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Articles by R. Guy Emerson

Security Dialogue, 2024

This article concerns the security governance of gender in Mexico City. It begins by juxtaposing ... more This article concerns the security governance of gender in Mexico City. It begins by juxtaposing the alleged rape of a 17-year-old female by security officials against the policy responses that ensued: policies designed to make it safer for women to navigate dangerous streets. The article explores this radical turnaround: how an episode in violent opposition to security governance would ultimately sustain its implementation. It does so through what is called a gendered security dispositif-a dispositif consistent with the original formulation of Michel Foucault, albeit configured to an official account of gender-based violence that is confined to women. A gendered security dispositif renders a violent event intelligible to government by locating it in existing statistical and surveillance technologies, thereby reducing the alleged rape to citywide rates of violence and areas of high risk. Policy initiatives then target these high-risk areas, as practices of subjectification turn on the behavior of female inhabitants. The result is an official appreciation of gender-based violence that reduces the very matter of a violent event and its female victim to an administrative plane. What began as an episode contrary to security governance opens onto the production of gender and security in a manner derivative of rule.

Latin American Policy, 2024

The article provides a backdrop to citizen security in Mexico, presenting a critique that challen... more The article provides a backdrop to citizen security in Mexico, presenting a critique that challenges the democratic bases of citizen security and offering an alternate genealogy of its analytical and practical implementations. On the one hand, citizen security emerges not only from a violent legacy of national security but also amid larger international and domestic trends. Internationally, citizen security is consistent with shifts toward human security that prioritize individual existence over territorial integrity. Locating the citizen as its referent object, citizen security forwards a universal citizen situated against an ever-expanding list of threats. Domestically, citizen security coincides with wider neoliberal reforms premised on public-private partnerships and a reliance on individual responsibility. On the other hand, a separate genealogy of citizen security in present-day Mexico is offered, wherein its application is drawn from three interconnected themes-how citizen security emerges amid a political legacy of national security, how it develops from analytical limitations in human security, and how it operates in a context of neoliberal governance.

This paper is an exercise in counter-mapping gender-based violence, both its lived experience and... more This paper is an exercise in counter-mapping gender-based violence, both its lived experience and the need for safe passage. Building on the concept of body-territory introduced by feminist geographers in Latin America, gender-based violence is plotted by its would be objects: female/feminized bodies. Each counter-map is drawn by those immediately moved by violence, by those forced to navigate its deadly consequences. William James offers insight into the spatio-temporal implications of this experience, revealing how the extensive lines of a countermap are born of intensities felt in sensation and later reflected on in thought. Counter-maps are drawn by thinking-feeling bodies to break with any fixed domain: plotted are individual memories and shared pieces of advice that are accumulated across time to give the map a unique history, and that encompass diverse events to give the map a unique spatiality. Mapped is the experience of gender-based violence in Puebla, Mexico, so as to challenge official cartographic practices and rework their deadly effects.

Theory & Event, 2022

“If You See Something, Say Something”: individuals detect the warning signs of an attack and noti... more “If You See Something, Say Something”: individuals detect the warning signs of an attack and notify authorities before it is too late. Yet, rather than a permanent state of alert, these vigilant subjects are only ever provisionally activated upon discovering risky objects: seeing something is to draw risky objects from a dangerous indeterminacy, while saying something is to affirm vigilant subjecthood. Offered is a processual account of these emergent subject-object relations, an account which extends security governance into incipient experience—before the self of self-government— and onto affectivities that strike the body—before calculations on how best to respond.

