Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception
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.
National Enterprise Emergency: Steps toward an Ecology of Powers
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Published:August 2015
Preemption must be understood as part of an ecology of powers. This term refers to the fact that preemption is a dominant mode of power but it cohabits the field of power with earlier modes with very different logics. The way these modes co-operate is too complex to be understood as a system. A distinction between system and process is developed to grasp the complexity. Foucault’s categories of power—sovereign, disciplinary, biopower—are adopted and adapted. Ontopower is distinct from, and more encompassing than, all of these. Ontopower pertains to an ecology of powers also in the sense that it is “environmental”:...
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