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Aihwa Ong

Abstract: Hardt and Negri’s trilogy describes an American as shaping a world split between global capital and disenfranchised multitude, leading to a final confrontation between the Empire of capital and the counter-Empire of workers everywhere. However, their interpretation is limited by their philosoph- ical abstraction and revolutionary vision, which fails to recognize the implica- tions of actually existing processes of sovereignty and capital at this global juncture. The situation found in challenges their analysis. In contemporary , experimental assemblages of sovereign powers, capital, techne, and ethics have not weakened, but, in fact, have strengthened political sovereignty, - alist sentiments, and collectivist ethos, presenting a different picture of biopoli- tics from that of Hardt and Negri’s global theory. The authoritarian outcomes in China are political solutions forged in circumstances that mingle the global, the historical, and the situated. This article argues that Asian aspirations are rear- ranging capitalism and political sovereignty as Hardt and Negri understand them. Keywords: assemblage, biopolitics, China, Empire, global capitalism, Multitude, sovereignty

Shifting sovereign powers was a book that made all of us proud to be both academic and relevant. With philosophical rigor “When someone writes the history of our time and passionate urgency, Michael Hardt and An- 50 or 100 years from now, it is unlikely to be tonio Negri reinstated the centrality of capital- about the Great Recession of 2008 … or about ism in serious work on the global contempo- the fiscal problems that America confronted in rary. Empire, followed by Multitude (Hardt and the second half of the 21st century. It will be Negri 2004) and Commonwealth (Hardt and about how the world adjusted to the movement Negri 2009), lays out an ambitious program of of the theatre of history toward China.” world revolution, pinning hopes of their in- —Lawrence Summers1 evitable revolution on an emerging revolution- ary subject located in a global multitude disen- Bursting upon the world at the end of the twen- franchised by global capital. The global sweep tieth century, Empire (Hardt and Negri 2000) of Hardt and Negri’s claims, however, are per-

Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 64 (2012): 24–35 doi:10.3167/fcl.2012.640103 Powers of sovereignty: State, people, wealth, life | 25 haps more reflective of their philosophical am- gular logic, but as a historically contingent con- bition to reclaim the world than of an analytical cept that points to configurations shaped by the goal to renew structural Marxism. interaction of global and situated components. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, they “Global assemblages” of capital, , and see an American Empire as unchallenged in the ethics define a space of inquiry, pointing to world, shaping a world split between global cap- ways in which “the human” is at stake (Collier ital and disenfranchised multitude. This progres- and Ong 2005). Rather than flying at a high sive simplification of the capital-labor contradic- level of abstraction, anthropologists have always tion, they argue, will lead to a final confrontation preferred a low-flying approach to emerging sit- between the Empire of capital and the counter- uations crystallized in the interconnections of Empire of workers everywhere. Furthermore, capital and politics, technology and ethics. In- the philosophers project a convergence of pro- deed, by hovering close to the surface of observ- letarian consciousness and Christian fervor in a able human practices, we discover not the struc- global solidarity that will foment as ademo- tural uniformity of capitalism’s deprivation but, cratic alternative to Empire. Caught up in their rather, highly varied economic, social, and cul- epochal revolutionary vision, however, Hardt tural outcomes. For instance, in Asia, some and Negri seem to miss the giant of the Chinese participate in global markets by ex- economy looming on the horizon. porting increasingly large ratios of their labor Even as Empire rolled off the press to great force to richer countries. But where the state is academic acclaim, China had been bankrolling strong, strategic exceptions are made both in fa- US capitalism for over a decade. By 2011, sover- vor of capital and of social well-being. Attempts eign wealth funds mainly from Asia and the are made to combine neoliberal logic and bio- Middle East hold half of the outstanding federal political interventions in order to align goals of debt of the US . The People’s Repub- wealth production on the one hand with secur- lic of China (PRC), a backward behemoth just ing varied visions of the good life on the other. 