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2022

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2011

In this article, we propose the concepts of " generalized " and " specialized " soft power throug... more In this article, we propose the concepts of " generalized " and " specialized " soft power through an analysis of the effects of Latino power in the United States. By focusing on demographic features, mass media, education, science and technology, and business, we attempt to provide a snapshot of the subtlety of Latino power in terms of flows and degrees of penetration within the U.S. landscape. We conclude by pointing out the main differences between these two theoretic concepts to deepen the understanding of the ways that peripheral regions might exert power on powerful countries. En este artículo proponemos los conceptos de soft power " generalizado " y " especializado " a través de un análisis del impacto del poder latino en los Estados Unidos. Concentrándonos en características demográficas, los medios masivos, la educación, la ciencia y la tecnología y el mundo de los negocios, intentamos brindar una descripción de la sutileza del poder latino en término de flujos y grados de penetración en el paisaje cultural estadounidense. Señalamos, en las conclusiones, las principales diferencias entre estos dos conceptos teóricos con el fin de profundizar la comprensión de las maneras a través de las cuales regiones periféricas pueden ejercer poder sobre países poderosos.

This paper reveals the limits to representing cyberspace as a threat. In contrast to more convent... more This paper reveals the limits to representing cyberspace as a threat.
In contrast to more conventional threats, the suggestion is that the
not-immediately-apparent consequences of a cyber-attack make it
largely reliant on official practices of representation. Exploring the
implications of this reliance, the paper outlines how attributing
meaning and culpability – always contested practices – are
amplified in the potential absence of a readily apparent attack.
Given these limits, does the cyber-threat then require a different
lexicon of danger to both educate and engender a sense of
caution? Examining the discursive construction of the cyberthreat,
the paper demonstrates how this threat draws upon an
established economy of danger – likening it to warfare and
terrorism – but also suggests a limit to these representations.
Specifically, by engaging post-structuralist literature the paper
illustrates that these limits are best understood through an
appreciation of the performative and the constitutive ‘lack’ in
signification. It thus concludes that the value of the cyber-threat is
not determined by transparently representing a cyber-attack.
Rather, it is drawn from processes of hyper-securitization and
through the establishment of institutions like the NATO Center of
Excellence in Cooperative Cyber Defense that retroactively bring
into existence the very object it purports to defend against.

This paper concerns the growing importance of the executive to the foreign policies of Brazil and... more This paper concerns the growing importance of the executive to the foreign policies of Brazil and Venezuela. Exploring the implications of this trend, it examines the extent to which the concentration of power in the presidency—rather than its diffusion in institutions—facilitates the steering tasks of government in an interstate setting. It focuses on the issue of energy security—a theme integral to both states—so as to tell a larger story about the role of the executive in promoting cooperation in spite of the different policy trajectories pursued by the respective foreign ministries. It concludes that while the concentration of power is beneficial to the monitoring of and intervention into the cooperation process so as to push it forward, in the absence of a strong institutional back-drop, the longevity of such cooperation is likely to be limited. There has been a renewal of interest in the study of Latin American presidential-ism. Spawned largely in response to the return to democracy throughout the region during the 1980s and 1990s, greater attention is now paid to the intricacies of Latin American democratic structures and the mechanics of decision making. While the importance of the executive to Latin American politics has long been accepted, there is a growing interest in exploring the dynamics of this position without recourse to comparisons with the United States or Europe. This shift away from " pure " presidentialism—and its normative adherence to Western models—has led to an appreciation of the sui generis character of Latin American presidential regimes. Although undoubtedly the region—including the two federal states of Brazil and Venezuela—has been informed by the presidential experience of the United States, it is another thing altogether to assert that this has been a simple transfer, that the same institutions have structured the powers of the president. Even if some ancillary institutions were borrowed, they have evolved over time to create new variants of presidentialism that bear little resemblance to the US model (Cheibub, Elkins, and Ginsburg 2011). Consequently, as the richness and diversity of these regimes have grown, so too has the study of their formation and ongoing development. While the paper seeks to contribute to this literature, it does so by moving outside the confines of the nation-state itself, to explore the reaches of presidential power in the process of interstate cooperation. Although it is informed by work on presidentialism—including elements of both formalist and functionalist approaches—it explores avenues largely uncharted within this setting. As such, it concerns the growing importance of the executive to the formation of foreign Emerson, Guy. (2014) Strong Presidentialism and the Limits of Foreign Policy Success: Explaining Cooperation Between Brazil and Venezuela. International Studies Perspectives,

