tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62156000872610938132024-03-13T11:06:21.390-07:00Secure AirportsSecure Airports is an ongoing artist's project, exploring the airports as a political and social space. Feel free to contribute.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-19637354456219972902010-01-12T12:54:00.001-08:002010-01-12T12:54:56.178-08:00Terrorism Alert: A System Shows GapsMarch 21, 1989<br />New York Times<br />Craig R. Whitney<br /><br />LONDON, March 20— The furor over whether the British authorities failed to pass along warnings about a new kind of terrorist bomb in time to prevent the destruction of a Pan Am jumbo jet has revealed a serious lack of coordination between governments and airlines on terrorism, diplomats and officials here say.<br /><br />Among the questions that have been raised is whether Pan Am's Frankfurt office passed on a warning that it received from the West German authorities on Nov. 10 that terrorists had hidden bombs in portable radio cassette-recorders. Such a device blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, and all 259 people on board and 11 more on the ground died in the crash.<br /><br />Another question is why the British Department of Transport waited until Nov. 22 to warn British airlines and airports, but no others, of the bomb threat. It prepared on Dec. 19 a more complete warning, with photographs, for American and other foreign carriers, but waited until after Lockerbie and after Christmas to send it out, by mail. That one did not reach Pan Am's London office until Jan. 17. Differing Warning<br /><br />An official close to the investigation said tonight that the Nov. 22 warning was not identical to one sent by the Federal Aviation Administration in Washington to American airlines four days earlier, and that American officials were asking why the British had not sent theirs to the F.A.A.<br /><br />Pan Am has acknowledged receiving the original warning from West Germany on Nov. 10, after the police there discovered a Palestinian bomb-making network using sophisticated explosives and Toshiba portable cassette players. The airline said it had stepped up its security in Frankfurt as a result.<br /><br />Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt, and both the British investigators and the Federal Bureau of Investigation say they believe that the bomb was in a piece of baggage loaded into a hold container there. Pan Am will not say when or even whether its office in Frankfurt passed on the West German information to headquarters in New York or to Heathrow Airport in London. The Pan Am Boeing 747 left Heathrow on the final leg to New York an hour before the explosion blew it apart at 31,000 feet.<br /><br />Even if employees in both places had been fully alert to the danger on Dec. 21, there is no guarantee they could have found the bomb in the baggage. A Department of Transport spokesman, Paul McKie, said today that the department could not confirm an ABC News report that the department had acknowledged, on Dec. 29, that baggage from the plane from Frankfurt had not been screened again at Heathrow before being loaded onto the 747, as required. Possible Misinformation<br /><br />Both the British alerts on radio cassette bombs, on Nov. 22 and Dec. 19, stressed how difficult they would be to detect. Paul Channon, the Transport Minister, has acknowledged that ''maybe'' the Dec. 19 warning ''should have been sent out by telex,'' and the color photographs of the device that delayed the mailing sent out later.<br /><br />A comparison of the full texts of the Nov. 22 message and the Dec. 19 bulletin shows that the later one gave security staff members some pointers on how to detect radio casette players concealing bombs.<br /><br />First of all, it said, an altered set would not play when turned on. A jack plug for the aerial would arm the device. When X-rayed, it would show more wiring than normal. Additional batteries used to arm the explosive device would rattle around inside. ''Any item about which a searcher is unable to satisfy himself/herself must, if it is to be carried in the aircraft, be consigned to the aircraft hold,'' the bulletin said.<br /><br />That is where the bomb that destroyed Flight 103 was. But Mr. Channon has excused both the delay and the possible misinformation by saying that since it almost certainly was loaded in Frankfurt, not Heathrow, ''the sad fact is that nothing my department did or could have done would have made the slightest difference.''<br /><br />Mr. Channon is not in charge of the painstaking investigation into the crash, which has pieced together thousands of fragments of wreckage and has now identified the piece of baggage in which the tape recorder was contained, but not whose baggage it was or who put the bomb into it. 'A Lot to Be Desired'<br /><br />But an American official close to the investigation said that the confusing statements from the Department of Transport had shaken confidence in Washington, where Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner dispatched aides to Britain and West Germany last week to review the state of international cooperation on terrorism. ''It's obvious that there is a lot of information out there, but a lot to be desired on the way it comes together so it can do some good,'' he said.<br /><br />There have also been indications of discontent from officials in other countries with an interest in the investigation. Alexander Prechtel, a spokesman for the West German federal prosecution authority, said, ''If the British authorities know more than we do, then they are not fulfilling their pledges of keeping us closely informed.''<br /><br />The investigation is being run not by Scotland Yard, though its anti-terrorism branch is involved, but by a detective chief superintendent of the Strathclyde police force, the largest in Britain outside London, from the town of Lockerbie, a village of about 3,500 people near the English border.<br /><br />Over the weekend, the Transport Department advised airlines again to be on the alert for luggage and passengers carrying electronic devices aboard airplanes, citing a ''high and continuing risk'' that they could conceal explosives.<br /><br />The department said it had originally issued the warning on Feb. 18, two days after the investigators determined what had brought down Pan Am 103. Until the weekend, it apparently had not been enforced, even at Heathrow.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-42703664299805437382010-01-12T12:38:00.000-08:002010-01-12T12:51:24.631-08:00First 10 Results, Google Images: Airport Security after 9/11<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOLOHov3cahI_pQdnvKkGZy6pVJRfCPIDnWvlzrdZUcD5fdhfmKy9uMHMIGbZkysZF5gnA7Voqe5xT3OVfUrxRpB5yhKyqvmj2ZMJRAkdP_vNETB76hVBFTnXnBrUXB9QU2TLSDbyElYD/s1600-h/10.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigOLOHov3cahI_pQdnvKkGZy6pVJRfCPIDnWvlzrdZUcD5fdhfmKy9uMHMIGbZkysZF5gnA7Voqe5xT3OVfUrxRpB5yhKyqvmj2ZMJRAkdP_vNETB76hVBFTnXnBrUXB9QU2TLSDbyElYD/s320/10.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425958354993591426" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsbsY6xUAEB9mvZloBTl0WE8qpdhmdQRFjNRWbclb4GxjFNSN3IgumW-MsgI60IN4cavXDjGPQAiKSiN35stpvR6aFRhObk52YUxhtNkjM45UiYWwxdbyfe5HH9EQAp8mAoD2xwPktC7I/s1600-h/9.jpg"><img style="display:block; 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margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 255px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiekpioMM4RO8pheTKBbM_VPOKRZ1f_bf0OVUxwr3HEVA3ZaYYz-XW403_HALrSlbo34CfDfKAJ8ZIM31bfzeIoqQSegDOF15xNyEQiXbcafu6dAmkp3bmEy2rD8MjvnYBkDsyYzwoNRP7W/s320/4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425952857857714466" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbVfu0FNU_bbRFxbFsrb6VxXqEhdfMh85ColSb8eTploFJkLfysqVE0Fur_gLkQjK28ODCTlvTxz-ct54H7XYjrEvjMRpQfTVdx06LzXqwxeX5x0fRU2Ic91xd_tO6rBGYaED_lycKxKB/s1600-h/5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 205px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbVfu0FNU_bbRFxbFsrb6VxXqEhdfMh85ColSb8eTploFJkLfysqVE0Fur_gLkQjK28ODCTlvTxz-ct54H7XYjrEvjMRpQfTVdx06LzXqwxeX5x0fRU2Ic91xd_tO6rBGYaED_lycKxKB/s320/5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425952723773808658" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2OXX-JeMPNywz-_W3sz7rfzi_H_f0eSO1YdcZwj__mWZPKAXy-OlEVBlh6pZyD6VGxetzPYODeDnVKpX9Vb4HxrgYWkoPeZbUxGqN3wOfhL238Q7Y-EnJYURTlLZWftbEftqKa9kvn4CK/s1600-h/3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 252px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2OXX-JeMPNywz-_W3sz7rfzi_H_f0eSO1YdcZwj__mWZPKAXy-OlEVBlh6pZyD6VGxetzPYODeDnVKpX9Vb4HxrgYWkoPeZbUxGqN3wOfhL238Q7Y-EnJYURTlLZWftbEftqKa9kvn4CK/s320/3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425952607547681362" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUmeu2P5-CAQ0nnEd7sCG9vjOSvzON1skphLxwQzY14VJcPIpcUXbv8wgZvYOxj4Mp53BZXA-29JgS9PPQq_6qOS76bgmjOr4Eh3IG18a4ITSgiDjsZLlsXH6BClb-5f4-1Ab9WnBUVulZ/s1600-h/2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUmeu2P5-CAQ0nnEd7sCG9vjOSvzON1skphLxwQzY14VJcPIpcUXbv8wgZvYOxj4Mp53BZXA-29JgS9PPQq_6qOS76bgmjOr4Eh3IG18a4ITSgiDjsZLlsXH6BClb-5f4-1Ab9WnBUVulZ/s320/2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425952486950657314" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEn7wYJ-mjbeQuBDOZ9cGWFU_sOPIyhK8Cy9jtKBfoGHQNvrlL6oMXH74EVy5PiX7wdGMq1evra3SfYMX4gqtWeUu-rct_J9LCW8mj557v8hRM6-jFhXoXSs0B0V72SRlHxJ97Ml17Wqzr/s1600-h/1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 294px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEn7wYJ-mjbeQuBDOZ9cGWFU_sOPIyhK8Cy9jtKBfoGHQNvrlL6oMXH74EVy5PiX7wdGMq1evra3SfYMX4gqtWeUu-rct_J9LCW8mj557v8hRM6-jFhXoXSs0B0V72SRlHxJ97Ml17Wqzr/s320/1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425952366135820210" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-77138195771758218262010-01-12T12:16:00.000-08:002010-01-12T12:17:18.347-08:00A ‘Romantic’ Now in Trouble Over an Airport Kiss<span style="font-style:italic;">January 10, 2010<br />New York Times<br />Al Baker and Liz Robbins</span><br /><br />When a man ducked past security at Newark Liberty International Airport last Sunday to kiss his girlfriend goodbye, the breach in security shut down one of the country’s busiest airports, delayed flights through Monday and prompted an intensive manhunt from New Jersey detectives that ended on Friday evening on a street in Piscataway, N.J.<br /><br />But the man police sought was not even home. He was at the gym.<br /><br />When Haisong Jiang, a 28-year-old Rutgers University graduate student, returned, the police arrested him.<br /><br />On Saturday, some of Mr. Jiang’s roommates described him as a “romantic” now trying to secure a lawyer after the dizzying turn of events. His actions might have seemed innocently romantic to him, his friends said. But the incident was yet another lapse in airport security that frustrated harried travelers in the wake of the failed plane bombing on Christmas and incensed one New Jersey lawmaker over the leniency of Mr. Jiang’s potential penalty.<br /><br />According to a statement from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Mr. Jiang would be charged with defiant trespass. He was issued with a summons and told to appear in Newark Municipal Court.<br /><br />It is a “petty disorderly persons offense,” said Paul M. Loriquet, a spokesman for the Essex County district attorney’s office, explaining that such an offense did not qualify to be prosecuted in federal court and only carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail.<br /><br />In an interview on Saturday, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, of New Jersey, said he was hoping that the United States attorney’s office would consider bringing federal charges because the penalty Mr. Jiang is facing, “is hardly noteworthy and would not discourage people who want to break through the perimeter.”<br /><br />The senator said the trouble the security breach caused far outweighed the punishment: 1,600 people stuck in the airport for six hours; flights delayed and an “incalculable” loss of money. And then for five days after the incident, New Jersey law enforcement officials searched exhaustively for the man caught on a grainy surveillance video, one which Sen. Lautenberg had released on Thursday.<br /><br />The video showed that Mr. Jiang was able to step past security last Sunday when a guard, identified by a law enforcement official as Ruben Hernandez, left his post. The guard has been on administrative leave since Tuesday, and he faces disciplinary action, according to the Transportation Security Administration.<br /><br />Without Mr. Hernandez watching, Mr. Jiang was able to slip into an area of people who had already cleared security and embraced a woman in a puffy coat and kissed her. When security officials were alerted that someone had breached a secure area, they took steps to lock down the terminal.<br /><br />Ning Huang, 33, a former Rutgers graduate student and a friend of Mr. Jiang’s identified the woman as Mr. Jiang’s girlfriend. Mr. Huang did not provide the woman’s name, but said she is a former Rutgers student who has dated Mr. Jiang for about a year and now lives in Los Angeles.<br /><br />“He loves her very much,” Mr. Huang said on Saturday, outside the two-story house Mr. Jiang shares with five roommates. Mr. Huang added that his friend “just wanted to say goodbye to his girlfriend, so it was a very emotional moment. I don’t think he realized what he’s doing.”<br /><br />Andy Riu, a friend of Mr. Jiang, also came to the Piscataway house after word spread on a soccer league’s online message board that Mr. Jiang would miss a scheduled 2 p.m. pickup game because he had been arrested.<br /><br />“I think this man is very romantic,” Mr. Riu said.<br /><br />Mr. Jiang, who comes from the Jiangxi province of China, said Mr. Huang, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, according to the Rutgers University Web site. He intended to find a job in Los Angeles after graduation so he could be with his girlfriend, Mr. Huang said.<br /><br />“I just hope this doesn’t affect his future career path.”<br /><br />Mr. Jiang has not spoken publicly since his arrest. He was held in a building at the airport until about midnight Friday, when he was released on his own recognizance.<br /><br />No date for his arraignment has been set yet, Esmeralda Cameron, a spokeswoman for the Newark Municipal Court said on Saturday.<br /><br />Nate Schweber contributed reporting from Piscataway, N.J.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-60567278066451535482010-01-12T11:57:00.000-08:002010-01-12T12:09:30.683-08:00For Immigrants, New Travel Concerns<span style="font-style:italic;">January 9, 2010<br />New York Times<br />Anne Barnard</span><br /><br />Eating spiced lamb at a bustling Yemeni restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn, Mahib Alkrizy said that since Sept. 11, 2001, his wife, a religious Muslim who covers her hair, has come to expect being patted down and stared at when she travels by plane.<br /><br />Around the corner at Abu Yasser Travel Agency, employees waved a reporter away — they were tired of even talking about the Obama administration’s recent decision to impose tougher airline screening measures for people flying from 14 countries, including Yemen.<br /><br />“People who travel a lot, they’re getting used to it,” said Abdul Alzundani, a clerk at the office of Yemenia, the national airline, nearby.<br /><br />It was a different story at Odyssey African Market in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Evident there, along with the smoked fish and kola nuts that loaded the narrow aisles, was much of the anguish that radiated from Arab-Americans in the days after 9/11.<br /><br />For Nigerian immigrants, the news that their country was on the list, after a Nigerian citizen was charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, was a new experience, bringing insult and a creeping fear that they were entering a new era of stigma and scrutiny.<br /><br />“There is nothing like that in our record!” exclaimed Raymond Owolewa, 73, a retired Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker who brought his children to the United States from Nigeria more than three decades ago and was incensed that Nigeria was lumped in with nations the United States lists as state sponsors of terrorism, like Syria and Iran.<br /><br />“Every country has radical people,” he added. “But we are not specializing in that.”<br /><br />Five days after President Obama announced the new rules, it is too early to tell how they will ultimately affect people from Nigeria and the other listed countries, or New York’s Nigerian diaspora, which numbers more than 15,000, according to the Census Bureau. The immediate impact, Nigerians and Yemenis said, is simply inconvenience and fear of stigmatization; travel agents said no one was canceling trips.<br /><br />But these immigrant communities are uncertain whether there could be, over time, a chilling effect on family visits or business travel. And Nigerians, for whom the problem is freshest, wonder if it is a precursor to more serious challenges like the ones Middle Easterners face, such as increased difficulty getting visas to study and work in America.<br /><br />Nigeria and Yemen were bound together by the Dec. 25 bombing attempt, when, officials say, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 19, a Nigerian Muslim working with a Qaeda cell in Yemen, tried to detonate explosives on a plane about to land in Detroit.<br /><br />Besides Nigeria and Yemen, the rules affect Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Anyone flying from those countries, and citizens of those countries flying from anywhere in the world, must undergo a pat-down and a check of their carry-on luggage before boarding. Critics say the rules will simply encourage plotters to recruit bombers in nonlisted countries.<br /><br />Complicating reaction among Nigerians is the country’s tension between the mostly Christian south and the largely Muslim north. Many Nigerians in the United States are Christians, and their chagrin at the blow to Nigeria’s image was mixed with anger at growing Islamic extremism in the north of their country and concern that ill-informed Americans might now associate such views with all Nigerians.<br /><br />Many blamed the Nigerian government for making their oil-rich country famous for corruption, e-mail get-rich-quick schemes, and, some argue, fertile ground for Qaeda recruiters.<br /><br />Oliver Mbamara, of the New York-based Nigerian Lawyers Association, wrote in African Events magazine that Nigeria’s leaders were “turning a blind eye to elements that breed the type of circumstance and environment where the likes of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab thrive.”<br /><br />Olujimi Gureje, who named his dog Umaru as a dig at Nigeria’s president, Umaru Yar’Adua, welcomed the rules and said Nigerians should not be quick to claim discrimination. “You are not Abdul-whatever-his-name-is,” he said, surrounded by African-influenced avant-garde clothing he designs at his boutique in Prospect Heights. “Take responsibility for yourself.”<br /><br />He said Nigeria had received a wake-up call, and that Mr. Abdulmutallab, from a wealthy family, typified the aimlessness of the country’s young elite.<br /><br />But more Nigerian-Americans saw the story as every parent’s nightmare. They praised Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father for alerting American authorities to his son’s growing extremism, insisted that Nigeria’s 150 million people were being penalized for a plot that had nothing to do with them, and opined — like many Yemenis — that the rules should apply to all countries.<br /><br />“It goes to show the relations between powerful nations and weak nations,” said Eman Orji, 50, a paralegal who was buying kola nuts at Odyssey. The United Kingdom, he noted, was not placed on a “no-fly” list after a Briton, Richard C. Reid, tried to blow up a Miami-bound plane in December 2001: “It shows this air of superiority, that we can subject Nigeria to this kind of international humiliation.”<br /><br />Sheri Adenekan, 39, a home health aide who stopped in for plantains, said, “Because of one person, a lot of people will suffer.”<br /><br />The Yemeni airline office, despite its inviting pictures of Yemen’s dunes and ornate traditional houses, was deserted Wednesday but for the clerk, Mr. Alzundani. He grew up in New York but sent his wife and family back to Yemen so the children to study Arabic and Islam. Now he worries the new rules will have a very personal effect: loneliness.<br /><br />His modest, traditional wife, he said, might refuse to visit him if it meant a pat-down or a walk through a machine that let guards see through her clothes.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-48853668684315100302010-01-12T11:54:00.000-08:002010-01-12T11:57:50.002-08:00A Photograph<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnDpvK2Pp7DqJ1zttU_kd2hL2Ei0Jv2GR5QDlvzx-PrMwLg_0XzmsKTilzGOdinzUCGCJHVU1hsmE603mNNGl9Q_j7SFBtYBk6h4SQIjOwMhGoZN4ctXgsa28zw-5rFJkpJItdbOwnhr28/s1600-h/epic-fail-airport-security-fail.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnDpvK2Pp7DqJ1zttU_kd2hL2Ei0Jv2GR5QDlvzx-PrMwLg_0XzmsKTilzGOdinzUCGCJHVU1hsmE603mNNGl9Q_j7SFBtYBk6h4SQIjOwMhGoZN4ctXgsa28zw-5rFJkpJItdbOwnhr28/s320/epic-fail-airport-security-fail.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425944948953251682" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-67761004534872237462010-01-12T10:16:00.000-08:002010-01-12T10:33:16.834-08:00Airport Security<span style="font-style:italic;">Updated Jan. 6, 2010<br />Jonathan Alcom for the New York Times<br />Under Times Topics</span><br /><br />The Department of Homeland Security has spent $40 billion rebuilding the aviation security system since the terror attacks of 2001. Congress pulled responsibility for aviation security out of the Federal Aviation Administration and created the Transportation Security Administration, which also assumed control of security for other modes of transportation. Much work that was formerly done by the airlines or private contractors is now done by federal employees.<br /><br />The years of effort have created a security net that is much stronger in key areas, from simple things like secure cockpit doors to the routine inspections now done on checked baggage.<br /><br />But a self-proclaimed terrorist's attempt to bring down a passenger jet headed to Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009, exposed gaps in the system. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged in the attempted attack, was able to board a plane even after his father was so alarmed by his son's radical talk that he contacted U.S. officials after his son disappeared while studying abroad.<br /><br />The incident led to an immediate increase in security efforts at airports. Less than two weeks after the attempted attack, the Obama administration mandated extra scrutiny - including full-body pat downs - for people flying into the United States from 14 mostly Muslim countries. Under the new rules, all citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen must receive a pat down and an extra check of their carry-on bags before boarding a plane bound for the United States, officials said. Citizens of Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria - nations considered "state sponsors of terrorism" - face the same requirement.<br /><br />As officials began another round of struggles to strengthen the country's aviation security system, a review of government audits and interviews with experts inside and outside the government showed that the system has been slow to make some large changes because of a balky bureaucracy, fickle politics and, at times, airline industry opposition. It has also squandered tens of millions of dollars on faulty technology, like high-tech "puffer" machines that repeatedly broke down and flunked the most basic test: they failed to detect some explosives.<br /><br />As a result, the government has delayed putting in place some of the most important recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission report, which examined the missteps that led to attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.<br /><br />For example, the government has yet to fully deploy a sophisticated method of matching passenger names with terrorist watch lists. And it has still not finished changes that would make it harder for terrorists to sneak bombs into airplane cargo holds, according to government reports.<br /><br />Officials from both the Obama and Bush administrations argue that the progress is real, and they contend that with additional steps since the Christmas incident, and others under way, a robust security network is in sight.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-70694002110276072242010-01-10T10:28:00.000-08:002010-01-10T10:29:52.478-08:00The A Brief History of the State of Exception<span style="font-style:italic;">Giorgio Agamben<br />An excerpt from State of Exception<br /></span><br />FRANCE<br /><br />We have already seen how the state of siege had its origin in France during the Revolution. After being established with the Constituent Assembly’s decree of July 8, 1791, it acquired its proper physiognomy as état de siège fictif or état de siège politique with the Directorial law of August 27, 1797, and, finally, with Napoleon’s decree of December 24, 1811. The idea of a suspension of the constitution (of the “rule of the constitution”) had instead been introduced, as we have also seen, by the Constitution of 22 Frimaire Year 8. Article 14 of the Charte of 1814 granted the sovereign the power to “make the regulations and ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the security of the State”; because of the vagueness of the formula, Chateaubriand observed “that it is possible that one fine morning the whole Charte will be forfeited for the benefit of Article 14.” The state of siege was expressly mentioned in the Acte additionel to the Constitution of April 22, 1815, which stated that it could only be declared with a law. Since then, moments of constitutional crisis in France over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been marked by legislation on the state of siege. After the fall of the July Monarchy, a decree by the Constituent Assembly on June 24, 1848, put Paris in a state of siege and assigned General Cavaignac the task of restoring order in the city. Consequently, an article was included in the new constitution of November 4, 1848, establishing that the occasions, forms, and effects of the state of siege would be firmly set by a law. From this moment on, the dominant principle in the French tradition (though, as we will see, not without exceptions) has been that the power to suspend the laws can belong only to the same power that produces them, that is, parliament (in contrast to the German tradition, which entrusted this power to the head of state). The law of August 9, 1849 (which was partially restricted later by the law of April 4, 1878), consequently established that a political state of siege could be declared by parliament (or, additionally, by the head of state) in the case of imminent danger to external or internal security. Napoleon III had recourse several times to this law and, once installed in power, he transferred, in the constitution of January 1852, the exclusive power to proclaim a state of siege to the head of state. The Franco-Prussian War and the insurrection of the Commune coincided with an unprecedented generalization of the state of exception, which was proclaimed in forty departments and lasted in some of them until 1876. On the basis of these experiences, and after MacMahon’s failed coup d’état in May 1877, the law of 1849 was modified to establish that a state of siege could be declared only with a law (or, if the Chamber of Deputies was not in session, by the head of state, who was then obligated to convene parliament within two days) in the event of “imminent danger resulting from foreign war or armed insurrection” (law of April 3, 1878, Art. 1).<br /><br />World War One coincided with a permanent state of exception in the majority of the warring countries. On August 2, 1914, President Poincaré issued a decree that put the entire country in a state of siege, and this decree was converted into law by parliament two days later. The state of siege remained in force until October 12, 1919. Although the activity of parliament, which was suspended during the first six months of the war, recommenced in January 1915, many of the laws passed were, in truth, pure and simple delegations of legislative power to the executive, such as the law of February 10, 1918, which granted the government an all but absolute power to regulate by decree the production and trade of foodstuffs. As Tingsten has observed, in this way the executive power was transformed into a legislative organ in the material sense of the term. In any case, it was during this period that exceptional legislation by executive [governativo] decree (which is now perfectly familiar to us) became a regular practice in the European democracies.<br /><br /> Predictably, the expansion of the executive’s powers into the legislative sphere continued after the end of hostilities, and it is significant that military emergency now ceded its place to economic emergency (with an implicit assimilation between war and economics). In January 1924, at a time of serious crisis that threatened the stability of the franc, the Poincaré government asked for full powers over financial matters. After a bitter debate, in which the opposition pointed out that this was tantamount to parliament renouncing its own constitutional powers, the law was passed on March 22, with a four-month limit on the government’s special powers. Analogous measures were brought to a vote in 1935 by the Laval government, which issued more than five hundred decrees “having force of law” in order to avoid the devaluation of the franc. The opposition from the left, led by Léon Blum, strongly opposed this “fascist” practice, but it is significant that once the Left took power with the Popular Front, it asked parliament in June 1937 for full powers in order to devalue the franc, establish exchange control, and impose new taxes. As has been observed, this meant that the new practice of legislation by executive [governativo] decree, which had been inaugurated during the war, was by now a practice accepted by all political sides. On June 30, 1937, the powers that had been denied Blum were granted to the Chautemps government, in which several key ministries were entrusted to nonsocialists. And on April 10, 1938, Édouard Daladier requested and obtained from parliament exceptional powers to legislate by decree in order to cope with both the threat of Nazi Germany and the economic crisis. It can therefore be said that until the end of the Third Republic “the normal procedures of parliamentary democracy were in a state of suspension.” When we study the birth of the so-called dictatorial regimes in Italy and Germany, it is important not to forget this concurrent process that transformed the democratic constitutions between the two world wars. Under the pressure of the paradigm of the state of exception, the entire politico-constitutional life of Western societies began gradually to assume a new form, which has perhaps only today reached its full development. In December 1939, after the outbreak of the war, the Daladier government obtained the power to take by decree all measures necessary to ensure the defense of the nation. Parliament remained in session (except when it was suspended for a month in order to deprive the communist parliamentarians of their immunity), but all legislative activity lay firmly in the hands of the executive. By the time Marshal Pétain assumed power, the French parliament was a shadow of itself. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Act of July 11, 1940, granted the head of state the power to proclaim a state of siege throughout the entire national territory (which by then was partially occupied by the German army).<br /><br /> In the present constitution, the state of exception is regulated by Article 16, which De Gaulle had proposed. The article establishes that the president of the Republic may take all necessary measures “when the institutions of the Republic, the independence of the Nation, the integrity of its territory, or the execution of its international commitments are seriously and immediately threatened and the regular functioning of the constitutional public powers is interrupted.” In April 1961, during the Algerian crisis, De Gaulle had recourse to Article 16 even though the functioning of the public powers had not been interrupted. Since that time, Article 16 has never again been invoked, but, in conformity with a continuing tendency in all of the Western democracies, the declaration of the state of exception has gradually been replaced by an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government.<br /><br /> GERMANY<br /><br /> The history of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution is so tightly woven into the history of Germany between the wars that it is impossible to understand Hitler’s rise to power without first analyzing the uses and abuses of this article in the years between 1919 and 1933. Its immediate precedent was Article 68 of the Bismarckian Constitution, which, in cases where “public security was threatened in the territory of the Reich,” granted the emperor the power to declare a part of the Reich to be in a state of war (Kriegszustand), whose conditions and limitations followed those set forth in the Prussian law of June 4, 1851, concerning the state of siege. Amid the disorder and rioting that followed the end of the war, the deputies of the National Assembly that was to vote on the new constitution (assisted by jurists among whom the name of Hugo Preuss stands out) included an article that granted the president of the Reich extremely broad emergency [eccezionali] powers. The text of Article 48 reads, “If security and public order are seriously [erheblich] disturbed or threatened in the German Reich, the president of the Reich may take the measures necessary to reestablish security and public order, with the help of the armed forces if required. To this end he may wholly or partially suspend the fundamental rights [Grundrechte] established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153.” The article added that a law would specify in detail the conditions and limitations under which this presidential power was to be exercised. Since that law was never passed, the president’s emergency [eccezionali] powers remained so indeterminate that not only did theorists regularly use the phrase “presidential dictatorship” in reference to Article 48, but in 1925 Schmitt could write that “no constitution on earth had so easily legalized a coup d’état as did the Weimar Constitution.”<br /><br /> Save for a relative pause between 1925 and 1929, the governments of the Republic, beginning with Brüning’s, made continual use of Article 48, proclaiming a state of exception and issuing emergency decrees on more than two hundred and fifty occasions; among other things, they employed it to imprison thousands of communist militants and to set up special tribunals authorized to pronounce capital sentences. On several occasions, particularly in October 1923, the government had recourse to Article 4 to cope with the fall of the mark, thus confirming the modern tendency to conflate politico-military and economic crises.<br /><br /> It is well known that the last years of the Weimar Republic passed entirely under a regime of the state of exception; it is less obvious to note that Hitler could probably not have taken power had the country not been under a regime of presidential dictatorship for nearly three years and had parliament been functioning. In July 1930, the Brüning government was put in the minority, but Brüning did not resign. Instead, President Hindenburg granted him recourse to Article 48 and dissolved the Reichstag. From that moment on, Germany in fact ceased to be a parliamentary republic. Parliament met only seven times for no longer than twelve months in all, while a fluctuating coalition of Social Democrats and centrists stood by and watched a government that by then answered only to the president of the Reich. In 1932, Hindenburg—reelected president over Hitler and Thälmann—forced Brüning to resign and named the centrist von Papen to his post. On June 4, the Reichstag was dissolved and never reconvened until the advent of Nazism. On July 20, a state of exception was proclaimed in the Prussian territory, and von Papen was named Reich Commissioner for Prussia—ousting Otto Braun’s Social Democratic government.<br /><br /> The state of exception in which Germany found itself during the Hindenburg presidency was justified by Schmitt on a constitutional level by the idea that the president acted as the “guardian of the constitution;” but the end of the Weimar Republic clearly demonstrates that, on the contrary, a “protected democracy” is not a democracy at all, and that the paradigm of constitutional dictatorship functions instead as a transitional phase that leads inevitably to the establishment of a totalitarian regime.<br /><br /> Given these precedents, it is understandable that the constitution of the Federal Republic did not mention the state of exception. Nevertheless, on June 24, 1968, the “great coalition” of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats passed a law for the amendment of the constitution (Gesetz zur Ergänzung des Grundgesetzes) that reintroduced the state of exception (defined as the “state of internal necessity,” innere Notstand). However, with an unintended irony, for the first time in the history of the institution, the proclamation of the state of exception was provided for not simply to safeguard public order and security, but to defend the “liberal-democratic constitution.” By this point, protected democracy had become the rule.<br /><br /> SWITZERLAND<br /><br /> On August 3, 1914, the Swiss Federal Assembly granted the Federal Council “the unlimited power to take all measures necessary to guarantee the security, integrity, and neutrality of Switzerland.” This unusual act—by virtue of which a non-warring state granted powers to the executive that were even vaster and vaguer than those received by the governments of countries directly involved in the war—is of interest because of the debates it provoked both in the assembly itself and in the Swiss Federal Court when the citizens objected that the act was unconstitutional. The tenacity with which on this occasion the Swiss jurists (nearly thirty years ahead of the theorists of constitutional dictatorship) sought (like Waldkirch and Burckhardt) to derive the legitimacy of the state of exception from the text of the constitution itself (specifically, Article 2, which read, “the aim of the Confederation is to ensure the independence of the fatherland against the foreigner [and] to maintain internal tranquility and order”), or (like Hoerni and Fleiner) to ground the state of exception in a law of necessity “inherent in the very existence of the State,” or (like His) in a juridical lacuna that the exceptional provisions must fill, shows that the theory of the state of exception is by no means the exclusive legacy of the antidemocratic tradition.<br /><br /> ITALY<br /><br /> In Italy the history and legal situation of the state of exception are of particular interest with regard to legislation by emergency executive [governativi] decrees (the so-called law-decrees). Indeed, from this viewpoint one could say that Italy functioned as a true and proper juridico-political laboratory for organizing the process (which was also occurring to differing degrees in other European states) by which the law-decree “changed from a derogatory and exceptional instrument for normative production to an ordinary source for the production of law”. But this also means that one of the essential paradigms through which democracy is transformed from parliamentary to executive [governamentale] was elaborated precisely by a state whose governments were often unstable. In any case, it is in this context that the emergency decree’s pertinence to the problematic sphere of the state of exception comes clearly into view. The Albertine Statute (like the current Republican Constitution) made no mention of the state of exception. Nevertheless, the governments of the kingdom resorted to proclaiming a state of siege many times: in Palermo and the Sicilian provinces in 1862 and 1866, in Naples in 1862, in Sicily and Lunigiana in 1894, and in Naples and Milan in 1898, where the repression of the disturbances was particularly bloody and provoked bitter debates in parliament. The declaration of a state of siege on the occasion of the earthquake of Messina and Reggio Calabria on December 28, 1908 is only apparently a different situation. Not only was the state of siege ultimately proclaimed for reasons of public order—that is, to suppress the robberies and looting provoked by the disaster—but from a theoretical standpoint, it is also significant that these acts furnished the occasion that allowed Santi Romano and other Italian jurists to elaborate the thesis (which we examine in some detail later) that necessity is the primary source of law.