30 years ago, is now the vital lifeline that keeps the US economy afloat. This awkward partner- ship between the United States and the Chinese Sovereignty and biopower Communist Party has been dubbed “Chimerica” by the historian Niall Ferguson. A rapid reassem- Modern political reason concerns itself, by def- bling of capitalist forces has taken place, recen- inition, with intervening upon human life and tering in East Asia. There is no more vivid chal- modes of living. In Hardt and Negri’s formula- lenge to claims about a US-led Empire or global tion, however, “[m]odern European sovereignty order. China is the emerging heavyweight, shift- is capitalist sovereignty, a form of command ing the political and economic tectonic plates of that overdetermines the relationship between our times. individuality and universality as a function of In recent years, shake-ups in global events the development of capital” (Hardt and Negri and in the social sciences have required a shift 2000: 87). This questionable synthesis of sover- away from models of stabilized world arrange- eignty and an abstracted universal capitalism, ments to the analysis of heterogeneous situa- they claim, was historically extended to the rest tions contingently shaped by global forces. of the world through European colonialism. Instead of projecting a framework of fixed trans - With the end of colonialism, “the declining national relationships, we problematize univer- powers of the nation,” and the rise of American sal categories by studying the dynamic inter- capitalism, there is a passage to a form of “im- relationships that form a diversity of globalized perial sovereignty” that Hardt and Negri call environments. We invoke “the global” not as a “Empire” (ibid.: 137). Here, sovereignty is reter- metaphorical or achieved instantiation of a sin- ritorialized from the waning state onto the 26 | Aihwa Ong machinations of a global capitalism that sub- cuits. Indeed, special zoning techniques have verts or circumvents classical categories of sov- been widely implemented in East Asian coun- ereignty and their dependence on the system of tries, in order to strategically position specific nation-states. This projection echoes other spaces to different economic and political ends. claims that market-centered deregulation has Especially in the PRC, the technique of zoning contributed to “the declining sovereignty of areas of political exception is frequently wielded states over their economies” (Sassen 1998: to create special industrial zones and to enforce xxvii–xxviii). Such “denationalizing” effects of a regime of graduated rule across a vast terri- are synchronized by global bank- tory (Ong 2006: 102–111; Ong and Zhang ers, executives, and capitalists at meetings such 2008). Rather than a uniform application of as the World Economic Forum in Davos, sovereign power, neoliberal calculations dictate Switzerland. As I have argued elsewhere, claims policies that make the most of differentiations about the impending end of the nation-state in the productive capacities of population and could not be more off the mark, even when ar- space within the national terrain. The neolib- ticulated in the days of the Asian financial crisis eral as a technology of governing for optimal of the late 1990s. Instead of assuming a decline outcomes challenges the conventional view of of sovereign power in an economic storm, it capitalism steamrolling over political sover- would have been useful to observe how crises eignty, or of neoliberalism as a set of irreducible compel states to become flexible in their re- elements that can characterize entire sponses by manipulating capitalist circuits (Harvey 2005). The novel Asian milieus consti- (Ong 2006: 97–120). It is especially a mistake to tuted in the articulation of neoliberal logic, au- fuse political sovereignty with capitalist might, thoritarian politics, and capital reject the view as these are separate technologies of power that that every encounter is an instantiation of capi- interact in complex ways. We tend to find state- tal’s imperial sovereignty overcoming political guided development in postcolonial countries sovereign rule. where state sovereignty was not merely imag- Besides ignoring actually existing states, ined into being (Anderson 1983), but largely Hardt and Negri claim, also in a philosophical embraced as the necessary political institution vein, that Empire has engendered conditions for charged with defending national well-being in a a unified totalizing biopower, expressed as a set competitive global environment. of rules over life on earth.2 They recast Fou- The irony of abstract claims about capital cault’s concept of governmentality as “a passage flows ending political sovereignty is that these within the notion of sovereignty, as a transition very flows have had the practical effects of to a new form of transcendence” (Hardt and strengthening some nation-states, a phenome- Negri 2000: 88). In this formulation, Hardt and non dramatized in the meteoric rise of the “Asian Negri argue that “biopolitical production” of in- tiger” countries in the 1980s to 1990s. The artic- formational, material, and social networks ulation of authoritarian politics and neoliberal across the world transforms heretofore differ- reason engendered a flexible approach to capital entiated labor forces into a common multitude circulations that, rather than depleting national (2004: xv–xvi, 94–95). According to Foucault, into a singular depoliticizing biopower and biopolitics refer to techniques of global capitalism, can even shore up authoritar- political government in which