Recent analysis on New Regionalism has, for Bjo¨rn Hettne, raised important ontological questions... more Recent analysis on New Regionalism has, for Bjo¨rn Hettne, raised important ontological questions over ‘what we study when we study regionalism’. The paper contributes to this debate by focusing on the shared beliefs, norms and rituals that hold a region together. Working between the New Regionalism literature and thinking on international regimes, this paper – to paraphrase Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie – outlines the ‘inescapable inter-subjective quality’ of a region. This focus on inter-subjectivity seeks to improve on existing approaches that consider shared social structures as already fixed, and/or as autonomous constructs operating over and above regional actors. In order to appreciate how intersubjective structures and regional agents interact with each other, the paper explores the social construction of Latin America. Specifically, it examines the politics of regionness – understood here in relation to identity, space and agents – to demonstrate how various regional actors operate within, and reconstruct, shared meaning. In so doing, it interrogates the practices that govern and continually produce the region.

This paper explores the diplomatic potential of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Am... more This paper explores the diplomatic potential of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP). It does so by refusing to take the region as a fixed, given actor and, instead, suggests that regional organisation is
better understood as a process of construction that involves diverse actors and a plurality of interests. Rather than assuming commonality – be it a shared series of beliefs, or, in a more practical sense, a collective policy position – the paper examines
the process in which certain beliefs and expectations come to be shared (or resisted). Far from forestalling collective action, however, in acknowledging this instability the paper also reveals how ALBA-TCP has the capacity to affect inter-American relations.
It highlights how the potential re-admission of Cuba into diplomatic institutions within the Americas, combined with the regional response to the 2009 Honduran golpe, demonstrates both the limits and possibilities of ALBA-TCP as a diplomatic actor in the Americas.

This article expands upon the theory of post-hegemony so as to maintain the multitude as an opera... more This article expands upon the theory of post-hegemony so as to maintain the multitude as an operative political category alongside the State. Ironically, it does so by returning to Antonio Gramsci. It argues that the multitude – or, for Gramsci ‘civil society’ – is constitutive of statal politics in two specific ways: (1) the multitude as a constitutive outside or alterity that the State carries; and (2) constitutive in its positivity, as a productive immanence that
affects the social field from which the State is drawn. This relationship of constituent participation – not representation – is demonstrated by investigating changes in politics-as-usual in Venezuela.

Dating from the Reagan presidency’s ‘crusade for freedom’, democracy promotion has been a central... more Dating from the Reagan presidency’s ‘crusade for freedom’, democracy promotion has been a central pillar of US foreign policy. Whether claims by George H.W. Bush that ‘beyond containment lies democracy’, or by George W. Bush that intervention into the Middle East promoted a ‘march to freedom in the Muslim world’, the importance of democracy to US foreign policy should not be underestimated. Far from promoting democracy, however, critics suggest that it is merely rhetorical cover for intervention and control, thus serving US rather than
local interests. While not discarding these insights, this paper suggests that while democracy promotion may support US self-interests, so too does it uphold a US self-image by acting as an ideal around which Washington constructs its identity and worldview. Explored in relation to Latin America, it is argued that US democracy promotion enabled by authoritarian representations of Venezuela is central to both a US-authored Latin American identity and, in contrast, integral to challenging it. While Venezuela acts as the reverse image of freedomloving
United States and a democratically abiding Latin America, Caracas also challenges US democratic pre-eminence by extending the very notion of democracy and thereby demonstrates how both democracy and US influence more broadly are increasingly sites of contestation.

Be it the ideal of liberal democracy, the opening of local markets to the fluctuations of interna... more Be it the ideal of liberal democracy, the opening of local markets to the fluctuations of international capital, or the elusive quest for development, the discursive strategies of the North and the policy
orientations that they enable toward the South are well explored. Less explored, however, is the way in which the South interacts with this received wisdom. This article explicitly focuses on
how Venezuela, as one of the more outspoken southern states, works within and subverts the dominant U.S.-authored tropes in Latin America. It suggests that while U.S. representations of
the Cha´vez administration as a strange anomaly in the America’s resonate in Venezuela and beyond, it is possible for Venezuela to subvert these messages by ‘‘embracing strangeness.’’ That
is, by embracing and expanding the difference attributed to them onto the rest of Latin America, Venezuela is able to use ‘‘strangeness’’ to open up possibilities for new meanings and political spaces in the Americas.

