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ontopower BRIAN MASSUMI Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception Duke university press Durham anD LonDon 2015 © 2015 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Ame rica on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Natalie F. Smith Typeset in Quadraat Pro by Westchester Book Group Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Massumi, Brian, author. Ontopower : war, powers, and the state of perception / Brian Massumi. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-5952-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-5995-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-7519-7 (e- book) 1. Power (Social sciences)—United States— History—21st century. 2. War on Terrorism, 2001– 2009. 3. National security— United States— History—21st century. I. Title. hn90.p6m37 2015 320.01'1— dc23 2015001928 Frontispiece art: ak-47 firing, shadowgraph, Dr. Gary S. Settles/Science Photo Library. Cover art: Erin Manning, 9/11 (2001), acrylic and mixed media, detail. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Leslie Plumb. The author acknowledges the generous support of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (sshrc). c ontents Preface vii p art one: powers 1 The Primacy of Preemption The Operative Logic of Threat 3 2 National Enterprise Emergency Steps toward an Ecol ogy of Powers 21 p art two: powers of perception 3 Perception Attack The Force to Own Time 63 4 Power to the Edge Making Information Pointy 93 5 Embroilments and History 153 p art three: the power to affect 6 Fear (The Spectrum Said) 171 7 The Future Birth of the Affective Fact 189 Afterword:A fter the Long Past A Retrospective Introduction to the History of the Pre sent 207 Notes 247 References 275 Index 287 This page intentionally left blank preface This book began on September 11, 2001: “The day the world changed.” Hyperbole, of course. There is no event that changes everything. Still, something changed, and the change was significant. In the aftermath of 9/11, many aspects of contemporary life reconfigured themselves around a new dominant: preemption. It is the thesis of this book that the doctrine of preemption that was the hallmark of George W. Bush’s “war on terror” became the driving force for a reconfiguration of powers that has survived his administration and whose full impact we have yet to come to terms with. More than a doctrine, preemption has taken on a life of its own. It launches into operation wherever threat is felt. In t oday’s multidimen- sional “threat environment,” that is everywhere. This book will argue that preemption, as it operates today, lies at the heart of a newly consolidated mode of power. A new mode of power de- serves a new name. In the chapters that follow, it is dubbed “ontopower.” Ontopower does not replace prior powers. Rather, it reorganizes and re- integrates them around the new fulcrum of preemption, changing their object and mode of operation in the pro cess. Ontopower designates a changing “ecol ogy of powers.” The way in which this ecolo gy of powers pivots on preemption brings new urgency to what can only be called metaphysical problems. Preemption is a time concept. It denotes acting on the time before: the time of threat, before it has emerged as a clear and pre sent danger. What is this time of the before? How can it be acted upon? How can that acting upon already constitute a decision, given the ungraspability of that which has yet to eventuate and may yet take another form? Preemption does not idly pose these problems concerning the nature of time, perception, action, and decision: it operationalizes them. It weaponizes them. Paradoxically, it weaponizes them in a way that is productive. Ontopower is not a negative power, a power- over. It is a power-t o: a power viii preface to incite and orient emergence that insinuates itself into the pores of the world where life is just stirring, on the verge of being what it will become, as yet barely there. It is a positive power for bringing into being (hence the prefix “onto”). The goal of Ontopower is to explore how this operation- alization works. In par tic u lar, the book seeks to plumb the paradox that a power so productive centers on preemption. Ontopowers are many and diverse. Preemption is their keystone and cutting edge. This is not a book of history. It is in equal parts pragmatic (how does it work?) and speculative (what does how it works tell us philosophically about the way in which the pre sent- day ecol ogy of powers obliges us to rethink fundamental categories?). Each chapter sparks from very par tic- u lar events in the history of post-9/11 culture and politics. The object of the analyses, however, is less these historical moments per se than the driving force of their formation as it passes through them. Preemption is treated as a formative tendency moving through historical moments. It is transhistorical. The pro ject of diagnosing a transhistorical tendency that concerns noth- ing so much as what has yet to emerge is fraught with difficulties. It not only raises fundamental philosophical questions; it also raises questions about how a philosophical consideration of the formative movement of history relates to historiography. This is the prob lem of the relation between speculatively pragmatic thought and empirical study. This prob lem is treated in chapter 5, in a self- reflective pause midstream. It is returned to in the afterword, which is a belated meditation on what comes before: an afterthought on how the pro ject of thinking the transhistorical force of the not- yet- fully- emerged must conceive itself, paradoxically, as a “history of the pre sent.” The afterword deals with the conceptual issues raised by the speculative- pragmatic nature of the pro ject at great length, at the same time as it fulfils many of the functions of an introduction (including a chapter-by - chapter synopsis). Its main job is to delve into the status of what through- out the book is called an “operative logic.” This is a term designating that transhistorical tendencies are in and of themselves speculatively pragmatic formative forces: they effectively carry a conceptual force of change (in their way of formatively posing and operationalizing metaphysical problems). It is also a term for concepts themselves, in that when they succeed preface ix in their mission to speculate pragmatically on the history of the pre sent, they have the power to carry over as transhistorical tendencies. In and of themselves, concepts may be operative logics: forces for change. At this point, the difference between a concept and a formative force of history becomes a question of perspective— which is why, try as it might, historiography can never disentangle itself from philosophy, especially when it is a question of such fundamentally quizzical issues as preemption and ontopower. Alone, historiography cannot approach them— much less the crucial question for the future of what a counter- ontopower might be. Readers of a particularly philosophical bent may enjoy reading the afterword first, as an introduction. Others may wish to enter the preemptive thick of things directly with chapter 1. Readers curious for more detail on how preemption has carried over from the Bush administration into and through the Obama administration, an issue sporadically addressed at vari- ous points in the book, may be directed to the lengthy aside inserted half- way through the afterword in indented text titled “Bush on Ste roids?.” This page intentionally left blank part one Powers This page intentionally left blank 1 The Primacy of Preemption The Operative Logic of Threat If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path to action. And this nation will act. — George W. Bush It was with these words, uttered in June 2002 in a speech before the grad- uating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point, that George W. Bush first gave explicit expression to the approach that would become the hallmark of his administration’s foreign policy (2002).1 The doctrine of preemption would lead the United States from the invasion of Af ghan i stan to the War in Iraq, and carry Bush himself to reelection in 2004. It would also lead, aft er another two short but eventful years punctuated by the turbulence of a hurricane and the near- death of a great American city, to the dramatic defeat of the president’s party in the 2006 midterm congressional elections. The most immediate casualty of that defeat would not be President Bush himself. Secretary of Defense Don- ald Rumsfeld, the individual most identified in the public’s mind with the doctrine of preemption and its translation into action in Iraq, would take the fall. He would be out of office within twenty-f our hours of the vote count. The reason universally cited for the election defeat was the growing dissatisfaction of the American public with the fact that there had been no palpable change in the situation in Iraq. One thing that had changed in the lead-up to the election lay half a world away from Iraq, in North Korea. Although the North Korean govern- ment’s October 2006 announcement that it had tested a nuclear weapon barely created a ripple on the surface of the American electorate’s gen- eral awareness and was not cited in press analyses as having had an 4 chapter 1 appreciable influence on the election outcome, it seemed to be one more sign that the Bush administration’s defining doctrine of preemption was fast becoming history.

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