The Subtlety of Caesar
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3516148 |
|---|---|
| Authors | T Brennan (0000-0003-1684-4825) |
| Year | 2003 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 200-206 |
| Publication date | 2003-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801031000112932 |
| OpenAlex | W2076348920 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
The financial and military control of resources, as well as the disciplining of labor, is largely justified today under the rubric of ‘globalization’. This term, which is bound up with a modernist enthusiasm for the ‘new’, is an effective alibi today for forms of imperial power. Globalization is of course not generally recognized this way. Even the cultural left is unable to distinguish between left and right critiques of modernity, which it tends to conflate. Yesterday’s justifications for imperial conquest (‘civilization’, ‘enlightenment’, ‘the burdens of the white race’) have naturally fallen into disrepute. However, that these justifications have merely been refurbished in terms more inviting to contemporary sensibilities is rarely considered. There is, in short, a vital misrecognition by cultural theory of the role it plays in heralding an outlook that participates, against its will, in an imperial apologetics. Fixated on the supposed menace posed by all forms of state authority (and the internalizing of authority known as ‘governmentality’), the cultural theorist unintentionally weakens popular defenses against the mobility, chaos, and disruptions of capital. Crucial to the future of cultural theory is the creation of a rhetoric of outrage, and a rediscovery of the ‘beauty’ of a state authority that can curb the excesses of capital
Aesthetics · Alibi · Civilization · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Globalization · Modernity · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism
| Highly cited | No |
|---|