Retort
Auteur van Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War
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RETORT concludes that with some modifications the thesis still holds, and these authors are well qualified to answer, at least one of them having known the Situationists first hand. Despite overly modest disclaimers to the contrary they capture at least some of Debord's caustic and pithy tone which makes a refreshing change from the post-post-structuralist treacle of so much modern social commentary. They describe our present state as being governed by 'the contradictions of military neo-liberalism under conditions of spectacle', and pose the central questions: to what extent did '9/11' usher in a new era?; are US actions since 9/11 simply a historical regression to naked force?; and does the concept 'society of the spectacle' still have any explanatory value or are we now facing a cruder, older kind of statecraft?
The book doesn't claim to answer these completely, but merely to open them up for further debate as a precondition for rebuilding any sort of coherent leftwing opposition (the title 'Afflicted Powers' is from Milton's Paradise Lost, uttered by Satan when recounting his failed rebellion).
The book takes off from two striking (ie. spectacular) images of al-Qaida's devastating attack on the Twin Towers and the grotesquely hooded Iraqi prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison. RETORT contends that al-Qaida fully understands that US military power is now based as much in spectacle as material firepower, so it committed an outrage that while itself confined within the spectacle (that is, which could achieve no conceivable political goal), still inflicted great damage on the spectacle of US power.
RETORT does not in any way defend al-Qaida, but on the contrary explains lucidly how Revolutionary Islam used a toxic combination of the worst of Leninist/Guevarist vanguardism and anti-modern religious fundamentalism to defeat all its secular progressive rivals. In an excellent chapter they also untangle the circulation of oil, construction services and arms sales between the US and the Middle East, which is far, far more complex than any crude leftist claims that Iraq was invaded only to grab the oil fields.
This book is in a different league from most of the anti-war books published since the Iraq invasion, and really should be required reading even for those who will not agree with its analysis.… (meer)