamentally transforms materiality, social relations, communities and life-worlds. In the year 2000, tourism was globally “the largest industry, in terms of employment and trade, and it is already having profound environmental consequences.”2 This paper presents the environmental history of the winter tourism destination Damüls, a village in Austria’s westernmost province Vorarlberg. Like many other Alpine villages, Damüls was almost given up as a permanent settlement in the early 20th century, due to the industrialization of the valleys. The first skiers arrived in the early 1920s, demanding lodging and catering. In the decades after 1945, the village underwent a transformation from a high Alpine farming community that was close to collapse into one of the most profitable service centres in Austria. In the 1990s, after five decades of economic and material growth, the ski resort faced due to anthropogenic climate change increasingly unreliable snow fall and weather, which was counteracted by technology. This paper deals with the question of how materiality can be integrated into historiography. Practice theory is used as analytical tool for this interdisciplinary study, which aims to make insights from physical

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environmental history communicable to social and cultural historians. The most striking challenge in this study is the conceptualization of materiality. In this paper, Michel Foucault’s concept of the dispositive was adopted to frame artefacts and materiality as part of a wider nexus of discursive and non-discursive practices. From an environmental historian’s perspective, the tourism dispositive is tied to the industrialization of western societies, which can be characterized by a shift in societal energy consumption patterns. A range of non-discursive practices and the materiality in which practices are embedded depends on the availability of energy. While dispositive research is typically carried out in discourse analytical studies, this paper does not present the results of such an investigation. Rather, the dispositive framework is used as a conceptual tool to discuss the role of materiality in shaping human history.

Narrating links between nature and society As environmental historians, we seek to trace relations between society and nature in the past and link them to people’s perceptions of nature. Moreover, environmental historians try to elucidate the roots of recent environmental problems such as the degradation of ecosystems, biodiversity loss, climate-change and land use change. This poses a twofold challenge for the study of tourism. “Nature” has to be conceptualized as an independent parameter of history without being reduced to a social construct, but at the same time the social construction of “beautiful landscapes” as an integral part of the tourism industry has to be accounted for. A dialectical approach allows these two seemingly contradictory conceptualizations to be combined, allowing us to grasp the entangled nature of “environment”.3 Historians have tended to neglect the nexus of nature and society.4 Predominantly, scholars have subscribed to human exemptionalism, advocating “that because humans, and only they, have culture, they are exempt from many biogeophysical laws and constraints.”5 Within this paradigm, “certain kinds of questions are askable and certain hypotheses are conceivable.”6 These dispositions have acted as a perceptual and intellectual matrix to constrain historians: for a long time, historiography has ignored the possibility that humans might be part of the ecological web of life and depend on other species. Not so environmental historians. In 1990, environmental historian Donald Worster suggested a focus on three levels of interaction. “Nature” and its perception and conception by natural scientists, namely ecologists and biologists, is important for environmental historians. Likewise important is “society” with regard to factors such as race, class, gender,

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age and health status. Another discriminator is the mode of production, for example the distinction between hunter-gatherer societies, agrarian societies and industrial society. The third aspect that Worster suggests should be integrated into the study of human history is the perception of “nature” and of symbolic codes such as ethics, law, and myths, which together form a “cognitive map” of the world and its resources. The challenge is to develop cross-linkages between these three aspects.7 Given such a broad view of human history, exemptionalism is not possible, as “humans are but one species in the biotic communities that shape our social life.” The interaction works both ways, Human activities produce side effects on plant and animal species, on soil dynamics or on river dynamics, and “these might well be beyond the repair-capacities of humans, despite their technical advancements.”8 Environmental history, in short, takes into account the biogeophysical and all other material ramifications of the social. Social scientists Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens and Theodore Schatzki have developed frameworks for understanding materiality and artefacts as indispensable elements of social practices. The analysis of dispositives, which emphasizes the material aspect of discursive and non-discursive human action, allows an approach to human interaction with the material world which goes beyond the question of side effects. According to Michel Foucault, the constitution of a dispositive is accompanied by a twofold process. The prevalence of a strategic target initiates the process, and this is followed by functional over-determination, aiming at the realization of the target by increasing rationality, efficiency and the legitimacy of certain measures. The realized order can then be reutilized by other actors for diverse socio-political interventions. This reutilization as a side effect of the dispositive can hardly be imagined by actors before it takes place. It is almost incalculable in advance. Michel Foucault termed this second process “strategic reinstatement”. Together, the two processes build a dispositive which exists to develop, stabilize, destabilize or utilize power relations by a concerted action.9 However, the material aspect of the triangle of the dispositive has hitherto often been considered as a given; its role in the discursive formation of power relations has been acknowledged, but less so the effects of a changing materiality on the practices of the discourse. This paper aims to offer insights from environmental history to further develop the Foucault-inspired analysis of dispositives as a means to elucidate the ways power relations are structured, produced, reproduced and bound through the materiality in which they are enmeshed. Environmental historians use refinements of practice theory as suggested