The 1998 electoral success of Hugo Chávez brought about a dramatic shift in Venezuelan identity. ... more The 1998 electoral success of Hugo Chávez brought about a dramatic shift in Venezuelan identity. While rhetorically inclusive at first glance, references to the 'Venezuelan people' would not speak to all Venezuelans. Rather, the 'people' would come to denote a previously marginalised segment of society now at the centre of Venezuelan political life. More than a simple reorientation in political focus, this shift in the politics of Venezuelan identity sends out a set of messages that acts as a symbolic boundary to frame, limit and domesticate an official 'Bolivarian' identity. It is the construction of this new official identity assembled, in part, from the ruins of the previous order that concerns this article. Frías arrived at the Miraflores Presidential Palace as the fifty-second President of the Republic of Venezuela, promising to dramatically refashion political life. Coming to the presidency during a period of institutional decay and popular exhaustion with traditional political parties, Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution stood upon the ruins of the Punto Fijo system pledging to consign political corruption and economic hardship to the past. Foremost in the former Lieutenant Colonel's message was the promise to return dignity to both the nation and its people. On the back of this narrative of national renewal began a period of dramatic transformation. The former constitution was consigned to the scrap heap, taking with it the country's bicameral legislative system, while both the national flag and its emblem were modified to affect symbolic change. Not even the name of the country was left untouched, with the South American state becoming the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Beyond these structural and symbolic changes, however, the new Chávez administration would also affect a shift in Venezuelan identity. President Chávez's inaugural address in 1999 pointed to the dimensions of this shift: 'Today, the second of February

Radical Neglect? The " War on Terror " and Latin America, 2010

The rise of leftist governments in the Americas and the adoption of policy initiatives contrary t... more The rise of leftist governments in the Americas and the adoption
of policy initiatives contrary to U.S. interests highlight a disconnect
in interamerican relations, which cannot be understood simply as
U.S. “neglect” of Latin America. In contrast to arguments that
attribute the deteriorating relations to U.S. preoccupation with the
Middle East, the article examines whether the “War on Terror”
acted as a guiding paradigm for the George W. Bush administration in Latin America. Opposition to this “War on Terror” paradigm was evident following Colombia’s 2008 air strike in Ecuador. Justified as a preemptive strike against a terrorist threat, Colombia’s action met regional condemnation. The article argues that this Colombia-Latin America division reflects a larger geostrategic disconnect, whereby the “War on Terror” is challenged, causing the increasing marginalization of Washington and resistance to U.S. policy.

Este artículo resalta las formas en las que el movimiento vegano en Puebla da cuenta del cambio p... more Este artículo resalta las formas en las que el movimiento vegano en Puebla da cuenta del cambio político y social. A modo de propuesta exploratoria, este artículo provee una introducción descriptiva a la teoría y práctica del veganismo, así como una exploración analítica preliminar de cómo este movimiento puede ser informado por la teoria social contemporánea. En el artículo se yuxtaponen la etnografía crítica con perspectivas teóricas informadas por la post-hegemonia, que sostiene que la “Revolución Vegana” debería de ser entendida como una serie de prácticas (micro-)políticas que se mueven más allá de la política en sentido tradicional.

The rise of leftist governments throughout South America illustrates a division within inter-Amer... more The rise of leftist governments throughout South America illustrates a division within inter-American relations. Using the division as a starting point, this article investigates the proposition that the change in relations represents an expression of autonomy by South America. The dimension of this change are explored through two regional organisations: Mercosur and the Bank of the South. In contrast to analysis that confines its explanation of change to events in Washington, this article will argue that internal factors underpin South American autonomy. While commodity prices influence the region, internal factors exercise as much influence over South American autonomy as those external.

CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY, 2021

Written 100 years ago, Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of violence’ offers an escape from the biopoli... more Written 100 years ago, Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of violence’ offers an
escape from the biopolitical spiral into death. It confronts the violent
underside to a politics of life by refusing to justify force on set politicallegal
grounds, and, by offering readings that continually undermine any
official position. First, critique is mindful of the spurious ends and means
of biopower: the violence deployed to protect life that requires evermore
force against anything threatening, and, the violence said to optimise life
that eliminates anything debilitating. Second, critique moves beyond such
justifications. It does so in reference to Benjamin’s concept of the divine
that appreciates violence through criteria irreducible to official foundations.
An understanding of violence is not mediated by government, but
continually extended in how individuals live such violence in novel ways.
A critique of biopolitical violence accordingly moves from a deadly productivity
coincident with political-legal authority (the violence of biopower),
to how such violence generates new ways of thinking and acting
(a bio-politics of violence).

Security Dialogue, 2024

Latin American Policy, 2024

Theory & Event, 2022

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 2022

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, 2011

Radical Neglect? The " War on Terror " and Latin America, 2010

CRITICAL STUDIES ON SECURITY, 2021

Necropolitics: Living Death in Mexico, 2019

This book offers a contemporary look at violence in Mexico and argues for a recalibration in how ... more This book offers a contemporary look at violence in Mexico and argues for a recalibration in how necropolitics, as the administration of death, is understood. The author locates the forces of mortality directly on the body, rather than as an object of government, thereby placing death in a politics of the everyday. This necropolitics is explored through testimonies of individuals living in towns overrun by organized crime and resistance groups, namely, the autodefensa movement, that operate throughout Michoacán, one of the most violent states in Mexico. This volume studies how individuals and communities go on living not in spite of the death that surrounds life, but more disturbingly by attuning to it.

Latin American Perspectives, 2016

On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably reelected president of Venezuela. Just days befor... more On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably reelected president of Venezuela. Just days before the vote, the impression given by major international print media was that it would be close, an assessment that proved to be at best optimistic. Western media coverage of the election in Venezuela was designed to skew the result toward the opposition, and this effort singularly failed. The “propaganda model” advanced by Herman and Chomsky is now faltering in the Americas, and the region is acting in a manner that is increasingly free of influence from the United States. Venezuela thus stands as a case of the citizenry actively and independently asserting its political agency despite clear attempts to redirect its thinking and decision making.El 7 de octubre de 2012, Hugo Chávez fue cómodamente reelegido presidente de Venezuela. Justo antes de las elecciones, los principales medios periodísticos internacionales daban por sentado que la votación iba a ser cerrada, una apreciación que re...

Journal of Political Power, 2015

The strength of Lukes’ third face of power is the recognition that agents can be influenced by st... more The strength of Lukes’ third face of power is the recognition that agents can be influenced by structures and ideas in ways of which they are unaware. The weakness of Lukes’ position is that his consideration of the third face is under-developed. In this article, we argue that Bourdieu and Foucault’s work offer fruitful ways of exploring this ‘pre-conscious’ dimension. Using Bourdieu’s work, the core of any understanding of the third face is rooted in the relationship between the social field and the habitus, while, for Foucault, the focus is upon the construction of the subject and her preferences in relation to the ongoing production of power. We subsequently explore the differences between their positions.

Contexto Internacional

Walter Benjamin published his influential essay ‘Critique of Violence’/‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ in... more Walter Benjamin published his influential essay ‘Critique of Violence’/‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt’ in 1921, and the work has troubled and provoked thinkers across disciplines for over a century now. This Forum gathers a group of scholars in philosophy, political science, international relations and legal studies to reflect on the actuality of Benjamin’s essay for contemporary critical theory. In their separate contributions, sasha skaidra and R. Guy Emerson each elaborate on how Benjamin’s classic illuminates contemporary understandings of the politics of life and (violent) death globally. skaidra takes the Sanctuary City movement in Europe and North America as a focus. Arguing that Sanctuary politics is limited in its capacity to challenge borders in-of-themselves because the movement is caught in a false antinomy between natural and positive law that Benjamin critiques, skaidra’s contribution proposes a critique of borders that emulates Benjamin’s method which isolates violence from t...