<br /><br /> In each of these cases, the state of siege was proclaimed by a royal decree that, while not requiring parliamentary ratification, was nevertheless always approved by parliament, as were other emergency decrees not related to the state of siege (in 1923 and 1924 several thousand outstanding law-decrees issued in the preceding years were thus converted into law). In 1926 the Fascist regime had a law issued that expressly regulated the matter of the law-decrees. Article 3 of this law established that, upon deliberation of the council of ministers, “norms having force of law” could be issued by royal decree “(1) when the government is delegated to do so by a law within the limits of the delegation, and (2) in extraordinary situations, in which it is required for reasons of urgent and absolute necessity. The judgment concerning necessity and urgency is not subject to any oversight other than parliament’s political oversight.” The decrees provided for in the second clause had to be presented to parliament for conversion into law; but parliament’s total loss of autonomy during the Fascist regime rendered this condition superfluous.<br /><br /> Although the Fascist governments’ abuse of emergency decrees was so great that in 1939 the regime itself felt it necessary to limit their reach, Article 77 of the Republican Constitution established with singular continuity that “in extraordinary situations of necessity and emergency” the government could adopt “provisional measures having force of law,” which had to be presented the same day to parliament and which went out of effect if not converted into law within sixty days of their issuance.<br /><br /> It is well known that since then the practice of executive [governamentale] legislation by law-decrees has become the rule in Italy. Not only have emergency decrees been issued in moments of political crisis, thus circumventing the constitutional principle that the rights of the citizens can be limited only by law (see, for example, the decrees issued for the repression of terrorism: the law-decree of March 28, 1978, n. 59, converted into the law of May 21 1978, n. 191 [the so-called Moro Law], and the law-decree of December 15, 1979, n. 625, converted into the law of February 6, 1980, n. 15), but law-decrees now constitute the normal form of legislation to such a degree that they have been described as “bills strengthened by guaranteed emergency.” This means that the democratic principle of the separation of powers has today collapsed and that the executive power has in fact, at least partially, absorbed the legislative power. Parliament is no longer the sovereign legislative body that holds the exclusive power to bind the citizens by means of the law: it is limited to ratifying the decrees issued by the executive power. In a technical sense, the Italian Republic is no longer parliamentary, but executive [governamentale]. And it is significant that though this transformation of the constitutional order (which is today underway to varying degrees in all the Western democracies) is perfectly well known to jurists and politicians, it has remained entirely unnoticed by the citizens. At the very moment when it would like to give lessons in democracy to different traditions and cultures, the political culture of the West does not realize that it has entirely lost its canon.<br /><br /> ENGLAND<br /><br /> The only legal apparatus in England that is comparable to the French état de siège goes by the term martial law; but this concept is so vague that it has been rightly described as an “unlucky name for the justification by the common law of acts done by necessity for the defence of the Commonwealth when there is war within the realm.” This, however, does not mean that something like a state of exception could not exist. In the Mutiny Acts, the Crown’s power to declare martial law was generally confined to times of war; nevertheless, it necessarily entailed sometimes serious consequences for the civilians who found themselves factually involved in the armed repression. Thus Schmitt sought to distinguish martial law from the military tribunals and summary proceedings that at first applied only to soldiers, in order to conceive of it as a purely factual proceeding and draw it closer to the state of exception: “Despite the name it bears, martial law is neither a right nor a law in this sense, but rather a proceeding guided essentially by the necessity of achieving a certain end.”<br /><br />World War One played a decisive role in the generalization of exceptional executive [governamentali] apparatuses in England as well. Indeed, immediately after war was declared, the government asked parliament to approve a series of emergency measures that had been prepared by the relevant ministers, and they were passed virtually without discussion. The most important of these acts was the Defence of the Realm Act of August 4, 1914, known as DORA, which not only granted the government quite vast powers to regulate the wartime economy, but also provided for serious limitations on the fundamental rights of the citizens (in particular, granting military tribunals jurisdiction over civilians). The activity of parliament saw a significant eclipse for the entire duration of the war, just as in France. And in England too this process went beyond the emergency of the war, as is shown by the approval—on October 29, 1920, in a time of strikes and social tensions—of the Emergency Powers Act. Indeed, Article 1 of the act stated that<br /><br />if at any time it appears to His Majesty that any action has been taken or is immediately threatened by any persons or body of persons of such a nature and on so extensive a scale as to be calculated, by interfering with the supply and distribution of food, water, fuel, or light, or with the means of locomotion, to deprive the community, or any substantial portion of the community, of the essentials of life, His Majesty may, by proclamation (hereinafter referred to as a proclamation of emergency), declare that a state of emergency exists.<br /><br />Article 2 of the law gave His Majesty in Council the power to issue regulations and to grant the executive the “powers and duties…necessary for the preservation of the peace,” and it introduced special courts (“courts of summary jurisdiction”) for offenders. Even though the penalties imposed by these courts could not exceed three months in jail (“with or without hard labor”), the principle of the state of exception had been firmly introduced into English law.<br /><br /> UNITED STATES<br /><br /> The place—both logical and pragmatic—of a theory of the state of exception in the American constitution is in the dialectic between the powers of the president and those of Congress. This dialectic has taken shape historically (and in an exemplary way already beginning with the Civil War) as a conflict over supreme authority in an emergency situation; or, in Schmittian terms (and this is surely significant in a country considered to be the cradle of democracy), as a conflict over sovereign decision.<br /><br /> The textual basis of the conflict lies first of all in Article 1 of the constitution, which establishes that “the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it” but does not specify which authority has the jurisdiction to decide on the suspension (even though prevailing opinion and the context of the passage itself lead one to assume that the clause is directed at Congress and not the president). The second point of conflict lies in the relation between another passage of Article 1 (which declares that the power to declare war and to raise and support the army and navy rests with Congress) and Article 2, which states that “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”<br /><br /> Both of these problems reach their critical threshold with the Civil War (1861–1865). Acting counter to the text of Article 1, on April 15, 1861, Lincoln decreed that an army of seventy-five thousand men was to be raised and convened a special session of Congress for July 4. In the ten weeks that passed between April 15 and July 4, Lincoln in fact acted as an absolute dictator (for this reason, in his book Dictatorship, Schmitt can refer to it as a perfect example of commissarial dictatorship. On April 27, with a technically even more significant decision, he authorized the General in Chief of the Army to suspend the writ of habeas corpus whenever he deemed it necessary along the military line between Washington and Philadelphia, where there had been disturbances. Furthermore, the president’s autonomy in deciding on extraordinary measures continued even after Congress was convened (thus, on February 14, 1862, Lincoln imposed censorship of the mail and authorized the arrest and detention in military prisons of persons suspected of “disloyal and treasonable practices”).<br /><br /> In the speech he delivered to Congress when it was finally convened on July 4, the president openly justified his actions as the holder of a supreme power to violate the constitution in a situation of necessity. “Whether strictly legal or not,” he declared, the measures he had adopted had been taken “under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity” in the certainty that Congress would ratify them. They were based on the conviction that even fundamental law could be violated if the very existence of the union and the juridical order were at stake (“Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?”<br /><br /> It is obvious that in a wartime situation the conflict between the president and Congress is essentially theoretical. The fact is that although Congress was perfectly aware that the constitutional jurisdictions had been transgressed, it could do nothing but ratify the actions of the president, as it did on August 6, 1861. Strengthened by this approval, on September 22, 1862, the president proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves on his authority alone and, two days later, generalized the state of exception throughout the entire territory of the United States, authorizing the arrest and trial before courts martial of “all Rebels and Insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels against the authority of the United States.” By this point, the president of the United States was the holder of the sovereign decision on the state of exception.<br /><br /> According to American historians, during World War One President Woodrow Wilson personally assumed even broader powers than those Abraham Lincoln had claimed. It is, however, necessary to specify that instead of ignoring Congress, as Lincoln had done, Wilson preferred each time to have the powers in question delegated to him by Congress. In this regard, his practice of government is closer to the one that would prevail in Europe in the same years, or to the current one, which instead of declaring the state of exception prefers to have exceptional laws issued. In any case, from 1917 to 1918, Congress approved a series of acts (from the Espionage Act of June 1917 to the Overman Act of May 1918) that granted the president complete control over the administration of the country and not only prohibited disloyal activities (such as collaboration with the enemy and the diffusion of false reports), but even made it a crime to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”<br /><br /> Because the sovereign power of the president is essentially grounded in the emergency linked to a state of war, over the course of the twentieth century the metaphor of war becomes an integral part of the presidential political vocabulary whenever decisions considered to be of vital importance are being imposed. Thus, in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to assume extraordinary powers to cope with the Great Depression by presenting his actions as those of a commander during a military campaign:<br /><br /> I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.…I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken Nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.…But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take [the necessary measures] and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.<br /><br /> It is well not to forget that, from the constitutional standpoint, the New Deal was realized by delegating to the president (through a series of statutes culminating in the National Recovery Act of June 16, 1933) an unlimited power to regulate and control every aspect of the economic life of the country—a fact that is in perfect conformity with the already mentioned parallelism between military and economic emergencies that characterizes the politics of the twentieth century.<br /><br /> The outbreak of World War Two extended these powers with the proclamation of a “limited” national emergency on September 8, 1939, which became unlimited on May 27, 1941. On September 7, 1942, while requesting that Congress repeal a law concerning economic matters, the president renewed his claim to sovereign powers during the emergency: “In the event that the Congress should fail to act, and act adequately, I shall accept the responsibility, and I will act.…The American people can…be sure that I shall not hesitate to use every power vested in me to accomplish the defeat of our enemies in any part of the world where our own safety demands such defeat.” The most spectacular violation of civil rights (all the more serious because of its solely racial motivation) occurred on February 19, 1942, with the internment of seventy thousand American citizens of Japanese descent who resided on the West Coast (along with forty thousand Japanese citizens who lived and worked there).<br /><br /> President Bush’s decision to refer to himself constantly as the “Commander in Chief of the Army” after September 11, 2001, must be considered in the context of this presidential claim to sovereign powers in emergency situations. If, as we have seen, the assumption of this title entails a direct reference to the state of exception, then Bush is attempting to produce a situation in which the emergency becomes the rule, and the very distinction between peace and war (and between foreign and civil war) becomes impossible.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-7547327138169800512010-01-10T10:27:00.000-08:002010-01-10T10:28:54.903-08:00The State of Emergency<span style="font-style:italic;">Giorgio Agamben<br /></span><br />In his Political Theology (1922), Carl Schmitt (1888-1985) established the essential proximity between the state of emergency and sovereignty. But although his famous definition of the sovereign as “the one who can proclaim a state of emergency” has been commented on many times, we still lack a genuine theory of the state of emergency within public law. For legal theorists as well as legal historians it seems as if the problem would be more of a factual question than an authentic legal question.<br /><br />The very definition of the term is complex, since it is situated at the limit of law and of politics. According to a widespread conception, the state of emergency would be situated at an “ambiguous and uncertain fringe at the intersection of the legal and the political,” and would constitute a “point of disequilibrium between public law and political fact.” The task of defining its limits is nevertheless nothing less than urgent. And, indeed, if the exceptional measures that characterize the state of emergency are the result of periods of political crisis, and if they for this very reason must be understood through the terrain of politics rather than through the legal or constitutional terrain, they find themselves in the paradoxical position of legal measures that cannot be understood from a legal point of view, and the state of emergency presents itself as the legal form of that which can have no legal form.<br /><br />And, furthermore, if the sovereign exception is the original set-up through which law relates to life in order to include it in the very same gesture that suspends its own exercise, then a theory of the state of emergency would be the preliminary condition for an understanding of the bond between the living being and law. To lift the veil that covers this uncertain terrain between, on the one hand, public law and political fact, and on the other, legal order and life, is to grasp the significance of this difference, or presumed difference, between the political and the legal; and between law and life. Among the elements that render a definition of the state of emergency thorny, we find the relationship it has to civil war, insurrection and the right to resist. And, in fact, since civil war is the opposite of the normal state, it tends to coalesce with the state of emergency, which becomes the immediate response of the State when faced with the gravest kind of internal conflict. In this way, the 20th century has produced a paradoxical phenomenon defined as “legal civil war.”<br /><br />Let us look at the case of Nazi Germany. Just after Hitler came to power (or, to be more precise, just after he was offered power) he proclaimed, on February 28, 1933, the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. This decree suspends all the articles in the Weimar Constitution maintaining individual liberties. Since this decree was never revoked, we can say that the entire Third Reich from a legal point of view was a twelve year-long state of emergency. And in this sense we can define modern totalitarianism as the institution, by way of a state of emergency, of a legal civil war that permits the elimination not only of political adversaries, but whole categories of the population that resist being integrated into the political system. Thus the intentional creation of a permanent state of emergency has become one of the most important measures of contemporary States, democracies included. And furthermore, it is not necessary that a state of emergency be declared in the technical sense of the term.<br /><br />At least since Napoleon’s decree of December 24, 1811, French doctrine has opposed a “fictitious or political” state of siege in contradistinction to a military state of siege. In this context, English jurisprudence speaks of a “fancied emergency”; Nazi legal theorists spoke unconditionally of an “intentional state of emergency” in order to install the National Socialist State. During the world wars, the recourse to a state of emergency was spread to all the belligerent States. Today, in the face of the continuous progression of something that could be defined as a “global civil war,” the state of emergency tends more and more to present itself as the dominant paradigm of government in contemporary politics. Once the state of emergency has become the rule, there is a danger that this transformation of a provisional and exceptional measure into a technique of government will entail the loss of the traditional distinction between different forms of Constitution.<br /><br />The basic significance of the state of emergency as an original structure through which law incorporates the living being – and, this, by suspending itself – has emerged with full clarity in the military order that the President of the United States issued on November 13, 2001. The issue was to subject non-citizens suspected of terrorist activities to special jurisdiction that would include “indefinite detention” and military tribunals. The U.S. Patriot Act of October 26, 2001, already authorized the Attorney General to detain every alien suspected of endangering national security. Nevertheless, within seven days, this alien had to either be expelled or accused of some crime. What was new in Bush’s order was that it radically eradicated the legal status of these individuals, and produced entities that could be neither named nor classified by the Law. Those Talibans captured in Afghanistan are not only excluded from the status as Prisoners of War defined by the Geneva Conventions, they do not correspond to any jurisdiction set by American law: neither prisoners nor accused, they are simply detainees, they are subjected to pure de facto sovereignty/to a detention that is indefinite not only in its temporal sense, but also in its nature, since it is outside of the law and of all forms of legal control. With the detainees at Guantamo Bay, naked life returns to its most extreme indetermination.<br /><br />The most rigorous attempt to construct a theory of the state of emergency can be found in the work of Carl Schmitt. The essentials of his theory can be found in Dictatorship, as well in Political Theology, published one year later. Because these two books, published in the early 1920s, set a paradigm that is not only contemporary, but may in fact find its true completion only today, it is necessary to give a resume of their fundamental theses.<br /><br />The objective of both these books is to inscribe the state of emergency into a legal context. Schmitt knows perfectly well that the state of emergency, in as far as it enacts a “suspension of the legal order in its totality,” seems to “escape every legal consideration”; but for him the issue is to ensure a relation, no matter of what type, between the state of emergency and the legal order: “The state of emergency is always distinguished from anarchy and chaos and, in the legal sense, there is still order in it, even though it is not a legal order.” This articulation is paradoxical, since, that which should be inscribed within the legal realm is essentially exterior to it, corresponding to nothing less than the suspension of the legal order itself. Whatever the nature of the operator of this inscription of the state of emergency into the legal order, Schmitt needs to show that the suspension of law still derives from the legal domain, and not from simple anarchy. In this way, the state of emergency introduces a zone of anomy into the law, which, according to Schmitt, renders possible an effective ordering of reality. Now we understand why the theory of the state of emergency, in Political Theology, can be presented as a doctrine of sovereignty. The sovereign, who can proclaim a state of emergency, is thereby ensured of remaining anchored in the legal order. But precisely because the decision here concerns the annulation of the norm, and consequently, because the state of emergency represents the control of a space that is neither external nor internal, “the sovereign remains exterior to the normally valid legal order, and nevertheless belongs to it, since he is responsible for decision whether the Constitution can be suspended in toto.” To be outside and yet belong: such is the topological structure of the state of emergency, and since the being of the sovereign, who decides over the exception, is logically defined by this very structure, he may also be characterized by the oxymoron of an “ecstasy-belonging.”<br /><br />1. In 1990, Jacques Derrida gave a lecture in New York entitled “Force de loi: le fondement mystique de l’autorite.” ["Force of Law: the Mystical Foundation of Authority"] The lecture, that in fact consisted of a reading of an essay by Walter Benjamin, “Towards a Critique of Violence,” provoked a big debate among philosophers and legal theorists. That no one had proposed an analysis of the seemingly enigmatic formula that gave the lecture its title is not only a sign of the profound chiasm separating philosophical and legal culture, but of the decadence of the latter. The syntagm “Force de loi” refers back to a long tradition of Roman and Medieval Law where it signifies “efficacy, the capacity to oblige,” in a general sense. But it was only in the modern era, in the context of the French Revolution, that this expression began designating the supreme value of acts expressed by an assembly representative of the people. In article 6 from the Constitution of 1791, “force de loi” designates the indestructible character of the law, that the sovereign himself can neither abrogate nor modify.<br /><br />From a technical point of view, it is important to note that in modern as well as ancient doctrine, the syntagm “force de loi” refers not to the law itself, but to the decrees which have, as the expression goes, “force de loi” – decrees that the executive power in certain cases can be authorized to give, and most notably in the case of a state of emergency. The concept of “force de loi,” as a technical legal term defines a separation between the efficacy of law and its formal essence, by which the decrees and measures that are not formally laws still acquire its force.<br /><br />This type of confusion between the acts by an executive power and those by a legislative power is a necessary characteristic of the state of emergency. (The most extreme case being the Nazi regime, where, as Eichmann constantly repeated, “the words of the Fuhrer had the force of law.”) And in contemporary democracies, the creation of laws by governmental decrees that are subsequently ratified by Parliament has become a routine practice. Today/the Republic is not parliamentary. It is governmental. But from a technical point of view, what is specific for the state of emergency is not so much the confusion of powers as it is the isolation of the force of law from the law itself. The state of emergency defines a regime of the law within which the norm is valid but cannot be applied (since it has no force), and where acts that do not have the value of law acquire the force of law.<br /><br />This means, ultimately, that the force of law fluctuates as an indeterminate element that can be claimed both by the authority of the State or by a revolutionary organization. The state of emergency is an anomic space in which what is at stake is a force of law without law. Such a force of law is indeed a mystical element, or rather a fiction by means of which the law attempts to make anomy a part of itself. But how should we understand such a mystical element, one by which the law survives its own effacement and acts as a pure force in the state of emergency?<br /><br />2. The specific quality of the state of emergency appears clearly if we examine one measure in Roman Law that may be considered as its true archetype, the iustitium.<br /><br />When the Roman Senate was alerted to a situation that seemed to threaten or compromise the Republic, they pronounced a senatus consultum ultimum, whereby consuls (or their substitutes, and each citizen) were compelled to take all possible measures to assure the security of the State. The senatus consultum implied a decree by which one declared the tumultus, i.e., a state of emergency caused by internal disorder or an insurrection whose consequence was the proclamation of a iustutium.<br /><br />The term iustitium – construed precisely like solstitium– literally signifies “to arrest, suspend the ius, the legal order.” The Roman grammarians explained the term in the following way: “When the law marks a point of arrest, just as the sun in its solstice.”<br /><br />Consequently, the iustitium was not so much a suspension within the framework of the administration of justice, as a suspension of the law itself. If we would like to grasp the nature and structure of the state of emergency, we first must comprehend the paradoxical status of this legal institution that simply consists in the production of a leg. void, the production of a space entirely deprived by ius. Consider the iustitium mentioned by Cicero in one of his Philippic Discourses. Anthony’s army is marching toward Rome, and the consul Cicero addresses the Senate in the following terms: “I judge it necessary to declare tumultus, to proclaim iustitium and to prepare for combat.” The usual translation of iustitium as “legal vacancy” here seems quite pointless On the contrary, faced with a dangerous situation, the issue is to abolish the restrictions imposed by the laws on action by the magistrate – i.e., essentially the interdiction against putting a citizen to death without having recourse to popular judgment.<br /><br />Faced with this anomic space that violently comes to coalesce wit that of the City, both ancient and modern writers seem to oscillate between two contradictory conceptions: either to make iustitium correspond to the idea of a complete anomy within which all power an all legal structures are abolished, or to conceive of it as the very plentitude of law where it coincides with the totality of the real.<br /><br />Whence the question: what is the nature of the acts committed during iustitium? From the moment they are carried out in a legal void they ought to be considered as pure facts with no legal connotation: The question is important, because we are here contemplating sphere of action that implies above all the license to kill. Thus historians have asked the question of whether a magistrate who kills a citizen during a iustitium can be put on trial for homicide once the iustitium is over. Here we are faced with a type of action which appears t exceed the traditional legal distinction between legislation, execution, and transgression. The magistrate who acts during the iustitium is like an officer during the state of emergency, who neither carries out the law, nor transgresses it, just as little as he is in the process of creating a new law. To use a paradoxical expression, we could say that h is in the process of “un-executing” the law. But what does it meant un-execute the law? How should we conceive of this particular class within the entire range of human actions?<br /><br />Let us now attempt to develop the results of our genealogical investigation into the iustitium from the perspective of a general theory c the state of emergency. – The state of emergency is not a dictatorship, but a space devoid of law. In the Roman Constitution, the dictator was a certain type c magistrate who received his power from a law voted on by the people The iustitium, on the contrary, just as the modern state of emergent does not imply the creation of a new magistrate, only the creation of zone of anomy in which all legal determinations find themselves inactivated. In this way, and in spite of the common view, neither Mussolini nor Hitler can be technically defined as dictators. Hitler, in particular, was Chancellor of the Reich, legally appointed by the president What characterizes the Nazi regime, and makes it into such a dangerous model, is that it allowed the Weimar Constitution to exist, while doubling it with a secondary and legally non-formalized structure the could not exist alongside the first without the support of a generalize state of emergency. – For one reason or another this space devoid of law seems so essential to the legal order itself that the latter makes every possible attempt to assure a relation to the former, as if the law in order to guarantee its functioning would necessarily have to entertain a relation t an anomy.<br /><br />3. It is precisely in this perspective that we have to read the debate on the state of emergency which pitted Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt against each other between 1928 and 1940. The starting point of the discussion is normally located in Benjamin’s reading of Political Theology in 1923, and in the many citations from Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty that appeared in The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Benjamin’s acknowledging of Schmitt’s influence on his own thought has always been considered scandalous. Without going into the details of this demonstration, I think it possible to inverse the charge of scandal, in suggesting that Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty can be read as the response to Benjamin’s critique of violence. What is the problem Benjamin poses in his “Critique of Violence”? For him, the question is how to establish the possibility of a future violence outside of, or beyond the law, a violence which could rupture the dialectic between the violence that poses and the one that conserves the law. Benjamin calls this other violence “pure,” “divine,” or “revolutionary.” That which the law cannot stand, that which it resents as an intolerable menace, is the existence of a violence that would be exterior to it, and this not only because its finalities would be incompatible with the purpose of the legal order, but because of the “simple fact of its exteriority.”<br /><br />Now we understand the sense in which Schmitt’s doctrine of sovereignty can be considered as a response to Benjamin’s critique. The state of emergency is precisely that space in which Schmitt attempts to comprehend and incorporate into the thesis that there is a pure violence existing outside of the law. For Schmitt, there is no such thing as pure violence, there is no violence absolutely exterior to the nomos, because revolutionary violence, once the state of emergency is established, it always finds itself included in the law. The state of emergency is thus the means invented by Schmitt to respond to Benjamin’s thesis that there is a pure violence.<br /><br />The decisive document in the Benjamin/Schmitt dossier is surely the 8th of the theses on the concept of history: “The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ’state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism.”<br /><br />That the state of emergency since then has become the norm does not only signify that its undecidability has reached a point of culmination, but also that it is no longer capable of fulfilling the task assigned to it by Schmitt. According to him, the functioning of the legal order rests in the last instance on an arrangement, the state of emergency, whose aim it is to make the norm applicable by a temporary suspension of its exercise. But if the exception becomes the rule, this arrangement can no longer function and Schmitt’s theory of the state of emergency breaks down.<br /><br />In this perspective, the distinction proposed by Benjamin between – an effective state of emergency and a fictitious state of emergency is essential, although little noticed. It can be found already in Schmitt, who borrowed it from French legal doctrine; but this latter, in line with his critique of the liberal idea of a state governed by law, deems any state of emergency which professes to be governed by law to be fictitious.<br /><br />Benjamin reformulates the opposition in order to turn it against Schmitt: once the possibility of a state of emergency, in which the exception and the norm are temporally and spatially distinct, has fallen away, what becomes effective is the state of emergency in which we are living, and where we can no longer distinguish the rule. In this case, all fiction of a bond between it and law disappears: there is only a zone of anomy dominated by pure violence with no legal cover.<br /><br />Now we are in a position to better understand the debate between Schmitt and Benjamin. The dispute occurs in that anomic zone which for Schmitt must maintain its connection to law at all costs, whereas for Benjamin it has to be twisted free and liberated from this relation. What is at issue here is the relation between violence and law, i.e., the status of violence as a cipher for political action. The logomachia over anomy seems to be equally decisive for Western politics as the “battle of the giants around being” that has defined Western metaphysics. To pure being as the ultimate stake of metaphysics, corresponds pure violence as the ultimate stake of the political; to the onto-theological strategy that wants pure being within the net of logos, corresponds the strategy of exception that has to secure the relation between violence and law. It is as if law and logos would need an anomic or “a-logic” zone of suspension in order to found their relation to life.<br /><br />4. The structural proximity between law and anomy, between pure violence and the state of emergency also has, as is often the case, an inverted figure. Historians, ethnologists, and folklore specialists are well acquainted with anomic festivals, like the Roman Saturnalias, the charivari, and the Medieval carnival, that suspend and invert the legal and social relations defining normal order. Masters pass over into the service of servants, men dress up and behave like animals, bad habits and crimes that would normally be illegal are suddenly authorized. Karl Meuli was the first to emphasize the connection between these anomic festivals and the situations of suspended law that characterize certain archaic penal institutions. Here, as well as in the iustitium, it is possible to kill a man without going to trial, to destroy his house, and take his belongings. Far from reproducing a mythological past, the disorder of the carnival and the tumultuous destruction of the charivari re-actualize a real historical situation of anomy. The ambiguous connection between law and anomy is thus brought to light: the state of emergency is transformed into an unrestrained festival where one displays pure violence in order to enjoy it in full freedom.<br /><br />5. The Western political system thus seems to be a double apparatus, founded in a dialectic between two heterogeneous and, as it were, antithetical elements; nomos and anomy, legal right and pure violence, the law and the forms of life whose articulation is to be guaranteed by the state of emergency. As long as these elements remain separated, their dialectic works, but when they tend toward a reciprocal indetermination and to a fusion into a unique power with two sides, when the state of emergency becomes the rule, the political system transforms into an apparatus of death. We ask: why does nomos have a constitutive need for anomy? Why does the politics of the West have to measure up to this interior void? What, then, is the substance of the political, if it is essentially assigned to this legal vacuum? As long as we are not able to respond to these questions, we can no more respond to this other question whose echo traverses all of Western political history: what does it mean to act politically?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-56870085818329754902010-01-10T10:26:00.000-08:002010-01-10T10:27:57.253-08:00The State of Emergency as the Empire’s Mode of Governance<span style="font-style:italic;">5 German Law Journal No. 5 (1 May 2004) – Special Edition<br /><br /> Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life<br /><br />http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437<br /><br />By Ulrich Raulff<br /><br /> [Editors’ note: this interview, conducted by Ulrich Raulff in Rome on 4March 2004, was originally published, in German, by the Süddeutsche Zeitung on 6 April 2004. We are grateful to Ulrich Raulff and Giorgio Agamben for the permission to translate and publish this interview in German Law Journal. This translation was made by German Law Journal Co-Editor, Morag Goodwin, EUI, Florence. All notes have been provided for this publication by the editors.]</span><br /><br /> [1] Raulff: Your latest book The State of Exception has recently been published in German. It is an historical and legal-historical analysis of a concept that we, at first blush, associate with Carl Schmitt. What does this concept mean for your Homo Sacer[1]project?<br /><br /> [2] Agamben: The State of Exception belongs to a series of genealogical essays that follow on from Homo Sacer and which should form a tetralogy. Regarding the content, it deals with two points. The first is a historical matter: the state of exception or state of emergency has become a paradigm of government today. Originally understood as something extraordinary,an exception, which should have validity only for a limited period of time, but a historical transformation has made it the normal form of governance. I wanted to show the consequence of this change for the state of the democracies in which we live. The second is of a philosophical nature and deals with the strange relationship of law and lawlessness, law and anomy. The state of exception establishes a hidden but fundamental relationship between law and the absence of law. It is a void, a blank and this empty space is constitutive of the legal system.<br /><br /> [3] Raulff: You wrote already in the first volume of Homo Sacer that the paradigm of the state of exception came into being in the concentration camps, or corresponds to the camps. The indignant outcry of last year as you applied this concept to the United States, to American politics, was predictably loud. Do you still consider your critique to be correct?<br /><br /> [4] Agamben: Regarding such an application, the publication of my Auschwitz book[2] brought similar remonstrance. But I am not an historian. I work with paradigms. A paradigm is something like an example, an exemplar, a historically singular phenomenon. As it was with the panopticon for Foucault,[3] so is the Homo Sacer or the Muselmann or the state of exception for me. And then I use this paradigm to construct a large group of phenomena and in order to understand an historical structure, again analogous with Foucault, who developed his “panopticism” from the panopticon.[4] But this kind of analysis should not be confused with a sociological investigation.