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by Andreas Reckwitz, who follows Michel de Certeau’s proposition that materiality matters for culture. According to Reckwitz, practice theoreticians systematically criticize the disembodiment and dematerialization of the social world brought about by the marginalization of artefacts and materiality that is typical for many social and cultural theories. Practice theory offers a “third way” between two types of reductionist tendencies: (1) treating matter as purely socially constructed and (2) Marxian base-and superstructure concepts. A practice, considered as a knowledge-dependent habit, implies a bodily actor and material artefacts. Both are interwoven. The actor incorporates into his/her body ways of knowing and doing practices. Material artefacts are implemented by the actor to carry out and reproduce practices. 10 What Reckwitz is missing here and what dispositive analysis offers is the production and reproduction of power relations via embodied or materialized discursive practices. Historians Tony Benett and Patrick Joyce draw attention to the question of how material agency interacts “with human agency.”11 They point out that artefacts and materiality reveal a kind of “mute power”.12 By doing so, they emphasize the role of materiality and artefacts. Benett and Joyce argue that not only do bodily actors and practices shape materiality and artefacts but also that changes in artefacts and materiality can affect social practices. Reckwitz illustrates this effect by quoting Marshall McLuhan and the example of the press. Printed books enabled certain labor and education practices.13 Verena Winiwarter and Martin Schmid have further advanced this argument. As environmental historians, they deal with the long-term development of the Viennese waterscape. They have studied the impact that large-scale infrastructures had on the development of the city, but also how they altered hydro-ecosystems.14 Winiwarter and Schmid conclude that “[w]e are bound to the maintenance of our [artefacts]; legacies of earlier interventions [into artefacts …] have profound impact on our and our descendants’ practices.”15 While these infrastructures do not become autonomous agents of history, they do“[…] acquire momentum. They have a mass of technical and organizational components, they possess direction, or goals; and they display a rate of growth suggesting velocity.”16 Foucault-inspired approaches to the study of materiality as part of dispositives could benefit from environmental history approaches in which single artefacts are considered as embedded in larger biophysical arrangements, interwoven by discursive and nondiscursive practices (e.g. labor) but also by flows of energy and matter. This article aims to highlight the role of large-scale infrastructures such as networks of ski lifts in the Alps and the way in which their feedback results in a differentiation of non-discursive practices. Large-scale

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infrastructures “have exerted and exert a powerful and lasting influence on all levels of organizations of modern societies.”17 Very often, institutional effects accompany the construction and maintenance of large-scale infrastructure. Large private companies or publicly funded organizations have to be set up to manage such infrastructures.18 Over the past decades, ski lift companies in the Alps have produced considerable employment effects. Consequently, public authorities funded them as a measure to fight local unemployment and the depopulation of peripheral, Alpine regions. The analysis of large-scale infrastructure in times of socio-economic change reveals their inertness, which results from spatio-temporal binding of social structures to materiality.19 This binding of society and material structures has been described by scholars as “lock-in” into a development path.20 Lock-in effects keep a development on track, even though more profitable alternatives exist economically, ecologically or socially.21 In Alpine villages, lock-in effects are most visible when it comes to the overlapping dispositives of the ski lift industry, the local labor market, the accommodation sector, and weather- and climate conditions. In this article, I suggest an alternative perspective on “lock-in” and “path dependency” by analyzing how the tourism dispositive came into existence in Damüls and how it structured and stabilized the relations between farmers, tourism actors and materiality. Analyzing material aspects of a dispositive entails studying how societies use materiality to rule over “nature”. Energy plays a pivotal role because energy consumption is the basis of non-discursive practices such as labor, mobility, production, and construction. Figure 1 depicts the changing per capita energy consumption in Austria from 1830 to 2010 to show how the energy basis for the material part of dispositives profoundly changed over the period in question. The figure shows that per capita energy consumption increased by a factor of 8 during the period, but the time series also reveals a gradual change from biomass to fossil fuel and electricity consumption. To a large extent, the considerable rise in energy consumption was made possible by the use of coal, oil and natural gas.22 Using energy consumption as an indicator enables us to distinguish a biomass-based agrarian mode until the mid-19th century and a coal based industrial mode until the 1950s, followed by an oil, electricity and natural gas based (post) industrial mode.23 Each mode is characterized by typical materials involved in a broad array of practices, ski sport being just one such practice. Wood, steel and plastic can be considered as materials signifying the modes of production based on different energy carriers. The iconic material of the post-industrial mode is plastic, synthesized from oil. As early as 1965, the German journal “Der

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i Austria. Figure 10.1: Long-term devvelopment of technical energyy consumption in Source: Krauusmann F. and D. D Wiedenhofer 2014 (pers. C Com.) Updated version of the energy serries presented in i Krausmann et e al. 2003.

Spiegel” annnounced thatt skis made of o plastic woould soon rep place skis produced frrom wood or metal.24 In 1935, 1 plastic as a raw maaterial for skiing equippment had beeen unthinkablle. In 1935, thhe famous alp pine sport writer Luis T Trenker predicted that steell skis would reevolutionize ski s sports. Steel is a very prominennt material in the industriaal mode of prroduction, and its masss production is inherently y tied to the use of coal. Skis had originally been made of wood.25 In tu urn, skis as aartefacts shaped skiing practices, paarticularly thee way of contrroling and cooordinating the interplay of the skierr’s body and the terrain. Wooden skiss were more than two meters longg, needed a loot of muscle power p and brooke easily. They were constructed to support ascent in deep p snow but w were rather diifficult to navigate doownhill on grroomed ski sllopes. In cont ntrast, steel sk kies were more robustt and elastic than t wood an nd fitted downnhill skiing better, b but were very exxpensive.26 Skkis made of plastic combinned the benefitts of both materials annd were muchh cheaper in production.277 The examplle of skis demonstratees that artefaacts and non--discursive prractices are tied t to a

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society’s energy base but – in the case of skiing - also to the tourism dispositive. Changes in the energy basis of a society do not explain social change monocausally. Rather, they direct attention to specific qualities of artefacts as part of the overall mode of production. Donald Worster has argued that “the capitalist era in production introduced a new, distinctive relation of people to the natural world.”28 This new relation is neither solely a result of a shift in the energy basis, nor simply a novel cultural way of conceptualizing the natural world as resource. Rather, the relation of human bodies to the natural world is mediated by (a) novel materials, enabling artefacts with novel qualities; (b) an overwhelming increase in the number of artefacts; (c) the capitalist mode of production as a frame for the cultural significance of artefacts and their material qualities. Consequently, we experience the natural world in different ways today than in earlier periods.29 Winter tourism can be conceptualized as the consumption of a place, specifically mediated by the materiality of skis, by strategies to control the skier’s body and also by discursive practices.30 In the 1930s, wooden skis were interpreted by authors as a basic invention of humanity, comparable to the wheel or bow and arrow.31 Thus, skiing was perceived as a heroic act of (mostly) Germans, who consumed places by measuring their strength in challenging Nordic-type environments. The material and technical adaptation of skis transformed ski sports and the ways in which skiers consumed places. They began to crave “speed, security, and convenience.”32 As for the material aspect, energy plays an important role when it comes to fulfilling skiers’ desires. Fossil fuel is embodied in the construction materials of the dense web of ski lifts, hotels and roads, which is superimposed on a once predominantly agro-pastoral landscape. Hence, energy influences the tourism dispositive.

