Mark Neocleous
Brunel University, Politics and History, Faculty Member
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Research Interests: Security and Pacification
“Anti-security: A Declaration” was published as the prologue to the edited anthology Anti-security (Ottawa: Red Quill Books, 2011). It is based on discussions with a broader group of scholars in attendance at a workshop at Carleton... more
“Anti-security: A Declaration” was published as the prologue to the edited anthology Anti-security (Ottawa: Red Quill Books, 2011). It is based on discussions with a broader group of scholars in attendance at a workshop at Carleton University in the Fall of 2009. The intent of the Declaration is to challenge dominant debates and accepted wisdoms about security and to act as a catalyst for a counter-hegemonic discourse and practice.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Criminology, Marxism, Critical Legal Theory, Anarchism, and 13 moreSecurity Studies, Critical Security Studies, Urban Studies, Policing Studies, Risk Management, Historical Materialism, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory, Anonymous, Mutualism, Occupy Wall Street, Lulz, Anti-Security, and Political economy of G20
This article is a response to the comments made by Cladia Aradau, Caroline Holmqvist, Yari, Lanci and Illan Rua Wall on my book War Power, Police Power (Edinburgh University Press, 2014).
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Political administration from 1834 was concerned first and foremost with the condition of the working class. This concern rested on a distinction drawn between poverty and pauperism (or indigence). The latter was regarded as ‘one of the... more
Political administration from 1834 was concerned first and foremost with the condition of the working class. This concern rested on a distinction drawn between poverty and pauperism (or indigence). The latter was regarded as ‘one of the great calamities which can afflict civil society, since, with certain exceptions, it generates everything that is noxious, criminal and vicious in the civil body’.1 In contrast, it was widely recognized that the eradication of poverty would be the eradication of wealth, for with poverty came labour. For Bentham ‘poverty is the state of everyone who, in order to obtain subsistence, is forced to have recourse to labour. Indigence is the state of him who, being destitute of property … is at the same time, either, unable to labour, or unable, even for labour, to procure the supply of which he happens thus to be in want.’2 Through Bentham’s followers this understanding of poverty and indigence formed one of the intellectual presuppositions behind the New Poor Law of 1834. The Report on the Poor Law states that: In no part of Europe except England has it been thought fit that the provision, whether compulsory or voluntary, should be applied to more than the relief of indigence, the state of a person unable to labour, or unable to obtain, in return for his labour, the means of subsistence. It has never been deemed expedient that the provision should extend to the relief of poverty; that is, the state of one who, in order to obtain a mere subsistence, is forced to have recourse to labour.3
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This article explores the political meanings of a relatively unexplored dimension of Edmund Burke’s thought: the monster. After first showing the extent to which the figure of the monster appears in Burke’s category of the aesthetic, the... more
This article explores the political meanings of a relatively unexplored dimension of Edmund Burke’s thought: the monster. After first showing the extent to which the figure of the monster appears in Burke’s category of the aesthetic, the author speculates on some of the political reasons for Burke’s use of the metaphor of the monstrous. The article suggests that these political reasons lie in Burke’s fear of the mob, and that this fear tells us something important about the conservative ideology of order.
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This article reassesses the work of Patrick Colquhoun by reconsidering his notion of prevention. It argues that Colquhoun has been badly served by having his notion of prevention understood in the light of the emergence of the new police... more
This article reassesses the work of Patrick Colquhoun by reconsidering his notion of prevention. It argues that Colquhoun has been badly served by having his notion of prevention understood in the light of the emergence of the new police in 1829. This has obscured the ...
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This article explores the link between the territorial imperative of the modern state, the exercise of violence and the practice of cartography. After first tracing the ways in which the exercise of ‘non-state’ coercion has been either... more
This article explores the link between the territorial imperative of the modern state, the exercise of violence and the practice of cartography. After first tracing the ways in which the exercise of ‘non-state’ coercion has been either eliminated historically or isolated ideologically, the question of the map is brought to bear on the issue of violence and territoriality. The article thus illustrates the importance of cartographic violence: the way the state and its violent constitution of territory have been sanctified through the project of the map.
