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February 27, 2006

Blair: "this is not an issue of liberty but of modernity"

I'm trying to put together a broadly poststructuralist account of the 'war on terror' at the moment - thinking through what 'modern' war might be. Unfortunately, it seems that Prime Minister Blair is well ahead of me on this - releasing a load of articles this weekend, arguing that new measures introduced to deal with terrorism and 'anti-social behaviour' are "an issue [not] of liberty but of modernity."

Michel Foucault argued that politics is war by other means. Blair seems to agree with him - the 'war' against serious terrorist violence which can cause massive casualties and 'anti-social' behaviour such as swearing in a private conversation are being brought together in 'modern' British politics. For Blair, "there is a serious debate about the nature of liberty in the modern world" and we must move beyond "traditional court processes and attitudes to civil liberties" in order to continue to enforce 'the rules' of our society. After all, as Blair argues, "the 'rules' are becoming harder to enforce" - and maybe they're becoming more ambiguous as well.

'The rules' are becoming harder to enforce, and are no longer as stable as they used to be. While Blair is seeking to find new and bigger truncheons with which to squash attempts at rule breaking/remaking (and, bizarrely, to use the same weapons against global terrorist violence and relatively trivial 'offences' like swearing in public) the other possibility is that new and different rule-sets might emerge - or are emerging now.

Posted by jon_mendel at February 27, 2006 03:35 PM