The Careerist Security of Noblesse Oblige #3: Alternative Security?

Above via.

In response to questions from jon and clif stemming from two earlier posts..

What I am trying to think around is ‘revolution’ as a movement (or ‘exodus’ as it may be) and more along the lines of a stabilization of a movement that is already happening.

The way the PoSL manifesto discusses it is in terms of a revolutionary movement. First there is an awakening to the real conditions of existence which is not a static distribution of power in relation to the mode of production, but it itself the insatiable appetite of the processual ‘spectacle’ at work (I think captured in the phrase ‘the moving wall of hegemony’), then there is a movement away from falsity through the application of a kind of violence that comes with the near absurd ‘total revolution’. Can revolution be stasis when the entire world is always already movement (of capital, desire, deterritorialised flows of whatever, etc)? unlikely, as it would always already be a movement relative to any other coordinate in the frame of reference (or ‘segment’ or ‘field’)… so it is not movement itself that is the problem.

A more rigorous definition of what I mean by ‘security’. Two quick distinctions can be made here. One between ‘security’ as pertaining to physical systems that are in someway regulated and incorporeal events of security, where ‘security’ is a metaphysical state/process. A second distinction can be made between security belonging to thresholds/being and the security belonging to duration/becoming. The airport security is a classic example of a liminal space of State sovereignty. It operates as a material and immaterial filter. I have discussed this on my blog somewhere, hmmm… This is the security of the threshold.

Is if there is a security in/of/to becoming? I am not sure. Security would be more like â€˜maintenanceâ€™, ie if you maintain your car you can be secure in the knowledge that you can expect it to run properly and it wonâ€™t break down. There is no certainty here; oneâ€™s car may very well breakdown. Yet, there is a pleasant kind of security in knowing that your car should not break down. There is a reduction in the mist of (im)probability surrounding each movement. I think it is necessary to reclaim the positive potential in this. What I am dreaming is a ‘security’ that can serve as an alternative stability to the social mechanisms serving as apparatuses of capture for Empire. Stability in this sense is having the security in an expectation that the future will be something and having some conception of what that something will be. There is a centrifugal tendency where those who need or want an alternative security are pushed outward (or inward or to the surface, etc). It is not the human agency that refuses, but the social machinery from which the non-agency is expelled. Exclusion only leads to another inclusion in today’s ‘control society’. What I imagine as security is an alternative form of ‘inclusion’.