Monday, 1 March 2010

binding axes


In the war machine, unity appears as emergency projection - as wartime convergence of the king’s two bodies, the official function and actual person of Commander in Chief, enthroned in the Oval Office or touring the forts and estates in Air Force One.
 
Before the hated enemy, contradictions are deferred, internal rivalries managed: yessir, yessir, united we stand.

Imperfect, but still control, as real and terrible as it gets. US presidential elections – ultimate staging of sanctioned political struggle under the current global order. As we’ve seen, an election worth stealing.

War gives command over this machine its maximum unity; permanent emergency normalizes it. Repeat accumulation, with surplus: power mirrors capital’s spiral.

As in Benjamin’s thesis contra Schmitt, the state of exception suspending the rule proved to be part of it: the rule is, that the exception enforces the rule. What rules is the rule of exception and rule together: permanence in accumulating power and catastrophe.

A complexly commanded but precisely deployable power of terror – state terror, the terror of enforcement. And globally, the US role, capital guarantee.

Entrenched empire of functional death-power, deep wound and legacy of Hiroshima.

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