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L’etat d’urgence suite aux attentats du 13 novembre 2015 a consolide les modalites de la gestion securitaire des populations propre aux societes liberales. Cet ouvrage se propose de s’extraire de la temporalite de l’urgence et de la... more
L’etat d’urgence suite aux attentats du 13 novembre 2015 a consolide les modalites de la gestion securitaire des populations propre aux societes liberales. Cet ouvrage se propose de s’extraire de la temporalite de l’urgence et de la stricte reaction a telle ou telle operation securitaire en interrogeant en profondeur le role de la securite dans la production et perpetuation de la normalite capitaliste. C’est ainsi que les auteurs soumettent a la critique la categorie de « securite », en faisant ressortir les rapports de pouvoir et les formes de domination qu’elle naturalise et legitime. Mark Neocleous cerne l’imbrication des differents moments et spheres de la securite – paix/guerre, armee/police, interieur/exterieur etc. – dans la construction de nos societes a travers la notion de « pacification ». Christos Boukalas analyse l’emergence des appareils anti-terroristes anglo-saxons en rapport avec la double restructuration de l’Etat et des economies capitalistes, en montant comme l’anti-terrorisme releve d’une forme d’etatisme autoritaire qui se deploie au sein meme de l’Etat liberal. Claude Serfati revient enfin sur l’evolution des paradigmes de la defense dans le monde post-guerre froide et l’evolution des architectures securitaires au sein de la globalisation neoliberale. De ces contributions ressort l’idee que la securite ne peut etre etudiee de maniere fractionnee mais doit au contraire etre apprehendee du point de vue de l’unite des appareils et processus securitaires dans leur contribution a la (re)production des capitalistes.
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This article seeks to explore the way that warfare, and categories gleaned from warfare and military practice, are used in the work of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault. Despite their profound political and theoretical differences both... more
This article seeks to explore the way that warfare, and categories gleaned from warfare and military practice, are used in the work of Carl Schmitt and Michel Foucault. Despite their profound political and theoretical differences both writers seek to understand politics and society through the idea of war. Because both writers resist the use of the state-civil society distinction their account of war renders it a perpetual phenomenon of the social and political order; this creates difficulties concerning fascism, though for different reasons. At the same time the article explores the similarities and differences in the way both Schmitt and Foucault appropriate Hobbesian and Nietzschean ideas and motifs.
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Acknowledgements Preface Part one: The Body of the State Absolute bodies Social bodies Dirty bodies Part two: The mind of the state /f003Raison d'Etat/f001:a rationality of expedience /f003Character angelicus/f001: the intelligent... more
Acknowledgements Preface Part one: The Body of the State Absolute bodies Social bodies Dirty bodies Part two: The mind of the state /f003Raison d'Etat/f001:a rationality of expedience /f003Character angelicus/f001: the intelligent state /f003Arcana imperii/f001: secrecy, privacy, idiocy Part three: The personality of the state Hobbes's person The personification of capital The revenge of sovereignty Part four: The home of the state The terror of territory The scum of the earth, or, once more on the dirty social body The violence of cartography Coda Notes
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In his denunciation of the theorists of the Second International, Georg Lukacs claims that their opportunism ‘is illustrated most clearly by the fact that none of them dealt seriously with the problem of the state’, failing to examine its... more
In his denunciation of the theorists of the Second International, Georg Lukacs claims that their opportunism ‘is illustrated most clearly by the fact that none of them dealt seriously with the problem of the state’, failing to examine its ‘character’ and to evaluate it from the standpoint of the proletariat as a whole. ‘Lenin was alone in regaining the theoretical heights of Marx’s conception — the clarity of the proletarian attitude to the state.’1 Briefly placing Lenin’s work on the state in the context of debates within the Second International will enable us to test the strength of this claim. It will be argued that Lenin’s work on the state is flawed in a number of fundamental ways, but that these flaws are replicated in the work of Kautsky, Luxemburg and Bernstein. For while they frequently discuss state power their use of a crude version of base and superstructure rather than state and civil society (or, better still, both conceptual couplets together) results in a narrow focus on the state, and the nature of its ‘determination’ by the economic base. The state gets abstracted out of its relationship with civil society, with considerable theoretical loss, and in turn reduced to Parliament, thereby circumventing any account of administration.
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The idea that “privacy” is a political virtue came about with the rise of capitalism, the consolidation of the state, and the gradual emergence of liberal democracy. With the breakdown of feudal-ism the powers that had been the carriers... more
The idea that “privacy” is a political virtue came about with the rise of capitalism, the consolidation of the state, and the gradual emergence of liberal democracy. With the breakdown of feudal-ism the powers that had been the carriers of “publicness”—the Church, the prince, the ...
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On 25 February 2002, Rafael Perez, a former oicer of the LAPD’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit (CRASH), appeared in court accused of various crimes: covering up a bank robbery, shooting and framing an innocent citizen,... more
On 25 February 2002, Rafael Perez, a former oicer of the LAPD’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums unit (CRASH), appeared in court accused of various crimes: covering up a bank robbery, shooting and framing an innocent citizen, stealing and selling cocaine from evidence lockers, being a member of the Los Angeles gang called the Bloods, and murdering the rapper The Notorious B.I.G. In his statement to the court he pointed out that above the threshold of doors that lead to CRASH oices there are philosophical mottos such as ‘Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall’ and ‘We intimidate those who intimidate others’. Perez commented: ‘To those mottos, I ofer this: “Whoever chases monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster himself.”’ The quotation from Nietzsche might appear unusual coming from the mouth of a former police oicer, but it is far from uncommon: Whoever Fights Monsters is the title of one police memoir, in which Nietzsche’s aphorism als...
