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Necropolitics (excerpts, part 3)

In the postcolony, wherein a particular form of power rages, wherein the dominant and the subjugated are specifically linked in one and the same bundle of desire, enthusiasm for the end is often expressed in the language of the religious. One reason why is that the postcolony is a relatively specific form of capture and emasculation of the desire for revolt and the will to struggle.  The enthusiasm for origins thrives by provoking an affect of fear of encountering the other—an encounter that is not always material but is certainly always phantasmatic, and in general traumatic. Indeed, many are concerned that they have preferred others over themselves for a long time. They deem that the matter can no longer be to prefer such others to ourselves. Everything is now about preferring ourselves to others, who, in any case, are scarcely worthy of us, and last, it is about making our object choices settle on those who are like us. The era is therefore one of strong narcissistic bonds. In t...
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Britain "I find it hard to believe that the government would have made the decision to strip a British born subject of their citizenship and the media and public being so supportive of the decision if Shamima Begum had been a 15 year-old impressionable white girl who had made the same foolish and immature decisions. If this was a young BRITISH white girl she would be sitting on a Breakfast TV sofa recounting her traumatic adventurous experience with book deals and film scripts piling up at her door and with Newsnight and Dispatches competing for an exclusive interview. Such is the subtlety of society’s unspoken racism, the nature of our warped reality and the power of the state to manufacture and manipulate public opinion to serve their own nefarious desires."   —Ishmahil  Blagrove, 22 February 2019 "I think that she should be returned to face an investigation and for justice. That a court of law should decide what happens from there, rather than a court of Fac...
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" The essay seems to vacillate between the urge to expose the hypocrisy or mendacity of power in its use of humanitarianism as char- ter for invasion and domination, a critique that might still leave a (liberal) concept of the human intact, and a drive to expose a deeper, constitutive, and unredeemable involvement of the very concept of the human (and in particular, the suffering human) in the violence of geopolitical power. Repeatedly, though not consistently, Asad’s essay reaches for this sense of a deeper crisis of the modern concept of the human and its wider constellation rather than its (cynical, partial, and hypocritical) manipulation by power. But whether or not he subscribes to any version of the posthuman paradigm currently in vogue remains utterly unclear... Throughout the essay, as in much of Asad’s writing, one gets the sense that there are only these two sociocultural realities (and modes of thinking) in the world: the liberal-secular-modern (which is im...
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Law says, “Go to the Mullā and learn the rules and regulations!”  Love says, “A single word is enough: shut and put away all other  books!” . . . Law says, “Have some shame and decency: put out this light!” Love says, “What is this veil for? Let the visions be open!” Law says, “Come into the mosque and perform the obligatory prayer!”  Love says, “Go to the wine-tavern, and having drunk, peform the  superogatory prayer!” . . . Law says, “O, Believer! go for Ḥajj—for you will have to cross the Ṣirāt  Bridge!” Love says, “ The door of the Beloved is the Kaʿbah, don’t move from  there!” Law says, “We strung Shāh Manṣūr up on the cross!” Love says, “ Ten, you did well; for you sacrificed him at the Beloved’s  door!”  — ( probably not actually authored by) the most widely sung Su poet of the Panjāb, Bullhē Shāh of Ḳaṣūr (1680–1758). Quoted in Shahab Ahmed's What is Islam?
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