<br /><br /> [5] Raulff: Nevertheless, people were shocked by your comparison because it seemed to equate American and Nazi policies.<br /><br /> [5] Agamben: But I spoke rather of the prisoners in Guantánamo, and their situation is legally-speaking actually comparable with those in the Nazi camps. The detainees of Guantanamo do not have the status of Prisoners of War, they have absolutely no legal status.[5] They are subject now only to raw power; they have no legal existence. In the Nazi camps, the Jews had to be first fully “denationalised” and stripped of all the citizenship rights remaining after Nuremberg,[6] after which they were also erased as legal subjects.<br /><br /> [6] Raulff: What do you understand the connection to be to America’s security policy? Does Guantánamo belong to the transition you have previously described from governance through law to governance through the administration of the absence of order?<br /><br /> [7] Agamben: This is the problem behind every security policy, ruling through management, through administration. In the 1968 course at the Collège de France, Michel Foucault showed how security becomes in the 18th century a paradigm of government. For Quesnay, Targot and the other physiocratic politicians, security did not mean the prevention of famines and catastrophes, but meant allowing them to happen and then being able to orientate them in a profitable direction. Thus is Foucault able to oppose security, discipline and law as a model of government. Now I think to have to have discovered that both elements – law and the absence of law – and the corresponding forms of governance – governance through law and governance through management – are part of a double-structure or a system. I try to understand how this system operates. You see, there is a French word that Carl Schmitt often quotes and that means: Le Roi reigne mail il ne gouverne pas (the King reigns but he does not govern). That is the termini of the double-structure: to reign and to govern. Benjamin brought the conceptual pairing of schalten and walten (command and administer) to this categorization. In order to understand their historical dissociation one must then first grasp their structural interrelation.<br /><br /> [8] Raulff: Again, is the time of law over? Do we live now in an era of rule by decree (Schaltung), of cybernetic regulation and of the pure administration of mankind?<br /><br />[9] Agamben: At first glance it really does seem that governance through administration, through management, is in the ascendancy, while rule by law appears to be in decline. We are experiencing the triumph of the management, the administration of the absence of order.<br /><br /> [10] Raulff: But do we not also observe, at the same time, the enlargement of the whole legal system and a tremendous increase in legal regulation? More laws are created on a daily basis and the Germans, for example, regularly feel that they are governed far more by Karlsruhe than Berlin.[7]<br /><br /> [11] Agamben: Also there you see that both elements of the system coexist with one another, and that they both are driven to the extreme, so much so, that they seem at the end to fall apart. Today we see how a maximum of anomy and disorder can perfectly coexist with a maximum of legislation.<br /><br /> [12] Raulff: From the way you have just described it, I see a rift that leads to an ever-starker polarization. Elsewhere, however, you say that the classical realm of the political will become ever narrower – and that sounds somewhat critical and decadently theoretical.<br /><br /> [13] Agamben: Allow me to reply with Benjamin: there is no such thing as decline. Perhaps this is because the age is always already understood as being in decline. When you take a classical distinction of the political-philosophical tradition such as public/private, then I find it much less interesting to insist on the distinction and to bemoan the diminution of one of the terms, than to question the interweaving. I want to understand how the system operates. And the system is always double; it works always by means of opposition. Not only as private/public, but also the house and the city, the exception and the rule, to reign and to govern, etc. But in order to understand what is really at stake here, we must learn to see these oppositions not as “di-chotomies” but as “di-polarities,” not substantial, but tensional. I mean that we need a logic of the field, as in physics, where it is impossible to draw a line clearly and separate two different substances. The polarity is present and acts at each point of the field. Then you may suddenly have zones of indecidability or indifference. The state of exception is one of those zones.<br /><br /> [14] Raulff: Does the endpoint – and therewith the reality – of the private still have a meaning, in the sense of your systematic examination too? Is there something there that is worth defending?<br /><br /> [15] Agamben: It is firstly obvious that we frequently can no longer differentiate between what is private and what public, and that both sides of the classical opposition appear to be losing their reality. And the detention camp at Guantánamo is the locus par excellence of this impossibility. The state of exception consists, not least, in the neutralization of this distinction. Nonetheless, I think that the concept is still interesting. Think only of the multitude of organizations and activities in the United States that, at present, are devoted to the protection and defense of “privacy” and attempt to define what belongs within this realm and what does not.<br /><br /> [16] Raulff: How does this then involve your work?<br /><br /> [17] Agamben: Homo Sacer is supposed to, as I said at the beginning, comprise four volumes in total. The last and most interesting for me will not be dedicated to an historical discussion. I would like to work on the concepts of forms-of-life and lifestyles. What I call a form-of-life is a life that can never be separated from its form, a life in which it is never possible to separate something such as bare life. And here too the concept of “privacy” comes in to play.<br /><br /> [18] Raulff: At this point you clearly link up again with Foucault, perhaps with Roland Barthes as well, who held one of his later lectures on the topic of Vivre ensemble.<br /><br /> [19] Agamben: Yes, but Foucault went back in history to the Greeks and the Romans when he had this idea. When you work on this topic, you suddenly no longer have a floor under your feet. And here you see clearly that we seem not to have any access to the present and to the immediate, except through what Foucault called an archaeology.[8] But what an archaeology could be, whose object is a form-of-life, that is to say an immediate life experience, this is not easy to say.<br /><br /> [20] Raulff: As I understand it, almost every philosopher has had a vision of the good and the right or of a philosophical life as well. What does yours look like?<br /><br /> [21] Agamben: The idea that one should make his life a work of art is attributed mostly today to Foucault and to his idea of the care of the self. Pierre Hadot, the great historian of ancient philosophy, reproached Foucault that the care of the self of the ancient philosophers did not mean the construction of life as a work of art, but on the contrary a sort of dispossession of the self.[9] What Hadot could not understand is that for Foucault, the two things coincide. You must remember Foucault’s criticism of the notion of author, his radical dismissal of authorship. In this sense, a philosophical life, a good and beautiful life, is something else: when your life becomes a work of art, you are not the cause of it. I mean that at this point you feel your own life and yourself as something “thought,” but the subject, the author, is no longer there. The construction of life coincides with what Foucault referred to as “se deprendre de soi.” And this is also Nietzsche’s idea of a work of art without the artist.<br /><br /> [22] Raulff: For all those who have tried over the last thirty years to forge a non-exclusive form of politics, Nietzsche was the decisive reference. Why is he not that for you?<br /><br /> [23] Agamben: Oh, Nietzsche was important for me also. But I stand rather more with Benjamin, who said, the eternal return is like the punishment of detention, the sentence in school in which one had to copy the same sentence a thousand times….<br /><br />[24] Raulff: But the work of the Italian Philological School around and after Montinari has precisely shown us that Nietzsche is not a hard, despotic author, as one wanted us to believe for so long, but rather an open, traversed and criss-crossed system of readings and ideas – a work of art without author, like you just now called for.[25] Agamben: If that is so, then we need to learn to forget the presence of the subject. We must protect the work against the author.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-7307470506732741782010-01-10T10:25:00.000-08:002010-01-10T10:26:24.031-08:00Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address<span style="font-style:italic;">January 20, 2009<br />TRANSCRIPT<br />Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:</span><br /><br />PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you.<br /><br />CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!<br /><br />My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.<br /><br />I thank President Bush for his service to our nation…<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />… as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.<br /><br />Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.<br /><br />The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears, and true to our founding documents.<br /><br />So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.<br /><br />That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.<br /><br />Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.<br /><br />These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.<br /><br />Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.<br /><br />On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.<br /><br />We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.<br /><br />It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.<br /><br />Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.<br /><br />For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.<br /><br />For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.<br /><br />Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.<br /><br />This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed.<br /><br />Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.<br /><br />The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.<br /><br />We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.<br /><br />We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality…<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />… and lower its costs.<br /><br />We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.<br /><br />All this we can do. All this we will do.<br /><br />Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.<br /><br />What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.<br /><br />MR. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.<br /><br />Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.<br /><br />And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.<br /><br />Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.<br /><br />But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.<br /><br />The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.<br /><br />Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.<br /><br />Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.<br /><br />And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.<br /><br />They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.<br /><br />We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We’ll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.<br /><br />With old friends and former foes, we’ll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.<br /><br />We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.<br /><br />And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, “Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.<br /><br />We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.<br /><br />And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.<br /><br />To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.<br /><br />To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.<br /><br />To those…<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.<br /><br />And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.<br /><br />As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.<br /><br />We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.<br /><br />And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.<br /><br />For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.<br /><br />It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.<br /><br />It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.<br /><br />Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old.<br /><br />These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.<br /><br />What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.<br /><br />This is the price and the promise of citizenship.<br /><br />This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.<br /><br />This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.<br /><br />In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.<br /><br />The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.<br /><br />At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:<br /><br />“Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.”<br /><br />America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.<br /><br />Thank you. God bless you.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)<br /><br />And God bless the United States of America.<br /><br />(APPLAUSE)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-16561214180793643672010-01-10T10:01:00.002-08:002010-01-10T10:23:40.630-08:00Welcome to the Desert of the Real<span style="font-style:italic;">2001<br />Slavoj Žižek</span><br /><br />Alain Badiou identified as the key feature of the XXth century the “passion of the Real /la passion du reel/”1: in contrast to the XIXth century of the utopian or “scientific” projects and ideals, plans about the future, the XXth century aimed at delivering the thing itself, at directly realizing the longer-for New Order. The ultimate and defining experience of the XXth century was the direct experience of the Real as opposed to the everyday social reality — the Real in its extreme violence as the price to be paid for peeling off the deceiving layers of reality. Already in the trenches of the World War I, Carl Schmitt was celebrating the face to face combat as the authentic intersubjective encounter: authenticity resides in the act of violent transgression, from the Lacanian Real — the Thing Antigone confronts when he violates the order of the City — to the Bataillean excess.<br /><br />As Badiou demonstrated apropos of the Stalinist show trials, this violent effort to distill the pure Real from the elusive reality necessarily ends up in its opposite, in the obsession with pure appearance: in the Stalinist universe, the passion of the Real (ruthless enforcement of the Socialist development) thus culminates in ritualistic stagings of a theatrical spectacle in the truth of which no one believes. The key to this reversal resides in the ultimate impossibility to draw a clear distinction between deceptive reality and some firm positive kernel of the Real: every positive bit of reality is a priori suspicious, since (as we know from Lacan) the Real Thing is ultimately another name for the Void. The pursuit of the Real thus equals total annihilation, a (self)destructive fury within which the only way to trace the distinction between the semblance and the Real is, precisely, to STAGE it in a fake spectacle. The fundamental illusion is here that, once the violent work of purification is done, the New Man will emerge ex nihilo, freed from the filth of the past corruption. Within this horizon, “really-existing men” are reduced to the stock of raw material which can be ruthlessly exploited for the construction of the new — the Stalinist revolutionary definition of man is a circular one: “man is what is to be crushed, stamped on, mercilessly worked over, in order to produce a new man.” We have here the tension between the series of “ordinary” elements (“ordinary” men as the “material” of history) and the exceptional “empty” element (the socialist “New Man,” which is at first nothing but an empty place to be filled up with positive content through the revolutionary turmoil). In a revolution, there is no a priori positive determination of this New Man: a revolution is not legitimized by the positive notion of what Man’s essence, “alienated” in present conditions and to be realized through the revolutionary process, is — the only legitimization of a revolution is negative, a will to break with the Past. One should formulate here things in a very precise way: the reason why the Stalinist fury of purification is so destructive resides in the very fact that it is sustained by the belief that, after the destructive work of purification will be accomplished, SOMETHING WILL REMAIN, the sublime “indivisible remainder,” the paragon of the New. It is in order to conceal the fact that there is nothing beyond that, in a strictly perverse way, the revolutionary has to cling to violence as the only index of his authenticity, and it is as this level that the critics of Stalinism as a rule misperceive the cause of the Communist’s attachment to the Party. Say, when, in 1939-1941 pro-Soviet Communists twice had to change their Party line overnight (after the Soviet-German pact, it was imperialism, not, Fascism, which was elevated to the role of the main enemy; from June 22 1941, when Germany attacked Soviet Union, it was again the popular front against the Fascist beast), the brutality of the imposed changes of position was what attracted them. Along the same lines, the purges themselves exerted an uncanny fascination, especially on intellectuals: their “irrational” cruelty served as a kind of ontological proof, bearing witness to the fact that we are dealing with the Real, not just with empty plans — the Party is ruthlessly brutal, so it means business…<br /><br />So, if the passion of the Real ends up with the pure semblance of the political theater, then, in an exact inversion, the “postmodern” passion of the semblance of the Last Men ends up in a kind of Real. Recall the phenomenon of “cutters” (mostly women who experience an irresistible urge to cut themselves with razors or otherwise hurt themselves), strictly correlative to the virtualization of our environs: it stands for a desperate strategy to return to the real of the body. As such, cutting is to be contrasted with the standard tattoo inscriptions on the body, which guarantee the subject’s inclusion in the (virtual) symbolic order — with the cutters, the problem is the opposite one, namely the assertion of reality itself. Far from being suicidal, far from signalling a desire for self-annihilation, cutting is a radical attempt to (re)gain a stronghold in reality, or (another aspect of the same phenomenon) to firmly ground our ego in our bodily reality, against the unbearable anxiety of perceiving oneself as non-existing. The standard report of cutters is that, after seeing the red warm blood flowing out of the self-inflicted wound, the feel alive again, firmly rooted in reality. So, although, of course, cutting is a pathological phenomenon, it is nonetheless a pathological attempt at regaining some kind of normalcy, at avoiding a total psychotic breakdown. On today’s market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol… Virtual Reality simply generalizes this procedure of offering a product deprived of its substance: it provides reality itself deprived of its substance, of the resisting hard kernel of the Real — in the same way decaffeinated coffee smells and tastes like the real coffee without being the real one, Virtual Reality is experienced as reality without being one. However, at the end of this process of virtualization, the inevitable Benthamian conclusion awaits us: reality is its own best semblance.<br /><br />And was the bombing of the WTC with regard to the Hollywood catastrophe movies not like the snuff pornography versus ordinary sado-maso porno movies? This is the element of truth in Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s provocative statement that the planes hitting the WTC towers was the ultimate work of art: one can effectively perceive the collapse of the WTC towers as the climactic conclusion of the XXth century art’s “passion of the real” — the “terrorists” themselves did it not do it primarily to provoke real material damage, but FOR THE SPECTACULAR EFFECT OF IT. The authentic XXth century passion to penetrate the Real Thing (ultimately, the destructive Void) through the cobweb of semblances which constitute our reality thus culminates in the thrill of the Real as the ultimate “effect,” sought after from digitalized special effects through reality TV and amateur pornography up to snuff movies. Snuff movies which deliver the “real thing” are perhaps the ultimate truth of virtual reality. There is an intimate connection between virtualization of reality and the emergence of an infinite and infinitized bodily pain, much stronger that the usual one: do biogenetics and Virtual Reality combined not open up new “enhanced” possibilities of TORTURE, new and unheard-of horizons of extending our ability to endure pain (through widening our sensory capacity to sustain pain, through inventing new forms of inflicting it)? Perhaps, the ultimate Sadean image on an “undead” victim of the torture who can sustain endless pain without having at his/her disposal the escape into death, also waits to become reality.<br /><br />The ultimate American paranoiac fantasy is that of an individual living in a small idyllic Californian city, a consumerist paradise, who suddenly starts to suspect that the world he lives in is a fake, a spectacle staged to convince him that he lives in a real world, while all people around him are effectively actors and extras in a gigantic show. The most recent example of this is Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), with Jim Carrey playing the small town clerk who gradually discovers the truth that he is the hero of a 24-hours permanent TV show: his hometown is constructed on a gigantic studio set, with cameras following him permanently. Among its predecessors, it is worth mentioning Philip Dick’s Time Out of Joint (1959), in which a hero living a modest daily life in a small idyllic Californian city of the late 50s, gradually discovers that the whole town is a fake staged to keep him satisfied… The underlying experience of Time Out of Joint and of The Truman Show is that the late capitalist consumerist Californian paradise is, in its very hyper-reality, in a way IRREAL, substanceless, deprived of the material inertia. And the same “derealization” of the horror went on after the WTC bombings: while the number of 6000 victims is repeated all the time, it is surprising how little of the actual carnage we see — no dismembered bodies, no blood, no desperate faces of the dying people… in clear contrast to the reporting from the Third World catastrophies where the whole point was to produce a scoop of some gruesome detail: Somalis dying of hunger, raped Bosnian women, men with throats cut. These shots were always accompanied with the advance-warning that “some of the images you will see are extremely graphic and may hurt children” — a warning which we NEVER heard in the reports on the WTC collapse. Is this not yet another proof of how, even in this tragic moments, the distance which separates Us from Them, from their reality, is maintained: the real horror happens THERE, not HERE? /”2<br /><br />So it is not only that Hollywood stages a semblance of real life deprived of the weight and inertia of materiality — in the late capitalist consumerist society, “real social life” itself somehow acquires the features of a staged fake, with our neighbors behaving in “real” life as stage actors and extras… Again, the ultimate truth of the capitalist utilitarian de-spiritualized universe is the de-materialization of the “real life” itself, its reversal into a spectral show. Among others, Christopher Isherwood gave expression to this unreality of the American daily life, exemplified in the motel room: “American motels are unreal! /…/ they are deliberately designed to be unreal. /…/ The Europeans hate us because we’ve retired to live inside our advertisements, like hermits going into caves to contemplate.” Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of the “sphere” is here literally realized, as the gigantic metal sphere that envelopes and isolates the entire city. Years ago, a series of science-fiction films like Zardoz or Logan’s Run forecasted today’s postmodern predicament by extending this fantasy to the community itself: the isolated group living an aseptic life in a secluded area longs for the experience of the real world of material decay. Is the endlessly repeated shot of the plane approaching and hitting the second WTC tower not the real-life version of the famous scene from Hitchcock’s Birds, superbly analyzed by Raymond Bellour, in which Melanie approaches the Bodega Bay pier after crossing the bay on the small boat? When, while approaching the wharf, she waves to her (future) lover, a single bird (first perceived as an undistinguished dark blot) unexpectedly enters the frame from above right and hits her head.3 Was the plane which hit the WTC tower not literally the ultimate Hitchcockian blot, the anamorphic stain which denaturalized the idyllic well-known New York landscape?<br /><br />The Wachowski brothers’ hit Matrix (1999) brought this logic to its climax: the material reality we all experience and see around us is a virtual one, generated and coordinated by a gigantic mega-computer to which we are all attached; when the hero (played by Keanu Reeves) awakens into the “real reality,” he sees a desolate landscape littered with burned ruins — what remained of Chicago after a global war. The resistance leader Morpheus utters the ironic greeting: “Welcome to the desert of the real.” Was it not something of the similar order that took place in New York on September 11? Its citizens were introduced to the “desert of the real” — to us, corrupted by Hollywood, the landscape and the shots we saw of the collapsing towers could not but remind us of the most breathtaking scenes in the catastrophe big productions.<br /><br />When we hear how the bombings were a totally unexpected shock, how the unimaginable Impossible happened, one should recall the other defining catastrophe from the beginning of the XXth century, that of Titanic: it was also a shock, but the space for it was already prepared in ideological fantasizing, since Titanic was the symbol of the might of the XIXth century industrial civilization. Does the same not hold also for these bombings? Not only were the media bombarding us all the time with the talk about the terrorist threat; this threat was also obviously libidinally invested — just recall the series of movies from Escape From New York to Independence Day. Therein resides the rationale of the often-mentioned association of the attacks with the Hollywood disaster movies: the unthinkable which happened was the object of fantasy, so that, in a way, America got what it fantasized about, and this was the greatest surprise.<br /><br />One should therefore turn around the standard reading according to which, the WTC explosions were the intrusion of the Real which shattered our illusory Sphere: quite on the contrary, it is prior to the WTC collapse than we lived in our reality, perceiving the Third World horrors as something which is not effectively part of our social reality, as something which exists (for us) as a spectral apparition on the (TV) screen — and what happened on September 11 is that this screen fantasmatic apparition entered our reality. It is not that reality entered our image: the image entered and shattered our reality (i.e., the symbolic coordinates which determine what we experience as reality). The fact that, after September 11, the opening of many “of the blockbuster” movies with scenes which bear a resemblance to the WTC collapse (large buildings on fire or under attack, terrorist actions…) was postponed (or the films were even shelved), is thus to be read as the “repression” of the fantasmatic background responsible for the impact of the WTC collapse. Of course, the point is not to play a pseudo-postmodern game of reducing the WTC collapse to just another media spectacle, reading it as a catastrophy version of the snuff porno movies; the question we should have asked ourselves when we stared at the TV screens on September 11 is simply: WHERE DID WE ALREADY SEE THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN?<br /><br /> It is precisely now, when we are dealing with the raw Real of a catastrophe, that we should bear in mind the ideological and fantasmatic coordinates which determine its perception. If there is any symbolism in the collapse of the WTC towers, it is not so much the old-fashioned notion of the “center of financial capitalism,” but, rather, the notion that the two WTC towers stood for the center of the VIRTUAL capitalism, of financial speculations disconnected from the sphere of material production. The shattering impact of the bombings can only be accounted for only against the background of the borderline which today separates the digitalized First World from the Third World “desert of the Real.” It is the awareness that we live in an insulated artificial universe which generates the notion that some ominous agent is threatening us all the time with total destruction.<br /><br />Is, consequently, Osama Bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the bombings, not the real-life counterpart of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the master-criminal in most of the James Bond films, involved in the acts of global destruction. What one should recall here is that the only place in Hollywood films where we see the production process in all its intensity is when James Bond penetrates the master-criminal’s secret domain and locates there the site of intense labor (distilling and packaging the drugs, constructing a rocket that will destroy New York…). When the master-criminal, after capturing Bond, usually takes him on a tour of his illegal factory, is this not the closest Hollywood comes to the socialist-realist proud presentation of the production in a factory? And the function of Bond’s intervention, of course, is to explode in firecraks this site of production, allowing us to return to the daily semblance of our existence in a world with the “disappearing working class.” Is it not that, in the exploding WTC towers, this violence directed at the threatening Outside turned back at us?<br /><br />The safe Sphere in which Americans live is experienced as under threat from the Outside of terrorist attackers who are ruthlessly self-sacrificing AND cowards, cunningly intelligent AND primitive barbarians. The letters of the deceased attackers are quoted as “chilling documents” — why? Are they not exactly what one would expect from dedicated fighters on a suicidal mission? If one takes away references to Koran, in what do they differ from, say, the CIA special manuals? Were the CIA manuals for the Nicaraguan contras with detailed descriptions on how to perturb the daily life, up to how to clog the water toilets, not of the same order — if anything, MORE cowardly? When, on September 25, 2001, the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar appealed to Americans to use their own judgement in responding to the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon rather than blindly following their government’s policy to attack his country (“You accept everything your government says, whether it is true or false. /…/ Don’t you have your own thinking? /…/ So it will be better for you to use your sense and understanding.”), were these statements, taken in a literal-abstract, decontextualized, sense, not quite appropriate? Today, more than ever, one should bear in mind that the large majority of Arabs are not fanaticized dark crowds, but scared, uncertain, aware of their fragile status — witness the anxiety the bombings caused in Egypt.<br /><br />Whenever we encounter such a purely evil Outside, we should gather the courage to endorse the Hegelian lesson: in this pure Outside, we should recognize the distilled version of our own essence. For the last five centuries, the (relative) prosperity and peace of the “civilized” West was bought by the export of ruthless violence and destruction into the “barbarian” Outside: the long story from the conquest of America to the slaughter in Congo. Cruel and indifferent as it may sound, we should also, now more than ever, bear in mind that the actual effect of these bombings is much more symbolic than real: in Africa, EVERY SINGLE DAY more people die of AIDS than all the victims of the WTC collapse, and their death could have been easily cut back with relatively small financial means. The US just got the taste of what goes on around the world on a daily basis, from Sarajevo to Grozny, from Ruanda and Congo to Sierra Leone. If one adds to the situation in New York rapist gangs and a dozen or so snipers blindly targeting people who walk along the streets, one gets an idea about what Sarajevo was a decade ago.<br /><br />When, days after September 11 2001, our gaze was transfixed by the images of the plane hitting one of the WTC towers, all of us were forced to experience what the “compulsion to repeat” ans jouissance beyond the pleasure principle are: we wanted to see it again and again, the same shots were repeated ad nauseam, and the uncanny satisfaction we got from it was jouissance at its purest. It is when we watched on TV screen the two WTC towers collapsing, that it became possible to experience the falsity of the “reality TV shows”: even if these shows are “for real,” people still act in them — they simply play themselves. The standard disclaimer in a novel (“characters in this text are a fiction, every resemblance with the real life characters is purely contingent”) holds also for the participants of the reality soaps: what we see there are fictional characters, even if they play themselves for the real. Of course, the “return to the Real” can be given different twists: one already hears some conservatives claim that what made us so vulnerable is our very openness — with the inevitable conclusion lurking in the background that, if we are to protect our “way of life,” we will have to sacrifice some of our freedoms which were “misused” by the enemies of freedom. This logic should be rejected tout court: is it not a fact that our First World “open” countries are the most controlled countries in the entire history of humanity? In the United Kingdom, all public spaces, from buses to shopping malls, are constantly videotaped, not to mention the almost total control of all forms of digital communication.<br /><br />Along the same lines, Rightist commentators like George Will also immediately proclaimed the end of the American “holiday from history” — the impact of reality shattering the isolated tower of the liberal tolerant attitude and the Cultural Studies focus on textuality. Now, we are forced to strike back, to deal with real enemies in the real world… However, WHOM to strike? Whatever the response, it will never hit the RIGHT target, bringing us full satisfaction. The ridicule of America attacking Afghanistan cannot but strike the eye: if the greatest power in the world will destroy one of the poorest countries in which peasant barely survive on barren hills, will this not be the ultimate case of the impotent acting out? Afghanistan is otherwise an ideal target: a country ALREADY reduced to rubble, with no infrastructure, repeatedly destroyed by war for the last two decades… one cannot avoid the surmise that the choice of Afghanistan will be also determined by economic considerations: is it not the best procedure to act out one’s anger at a country for which no one cares and where there is nothing to destroy? Unfortunately, the possible choice of Afghanistan recalls the anecdote about the madman who searches for the lost key beneath a street light; when asked why there when he lost the key in a dark corner backwards, he answers: “But it is easier to search under strong light!” Is not the ultimate irony that the whole of Kabul already looks like downtown Manhattan?<br /><br />To succumb to the urge to act now and retaliate means precisely to avoid confronting the true dimensions of what occurred on September 11 — it means an act whose true aim is to lull us into the secure conviction that nothing has REALLY changed. The true long-term threat are further acts of mass terror in comparison to which the memory of the WTC collapse will pale — acts less spectacular, but much more horrifying. What about bacteriological warfare, what about the use of lethal gas, what about the prospect of the DNA terrorism (developing poisons which will affect only people who share a determinate genome)? In contrast to Marx who relied on the notion of fetish as a solid object whose stable presence obfuscates its social mediation, one should assert that fetishism reaches its acme precisely when the fetish itself is “dematerialized,” turned into a fluid “immaterial” virtual entity; money fetishism will culminate with the passage to its electronic form, when the last traces of its materiality will disappear — it is only at this stage that it will assume the form of an indestructible spectral presence: I owe you 1000 $, and no matter how many material notes I burn, I still owe you 1000 $, the debt is inscribed somewhere in the virtual digital space… Does the same not hold also for warfare? Far from pointing towards the XXIth century warfare, the WTC twin towers explosion and collapse in September 2001 were rather the last spectacular cry of the XXth century warfare. What awaits us is something much more uncanny: the specter of an “immaterial” war where the attack is invisible — viruses, poisons which can be anywhere and nowhere. At the level of visible material reality, nothing happens, no big explosions, and yet the known universe starts to collapse, life disintegrates… We are entering a new era of paranoiac warfare in which the biggest task will be to identify the enemy and his weapons. Instead of a quick acting out, one should confront these difficult questions: what will “war” mean in the XXIst century? Who will be “them,” if they are, clearly, neither states nor criminal gangs? One cannot resist the temptation to recall here the Freudian opposition of the public Law and its obscene superego double: are, along the same line, the “international terrorist organizations” not the obscene double of the big multinational corporations — the ultimate rhizomatic machine, all-present, although with no clear territorial base? Are they not the form in which nationalist and/or religious “fundamentalism” accommodated itself to global capitalism? Do they not embody the ultimate contrafiction, with their particular/exclusive content and their global dynamic functioning?<br /><br />There is a partial truth in the notion of the “clash of civilizations” attested here — witness the surprise of the average American: “How is it possible that these people display and practice such a disregard for their own lives?” Is the obverse of this surprise not the rather sad fact that we, in the First World countries, find it more and more difficult even to imagine a public or universal Cause for which one would be ready to sacrifice one’s life? When, after the bombings, even the Taliban foreign minister said that he can “feel the pain” of the American children, did he not thereby confirm the hegemonic ideological role of this Bill Clinton’s trademark phrase? It effectively appears as if the split between First World and Third World runs more and more along the lines of the opposition between leading a long satisfying life full of material and cultural wealth, and dedicating one’s life to some transcendent Cause. Two philosophical references immediately impose themselves apropos this ideological antagonism between the Western consummerist way of life and the Muslim radicalism: Hegel and Nietzsche. Is this antagonism not the one between what Nietzsche called “passive” and “active” nihilism? We in the West are the Nietzschean Last Men, immersed in stupid daily pleasures, while the Muslim radicals are ready to risk everything, engaged in the struggle up to their self-destruction. (One cannot but note the significant role of the stock exchange in the bombings: the ultimate proof of their traumatic impact was that the New York Stock Exchange was closed for four days, and its opening the following Monday was presented as the key sign of things returning to normal.) Furthermore, if one perceives this opposition through the lenses of the Hegelian struggle between Master and Servant, one cannot avoid noting the paradox: although we in the West are perceived as exploiting masters, it is us who occupy the position of the Servant who, since he clings to life and its pleasures, is unable to risk his life (recall Colin Powell’s notion of a high-tech war with no human casualties), while the poor Muslim radicals are Masters ready to risk their life…<br /><br />However, this notion of the “clash of civilizations” has to be thoroughly rejected: what we are witnessing today are rather clashes WITHIN each civilization. Furthermore, a brief look at the comparative history of Islam and Christianity tells us that the “human rights record” of Islam (to use this anachronistic term) is much better than that of Christianity: in the past centuries, Islam was significantly more tolerant towards other religions than Christianity. NOW it is also the time to remember that it was through the Arabs that, in the Middle Ages, we in the Western Europe regained access to our Ancient Greek legacy. While in no way excusing today’s horror acts, these facts nonetheless clearly demonstrate that we are not dealing with a feature inscribed into Islam “as such,” but with the outcome of modern socio-political conditions.