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

On August 16, 2019, protesters arrived at the Monument to Independence in Mexico City. In respons... more On August 16, 2019, protesters arrived at the Monument to Independence in Mexico City. In response to three separate allegations of rape by police in less than a month, demonstrators scrawled 565 pieces of graffiti to transform a historical site of national commemoration into a symbol of state violence against women. México feminicida (Mexico is femicide) covered the central plaque that previously read: ‘[from] the Nation to the Heroes of Independence’. The paper explores this transformation. Informed by Alfred North Whitehead, it argues that the Monument to Independence is an event. It is neither a timeless tribute to the nation, nor is it merely situated along the manicured Paseo de la Reforma. Rather, the Monument is continually reproduced in how graffiti connects it up with multiple histories of gender-based violence, in how it is given to meaning through the assembly of female/feminine bodies. From one of the most sedimented artifices of national remembrance, the site is transf...

Revista Physios, 2023

Contramapeo es un proyecto que mapea colectivamente la violencia de género. En lugar de mapear la... more Contramapeo es un proyecto que mapea colectivamente la violencia de género. En lugar de mapear la violencia desde las lógicas gubernamentales que favorecen las zonas económicas de plusvalía, los sitios turísticos o de derrama económica, buscamos mapear las experiencias de violencia en las zonas por las que las mujeres no se sienten seguras, en los espacios de tránsito en los que se acuden a estrategias aprendidas. En su mayoría, los mapas oficiales documentan la administración del riesgo, la regulación de movimientos y el control de los cuerpos. A diferencia de ello, los contramapas producidos desde este proyecto se mueven en una dirección opuesta: hay una modificación mutua de cuerpo y territorio, en cada mapa en donde el cuerpo se entiende como un ente político cuya experiencia modifica el territorio y no al revés.

Theory & Event

Critical Studies on Security

Written 100 years ago, Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of violence’ offers an escape from the biopoli... more Written 100 years ago, Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of violence’ offers an escape from the biopolitical spiral into death. It confronts the violent underside to a politics of life by refusing to justify force on set politicallegal grounds, and, by offering readings that continually undermine any official position. First, critique is mindful of the spurious ends and means of biopower: the violence deployed to protect life that requires evermore force against anything threatening, and, the violence said to optimise life that eliminates anything debilitating. Second, critique moves beyond such justifications. It does so in reference to Benjamin’s concept of the divine that appreciates violence through criteria irreducible to official foundations. An understanding of violence is not mediated by government, but continually extended in how individuals live such violence in novel ways. A critique of biopolitical violence accordingly moves from a deadly productivity coincident with political-legal authority (the violence of biopower), to how such violence generates new ways of thinking and acting (a bio-politics of violence).

Necropolitics, 2019

Life is inseparable from death. To live amid violent death is to have it penetrate the body. This... more Life is inseparable from death. To live amid violent death is to have it penetrate the body. This is necropolitics as the study of life’s inherence to death, of bodies continuous with their violent environment, or better ‘death world’. Its ontology is the wounded body, drawn from the flesh as outlined by Merleau-Ponty and conatus by Spinoza. Inspired by the former, the wound inscribes death on the flesh and renders it inseparable from the death world; while, following the latter, the body stays death to go on living despite its violent surrounds. Through testimonies of inhabitants in Michoacan, necropolitics moves beyond transcendental abstraction and toward an engagement with lived experience. Testimonies are emergent reconstructions of meaning, wherein inhabitants reveal how violent death is not simply imposed on them, but how the body-as-wound is composed of, and composes, the death world.

