Publications
Books
(2012) Liberal Terror Polity Press
Deleuze & Fascism: Securitisation, War & Aesthetics Routledge
Chapters
(2012) Biospheric Security: How the Merger Between Development, Security & the Environment [Desenex] is Retrenching Fortress Europe In: Burgess P; Gutwirth S (eds.) A Threat Against Europe? Security, Migration and Integration VUB Press
Journal Articles
(2010) Foucault's Legacy: Security, War and Violence in the 21st Century In: SECURITY DIALOGUE 41 pp. 413 - 433
(2011) The Liberal War Thesis: Introducing the Ten Key Principles of Twenty-First-Century Biopolitical Warfare In: SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY 110 pp. 747 - 756
(2010) Deleuze & War: An Introduction In: Theory & Event 13 (3) The John Hopkins University Press
Repository URL: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/42839/
Gilles Deleuze’s work displays an intimate relationship with the problem of war. Beginning for instance with his highly original co-authored Treatise on Nomadology, he borrowed from an array of sources including anthropology, military strategy, the human sciences, literature, aesthetics, and history, not only to illustrate how the ‘State itself’ has always been formed ‘in relation with an outside’, but to expose us to a whole plethora of competing dualisms which when combined constituted the very of order of historical battle: nomos/polis, smooth/striated, deterritorialisation/re-territorialisation, lines of flight/lines of articulation, active/reactive, movement/strata, rhizome/aborescent, minor/major, singularity/totality, heterogeneity/homogeneity, molecular/molar, so on. Importantly, for Deleuze, when this nomadology versus the State narrative was subsequently coupled with his and Felix Guattari’s concept of the “war machine” it then at once became possible to offer an alternative reading of the history of state power which, exposing the war like origin of all modern forms of civic ordering, posed uncomfortable questions for those grounded in the peaceful sermons of conventional political orthodoxy. For the history of State politics becomes the continuation of war by other means. The history of state power is fractured and multiplied if we consider the ways in which military force and warrior logic operates at the level of the unfolding of social relations rather than simply from the perspective of sovereign statehood. Once this perspective is adopted then our entire understanding of social and spatial ordering, the role of science, the deployment of technologies for rule, the formation of power/knowledge relations, the claims to truth and justice, along with the function of aesthetics factors accordingly.
(2010) Terror in All Eventuality In: Theory & Event 13 (3) The John Hopkins University Press
Following the events of September 11 th 2001 the “uncertain” has become all the more certain in meaning. The two most notorious “flights” in history have contributed to a global (in)security situation in which we have all in one way or another become connected through an assured vulnerability to the catastrophic “event-to-come”. This dangerous certainty unfortunately seems to be the only truism of the 21 st Century. Naturally, facing these conditions the strategic landscape has been radically transformed. With security broadened in scope and deepened in meaning, governmental reason has been forced to confront each and every potential threat posed to our settled political existence. However, whilst these efforts could be seen to be indicative of a new global humanism, one which is properly concerned with protecting life from all manner of violent and traumatic encounters, they do not necessarily guarantee any prospect of success. To the contrary, the advances made in complexity thinking have taught us a rather disturbing lesson: despite our most strident attempts, radically interconnected and dynamic systems cannot be calculated with absolute precision. With another attack by all accounts “inevitable”, at best, it is hoped that our efforts will disrupt capacities for destruction, improve our early warning systems, or make our logistical arrangements more responsive when dealing with the aftermath of some future attack. To be expected, in this climate the Global War on Terror has moved well beyond bringing the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice. Tasked with protecting the future productive vitality of all species existence—not to mention the critical infrastructure which sustains that existence, it has become a generic term for a planetary security effort which is increasingly taking all life to be its object.
(2010) Post-Interventionary Societies: An Introduction In: Journal of Intervention & State Building 4 (4) pp. 363 - 370
(2010) Barbarians to Savages: Liberal War Inside and Out In: Theory & Event 13 (3) The John Hopkins University Press
One of the most important aspects of your work has been to argue why the original sentiment which provoked Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadology narrative needed to be challenged. With the onset of a global war machine which showed absolutely no respect for state boundaries, matched by the rise of many local fires of resistance which had no interest in capturing state power, the sentiment that “History is always written from the victory of States” could now be brought firmly into question. On a theoretical level alone, the need to bring the Nomadology Treatise up to date was an important move. However, there was something clearly more at stake for you than simply attempting to canonise Deleuze and Guattari. One gets the impression from your works that you were deeply troubled by what was taking place with this new found humanitarianism. Indeed, as you suggest, if we accept that this changing political terrain demanded a rewriting of war itself—away from geo-political territorial struggles which once monopolised the strategic field, towards bio-political life struggles whose unrelenting wars were now to be consciously fought for the politics of all life itself, then it could be argued that the political stakes could not be higher. For not only does a bio-political ascendency force a re-conceptualisation of the war effort—to include those forces which are less militaristic and more developmental (one can see this best reflected today in the now familiar security mantra “War by Other Means”), but through this process a new paradigm appears which makes it possible to envisage for the first time in human history a Global State of War or a Civil War on a planetary scale.
(2010) Terrorism to Insurgency: Mapping the Post-Intervention Security Terrain In: Journal of Intervention & State Building 4 (4) pp. 371 - 390
(2010) Life Resistance: Towards a Different Concept of the Political In: Deleuze Studies 4 (3) pp. 142 - 162
(2009) Revolution Without Violence In: Peace Review 21 (1) pp. 85 - 94
(2008) The Zapatista Insurgency: Bringing the Political Back into Conflict Analysis In: New Political Science 30 (4) pp. 497 - 520
This paper will argue that the political dimensions to Zapatista Insurgency offer a significant challenge to prevailing understanding of conflict. Whilst the Liberal account of war is underwritten by notions of 1) cultural barbarism 2) socio-economic regression, their commitment to autonomy exposes the political bias of this reading. Indeed, by drawing our attentions towards the relationships between Liberal power and indigenous autonomy, their insurgency forces us to reconsider why the attempts to conquer the self-reliant terrain of indigenous life itself have become an integral feature of the war effort. This broadened focus is crucial. Since the minor political necessarily appears upon this terrain to be that which is dangerous, and yet that which resists the strategic political will of Liberal rationality; it will be concluded that one of the Zapatistas most significant contributions is to demand a return of the homo politicus into conflict analysis.
(2007) The State of Violence In: The International Journal of Human Rights 11 (3) pp. 349 - 363
Oppression Desired: Fascism and the Security Imperative In: Contemporary Political Theory
Time of the Event In: Thesis Eleven: critical theory and historical sociology
Contact Details
- Tel: 0113 343 8012
- Fax:0113 343 4403
- Email: b.evans@leeds.ac.uk