...and the Rise of the Security State

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  CTHEORY          THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE          VOL 24, NO 3

  Event-scene 98   09/18/01       Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
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  The World Trade Center and the Rise of the Security State
  =========================================================


  ~Dion Dennis~


  Reflecting on the images of a black and gray ashen Manhattan, the
  skeletal remains of imploded skyscrapers, the survival narratives of
  witnesses, and the images of the dead and dying, the iconicity of the
  attack is striking: the date, 911, a shorthand for telephoning
  emergency services; the airlines, "United" and "American," synecdoche
  for the state, and the nation, respectively; the American Airlines
  plane ripping into one side of the Pentagon, lurching toward its
  center, breaking what had been a domestically unbroken pentagram of
  power. As representative instruments of spatial deterritorialization
  and globalization, Boeing 757s and 767s slammed into two prominent
  icons of information and commodification, the Twin Towers of the
  World Trade Center. As the buildings tumbled into a mix of black
  smoke and debris that rushed down the streets of West Manhattan, the
  utopian belief in Market Society also crumbled. As John Lennon sang a
  generation ago about another rupture, "the Dream is Over."

  The abrupt and violent detumescence of the Twin Towers signals,
  irreparably, the de facto end of an uncritical faith in Market
  Society. While markets will always be with us, the universalist
  prescription of "the market" as a form of social and cultural Viagra,
  died on the streets of Manhattan, and in the images of destruction
  dispersed to the rest of the planet.Embedded in the black smoke and
  in the shredded and spongy mountains of glass, steel and cadavers was
  the virus of endemic fear and perpetual anxiety, and the incipient
  prescription and inscription of a nascent security state.

  What a virus does, biological, technological or social, is to
  rewrite a basic instructional set on a cellular, machine-language or
  cultural level, and then to spread that instruction set, upward from
  below. That's what makes it a form of micro-power, low-tech,
  secretive, adaptive and extremely replicable. What has so quickly
  spread in the last few days is this virus of terrorism, from the
  outer spatial and cultural margins of late capitalism (Afghanistan)
  rewriting not just the mood of the U.S., but also the fundamental
  stance (national identity and values) of Americans, and the
  institutional routines of the state. Taken as a whole, the net effect
  is of the American Empire stumbling through a sharp discontinuity
  into its third, post-WWII ideological period. Below is a brief
  mapping of the relationship between the past, the incipient present,
  and the probable near future.

  The first ideological dream, an uncritical belief in government,
  emerged after WWII. Fiscal policies informed by Keynesian economics
  had turned the tide against the Depression, and the U.S. emerged as
  an economically and technologically dominant world power by 1945.
  Nearly three decades of rising standards of living (for almost all
  demographic groups), and remarkable technological achievements, lent
  temporary credence to an uncritical faith in the powers of
  government.

  Durable as that dream was, it was ruptured by multiple and
  persistent shocks: Assassinations, a morally ambiguous and unviable
  Vietnam War, urban riots, political corruption (Watergate), and
  structural changes in national and global economies (changes that led
  to the "stagflation," in the post-1973 period). Symbolized by the
  U.S. government's impotence in securing the release of 52 hostages,
  in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the "dream of government"
  as a universalist panacea for social ills lost its viability. With
  the election of Ronald Reagan, the post-1945 American Empire entered
  into its second ideological dream - an uncritical belief in the
  curative properties of "market society."

  Symbolized by Reagan, and his charmingly simple and nostalgic moral
  tales about the wonders of "the individual" and a "Mr. Rogers"
  version of "the invisible hand," the redistribution of wealth during
  the 1980s (spurred by massive changes in tax laws in 1981), and the
  years of economic growth between 1983-1990 led many to conclude that
  the mix of governmental deregulation and the hyper-redistribution of
  wealth was the medicine that the country needed. After all, didn't
  the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and "The Velvet Revolution" of 1989
  herald the triumph of capitalism, and the defeat of centralized
  statisms?

  In the early 90s, the U.S. faced a massive savings and loan crisis,
  enormous general fiscal debt and an economic recession. The
  uncritical dream of market society might have died in 1993, but for
  Bill Clinton's election. In the eight years of the Clinton
  presidency, Clinton commandeered just enough governmental resources
  to buttress the practices and discourses of market society. Informed
  by Gary C. Becker's formulation of "human capital," Clinton found his
  complement in Al Gore, an avid total quality management advocate who
  was in charge of "reinventing government." Concurrently, the religion
  of Privatization was the buzz word of the Gingrich conservatives.
  "Whatever you [government] can do, I [the private sector] can do
  better," they chanted. And so some of the practices [and much of the
  discourse] of the private sector came to dominate how the public
  sector and its workers were viewed, and how work and monies were
  redistributed.

  By the 2000 election, the U.S. economy had lost its momentum, and
  the shortcomings of an uncritical faith in market society became more
  evident. Examples include welfare reform that moved people from
  destitution to perpetual poverty; privatized prisons and schools that
  were dens of corruption and misery; and institutional scandals, such
  as an enormous (268 billion dollar) tobacco settlement from firms
  that had previously shifted the health risks and costs from cigarette
  manufacturers to the public sector. All of these areas (and many
  more) demonstrated the narrow limits of the market as universalist
  prescription and dream.

  And then came 911. Nothing in Adam's Smith's invisible hand, or in
  Yahoo's web directory, or in short-term cost/benefit analyses, or in
  any dream of the market (equity, futures or derivatives) and its
  neo-utilitarian and commodified world-view could account for, or
  prevent Boeing 757s and 767s from crashing the twin towers of the
  late World Trade Center. No faith in "human capital" or a
  commodity-based social logic (to run government like a business,
  taking the low bid for airport security services, for example)could
  mediate such transgressive violence. of 911. Thousands die, billions
  are lost, fear reigns, and market society, which requires a
  socio-political backbone of stability and predictability, loses its
  patina of magic. As the offices of Merrill Lynch, Smith-Barney and
  the Solomon Brothers disintegrated into ash, smoke and cadavers, so
  did the idea of "market society" as a panacea to our woes. No market
  tool (such as focus groups or surveys) can, by itself, counter those
  forces that seek the destruction of the very idea of a Western-style
  commodity market. Mark the date: On 09/11/01, that particular
  incarnation of Market Society died.

  Market Society was the target, not the weapon. It failed to
  guarantee order. Government did not foresee nor act - it failed to
  guarantee order. Our third ideological dream may be organized around
  a more intensive version of what Richard Ericson called a "policing
  [of] the risk society." As terroristic violence becomes increasingly
  dispersed, fluidic and possible almost anywhere, at any time, it does
  so by evading pre-existent risk-management techniques (as was the
  case on September 11th). The goal of state-centered responses will be
  to hone deterrence and policing strategies via intensified modes of
  militarization. Continuous surveillance, intensified
  information-collection and analysis techniques, and the honing of
  rapid deployment of counter-terrorism units may well be prominent,
  very soon, in the daily routines of American life. The boundaries of
  American life are in the process of a fundamental and rapid
  reconfiguration.

  Especially if there are some initial successes, the American Empire
  may be embracing this information-intensive dream of security as a
  paramount value, at the beginning of the new century. Fear is its
  engine.

  _____________________________________________________________________
  Dion Dennis is Visiting Assistant Professor, Dept of
  Psychology/Sociology, Texas A&M University - Kingsville, System
  Center Palo Alto (San Antonio)

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