Abandoning Humanity?: On Cultural Heritage and the Subject of International Law

A recent International Criminal Court decision on the destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu has sparked a debate that goes far beyond the concrete case. It touches upon the longstanding and crucial question of who is the subject of international law. This question has also become exigent in the only seemingly distinct debate around the crisis of the Anthropocene. In both these debates humanity is portrayed as an actor who has either created or destroyed a foundation of creation’s existence, one that now is recognized as having a value of its own. The article first probes analytically how the court’s verdict and the debate surrounding it may be understood as echoing a fundamental concern of our time. Bringing affect theory into play, it delineates in a second step a concept of vulnerability that makes it possible to decenter the idea of “humanity” in international law as well as in political thought. Rather than thinking in terms of ownership, we might prefer to address the topic by using the notions of belonging and longing for

Katastrophische Situationen

In dem Augenblick, in dem das moderne Sicherheitsversprechen brüchig geworden ist und in dem katastrophische Ereignisse wie Terroranschläge zu einem seltsam gewöhnlichen wiewohl erschreckenden Bestandteil des urbanen Lebens geworden sind, ist die Situation ins Zentrum von Sicherheitspraktiken gerückt. Die Situationsorientierung ist ein Zugeständnis gegenüber dem Unberechenbaren, das die unmittelbare Präsenz und Einschätzung einer Gefahr und ebenso schnelles wie besonnenes Handeln einfordert, und zwar von professionellen Sicherheitsakteuren und gewöhnlichen Bürger/innen gleichermaßen. Der Beitrag nimmt die Herausforderungen in den Blick, die diese Rejustierung mit sich bringt: wie Situationsorientierung die Gewissheit von Prognosetechnologien und kriminologischem Wissen in Frage stellt; wie sie sich zur Militarisierung urbaner Sicherheit und zum Ausnahmezustand verhält; und wie sich das Ephemere, das ihr eigen ist, mit rechtlichen Normen vereinbaren lässt. Die Situation, die mit Ungewissheit an das urbane Leben herantritt, ist nicht nur Ausdruck einer Neuorientierung von Sicherheit, sie zeichnet auch ein neues Bild von Gesellschaft und politischer Subjektivität

Im Namen des Volkes: Neue Bücher von, gegen und über Foucault diskutieren das Verhältnis von Strafe, Recht und Staat

Michel Foucault: Theorien und Institutionen der Strafe: Vorlesungen am Collège de France 1971-1972. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2017. 978-3-518-58699-0 +++ Geoffrey de Lagasnerie: Verurteilen: Der strafende Staat und die Soziologie. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2017. 978-3-518-58709-6 +++ Marc Rölli / Roberto Nigro (Hg.): Vierzig Jahre »Überwachen und Strafen«: Zur Aktualität der Foucault'schen Machtanalyse. Bielefeld: transcript 2017. 978-3-8376-3847-

Leben und Nichtleben: Rezension zu "Geontologien: Requiem auf den Spätliberalismus" von Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Elizabeth A. Povinelli: Geontologien: Requiem auf den Spätliberalismus. Leipzig: Merve 2023. 978-3-962-73023-

Imagining Foucault. On the digital subject and “visual citizenship”

One of the most exciting features in Foucault’s work is his analytics of power in terms of forms of visibility. It allows for a reflection on the conditions of seeing and thinking, thus triggering a seemingly paradoxical move: locating the limits of our perspectives entails simultaneously transgressing these limits. In a way, we decipher our own blind spot. Approaching Discipline and Punish through this perspective brings us to identify the digital subject as a characteristic figure of our time. In contrast to its disciplinarian counterpart, it appears to be an active, though not necessarily political subject. The notion of visual citizenship will help us to go a step further and figure out what it could mean to challenge today’s surveilling gaze

On the boundaries of knowledge. Security, the sensible, and the law

Governing security means acting under conditions of uncertainty, that is, operating at the boundary of the knowable, as security is about dangers and threats that by definition have not yet materialized. Security in this sense relies on imagination, which renders the future accessible. Furthermore, security concerns the undesired and is therefore intertwined with emotions and affects. It is about dangers and threats that should not materialize. Drawing on the example of Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court decision on deploying military forces within national boundaries in the name of security, the article examines the relationship of the law to the sensible, to moments of anticipation and imagination, and to emotions and affect that exceed language. Taking on the form of fictive realities, these moments come to affect and shape the law, they are inscribed into the law as security matters. Since this happens rather implicitly, these processes tend to remain unrecognized by legal theory. However, fictive realities are an important ingredient of law’s reality