<br /><br />On a closer look, what IS this “clash of civilizations” effectively about? Are all real-life “clashes” not clearly related to global capitalism? The Muslim “fundamentalist” target is not only global capitalism’s corroding impact on social life, but ALSO the corrupted “traditionalist” regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc. The most horrifying slaughters (those in Ruanda, Kongo, and Sierra Leone) not only took place — and are taking place — within the SAME “civilization,” but are also clearly related to the interplay of global economic interests. Even in the few cases which would vaguely fit the definition of the “clash of civilisations” (Bosnia and Kosovo, south of Sudan, etc.), the shadow of other interests is easily discernible.<br /><br />Every feature attributed to the Other is already present in the very heart of the US: murderous fanaticism? There are today in the US itself more than two millions of the Rightist populist “fundamentalists” who also practice the terror of their own, legitimized by (their understanding of) Christianity. Since America is in a way “harboring” them, should the US Army have punished the US themselves after the Oklashoma bombing? And what about the way Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson reacted to the bombings, perceiving them as a sign that God lifted up its protection of the US because of the sinful lives of the Americans, putting the blame on hedonist materialism, liberalism, and rampant sexuality, and claiming that America got what it deserved? The fact that very same condemnation of the “liberal” America as the one from the Muslim Other came from the very heart of the Amerique profonde should give as to think. America as a safe haven? When a New Yorker commented on how, after the bombings, one can no longer walk safely on the city’s streets, the irony of it was that, well before the bombings, the streets of New York were well-known for the dangers of being attacked or, at least, mugged — if anything, the bombings gave rise to a new sense of solidarity, with the scenes of young African-Americans helping an old Jewish gentlemen to cross the street, scenes unimaginable a couple of days ago.<br /><br />Now, in the days immediately following the bombings, it is as if we dwell in the unique time between a traumatic event and its symbolic impact, like in those brief moment after we are deeply cut, and before the full extent of the pain strikes us — it is open how the events will be symbolized, what their symbolic efficiency will be, what acts they will be evoked to justify. If nothing else, one can clearly experience yet again the limitation of our democracy: decisions are being made which will affect the fate of all of us, and all of us just wait, aware that we are utterly powerless. Even here, in these moments of utmost tension, this link is not automatic but contingent. There are already the first bad omens, like the sudden resurrection, in the public discourse, of the old Cold war term “free world”: the struggle is now the one between the “free world” and the forces of darkness and terror. The question to be asked here is, of course: who then belongs to the UNFREE world? Are, say, China or Egypt part of this free world? The actual message is, of course, that the old division between the Western liberal-democratic countries and all the others is again enforced.<br /><br />The day after the bombing, I got a message from a journal which was just about to publish a longer text of mine on Lenin, telling me that they decided to postpone its publication — they considered inopportune to publish a text on Lenin immediately after the bombing. Does this not points towards the ominous ideological rearticulations which will follow, with a new Berufsverbot (prohibition to employ radicals) much stronger and more widespread than the one in the Germany of the 70s? These days, one often hears the phrase that the struggle is now the one for democracy — true, but not quite in the way this phrase is usually meant. Already, some Leftist friends of mine wrote me that, in these difficult moments, it is better to keep one’s head down and not push forward with our agenda. Against this temptation to duck out the crisis, one should insist that NOW the Left should provide a better analysis — otherwise, it concedes in advance its political AND ethical defeat in the face of the acts of quite genuine ordinary people heroism (like the passengers who, in a model of rational ethical act, overtook the kidnappers and provokes the early crush of the plane: if one is condemned to die soon, one should gather the strength and die in such a way as to prevent other people dying).<br /><br />When, in the aftermath of September 11, the Americans en masse rediscovered their American pride, displaying flags and singing together in the public, one should emphasize more than ever that there is nothing “innocent” in this rediscovery of the American innocence, in getting rid of the sense of historical guilt or irony which prevented many of them to fully assume being American. What this gesture amounted to was to “objectively” assume the burden of all that being “American” stood for in the past — an exemplary case of ideological interpellation, of fully assuming one’s symbolic mandate, which enters the stage after the perplexity caused by some historical trauma. In the traumatic aftermath of September 11, when the old security seemed momentarily shattered, what more “natural” gesture than to take refuge in the innocence of the firm ideological identification? 4 However, it is precisely such moments of transparent innocence, of “return to basics,” when the gesture of identification seems “natural,” that are, from the standpoint of the critique of ideology, the most obscure one’s, even, in a certain way, obscurity itself. Let us recall another such innocently-transparent moment, the endlessly reproduced video-shot from Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Piece at the height of the “troubles” in 1989, of a tiny young man with a can who, alone, stands in front of an advancing gigantic tank, and courageously tries to prevent its advance, so that, when the tank tries to bypass him by turning right or left, them man also moves aside, again standing in its way:<br /><br />“The representation is so powerful that it demolishes all other understandings. This streetscene, this time and this event, have come to constitute the compass point for virtually all Western journeys into the interior of the contemporary political and cultural life of China.”5<br /><br />And, again, this very moment of transparent clarity (things are rendered at their utmost naked: a single man against the raw force of the State) is, for our Western gaze, sustained by a cobweb of ideological implications, embodying a series of oppositions: individual versus state, peaceful resistance versus state violence, man versus machine, the inner force of a tiny individual versus the impotence of the powerful machine… These implications, against the background of which the shot exerts its full direct impact, these “mediations” which sustain the shot’s immediate impact, are NOT present for a Chinese observer, since the above-mentioned series of oppositions is inherent to the European ideological legacy. And the same ideological background also overdetermines, say, our perception of the horrifying images of tiny individuals jumping from the burning WTC tower into certain death.<br /><br />So what about the phrase which reverberates everywhere, “Nothing will be the same after September 11″? Significantly, this phrase is never further elaborated — it just an empty gesture of saying something “deep” without really knowing what we want to say. So our first reaction to it should be: Really? Is it, rather, not that the only thing that effectively changed was that America was forced to realize the kind of world it was part of? On the other hand, such changes in perception are never without consequences, since the way we perceive our situation determines the way we act in it. Recall the processes of collapse of a political regime, say, the collapse of the Communist regimes in the Eastern Europe in 1990: at a certain moment, people all of a sudden became aware that the game is over, that the Communists are lost. The break was purely symbolic, nothing changed “in reality” — and, nonetheless, from this moment on, the final collapse of the regime was just a question of days… What if something of the same order DID occur on September 11?<br /><br />We don’t yet know what consequences in economy, ideology, politics, war, this event will have, but one thing is sure: the US, which, till now, perceived itself as an island exempted from this kind of violence, witnessing this kind of things only from the safe distance of the TV screen, is now directly involved. So the alternative is: will Americans decide to fortify further their “sphere,” or to risk stepping out of it? Either America will persist in, strengthen even, the deeply immoral attitude of “Why should this happen to us? Things like this don’t happen HERE!”, leading to more aggressivity towards the threatening Outside, in short: to a paranoiac acting out. Or America will finally risk stepping through the fantasmatic screen separating it from the Outside World, accepting its arrival into the Real world, making the long-overdued move from “A thing like this should not happen HERE!” to “A thing like this should not happen ANYWHERE!”. Therein resides the true lesson of the bombings: the only way to ensure that it will not happen HERE again is to prevent it going on ANYWHERE ELSE. In short, America should learn to humbly accept its own vulnerability as part of this world, enacting the punishment of those responsible as a sad duty, not as an exhilarating retaliation.<br /><br />The WTC bombings again confront us with the necessity to resist the temptation of a double blackmail. If one simply, only and unconditionally condemns it, one cannot but appear to endorse the blatantly ideological position of the American innocence under attack by the Third World Evil; if one draws attention to the deeper socio-political causes of the Arab extremism, one cannot but appear to blame the victim which ultimately got what it deserved… The only consequent solution is here to reject this very opposition and to adopt both positions simultaneously, which can only be done if one resorts to the dialectical category of totality: there is no choice between these two positions, each one is one-sided and false. Far from offering a case apropos of which one can adopt a clear ethical stance, we encounter here the limit of moral reasoning: from the moral standpoint, the victims are innocent, the act was an abominable crime; however, this very innocence is not innocent — to adopt such an “innocent” position in today’s global capitalist universe is in itself a false abstraction. The same goes for the more ideological clash of interpretations: one can claim that the attack on the WTC was an attack on what is worth fighting for in democratic freedoms — the decadent Western way of life condemned by Muslim and other fundamentalists is the universe of women’s rights and multiculturalist tolerance; however, one can also claim that it was an attack on the very center and symbol of global financial capitalism. This, of course, in no way entails the compromise notion of shared guilt (terrorists are to blame, but, partially, also Americans are also to blame…) — the point is, rather, that the two sides are not really opposed, that they belong to the same field. The fact that global capitalism is a totality means that it is the dialectical unity of itself and of its other, of the forces which resist it on “fundamentalist” ideological grounds.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Consequently, of the two main stories which emerged after September 11, both are worse, as Stalin would have put it. The American patriotic narrative — the innocence under siege, the surge of patriotic pride — is, of course, vain; however, is the Leftist narrative (with its Schadenfreude: the US got what they deserved, what they were for decades doing to others) really any better? The predominant reaction of European, but also American, Leftists was nothing less than scandalous: all imaginable stupidities were said and written, up to the “feminist” point that the WTC towers were two phallic symbols, waiting to be destroyed (“castrated”). Was there not something petty and miserable in the mathematics reminding one of the holocaust revisionism (what are the 6000 dead against millions in Ruanda, Kongo, etc.)? And what about the fact that CIA (co)created Taliban and Bin Laden, financing and helping them to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan? Why was this fact quoted as an argument AGAINST attacking them? Would it not be much more logical to claim that it is precisely their duty to get us rid of the monster they created? The moment one thinks in the terms of “yes, the WTC collapse was a tragedy, but one should not fully solidarize with the victims, since this would mean supporting US imperialism,” the ethical catastrophy is already here: the only appropriate stance is the unconditional solidarity will ALL victims. The ethical stance proper is here replaced with the moralizing mathematics of guilt and horror which misses the key point: the terrifying death of each individual is absolute and incomparable. In short, let us make a simple mental experiment: if you detect in yourself any restraint to fully empathize with the victims of the WTC collapse, if you feel the urge to qualify your empathy with “yes, but what about the millions who suffer in Africa…”, you are not demonstrating your Third World sympathize, but merely the mauvaise foi which bears witness to your implicit patronizing racist attitude towards the Third World victims. (More precisely, the problem with such comparative statements is that they are necessary and inadmissible: one HAS to make them, one HAS to make the point that much worse horrors are taken place around the world on a daily basis — but one has to do it without getting involved in the obscene mathematics of guilt.)<br /><br />It must be said that, within the scope of these two extremes (the violent retaliatory act versus the new reflection about the global situation and America’s role in it), the reaction of the Western powers till now was surprisingly considerate (no wonder it caused the violent anti-American outburst of Ariel Sharon!). Perhaps the greatest irony of the situation is that the main “collateral damage” of the Western reaction is the focus on the plight of the Afghani refugees, and, more generally, on the catastrophic food and health situation in Afghanistan, so that, sometimes, military action against Taliban is almost presented as a means to guarantee the safe delivery of the humanitarian aid — as Tony Blair said, perhaps, we will have to bomb Taliban in order to secure the food transportation and distribution. Although, of course, such large-scale publicized humanitarian actions are in themselves ideologically charged, involving the debilitating degradation of the Afghani people to helpless victims, and reducing the Taliban to a parasite terrorizing them, it is significant to acknowledge that the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan presents a much larger catastrophy than the WTC bombings.<br /><br />Another way in which the Left miserably failed is that, in the weeks after the bombing, it reverted to the old mantra “Give peace a chance! War does not stop violence!” — a true case of hysterical precipitation, reacting to something which will not even happen in the expected form. Instead of the concrete analysis of the new complex situation after the bombings, of the chances it gives to the Left to propose its own interpretation of the events, we got the blind ritualistic chant “No war!”, which fails to address even the elementary fact, de facto acknowledged by the US government itself (through its postponing of the retaliatory action), that this is not a war like others, that the bombing of Afghanistan is not a solution. A sad situation, in which George Bush showed more power of reflection than most of the Left!<br /><br />No wonder that anti-Americanism was most discernible in “big” European nations, especially France and Germany: it is part of their resistance to globalization. One often hears the complaint that the recent trend of globalization threatens the sovereignty of the Nation-States; here, however, one should qualify this statement: WHICH states are most exposed to this threat? It is not the small states, but the second-rang (ex-)world powers, countries like United Kingdom, Germany and France: what they fear is that, once fully immersed in the newly emerging global Empire, they will be reduced at the same level as, say, Austria, Belgium or even Luxembourg. The refusal of “Americanization” in France, shared by many Leftists and Rightist nationalists, is thus ultimately the refusal to accept the fact that France itself is losing its hegemonic role in Europe. The results of this refusal are often comical — at a recent philosophical colloquium, a French Leftist philosopher complained how, apart from him, there are now practically no French philosophers in France: Derrida is sold to American deconstructionism, the academia is overwhelmed by Anglo-Saxon cognitivism… A simple mental experiment is indicative here: let us imagine someone from Serbia claiming that he is the only remaining truly Serb philosopher — he would have been immediately denounced and ridiculed as a nationalist. The levelling of weight between larger and smaller Nation-States should thus be counted among the beneficial effects of globalization: beneath the contemptuous deriding of the new Eastern European post-Communist states, it is easy to discern the contours of the wounded Narcissism of the European “great nations.” Here, a good dose of Lenin’s sensitivity for the small nations (recall his insistence that, in the relationship between large and small nations, one should always allow for a greater degree of the “small” nationalism) would be helpful. Interestingly, the same matrix was reproduced within ex-Yugoslavia: not only for the Serbs, but even for the majority of the Western powers, Serbia was self-evidently perceived as the only ethnic group with enough substance to form its own state. Throughout the 90s, even the radical democratic critics of Milosevic who rejected Serb nationalism, acted on the presupposition that, among the ex-Yugoslav republics, it is only Serbia which has democratic potential: after overthrowing Milosevic, Serbia alone can turn into a thriving democratic state, while other ex-Yugoslav nations are too “provincial” to sustain their own democratic State… is this not the echo of Friedrich Engels’ well-known scathing remarks about how the small Balkan nations are politically reactionary since their very existence is a reaction, a survival of the past?<br /><br />America’s “holiday from history” was a fake: America’s peace was bought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere. These days, the predominant point of view is that of an innocent gaze confronting unspeakable Evil which stroke from the Outside — and, again, apropos this gaze, one should gather the strength and apply to it also Hegel’s well-known dictum that the Evil resides (also) in the innocent gaze itself which perceives Evil all around itself. There is thus an element of truth even in the most constricted Moral Majority vision of the depraved America dedicated to mindless pleasures, in the conservative horror at this netherworld of sexploitation and pathological violence: what they don’t get is merely the Hegelian speculative identity between this netherworld and their own position of fake purity — the fact that so many fundamentalist preachers turned out to be secret sexual perverts is more than a contingent empirical fact. When the infamous Jimmy Swaggart claimed that the fact that he visited prostitutes only gave additional strength to his preaching (he knew from intimate struggle what he was preaching against), although undoubtedly hypocritical at the immediate subjective level, is nonetheless objectively true.<br /><br />Can one imagine a greater irony than the fact that the first codename for the US operation against terrorists was “Infinite Justice” (later changed in response to the reproach of the American Islam clerics that only God can exert infinite justice)? Taken seriously, this name is profoundly ambiguous: either it means that the Americans have the right to ruthlessly destroy not only all terrorists but also all who gave then material, moral, ideological etc. support (and this process will be by definition endless in the precise sense of the Hegelian “bad infinity” — the work will never be really accomplished, there will always remain some other terrorist threat…); or it means that the justice exerted must be truly infinite in the strict Hegelian sense, i.e., that, in relating to others, it has to relate to itself — in short, that it has to ask the question of how we ourselves who exert justice are involved in what we are fighting against. When, on September 22 2001, Derrida received the Theodor Adorno award, he referred in his speech to the WTC bombings: “My unconditional compassion, addressed at the victims of the September 11, does not prevent me to say it loudly: with regard to this crime, I do not believe that anyone is politically guiltless.” This self-relating, this inclusion of oneself into the picture, is the only true “infinite justice.”<br /><br />In the electoral campaign, President Bush named as the most important person in his life Jesus Christ. Now he has a unique chance to prove that he meant it seriously: for him, as for all Americans today, “Love thy neighbor!” means “Love the Muslims!” OR IT MEANS NOTHING AT ALL.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-79090093095870151932010-01-10T10:01:00.001-08:002010-01-10T10:01:40.336-08:00Of Noble Lies and Bitter Truths<span style="font-style:italic;">Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle<br />2004<br />Slavoj Žižek</span><br /><br />In a TV interview, Ralf Dahrendorf linked the growing distrust in democracy to the fact that, after every revolutionary change, the road to new prosperity leads through a ‘vale of tears’: after the breakdown of socialism, one cannot pass directly to the abundance of a successful market economy – the limited, but real, socialist welfare and social security systems have to be dismantled, and these first steps are necessarily painful; the same goes for Western Europe, where the passage from the post-World War II welfare state to the new global economy involves painful renunciations, less social security, less guaranteed social care. For Dahrendorf, the problem is best encapsulated by the simple fact that this painful passage through the ‘vale of tears’ lasts longer than the average period between (democratic) elections, sot that the temptation to postpone difficult changes for short-term electoral gain is great. For him, the paradigmatic constellation here is the disappointment of large strata of post-Communist nations with the economic results of the new democratic order: in the glorious days of 1989, they equated democracy with the abundance of Western consumerist societies; now, more than ten years later, when this abundance is still lacking, they blame democracy itself. Unfortunately, he focuses much less on the opposite temptation: if the majority resists the necessary structural changes in the economy, would one of the logical conclusions not be that, for a decade or so, an enlightened elite should take power, even by non-democratic means, to enforce the necessary measures, and thus to lay the foundations for a truly stable democracy? Along these lines, Fareed Zakaria points out how democracy can ‘catch on’ only in economically developed countries: if developing countries are ‘prematurely democratized’, the result is a populism which ends in economic catastrophe and political despotism – no wonder today’s economically most successful Third World countries (Taiwan, South Korea, Chile) embraced full democracy only after a period of authoritarian rule. <br /><br />This inherent crisis of democracy is also the reason for the renewed popularity of Leo Strauss: the key feature which makes his political thought relevant today is the elitist notion of democracy, that is, the idea of a ‘noble lie’, of how elites should rule, aware of the actual state of things (the brutal materialist logic of power, and so forth), while feeding the people fables which keep them satisfied in their blessed ignorance. For Strauss, the lesson of the trial and execution of Socrates is that Socrates was guilty as charged: philosophy is a threat to society. By questioning the gods and the ethos of the city, philosophy undermines the citizens’ loyalty, and thus the basis of normal social life. Yet philosophy is also the highest, the worthies, of all human endeavours. The resolution of this this conflict was that the philosophers should – and in fact did – keep their teachings secret, passing them on by the esoteric art of writing ‘between the lines’. The True, hidden message contained in the ‘Great Tradition’ of philosophy, from Plato to Hobbes and Locke, is that there are no gods, that morality is unfounded prejudice and that society is not grounded in nature. <br /><br />But does Strauss’s notion of esoteric knowledge not confuse two different phenomena: the cynicism of power, its unreadiness to admit publicly its own true foundations, and the subversive insights of those who aim at undermining the power system? For example, under Really Existing Socialism, there was a difference between a critical intellectual who, in order to get his message across, had to hide it in the terms of official ideology, and the cynical high-ranking member of the nomenklatura who was aware of the falsity of the basic claims of the ruling ideology. Or, in Christianity, there is an abyss which separates a Renaissance atheist trying to pass his message on in a coded way from the Renaissance pope making fun of Christian belief at a private orgy. Recall the passage from Roudinesco quoted above, directed against those who perceive gay communities as the model for totalitarian collectives which exclude otherness: <br /><br />"For now, the only apocalypse that seems to threaten Western society – and Islam as well – is radical Islamic fundamentalism disposed to terrorism. Islamic threats are made by extremist bearded and barbaric polygamists who constrain women’s bodies and pit invectives against homosexuals whom they hold responsible for weakening the masculine values of God the father."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-30213864539932913882010-01-10T09:57:00.000-08:002010-01-10T09:59:13.494-08:00The Dark Pursuit of the Truth<span style="font-style:italic;">July 30, 2009<br />The Economist</span><br /><br />Torture still casts a long shadow in the battle between spies and terrorists<br /><br />JACK BAUER famously does whatever it takes to save America from disaster, be that disaster nuclear, biological or computer attack. Week after week, the hero of “24” acts brutally, and endures brutality, for the greater good. It is a sign of the times that this year’s season opened with Bauer being hauled before a congressional committee to face the charge of committing torture. He was unrepentant.<br /><br />This television character, who first appeared in 2001, has been oddly at the heart of the arguments over the conduct of America’s “war on terrorism”. Critics in the American army have complained that he encourages young soldiers to abuse prisoners. Supporters, such as Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice, praised him for the episode in which he saved Los Angeles from nuclear attack, even though it meant staging the mock execution of a family to get a Middle Eastern villain to talk. “Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so,” said the judge.<br /><br />In contrast with Europeans, who strongly reject the use of torture, the American public is pretty evenly divided about its use to extract information from terrorists. But President Barack Obama, for one, is clear. No sooner had he been sworn into office than he banned torture, rescinded legal opinions allowing simulated drowning and other harsh methods, ordered all American agencies to comply with the army’s field manual on interrogation, announced he would close the prison at Guantánamo Bay within a year and ordered a series of policy reviews on detention and interrogation. “From Europe to the Pacific”, Mr Obama said in May, “we’ve been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law.” Dick Cheney, George Bush’s vice-president, sneered at such talk as “recklessness cloaked in righteousness”.<br /><br />Many people thought that Mr Obama’s election would finally settle the controversies about counter-terrorism’s “dark side” (as Mr Cheney once put it); a darkness that concealed secret prisons, abusive interrogation and “rendition” to countries that practise torture. The distorted DIY legal framework that treated suspected terrorists as neither criminals nor prisoners-of-war, leaving them in an unprotected grey zone between civil and military law, would, many liberals hoped, be put right.<br /><br />In April, against the wishes of current and former CIA directors, Mr Obama released four secret memos from the Department of Justice, written in 2002 and updated in 2005, that made legal the CIA’s use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques such as the use of the “waterboard” (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, “walling” (hurling a prisoner against a partition wall), “stress positions” and strange practices like placing a “high-value prisoner” in a cramped box with an insect to exploit his phobia about bugs. It revealed that one prisoner, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the operational head of the September 11th 2001 attacks on America, was waterboarded 183 times.<br /><br />Mr Obama said that he did not want to prosecute those who operated within these rules. He knows that if he takes action against interrogators he could be accused of seeking scapegoats; if he goes after the CIA chiefs he would be charged with undermining America’s security; and if he investigates leaders of the Bush administration he would look as if he were conducting a witch-hunt against his political rivals. “Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past,” he argued.<br /><br />Yet the past casts a long shadow. Some of Mr Obama’s supporters want a “truth commission” to establish what happened and, perhaps, recommend prosecutions. Congress is incensed that the CIA did not tell it of a secret programme (which may have had to do with the assassination of terrorists), apparently under orders from Mr Cheney, bringing the former vice-president a step closer to formal investigation. The attorney-general, Eric Holder, is thought to be about to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate those interrogators who exceeded the already lax limits set by the so-called “torture memos”.<br /><br />Even before this, CIA officials had been hiring lawyers in anticipation of trouble. Some of Mr Obama’s favourite spooks have been unable to take up senior appointments because of their association, sometimes only peripheral, with the interrogation programme. John Brennan, a veteran CIA figure, was withdrawn from consideration as the agency’s director and was given a job in the White House instead. Philip Mudd, a respected intelligence man currently on secondment to the FBI, pulled out of his nomination to the senior intelligence post in the Department of Homeland Security. The Obama administration may have chosen these men but it put little effort into backing its choices.<br /><br />The big chill<br /><br />How will all this affect future intelligence operations? There is a distinct chill. Some reckon that the CIA and other agencies face their worst crisis since the post-Watergate inquiries in the 1970s uncovered evidence of spying on Americans and plots to assassinate foreign leaders. “There is undoubtedly some nervousness,” says one senior source. “It does not stop you taking action, but it makes you think twice and talk to your lawyer.”<br /><br />Britain’s close relations with America are causing it similar problems. Its intelligence agencies are being dragged into the legal limelight, not for torturing suspects but for allegedly colluding in their maltreatment by others—whether they are Americans, Pakistanis or Moroccans. One member of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, is under police investigation.<br /><br />Increasingly lawyers are being brought in to scrutinise British intelligence before it can be passed on. Will handing over the name of a suspect to America lead to him being killed by an unmanned aircraft in Pakistan? Will sharing a telephone number with, say, Egypt’s spies, lead to the arrest and torture of somebody who should instead be merely watched? Will submitting questions to be asked of a man held in a foreign prison mean that British agents will be held responsible for his treatment?<br /><br />Agents have become warier of questioning detainees abroad for fear that they will be blamed for any abuse they may have suffered. The number of requests by officials in MI6 (Britain’s foreign intelligence service) for the legal cover known as “Article 7”, in which the foreign secretary approves actions that are illegal in Britain, has shot up.<br /><br />Many of the woes of British agencies are embodied in the case of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian asylum-seeker in Britain, who gave up his drugs habit after rediscovering Islam. He went to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to see an Islamic state at work. There he underwent some form of military training—to help the resistance in Chechnya, he says, not to fight the Americans. He was arrested trying to leave Pakistan in 2002 on a forged passport. He was beaten in prison, where he was seen by members of the FBI and MI5. He was then taken by the Americans to Morocco, where he says he was tortured by a questioner called Marwan, who took a sharp blade to his chest and penis while asking questions that had plainly been fed to him by MI5.<br /><br />The British authorities say that once Mr Mohamed had left Pakistan, they did not know his whereabouts or conditions of detention; all questions were submitted through the Americans. Much of America’s programme of secret detention and interrogation was formally hidden from allies. The top-secret “torture memos” were classified “NOFORN” (no foreign nationals). But stories of prisoners being abused by the Americans were already circulating in 2002. Indeed some British officials had expressed concern at what they saw.<br /><br />It was under torture, Mr Mohamed says, that he admitted to meeting Osama bin Laden and to taking part in plots including the detonation of a dirty bomb. This is what he would be accused of when he got to Guantánamo Bay in 2004, via a secret prison in Afghanistan. But, like many others, Mr Mohamed was released in February this year without charge.<br /><br />By then Mr Mohamed’s lawyers, among them Clive Stafford Smith, founder of a legal charity called Reprieve, had been in full swing on both sides of the Atlantic. They sued the British government to release documents that might prove Mr Mohamed’s innocence, obtaining a High Court judgment that was critical of MI5 and led to the police investigation of one of its officials, known only as “Witness B”. In a parallel case in America, Mr Mohamed and other Guantánamo inmates are suing Jeppensen DataPlan, a subsidiary of Boeing, which allegedly provided aircraft for the CIA’s rendition programme.<br /><br />Mr Mohamed’s release has not stopped the litigation in either America or Britain. Both governments argue that the lawsuits should be thrown out because state secrets cannot be divulged. Indeed, the Obama administration has warned Britain that intelligence-sharing would be jeopardised if secret information provided by the CIA were to be revealed in British courts. Similarly, officials in Britain are alarmed by what may be disclosed in America.<br /><br />Waterboarding the agencies<br /><br />These days it is the intelligence agencies that find themselves under interrogation. Each snippet they provide produces requests for more information. And the courts, suspicious of what the agencies may be hiding, are demanding ever more disclosure. One source of information has been the succession of freedom-of-information requests for official documents, including the “torture memos”, by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).<br /><br />Legal campaigners are waging an information-gathering effort that earns the grudging respect of intelligence operatives. “They are chasing the paper trail and winning,” says one. “They are chipping away at state-secret privilege [the doctrine that courts can dismiss lawsuits if classified information will be released]. They could disclose an awful lot of information—names of interrogators and medical personnel. If secrets start seeping out, countries that have been sharing information may be disinclined to do so.”<br /><br />The controversies show the extent to which torture and other forms of harsh interrogation—even though they may have been abandoned—cloud the legitimate work of counter-terrorism. American sources say that in the latter years of the Bush administration, European agencies, worried that they might be caught up in America’s abusive practices, became reticent about sharing intelligence. Today, America’s partners may hold back out of fear that America will not be able to protect their information. Officials lament that the machinery of Western intelligence-sharing is becoming “gritted up”—though information about “life-threatening” plots is still swapped briskly.<br /><br />Intelligence-sharing is vital. America, with its vast resources, has become the main repository of information on global terrorism. Though Britain has well-regarded intelligence services, it obtains more than half its reports on terrorism from other agencies, principally American. And about half of America’s intelligence reports on al-Qaeda until 2006, says a former senior official, came from detainees.<br /><br />The Justice Department’s memos were prompted by the arrest in 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, a man with close links to al-Qaeda. The CIA wanted clearance to exert greater pressure on the first of its “high-value detainees”—even though FBI investigators would later claim that Mr Zubaydah was already talking freely.<br /><br />Degrees of pain<br /><br />The memos gave the CIA licence to use “enhanced” techniques derived from American training advice to pilots and other personnel on how to withstand torture if they should fall into enemy hands. They are shocking for their bureaucratic punctiliousness. They parse the degrees of pain that would constitute forbidden torture (“an intensity akin to the pain accompanying serious physical injury”). They set out in incongruous detail the limits of abuse.<br /><br />A prisoner could be deprived of sleep, but for no more than 180 hours before being allowed to rest for eight. He could be stripped naked but only if the room was warmer than 68°F (20°C). He could be doused in water but it had to be potable. He could be waterboarded with cold (saline) water poured onto his face but each application should not last more than 40 seconds, there should be no more than six applications per session, no session could last more than two hours and there could be only two sessions in 24 hours.