Damüls in transformation The most characteristic material feature of Damüls is its position in a small valley surrounded by mountains. The village area ranges from 1400 to 2100 meters; precipitation is high and local climate is characterized by strong seasonal variation in temperature. In the 19th century, these constraints limited the array of agricultural practices to forestry, dairy farming and some rye cultivation. 33 The inhabitants compensated for the limits on local agriculture by importing flour and grain; this involved a six to seven hour walk on their way back from markets in the Rhine valley. Furthermore, they manipulated the carrying capacity of the area by

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temporary migration. In particular, poorer families sent their children to other countries to earn money over the summer.34 A worsening climate in the period from 1810 – 183535 led to even more precipitation and lower temperatures. This made the cultivation of rye impossible and resulted in smaller hay harvests, which hampered dairy farming. Inhabitants avoided a subsistence crisis by integrating potato cultivation into their agricultural repertoire.36 While the inhabitants of Damüls introduced potatoes, the nearby Rhine Valley, the major lowland region of the province, became part of a growing network of railway tracks. Textile manufacture in the Rhine valley boomed, exerting demographic pull effects on the mountains. Substantial out-migration prevailed in Damüls as early as 1880.37 After less than four decades of out-migration, farmers gave up the cultivation of potatoes. They also reduced the number of cattle considerably; less intensive grazing replaced work-intensive haying. Many farmhouses and alpine cabins were forsaken. In some cases, they would later be re-used as alpine huts for skiers, but most of them decayed.38 Damüls approached demographic collapse. At the time of this crisis, a growing number of tourists came from German cities by railway to the Alps in Vorarlberg. These tourists recognized that wide, cleared, sunny hillsides were very common. In combination with the abundance of snow, this meant that Vorarlberg, and with it Damüls, was discursively reinterpreted as an ideal winter sports location after WWI. Before WWI, the Alps had served predominantly as a summer destination. Winter tourism became popular after 1918 due to a boom in skiing. Whole regiments of young men had been trained to ski during the war. Skiing now had a positive image. It was associated with individual liberation, psychological cleansing and physical strengthening.39 Moreover, the film industry, which had developed the genre of “Bergfilm” [mountain film], popularized skiing as a lifestyle.40 Damüls became part of the “mental topography” of skiers in 1924 when the village was connected to a famous ski route linking the Rhine valley with the Arlberg region.41 Back then, the Arlberg was one of the best-known ski resorts in the Alps, as it had served as the scenery for the film “Der weiße Rausch–Neue Wunder des Schneeschuhs” [The White Flame–New Miracles of the Snowshoe] with Leni Riefenstahl, produced by Arnold Fanck in 1931. The discovery of the wintry Alps by film-makers is only one instance of the important role played by the mass media in the constitution of the tourism dispositive. Daily newspapers, specialized winter tourism journals and the professionalization of winter tourism advertising are others.42 According to John Urry, this discourse stimulated tourists to transport their bodies

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into the landscapes described.43 From this point on, skiers flocked to Damüls, demanding food and lodging. The provincial government was very skeptical. The authorities feared that skiers with a loose sexual morale would threaten catholic-conservative values in the farming villages.44 However, the Council of Ministers in Austria convinced conservative members of the provincial government, arguing that tourism possessed a unique potential to attenuate depopulation in peripheral regions. Subsequently, money was provided to organize province-wide, concerted tourism advertising campaigns and to aid the erection of hotels and guesthouses.45 Each dispositive has a dominant strategic function.46 In Austria, economic experts perceived the development of a winter tourism industry as the most promising measure to compensate for the large deficit of foreign currency which was threatening the political stability of the successor state of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In this situation, tourism was expected not only to aid the development of peripheral regions. Foreign currency from tourists would also finance imports of raw materials, food and fuels. In this early period of tourism in Damüls, farmers were politically powerful but economically depressed. The power of farmers rested mainly on land property. Tourism entrepreneurs began to dominate village politics due to their ability to employ people and to invest in infrastructure. However, the tourism boom hit a bottleneck in Damüls in the overall economic depression of the interwar years and was constrained by the lack of a winter-proof road.47 In the early stage of winter tourism in Damüls, foodstuff for the guesthouses with their rapidly increasing number of tourists was primarily provided by local farmers. Meat, milk, cheese, butter and honey on tourist tables were locally produced. In the 1930s, farmers thus profited from the new economic practice. As nodes of a network of producers and consumers, the guesthouses directed flows of biomass from farmers to customers. Agro-pastoral practices and tourism practices as well as particular energy consumption patterns co-existed in Damüls in the 1930s. Alois Madlener, the owner of the guesthouse “Berggasthaus Madlener” built a small river power plant. He supplied guesthouses with modern amenities such as electric lightning, heating and kitchen machines, thereby modernizing practices of accommodation and catering.48 In contrast, farmers had to wait until 1945 to be integrated into the state-funded power distribution network, which is but one indicator of the growing materialized social power of tourism actors. When told as environmental history, the story of Damüls results in an analytical interest in the role of energy. Coal fueled the production of

