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Reading the War on Terror through Fear and Hope: Affective Warfare and the Question of the Future
University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden, (SWE). (Critical War Studies)ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1806-4347
2013 (English)In: Political Perspectives, E-ISSN 2049-081X, Vol. 7, no 2, p. 85-105Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In critical theories of security, it is often claimed that the governance oflife operates by the production of fear, an emotion marked by its political character,working as to arrest bodies in the present. Simultaneously, hope is often announcedas fear’s binary opposite, as the condition of possibility of a future beyond thepresent. Hope is thereby rendered as an ethical imperative, opposed by default toboth power and politics. Through a reading of contemporary affective theoreticalcritique, this paper questions the role of this analytical binary in masking thearticulation of hope as a political concept of governance and power, central as hopearguably has been in the creation of the liberal subject. As such, this paperinterrogates whether not the analytical distinction between hope and fear rather ispolitical, functioning as to confirm rather than challenge the affective, temporal andpolitical framing of the War on Terror – thereby disallowing from the outset areading of fear and hope as simultaneous modes of governance, hailing bodies intoplace by offering both the dream and fear of another world.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2013. Vol. 7, no 2, p. 85-105
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-13379OAI: oai:DiVA.org:fhs-13379DiVA, id: diva2:1925142
Available from: 2025-01-08 Created: 2025-01-08 Last updated: 2025-09-29Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. The Use of Hope: Biopolitics of Security During the Obama Presidency
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Use of Hope: Biopolitics of Security During the Obama Presidency
2018 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

 Through a compilation of four research articles, this PhD thesis investigates ‘hope’ as a biopolitical technology. It interrogates the use of hope by the United States security apparatus, on the one hand, to pre-empt processes of radicalisation and, on the other hand, to prepare the subject of security to cope with permanent insecurity. The dissertation analyses the security discourse of the Obama Administrations 2009 – 2016, paying particular attention to strategic narratives of hope across three principal domains of US security: diplomacy, development and military. The thesis thereby renders visible the ambiguous relations between hope and insecurity in US foreign policy during the Obama period: between hate and hope in the domain of (public) diplomacy; between despair and hope in the domain of development; and between fear and hope in the military domain. To analyse the respective strategic narratives, the thesis employs a theoretical framework drawn from Giorgio Agamben’s theory of biopolitics. Through Agamben’s theoretical perspective, hope appears as a means of governing the future, a technology employed to regulate processes of subjectification. The dissertation’s theoretical ambition is to question a central assumption undergirding important critique of the post-9/11 biopolitical condition: namely that practices of security are inherently at odds with hope, operating through discourses and practices of fear and suffering to reduce the capacity to hope within the global populace. By analysing the appropriation of hope by US security discourse, the thesis explores how practices of security works through hope to achieve security. US security discourse achieves this by means of constituting a particular form of hopeful life: an individualised and resilient form of neoliberal life who is called to embody an indistinction between fear, despair, hate and hope.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, 2018. p. 119
National Category
Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-13383 (URN)978-91-629-0412-8 (ISBN)
Public defence
2018-02-16, 10:34 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2025-04-25 Created: 2025-01-08 Last updated: 2025-09-29Bibliographically approved

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