<br /><br />The ACLU’s next target is a comprehensive and still largely secret internal CIA report written in 2004 by John Helgerson, then the agency’s inspector-general. This is believed to be particularly damning, providing evidence of abuse that went well beyond the permitted guidelines. Compared with the antiseptic legal memos, writes Jane Mayer, the author of a book called “The Dark Side”, the Helgerson report is a “Technicolor horror show”, including accounts of people who died in custody. A version of the report, so heavily redacted with black deletion marks as to be barely comprehensible, was released in 2008. A more complete version is expected in the coming weeks, although the Obama administration has asked for delays.<br /><br />Crucially, the report is critical of the value of the information obtained through harsh interrogation. It apparently concludes that there is no evidence that such intelligence prevented any imminent attacks. But this argument was strongly contested by the Bush administration.<br /><br />Michael Hayden, the CIA’s director from 2006 until earlier this year, wrote in April that enhanced interrogation had led the agency from one big fish to another. Abu Zubaydah, he says, was forced to give information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh (one of the planners of the September 11th attacks); he, in turn, helped lead to the capture of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (which, the memos claimed, foiled a “second wave” plot to crash an aircraft into Los Angeles). Mr Hayden said that of the thousands of people captured as “unlawful combatants”, fewer than 100 were held under the CIA’s interrogation programme and fewer than one-third of those were subjected to the “enhanced” techniques set out in the memos. Just three people were waterboarded. This, however, ignores all manner of abuses committed in military prisons.<br /><br />That there was no follow-on attack on America after September 11th was thanks in large measure, argues Mr Cheney, to the Bush administration’s policies, including the enhanced techniques. Though he denounced the release of the memos that allowed these methods, he now wants further documents to be published that would, he says, demonstrate their success.<br /><br />People familiar with the inner workings of intelligence suggest a more ambiguous story. Intelligence, they argue, is about piecing together fragments of information and building up spider diagrams of connections between suspects. “Intelligence is grains of sand; you don’t usually get the whole beach,” says one veteran.<br /><br />It is true that in 2001, a time when the CIA and other agencies were woefully ignorant of al-Qaeda’s methods, the prisoners captured after the overthrow of the Taliban were the first rich source of information to help “map the enemy”, as one intelligence source puts it. But, says a former counter-terrorism official, the most valuable information from Mr Zubaydah’s capture came not from his interrogation but from his address book. With Mr Mohammed, says another analyst, the most important factor in stopping further attacks on America was not what the terrorist said under duress, but that he had been captured in the first place.<br /><br />Intelligence officials maintain that detainees under interrogation provided as many, perhaps more, specks of information as other sources of intelligence on terrorism, including signals and agents. The question that nobody can answer is how much of this could have been obtained without torture.<br /><br />Bleak choices<br /><br />The danger for Mr Obama, as he seeks to overhaul the intelligence system, is that a fresh attack on the American mainland would immediately expose him to the accusation of being soft on terrorism. In May Congress revolted against any attempt to move detainees from Guantánamo to American soil before a plan for the disposal of its 229 prisoners had been drawn up. Yet three task-forces examining the matter, including future policy on detainees, have delayed issuing their reports because of the complexity of the problem.<br /><br />Mr Obama has decided to keep the reviled military commissions, albeit with reforms. And he may yet seek a form of indefinite detention for some prisoners, with judicial and congressional oversight. Lurking in the background are the lesser-known problems of America’s prison at Bagram, its main base in Afghanistan, where detainees are being held with much less scrutiny than those at Guantánamo.<br /><br />Holding terrorism suspects has become a huge headache for America. One fear is that if, in future, it tracks down important al-Qaeda figures, it may prefer one of two bleak options: either turn them over to countries with far fewer qualms—or just drop a bomb on them. Jack Bauer would be delighted.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-52931905553643661252010-01-10T09:55:00.000-08:002010-01-10T09:57:47.970-08:00Terry v. OhioTERRY v. OHIO, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)<br />392 U.S. 1<br /><br />TERRY v. OHIO.<br />CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO.<br />No. 67.<br />Argued December 12, 1967.<br />Decided June 10, 1968.<br /><br />A Cleveland detective (McFadden), on a downtown beat which he had been patrolling for many years, observed two strangers (petitioner and another man, Chilton) on a street corner. He saw them proceed alternately back and forth along an identical route, pausing to stare in the same store window, which they did for a total of about 24 times. Each completion of the route was followed by a conference between the two on a corner, at one of which they were joined by a third man (Katz) who left swiftly. Suspecting the two men of “casing a job, a stick-up,” the officer followed them and saw them rejoin the third man a couple of blocks away in front of a store. The officer approached the three, identified himself as a policeman, and asked their names. The men “mumbled something,” whereupon McFadden spun petitioner around, patted down his outside clothing, and found in his overcoat pocket, but was unable to remove, a pistol. The officer ordered the three into the store. He removed petitioner’s overcoat, took out a revolver, and ordered the three to face the wall with their hands raised. He patted down the outer clothing of Chilton and Katz and seized a revolver from Chilton’s outside overcoat pocket. He did not put his hands under the outer garments of Katz (since he discovered nothing in his pat-down which might have been a weapon), or under petitioner’s or Chilton’s outer garments until he felt the guns. The three were taken to the police station. Petitioner and Chilton were charged with carrying concealed weapons. The defense moved to suppress the weapons. Though the trial court rejected the prosecution theory that the guns had been seized during a search incident to a lawful arrest, the court denied the motion to suppress and admitted the weapons into evidence on the ground that the officer had cause to believe that petitioner and Chilton were acting suspiciously, that their interrogation was warranted, and that the officer for his own protection had the right to pat down their outer clothing having reasonable cause to believe that they might be armed. The court distinguished between an investigatory “stop” and an arrest, and between a “frisk” of the outer clothing for weapons and a full-blown search for evidence of crime. Petitioner and Chilton were found guilty, an intermediate appellate court affirmed, and the State Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on the ground that “no substantial constitutional question” was involved. Held:<br /><br />1. The Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, “protects people, not places,” and therefore applies as much to the citizen on the streets as well as at home or elsewhere. Pp. 8-9.<br /><br />2. The issue in this case is not the abstract propriety of the police conduct but the admissibility against petitioner of the evidence uncovered by the search and seizure. P. 12.<br /><br />3. The exclusionary rule cannot properly be invoked to exclude the products of legitimate and restrained police investigative techniques; and this Court’s approval of such techniques should not discourage remedies other than the exclusionary rule to curtail police abuses for which that is not an effective sanction. Pp. 13-15.<br /><br />4. The Fourth Amendment applies to “stop and frisk” procedures such as those followed here. Pp. 16-20.<br /><br />(a) Whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has “seized” that personwithin the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. P. 16.<br /><br />(b) A careful exploration of the outer surfaces of a person’s clothing in an attempt to find weapons is a “search” under that Amendment. P. 16.<br /><br />5. Where a reasonably prudent officer is warranted in the circumstances of a given case in believing that his safety or that of others is endangered, he may make a reasonable search for weapons of the person believed by him to be armed and dangerous regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest that individual for crime or the absolute certainty that the individual is armed. Pp. 20-27.<br /><br />(a) Though the police must whenever practicable secure a warrant to make a search and seizure, that procedure cannot be followed where swift action based upon on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat is required. P. 20.<br /><br />(b) The reasonableness of any particular search and seizure must be assessed in light of the particular circumstances against the standard of whether a man of reasonable caution is warranted in believing that the action taken was appropriate. Pp. 21-22.<br /><br />(c) The officer here was performing a legitimate function of investigating suspicious conduct when he decided to approach petitioner and his companions. P. 22.<br /><br />(d) An officer justified in believing that an individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed may, to neutralize the threat of physical harm, take necessary measures to determine whether that person is carrying a weapon. P. 24.<br /><br />(e) A search for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest must be strictly circumscribed by the exigencies of the situation. Pp. 25-26.<br /><br />(f) An officer may make an intrusion short of arrest where he has reasonable apprehension of danger before being possessed of information justifying arrest. Pp. 26-27.<br /><br />6. The officer’s protective seizure of petitioner and his companions and the limited search which he made were reasonable, both at their inception and as conducted. Pp. 27-30.<br /><br />(a) The actions of petitioner and his companions were consistent with the officer’s hypothesis that they were contemplating a daylight robbery and were armed. P. 28.<br /><br />(b) The officer’s search was confined to what was minimally necessary to determine whether the men were armed, and the intrusion, which was made for the sole purpose of protecting himself and others nearby, was confined to ascertaining the presence of weapons. Pp. 29-30.<br /><br />7. The revolver seized from petitioner was properly admitted into evidence against him, since the search which led to its seizure was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 30-31.<br /><br />Affirmed. <br />Louis Stokes argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief was Jack G. Day.<br /><br />Reuben M. Payne argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was John T. Corrigan.<br /><br />Briefs of amici curiae, urging reversal, were filed by Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III, Michael Meltsner, Melvyn Zarr, and Anthony G. Amsterdam for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., and by Bernard A. Berkman, Melvin L. Wulf, and Alan H. Levine for the American Civil Liberties Union et al.<br /><br />Briefs of amici curiae, urging affirmance, were filed by Solicitor General Griswold, Assistant Attorney General Vinson, Ralph S. Spritzer, Beatrice Rosenberg, and Mervyn Hamburg for the United States; by Louis J. Lefkowitz, pro se, Samuel A. Hirshowitz, First Assistant Attorney General, and Maria L. Marcus and Brenda Soloff, Assistant Attorneys General, for the Attorney General of New York; by Charles Moylan, Jr., Evelle J. Younger, and Harry Wood for the National District Attorneys’ Assn., and by James R. Thompson for Americans for Effective Law Enforcement.<br /><br />MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.<br /><br />This case presents serious questions concerning the role of the Fourth Amendment in the confrontation on the street between the citizen and the policeman investigating suspicious circumstances.<br /><br />Petitioner Terry was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and sentenced to the statutorily prescribed term of one to three years in the penitentiary.Following the denial of a pretrial motion to suppress, the prosecution introduced in evidence two revolvers and a number of bullets seized from Terry and a codefendant, Richard Chilton, by Cleveland Police Detective Martin McFadden. At the hearing on the motion to suppress this evidence, Officer McFadden testified that while he was patrolling in plain clothes in downtown Cleveland at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon of October 31, 1963, his attention was attracted by two men, Chilton and Terry, standing on the corner of Huron Road and Euclid Avenue. He had never seen the two men before, and he was unable to say precisely what first drew his eye to them. However, he testified that he had been a policeman for 39 years and a detective for 35 and that he had been assigned to patrol this vicinity of downtown Cleveland for shoplifters and pickpockets for 30 years. He explained that he had developed routine habits of observation over the years and that he would “stand and watch people or walk and watch people at many intervals of the day.” He added: “Now, in this case when I looked over they didn’t look right to me at the time.”<br /><br />His interest aroused, Officer McFadden took up a post of observation in the entrance to a store 300 to 400 feet away from the two men. “I get more purpose to watch them when I seen their movements,” he testified. He saw one of the men leave the other one and walk southwest on Huron Road, past some stores. The man paused for a moment and looked in a store window, then walked on a short distance, turned around and walked back toward the corner, pausing once again to look in the same store window. He rejoined his companion at the corner, and the two conferred briefly. Then the second man went through the same series of motions, strolling down Huron Road, looking in the same window, walking on a short distance, turning back, peering in the store window again, and returning to confer with the first man at the corner. The two men repeated this ritual alternately between five and six times apiece – in all, roughly a dozen trips. At one point, while the two were standing together on the corner, a third man approached them and engaged them briefly in conversation. This man then left the two others and walked west on Euclid Avenue. Chilton and Terry resumed their measured pacing, peering, and conferring. After this had gone on for 10 to 12 minutes, the two men walked off together, heading west on Euclid Avenue, following the path taken earlier by the third man.<br /><br />By this time Officer McFadden had become thoroughly suspicious. He testified that after observing their elaborately casual and oft-repeated reconnaissance of the store window on Huron Road, he suspected the two men of “casing a job, a stick-up,” and that he considered it his duty as a police officer to investigate further. He added that he feared “they may have a gun.” Thus, Officer McFadden followed Chilton and Terry and saw them stop in front of Zucker’s store to talk to the same man who had conferred with them earlier on the street corner. Deciding that the situation was ripe for direct action. Officer McFadden approached the three men, identified himself as a police officer and asked for their names. At this point his knowledge was confined to what he had observed. He was not acquainted with any of the three men by name or by sight, and he had received no information concerning them from any other source. When the men “mumbled something” in response to his inquiries, Officer McFadden grabbed petitioner Terry, spun him around so that they were facing the other two, with Terry between McFadden and the others, and patted down the outside of his clothing. In the left breast pocket of Terry’s overcoat Officer McFadden felt a pistol. He reached inside the overcoat pocket, but was unable to remove the gun. At this point, keeping Terry between himself and the others, the officer ordered all three men to enter Zucker’s store. As they went in, he removed Terry’s overcoat completely, removed a .38-caliber revolver from the pocket and ordered all three men to face the wall with their hands raised. Officer McFadden proceeded to pat down the outer clothing of Chilton and the third man, Katz. He discovered another revolver in the outer pocket of Chilton’s overcoat, but no weapons were found on Katz. The officer testified that he only patted the men down to see whether they had weapons, and that he did not put his hands beneath the outer garments of either Terry or Chilton until he felt their guns. So far as appears from the record, he never placed his hands beneath Katz’ outer garments. Officer McFadden seized Chilton’s gun, asked the proprietor of the store to call a police wagon, and took all three men to the station, where Chilton and Terry were formally charged with carrying concealed weapons.<br /><br />On the motion to suppress the guns the prosecution took the position that they had been seized following a search incident to a lawful arrest. The trial court rejected this theory, stating that it “would be stretching the facts beyond reasonable comprehension” to find that Officer McFadden had had probable cause to arrest the men before he patted them down for weapons. However, the court denied the defendants’ motion on the ground that Officer McFadden, on the basis of his experience, “had reasonable cause to believe . . . that the defendants were conducting themselves suspiciously, and some interrogation should be made of their action.” Purely for his own protection, the court held, the officer had the right to pat down the outer clothing of these men, who he had reasonable cause to believe might be armed. The court distinguished between an investigatory “stop” and an arrest, and between a “frisk” of the outer clothing for weapons and a full-blown search for evidence of crime. The frisk, it held, was essential to the proper performance of the officer’s investigatory duties, for without it “the answer to the police officer may be a bullet, and a loaded pistol discovered during the frisk is admissible.”<br /><br />After the court denied their motion to suppress, Chilton and Terry waived jury trial and pleaded not guilty. The court adjudged them guilty, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Judicial District, Cuyahoga County, affirmed. State v. Terry, 5 Ohio App. 2d 122, 214 N. E. 2d 114 (1966). The Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed their appeal on the ground that no “substantial constitutional question” was involved. We granted certiorari, 387 U.S. 929 (1967), to determine whether the admission of the revolvers in evidence violated petitioner’s rights under the Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643(1961). We affirm the conviction.<br /><br />I.<br />The Fourth Amendment provides that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .” This inestimable right of personal security belongs as much to the citizen on the streets of our cities as to the homeowner closeted in his study to dispose of his secret affairs. For, as this Court has always recognized,<br /><br />“No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded, by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.” Union Pac. R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891).<br /><br />We have recently held that “the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places,” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967), and wherever an individual may harbor a reasonable “expectation of privacy,” id., at 361 (MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring), he is entitled to be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. Of course, the specific content and incidents of this right must be shaped by the context in which it is asserted. For “what the Constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.” Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 222 (1960). Unquestionably petitioner was entitled to the protection of the Fourth Amendment as he walked down the street in Cleveland. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89 (1964); Rios v. United States,364 U.S. 253 (1960); Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959); United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581 (1948); Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925). The question is whether in all the circumstances of this on-the-street encounter, his right to personal security was violated by an unreasonable search and seizure.<br />We would be less than candid if we did not acknowledge that this question thrusts to the fore difficult and troublesome issues regarding a sensitive area of police activity – issues which have never before been squarely presented to this Court. Reflective of the tensions involved are the practical and constitutional arguments pressed with great vigor on both sides of the public debate over the power of the police to “stop and frisk” – as it is sometimes euphemistically termed – suspicious persons.<br /><br />On the one hand, it is frequently argued that in dealing with the rapidly unfolding and often dangerous situations on city streets the police are in need of an escalating set of flexible responses, graduated in relation to the amount of information they possess. For this purpose it is urged that distinctions should be made between a “stop” and an “arrest” (or a “seizure” of a person), and between a “frisk” and a “search.” Thus, it is argued, the police should be allowed to “stop” a person and detain him briefly for questioning upon suspicion that he may be connected with criminal activity. Upon suspicion that the person may be armed, the police should have the power to “frisk” him for weapons. If the “stop” and the “frisk” give rise to probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a crime, then the police should be empowered to make a formal “arrest,” and a full incident “search” of the person. This scheme is justified in part upon the notion that a “stop” and a “frisk” amount to a mere “minor inconvenience and petty indignity,” which can properly be imposed upon the citizen in the interest of effective law enforcement on the basis of a police officer’s suspicion.<br /><br />On the other side the argument is made that the authority of the police must be strictly circumscribed by the law of arrest and search as it has developed to date in the traditional jurisprudence of the Fourth Amendment. It is contended with some force that there is not – and cannot be – a variety of police activity which does not depend solely upon the voluntary cooperation of the citizen and yet which stops short of an arrest based upon probable cause to make such an arrest. The heart of the Fourth Amendment, the argument runs, is a severe requirement of specific justification for any intrusion upon protected personal security, coupled with a highly developed system of judicial controls to enforce upon the agents of the State the commands of the Constitution. Acquiescence by the courts in the compulsion inherent in the field interrogation practices at issue here, it is urged, would constitute an abdication of judicial control over, and indeed an encouragement of, substantial interference with liberty and personal security by police officers whose judgment is necessarily colored by their primary involvement in “the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.” Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 (1948). This, it is argued, can only serve to exacerbate police-community tensions in the crowded centers of our Nation’s cities.<br /><br />In this context we approach the issues in this case mindful of the limitations of the judicial function in controlling the myriad daily situations in which policemen and citizens confront each other on the street. The State has characterized the issue here as “the right of a police officer . . . to make an on-the-street stop, interrogate and pat down for weapons (known in street vernacular as `stop and frisk’).” But this is only partly accurate. For the issue is not the abstract propriety of the police conduct, but the admissibility against petitioner of the evidence uncovered by the search and seizure. Ever since its inception, the rule excluding evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment has been recognized as a principal mode of discouraging lawless police conduct. See Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 391 -393 (1914). Thus its major thrust is a deterrent one, see Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 629 -635 (1965), and experience has taught that it is the only effective deterrent to police misconduct in the criminal context, and that without it the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures would be a mere “form of words.” Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961). The rule also serves another vital function – “the imperative of judicial integrity.” Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 222 (1960). Courts which sit under our Constitution cannot and will not be made party to lawless invasions of the constitutional rights of citizens by permitting unhindered governmental use of the fruits of such invasions. Thus in our system evidentiary rulings provide the context in which the judicial process of inclusion and exclusion approves some conduct as comporting with constitutional guarantees and disapproves other actions by state agents. A ruling admitting evidence in a criminal trial, we recognize, has the necessary effect of legitimizing the conduct which produced the evidence, while an application of the exclusionary rule withholds the constitutional imprimatur.<br /><br />The exclusionary rule has its limitations, however, as a tool of judicial control. It cannot properly be invoked to exclude the products of legitimate police investigative techniques on the ground that much conduct which is closely similar involves unwarranted intrusions upon constitutional protections. Moreover, in some contexts the rule is ineffective as a deterrent. Street encounters between citizens and police officers are incredibly rich in diversity. They range from wholly friendly exchanges of pleasantries or mutually useful information to hostile confrontations of armed men involving arrests, or injuries, or loss of life. Moreover, hostile confrontations are not all of a piece. Some of them begin in a friendly enough manner, only to take a different turn upon the injection of some unexpected element into the conversation. Encounters are initiated by the police for a wide variety of purposes, some of which are wholly unrelated to a desire to prosecute for crime. Doubtless some police “field interrogation” conduct violates the Fourth Amendment. But a stern refusal by this Court to condone such activity does not necessarily render it responsive to the exclusionary rule. Regardless of how effective the rule may be where obtaining convictions is an important objective of the police, it is powerless to deter invasions of constitutionally guaranteed rights where the police either have no interest in prosecuting or are willing to forgo successful prosecution in the interest of serving some other goal.<br /><br />Proper adjudication of cases in which the exclusionary rule is invoked demands a constant awareness of these limitations. The wholesale harassment by certain elements of the police community, of which minority groups, particularly Negroes, frequently complain, will not be stopped by the exclusion of any evidence from any criminal trial. Yet a rigid and unthinking application of the exclusionary rule, in futile protest against practices which it can never be used effectively to control, may exact a high toll in human injury and frustration of efforts to prevent crime. No judicial opinion can comprehend the protean variety of the street encounter, and we can only judge the facts of the case before us. Nothing we say today is to be taken as indicating approval of police conduct outside the legitimate investigative sphere. Under our decision, courts still retain their traditional responsibility to guard against police conduct which is overbearing or harassing, or which trenches upon personal security without the objective evidentiary justification which the Constitution requires. When such conduct is identified, it must be condemned by the judiciary and its fruits must be excluded from evidence in criminal trials. And, of course, our approval of legitimate and restrained investigative conduct undertaken on the basis of ample factual justification should in no way discourage the employment of other remedies than the exclusionary rule to curtail abuses for which that sanction may prove inappropriate.<br /><br />Having thus roughly sketched the perimeters of the constitutional debate over the limits on police investigative conduct in general and the background against which this case presents itself, we turn our attention to the quite narrow question posed by the facts before us: whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest. Given the narrowness of this question, we have no occasion to canvass in detail the constitutional limitations upon the scope of a policeman’s power when he confronts a citizen without probable cause to arrest him.<br /><br />II.<br />Our first task is to establish at what point in this encounter the Fourth Amendment becomes relevant. That is, we must decide whether and when Officer McFadden “seized” Terry and whether and when he conducted a “search.” There is some suggestion in the use of such terms as “stop” and “frisk” that such police conduct is outside the purview of the Fourth Amendment because neither action rises to the level of a “search” or “seizure” within the meaning of the Constitution. We emphatically reject this notion. It is quite plain that the Fourth Amendment governs “seizures” of the person which do not eventuate in a trip to the station house and prosecution for crime – “arrests” in traditional terminology. It must be recognized that whenever a police officer accosts an individual and restrains his freedom to walk away, he has “seized” that person. And it is nothing less than sheer torture of the English language to suggest that a careful exploration of the outer surfaces of a person’s clothing all over his or her body in an attempt to find weapons is not a “search.” Moreover, it is simply fantastic to urge that such a procedure performed in public by a policeman while the citizen stands helpless, perhaps facing a wall with his hands raised, is a “petty indignity.” It is a serious intrusion upon the sanctity of the person, which may inflict great indignity and arouse strong resentment, and it is not to be undertaken lightly.<br /><br />The danger in the logic which proceeds upon distinctions between a “stop” and an “arrest,” or “seizure” of the person, and between a “frisk” and a “search” is two-fold. It seeks to isolate from constitutional scrutiny the initial stages of the contact between the policeman and the citizen. And by suggesting a rigid all-or-nothing model of justification and regulation under the Amendment, it obscures the utility of limitations upon the scope, as well as the initiation, of police action as a means of constitutional regulation. This Court has held in the past that a search which is reasonable at its inception may violate the Fourth Amendment by virtue of its intolerable intensity and scope. Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346 (1957); Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 356 -358 (1931); see United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 586 -587 (1948). The scope of the search must be “strictly tied to and justified by” the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 310 (1967) (MR. JUSTICE FORTAS, concurring); see, e. g., Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 -368 (1964); Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30 -31 (1925).<br /><br />The distinctions of classical “stop-and-frisk” theory thus serve to divert attention from the central inquiry under the Fourth Amendment – the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security. “Search” and “seizure” are not talismans. We therefore reject the notions that the Fourth Amendment does not come into play at all as a limitation upon police conduct if the officers stop short of something called a “technical arrest” or a “full-blown search.”<br /><br />In this case there can be no question, then, that Officer McFadden “seized” petitioner and subjected him to a “search” when he took hold of him and patted down the outer surfaces of his clothing. We must decide whether at that point it was reasonable for Officer McFadden to have interfered with petitioner’s personal security as he did. And in determining whether the seizure and search were “unreasonable” our inquiry is a dual one – whether the officer’s action was justified at its inception, and whether it was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.<br /><br />III.<br />If this case involved police conduct subject to the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment, we would have to ascertain whether “probable cause” existed to justify the search and seizure which took place. However, that is not the case. We do not retreat from our holdings that the police must, whenever practicable, obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through the warrant procedure, see, e. g., Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96 (1964); Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610 (1961), or that in most instances failure to comply with the warrant requirement can only be excused by exigent circumstances, see, e. g., Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294 (1967) (hot pursuit); cf. Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 -368 (1964). But we deal here with an entire rubric of police conduct – necessarily swift action predicated upon the on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat – which historically has not been, and as a practical matter could not be, subjected to the warrant procedure. Instead, the conduct involved in this case must be tested by the Fourth Amendment’s general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures.<br /><br />Nonetheless, the notions which underlie both the warrant procedure and the requirement of probable cause remain fully relevant in this context. In order to assess the reasonableness of Officer McFadden’s conduct as a general proposition, it is necessary “first to focus upon the governmental interest which allegedly justifies official intrusion upon the constitutionally protected interests of the private citizen,” for there is “no ready test for determining reasonableness other than by balancing the need to search [or seize] against the invasion which the search [or seizure] entails.” Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 534 -535, 536-537 (1967). And in justifying the particular intrusion the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant that intrusion. The scheme of the Fourth Amendment becomes meaningful only when it is assured that at some point the conduct of those charged with enforcing the laws can be subjected to the more detached, neutral scrutiny of a judge who must evaluate the reasonableness of a particular search or seizure in light of the particular circumstances. And in making that assessment it is imperative that the facts be judged against an objective standard: would the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or the search “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief” that the action taken was appropriate? Cf. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925); Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96 -97 (1964). Anything less would invite intrusions upon constitutionally guaranteed rights based on nothing more substantial than inarticulate hunches, a result this Court has consistently refused to sanction. See, e. g., Beck v. Ohio, supra; Rios v. United States, 364 U.S. 253 (1960); Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959). And simple “`good faith on the part of the arresting officer is not enough.’ . . . If subjective good faith alone were the test, the protections of the Fourth Amendment would evaporate, and the people would be `secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ only in the discretion of the police.” Beck v. Ohio, supra, at 97.<br /><br />Applying these principles to this case, we consider first the nature and extent of the governmental interests involved. One general interest is of course that of effective crime prevention and detection; it is this interest which underlies the recognition that a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest. It was this legitimate investigative function Officer McFadden was discharging when he decided to approach petitioner and his companions. He had observed Terry, Chilton, and Katz go through a series of acts, each of them perhaps innocent in itself, but which taken together warranted further investigation. There is nothing unusual in two men standing together on a street corner, perhaps waiting for someone. Nor is there anything suspicious about people in such circumstances strolling up and down the street, singly or in pairs. Store windows, moreover, are made to be looked in. But the story in quite different where, as here, two men hover about a street corner for an extended period of time, at the end of which it becomes apparent that they are not waiting for anyone or anything; where these men pace alternately along an identical route, pausing to stare in the same store window roughly 24 times; where each completion of this route is followed immediately by a conference between the two men on the corner; where they are joined in one of these conferences by a third man who leaves swiftly; and where the two men finally follow the third and rejoin him a couple of blocks away. It would have been poor police work indeed for an officer of 30 years’ experience in the detection of thievery from stores in this same neighborhood to have failed to investigate this behavior further.<br /><br />The crux of this case, however, is not the propriety of Officer McFadden’s taking steps to investigate petitioner’s suspicious behavior, but rather, whether there was justification for McFadden’s invasion of Terry’s personal security by searching him for weapons in the course of that investigation. We are now concerned with more than the governmental interest in investigating crime; in addition, there is the more immediate interest of the police officer in taking steps to assure himself that the person with whom he is dealing is not armed with a weapon that could unexpectedly and fatally be used against him. Certainly it would be unreasonable to require that police officers take unnecessary risks in the performance of their duties. American criminals have a long tradition of armed violence, and every year in this country many law enforcement officers are killed in the line of duty, and thousands more are wounded. Virtually all of these deaths and a substantial portion of the injuries are inflicted with guns and knives. <br /><br />In view of these facts, we cannot blind ourselves to the need for law enforcement officers to protect themselves and other prospective victims of violence in situations where they may lack probable cause for an arrest. When an officer is justified in believing that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others, it would appear to be clearly unreasonable to deny the officer the power to take necessary measures to determine whether the person is in fact carrying a weapon and to neutralize the threat of physical harm.<br /><br />We must still consider, however, the nature and quality of the intrusion on individual rights which must be accepted if police officers are to be conceded the right to search for weapons in situations where probable cause to arrest for crime is lacking. Even a limited search of the outer clothing for weapons constitutes a severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security, and it must surely be an annoying, frightening, and perhaps humiliating experience. Petitioner contends that such an intrusion is permissible only incident to a lawful arrest, either for a crime involving the possession of weapons or for a crime the commission of which led the officer to investigate in the first place. However, this argument must be closely examined.