Tuesday, January 13, 2015

necropolitics: a war zone of the mind playing itself out on the streets


NYTimes |  At least in these cases that have galvanized the nation and the world in protest, we all see the twisted logic that results in the exoneration of the police who take away the lives of unarmed black men and women. And why is that the case? It is not because what the police and their lawyers present as their thinking in the midst of the situation is very reasonable. No, it is because that form of thinking is becoming more “reasonable” all the time. In other words, every time a grand jury or a police review board accepts this form of reasoning, they ratify the idea that blacks are a population against which society must be defended, and that the police defend themselves and (white) society, when they preemptively shoot unarmed black men in public space. At stake is a way that black people are figured as a threat even when they are simply living their lives, walking the street, leaving the convenience store, riding the subway, because in those instances this is only a threatening life, or a threat to the only kind of life, white life, that is recognized.

G.Y.: What has led us to this place?

J.B.: Racism has complex origins, and it is important that we learn the history of racism to know what has led us to this terrible place. But racism is also reproduced in the present, in the prison system, new forms of population control, increasing economic inequality that affects people of color disproportionately. These forms of institutionalized destitution and inequality are reproduced through these daily encounters — the disproportionate numbers of minorities stopped and detained by the police, and the rising number of those who fall victim to police violence. The figure of the black person as threat, as criminal, as someone who is, no matter where he is going, already-on-the-way-to-prison, conditions these pre-emptive strikes, attributing lethal aggression to the very figure who suffers it most. The lives taken in this way are not lives worth grieving; they belong to the increasing number of those who are understood as ungrievable, whose lives are thought not to be worth preserving.

But, of course, what we are also seeing in the recent and continuing assemblies, rallies and vigils is an open mourning for those whose lives were cut short and without cause, brutally extinguished. The practices of public mourning and political demonstration converge: when lives are considered ungrievable, to grieve them openly is protest. So when people assemble in the street, arrive at rallies or vigils, demonstrate with the aim of opposing this form of racist violence, they are “speaking back” to this mode of address, insisting on what should be obvious but is not, namely, that these lost lives are unacceptable losses.

12 comments:

Dale Asberry said...

Hell, what's Brooks' address...!

Ed Dunn said...

He was not killed when the french stormed the supermarket and i saw the unedited video. Coulibaby ran to the door unarmed into the bullets which was the biggest cluster mess i saw..he did suicide by cop - they did not go in and shoot him

Naive Tom said...

But we're "not bad people"!

BigDonOne said...

NorthWest Fuzzies, iq74, alive and well ---> http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Man-threatens-to-blow-up-Ore-deli-in-name-of-Allah-288420081.html

CNu said...

lol, Portland overseers must've choked out their loosie man..., http://youtu.be/m5-oXPTZaXA

CNu said...

lol, who among you humans is not sound asleep, let him be first to cast a stone...,

Dale Asberry said...

I'm keepin' an eye out for unusual letters...

Dale Asberry said...

you mean first to cast some glitter??

BigDonOne said...

@CNu..." DoD can't possibly go toe-to-toe with Russia or China... "
Moscow, drunk on their vodka-swilling asses, can't even get Ukraine back after Perestroika -- China similarly can't get Taiwan back since WW2, not even a few crummy little islands in the South China Sea (Spratleys). You really think any of those folks have a realistic shot at America...?? --ROTFLMAO-- For openers, neither begin to have the logistics to even get significant forces over here. DoD can put well-equipped forces on the ground anywhere in the world virtually overnight (e.g., Kuwait, 1991, booted Iraqi invaders in a few days...)


Furthermore, American man-in-the-street has no idea what military toys are lurking in the classified background, e.g., hinted below. BD sleeps well at night.....

CNu said...

lol, BD dreaming those fabulous vril dreams...., http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/

woodensplinter said...

Indicators of a false-flag event:



* Extremely unlikely reveals of their identities (passports
"miraculously found undamaged," ID cards "left behind," "instant"
pre-scripted news analysis, ...).

* Designated perpetrators killed during the event, and, best of all, in or by the event, making it a "suicide attack."

* "News" blackouts and lockdowns until the crime scene can be sanitized
and early rumors and observations (such as off-script "third parties")
countered by "official" accounts

* Later leaks that the perps had "relationships" with government agencies.

* Confiscations of unauthorized media and citizen-journalist and bystander documentation.

* Confiscation of CCTV records, and later release of highly redacted versions (if at all).

* Just-prior or simultaneous multi-agency "training exercises" in the area of the event.

* Later leaks that the perps had attended "training camps" provided by
organizations that have semi-covert ties with government agencies.

* Justification for totalitarian tactics by militarized police, and
city-wide lockdowns during the "search" for the designated perpetrators, using
the "emergency" to desensitize citizens to the loss of civil rights.

* Whatever. (I bet we can fill in several more blanks here...)



This is becoming an all-too-familiar pattern to be recognized by anyone
with even just shreds of remaining intelligence and common sense.

CNu said...

Mind-war of the black magicians on the battlefield of the global panopticon..., Say: Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel-for he brings down the (revelation) to thy heart by Allah's will, a confirmation of what went before, and guidance and glad tidings for those who believe,-

Whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and messengers, to Gabriel and Michael,- Lo! Allah is an enemy to those who reject Faith.
—Quran, sura 2 (Al-Baqara) ayat 97-98

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

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