an ensemble of ian rule. technologies act on the population in order to An anthropological study of the neoliberal optimize life, but not in a uniform or totalizing identifies the situated articulation of neoliberal way. In Security, , Population, Foucault reason and state policies. One effect of neolib- (2007) identifies different modalities of power— eral political reason has been the disassembling sovereignty, discipline, and security—that are of the national territory and population into variously coordinated in specific constellations separate zones for linking up with capital cir- of governing practices. These strategic ensem- Powers of sovereignty: State, people, wealth, life | 27 bles of practices express a combinatorial logic biggest contract electronics company, and em- that Collier (2009), reading across Foucault’s ear- ploys 800,000 Chinese workers who assemble lier and later works, calls “a topology of power.” computer components for Dell, Hewlett- The specific topologies that emerge in the com- Packard, and Apple. bination of forms of governing variously enact For Americans, such labor protests may different problematics of life and the living. seem to be an instantiation of the unifying mul- But such statements must be subject to the titude in Hardt and Negri’s formulation. After interrogation of grounded and situated investi- all, our favorite portable devices—smartphones, gation, the kind of attention that anthropolo- laptops, electronic tablets—are largely the hand- gists recommend. Has the global circulation of iwork of these Chinese workers, many of whom capital everywhere undone political sovereignty, are migrant teenagers who are exposed daily to or has it in some cases compelled the state to be toxic fumes while assembling our digital toys. more flexible and agile in dealing with market Outrage against huge corporations and the sim- challenges? That is, if capital cannot be said to mering guilt of global consumers are captured simply obliterate sovereignty, we might be more in a new play staged in Berkeley, California, The attentive to the ways in which capital articulates Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. In this one-man situated political rationalities and aims, and in show, artist Mike Daisey narrates stories gath- these assemblages, how sovereign power itself ered from workers in Shenzhen. His goal is to mutates. Clearly, it is necessary to distinguish pinpoint “the charged ethical dilemma that is between state sovereignty and biopolitics as dif- literally in our pockets” (Carstensen 2011). ferent but interacting forms of rule that shape a But while the products are internationally particular topology of power. To understand distributed, the labor conditions of production unfolding situations in East Asia, for instance, are enforced by Foxconn (a company), we need to pose further questions. How does the major anchor of the world’s largest indus- the exercise of sovereign power and political trial complex in East Asia. As the world’s lead- reason modulate a fast-moving capital, turning ing subcontractor for high-tech companies, the market into a site of both political and eco- Foxconn is notorious for imposing excessively nomic experimentation that enhances national fast assembly lines and high demands for over- security? In what ways can biopolitical strate- time. The sped-up exploitation of Chinese gies shape people’s power and biological fate workers is the work of Asian industrialists, con- within a national space? Below, I will briefly dis- tractors, and factories, and such draconian prac- cuss three unfolding situations whereby sover- tices interface not US labor policies, but those eignty becomes intensified at multiple scales of the PRC. through the mix of risk technologies that gov- The articulation of global companies, Asian ern labor, finance, and life in conditions of industrial discipline, Chinese labor, and PRC globalized uncertainty. policies shapes particular conditions of biopower in these factory zones, and also conditions shifts in management in moments of crisis and op- People’s sovereignty portunity. Studies on the rise of trans-Asian in- formational agents and infrastructure have In May 2010, massive worker unrest roiled in focused on the accumulation of labor skills and Shen zhen(Guangdong ), one of China’s “quality” (suzhi). However, contrary to Hardt giant manufacturing complexes. Labor strikes and Negri’s claim that information workers are in Honda Motors brought production to a halt, allies of labor (2000: 298–300), only a handful and the unrest spread to other factories in the of Chinese digital advocates have defended and vast labor zone. A spate of suicides by workers argued for labor , and they are continually put the global spotlight on Foxconn Technol- hounded off cyberspace by the state security ap- ogy. Foxconn, based in Taiwan, is the world’s paratus. Another possible misreading may in- 28 | Aihwa Ong terpret the spate of worker suicides as an incip- The realignment of the three-way relation- ient catalyst for labor solidarity with the global ship between the Chinese state, Chinese labor, multitude. Instead of this proletarian fable, the and foreign investors is therefore