<br /><br />Petitioner does not argue that a police officer should refrain from making any investigation of suspicious circumstances until such time as he has probable cause to make an arrest; nor does he deny that police officers in properly discharging their investigative function may find themselves confronting persons who might well be armed and dangerous. Moreover, he does not say that an officer is always unjustified in searching a suspect to discover weapons. Rather, he says it is unreasonable for the policeman to take that step until such time as the situation evolves to a point where there is probable cause to make an arrest. When that point has been reached, petitioner would concede the officer’s right to conduct a search of the suspect for weapons, fruits or instrumentalities of the crime, or “mere” evidence, incident to the arrest.<br /><br />There are two weaknesses in this line of reasoning, however. First, it fails to take account of traditional limitations upon the scope of searches, and thus recognizes no distinction in purpose, character, and extent between a search incident to an arrest and a limited search for weapons. The former, although justified in part by the acknowledged necessity to protect the arresting officer from assault with a concealed weapon, Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 (1964), is also justified on other grounds, ibid., and can therefore involve a relatively extensive exploration of the person. A search for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest, however, must, like any other search, be strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its initiation. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 310 (1967) (MR. JUSTICE FORTAS, concurring). Thus it must be limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby, and may realistically be characterized as something less than a “full” search, even though it remains a serious intrusion.<br /><br />A second, and related, objection to petitioner’s argument is that it assumes that the law of arrest has already worked out the balance between the particular interests involved here – the neutralization of danger to the policeman in the investigative circumstance and the sanctity of the individual. But this is not so. An arrest is a wholly different kind of intrusion upon individual freedom from a limited search for weapons, and the interests each is designed to serve are likewise quite different. An arrest is the initial stage of a criminal prosecution. It is intended to vindicate society’s interest in having its laws obeyed, and it is inevitably accompanied by future interference with the individual’s freedom of movement, whether or not trial or conviction ultimately follows. The protective search for weapons, on the other hand, constitutes a brief, though far from inconsiderable, intrusion upon the sanctity of the person. It does not follow that because an officer may lawfully arrest a person only when he is apprised of facts sufficient to warrant a belief that the person has committed or is committing a crime, the officer is equally unjustified, absent that kind of evidence, in making any intrusions short of an arrest. Moreover, a perfectly reasonable apprehension of danger may arise long before the officer is possessed of adequate information to justify taking a person into custody for the purpose of prosecuting him for a crime. Petitioner’s reliance on cases which have worked out standards of reasonableness with regard to “seizures” constituting arrests and searches incident thereto is thus misplaced. It assumes that the interests sought to be vindicated and the invasions of personal security may be equated in the two cases, and thereby ignores a vital aspect of the analysis of the reasonableness of particular types of conduct under the Fourth Amendment. See Camara v. Municipal Court, supra.<br /><br />Our evaluation of the proper balance that has to be struck in this type of case leads us to conclude that there must be a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime. The officer need not be absolutely certain that the individual is armed; the issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger. Cf. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 91 (1964); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 174 -176 (1949); Stacey v. Emery, 97 U.S. 642, 645 (1878). And in determining whether the officer acted reasonably in such circumstances, due weight must be given, not to his inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or “hunch,” but to the specific reasonable inferences which he is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his experience. Cf. Brinegar v. United States supra.<br /><br />IV.<br />We must now examine the conduct of Officer McFadden in this case to determine whether his search and seizure of petitioner were reasonable, both at their inception and as conducted. He had observed Terry, together with Chilton and another man, acting in a manner he took to be preface to a “stick-up.” We think on the facts and circumstances Officer McFadden detailed before the trial judge a reasonably prudent man would have been warranted in believing petitioner was armed and thus presented a threat to the officer’s safety while he was investigating his suspicious behavior. The actions of Terry and Chilton were consistent with McFadden’s hypothesis that these men were contemplating a daylight robbery – which, it is reasonable to assume, would be likely to involve the use of weapons – and nothing in their conduct from the time he first noticed them until the time he confronted them and identified himself as a police officer gave him sufficient reason to negate that hypothesis. Although the trio had departed the original scene, there was nothing to indicate abandonment of an intent to commit a robbery at some point. Thus, when Officer McFadden approached the three men gathered before the display window at Zucker’s store he had observed enough to make it quite reasonable to fear that they were armed; and nothing in their response to his hailing them, identifying himself as a police officer, and asking their names served to dispel that reasonable belief. We cannot say his decision at that point to seize Terry and pat his clothing for weapons was the product of a volatile or inventive imagination, or was undertaken simply as an act of harassment; the record evidences the tempered act of a policeman who in the course of an investigation had to make a quick decision as to how to protect himself and others from possible danger, and took limited steps to do so.<br /><br />The manner in which the seizure and search were conducted is, of course, as vital a part of the inquiry as whether they were warranted at all. The Fourth Amendment proceeds as much by limitations upon the scope of governmental action as by imposing preconditions upon its initiation. Compare Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 354 -356 (1967). The entire deterrent purpose of the rule excluding evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment rests on the assumption that “limitations upon the fruit to be gathered tend to limit the quest itself.” United States v. Poller, 43 F.2d 911, 914 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1930); see, e. g., Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 629 -635 (1965); Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961); Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 216 -221 (1960). Thus, evidence may not be introduced if it was discovered by means of a seizure and search which were not reasonably related in scope to the justification for their initiation. Warden v. Hayden,387 U.S. 294, 310 (1967) (MR. JUSTICE FORTAS, concurring).<br /><br />We need not develop at length in this case, however, the limitations which the Fourth Amendment places upon a protective seizure and search for weapons. These limitations will have to be developed in the concrete factual circumstances of individual cases. See Sibron v. New York, post, p. 40, decided today. Suffice it to note that such a search, unlike a search without a warrant incident to a lawful arrest, is not justified by any need to prevent the disappearance or destruction of evidence of crime. See Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367 (1964). The sole justification of the search in the present situation is the protection of the police officer and others nearby, and it must therefore be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer.<br /><br />The scope of the search in this case presents no serious problem in light of these standards. Officer McFadden patted down the outer clothing of petitioner and his two companions. He did not place his hands in their pockets or under the outer surface of their garments until he had felt weapons, and then he merely reached for and removed the guns. He never did invade Katz’ person beyond the outer surfaces of his clothes, since he discovered nothing in his pat-down which might have been a weapon. Officer McFadden confined his search strictly to what was minimally necessary to learn whether the men were armed and to disarm them once he discovered the weapons. He did not conduct a general exploratory search for whatever evidence of criminal activity he might find.<br /><br />V.<br />We conclude that the revolver seized from Terry was properly admitted in evidence against him. At the time he seized petitioner and searched him for weapons, Officer McFadden had reasonable grounds to believe that petitioner was armed and dangerous, and it was necessary for the protection of himself and others to take swift measures to discover the true facts and neutralize the threat of harm if it materialized. The policeman carefully restricted his search to what was appropriate to the discovery of the particular items which he sought. Each case of this sort will, of course, have to be decided on its own facts. We merely hold today that where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him. Such a search is a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, and any weapons seized may properly be introduced in evidence against the person from whom they were taken.<br /><br />Affirmed.<br /><br />MR. JUSTICE BLACK concurs in the judgment and the opinion except where the opinion quotes from and relies upon this Court’s opinion in Katz v. United States and the concurring opinion in Warden v. Hayden.<br /><br />MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring.<br /><br />While I unreservedly agree with the Court’s ultimate holding in this case, I am constrained to fill in a few gaps, as I see them, in its opinion. I do this because what is said by this Court today will serve as initial guidelines for law enforcement authorities and courts throughout the land as this important new field of law develops.<br /><br />A police officer’s right to make an on-the-street “stop” and an accompanying “frisk” for weapons is of course bounded by the protections afforded by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court holds, and I agree, that while the right does not depend upon possession by the officer of a valid warrant, nor upon the existence of probable cause, such activities must be reasonable under the circumstances as the officer credibly relates them in court. Since the question in this and most cases is whether evidence produced by a frisk is admissible, the problem is to determine what makes a frisk reasonable.<br /><br />If the State of Ohio were to provide that police officers could, on articulable suspicion less than probable cause, forcibly frisk and disarm persons thought to be carrying concealed weapons, I would have little doubt that action taken pursuant to such authority could be constitutionally reasonable. Concealed weapons create an immediate [392 U.S. 1, 32] and severe danger to the public, and though that danger might not warrant routine general weapons checks, it could well warrant action on less than a “probability.” I mention this line of analysis because I think it vital to point out that it cannot be applied in this case. On the record before us Ohio has not clothed its policemen with routine authority to frisk and disarm on suspicion; in the absence of state authority, policemen have no more right to “pat down” the outer clothing of passers-by, or of persons to whom they address casual questions, than does any other citizen. Consequently, the Ohio courts did not rest the constitutionality of this frisk upon any general authority in Officer McFadden to take reasonable steps to protect the citizenry, including himself, from dangerous weapons.<br /><br />The state courts held, instead, that when an officer is lawfully confronting a possibly hostile person in the line of duty he has a right, springing only from the necessity of the situation and not from any broader right to disarm, to frisk for his own protection. This holding, with which I agree and with which I think the Court agrees, offers the only satisfactory basis I can think of for affirming this conviction. The holding has, however, two logical corollaries that I do not think the Court has fully expressed.<br /><br />In the first place, if the frisk is justified in order to protect the officer during an encounter with a citizen, the officer must first have constitutional grounds to insist on an encounter, to make a forcible stop. Any person, including a policeman, is at liberty to avoid a person he considers dangerous. If and when a policeman has a right instead to disarm such a person for his own protection, he must first have a right not to avoid him but to be in his presence. That right must be more than the liberty (again, possessed by every citizen) to address questions to other persons, for ordinarily the person [392 U.S. 1, 33] addressed has an equal right to ignore his interrogator and walk away; he certainly need not submit to a frisk for the questioner’s protection. I would make it perfectly clear that the right to frisk in this case depends upon the reasonableness of a forcible stop to investigate a suspected crime.<br /><br />Where such a stop is reasonable, however, the right to frisk must be immediate and automatic if the reason for the stop is, as here, an articulable suspicion of a crime of violence. Just as a full search incident to a lawful arrest requires no additional justification, a limited frisk incident to a lawful stop must often be rapid and routine. There is no reason why an officer, rightfully but forcibly confronting a person suspected of a serious crime, should have to ask one question and take the risk that the answer might be a bullet.<br /><br />The facts of this case are illustrative of a proper stop and an incident frisk. Officer McFadden had no probable cause to arrest Terry for anything, but he had observed circumstances that would reasonably lead an experienced, prudent policeman to suspect that Terry was about to engage in burglary or robbery. His justifiable suspicion afforded a proper constitutional basis for accosting Terry, restraining his liberty of movement briefly, and addressing questions to him, and Officer McFadden did so. When he did, he had no reason whatever to suppose that Terry might be armed, apart from the fact that he suspected him of planning a violent crime. McFadden asked Terry his name, to which Terry “mumbled something.” Whereupon McFadden, without asking Terry to speak louder and without giving him any chance to explain his presence or his actions, forcibly frisked him.<br /><br />I would affirm this conviction for what I believe to be the same reasons the Court relies on. I would, however, make explicit what I think is implicit in affirmance on [392 U.S. 1, 34] the present facts. Officer McFadden’s right to interrupt Terry’s freedom of movement and invade his privacy arose only because circumstances warranted forcing an encounter with Terry in an effort to prevent or investigate a crime. Once that forced encounter was justified, however, the officer’s right to take suitable measures for his own safety followed automatically.<br /><br />Upon the foregoing premises, I join the opinion of the Court.<br /><br />MR. JUSTICE WHITE, concurring.<br /><br />I join the opinion of the Court, reserving judgment, however, on some of the Court’s general remarks about the scope and purpose of the exclusionary rule which the Court has fashioned in the process of enforcing the Fourth Amendment.<br /><br />Also, although the Court puts the matter aside in the context of this case, I think an additional word is in order concerning the matter of interrogation during an investigative stop. There is nothing in the Constitution which prevents a policeman from addressing questions to anyone on the streets. Absent special circumstances, the person approached may not be detained or frisked but may refuse to cooperate and go on his way. However, given the proper circumstances, such as those in this case, it seems to me the person may be briefly detained against his will while pertinent questions are directed to him. Of course, the person stopped is not obliged to answer, answers may not be compelled, and refusal to answer furnishes no basis for an arrest, although it may alert the officer to the need for continued observation. In my view, it is temporary detention, warranted by the circumstances, which chiefly justifies the protective frisk for weapons. Perhaps the frisk itself, where proper, will have beneficial results whether questions are asked or not. If weapons are found, an arrest will follow. [392 U.S. 1, 35] If none are found, the frisk may nevertheless serve preventive ends because of its unmistakable message that suspicion has been aroused. But if the investigative stop is sustainable at all, constitutional rights are not necessarily violated if pertinent questions are asked and the person is restrained briefly in the process.<br /><br />MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting.<br /><br />I agree that petitioner was “seized” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. I also agree that frisking petitioner and his companions for guns was a “search.” But it is a mystery how that “search” and that “seizure” can be constitutional by Fourth Amendment standards, unless there was “probable cause to believe that (1) a crime had been committed or (2) a crime was in the process of being committed or (3) a crime was about to be committed.<br /><br />The opinion of the Court disclaims the existence of “probable cause.” If loitering were in issue and that [392 U.S. 1, 36] was the offense charged, there would be “probable cause” shown. But the crime here is carrying concealed weapons; 2 and there is no basis for concluding that the officer had “probable cause” for believing that that crime was being committed. Had a warrant been sought, a magistrate would, therefore, have been unauthorized to issue one, for he can act only if there is a showing of “probable cause.” We hold today that the police have greater authority to make a “seizure” and conduct a “search” than a judge has to authorize such action. We have said precisely the opposite over and over again. 3 [392 U.S. 1, 37]<br /><br />In other words, police officers up to today have been permitted to effect arrests or searches without warrants only when the facts within their personal knowledge would satisfy the constitutional standard of probable cause. At the time of their “seizure” without a warrant they must possess facts concerning the person arrested that would have satisfied a magistrate that “probable cause” was indeed present. The term “probable cause” rings a bell of certainty that is not sounded by phrases such as “reasonable suspicion.” Moreover, the meaning of “probable cause” is deeply imbedded in our constitutional history. As we stated in Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98, 100 -102:<br /><br />“The requirement of probable cause has roots that are deep in our history. The general warrant, in which the name of the person to be arrested was left blank, and the writs of assistance, against which James Otis inveighed, both perpetuated the oppressive practice of allowing the police to arrest and search on suspicion. Police control took the place of judicial control, since no showing of `probable cause’ before a magistrate was required.<br /><br />. . . . .<br />“That philosophy [rebelling against these practices] later was reflected in the Fourth Amendment. And as the early American decisions both before and immediately after its adoption show, common rumor or report, suspicion, or even `strong reason to suspect’ was not adequate to support a warrant [392 U.S. 1, 38] for arrest. And that principle has survived to this day. . . .<br />“. . . It is important, we think, that this requirement [of probable cause] be strictly enforced, for the standard set by the Constitution protects both the officer and the citizen. If the officer acts with probable cause, he is protected even though it turns out that the citizen is innocent. . . . And while a search without a warrant is, within limits, permissible if incident to a lawful arrest, if an arrest without a warrant is to support an incidental search, it must be made with probable cause. . . . This immunity of officers cannot fairly be enlarged without jeopardizing the privacy or security of the citizen.”<br /><br />The infringement on personal liberty of any “seizure” of a person can only be “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment if we require the police to possess “probable cause” before they seize him. Only that line draws a meaningful distinction between an officer’s mere inkling and the presence of facts within the officer’s personal knowledge which would convince a reasonable man that the person seized has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a particular crime. “In dealing with probable cause, . . . as the very name implies, we deal with probabilities. These are not technical; they are the factual and practical considerations of everyday life on which reasonable and prudent men, not legal technicians, act.” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 175 .<br />To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path. Perhaps such a step is desirable to cope with modern forms of lawlessness. But if it is taken, it should be the deliberate choice of the people through a constitutional amendment. [392 U.S. 1, 39] Until the Fourth Amendment, which is closely allied with the Fifth, 4 is rewritten, the person and the effects of the individual are beyond the reach of all government agencies until there are reasonable grounds to believe (probable cause) that a criminal venture has been launched or is about to be launched.<br /><br />There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today.<br /><br />Yet if the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can “seize” and “search” him in their discretion, we enter a new regime. The decision to enter it should be made only after a full debate by the people of this country.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-43286097611426250522010-01-10T09:51:00.000-08:002010-01-10T09:55:33.528-08:00Michigan v. LongMICHIGAN v. LONG, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983)<br />463 U.S. 1032<br />MICHIGAN v. LONG <br />CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF MICHIGAN <br />No. 82-256. <br />Argued February 23, 1983 <br />Decided July 6, 1983 <br /><br />Two police officers, patrolling in a rural area at night, observed a car traveling erratically and at excessive speed. When the car swerved into a ditch, the officers stopped to investigate and were met by respondent, the only occupant of the car, at the rear of the car. Respondent, who “appeared to be under the influence of something,” did not respond to initial requests to produce his license and registration, and when he began walking toward the open door of the car, apparently to obtain the registration, the officers followed him and saw a hunting knife on the floorboard of the driver’s side of the car. The officers then stopped respondent and subjected him to a patdown search, which revealed no weapons. One of the officers shined his flashlight into the car, saw something protruding from under the armrest on the front seat, and upon lifting the armrest saw an open pouch that contained what appeared to be marihuana. Respondent was then arrested for possession of marihuana. A further search of the car’s interior revealed no more contraband, but the officers decided to impound the vehicle and more marihuana was found in the trunk. The Michigan state trial court denied respondent’s motion to suppress the marihuana taken from both the car’s interior and its trunk, and he was convicted of possession of marihuana. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the search of the passenger compartment was valid as a protective search under Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 , and that the search of the trunk was valid as an inventory search under South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 . However, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed, holding that Terry did not justify the passenger compartment search, and that the marihuana found in the trunk was the “fruit” of the illegal search of the car’s interior.<br /><br />Held:<br /><br />1. This Court does not lack jurisdiction to decide the case on the asserted ground that the decision below rests on an adequate and independent state ground. Because of respect for the independence of state courts and the need to avoid rendering advisory opinions, this Court, in determining whether state court references to state law constitute adequate and independent state grounds, will no longer look beyond the opinion under review, or require state courts to reconsider cases to clarify the grounds of their decisions. Accordingly, when a state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with federal law, and when the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion, this Court will accept as the most reasonable explanation that the state court decided the case the way it did because it believed that federal law required it to do so. If the state court decision indicates clearly and expressly that it is alternatively based on bona fide separate, adequate, and independent state grounds, this Court will not undertake to review the decision. In this case, apart from two citations to the State Constitution, the court below relied exclusively on its understanding of Terry and other federal cases. Even if it is accepted that the Michigan Constitution has been interpreted to provide independent protection for certain rights also secured under the Fourth Amendment, it fairly appears that the Michigan Supreme Court rested its decision primarily on federal law. Pp. 1037-1044. <br /><br /> <br />2. The protective search of the passenger compartment of respondent’s car was reasonable under the principles articulated in Terry and other decisions of this Court. Although Terry involved the stop and subsequent patdown search for weapons of a person suspected of criminal activity, it did not restrict the preventive search to the person of the detained suspect. Protection of police and others can justify protective searches when police have a reasonable belief that the suspect poses a danger. Roadside encounters between police and suspects are especially hazardous, and danger may arise from the possible presence of weapons in the area surrounding a suspect. Thus, the search of the passenger compartment of an automobile, limited to those areas in which a weapon may be placed or hidden, is permissible if the police officer possesses a reasonable belief based on specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant the officer to believe that the suspect is dangerous and the suspect may gain immediate control of weapons. If, while conducting a legitimate Terry search of an automobile’s interior, the officer discovers contraband other than weapons, he cannot be required to ignore the contraband, and the Fourth Amendment does not require its suppression in such circumstances. The circumstances of this case justified the officers in their reasonable belief that respondent posed a danger if he were permitted to reenter his vehicle. Nor did they act unreasonably in taking preventive measures to ensure that there were no other weapons within respondent’s immediate grasp before permitting him to reenter his automobile. The fact that respondent was under the officers’ control during the investigative stop does not render unreasonable their belief that he could injure them. Pp. 1045-1052. <br /><br /> <br />3. Because the Michigan Supreme Court suppressed the marihuana taken from the trunk as a fruit of what it erroneously held was an illegal search of the car’s interior, the case is remanded to enable it to determine whether the trunk search was permissible under Opperman, supra, or other decisions of this Court. P. 1053. <br /><br /> <br />413 Mich. 461, 320 N. W. 2d 866, reversed and remanded.<br /><br />O’CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined, and in Parts I, III, IV, and V of which BLACKMUN, J., joined. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 1054. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 1054. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 1065.<br /><br />Louis J. Caruso, Solicitor General of Michigan, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General, and Leonard J. Malinowski, Assistant Attorney General.<br /><br />David A. Strauss argued the cause for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Lee, Assistant Attorney General Jensen, and Deputy Solicitor General Frey.<br /><br />James H. Geary argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Joseph J. Jerkins. <br /><br />David Crump, Wayne W. Schmidt, and James P. Manak filed a brief for the Gulf & Great Plains Legal Foundation of America et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.<br /><br />JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.<br /><br />In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), we upheld the validity of a protective search for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest because it is unreasonable to deny a police officer the right “to neutralize the threat of physical harm,” id., at 24, when he possesses an articulate suspicion that an individual is armed and dangerous. We did not, however, expressly address whether such a protective search for weapons could extend to an area beyond the person in the absence of probable cause to arrest. In the present case, respondent David Long was convicted for possession of marihuana found by police in the passenger compartment and trunk of the automobile that he was driving. The police searched the passenger compartment because they had reason to believe that the vehicle contained weapons potentially dangerous to the officers. We hold that the protective search of the passenger compartment was reasonable under the principles articulated in Terry and other decisions of this Court. We also examine Long’s argument that the decision below rests upon an adequate and independent state ground, and we decide in favor of our jurisdiction.<br /><br />I<br />Deputies Howell and Lewis were on patrol in a rural area one evening when, shortly after midnight, they observed a car traveling erratically and at excessive speed. The officers observed the car turning down a side road, where it swerved off into a shallow ditch. The officers stopped to investigate. Long, the only occupant of the automobile, met the deputies at the rear of the car, which was protruding from the ditch onto the road. The door on the driver’s side of the vehicle was left open.<br /><br />Deputy Howell requested Long to produce his operator’s license, but he did not respond. After the request was repeated, Long produced his license. Long again failed to respond when Howell requested him to produce the vehicle registration. After another repeated request, Long, who Howell thought “appeared to be under the influence of something,” 413 Mich. 461, 469, 320 N. W. 2d 866, 868 (1982), turned from the officers and began walking toward the open door of the vehicle. The officers followed Long and both observed a large hunting knife on the floorboard of the driver’s side of the car. The officers then stopped Long’s progress and subjected him to a Terry protective patdown, which revealed no weapons.<br /><br />Long and Deputy Lewis then stood by the rear of the vehicle while Deputy Howell shined his flashlight into the interior of the vehicle, but did not actually enter it. The purpose of Howell’s action was “to search for other weapons.” 413 Mich., at 469, 320 N. W. 2d, at 868. The officer noticed that something was protruding from under the armrest on the front seat. He knelt in the vehicle and lifted the armrest. He saw an open pouch on the front seat, and upon flashing his light on the pouch, determined that it contained what appeared to be marihuana. After Deputy Howell showed the pouch and its contents to Deputy Lewis, Long was arrested for possession of marihuana. A further search of the interior of the vehicle, including the glovebox, revealed neither more contraband nor the vehicle registration. The officers decided to impound the vehicle. Deputy Howell opened the trunk, which did not have a lock, and discovered inside it approximately 75 pounds of marihuana.<br /><br />The Barry County Circuit Court denied Long’s motion to suppress the marihuana taken from both the interior of the car and its trunk. He was subsequently convicted of possession of marihuana. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed Long’s conviction, holding that the search of the passenger compartment was valid as a protective search under Terry, supra, and that the search of the trunk was valid as an inventory search under South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976). See 94 Mich. App. 338, 288 N. W. 2d 629 (1979). The Michigan Supreme Court reversed. The court held that “the sole justification of the Terry search, protection of the police officers and others nearby, cannot justify the search in this case.” 413 Mich., at 472, 320 N. W. 2d, at 869. The marihuana found in Long’s trunk was considered by the court below to be the “fruit” of the illegal search of the interior, and was also suppressed. <br /><br />We granted certiorari in this case to consider the important question of the authority of a police officer to protect himself by conducting a Terry-type search of the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle during the lawful investigatory stop of the occupant of the vehicle. 459 U.S. 904 (1982).<br /><br />II<br />Before reaching the merits, we must consider Long’s argument that we are without jurisdiction to decide this case because the decision below rests on an adequate and independent state ground. The court below referred twice to the State Constitution in its opinion, but otherwise relied exclusively on federal law. Long argues that the Michigan courts have provided greater protection from searches and seizures under the State Constitution than is afforded under the Fourth Amendment, and the references to the State Constitution therefore establish an adequate and independent ground for the decision below.<br /><br />It is, of course, “incumbent upon this Court . . . to ascertain for itself . . . whether the asserted non-federal ground independently and adequately supports the judgment.” Abie State Bank v. Bryan, 282 U.S. 765, 773(1931). Although we have announced a number of principles in order to help us determine whether various forms of references to state law constitute adequate and independent state grounds, we openly admit that we have thus far not developed a satisfying and consistent approach for resolving this vexing issue. In some instances, we have taken the strict view that if the ground of decision was at all unclear, we would dismiss the case. See, e. g., Lynch v. New York ex rel. Pierson, 293 U.S. 52 (1934). In other instances, we have vacated, see, e. g., Minnesota v. National Tea Co, 309 U.S. 551 (1940), or continued a case, see, e. g., Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U.S. 117 (1945), in order to obtain clarification about the nature of a state court decision. See also California v. Krivda, 409 U.S. 33 (1972). In more recent cases, we have ourselves examined state law to determine whether state courts have used federal law to guide their application of state law or to provide the actual basis for the decision that was reached. See Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 732 -733, n. 1 (1983) (plurality opinion). Cf. South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 569 (1983) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). In Oregon v. Kennedy, 456 U.S. 667, 670 -671 (1982), we rejected an invitation to remand to the state court for clarification even when the decision rested in part on a case from the state court, because we determined that the state case itself rested upon federal grounds. We added that “[e]ven if the case admitted of more doubt as to whether federal and state grounds for decision were intermixed, the fact that the state court relied to the extent it did on federal grounds requires us to reach the merits.” Id., at 671.<br /><br />This ad hoc method of dealing with cases that involve possible adequate and independent state grounds is antithetical to the doctrinal consistency that is required when sensitive issues of federal-state relations are involved. Moreover, none of the various methods of disposition that we have employed thus far recommends itself as the preferred method that we should apply to the exclusion of others, and we therefore determine that it is appropriate to reexamine our treatment of this jurisdictional issue in order to achieve the consistency that is necessary.<br /><br />The process of examining state law is unsatisfactory because it requires us to interpret state laws with which we are generally unfamiliar, and which often, as in this case, have not been discussed at length by the parties. Vacation and continuance for clarification have also been unsatisfactory both because of the delay and decrease in efficiency of judicial administration, see Dixon v. Duffy, 344 U.S. 143 (1952), and, more important, because these methods of disposition place significant burdens on state courts to demonstrate the presence or absence of our jurisdiction. See Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. v. Jerome, 434 U.S. 241, 244(1978) (REHNQUIST, J., dissenting); Department of Motor Vehicles v. Rios, 410 U.S. 425, 427 (1973) (Douglas, J., dissenting). Finally, outright dismissal of cases is clearly not a panacea because it cannot be doubted that there is an important need for uniformity in federal law, and that this need goes unsatisfied when we fail to review an opinion that rests primarily upon federal grounds and where the independence of an alleged state ground is not apparent from the four corners of the opinion. We have long recognized that dismissal is inappropriate “where there is strong indication . . . that the federal constitution as judicially construed controlled the decision below.” National Tea Co., supra, at 556.<br /><br />Respect for the independence of state courts, as well as avoidance of rendering advisory opinions, have been the cornerstones of this Court’s refusal to decide cases where there is an adequate and independent state ground. It is precisely because of this respect for state courts, and this desire to avoid advisory opinions, that we do not wish to continue to decide issues of state law that go beyond the opinion that we review, or to require state courts to reconsider cases to clarify the grounds of their decisions. Accordingly, when, as in this case, a state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law, and when the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion, we will accept as the most reasonable explanation that the state court decided the case the way it did because it believed that federal law required it to do so. If a state court chooses merely to rely on federal precedents as it would on the precedents of all other jurisdictions, then it need only make clear by a plain statement in its judgment or opinion that the federal cases are being used only for the purpose of guidance, and do not themselves compel the result that the court has reached. In this way, both justice and judicial administration will be greatly improved. If the state court decision indicates clearly and expressly that it is alternatively based on bona fide separate, adequate, and independent grounds, we, of course, will not undertake to review the decision.<br /><br />This approach obviates in most instances the need to examine state law in order to decide the nature of the state court decision, and will at the same time avoid the danger of our rendering advisory opinions. It also avoids the unsatisfactory and intrusive practice of requiring state courts to clarify their decisions to the satisfaction of this Court. We believe that such an approach will provide state judges with a clearer opportunity to develop state jurisprudence unimpeded by federal interference, and yet will preserve the integrity of federal law. “It is fundamental that state courts be left free and unfettered by us in interpreting their state constitutions. But it is equally important that ambiguous or obscure adjudications by state courts do not stand as barriers to a determination by this Court of the validity under the federal constitution of state action.” National Tea Co., supra, at 557.