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artefacts and the building of infrastructure (e.g. railways) in the late 19th and early 20th century, but thereafter oil substituted coal as the prime energy carrier. Once oil began to fuel the combustion engines of construction machinery in the 1930s, roads, bridges, tunnels and avalanche barriers began to pervade agro-pastoral landscapes. However, the situation changed considerably in the 1950s, when the relative price of energy decreased markedly, leading to a profound change of practices but also of materiality. This process was called the “1950s syndrome”.49 The 1950s syndrome influenced practices and materiality in the periphery in three ways. First, the practices of mobility changed from a linear mode of operation (railway) or animal-driven mobility to practices of car mobility. In the post-war decades, travel intensity in Europe and to the Alps increased dramatically.50 But the 1950s syndrome also had local impact. In 1952, a winter-proof road to Damüls was finally built and a mechanized communal snow clearing service was established.51 Second, the relative decline of energy prices fostered the integration of the periphery into networks of hydroelectric power plants and transnational power grids, thereby considerably affecting tourism practices. Electric T-bar lifts, cable cars and chair lifts were the most visible local sign of the 1950s syndrome. Third, the spatial reorganization of agriculture had an effect on the distribution of networks of mobility arrangements and on the associated transport practices in the Alps. Alpine farmers lost their ability to compete with lowland farmers and local flows from the farming to the tourist sector were cut. As a result, alpine farming dwindled. In this crisis, farmers did not leave Damüls but began to participate in winter tourism. After 1945, a considerable number of farmhouses and meadows were integrated into the tourism dispositive by discursive and non-discursive practices. Advertising photography was a particularly important way in which existing haystacks, farmhouses and snowy meadows were absorbed discursively into the produced and reproduced dispositive. A (techno)romantic image of Damüls was created via visual and textual communication. These pictures framed tourists’ expectations, perceptions and actions.52 Meadows and alpine huts were physically altered via nondiscursive practices to increase economic returns and satisfy local labor markets. These two processes were intrinsically tied to each other, as the first T-bar lift built in 1957 illustrates (Fig. 10.2). The T-bar lift was the result of physical labor input to organize the component parts (e.g. metal shoring, motor, cables, T-bars, ropes, etc.) into existing materiality. The lift served as a popular motif in tourism advertising. The photograph depicts the ski lift in bird’s eye view, which suggests both sublimity and domination to the beholder.53 In this way, a

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Figure 10.2: T-bar lift in Damüls/Austria. Picture postcard produced by Risch-Lau in 1957. The provincial library of Vorarlberg (Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek). With permission of the copyright holder Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek

techno-structure which connoted something exceedingly modern was inserted into the Alpine imagery with its romantic connotations. Ski lifts visually modernized Alpine imagery.54 The ski lift depicted in the photograph served two purposes: it offered inhabitants the possibility to identify themselves with modernity, and it invited them to distance themselves from their agrarian past, which had become increasingly associated with the fear for survival.55 For inhabitants and tourists alike, such photographs served as instruction manuals for the modern nondiscursive practice of skiing. Downhill skiing had little in common with the traditional “cross country skiing” [skilaufen] of the interwar years. On lifts, skiers floated physically disburdened of the ascent, and afterwards they rushed downhill [skifahren]. Skiers gained downhill skills much faster than before.56 Moreover, the ski lift also disciplined skier’s bodies. It led to a concentration of a growing number of skiers on a clearly defined slope between the mountain and the valley station. As a result, ski lift operators found it easier to manage tourists, and conflicts between skiers and property holders were minimized.57 Damüls is a telling example of processes of differentiation of practices and of the transformation of materiality and artefacts. As early as 1960, the first chair lift was erected on the Alpe Uga, opening a terrain, which

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provided extraordinary landscape sensations to skiers. The European Recovery Program (ERP), commonly known as the Marshall Plan, had financed the lift. To ski lift operators, the ERP was merely an official funding scheme. Nevertheless, when the ministry of trade funded a ski lift, the tourism dispositive was coupled to US high efficiency models, reflecting an ideology of freedom and peace established through economic growth.58 When the chair lift was opened, the operating company soon realized that the majority of leisure skiers were not able to cope with the harsh environmental conditions of the steep mountainside. The chair lift was unviable and ski lift operators were threatened by insolvency. At this point, the national ski lift and winter tourism industry had reached a size that fostered a supply industry developing products such as snow groomers. Within only a few years, snow groomer production mushroomed in Austria because of the unsatisfactory economic efficiency of ski lifts in many places in the Alps. Damüls was by no means a singular case. When the ski lift operator in Damüls purchased a snow groomer in 1967, economic returns increased considerably.59 Groomed ski slopes were a huge attraction for skiers. The material impact of the snow groomer on slope quality increased the carrying capacity of the slopes. The ski lift company could raise the transport capacity of the ski lifts and thus boost the economic efficiency of the ski area. The integration of snow management by machines was just the beginning of the increasing technologization of the skiing area in Damüls. In 1980, five ski lifts with a transport capacity of 5000 riders per hour serviced the area. In 1987, two further lifts were built. Between 1984 and 1996, the ski lift operators mainly enlarged transport capacities, but then the first chair lift carrying four skiers in one chair was built. In 2000, Damüls and the neighbuoring village Mellau were joined into one network of slopes and lifts. The ski lift company built three new chair lifts, a ski tunnel and a series of avalanche barriers. Many trees were felled, and cliffs were blasted to construct ski slopes. The new combined area was the third biggest ski arena within the province, with a transport capacity of 20.000 riders per hour in 2010.60 The fossil fuel-based tourism mode of production deeply altered the role of Damüls in the regional economy. While the inhabitants had been termed “Armahüsler” (people living in a poorhouse) or “Boanager” (people gnawing on bones) in the beginning of the 20th century, in 2014 Damüls is amongst the five richest communities in Austria in terms of tax incomes.61 By an array of practices, ski lift operators were able to balance fluctuations in snow availability, temperature and precipitation within a certain range. However, the limitations of their practices became evident

