‘The continuation of sovereign capture by other means’: biopolitical tattooing and the shared logic of the exception and securitisation

Murphy, Michael

doi:10.1080/21624887.2018.1535210

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“… 7. As I have suggested previously (Murphy, 2019b: 38), some of his commentaries are far less radical than the critical philosophy for which he is best known. …”

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confidence: 87%

Potentiality, political protest and constituent power: A response to the special issue

Murphy

2019

Journal of International Political Theory

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Emergent forms of political protest and constitution often provide limit cases for their contemporary theoretical models, and transnational protest movements from Occupy to Democracy in Europe 2025 are no exception. The recent special issue of the Journal of International Political Theory offers a number of different conceptual paths towards understanding these developments, revising and refreshing categories like civil disobedience, opposition, resistance, as well as constituent and destituent power. However, the plurality of perspectives in the special issue leads to a certain degree of uncertainty in the use of terms. This response to the special issue begins with a reflection on its major conceptual developments, addresses the missed encounter with Giorgio Agamben’s theory of ‘destituent potential’ and develops a framework for contrasting different theoretical approaches to political protest and constitution through their relation to potentiality. This taxonomy of emergent forms of political protest and constitution complements the substantial theoretical developments undertaken in the special issue by making the important conceptual relationships between them more readily visible. As well, by demonstrating the applicability of potentiality to the study of International Relations, this framework contributes to the project of the theoretical investigation of international politics.

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“… 7. As I have suggested previously (Murphy, 2019b: 38), some of his commentaries are far less radical than the critical philosophy for which he is best known. …”

mentioning

confidence: 87%

Potentiality, political protest and constituent power: A response to the special issue

Murphy

2019

Journal of International Political Theory

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“…These studies have significantly deepened our understanding of the processes of exceptionality and the everyday, and have sparked conceptual discussion and exploration of the relationships between exceptionalism, sovereignty, and security (see e.g. Aradau and Van Munster, 2009; Burles, 2016; Murphy, 2019). In securitization theory, studies underscore ‘the importance of the audience in the construction of shared security values and its active engagement in securitization processes’ (Côté, 2016: 554).…”

Section: Thinking Of the Everyday In Exceptional Timesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Expecting the exceptional in the everyday: Policing global transportation hubs

Nøkleberg

2021

Security Dialogue

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There has been considerable scholarly interest regarding the notion of exceptionality, i.e. how and under what conditions extraordinary powers and measures are justified in the name of security. Exceptional threats are now omnipresent in the security discourse of the aviation and maritime industries, and this influences the everyday working environment. Taking Norwegian airport and port security as its point of departure, this article analyzes how security and policing agencies perceive, experience, and respond to the exceptional as part of their everyday practice. Drawing on extensive interview material with security agencies, it reveals how agencies construct strategies to cope with the consequences of exceptionality that arise from heightened (in)security and vulnerability. This article demonstrates that instrumental logic in risk management is one crucial strategy, but evidence also reveals the importance of the human dimension in security practices, as the emotional aspect of security consciousness is a part of the everyday life of security agencies. Closely associated with this is the emergence of mechanisms of active resistance that provide excitement and alleviate boredom.

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“…'Bare life' in the Agambenian sense is a form of life that is banned by sovereign power from law and politics, where the subject's 'undecidable status allows for the routinization of exceptional practices because access to conventional juridical-political structures is denied' (Vaughan-Williams, 2016: 194). Colonial practices of exclusion that portrayed the Bedouin as a fighting race by categorizing their warfare as a potential 'threat' correspondingly negated the possibility for such subjects to engage with their community in a human way (Murphy, 2018) and entrenched an insecurity within their subjectivities. Such portrayals not only served to legitimize the colonial encounter as a civilizing project, but also transformed the Bedouin into a gendered and racialized figuration of security that could not only uphold the logic of colonial protection but also legitimize the British presence within the region.…”

Section: Confronting Colonialism and The Construction Of The Bedouin As A 'Martial Race'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Militarism and the Bedouin: Intersections of colonialism, gender, and race in the Arab Gulf

Al-Noaimi

2021

Security Dialogue

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This article investigates the development of militarism in the Arab Gulf using the militarized representation of the Bedouin and their poetic tradition as a site for its analysis. The article traces the ways in which Bedouin ‘martial masculinities’ and Bedouin culture have been appropriated and transformed by British colonialism and postcolonial nationalisms to produce unusual patterns of militarism within the Gulf. It addresses a gap in international relations and security studies literature, in which militarism is examined through state-centric and methodologically nationalist framings that largely overlook transnational and colonial histories. The article argues that contemporary displays of militarism by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates should be read in relation to how colonialism engendered militarism across the Gulf region through the paradoxical representation of the Bedouin as a ‘martial race’ whose martial-ness was also seen as a security ‘threat’ for the colonial/postcolonial state. Militarized responses and rationalities were normalized within Gulf society through the ‘Bedouin warrior’ stereotype, which served as a timeless and fixed construct, connecting the Gulf’s disjointed past to its present-day context. Significantly, the ‘Bedouin warrior’ stereotype helps foster the belief that stability and historical continuity underpin state-modernization processes in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The article’s intervention seeks to disrupt this continuity by looking at how militarism and its martial constructs created ruptures in state trajectories, using the example of the 1996 coup attempt, citizen revocations, and the depoliticization of the poetic act as evidence for the claim that militarism engenders particular insecurities for Bedouin populations in the Arab Gulf.

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‘The continuation of sovereign capture by other means’: biopolitical tattooing and the shared logic of the exception and securitisation

Cited by 7 publications

References 52 publications

Potentiality, political protest and constituent power: A response to the special issue

Potentiality, political protest and constituent power: A response to the special issue

Expecting the exceptional in the everyday: Policing global transportation hubs

Militarism and the Bedouin: Intersections of colonialism, gender, and race in the Arab Gulf

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