also constitu- factory suicides in Shenzhen became an oppor- tive of the self-understanding of workers as a tune moment for the state to adjust its controls political community. Their modest success vis- on labor and corporations. à-vis capital seems to animate a historical sense For two decades of accelerated privatization of people’s sovereignty, that is, the will of the and industrial growth, the Chinese state pro- Chinese masses in their century-long struggle pelled millions of migrants to work in coastal against foreign invaders, a hallmark of national- Special Economic Zones (Ong and Zhang ist rhetoric and imagery in the Chinese modern 2008). Beijing and local authorities forcibly for- period. Every day, the Chinese state faces thou- bade workers to strike and walk off the jobs in sands of incidents of labor or peasant unrest, order to secure conditions of stability for the most of which are harshly put down or left un- continuation of accelerated capital accumula- reported. However, by tolerating worker demon - tion. The high-profile worker suicides of 2010, strations against Honda and Foxconn, the state however, signaled a breaking point, and occa- permits mass resentment against global capital, sioned a shift in political strategy. It became not to mention against better-paid overseas clear to the Guangdong provincial authorities work ers and consumers who benefit from cheap that the model of extremely cheap labor and Chinese labor. “Global capital” thus stands as an high productivity could not be sustained in an ambivalent player in this field of relations, to be era of rapidly rising costs of living in the Chi- alternately invoked in the event of both sup- nese coastal zones. As recently as 2003, severe pression of and permission for labor unrest. labor shortages created conditions for sustained The selective political approach to worker worker unrest (Ong 2006: 137–138). But in unrest demonstrates a complex state engagement 2010, as the cost of food, goods, housing, and with the still-resonant notion of people’s or na- land mounted in southern China’s Pearl River tion’s sovereignty versus the threat of foreign Delta, authorities uncharacteristically stood capital. This state strategy capitalizes on the his- back and let worker demonstrations run their torically grounded socialist notion of people’s course. The cumulative effect of sustained labor power, and the molding of worker subjectivity unrest was that a few months later, both Honda in the crucible of their nation’s emergence. While and Foxconn agreed to raise the wages of many market reforms have attenuated socialist aspects by 33 percent. Apple gave pay hikes that more of labor’s self-understanding, the resolutely than doubled worker salaries. By skillfully ma- Chinese (in political and cultural senses) char- nipulating the suffering of industrial workers, acter of protesting workers remains. Over the political authorities leveraged their grievances. past few years, as the labor market has become By using the grief of workers to put pressure on destabilized, the Chinese state has paid greater corporate power, the authorities created condi- attention to the welfare of laid-off workers than tions for rising wages and improved living con- to other poor people in the . There is rec- ditions. In other words, this exception to the ognition of the potential threat posed by un- active role of the state in suppressing labor un- happy workers amassed in cities, with their his- rest produced a shift in biopolitical regulation toric claims to political agency and legitimacy, of labor in Shenzhen. The flexible exercise of and the need to pay attention to their basic sub- exception—for instance, in favor of capital when sistence needs. Fundamentally, the contract with the economy is booming, but in favor of labor the people’s sovereignty is based on sustaining when things get a bit out of hand—keeps work- economic development, creating employment, ers tethered to and disciplined by the national- and consumer opportunities, for urban workers ist project of the Chinese economy, while also as well for the middle class. The political con- offering a means of reining in corporate power. struction of these “citizens” (gongmin) as op- Powers of sovereignty: State, people, wealth, life | 29 posed to the rural masses (nongmin or qun- eign wealth funds (SWF), or surplus capital zhong) is that they be productive workers who controlled by sovereign nations, have become are also loyal (Cho 2009; Hoffman 2010; Ong key players in global investments and financial and Zhang 2008). Meanwhile, ongoing online markets. For instance, SWF from and and offline protests over wages, pollution, land China have come to the rescue of failing banks grabs, tainted foods, and official corruption are and corporations in and North Amer- met by state responses that alternate between the ica. In addition, SWF have contributed to the enforcement of a cyber firewall and the mollifi- rise of new financial centers in the so-called cation of some public concerns. A combination global South and magnified the pooling of of authoritarian rule, market opportunities, and global finance in the (Ong 2011). The selective biopolitical