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This article unearths the political logic of the police kettle. Rather than add to the mundane debate about civil liberties or models of policing, this article argues that the kettle reveals nothing less than the police war at the heart... more
This article unearths the political logic of the police kettle. Rather than add to the mundane debate about civil liberties or models of policing, this article argues that the kettle reveals nothing less than the police war at the heart of modernity. This is a police war carried out as a logic of containment against the enemy within—within the kettle and within society. The kettle is a microcosm of the police war of containment.
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Security is cultivated and mobilized by enacting exclusionary practices, and exclusion is cultivated and realized on security grounds. This article explores the political dangers that lie in this connection, dangers which open the door to... more
Security is cultivated and mobilized by enacting exclusionary practices, and exclusion is cultivated and realized on security grounds. This article explores the political dangers that lie in this connection, dangers which open the door to a fascist mobilization in the name of security. To do so the article first asks: what happens to our understanding of fascism if we view it through the lens of security? But then a far more interesting question emerges: what happens to our understanding of security if we view it through the lens of fascism? Out of these questions it is suggested that the central issue might be less a question of "security and exclusion" and much more a question of "security and extermination."
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This article argues that the category ‘pacification’ offers the critique of security a means of thinking through the connection between war, police and accumulation. Pacification is a process in which the war power is used in the... more
This article argues that the category ‘pacification’ offers the critique of security a means of thinking through the connection between war, police and accumulation. Pacification is a process in which the war power is used in the fabrication of a social order of wage labour. This aligns the war power with the police power, and suggests that their interconnection might be understood through the lens of pacification. The article explores this through one of the mechanisms through which the war power and police power combine: the hunt. Capital rests on the hunt: the hunt for vagabonds, beggars, enemies, criminals, terrorists. Behind this hunt lies capital’s original demand, Let there be Accumulation! ‘Pacification’ is a category that helps us make sense of the way the state responds to this demand.
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This article challenges the widespread belief that the recent success of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National is due to a ‘protest vote’ on the part of the French electorate, a vote which thus lacks any ‘core identity’ and is... more
This article challenges the widespread belief that the recent success of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National is due to a ‘protest vote’ on the part of the French electorate, a vote which thus lacks any ‘core identity’ and is therefore unsustainable in the long term. Through a geographical and sociological breakdown of the 2002 presidential and legislative elections the article first shows the extent to which support for Le Pen is clearly not a ‘protest’ but has a clear and recognisable base. Following this, the article aims to situate the notion of the ‘protest vote’ in the wider context of the continued ‘moving right show’ in contemporary social democracy.
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This article explores the transformation of martial law into emergency powers. In so doing it presents an argument about the liberalization of martial law and the constitutionalization of emergency powers. In showing the ways in which the... more
This article explores the transformation of martial law into emergency powers. In so doing it presents an argument about the liberalization of martial law and the constitutionalization of emergency powers. In showing the ways in which the powers of martial rule have become normalized within liberal democracies the article points to an ideological circuit between emergency powers and the logic of security, a circuit most apparent in the current "war on terror."
Research Interests: Law and Political Science
Abstract This article explores the relationship between security, identity and loyalty. Focusing on the formative texts and practices underpinning the rise of the national security state in America, while alluding to more recent... more
Abstract This article explores the relationship between security, identity and loyalty. Focusing on the formative texts and practices underpinning the rise of the national security state in America, while alluding to more recent developments, the article claims that security and ...
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This paper makes a case for understanding air power through the lens of police. After first rethinking a key period in the history of air power (colonial bombing campaigns) as a police mechanism, the paper then moves to consider the... more
This paper makes a case for understanding air power through the lens of police. After first rethinking a key period in the history of air power (colonial bombing campaigns) as a police mechanism, the paper then moves to consider the impoverished conception of war and police in contemporary critical theory. The final section turns to perhaps the most pressing issue in current air power debates, namely drones, and suggests that a consideration of air power as police power helps us read drones as a continuation of the police logic inherent in air power since its inception.
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This is a highly stimulating book that sets out to challenge conventional ideas about the role and function of the police. It questions both liberal conceptions that relate the role of the police to the maintenance of law, and Marxist... more
This is a highly stimulating book that sets out to challenge conventional ideas about the role and function of the police. It questions both liberal conceptions that relate the role of the police to the maintenance of law, and Marxist approaches that restrict the police function to a repressive one. Instead, Neocleous argues for an extended conception of the police that relates it to what he calls the fabrication of social order. Neocleous develops his expanded conception of the role of the police in relation to how civil society is ordered. Challenging the modern use of the term, he looks at how: ‘As noun, verb and adjective “police” was historically used to describe the way order was achieved, and part of the argument here is to suggest that it is through policing that the state shapes and orders civil society’ (p. xi). This ordering of society has an important philosophical aspect to it as the role of police relates to crucial bourgeois ideas of sovereignty, legitimacy and consent. In short, the role of the police is important to the selfunderstanding of bourgeois society. Mark Neocleous The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power