{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025648762824381412, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004828002414001207, 'mean_word_length': 4.88809946714032, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
The return of the Camp

In a recent editorial in the Italian daily la Repubblica, referring implicitly to the geopolitics of exception of the current American administration, Umberto Eco (2004: 6) recalls Thucydides' rendering of the rhetoric of prevarication; rhetoric based not on pretexts or causus belli, but on the affirmation of the necessity and, indeed, inevitability of prevarication. At one point during their war with Sparta, Eco recounts, the Athenians send a force of men against the island of Melos, a Spartan colony that had remained neutral throughout the conflict. To the astonishment and dismay ofthe Meleans, who had explicitly declared themselves friends of Athens, the Athenians respond 'your friendship would be a proofofour weakness, while your hatred is proof of our force'. In other words, Eco adds maliciously, 'we are very sorry, but it makes much more sense for us to subjugate you, rather than to leave you in peace, so that everyone can fear us'. The Meleans say that they have faith in the Gods, but the Athenians answer that both Men and Gods, wherever they hold power, are bound to exercise it: it is an inexorable natural impulse. As Eco points out, Thucydides' account lays bare the only true logic ofprevarication one that does not seek justification. The Athenians simply extol their own force. They show the Meleans that force does not need persuasion. History, Eco (2004: 6) notes, will simply prove a long series of reproductions of this model, although few prevaricators will have the courage and lucidity ofthe valiant Athenians. The result of the recent US elections was a great shock for many like me. The idea that at least 60 million Americans could have supported an administration that allowed for the return of the Carmp into our political cartographies is difficult to swallow and, at times, even comprehend. It should also be noted, though, that even the contender did not base his campaign around the obscenity ofthe Guantinamo 'limbo' (Butler, 2002) if anything, his silence on the continuing (and by now taken for granted) violation of the most basic civil rights was marked. It seems that the return of the Camp has been simply metabolized by a significant part of the electorate in the world's most important democracy. When, as a student, I was learning about the history ofthe great tragedies ofthe twentieth century, the question was always the same: how could the European bourgeoisie have acquiesced to the creation of the political conditions that allowed for the constitution ofthe Camp, the production ofthe most pure expression of the biopolitical, of a zone of indistinction between body and politics, the most violent structure of the ban? Of course, I had no idea then what biopolitics was, nor did I associate the horrors of the twentieth century with any sort of 'ban', but the question was essentially one and the same. It is a question that has not stopped tormenting me ever since the Camp has returned among us, with the biopolitical experiment of Guantanamo. Calling attention to and exploring the workings of the spatialization of the politics of exception is, I believe, perhaps one ofthe most urgent tasks for academic geography today. This urgency is rendered by Derek Gregory' recent appeal, when, in the opening pages of The colonial