interventions fosters a sense fast accumulation of SWF in Asia and the furi- that state stewardship is responsive to the peo- ous gyrations of global money markets have de- ple’s will, or at least not unilaterally opposed to it. stabilized a recent architecture of global cities: An analytic of interacting powers (state and London, , Tokyo (Sassen 1992). New people) recognizes the situated mix of resist- financial hubs—, Shenzhen, and ance, accommodation, and manipulation, and —are all racing to the top of the list for uncertain outcomes. The state goal is to manip- initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2010. Hong ulate any political situation in order to achieve Kong took the top spot (its IPO volume topped an implicit state-people bargain that trades ac- $52 billion that year) not least because it enjoys ceptance of political authoritarianism for sus- a commanding position to serve the vast Chi- tained improvements in economic and social nese market (Mullen 2011). well-being. Each event crystallizes conditions of The rising affluence of East Asian countries struggle in which the state seeks to thwart or has contributed to a transformation of financial use the will of the people. But we need to grasp flows and a reorganization of the spatiality of the convergence of events and opportunities at markets. As financial capitals move south, they different moments in time, and how the inter- fuel rivalry between emerging centers outside actions crystallize heterogeneous possibilities the classical circuit of “global cities” such as and outcomes, not predetermined victory for Dubai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Within the the people or for state authoritarianism. That is, vast Chinese economy, new financial centers the authoritarian state, in its multifaceted em- compete with one another. Despite exploiting its broilment with global capital, cannot be frozen position as the gateway to China, Hong Kong, in a posture of opposition to the masses, but since 1997 a Special Administrative Region of must strategically intervene in unstable condi- the PRC, is struggling to maintain its lead as tions, one moment acting as a draconian op- Shanghai and Shenzhen on the mainland rise in pressor of workers, the next as a protector of their IPO rankings. The mainland markets re- labor against the depredations of global capital. main largely closed to foreign investors, causing Besides its dynamic and heterogeneous sites of many companies to list their securities in both struggle, the distinctive circumstances of China and Hong Kong. There is an inter-Chi- China’s rise also make it hard to imagine Chi- nese competition between Shanghai, Hong nese masses would politically identify with a Kong, Shenzhen, and non-PRC Singapore, but borderless global multitude. the financial momentum is taking on a regional coethnic dimension as China plans to make Singapore its offshore base for trading in the Sovereign wealth funds yuan futures market. The rise of the PRC-centered financial re- Besides a robust and historically entrenched gion has drawn huge volumes of international sense of people’s sovereignty, Asian states have trading away from traditional centers in the built up national capital accumulation. Sover- West. Recent investments in financial technolo- 30 | Aihwa Ong gies have accelerated the pace and volume of trading volume by buying foreign stock ex- trading, and expanded the absolute scale of fi- changes, but has been rebuffed in its attempt to nancial transactions in East Asia. The new fo- take over ’s ASX. Meanwhile, the trend cus is on high-speed trading techniques that toward exchange mergers has fanned monetary will allow trades to be completed in 90 micro- nationalism throughout the world. The deal to seconds, faster than the 98 microseconds that merge NYSE Euronext with Deutsche Borse of NASDAQ takes. The new techniques and faster Germany, for example, is giving US regulators trades thus enforce a disciplinary uptick that and politicians pause over the deep impact on demands longer trading hours, resulting in the national economy. There is growing na- traders having lunch at their desk. In short, the tional resistance to regional mergers of ex- mix of political logic, high-speed technology, changes as stock exchanges are increasingly and sped-up work conditions creates conditions viewed as resources of national pride and well- for the emergence of financial markets and their being. Since 2007, about half of the assets raised accelerating scale of operation in the Asia-Pacific in IPOs were sold on Asian exchanges (com- region. pared with 19 percent in the US) (Lucchetti and Now, there is a possible Hardt and Negri– Chon 2011). There is a new network of Chinese style reading that sees the shift of this financial and Asian capitals that pulls the financial center cartography as, first, merely the expansion of of gravity to East Asia, thus dislocating Hardt the Empire and global cities framework and, and Negri’s Empire. then, reading this as a metonym of the expan- Besides the ways in which Asian political sion of a capitalist system to the last impenetra- sovereignty is strengthened through the control ble bastion of China. My