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Theory, Culture & Society
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World Dis/Order

On Some Fundamental Questions

Couze Venn

Theory, Culture & Society Centre

This article addresses the fundamental issues about sovereignty and an ethical polity that the event of September 11th has brought to a crisis. It examines the geography of power that has become more visible as the USA sets about ensuring that the new world order that has been emerging with neo-liberalism and corporate capitalism is protected from challenges of any kind. It argues that the state of emergency has become chronic, making possible the enactment of exceptional measures that threaten the basic principles underlying democracy and liberty. Terror is becoming a universal tool to compel compliance with a global form of neo-feudalism. It questions the way in which Islamic fundamentalism is being used as ideological cover to legitimate another fundamentalism, namely neo-liberalism. The article opens up aspects of fundamentalism to an analysis that explores the interconnections between onto-logical lack, violence, surplus terror and the un(re)presentable in the discourse constitutive of authority. It also examines the exceptional status and character of the USA in the history of modernity, particularly with regard to its militarism. It calls for a critique of the present that recognizes that the current forms of totalitarianism eliminate the possibility of just forms of sociality emerging.

Key Words: fundamentalism • neo-liberal governance • sovereignty • the postcolonial • totalitarianism

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 19, No. 4, 121-136 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0263276402019004009
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