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when snow-covered periods within the Alps declined considerable in the late 1980s. Global competition aggravated the crisis of winter tourism caused by snow-shortage, thus increasing the vulnerability of the industry. Most winter sport destinations were in debt, both on the community level and on the level of the individual tourism business. When ridership on Damüls ski lifts declined by about 66 percent in the winter season 1989/90, the ski lift operator incurred an economic loss of about ATS 14 Million (approximately € 1 Million). Damüls combatted the threat of declining numbers of tourists by installing a snow system in 1991. Water for snow for 11 percent of total slope area came from the alpine creek Argenbach, integrating it into a network of pumps, hydrants, pipes and snow cannons. Over only two decades, the area under artificial snow was increased to 80 percent (2010). The necessary amount of water has outstripped the capacity of the small creek by far. Consequently, a freshwater storage pond had to be dug on the Alpe Uga. This was but one environmental legacy of snow making in Damüls. A secondary effect resulted from the cost of snowmaking. Bumpy parts of the slopes were straightened to keep the expensive artificial snow from accumulating in recesses, and bumps were levelled to avoid heightened exposure to sun, which might otherwise result in earlier melting. Soil was moved from the bumps to troughs, and then the bared spots were re-vegetated with seeds with a preference for species that resembled the local flora. In the late 1990s, the ski lift cooperation realized that this technique was not only ineffective with regard to the intended effect but also increased erosion. In response, they improved their intervention strategy, cut turf bricks when removing bumps, stored them during the excavation work, and then replaced them.62 The result of this intervention was a straightened slope, perfectly fitted to the needs of efficient snow management and to the maximized conservation of local plant biodiversity.

How farmers turned bad into good The transformative effects of the material elements of tourism dispositives and their effects on villages such as Damüls can be studied by emphasizing the role of infrastructure and investigating how materiality has shaped non-discursive practices. In the process, the side effects of nondiscursive practices altering materiality become visible. These side effects can be conceptualized as a twofold process of “functional overdetermination” and “strategic reinstatement”. In this section, counteractive non-discursive practices are discussed to point out how some negative implications of ski lift development were turned into positive effects.

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When the first T-bar lift in Damüls was built in 1958, the area was predominantly used for Alpine agricultural practices. By the late 1950s, none of the farmers could sustain their livelihood in this way alone.63 Farmers were economically dependent on ski lift companies, but the growing ski slopes began to challenge them. A skier on a slope could pass over the property of a dozen owners within a couple of minutes. Initially, it seems, most locals accepted the skiers on their property.64 When the first land owners went to court in the 1960s to ban skiers from their land, the court ruled clearly. Landowners could not ban skiers from their private property.65 When the capacity of landowners to act against the ski lift operators was limited by court decisions, they developed resistance practices such as the spreading of ash, manure, slurry and dry sticks on the ski slopes to keep skiers out of their private property.66 This reaction intimidated skiers. Some of the affected skiers were politicians. In consequence, this practice became politicized and was debated in the regional parliament of Vorarlberg.67 In 1968, the government of Vorarlberg passed the “Sportgesetz 1968”, a law comprising one clause on the protection of ski slopes below the forest line.68 Furthermore, economic returns for ski lift operators were to be secured by forcing farmers to remove fences and other obstacles from their land. Farmers had to accept any technical intervention such as the use of snow groomers or building activities on their property without any right to financial compensation.69 With the “Sportgesetz 1968” the land property right was adjusted to serve a considerably booming winter tourism industry. Private property consisting of alpine grasslands below the forest line was seasonally superimposed by an open access regime regulated in practice by the price of using the ski lift. The new land property dispositive disarmed farmers and landlords in their resistance to the winter tourism dispositive and its ideology of rationalization and ever increasing economic returns. Farmers were in an ambivalent position since they both profited and lost from tourism. Snow groomers created a lasting snow cover, and thousands of steel edged skis swinging downhill every day hampered the germination of early flowering plants, thus restricting the use of land property by the owners. As a result, species composition changed on the slopes. When groomer operators were not careful, their heavy vehicles damaged the turf. Farmers realized as early as 1970 that ski slope stabilization practices were having an impact on hay harvests. As they were legally disarmed, they began to counteract harvest losses and the belated snowmelt with “Thomasmehl”, a cheap, black, powdery substance which is a by-product of the smelting process of iron. It is rich in phosphates, but also, unfortunately, in heavy metals.

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“Thomasmehl” accelerated snowmelt and induced higher growth rates on damaged grassland.70 These areas, treated with a highly potent industrial fertilizer, soon turned into grassland with less biodiversity than other areas. In terms of hay harvest, however, they were transformed into highly productive areas and this treatment became popular with farmers. When the ski lift operators began to pay financial compensation for the use of areas during wintertime, farmers further profited from the technical modification of materiality. Both increased productivity and the additional income from financial compensation made farmers willing to accept the technological transformation of their property. Both benefits reduced conflicts within the community. Together, they supported the constitution of the tourism dispositive and the transformation of the materiality of Damüls into a desire-fulfilling winter tourism organic machine.71 By the 1960s, ski slopes had become multifunctional spatial arrangements. In winter, the areas were used for skiing, snow grooming and later for artificial snowing, but once ski lifts were switched off in spring, farmers and ski lift employees started to prepare the areas for agriculture – as they still do today. This begins with acceleration of the melting of snow, collecting garbage from the affected areas, monitoring the meadows for damage to the turf, negotiating financial compensation for any such damages and subsequently repairing the damages with fertilizer and grass seed. Once the traces of winter tourism are erased, farmers take over and bring out the cattle or cut the grass and produce hay. Even in areas where farming has ceased, ski slopes have to be maintained during the summer, otherwise grassland would be overgrown with bushes and the area would become valueless for ski tourism within a short time. Once again one can experience the momentum of materiality. Here, the ecological principles of succession describe the intrinsic power against which humans have to work. Natural laws do also impact ski slopes when it comes to gravity: When the grass on ski slopes is not cut during summer, friction between snow and slope surface is decreased and the risk of a floe avalanche increases considerably. In the course of the postwar era, non-discursive agrarian practices became indispensable to the maintenance of ski slopes. While ski lift operators in Damüls could ignore the claims of farmers in the 1950s and while their power was further strengthened by the “Sportgesetz 1968”, they were increasingly forced to cooperate with farmers when they attempted to increase the economic efficiency of their business. The rationalization and acceleration of the uphill and downhill of skiers on clearly defined ski slopes required farming practices to be partly absorbed

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by the tourism dispositive. In the process, the meaning of farming became modernized. Farmers were no longer perceived as backward, oldfashioned opponents; instead they underwent a discursive reinterpretation as landscape gardeners. This shift was coupled to the establishment of non-discursive economic practices between the tourism and farming sectors.