claim, on the contrary, of capital circulation and accumulation, there is is that in East Asia there is not an easy sub- a diversity of financial practices and arrange- sumption into capitalism, but rather that the ments that subvert the possibility of any one demand to harness and direct flows of global unified capitalist system-logic that underpins capital (both to China and also differentially to the Empire concept. Indeed, the great complex- multiple Chinese sites) induces particular kinds ity and velocity of financial flows have created of reorganization of sovereign powers in rela- opportunities for predatory trading across the tion to markets. In this dynamic, reconfiguring Pacific. For instance, in the largest ever Ameri- financial environment, a static global cities can probe of insider trading, almost all the play- model cannot account for the ways not only in ers and connections are of Asian origin. In early which specific assemblages of urban aspiration 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission play out in emerging centers, but also how the put on trial Raj Rajaratnam, the cofounder of entry of these local forms into the global finan- the New York–based hedge fund Galleon Group. cial actually transforms the whole paradigm of He was charged with using insider tips to make what counts as a global or a capitalist em- $45 million in illicit profits from 2003 to 2008. pire in some important way. Indeed, the rise of A native of , Rajaratnam allegedly sup- monetary hubs in Asia is mutating the ways that plied secret business information to associates financial exchanges are becoming reordered on in American corporations, including a former some formal or ontological level. director at Goldman Sachs and a former part- In other words, the velocity of East Asian ner at McKinsey, both of whom are also of South monetary growth does not create the conditions Asian ancestries. To supply tips to US-based by which “the state” is overrun or battened down portfolio managers, Rajaratnam drew on a net- by fast-flowing global capital. Rather, emerging work of ethnic Chinese consultants based in Asian sites are organizing new centers for capi- Asia. These are employees working for technol- tal formation through their stock exchanges, ogy companies based in Taiwan such American which are strategic national assets and symbols. Micro Devices, Seagate Technology, Western For instance, Singapore is trying to expand its Digital, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Marvell, Powers of sovereignty: State, people, wealth, life | 31 many of them clients of McKinsey. Information However, Hardt and Negri poetically note, “The technology facilitates the gleaning of business flesh of the multitude is an elemental power that secrets from Asia and the rapid conversion of tips continuously expands social being, producing into illicit superprofits. In one incident, Rajarat- in excess of every traditional political-economic nam made a $1 million profit from a very large measure of value” (2004: 192). They conjure up trade conducted in seven minutes. This insider- the always-potent image of a final confrontation trading scandal, alongside Bernard Madoff’s between the oppressive machinery of capital Ponzi scheme, which preyed on thousands of vic- and the ultimately ungovernable biology of the tims, not only indexes the weakness of US au- masses (ibid.: 141–146). In their scenario, the thorities, but also demonstrates that the growth bare life of the multitude can be summoned and of corrupt trading networks can wreak havoc in mobilized to defend diverse life-forms from be- financial markets and national economies. ing despoiled by high-tech capitalism. This The above cases contrast the assembling of apocalyptic model of irreducible opposition be- money flows to build legal SWFs in emerging tween technology and flesh, science and spirit, nations on the one hand, and illegal financial capital and democracy underpins their vision of schemes that fly under the radar screen of sov- global revolution. ereign powers on the other. These contrasting The elemental power of nature, Hardt and modes of financial accumulation—strengthen- Negri argue, is our answer to capital’s overreach. ing the economic power of legitimate sovereign They note that “[t]he elemental flesh of the nation-states versus the predatory power of il- multitude is maddeningly elusive, since it can- licit money managers—fragment and under- not be entirely corralled into the hierarchical mine the domination of American capitalism in organs of a political body” (2004: 192). I agree the global arena in different ways. The reconfig- with this poetic remark about the elusiveness of uration of financial flows and centers has made nature and the impossibility of its total submis- Asian sovereignty even more robust at a time sion to social construction or political capture. when American financial sovereignty has been Nevertheless, there is an alternative to Hardt dealt a blow by Wall Street. and Negri’s conceptual opposition between the tsunami of technocapitalism on the one hand, and the elusiveness of human flesh on the other. Biosovereignty With the rise of molecular biology, it has be- come