Necropolitics, 2019

Violence in contemporary Mexico requires a reevaluation of any politics of life and death. Think ... more Violence in contemporary Mexico requires a reevaluation of any politics of life and death. Think life, death and power as mutually inclusive, as continually informing how individuals navigate violence. Attention consequently shifts from questions of administering life and death, to living death, to the daily experiences of living amid violence. Specifically, two forms of living death are outlined: the wounded body and the mutilated body. The difference between the two pivots on the nature of the death inhabited. The wounded body is charted through a necropolitics wherein violent death is directly felt on the bodies of the living; while, in contrast, the mutilated body is a thanatopolitics of a violent death wielded by the state as an attempt to confirm rule, albeit in a manner that exceeds the technologies of sovereign or biopower.

Journal of International Relations and Development, Sep 1, 2019

This paper concerns how we understand and deploy securitisation—following speech act theory—from ... more This paper concerns how we understand and deploy securitisation—following speech act theory—from within a constative–performative continuum. The oscillation between each pole not only has analytical implications—moving from Schmitt-inspired prescriptive politics to performativity informed by Derrida—but also informs the actors and agency involved in the securitising move. Using this continuum as a point of departure, the paper has two aims. The first is to provide a state-of-the-art account of the Copenhagen school by locating the speech act, the securitiser and the audience within this continuum. Here, the securitiser shifts from a fixed agent to one constituted through the securitising move, while the audience moves from a proscriptive subject interpellated by the securitiser to an agent whose everyday life is integral to securitisation. The second aim is to interrogate the performative side of the spectrum wherein both the securitiser and the audience are subjects-in-process. A process-orientated account of securitisation is put forth in which the securitiser and the audience are enacted through the securitising move. Such an account rethinks the chronology of securitisation—placing greater emphasis on the enabling conditions that precede the utterance—and underlines the quotidian nature of security.

Latin American Research Review, 2020

This article explores the governing logics and political implications of citizen security in Pueb... more This article explores the governing logics and political implications of citizen security in Puebla, Mexico, specifically, the Programa Nacional de Prevención del Delito (National Program for the Prevention of Crime, PRONAPRED). Taking a biopolitical perspective, the article centers on how citizens are produced through the application of citizen security initiatives. This production operates at two levels: the regulation of populations and the molding of subjects. First, vital statistics and risk-related variables highlight those populations that exceed the median for risk. Second, those at-risk groups are targeted for training to reduce their susceptibility to violence. Training focuses on the individual, asking citizens to identify and minimize risk in a manner that emanates from and contributes to security governance. The political ontology of citizen security is this citizen/citizenry coincident with official measures. The democratic aspirations of citizen security are consequen...

Necropolitics, 2019

The state response is to capture and disband the autodefensa movement. This is thanatopolitics mu... more The state response is to capture and disband the autodefensa movement. This is thanatopolitics mutilating life, collapsing living death into institutional power. It reproduces a closed (read: mutilated) body that either confirms the state or is disbanded. Mutilation is the basis for thanatopolitical rule. It is not the result of war, or of the jailing and killing of prominent autodefensas. Rather, mutilation is the basis for order, a means of encasting living death within state power. The official response to the autodefensas is a perpetual rupturing of life as it appears, and indeed, as it must appear for thanatopolitics. Revealed is how thanatopolitics undoes and rebuilds bodies along official lines: it is the machinic enslavement of the ex-autodefensas that reduces them to state power and it is processes of subjectification that install a tending toward protocol among the newly created Fuerza Rural and later the Policia Michoacan.

Necropolitics, 2019

There is a regulatory force to violence that exceeds administration. The disfigured, dismembered ... more There is a regulatory force to violence that exceeds administration. The disfigured, dismembered or dissolved corpse introduces a destruction of life that is beyond a biopower of in/capacitation, beyond any sovereign classification of zoe or bios. The corpse ruptures the possibility of government and introduces the macabre order of organized crime. This order operates through visual techniques that display the corpse within a ‘barbaric semiotics’, while its representational techniques clarify who dies and why. Yet, this corpsed worldview disrupts any epistemic surety. The felt sensation of seeing death or the low-level fear propagated through representing violence differentially marks the bodies of the living. The corpse thus informs life beyond any external regimentation, working on and through the individual. Inadvertently, then, organized crime introduces a necropolitics of life’s inherence to violent death.