Concluding remarks on the power and limits of physical environmental history Damüls is only one single spot within the Alps, which are the most densely developed mountainous region in the world. 430.000 kilometers of roads and railways cross the macro-region, guiding 120 million guests per year to their vacation spots. In total, 500 million overnight stays were counted in 2004. About 11.000 ski lifts carry hundreds of million skiers on slopes year each year. 40.000 kilometres of ski slopes – the number equates the circumference of the earth – are groomed to service skiers’ demands.72 Artificial snowing to create a solid snow cover consumes an estimated 95 million m³ of water in the Alps as a whole, which matches the annual freshwater consumption of a city of 1,5 million inhabitants.73 These numbers demonstrate the importance that ski tourism has gained for Alpine economies and for the environment over the past decades. As we have seen, practice theory has potential for historians and environmental historians. It does not overemphasize discourses, culture, social structures or actors, but conceptualizes practices as one of their outcomes. Therefore, it can be useful to bridge dichotomies of actor/structure and of nature/culture.74 One of the aims of this paper has been to demonstrate that be it a bag of Thomasmehl or a ski lift network in the Alps, each artefact influences humans and their history. In Damüls, the natural environment of the villagers, which is conceptualized as both material and socially constructed, was created over centuries through farming practices. Damüls and many other ski destinations in the Alps were well suited for the mode of production inherent in tourism because their landscapes had been shaped by agro-pastoral practices. In this paper, ski lifts were discussed as indicators of a shift in the energy provision in peripheral places, as symbols of modernization discourse, as a disciplining agent for non-discursive skiing practices, and as a pivotal part of the winter tourism dispositive impacting local power relations between farmers and tourism entrepreneurs. Overall, it is possible to trace a profound shift during the 20th century from subsistence to ski slope preservation farming practices in Damüls and in most other Alpine winter

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sport communities. This shift was fueled by the material requirements of ski slopes, by technical and scientific discourses, and by the available amount of energy. Just as importantly, it was shaped by the decisions of individual people, with their interests, their socio-economic reproduction needs, and their intimate connection to their community and its history the basis for their identity.

Acknowledgements This paper is an output of the project “Alpine Skiläufer und die Umgestaltung alpiner Täler“ funded by the „Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung“ (FWF) (Nr. P24728-G18). Special thanks go to Univ.-Prof. Ing. Dr. phil. Verena Winiwarter for her support, as well as to Ass. Prof. Bo Poulsen and PhD Fellow Maren Lytje who enriched my stay at Aalborg University. I would also like to thank PhD Johan Lund Heinsen for his poignant questions as reviewer.

Notes 1

John K. Walton, introduction to Histories of Tourism. Representation, Identity and Conflict, by John K. Walton (ed.) (Clevedon: Channel View Publications, 2005), 1. 2 John Urry, Consuming Places (London: Routledge, 1995), 173. 3 Finn Arne Jorgensen, et al., “Entangled Environments: Historians and Nature in the Nordic Countries,” Historisk tidsskrift 92/1 (2013): 10. 4 Theodore R. Schatzki, “Nature and Technology in History,” History and Theory 42/4 (2003): 82-93. 5 Verena Winiwarter, “Historical Studies in Human Ecology” (Habilitation, University of Vienna, 2002): 28. 6 William R. Catton and Riley E. Dunlap, “Paradigms, Theories and the Primacy of the Hep-Nep Distinction,” The American Sociologist 13/4 (1978): 256-259. 7 Donald Worster, introduction to The Ends of the Earth. Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, by Donald Worster (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 8 Winiwarter, Historical Studies, 29. 9 Andrea D. Bührmann and Werner Schneider, Vom Diskurs zum Dispositiv. Eine Einführung in die Dispositivanalyse (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008): 51-55. 10 Andreas Reckwitz, “Grundelemente einer Theorie sozialer Praktiken. Eine sozialtheoretische Perspektive,” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 32/4 (2003): 291. 11 Patrick Joyce and Tony Bennett, introduction to Material powers. Cultural studies, history and the material turn, by Patrick Joyce and Tony Bennett (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2010), 9. 12 Ibid.