<br /><br />The principle that we will not review judgments of state courts that rest on adequate and independent state grounds is based, in part, on “the limitations of our own jurisdiction.” Herb v. Pitcairn,324 U.S. 117, 125 (1945). The jurisdictional concern is that we not “render an advisory opinion, and if the same judgment would be rendered by the state court after we corrected its views of federal laws, our review could amount to nothing more than an advisory opinion.” Id., at 126. Our requirement of a “plain statement” that a decision rests upon adequate and independent state grounds does not in any way authorize the rendering of advisory opinions. Rather, in determining, as we must, whether we have jurisdiction to review a case that is alleged to rest on adequate and independent state grounds, see Abie State Bank v. Bryan, 282 U.S., at 773 , we merely assume that there are no such grounds when it is not clear from the opinion itself that the state court relied upon an adequate and independent state ground and when it fairly appears that the state court rested its decision primarily on federal law. <br /><br />Our review of the decision below under this framework leaves us unconvinced that it rests upon an independent state ground. Apart from its two citations to the State Constitution, the court below relied exclusively on its understanding of Terry and other federal cases. Not a single state case was cited to support the state court’s holding that the search of the passenger compartment was unconstitutional. Indeed, the court declared that the search in this case was unconstitutional because “[t]he Court of Appeals erroneously applied the principles of Terry v. Ohio . . . to the search of the interior of the vehicle in this case.” 413 Mich., at 471, 320 N. W. 2d, at 869. The references to the State Constitution in no way indicate that the decision below rested on grounds in any way independent from the state court’s interpretation of federal law. Even if we accept that the Michigan Constitution has been interpreted to provide independent protection for certain rights also secured under the Fourth Amendment, it fairly appears in this case that the Michigan Supreme Court rested its decision primarily on federal law.<br /><br />Rather than dismissing the case, or requiring that the state court reconsider its decision on our behalf solely because of a mere possibility that an adequate and independent ground supports the judgment, we find that we have jurisdiction in the absence of a plain statement that the decision below rested on an adequate and independent state ground. It appears to us that the state court “felt compelled by what it understood to be federal constitutional considerations to construe . . . its own law in the manner it did.” Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562, 568 (1977). <br /><br />III<br />The court below held, and respondent Long contends, that Deputy Howell’s entry into the vehicle cannot be justified under the principles set forth in Terry because “Terry authorized only a limited pat-down search of a person suspected of criminal activity” rather than a search of an area. 413 Mich., at 472, 320 N. W. 2d, at 869 (footnote omitted). Brief for Respondent 10. Although Terry did involve the protective frisk of a person, we believe that the police action in this case is justified by the principles that we have already established in Terry and other cases.<br /><br />In Terry, the Court examined the validity of a “stop and frisk” in the absence of probable cause and a warrant. The police officer in Terry detained several suspects to ascertain their identities after the officer had observed the suspects for a brief period of time and formed the conclusion that they were about to engage in criminal activity. Because the officer feared that the suspects were armed, he patted down the outside of the suspects’ clothing and discovered two revolvers.<br /><br />Examining the reasonableness of the officer’s conduct in Terry, we held that there is “`no ready test for determining reasonableness other than by balancing the need to search [or seize] against the invasion which the search [or seizure] entails.’” 392 U.S., at 21 (quoting Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 536 -537 (1967). Although the conduct of the officer in Terry involved a “severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security,” 392 U.S., at 24 -25, we found that the conduct was reasonable when we weighed the interest of the individual against the legitimate interest in “crime prevention and detection,” id., at 22, and the “need for law enforcement officers to protect themselves and other prospective victims of violence in situations where they may lack probable cause for an arrest.” Id., at 24. When the officer has a reasonable belief “that the individual whose suspicious behavior he is investigating at close range is armed and presently dangerous to the officer or to others, it would appear to be clearly unreasonable to deny the officer the power to take necessary measures to determine whether the person is in fact carrying a weapon and to neutralize the threat of physical harm.” Ibid.<br /><br />Although Terry itself involved the stop and subsequent patdown search of a person, we were careful to note that “[w]e need not develop at length in this case, however, the limitations which the Fourth Amendment places upon a protective search and seizure for weapons. These limitations will have to be developed in the concrete factual circumstances of individual cases.” Id., at 29. Contrary to Long’s view, Terry need not be read as restricting the preventative search to the person of the detained suspect. <br /><br />In two cases in which we applied Terry to specific factual situations, we recognized that investigative detentions involving suspects in vehicles are especially fraught with danger to police officers. In Pennsylvania v. Mimms,434 U.S. 106 (1977), we held that police may order persons out of an automobile during a stop for a traffic violation, and may frisk those persons for weapons if there is a reasonable belief that they are armed and dangerous. Our decision rested in part on the “inordinate risk confronting an officer as he approaches a person seated in an automobile.” Id., at 110. In Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143 (1972), we held that the police, acting on an informant’s tip, may reach into the passenger compartment of an automobile to remove a gun from a driver’s waistband even where the gun was not apparent to police from outside the car and the police knew of its existence only because of the tip. Again, our decision rested in part on our view of the danger presented to police officers in “traffic stop” and automobile situations. <br /><br />Finally, we have also expressly recognized that suspects may injure police officers and others by virtue of their access to weapons, even though they may not themselves be armed. In the Term following Terry, we decided Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969), which involved the limitations imposed on police authority to conduct a search incident to a valid arrest. Relying explicitly on Terry, we held that when an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search “the arrestee’s person and the area `within his immediate control’ – construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.” 395 U.S., at 763 . We reasoned that “[a] gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested.” Ibid. In New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), we determined that the lower courts “have found no workable definition of `the area within the immediate control of the arrestee’ when that area arguably includes the interior of an automobile and the arrestee is its recent occupant.” Id., at 460. In order to provide a “workable rule,” ibid., we held that “articles inside the relatively narrow compass of the passenger compartment of an automobile are in fact generally, even if not inevitably, within `the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon’ . . . .” Ibid. (quoting Chimel, supra, at 763). We also held that the police may examine the contents of any open or closed container found within the passenger compartment, “for if the passenger compartment is within the reach of the arrestee, so will containers in it be within his reach.” 453 U.S., at 460 (footnote omitted). See also Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 702 (1981).<br /><br />Our past cases indicate then that protection of police and others can justify protective searches when police have a reasonable belief that the suspect poses a danger, that roadside encounters between police and suspects are especially hazardous, and that danger may arise from the possible presence of weapons in the area surrounding a suspect. These principles compel our conclusion that the search of the passenger compartment of an automobile, limited to those areas in which a weapon may be placed or hidden, is permissible if the police officer possesses a reasonable belief based on “specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant” the officer in believing that the suspect is dangerous and the suspect may gain immediate control of weapons. See Terry, 392 U.S., at 21. “[T]he issue is whether a reasonably prudent man in the circumstances would be warranted in the belief that his safety or that of others was in danger.” Id., at 27. If a suspect is “dangerous,” he is no less dangerous simply because he is not arrested. If, while conducting a legitimate Terry search of the interior of the automobile, the officer should, as here, discover contraband other than weapons, he clearly cannot be required to ignore the contraband, and the Fourth Amendment does not require its suppression in such circumstances. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 465 (1971); Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 509 (1978); Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S., at 739 (plurality opinion by REHNQUIST, J.); id., at 746 (POWELL, J., concurring in judgment).<br /><br />The circumstances of this case clearly justified Deputies Howell and Lewis in their reasonable belief that Long posed a danger if he were permitted to reenter his vehicle. The hour was late and the area rural. Long was driving his automobile at excessive speed, and his car swerved into a ditch. The officers had to repeat their questions to Long, who appeared to be “under the influence” of some intoxicant. Long was not frisked until the officers observed that there was a large knife in the interior of the car into which Long was about to reenter. The subsequent search of the car was restricted to those areas to which Long would generally have immediate control, and that could contain a weapon. The trial court determined that the leather pouch containing marihuana could have contained a weapon. App. 64a. It is clear that the intrusion was “strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justifi[ed] its initiation.” Terry, supra, at 26.<br /><br />In evaluating the validity of an officer’s investigative or protective conduct under Terry, the “[t]ouchstone of our analysis . . . is always `the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security.’” Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S., at 108 -109 (quoting Terry, supra, at 19). In this case, the officers did not act unreasonably in taking preventive measures to ensure that there were no other weapons within Long’s immediate grasp before permitting him to reenter his automobile. Therefore, the balancing required by Terry clearly weighs in favor of allowing the police to conduct an area search of the passenger compartment to uncover weapons, as long as they possess an articulable and objectively reasonable belief that the suspect is potentially dangerous.<br /><br />The Michigan Supreme Court appeared to believe that it was not reasonable for the officers to fear that Long could injure them, because he was effectively under their control during the investigative stop and could not get access to any weapons that might have been located in the automobile. See 413 Mich., at 472, 320 N. W. 2d, at 869. This reasoning is mistaken in several respects. During any investigative detention, the suspect is “in the control” of the officers in the sense that he “may be briefly detained against his will . . . .” Terry, supra, at 34 (WHITE, J., concurring). Just as a Terry suspect on the street may, despite being under the brief control of a police officer, reach into his clothing and retrieve a weapon, so might a Terry suspect in Long’s position break away from police control and retrieve a weapon from his automobile. See United States v. Rainone, 586 F.2d 1132, 1134 (CA7 1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 980 (1979). In addition, if the suspect is not placed under arrest, he will be permitted to reenter his automobile, and he will then have access to any weapons inside. United States v. Powless, 546 F.2d 792, 795-796 (CA8), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 910 (1977). Or, as here, the suspect may be permitted to reenter the vehicle before the Terry investigation is over, and again, may have access to weapons. In any event, we stress that a Terry investigation, such as the one that occurred here, involves a police investigation “at close range,” Terry, 392 U.S., at 24 , when the officer remains particularly vulnerable in part because a full custodial arrest has not been effected, and the officer must make a “quick decision as to how to protect himself and others from possible danger . . . .” Id., at 28. In such circumstances, we have not required that officers adopt alternative means to ensure their safety in order to avoid the intrusion involved in a Terry encounter.<br /><br /> <br /><br />IV<br />The trial court and the Court of Appeals upheld the search of the trunk as a valid inventory search under this Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364 (1976). The Michigan Supreme Court did not address this holding, and instead suppressed the marihuana taken from the trunk as a fruit of the illegal search of the interior of the automobile. Our holding that the initial search was justified under Terry makes it necessary to determine whether the trunk search was permissible under the Fourth Amendment. However, we decline to address this question because it was not passed upon by the Michigan Supreme Court, whose decision we review in this case. See Cardinale v. Louisiana, 394 U.S. 437, 438 (1969). We remand this issue to the court below, to enable it to determine whether the trunk search was permissible under Opperman, supra, or other decisions of this Court. See, e. g., United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982). <br /><br />V<br />The judgment of the Michigan Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.<br /><br />It is so ordered. <br />Footnotes<br />It is clear, and the respondent concedes, that if the officers had arrested Long for speeding or for driving while intoxicated, they could have searched the passenger compartment under New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), and the trunk under United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798 (1982), if they had probable cause to believe that the trunk contained contraband. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41. However, at oral argument, the State informed us that while Long could have been arrested for a speeding violation under Michigan law, he was not arrested because “[a]s a matter of practice,” police in Michigan do not arrest for speeding violations unless “more” is involved. See id., at 6. The officers did issue Long an appearance ticket. The petitioner also confirmed that the officers could have arrested Long for driving while intoxicated but they “would have to go through a process to make a determination as to whether the party is intoxicated and then go from that point.” Ibid.<br /><br />The court below treated this case as involving a protective search, and not a search justified by probable cause to arrest for speeding, driving while intoxicated, or any other offense. Further, the petitioner does not argue that if probable cause to arrest exists, but the officers do not actually effect the arrest, the police may nevertheless conduct a search as broad as those authorized by Belton and Ross. Accordingly, we do not address that issue.<br /><br />Chief Justice Coleman dissented, arguing that Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), authorized the area search, and that the trunk search was a valid inventory search. See 413 Mich., at 473-480, 320 N. W. 2d, at 870-873. Justice Moody concurred in the result on the ground that the trunk search was improper. He agreed with Chief Justice Coleman that the interior search was proper under Terry. See 413 Mich., at 480-486, 320 N. W. 2d, at 873-875.<br /><br />On the first occasion, the court merely cited in a footnote both the State and Federal Constitutions. See id., at 471, n. 4, 320 N. W. 2d, at 869, n. 4. On the second occasion, at the conclusion of the opinion, the court stated: “We hold, therefore, that the deputies’ search of the vehicle was proscribed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art. 1, 11 of the Michigan Constitution.” Id., at 472-473, 320 N. W. 2d, at 870.<br /><br />For example, we have long recognized that “where the judgment of a state court rests upon two grounds, one of which is federal and the other non-federal in character, our jurisdiction fails if the non-federal ground is independent of the federal ground and adequate to support the judgment.” Fox Film Corp. v. Muller,296 U.S. 207, 210 (1935). We may review a state case decided on a federal ground even if it is clear that there was an available state ground for decision on which the state court could properly have relied. Beecher v. Alabama, 389 U.S. 35, 37 , n. 3 (1967). Also, if, in our view, the state court “`felt compelled by what it understood to be federal constitutional considerations to construe . . . its own law in the manner it did,’” then we will not treat a normally adequate state ground as independent, and there will be no question about our jurisdiction. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 653 (1979) (quoting Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562, 568 (1977). See also South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 556 -557, n. 3 (1983). Finally, “where the non-federal ground is so interwoven with the [federal ground] as not to be an independent matter, or is not of sufficient breadth to sustain the judgment without any decision of the other, our jurisdiction is plain.” Enterprise Irrigation District v. Farmers Mutual Canal Co., 243 U.S. 157, 164 (1917).<br /><br /> Indeed, Dixon v. Duffy is also illustrative of another difficulty involved in our requiring state courts to reconsider their decisions for purposes of clarification. In Dixon, we continued the case on two occasions in order to obtain clarification, but none was forthcoming: “[T]he California court advised petitioner’s counsel informally that it doubted its jurisdiction to render such a determination.” 344 U.S., at 145 . We then vacated the judgment of the state court, and remanded.<br /><br />There may be certain circumstances in which clarification is necessary or desirable, and we will not be foreclosed from taking the appropriate action.<br /><br />In Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U.S., at 128 , the Court also wrote that it was desirable that state courts “be asked rather than told what they have intended.” It is clear that we have already departed from that view in those cases in which we have examined state law to determine whether a particular result was guided or compelled by federal law. Our decision today departs further from Herb insofar as we disfavor further requests to state courts for clarification, and we require a clear and express statement that a decision rests on adequate and independent state grounds. However, the “plain statement” rule protects the integrity of state courts for the reasons discussed above. The preference for clarification expressed in Herb has failed to be a completely satisfactory means of protecting the state and federal interests that are involved.<br /><br />It is not unusual for us to employ certain presumptions in deciding jurisdictional issues. For instance, although the petitioner bears the burden of establishing our jurisdiction, Durley v. Mayo, 351 U.S. 277, 285 (1956), we have held that the party who alleges that a controversy before us has become moot has the “heavy burden” of establishing that we lack jurisdiction. County of Los Angeles v. Davis, 440 U.S. 625, 631(1979). That is, we presume in those circumstances that we have jurisdiction until some party establishes that we do not for reasons of mootness.<br /><br />We also note that the rule that we announce today was foreshadowed by our opinions in Delaware v. Prouse,440 U.S. 648 (1979), and Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562 (1977). In these cases, the state courts relied on both state and federal law. We determined that we had jurisdiction to decide the cases because our reading of the opinions led us to conclude that each court “felt compelled by what it understood to be federal constitutional considerations to construe and apply its own law in the manner it did.” Zacchini, supra, at 568; Delaware, supra, at 653. In Delaware, we referred to prior state decisions that confirmed our understanding of the opinion in that case, but our primary focus was on the face of the opinion. In Zacchini, we relied entirely on the syllabus and opinion of the state court.<br /><br />In dissent, JUSTICE STEVENS proposes the novel view that this Court should never review a state court decision unless the Court wishes to vindicate a federal right that has been endangered. The rationale of the dissent is not restricted to cases where the decision is arguably supported by adequate and independent state grounds. Rather, JUSTICE STEVENS appears to believe that even if the decision below rests exclusively on federal grounds, this Court should not review the decision as long as there is no federal right that is endangered.<br /><br />The state courts handle the vast bulk of all criminal litigation in this country. In 1982, more than 12 million criminal actions (excluding juvenile and traffic charges) were filed in the 50 state court systems and the District of Columbia. See 7 State Court Journal, No. 1, p. 18 (1983). By comparison, approximately 32,700 criminal suits were filed in federal courts during that same year. See Annual Report of the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts 6 (1982). The state courts are required to apply federal constitutional standards, and they necessarily create a considerable body of “federal law” in the process. It is not surprising that this Court has become more interested in the application and development of federal law by state courts in the light of the recent significant expansion of federally created standards that we have imposed on the States.<br /><br />At oral argument, Long argued that the state court relied on its decision in People v. Reed, 393 Mich. 342, 224 N. W. 2d 867, cert. denied, 422 U.S. 1044 (1975). See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29. However, the court cited that case only in the context of a statement that the State did not seek to justify the search in this case “by reference to other exceptions to the warrant requirement.” 413 Mich., at 472, 320 N. W. 2d, at 869-870 (footnote omitted). The court then noted that Reed held that “`[a] warrantless search and seizure is unreasonable per se and violates the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Art. 1, 11 of the state constitution unless shown to be within one of the exceptions to the rule.’” 413 Mich., at 472-473, n. 8, 320 N. W. 2d, at 870, n. 8.<br /><br />There is nothing unfair about requiring a plain statement of an independent state ground in this case. Even if we were to rest our decision on an evaluation of the state law relevant to Long’s claim, as we have sometimes done in the past, our understanding of Michigan law would also result in our finding that we have jurisdiction to decide this case. Under state search-and-seizure law, a “higher standard” is imposed under Art. 1, 11, of the 1963 Michigan Constitution. See People v. Secrest, 413 Mich. 521, 525, 321 N. W. 2d 368, 369 (1982). If, however, the item seized is, inter alia, a “narcotic drug . . . seized by a peace officer outside the curtilage of any dwelling house in this state,” Art. 1, 11, of the 1963 Michigan Constitution, then the seizure is governed by a standard identical to that imposed by the Fourth Amendment. See People v. Moore, 391 Mich. 426, 435, 216 N. W. 2d 770, 775 (1974).<br /><br />Long argues that under the current Michigan Comp. Laws 333.7107 (1979), the definition of a “narcotic” does not include marihuana. The difficulty with this argument is that Long fails to cite any authority for the proposition that the term “narcotic” as used in the Michigan Constitution is dependent on current statutory definitions of that term. Indeed, it appears that just the opposite is true. The Michigan Supreme Court has held that constitutional provisions are presumed “to be interpreted in accordance with existing laws and legal usages of the time” of the passage of the provision. Bacon v. Kent-Ottawa Authority, 354 Mich. 159, 169, 92 N. W. 2d 492, 497 (1958). If the state legislature were able to change the interpretation of a constitutional provision by statute, then the legislature would have “the power of outright repeal of a duly-voted constitutional provision.” Ibid. Applying these principles, the Michigan courts have held that a statute passed subsequent to the applicable state constitutional provision is not relevant for interpreting its Constitution, and that a definition in a legislative Act pertains only to that Act. Jones v. City of Ypsilanti, 26 Mich. App. 574, 182 N. W. 2d 795 (1970). See also Walber v. Piggins, 2 Mich. App. 145, 138 N. W. 2d 772 (1966), aff’d, 381 Mich. 138, 160 N. W. 2d 876 (1968). At the time that the 1963 Michigan Constitution was enacted, it is clear that marihuana was considered a narcotic drug. See 1961 Mich. Pub. Acts, No. 206, 1(f). Indeed, it appears that marihuana was considered a narcotic drug in Michigan until 1978, when it was removed from the narcotic classification. We would conclude that the seizure of marihuana in Michigan is not subject to analysis under any “higher standard” than may be imposed on the seizure of other items. In the light of our holding in Delaware v. Prouse,440 U.S. 648 (1979), that an interpretation of state law in our view compelled by federal constitutional considerations is not an independent state ground, we would have jurisdiction to decide the case.<br /><br />Although we did not in any way weaken the warrant requirement, we acknowledged that the typical “stop and frisk” situation involves “an entire rubric of police conduct – necessarily swift action predicated upon the on-the-spot observations of the officer on the beat – which historically has not been, and as a practical matter could not be, subjected to the warrant procedure. Instead, the conduct in this case must be tested by the Fourth Amendment’s general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Terry, 392 U.S., at 20(footnote omitted). We have emphasized that the propriety of a Terry stop and frisk is to be judged according to whether the officer acted as a “reasonably prudent man” in deciding that the intrusion was justified. Id., at 27. “A brief stop of a suspicious individual, in order to determine his identity or to maintain the status quo momentarily while obtaining more information, may be most reasonable in light of the facts known to the officer at the time.” Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S. 143, 146 (1972).<br /><br />As Chief Justice Coleman noted in her dissenting opinion in the present case:<br /><br />“The opinion in Terry authorized the frisking of an overcoat worn by defendant because that was the issue presented by the facts. One could reasonably conclude that a different result would not have been constitutionally required if the overcoat had been carried, folded over the forearm, rather than worn. The constitutional principles stated in Terry would still control.” 413 Mich., at 475-476, 320 N. W. 2d, at 871 (footnote omitted). <br />According to one study, “approximately 30% of police shootings occurred when a police officer approached a suspect seated in an automobile. Bristow, Police Officer Shootings – A Tactical Evaluation, 54 J. Crim. L. C. & P. S. 93 (1963).” Adams v. Williams, supra, at 148, n. 3.<br />We stress that our decision does not mean that the police may conduct automobile searches whenever they conduct an investigative stop, although the “bright line” that we drew in Belton clearly authorizes such a search whenever officers effect a custodial arrest. An additional interest exists in the arrest context, i. e., preservation of evidence, and this justifies an “automatic” search. However, that additional interest does not exist in the Terry context. A Terry search, “unlike a search without a warrant incident to a lawful arrest, is not justified by any need to prevent the disappearance or destruction of evidence of crime. . . . The sole justification of the search . . . is the protection of the police officer and others nearby . . . .” 392 U.S., at 29 . What we borrow now from Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969), and Belton is merely the recognition that part of the reason to allow area searches incident to an arrest is that the arrestee, who may not himself be armed, may be able to gain access to weapons to injure officers or others nearby, or otherwise to hinder legitimate police activity. This recognition applies as well in the Terry context. However, because the interest in collecting and preserving evidence is not present in the Terry context, we require that officers who conduct area searches during investigative detentions must do so only when they have the level of suspicion identified in Terry.<br /><br />Of course, our analysis would apply to justify the search of Long’s person that was conducted by the officers after the discovery of the knife.<br /><br />Long makes a number of arguments concerning the invalidity of the search of the passenger compartment. The thrust of these argument is that Terry searches are limited in scope and that an area search is fundamentally inconsistent with this limited scope. We have recognized that Terry searches are limited insofar as they may not be conducted in the absence of an articulable suspicion that the intrusion is justified, see, e. g., Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 65 (1968), and that they are protective in nature and limited to weapons, see Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93 -94 (1979). However, neither of these concerns is violated by our decision. To engage in an area search, which is limited to seeking weapons, the officer must have an articulable suspicion that the suspect is potentially dangerous.<br /><br />Long also argues that there cannot be a legitimate Terry search based on the discovery of the hunting knife because Long possessed that weapon legally. See Brief for Respondent 17. Assuming, arguendo, that Long possessed the knife lawfully, we have expressly rejected the view that the validity of a Terry search depends on whether the weapon is possessed in accordance with state law. See Adams v. Williams, 407 U.S., at 146 .<br /><br />Contrary to JUSTICE BRENNAN’s suggestion in dissent, the reasoning of Terry, Chimel, and Belton points clearly to the direction that we have taken today. Although Chimel involved a full custodial arrest, the rationale for Chimel rested on the recognition in Terry that it is unreasonable to prevent the police from taking reasonable steps to protect their safety. <br /><br />JUSTICE BRENNAN suggests that we are expanding the scope of a Terry-type search to include a search incident to a valid arrest. However, our opinion clearly indicates that the area search that we approve is limited to a search for weapons in circumstances where the officers have a reasonable belief that the suspect is potentially dangerous to them. JUSTICE BRENNAN quotes at length from Sibron, but fails to recognize that the search in that case was a search for narcotics, and not a search for weapons.<br /><br />JUSTICE BRENNAN concedes that “police should not be exposed to unnecessary danger in the performance of their duties,” post, at 1064, but then would require that police officers, faced with having to make quick determinations about self-protection and the defense of innocent citizens in the area, must also decide instantaneously what “less intrusive” alternative exists to ensure that any threat presented by the suspect will be neutralized. Post, at 1065. For the practical reasons explained in Terry, 392 U.S., at 24 , 28, we have never required police to adopt alternative measures to avoid a legitimate Terry-type intrusion.<br /><br />Long suggests that the trunk search is invalid under state law. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41, 43-44. The Michigan Supreme Court is, of course, free to determine the validity of that search under state law.<br /><br />JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.<br /><br />I join Parts I, III, IV, and V of the Court’s opinion. While I am satisfied that the Court has jurisdiction in this particular case, I do not join the Court, in Part II of its opinion, in fashioning a new presumption of jurisdiction over cases coming here from state courts. Although I agree with the Court that uniformity in federal criminal law is desirable, I see little efficiency and an increased danger of advisory opinions in the Court’s new approach.<br /><br />JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL joins, dissenting.<br /><br />The Court today holds that “the protective search of the passenger compartment” of the automobile involved in this case “was reasonable under the principles articulated in Terry and other decisions of this Court.” Ante, at 1035. I disagree. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), does not support the Court’s conclusion and the reliance on “other decisions” is patently misplaced. Plainly, the Court is simply continuing the process of distorting Terry beyond recognition and forcing it into service as an unlikely weapon against the Fourth Amendment’s fundamental requirement that searches and seizures be based on probable cause. See United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 714 -717 (1983) (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result). I, therefore, dissent. <br /><br />On three occasions this Term I have discussed the limited scope of the exception to the probable-cause requirement created by Terry and its progeny. See Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 509 -511 (1983) (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result); Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 364 -365 (1983) (BRENNAN, J., concurring); United States v. Place, supra, at 711-717 (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result). I will not repeat those discussions here and note only that “Terry, and the cases that followed it, permit only brief investigative stops and extremely limited searches based on reasonable suspicion.” 462 U.S., at 714 . However, the Court’s opinion compels a detailed review of Terry itself.<br /><br />In Terry, the Court confronted the “quite narrow question” of “whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest.” 392 U.S., at 15 (emphasis supplied). Because the Court was dealing “with an entire rubric of police conduct . . . which historically [had] not been, and as a practical matter could not be, subjected to the warrant procedure,” id., at 20, the Court tested the conduct at issue “by the Fourth Amendment’s general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Ibid. (footnote omitted). In considering the “reasonableness” of the conduct, the Court balanced “`the need to search [or seize] against the invasion which the search [or seizure] entails.’” Id., at 21, quoting Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 534 -535, 536-537 (1967). It deserves emphasis that in discussing the “invasion” at issue, the Court stated that “[e]ven a limited search of the outer clothing for weapons constitutes a severe, though brief, intrusion upon cherished personal security . . . .”392 U.S., at 24 -25 (emphasis supplied). Ultimately, the Court concluded that “there must be a narrowly drawn authority to permit a reasonable search for weapons for the protection of the police officer, where he has reason to believe that he is dealing with an armed and dangerous individual, regardless of whether he has probable cause to arrest the individual for a crime.” Id., at 27 (emphasis supplied). The Court expressed its holding as follows:<br /><br />“We merely hold today that where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him.” Id., at 30 (emphasis supplied). <br />It is clear that Terry authorized only limited searches of the person for weapons. In light of what Terry said, relevant portions of which the Court neglects to quote, the Court’s suggestion that “Terry need not be read as restricting the preventive search to the person of the detained suspect,” ante, at 1047 (footnote omitted), can only be described as disingenuous. Nothing in Terry authorized police officers to search a suspect’s car based on reasonable suspicion. The Court confirmed this this very Term in United States v. Place, supra, where it described the search authorized by Terry as a “limited search for weapons, or `frisk’ . . . .” 462 U.S., at 702 . The search at issue in this case is a far cry from a “frisk” and certainly was not “limited.” <br /><br />The Court’s reliance on Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969), and New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454 (1981), as support for its new “area search” rule within the context of a Terry stop is misplaced. In Chimel, the Court addressed the scope of a search incident to a lawful arrest, 395 U.S., at 753 , and held invalid the search at issue there because it “went far beyond the petitioner’s person and the area from within which he might have obtained either a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him.” Id., at 768. Chimel stressed the need to limit the scope of searches incident to arrest and overruled two prior decisions of this Court validating overly broad searches. Ibid.<br /><br />In Belton, the Court considered the scope of a search incident to the lawful custodial arrest of an occupant of an automobile. 453 U.S., at 455 . In this “particular and problematic context,” id., at 460, n. 3, the Court held that “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” Id., at 460 (footnote omitted). <br /><br />The critical distinction between this case and Terry on the one hand, and Chimel and Belton on the other, is that the latter two cases arose within the context of lawful custodial arrests supported by probable cause. The Court in Terry expressly recognized the difference between a search incident to arrest and the “limited search for weapons,” 392 U.S., at 25 , involved in that case. The Court stated: <br /><br />“[A search incident to arrest], although justified in part by the acknowledged necessity to protect the arresting officer from assault with a concealed weapon, . . . is also justified on other grounds, . . . and can therefore involve a relatively extensive exploration of the person. A search for weapons in the absence of probable cause to arrest, however, must, like any other search, be strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its initiation. . . . Thus it must be limited to that which is necessary for the discovery of weapons which might be used to harm the officer or others nearby, and may realistically be characterized as something less than a `full’ search, even though it remains a serious intrusion. <br />“. . . An arrest is a wholly different kind of intrusion upon individual freedom from a limited search for weapons, and the interests each is designed to serve are likewise quite different. An arrest is the initial stage of a criminal prosecution. It is intended to vindicate society’s interest in having its laws obeyed, and it is inevitably accompanied by future interference with the individual’s freedom of movement, whether or not trial or conviction ultimately follows. The protective search for weapons, on the other hand, constitutes a brief, though far from inconsiderable, intrusion upon the sanctity of the person.” Id., at 25-26 (footnote omitted). <br />In United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 (1973), the Court relied on the differences between searches incident to lawful custodial arrests and Terry “stop-and-frisk” searches to reject an argument that the limitations established in Terry should be applied to a search incident to arrest. 