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A Virtual Theory of Global Politics, Mimetic War and the Spectral State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2017

James Der Derian
James Der Derian*
Affiliation:
Brown University, Providence, R.I., and UMASS/Amherst
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Type
Power
Information
Proceedings of the ASIL Annual Meeting , Volume 93 , 1999 , pp. 163 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1999

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References

1 Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, Ii, 19.

2 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols 35 (R.J. Hollingdale trans., 1968).

3 “Everywhere that a culture posits evil, it gives expression to a relationship oí fear, thus a weakness.” Friedrich Nietzsche, the Will to Power, 1025.

4 Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, 174.

5 Id. at 5. See also Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science, 355: “Look, isn’t our need for knowledge precisely this need for the familiar, the will to uncover everything strange, unusual, and questionable something that no longer disturbs us? Is it not the instinct of fear that bids us to know? And is the jubilation of those who obtain knowledge not the jubilation over the restoration of a sense of security?”

6 Nietzsche, supra note l, at II, 11.

7 Nietzsche, supra note 3, at 53, 576.

8 Nietzsche, supra note 1, at Ii, 19.

9 This is drawn mainly from Nietzsche’s Daybreak, Twilight of the Idols, Gay Science, Genealogy of Morals and Will to Power, and Derrida’s the Other Heading (1992) and Specters of Marx (Peggy Kamuf trans., 1994).

10 Jacques Derrida, the Other Heading (1992) and Specters of Marx, at 50-52 (Peggy Kamuf trans., 1994).

11 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Mark, at 50-51.

12 Nietzsche, supra note 2, at 106-07.

13 Time, Apr. 27, 1998.

14 Robert Bunker, Five-Dimensional (Cyber) Warfighting: Can the Army After Next Be Defeated Through Complex Concepts and Technologies? (1998).

15 One methodological note is required. My approach to virtual matters might be a bit thick on description and speculation, and thin on explanation, but I think that many of the new, protean forces I am investigating are resistant to current models of explanation in the social sciences. The political theorist William Connolly, contrasting the work of Deleuze to that of social scientists, puts it best in “The Liberal Image of the Nation” (unpublished essay, on file with the author, at 18): “Deleuze and Guattari are neither indeterminists nor causalists in the traditional sense. Their multicausualism projects a world of multiple, microcausal agents too dense in texture and multiple in shape to be captured by any theory simple enough to be explanatory. They are thus philosophers of intervention rather than explanation.”

16 Benjamin, Walter, Das Kustwek im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, in Gesammelte Schriften 1.2 (Teidemann, Rolf & Schweppenhauser, Hermann eds., 1974-1989)Google Scholar. I rely here on Jeneen Hobby’s translation and interpretation of the “second version” of the essay (discovered by Gary Smith in the Max Horkheimer Archíve in the 1980s and included in the collected works) since it includes the epilogue as well as material on mimetic theory that is missing from other versions. See Hobby, Jeneen, Raising Consciousness in the Writings of Walter Benjamin 254, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1996)Google Scholar.

17 Benjamin, Walter, On the Mimetic Faculty, in Reflections 333 (Jephcott, Edmund ed., 1978)Google Scholar.

18 Id

19 Id. at 335.

20 Id. at 336.

21 Benjamin, supra note 16, at VI, 127 (quoted by Hobby, 270). Compare to an earlier, more general statement by Benjamin, supra note 16, at Ii, 210: “The gift to see similarities which we possess, is nothing else but a weak rudiment of that violent compulsion in former times to become similar and to behave similarly...”

22 See, e.g., Theories of German Fascism: On the Collection of Essays War and Warrior, (Ernst Junger ed., 1930), and Benjamin, supra note 16, at III, 238-50.

23 Benjamin, W., Berliner Spielzeugwanderung Ii, in Aufklärung Für Kinder 49 Google Scholar, quoted in Mehlman, Jeffrey, Walter Benjamin for Children: an Essay on His Radio Years 4 (1993)Google Scholar.

24 Walter Benjamin, Spielzeug Un Spielen 71, quoted by Mehlman, supra note 23, at 5.

25 Benjamin, supra note 24, at 67, quoted by Mehlman, supra note 23, at 4.

26 Adorno, although critical of Benjamin’s interpretation of mimesis, does acknowledge that “[a]rt that seeks to redeem itself from semblance through play becomes sport,” thus opening another important link to practices of war. See Adorno, Aesthetic Theory 100 (1997) and Dialectics of Enlightenment (1979), in which he also links technologies of mimesis to fascism.

27 Walter Benjamin, Briefe [Benjamin’s letters] 425, quoted in John McCole, Walter Benjamin and the Antimonies of Tradition 12 (1993).

28 Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality 193 (1995).

29 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations 5 (1983).

30 Id.

31 Id.

32 Id. at 12.

33 Id. at 13.

34 Paul Virilio, Art of the Motor 32-33 (1995).

35 Id. at 36.

36 Paul Virilio, interview, Art and Philosophy 139-40 (1991).

37 See James Der Derian, Virtual War (forthcoming).

38 Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Ari in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, in Illuminations 241 (Arendt, Hannah ed., Zohn, Harry trans., 1969)Google Scholar.

39 Eisenhower, Dwight D., Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, Jan. 17, 1961, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1038 (1960-1961)Google Scholar.

40 Andrew Marshall, Interview (June 21, 1996).

41 Id.

42 In the only footnote in his most popular book, Strategy, Hart’s contribution to the Salisbury Plain exercises is acknowledged: “The strategy and tactics of the Mongols are dealt with more fully in the author’s earlier book Great Captains Unveiled—which was chosen for the first experimental Mechanized Force in 1927.” See Hart, B.H. Liddell, 2 Strategy 62 (1974)Google Scholar.

43 See B.H. Liddell Hart, Paris, Or the Future of War (1925), and Bond, Brian & Alexander, Martin, Liddell Hart and De Gaulle: The Doctrines of Limited Liability and Mobile Defense, in Makers of Modern Strategy From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age 598–623 Google Scholar ( Craig, Gordon & Gilbert, Felix eds., 1986)Google Scholar.

44 Hart, B.H. Liddell, Tidworth Tattoo—Modern War Staged, Daily Telegraph (London), Aug. 1, 1927 Google Scholar.

45 Hart, B.H. Liddell, “Mechanical Gods” of Modern Warfare—Tanks in Night Move—Driving Feat in the Dark, Daily Telegraph (London), Aug. 23, 1927 Google Scholar.

46 Kierkegaard, Søren, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection, no. 1395 (Dru, Alexander ed. & trans., 1938)Google Scholar, 1854 entry.

47 Michael Taussing, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses, at xv (l 993).

48 Id. at xvi-xvii.