fashionable in anthropology to claim that It should be noted that in their zeal to envision nature has become an artifact of human tech- the rise of a democratic counter-Empire, the ex- niques and that biology is now modeled by cul- ercise of sovereign state power anywhere has ture. Meanwhile, nature in all its complexity never been the focus of Hardt and Negri’s inter- remains fundamentally elusive to human inter- est. Rather, they choose to view sovereignty ex- ventions and transformation. Earthquakes, clusively in terms of its philosophical character tsunamis, and unpredictable climate events, not and underpinnings, in the interrelationship be- to mention the potential failures of big technol- tween the governing (capital) and the governed ogy projects (nuclear energy, space travel, com- (multitude) stretched to the global scale. For the munication grids, etc.), constantly remind us philosophers, financial capital is significant pri- that elemental nature is always bigger than the marily for defining a “new intimate relationship technological capacities of modern Homo sapi- between life and capital,” especially in the ex- ens. As the immensity, complexity, and mystery propriation of the “global commons,” by which of nature continue to overwhelm us, the dizzy- they mean all life-forms. Technologically inno- ing speed of innovations in the life sciences vative capital today, they claim, goes beyond the since the 1980s has produced claims that the exploitation of the living labor of the multitude of human life is now extended to the to include the harvesting of their living flesh. molecular scale. But biomedical experiments 32 | Aihwa Ong are still far from transforming “life itself” (Rose biocapitalist exploitations, but sovereign states 2007), and many fatal diseases continue to evade can make political decisions to better control the effective treatment. In seeking to understand national commons and protect their citizens. the articulation of culture and modern science, The new affluence harnessed by robust sov- we need to set aside masculinist models that pit ereignty has allowed a few Asian countries to nature against culture on the one hand, and the launch a Sputnik moment by assembling capi- notion of technology overcoming nature on the tal, scientific expertise, and institutions to pro- other. mote innovations in biotechnology and bio- Feminist scholars have pointed to the situ- medicine (Ong and Chen 2010). The scientific ated nature of scientific forms, and the ways hu- renaissance in Asian countries has spurred var- man action and nature are coconstitutive of our ious efforts to exert sovereign control over bio- futures (Haraway 1991; Jasanoff 2005; Lock logical resources and global drug companies, 1995). When it comes to biocapitalism, it is in- and increase the biosecurity of citizens. Indeed, structive to examine how molecular biopolitics sophisticated biomedical tools foster a novel as- unfold in a specific environment of possibility. semblage of politics, capital, science, and ethics The marriage of capitalism and the life sciences that has reinforced national sovereignty (in un- engenders techniques that extend the powers of expected ways) as struggle with bio- capital, whether in the plunder of living forms capitalist ventures but also seek to capitalize on in bioprospecting ventures (Hayden 2003), or them for attaining a level of protected life (bios). the exploitation of living flesh in clinical trials Asian governments have devised several that employ poor people as experimental sub- strategies to build up a kind of scientific sover- jects (Sunder Rajan 2010). While the misuses of eignty that I can only mention in brief (see, e.g., biomedical technology in poor countries would Ong 2010). First, in many countries, the state be sympathetic to Hardt and Negri’s argument, has invested in building research institutions in we cannot at the same time ignore the biopolit- order to develop new expertise that can inter- ical contributions of modern genetics in more vene effectively in biological crises such as the affluent circumstances, such as the availability severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pan- of new drugs in freeing up choices for improv- demic. Second, biomedical ethics in Asia tran- ing the quality of life (Rose 2007: 40). The illu- scend concerns about individual medical con- minating difference is how biocapital articulates sumer choice. Ethical discourses about Asian situated political regimes and ethical goals in biomedical projects link different scales of sci- novel settings. entific research, collaboration, and intervention For instance, we would be remiss to ignore to focus on diseases prevalent in the region. In the fact that modern governments, including laboratories, hospitals, and clinics, the elemen- Great Britain and the United States, established tal power of the flesh is valued not least for its medical projects that relied on combinations of potential to yield cellular secrets that can be public and private investments to realize biopo- customized for the treatment of patients with litical goals (Jasanoff 2005), although recent Asian ancestries. These practices link the power budgetary