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Color coded terror alerts, invasion, drone war, rampant surveillance: all manifestations of the type of new power Brian Massumi theorizes in Ontopower. Through an in-depth examination of the War on Terror and the culture of crisis, Massumi identifies the emergence of preemption, which he characterizes as the operative logic of our time. Security threats, regardless of the existence of credible intelligence, are now felt into reality. Whereas nations once waited for a clear and present danger to emerge before using force, a threat's felt reality now demands launching a preemptive strike. Power refocuses on what may emerge, as that potential presents itself to feeling. This affective logic of potential washes back from the war front to become the dominant mode of power on the home front as well. This is ontopower-the mode of power embodying the logic of preemption across the full spectrum of force, from the “hard” (military intervention) to the "soft" (surveillance). With Ontopower, Massumi provides an original theory of power that explains not only current practices of war but the culture of insecurity permeating our contemporary neoliberal condition.
List of contents
Preface vii
Part One: Powers
1. The Primacy of Preemption: The Operative Logic of Threat 3
2. National Enterprise Emergency: Steps toward an Ecology of Powers 21
Part Two: Powers of Perception
3. Perception Attack: The Force to Own Time 63
4. Power to the Edge: Making Information Pointy 93
5. Embodiments and History 153
Part Three: The Power to Affect
6. Fear (The Spectrum Said) 171
7. The Future Birth of the Affective Fact 189
Afterword: After the Long Past: A Retrospective Introduction to the History of the Present 207
Notes 247
References 275
Index 287
About the author
Brian Massumi is Professor of Communication at the University of Montreal. He is the author of The Power at the End of the Economy, What Animals Teach Us about Politics, and Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, all also published by Duke University Press.
Summary
In this original theory of power, Brian Massumi explains how the logic of preemption governs U.S. military policy in the War on Terror and how that logic spills over from the war front to the home front. Threats are now felt into reality and power refocuses on what may emerge. The mode of power embodying the logic of preemption is ontopower.
