Crisis of Presence in Times of Civil War

Globalization, as a process that structures and standardizes the world, has liberated not only capital from government control but also war from being a form of state intervention, to the point where it is difficult to identify the battlegrounds. As Maurizio Lazzarato and Éric Alliez argue in the counter-history of capitalism Wars and Capital, “Deterritorialized war is no longer inter-State war at all, but an uninterrupted succession of multiple wars against populations.”¹ 1 - Éric Alliez and Maurizio Lazzarato, Wars and Capital, trans. Ames Hodges (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext[e] / Foreign Agents, 2016), 26. In their view, the “global civil war” advanced by Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt in the 1960s is transformed through contemporary financialization—and the debt economy—into a multiplicity of civil wars (wars of class, race, and sex, among others) whose matrix is colonial war,² 2 - Ibid., 16. This perspective underlies the correspondence that the authors establish between the colonial undertakings of 1492 and Year One of Capital. or a war amongst and against the population.

Facebook Tweet LinkedIn Email

This content is available with a Digital or Premium subscription only. Subscribe to read the full text and access all our Features, Off-Features, Portfolios, and Columns!

Subscribe (starting at $20)

Already have a Digital or Premium subscription?

Don’t want to subscribe? Additional content is available with an Esse account. It’s free and no purchase will ever be required. Create an account or log in:

My Account

Crisis of Presence in Times of Civil War

Suggested Reading

In Homonational Times: Nationalist Mythology and LGBT Inclusivity

Traverses. Variations sur une même piste

Curator, your love’s on display

Corvo, or the Corsican Nuthatch: A Tale of Two Twitches