Latin American Perspectives, 2016

On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably re-elected president of Venezuela. Just days befo... more On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably re-elected president of Venezuela. Just days before the vote the impression given by major international print media was that the vote was a close-run thing, an assessment which proved to be at best optimistic. We argue that Western media coverage of the election in Venezuela was designed to skew the result towards the opposition and that these efforts singularly failed. The conclusions of our analysis are, first, that the “propaganda” model advanced by Chomsky is now faltering in the Americas and, second, that the region is acting in manner that is increasingly free of influence from the US. Venezuela thus stands as a case of the citizenry of a country actively and independently asserting its political agency despite clear attempts to redirect its thinking and decision-making.

Resistance does not escape from death, but excites necropolitics. The question of death and resis... more Resistance does not escape from death, but excites necropolitics. The question of death and resistance is explored through autodefensa groups that operate in Apatzingan, groups that initially emerged to overthrow organized crime only later to be accused of collaborating with them. Far from outside, the autodefensas operate amid death, regulating violence and operating immanently to the death world. Autodefensas wrest back control of Apatzingan from organized crime by controlling death-related circulations, while also operating in ever-greater proximity to death. Resistance, then, is not in opposition to the death world, but is central to understanding its dynamism. Autodefensas are forced into a prolonged exposure to violence, increasingly coming-into-relation with death as they coordinate their actions, as they confront organized crime. Yet, it is this proximity to violence that sees living death become evermore-precarious, that sees the growing criminality of the movement.

Does living amid violent death offer the opportunity for autonomous government? Explored in the c... more Does living amid violent death offer the opportunity for autonomous government? Explored in the community of Cheran, this final chapter contrasts thanatopolitics with an experiment in living death. The violence lived in Cheran is an invitation for organization, a possibility for self-sufficiency in the face of organized crime and a complicit state. Yet, for the majority of those living death in Michoacan, organization remains beyond reach. To appreciate this setting think necropolitically: of death worlds in excess of organization and instead as multiplicities and of living death in excess of regimentation and instead as transversal. Necropolitics is the study of living death’s inherence to the death world, a politics of life and death that is truly immanent.

International Political Sociology, 2019

This paper charts the mechanics of civic responsibility in preventing violence. Attention centers... more This paper charts the mechanics of civic responsibility in preventing violence. Attention centers on divergent practices of responsibilization in Puebla, Mexico, which emanate from both state rationales associated with citizen security initiatives and from community-based measures that confound such official logics. Situated in the workings of governmentality beyond advanced liberalism, the paper proposes a decentering of responsibilization. This requires two steps. First, analysis returns to governmentality as the intersection of technologies of domination and the self but locates the former in relation to nomos rather than logos. That is, responsibilization occurs not exclusively in relation to codes of conduct consistent with official determinations (logos) but also as a socially developed order that exceeds the political, economic, and rational dimensions of government (nomos). Second, it positions technologies of the self amid Michel Foucault's work on the empiricohistorica...

Politics, 2018

A vigilant subject foregrounds the terrorist event, working immanently to its development and dis... more A vigilant subject foregrounds the terrorist event, working immanently to its development and disrupting its realisation. Individuals are tasked with spotting the antecedents of future attacks in the present so as to ward off catastrophe and with being mindful of processes of radicalisation so as to counsel against extremism. A vigilant subject monitors others – as much as himself or herself – according to proscribed conduct, while at the same time he or she co-evolves with uncertainty in order to prevent emergent threats: be they those yet to materialise (signs of an attack) or yet to be even thought of (signs of radicalisation). This vigilant subject is explored through two cases: the British Transport Police campaign to make commuters aware of, and report, terror-related activity and the Prevent duty that asks university staff to limit students being drawn into terrorism.