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Reckwitz, Grundelemente, 291 Verena Winiwarter, Martin Schmid, Gert Dressel, “Looking at half a millennium of co-existence: the Danube in Vienna as socio-natural site,” Water History 5/2 (2013): 101-119. 15 Verena Winiwarter et al., “The Environmental History of the Danube River Basin as an Issue of Long-Term-Socio-Ecological Research.” In: Long Term Socio-Ecological Research. Studies in Society-Nature Interactions Across Spatial and Temporal Scales, ed. Sing, Simron Jit et al. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012): 108. 16 Chris Otter, “Locating Matter. The place of materiality in urban history,” in Material powers. Cultural studies, history and the material turn, ed. Patrick Joyce and Tony Bennett (London: Routledge, 2010): 44. 17 Iskender Giikalp, “On the Analysis of Large Technical Systems,” Science, Technology & Human Values 17/1 (1992): 57. 18 Frank W. Geels, “Technological transitions as evolutionary reconfiguration processes: a multi-level perspective and a case-study,” Research Policy 31 (2002): 1257-1274. 19 Reckwitz, Grundelemente, 283. 20 Frans Berkhout, “Technological regimes, path dependency and the environment,” Global Environmental Change 12 (2002): 1-4. 21 Douglas J. Puffert, “Path Dependence in Spatial Networks: The Standardization of Railway Track Gauge,” Explorations in Economic History 39/3 (2002): 282314. 22 Fridolin Krausmann and Helmut Haberl, Land-use change and socioeconomic metabolism: a macro view of Austria 1830-2000. In: Socioecological Transitions and Global Change. Trajectories of Social Metabolism and Land Use ed. Marina Fischer-Kowalski and Helmut Haberl (Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009): 37. 23 Ibid. 24 Anonymous, “Kunststoff: Skilauf ohne Flattern,” Der Spiegel 7 (1965): 73. 25 Luis Trenker, Berge im Schnee. Das Winterbuch (Berlin: Knaur, 1935): 35. 26 Anonymous, Kunststoff, 73. 27 Ibid. 28 Donald Worster, “A Round Table: Environmental History,” Journal of American History 76/4 (1990): 1130. 29 Sociologists such as Tim Dant have pointed to the relevance of the material in forming the social. Dant offers several insights into materiality in late modernity. He observes an increase in objects with which we interact, the growing complexity of these objects, their widened material range, and their use as an interface between humans or as substitutes for humans. He points out that more low-level maintenance of objects is necessary and that the design of objects has increased their symbolic significance. Objects are used as denominators of distinction, of taste and therefore of claims about our social status. See: Tim Dant, Materiality and Society (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2005), 143-146. 30 Urry, Consuming Places, 28-29. 31 Trenker, Berge, 35. 14

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Andrew Denning, “From Sublime Landscapes to “White Gold”: How Skiing Transformed the Alps after 1930,” Environmental History 19 (January 2014): 88. 33 Arnold Feuerstein, Damüls – die höchste ständige Siedlung im Bregenzerwald. Geographischer Jahresbericht aus Österreich XIV/XV (1929): 16. 34 Michael Kasper, “Damüls – Historische Streiflichter,“ in Damüls. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Michael Kasper and Andreas Rudigier (Damüls: Grafik Frei, 2013): 22. 35 Heinz Wanner and Christian Pfister, “Klimavariation und Anomalien,“ in Wetternachhersage. 500 Jahre Klimavariationen und Naturkatastrophen (1496– 1995), ed. Christian Pfister (Bern: Paul Haupt Verlag, 1999): 76 and 154. 36 Robert Groß, “Damüls im Strom der Modernisierung,“ in Damüls. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Michael Kasper and Andreas Rudigier (Damüls: Grafik Frei, 2013): 252-255. 37 “Sozioökonomische Merkmale österreichischer Gemeinden,” last modified May 7,2013, http://http://www.statistik.at/blickgem/blick1/g80209.pdf. 38 Robert Groß, “Zwischen Kruckenkreuz und Hakenkreuz: Tourismuslandschaften während der 1000-Reichsmark-Sperre,“ in Montfort. Zeitschrift für Geschichte Vorarlbergs 2 (2013): 54. 39 Gilbert Norden, “Breitensport und Spitzensport vom 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart,“ in Turnen und Sport in der Geschichte Österreichs, ed. Ernst Bruckmüller and Hannes Strohmeyer (Wien: Schriften des Instituts für Österreichkunde, 1998), 65–66; Bernhard Tschofen, Berg – Kultur – Moderne. Volkskundliches aus den Alpen (Wien: Sonderzahl Verlag, 1999), 20. 40 Christian Rapp, “Sonne über dem Arlberg. Wie das Kino die Skier zum Laufen brachte,“ in Schnee. Rohstoff der Kunst, ed. by Tobias G. Natter (Bregenz, 2009), 78. 41 Ferdinand Falger, “Wintermarkierungen in Vorarlberg,“ Der Feierabend, Julmond 12, 1931, 16. 42 Robert Groß, Wie das 1950er Syndrom in die Täler kam. Umwelthistorische Überlegungen zur Konstruktion von Wintersportlandschaften am Beispiel Damüls in Vorarlberg (Regensburg: Roderer Verlag, 2013): 86-93. 43 John Urry, The Tourist Gaze 3.0 (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2011), 195. 44 Lucie Varga, Zeitenwende. Mentalitätshistorische Studien 1936-1939 (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991), 80. 45 Gustav A. Otruba, A. Hitlers „Tausend-Mark-Sperre“ und die Folgen für Österreichs Fremdenverkehr (1933-1938) (Linz: Linzer Schriften zur Wirtschaftsund Sozialgeschichte, 1983), 4. 46 Bührmann and Schneider, Diskurs, 53. 47 Groß, 1950er Syndrom, 72. 48 Groß, Damüls, 42. 49 Christian Pfister, “Das 1950er Syndrom. Die Epochenschwelle der MenschUmwelt-Beziehung zwischen Industriegesellschaft und Konsumgesellschaft,“ GAIA 3/2 (1994): 71-90. 50 Rüdiger Hachtmann, Tourismus-Geschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007), 32.