cutbacks in both countries have re- of biomedicine not to questions of individual- sulted in the massive privatization and in- ized well-being, but to the well-being of ethni- equities in access to health care (see, e.g., Clark cized ancestral populations. et al. 2010: 57–63). This in a period when some Third, governments try to corral and define developing nations are just setting up their own biodiversity as state property in order to limit national health systems, while learning to deal biopiracy and regulate the power of drug com- with the power of biomedical technologies that panies. For instance, authorities in China and can both inflict great injustices and improve life have expressed a high degree of vigi- for citizens. Emerging countries are especially lance and paranoia about unauthorized foreign vulnerable to technologies that can enhance access to biomedical records and samples from Powers of sovereignty: State, people, wealth, life | 33 citizens; China and have banned the ex- Empire and Multitude are the double helix of port of genetic materials. made inter- a theoretical Marxism that claims to be the DNA national headlines when it withheld avian flu of our political world. We are reminded that samples in a strategy (supported by other South- these are philosophical books, and that the view east Asian countries) to compel the World Health propounded in these texts about the coming Organization and drug companies to provide global class confrontation and its revolutionary reimbursements in training and medicine. resolution is in the tradition of philosophical and India have imposed “compulsory inquiry into human evolution. Compared to licensing” on foreign corporations and asserted Hardt and Negri’s impressive erudition and self- national rights to produce generic versions of assurance in the mold of grand theorists, any life-saving drugs. anthropological attempt to track practices and Meanwhile, in an ultimate form of biona- assemblages in the global contemporary must tionalism, Taiwan and China are in a competi- seem modest and tentative indeed. Anthropol- tion to define the makeup of “Chinese DNA.” In ogy at its best can provide an analytical under- short, the articulation of biomedical sciences standing of unfolding situations linked to wider and biocapital are met by Asian states as both spirals of transformation but always particular threat and opportunity. By gaining mastery over in its momentum and motion. We can capture scientific innovations and developing medi- the at once global and distinctive dimensions of cines for Asian populations, Asian states have emerging assemblages that put the human at gained the knowledge and tools to shape stake, but without the misplaced security of a emerging “communities of fate” tied to the ge- universal logic or resolution. At the end of the netic makeup of Asian populations. There are twentieth century, political science and philoso- undoubtedly ongoing appropriations of native phy aspired to the global certainties of the hard resources by new profit-making technologies sciences just as anthropology and molecular bi- that harness the powers of human tissues and ology are taking an experimental approach to harvest body parts, and variously violate human contingently unfolding realities fraught with rights of defenseless populations everywhere. uncertainty. In different ways, we try to under- At the same time, science and technology, espe- stand human experiments that realign disparate cially when animated by state venture capital (as relationships in contingent configurations that in Singapore, South , and Taiwan) and can engender unpredictable outcomes. Our an- postcolonial nationalism, can instantiate a par- alytical claims are situated, limited, and melan- ticular form of vitalist politics for their citizens. cholic, but hopeful, as we learn from varied Human flesh is elusive, not only to capital, but human attempts to reorient capital and knowl- also to science, and the nation-state has a role to edge to better futures by mediating uncertain- protect its autonomy and vitality, not least ties (see, e.g., Miyazaki 2006). within their own territorial space. I also agree In contemporary Asia, experimental assem- that the value of living human tissues exceeds blages of sovereign powers, capital, techne, and any market value. For peoples who are potential ethics seem to produce circumstances that recipients of regenerative medicine, molecular strengthen political sovereignty, nationalist sen- sciences promise the generation of an array of timents, and collectivist ethos, not least in strug- material and symbolic values, not least the mas- gles to engage capitalism and to protect biologi- tery of conditions and new self-knowledge that cal resources and life itself. Such authoritarian can secure “flourishing life” for millions of peo- outcomes may not conform to the vision of ple (Ong forthcoming). But as the human body global revolution, but they are political solutions becomes inserted into different modes of gov- forged in circumstances that mingle the global, erning, we ask what kind of exchange of truth the historical, and the situated. 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