Description
Book SynopsisCritique of Security brings together very diverse discussions about security in order to sustain a genuine critique of security and its study.
Trade Review'There is no more urgent question than that of why and how western political systems have become saturated by the concern for security. Yet the more governments pursue security the more they subvert the freedoms they claim to secure. The more also they render the world dangerous. Mark Neocleous is amongst the most acute observers of this lethal paradox. Returning to it here, by interrogating the complicity that also obtains between security, freedom and capital, Neocleous asks who gets what, where, when, and how when security operates as the generative principle of formation for our political and economic orders. Detailing also how emergency powers derived from martial law in a process that has progressively militarised social and political relations he provides a powerful counter-weight to abstract arguments about states of emergency. Challenging and accessible, this book opens up new political questions as it describes the new ways in which life has become more comprehensively securitised.' Professor Michael Dillon, Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University -- Professor Michael Dillon, Lancaster University 'There is no more urgent question than that of why and how western political systems have become saturated by the concern for security. Yet the more governments pursue security the more they subvert the freedoms they claim to secure. The more also they render the world dangerous. Mark Neocleous is amongst the most acute observers of this lethal paradox. Returning to it here, by interrogating the complicity that also obtains between security, freedom and capital, Neocleous asks who gets what, where, when, and how when security operates as the generative principle of formation for our political and economic orders. Detailing also how emergency powers derived from martial law in a process that has progressively militarised social and political relations he provides a powerful counter-weight to abstract arguments about states of emergency. Challenging and accessible, this book opens up new political questions as it describes the new ways in which life has become more comprehensively securitised.' Professor Michael Dillon, Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. 'The supreme concept of bourgeois society': liberalism and the technique of security; (i) Security, sovereignty, prerogative; (ii) Liberty in security and liberal insecurity; (iii) Prerogative and necessity: towards emergency; 2. Emergency? What emergency?; (i) From martial law to emergency powers; (ii) Walter Benjamin goes to Senate; (iii) Against normality; 3. From social to national security: on the fabrication of economic order; (i) The garden of security, or 'Security - this is more like it'; (ii) Containment I: national security, international order and six million corpses; 4. Security, identity, loyalty; (i) Containment II: national security, domestic order and the fear of disintegration; (ii) The garden of pansies, or 'no communists or cocksuckers in the library'; 5. The Company and the Campus; (i) Security fetishism; (ii) Security intellectuals; (iii) Closing gambit: return the gift.