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Groß, 1950er Syndrom, 271-276. Verena Winiwarter, “Buying a Dream Come True,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 5/3 (2001): 451-454. 53 Interestingly, the photographer did not rely on assistive technology such as airplanes to produce the bird’s eye view; instead, he integrated qualities of sloping terrain into his photographic practice. 54 Ibid. 55 Tschofen, Berg, 126. 56 Groß, 1950er Syndrom, 56. 57 At this point it is important to say that every single ski slope in the Alps belong to a property holder, which is normally not the ski lift operator but either a farmer or a dweller. Thus, the development of ski lifts and ski slopes was accompanied from its first days by conflicts among property rights and access rights to these areas. 58 Robert Groß, “Wie das ERP (European Recovery Program) die Entwicklung des alpinen, ländlichen Raumes in Vorarlberg prägte,” Social Ecology Working Paper 141 (2013): 17. 59 Ibid. 60 Groß, 1950er Syndrom, 59-61. 61 “Ranking der reichsten Gemeinden Österreichs,” last modified August 1, 2014, http://www.gemeindebund.at/rcms/upload/news/RankingdreichstenGdesterreichs.p df?PHPSESSID=a3ce71d382. 62 Ibid., 57-63. 63 Hans Frei, Der Fremdenverkehr in seiner Bedeutung für die Bergbevölkerung am Beispiel von Damüls im Bregenzer Wald (München: Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft 55, 1970), 135-154. 64 At least no records appear in the archives until the mid-1960s. 65 The court argued that these slopes has already been used for more than thirty years and therefore skiers and ski lift operators had acquired accession to the private property by adverse posession of the right. See: VLA PrsG 1972 Sch. 56, Sportgesetz, Guntram Hörburger an Elmar Grabherr, 2.1.1969. 66 VLA PrsG 1968 Sch. 19, Sportgesetz I. Teil, Zl. 306/70/1968. 67 Ibid. 68 Vorarlberger Sportgesetz, LGBl.Nr. 9/1968. 69 Ibid. 70 “Thomasmehl” was used until 1995, when its use was restricted by law. Dark rock meal replaced it. 71 Richard White, Organic Machine. The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996). 72 “Piste frei für die Ski Industrie,“ last modified August 1, 2014, http://www.greenpeace-magazin.de/magazin/archiv/2-04/piste-frei-fuer-die-skiindustrie/. 73 “Schneekanonen trocknen die Alpen aus,” last modified August 1, 2014, http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/article818483/Schneekanonen-trocknen- Alpenaus.html. 52

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Andreas Reckwitz, “Toward a Theory of Social Practice. A development in culturalist theorizing,” in European Journal of Social Theory 5/2 (2002): 251.

CONTRIBUTORS

Berber Bevernage is Post-Doc researcher at the Department of History at the University of Ghent. He publishes on uses of history and memory in post-conflict situations and transitional justice and the relations between history and jurisdiction. He has published “History, Memory, and StateSponsored Violence. Time and Justice” and “Writing the past out of the present: history and politics of time in transitional justice”. Francis Dodsworth is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Kingston University, London. He publishes on the history of crime and criminology, police power, urban anxiety and modern governmentality focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His publications include “Habit, the criminal body and the body politic in England, c. 1700-1800” and “The idea of police in Eighteenth-Century England: discipline, reformation, superintendence, c. 1780-1800.” Nikolai von Egger is PhD-fellow at the department of the History of Ideas, Aarhus University. He publishes on political economy and political theory focusing on a variety of thinkers such as Agamben, Zizek, Foucault and Nietzsche. His publications include “Objects of History / Objects of Ideology–How to make a Foucaultian Critique of Ideology after Žižek and Agamben?,” "Governmentality, Police, Politics - Foucault with Rancière” and After the Death of God - Capitalism and Enjoyment. Nietzsche with Lacan (in Danish). He is co-editor of the Danish journal for the history of ideas, SLAGMARK Ehab Galal is Assistant Professor at the Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He publishes on Middle Eastern media, social and digital media and popular Middle Eastern culture. His publications include “Friday Khutba without borders : constructing a Muslim audience”, “Cyber Islam: Global Media and the Boundaries of Religious Identity” and “Conveying Islam: Arab Islamic satellite channels as new players”.

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Contributors

Robert Gross is Ph.D- fellow at the Centre for Environmental History at the University of Alpen-Adria, Vienna. He publishes on environmental history focusing on the environmental impact and social consequences of the Marshall Plan and tourism on the Austrian Alps. His publications include “How Tourism Transformed an Alpine Socio-Natural Site. The Case of Damüls/Vorarlberg” and “Zwischen Kruckenkreuz und Hakenkreuz: Tourismuslandschaften wärhend der 1000-Reichsmark-Sperre.” Johan Heinsen has a PhD from Aalborg University, Denmark. He researches the cultural and social histories of early modern maritime empires. Currently, he is assistant professor at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University where he teaches historical methodology. He is working on a monograph about convicts as subaltern laborers in the 17th century Danish colonial empire exploring the links between Denmark's maritime world and the state's penal institutions." Martin Ottovay Jørgensen is joint PhD-fellow and external lecturer at the Department of History at the University of Ghent and the Department of Culture and Global Studies at the University of Aalborg. He focuses on how the imperial lingers on in international military interventions. With Marianne Rostgaard, he has published “Academic History and the Future of the Past: Contesting the Current Paradigm of Global Governance and Western Temporal and Spatial Epistemologies through Memories and International History From Below by Example of the UN Peacekeeping Operation in the Gaza Strip, 1956-1967”. Maren Lytje Maren is Ph.D-fellow and external lecturer at the Department of Culture and Global Studies at Aalborg University. Maren publishes on just war theory, political theory, theory of history and Freudian psychoanalysis focusing on contemporary warfare. Her publications include “The Use and Abuse of the Female in the Middle Ages” and “Absence of the Frame: Danish Narratives of the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Lars Östman has finished his dissertation on die Stolpersteine at the Department for English, Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He publishes on political philosophy and cultural memory. His publications include “Cultural Memory as Philosophical Archaeology: From Document to Monument” and “'Stolpersteine' in Light of Roman Archaic Religion: Reflections on German Memorial Culture”

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Christian Ydesen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Learning and Philosophy at the University of Aalborg. Christian publishes on the history of education on matters national and international and philosophies of learning. His publications include “Crafting the English Welfare State: Interventions by Birmingham Local Education Authorities, 1948–1963”, “Educating for peace: The role and impact of international organisations in interwar and post-war Danish school experiments, 1918–1975”. Trine Øland is Associate Professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at the University of Copenhagen. Trine publishes on educational and social policies, and education theory. “The diversity of 'progressive school pedagogues' 1929-1960: A space of opposites making society making the child” and “The Social Making of Educational Theory: Unravelling How to Understand the Content, Emergence, and Transformation of Educational Theory”.