414 U.S., at 228 . The Court noted that “Terry clearly recognized the distinction between the two types of searches, and that a different rule governed one than governed the other,” id., at 233, and described Terry as involving “stricter . . . standards,” 414 U.S., at 234 , than those governing searches incident to arrest. The Court went on to state: <br /><br />“A custodial arrest of a suspect based on probable cause is a reasonable intrusion under the Fourth Amendment; that intrusion being lawful, a search incident to the arrest requires no additional justification. It is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to search, and we hold that in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a `reasonable’ search under that Amendment.” Id., at 235. <br />See also id., at 237-238 (POWELL, J., concurring) (“The search incident to arrest is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment because the privacy interest protected by that constitutional guarantee is legitimately abated by the fact of arrest” (footnote omitted)); Gustafson v. Florida, 414 U.S. 260, 264 (1973).<br /><br />As these cases recognize, there is a vital difference between searches incident to lawful custodial arrests and Terry protective searches. The Court deliberately ignores that difference in relying on principles developed within the context of intrusions supported by probable cause to arrest to construct an “area search” rule within the context of a Terry stop.<br /><br />The Court denies that an “area search” is fundamentally inconsistent with Terry, see ante, at 1052, n. 16, stating:<br /><br />“We have recognized that Terry searches are limited insofar as they may not be conducted in the absence of an articulable suspicion that the intrusion is justified, see e. g., Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 65 (1968), and that they are protective in nature and limited to weapons, see Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93 -94 (1979). However, neither of these concerns is violated by our decision. To engage in an area search, which is limited to seeking weapons, the officer must have an articulable suspicion that the suspect is potentially dangerous.” Ibid. <br />This patently is no answer: respondent’s argument relates to the scope of the search, not to the standard that justifies it. The Court flouts Terry’s holding that Terry searches must be carefully limited in scope. See supra, at 1056. Indeed, the page in Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40 (1968), cited by the Court states:<br /><br />“Even assuming arguendo that there were adequate grounds to search Sibron for weapons, the nature and scope of the search conducted by Patrolman Martin were so clearly unrelated to that justification as to render the heroin inadmissible. The search for weapons approved in Terry consisted solely of a limited patting of the outer clothing of the suspect for concealed objects which might be used as instruments of assault. Only when he discovered such objects did the officer in Terry place his hands in the pockets of the men he searched. In this case, with no attempt at an initial limited exploration for arms, Patrolman Martin thrust his hand into Sibron’s pocket and took from him envelopes of heroin. His testimony shows that he was looking for narcotics, and he found them. The search was not reasonably limited in scope to the accomplishment of the only goal which might conceivably have justified its inception – the protection of the officer by disarming a potentially dangerous man.” Id., at 65 (emphasis supplied). <br />As this passage makes clear, the scope of a search is determined not only by reference to its purpose, but also by reference to its intrusiveness. Yet the Court today holds that a search of a car (and the containers within it) that is not even occupied by the suspect is only as intrusive as, or perhaps less intrusive than, thrusting a hand into a pocket after an initial patdown has suggested the presence of concealed objects that might be used as weapons.<br /><br />The Court suggests no limit on the “area search” it now authorizes. The Court states that a “search of the passenger compartment of an automobile, limited to those areas in which a weapon may be placed or hidden, is permissible if the police officer possesses a reasonable belief based on `specific and articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant’ the officers in believing that the suspect is dangerous and the suspect may gain immediate control of weapons.” Ante, at 1049 (footnote omitted). Presumably a weapon “may be placed or hidden” anywhere in a car. A weapon also might be hidden in a container in the car. In this case, the Court upholds the officer’s search of a leather pouch because it “could have contained a weapon.” Ante, at 1050-1051 (footnote omitted). In addition, the Court’s requirement that an officer have a reasonable suspicion that a suspect is armed and dangerous does little to check the initiation of an area search. In this case, the officers saw a hunting knife in the car, see ante, at 1036, 1050, but the Court does not base its holding that the subsequent search was permissible on the ground that possession of the knife may have been illegal under state law. See ante, at 1052-1053, n. 16. An individual can lawfully possess many things that can be used as weapons. A hammer, or a baseball bat, can be used as a very effective weapon. Finally, the Court relies on the following facts to conclude that the officers had a reasonable suspicion that respondent was presently dangerous: the hour was late; the area was rural; respondent had been driving at an excessive speed; he had been involved in an accident; he was not immediately responsive to the officers’ questions; and he appeared to be under the influence of some intoxicant. Ante, at 1050. Based on these facts, one might reasonably conclude that respondent was drunk. A drunken driver is indeed dangerous while driving, but not while stopped on the roadside by the police. Even when an intoxicated person lawfully has in his car an object that could be used as a weapon, it requires imagination to conclude that he is presently dangerous. Even assuming that the facts in this case justified the officers’ initial “frisk” of respondent, see ante, at 1035-1036, 1050-1051, and n. 15, they hardly provide adequate justification for a search of a suspect’s car and the containers within it. This represents an intrusion not just different in degree, but in kind, from the intrusion sanctioned by Terry. In short, the implications of the Court’s decision are frightening.<br /><br />The Court also rejects the Michigan Supreme Court’s view that it “was not reasonable for the officers to fear that [respondent] could injure them, because he was effectively under their control during the investigative stop and could not get access to any weapons that might have been located in the automobile.” Ante, at 1051. In this regard, the Court states:<br /><br />“[W]e stress that a Terry investigation, such as the one that occurred here, involves a police investigation `at close range,’. . . when the officer remains particularly vulnerable in part because a full custodial arrest has not been effected, and the officer must make a `quick decision as to how to protect himself and others from possible danger.’ . . . In such circumstances, we have not required that officers adopt alternative means to ensure their safety in order to avoid the intrusion involved in a Terry encounter.” Ante, at 1052 (footnote omitted; emphasis in original). <br />Putting aside the fact that the search at issue here involved a far more serious intrusion than that “involved in a Terry encounter,” see ibid., and as such might suggest the need for resort to “alternative means,” the Court’s reasoning is perverse. The Court’s argument in essence is that the absence of probable cause to arrest compels the conclusion that a broad search, traditionally associated in scope with a search incident to arrest, must be permitted based on reasonable suspicion. But United States v. Robinson, stated: “It is scarcely open to doubt that the danger to an officer is far greater in the case of the extended exposure which follows the taking of a suspect into custody and transporting him to the police station than in the case of the relatively fleeting contact resulting from the typical Terry-type stop.” 414 U.S., at 234 -235. In light of Robinson’s observation, today’s holding leaves in grave doubt the question of whether the Court’s assessment of the relative dangers posed by given confrontations is based on any principled standard.<br /><br />Moreover, the Court’s reliance on a “balancing” of the relevant interests to justify its decision, see ante, at 1051, is certainly inappropriate. In Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200 (1979), the Court stated that “[t]he narrow intrusions involved in [Terry and its progeny] were judged by a balancing test rather than by the general principle that Fourth Amendment seizures must be supported by the `long-prevailing standards’ of probable cause, . . . only because these intrusions fell far short of the kind of intrusion associated with an arrest.” Id., at 212. The intrusion involved in this case is precisely “the kind of intrusion associated with an arrest.” There is no justification, therefore, for “balancing” the relevant interests.<br /><br />In sum, today’s decision reflects once again the threat to Fourth Amendment values posed by “balancing.” See United States v. Place, 462 U.S., at 717 -719 (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result). As Justice Frankfurter stated in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56 (1950):<br /><br />“To say that the search must be reasonable is to require some criterion of reason. It is no guide at all either for a jury or for district judges or the police to say that an `unreasonable search’ is forbidden – that the search must be reasonable. What is the test of reason which makes a search reasonable? The test is the reason underlying and expressed by the Fourth Amendment: the history and the experience which it embodies and the safeguards afforded by it against the evils to which it was a response.” Id., at 83 (dissenting opinion). <br />Hornbook law has been that “the police may not conduct a search unless they first convince a neutral magistrate that there is probable cause to do so.” New York v. Belton, 453 U.S., at 457 . While under some circumstances the police may search a car without a warrant, see, e. g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132(1925), “the exception to the warrant requirement established in Carroll . . . applies only to searches of vehicles that are supported by probable cause.” United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 809 (1982) (footnote omitted). “[T]he Court in Carroll emphasized the importance of the requirement that officers have probable cause to believe that the vehicle contains contraband.” Id., at 807-808. See also Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266, 269 (1973) (“Automobile or no automobile, there must be probable cause for the search” (footnote omitted)). Today the Court discards these basic principles and employs the very narrow exception established by Terry “to swallow the general rule that Fourth Amendment [searches of cars] are `reasonable’ only if based on probable cause.” Dunaway v. New York, supra, at 213. See also United States v. Place, supra, at 718-719 (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result).<br /><br />Today’s decision disregards the Court’s warning in Almeida-Sanchez: “The needs of law enforcement stand in constant tension with the Constitution’s protections of the individual against certain exercises of official power. It is precisely the predictability of these pressures that counsels a resolute loyalty to constitutional safeguards.”413 U.S., at 273 . Of course, police should not be exposed to unnecessary danger in the performance of their duties. But a search of a car and the containers within it based on nothing more than reasonable suspicion, even under the circumstances present here, cannot be sustained without doing violence to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. There is no reason in this case why the officers could not have pursued less intrusive, but equally effective, means of insuring their safety. Cf. United States v. Place, supra, at 715-716; Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S., at 511 , n. (BRENNAN, J., concurring in result). The Court takes a long step today toward “balancing” into oblivion the protections the Fourth Amendment affords. I dissent, for as Justice Jackson said in Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160 (1949):<br /><br />“[Fourth Amendment rights] are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government.” Id., at 180 (dissenting opinion).<br />JUSTICE STEVENS, dissenting.<br /><br />The jurisprudential questions presented in this case are far more important than the question whether the Michigan police officer’s search of respondent’s car violated the Fourth Amendment. The case raises profoundly significant questions concerning the relationship between two sovereigns – the State of Michigan and the United States of America.<br /><br />The Supreme Court of the State of Michigan expressly held “that the deputies’ search of the vehicle was proscribed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and art 1, 11 of the Michigan Constitution.” 413 Mich. 461, 472-473, 320 N. W. 2d 866, 870 (1982) (emphasis added). The state law ground is clearly adequate to support the judgment, but the question whether it is independent of the Michigan Supreme Court’s understanding of federal law is more difficult. Four possible ways of resolving that question present themselves: (1) asking the Michigan Supreme Court directly, (2) attempting to infer from all possible sources of state law what the Michigan Supreme Court meant, (3) presuming that adequate state grounds are independent unless it clearly appears otherwise, or (4) presuming that adequate state grounds are not independent unless it clearly appears otherwise. This Court has, on different occasions, employed each of the first three approaches; never until today has it even hinted at the fourth. In order to “achieve the consistency that is necessary,” the Court today undertakes a reexamination of all the possibilities. Ante, at 1039. It rejects the first approach as inefficient and unduly burdensome for state courts, and rejects the second approach as an inappropriate expenditure of our resources. Ante, at 1039-1040. Although I find both of those decisions defensible in themselves, I cannot accept the Court’s decision to choose the fourth approach over the third – to presume that adequate state grounds are intended to be dependent on federal law unless the record plainly shows otherwise. I must therefore dissent.<br /><br />If we reject the intermediate approaches, we are left with a choice between two presumptions: one in favor of our taking jurisdiction, and one against it. Historically, the latter presumption has always prevailed. See, e. g., Durley v. Mayo, 351 U.S. 277, 285 (1956); Stembridge v. Georgia, 343 U.S. 541, 547 (1952); Lynch v. New York ex rel. Pierson, 293 U.S. 52 (1934). The rule, as succinctly stated in Lynch, was as follows:<br /><br />“Where the judgment of the state court rests on two grounds, one involving a federal question and the other not, or if it does not appear upon which of two grounds the judgment was based, and the ground independent of a federal question is sufficient in itself to sustain it, this Court will not take jurisdiction. Allen v. Arguimbau, 198 U.S. 149, 154 , 155; Johnson v. Risk, [137 U.S. 300, 306, 307]; Wood Mowing & Reaping Machine Co. v. Skinner, [139 U.S. 293, 295, 297]; Consolidated Turnpike Co. v. Norfolk & Ocean View Ry. Co., 228 U.S. 596, 599 ; Cuyahoga River Power Co. v. Northern Realty Co., 244 U.S. 300, 302 , 304.” Id., at 54-55. <br />The Court today points out that in several cases we have weakened the traditional presumption by using the other two intermediate approaches identified above. Since those two approaches are now to be rejected, however, I would think that stare decisis would call for a return to historical principle. Instead, the Court seems to conclude that because some precedents are to be rejected, we must overrule them all. <br /><br />Even if I agreed with the Court that we are free to consider as a fresh proposition whether we may take presumptive jurisdiction over the decisions of sovereign States, I could not agree that an expansive attitude makes good sense. It appears to be common ground that any rule we adopt should show “respect for state courts, and [a] desire to avoid advisory opinions.” Ante, at 1040. And I am confident that all Members of this Court agree that there is a vital interest in the sound management of scarce federal judicial resources. All of those policies counsel against the exercise of federal jurisdiction. They are fortified by my belief that a policy of judicial restraint – one that allows other decisional bodies to have the last word in legal interpretation until it is truly necessary for this Court to intervene – enables this Court to make its most effective contribution to our federal system of government.<br /><br />The nature of the case before us hardly compels a departure from tradition. These are not cases in which an American citizen has been deprived of a right secured by the United States Constitution or a federal statute. Rather, they are cases in which a state court has upheld a citizen’s assertion of a right, finding the citizen to be protected under both federal and state law. The attorney for the complaining party is an officer of the State itself, who asks us to rule that the state court interpreted federal rights too broadly and “overprotected” the citizen.<br /><br />Such cases should not be of inherent concern to this Court. The reason may be illuminated by assuming that the events underlying this case had arisen in another country, perhaps the Republic of Finland. If the Finnish police had arrested a Finnish citizen for possession of marihuana, and the Finnish courts had turned him loose, no American would have standing to object. If instead they had arrested an American citizen and acquitted him, we might have been concerned about the arrest but we surely could not have complained about the acquittal, even if the Finnish court had based its decision on its understanding of the United States Constitution. That would be true even if we had a treaty with Finland requiring it to respect the rights of American citizens under the United States Constitution. We would only be motivated to intervene if an American citizen were unfairly arrested, tried, and convicted by the foreign tribunal.<br /><br />In this case the State of Michigan has arrested one of its citizens and the Michigan Supreme Court has decided to turn him loose. The respondent is a United States citizen as well as a Michigan citizen, but since there is no claim that he has been mistreated by the State of Michigan, the final outcome of the state processes offended no federal interest whatever. Michigan simply provided greater protection to one of its citizens than some other State might provide or, indeed, than this Court might require throughout the country.<br /><br />I believe that in reviewing the decisions of state courts, the primary role of this Court is to make sure that persons who seek to vindicate federal rights have been fairly heard. That belief resonates with statements in many of our prior cases. In Abie State Bank v. Bryan, 282 U.S. 765 (1931), the Supreme Court of Nebraska had rejected a federal constitutional claim, relying in part on the state law doctrine of laches. Writing for the Court in response to the Nebraska Governor’s argument that the Court should not accept jurisdiction because laches provided an independent ground for decision, Chief Justice Hughes concluded that this Court must ascertain for itself whether the asserted nonfederal ground independently and adequately supported the judgment “in order that constitutional guaranties may appropriately be enforced.” Id., at 773. He relied on our earlier opinion in Union Pacific R. Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of Missouri, 248 U.S. 67 (1918), in which Justice Holmes had made it clear that the Court engaged in such an inquiry so that it would not “be possible for a State to impose an unconstitutional burden” on a private party. Id., at 70. And both Abie and Union Pacific rely on Creswill v. Knights of Pythias, 225 U.S. 246, 261 (1912), in which the Court explained its duty to review the findings of fact of a state court “where a Federal right has been denied.”<br /><br />Until recently we had virtually no interest in cases of this type. Thirty years ago, this Court reviewed only one. Nevada v. Stacher, 346 U.S. 906 (1953). Indeed, that appears to have been the only case during the entire 1953 Term in which a State even sought review of a decision by its own judiciary. Fifteen years ago, we did not review any such cases, although the total number of requests had mounted to three. Some time during the past decade, perhaps about the time of the 5-to-4 decision in Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U.S. 562 (1977), our priorities shifted. The result is a docket swollen with requests by States to reverse judgments that their courts have rendered in favor of their citizens. I am confident that a future Court will recognize the error of this allocation of resources. When that day comes, I think it likely that the Court will also reconsider the propriety of today’s expansion of our jurisdiction.<br /><br />The Court offers only one reason for asserting authority over cases such as the one presented today: “an important need for uniformity in federal law [that] goes unsatisfied when we fail to review an opinion that rests primarily upon federal grounds and where the independence of an alleged state ground is not apparent from the four corners of the opinion.” Ante, at 1040 (emphasis omitted). Of course, the supposed need to “review an opinion” clashes directly with our oft-repeated reminder that “our power is to correct wrong judgments, not to revise opinions.” Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U.S. 117, 126 (1945). The clash is not merely one of form: the “need for uniformity in federal law” is truly an ungovernable engine. That same need is no less present when it is perfectly clear that a state ground is both independent and adequate. In fact, it is equally present if a state prosecutor announces that he believes a certain policy of nonenforcement is commanded by federal law. Yet we have never claimed jurisdiction to correct such errors, no matter how egregious they may be, and no matter how much they may thwart the desires of the state electorate. We do not sit to expound our understanding of the Constitution to interested listeners in the legal community; we sit to resolve disputes. If it is not apparent that our views would affect the outcome of a particular case, we cannot presume to interfere.<br /><br />Finally, I am thoroughly baffled by the Court’s suggestion that it must stretch its jurisdiction and reverse the judgment of the Michigan Supreme Court in order to show “[r]espect for the independence of state courts.” Ante, at 1040. Would we show respect for the Republic of Finland by convening a special sitting for the sole purpose of declaring that its decision to release an American citizen was based upon a misunderstanding of American law?<br /><br />I respectfully dissent.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-4590556260756658002010-01-09T09:22:00.001-08:002010-01-09T09:26:43.404-08:00Man Is Held in Security Breach at NewarkJ<span style="font-style:italic;">anuary 9, 2010<br />New York Times<br />by Sarah Wheaton</span><br /><br />The man who is believed to have slipped into a secured area of Newark Liberty International Airport and to have caused a six-hour shutdown of a major terminal on Sunday has been arrested, Port Authority officials said on Friday night.<br /><br />The man, Haisong Jiang, 28, was taken into custody at 7:30 p.m. at his home in Piscataway, N.J., according a statement from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The agency said he would be charged with defiant trespass.<br /><br />Mr. Jiang was held at the authority’s administration building at the airport until about midnight, when he was released on his own recognizance and issued a summons to appear in Newark Municipal Court next week, said Paul M. Loriquet, a spokesman for the Essex County district attorney’s office.<br /><br />“With this arrest, law enforcement will be able to take a closer look into how and why this incident occurred, and make sure that it never happens again,” Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey said in a statement.<br /><br />However, speaking later to The Associated Press, Mr. Lautenberg called the charge a “slap on the wrist.”<br /><br />Mr. Loriquet characterized defiant trespass as a “petty disorderly persons offense” that carried a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail. He said that federal authorities had examined the case, determined that “no federal statutes applied,” and deferred to local officials.<br /><br />The shutdown of one of the main terminals, the C Terminal, after the security breach on Sunday stranded thousands of travelers and caused flight delays that continued into Monday morning.<br /><br />Mr. Jiang’s arrest came a day after a video showing security footage of the incident was released by Mr. Lautenberg. It shows a man in a light-colored jacket standing near where arriving passengers exit a secured part of the airport. When a security guard leaves his post, the man embraces a woman and slips across the rope into the secured part of the terminal. The two then walk away together.<br /><br />Mr. Lautenberg said Mr. Jiang, who is Chinese, is a graduate student at Rutgers University. The school’s Web site lists him as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine.<br /><br />A neighbor of Mr. Jiang’s, Gene Wells, 53, said that he lived in a four-bedroom colonial-style house with several other students. Mr. Wells described them as “very, very quiet, good students that never had any parties there.”<br /><br />The security guard has been on administrative leave since Tuesday, and he faces disciplinary action, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Derrick F. Thomas, a national vice president with union representing the guard, told The A.P. that the guard has “been rated a model employee.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-84008717782665682542010-01-09T08:55:00.000-08:002010-01-09T09:01:08.326-08:00Omnes et Singulatim: Towards a Criticism of Political Reason<span style="font-style:italic;">Michel Foucault<br /><br />“The Tanner Lectures on Human Values”, delivered at Stanford University, October 10 and 16, 1979.</span><br /><br />I<br /><br />The title sounds pretentious, I know. But the reason for that is precisely its own excuse. Since the nineteenth century, Western thought has never stopped labouring at the task of criticising the role of reason – or the lack of reason – in political structures. It’s therefore perfectly unfitting to undertake such a vast project once again. However, so many previous attempts are a warrant that every new venture will be just about as successful as the former ones – and in any case, probably just as fortunate.<br /><br />Under such a banner, mine is the embarrassment of one who has only sketches and uncompletable drafts to propose. Philosophy gave up trying to offset the impotence of scientific reason long ago; it no longer tries to complete its edifice.<br /><br />One of the Enlightenment’s tasks was to multiply reason’s political powers. But the men of the nineteenth century soon started wondering whether reason weren’t getting too powerful in our societies. They began to worry about a relationship they confusedly suspected between a rationalisation-prone society and certain threats to the individual and his liberties, to the species and its survival.<br /><br />In other words, since Kant, the role of philosophy has been to prevent reason going beyond the limits of what is given in experience; but from the same moment– that is, from the development of modern states and political management of society – the role of philosophy has also been to keep watch over the excessive powers of political rationality – which is rather a promising life expectancy.<br /><br />Everybody is aware of such banal facts. But that they are banal does not mean they don’t exist. What we have to do with banal facts is to discover – or try to discover – which specific and perhaps original problems are connected with them.<br /><br />The relationship between rationalisation and the excesses of political power is evident. And we should not need to wait for bureaucracy or concentration camps to recognize the existence of such relations. But the problem is: what to do with such an evident fact ?<br /><br />Shall we ‘try’ reason? To my mind, nothing would be more sterile. First, because the field has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Second, because it’s senseless to refer to ‘reason’ as the contrary entity to non-reason. Last, because such a trial would trap us into playing the arbitrary and boring part of either the rationalist or the irrationalist.<br /><br />Shall we investigate this kind of rationalism which seems to be specific to our modern culture and which originates in Enlightenment? I think that that was the way of some of the members of the Frankfurter Schule. My purpose is not to begin a discussion of their works – they are most important and valuable. I would suggest another way of investigating the links between rationalisation and power:<br /><br />It may be wise not to take as a whole the rationalisation of society or of culture, but to analyse this process in several fields, each of them grounded in a fundamental experience: madness, illness, death, crime, sexuality, etc.<br /><br />I think that the word ‘rationalisation’ is a dangerous one. The main problem when people try to rationalise something is not to investigate whether or not they conform to principles of rationality, but to discover which kind of rationality they are using.<br /><br />Even if the Enlightenment has been a very important phase in our history, and in the development of political technology, I think we have to refer to much more remote processes if we want to understand how we have been trapped in our own history.<br /><br />This was my ‘ligne de conduite’ in my previous work: analyse the relations between experiences like madness, death, crime, sexuality, and several technologies of power. What I am working on now is the problem of individuality – or, I should say, selfidentity as referred to the problem of ‘individualising power’.<br /><br />Everyone knows that in European societies political power has evolved towards more and more centralised forms. Historians have been studying this organisation of the state, with its administration and bureaucracy, for dozens of years.<br /><br />I’d like to suggest in these two lectures the possibility of analysing another kind of transformation in such power relationships. This transformation is, perhaps, less celebrated. But I think that it is also important, mainly for modern societies. Apparently this evolution seems antagonistic to the evolution towards a centralised state. What I mean in fact is the development of power techniques oriented towards individuals and intended to rule them in a continuous and permanent way. If the state is the political form of a centralised and centralising power, let us call pastorship the individualising power.<br /><br />My purpose this evening is to outline the origin of this pastoral modality of power, or at least some aspects of its ancient history. And in the next lecture, I’ll try to show how this pastorship happened to combine with its opposite, the state.<br /><br />The idea of the deity, or the king, or the leader, as a shepherd followed by a flock of sheep wasn’t familiar to the Greeks and Romans. There were exceptions, I know – early ones in Homeric literature, later ones in certain texts of the Lower Empire. I’ll come back to them later. Roughly speaking, we can say that the metaphor of the flock didn’t occur in great Greek or Roman political literature.<br /><br />This is not the case in ancient Oriental societies: Egypt, Assyria, Judaea. Pharaoh was an Egyptian shepherd. Indeed, he ritually received the herdsman’s crook on his coronation day; and the term ‘shepherd of men’ was one of the Babylonian monarch’s titles. But God was also a shepherd leading men to their grazing ground and ensuring them food. An Egyptian hymn invoked Ra this way: “O Ra that keepest watch when all men sleep, Thou who seekest what is good for thy cattle . . . .” The association between God and King is easily made, since both assume the same role: the flock they watch over is the same; the shepherd-king is entrusted with the great divine shepherd’s creatures. An Assyrian invocation to the king ran like this: “Illustrious companion of pastures, Thou who carest for thy land and feedest it, shepherd of all abundance.”<br /><br />But, as we know, it was the Hebrews who developed and intensified the pastoral theme – with nevertheless a highly peculiar characteristic: God, and God only, is his people’s shepherd. With just one positive exception: David, as the founder of the monarchy, is the only one to be referred to as a shepherd. God gave him the task of assembling a flock.<br /><br />There are negative exceptions, too: wicked kings are consistently compared to bad shepherds; they disperse the flock, let it die of thirst, shear it solely for profit’s sake. Jahweh is the one and only true shepherd. He guides his own people in person, aided only by his prophets. As the Psalms say: “Like a flock/hast Thou led Thy people, by Moses’ and by Aaron’s hand.” Of course I can treat neither the historical problems pertaining to the origin of this comparison nor its evolution throughout Jewish thought. I just want to show a few themes typical of pastoral power. I’d like to point out the contrast with Greek political thought, and to show how important these themes became in Christian thought and institutions later on.<br /><br />The shepherd wields power over a flock rather than over a land. It’s probably much more complex than that, but, broadly speaking, the relation between the deity, the land, and men differs from that of the Greeks. Their gods owned the land, and this primary possession determined the relationship between men and gods. On the contrary, it’s the Shepherd-God’s relationship with his flock that is primary and fundamental here. God gives, or promises, his flock a land.<br /><br />The shepherd gathers together, guides, and leads his flock. The idea that the political leader was to quiet any hostilities within the city and make unity reign over conflict is undoubtedly present in Greek thought. But what the shepherd gathers together is dispersed individuals. They gather together on hearing his voice: “I’ll whistle and will gather them together.” Conversely, the shepherd only has to disappear for the flock to be scattered. In other words, the shepherd’s immediate presence and direct action cause the flock to exist. Once the good Greek lawgiver, like Solon, has resolved any conflicts, what he leaves behind him is a strong city with laws enabling it to endure without him.<br /><br />The shepherd’s role is to ensure the salvation of his flock. The Greeks said also that the deity saved the city; they never stopped declaring that the competent leader is a helmsman warding his ship away from the rocks. But the way the shepherd saves his flock is quite different. It’s not only a matter of saving them all, all together, when danger comes nigh. It’s a matter of constant, individualised, and final kindness. Constant kindness, for the shepherd ensures his flock’s food; every day he attends to their thirst and hunger. The Greek god was asked to provide a fruitful land and abundant crops. He wasn’t asked to foster a flock day by day. And individualised kindness, too, for the shepherd sees that all the sheep, each and every one of them, is fed and saved. Later Hebrew literature, especially, laid the emphasis on such individually kindly power: a rabbinical commentary on Exodus explains why Jahweh chose Moses to shepherd his people: he had left his flock to go and search for one lost sheep.<br /><br />Last and not least, it’s final kindness. The shepherd has a target for his flock. It must either be led to good grazing ground or brought back to the fold.<br /><br />Yet another difference lies in the idea that wielding power is a ‘duty’. The Greek leader had naturally to make decisions in the interest of all; he would have been a bad leader had he preferred his personal interest. But his duty was a glorious one: even if in war he had to give up his life, such a sacrifice was offset by something extremely precious: immortality. He never lost. By way of contrast, shepherdly kindness is much closer to ‘devotedness’. Everything the shepherd does is geared to the good of his flock. That’s his constant concern. When they sleep, he keeps watch. The theme of keeping watch is important. It brings out two aspects of the shepherd’s devotedness. First, he acts, he works, he puts himself out, for those he nourishes and who are asleep. Second, he watches over them. He pays attention to them all and scans each one of them. He’s got to know his flock as a whole, and in detail. Not only must he know where good pastures are, the seasons’ laws and the order of things; he must also know each one’s particular needs. Once again, a rabbinical commentary on Exodus describes Moses’ qualities as a shepherd this way: he would send each sheep in turn to graze – first, the youngest, for them to browse on the tenderest sward; then the older ones; and last the oldest, who were capable of browsing on the roughest grass. The shepherd’s power implies individual attention paid to each member of the flock.<br /><br />These are just themes that Hebraic texts associate with the metaphors of the Shepherd-God and his flock of people. In no way do I claim that that is effectively how political power was wielded in Hebrew society before the fall of Jerusalem. I do not even claim that such a conception of political power is in any way coherent.<br /><br />They’re just themes. Paradoxical, even contradictory, ones. Christianity was to give them considerable importance, both in the Middle Ages and in modern times. Among all the societies in history, ours – I mean, those that came into being at the end of Antiquity on the Western side of the European continent – have perhaps been the most aggressive and the most conquering; they have been capable of the most stupefying violence, against themselves as well as against others. They invented a great many different political forms. They profoundly altered their legal structures several times. It must be kept in mind that they alone evolved a strange technology of power treating the vast majority of men as a flock with a few as shepherds. They thus established between them a series of complex, continuous, and paradoxical relationships.<br /><br />This is undoubtedly something singular in the course of history. Clearly, the development of ‘pastoral technology’ in the management of men profoundly disrupted the structures of ancient society.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br />So as to better explain the importance of this disruption, I’d like to briefly return to what I was saying about the Greeks. I can see the objections liable to be made.<br /><br />One is that the Homeric poems use the shepherd metaphor to refer to the kings. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the expression ποιμήυ λαώυ crops up several times. It qualifies the leaders, highlighting the grandeur of their power. Moreover, it’s a ritual title, common in even late Indo-European literature. In Beowulf, the king is still regarded as a shepherd. But there is nothing really surprising in the fact that the same title, as in the Assyrian texts, is to be found in archaic epic poems.<br /><br />The problem arises rather as to Greek thought: There is at least one category of texts where references to shepherd models are made: the Pythagorean ones. The metaphor of the herdsman appears in the Fragments of Archytas, quoted by Stobeus. The word υόμος (the law) is connected with the word νυομεύς (shepherd) : the shepherd shares out, the law apportions. Then Zeus is called Νόμιος and Νέμειος because he gives his sheep food. And, finally, the magistrate must be Φιλάυθρωπος, i.e., devoid of selfishness. He must be full of zeal and solicitude, like a shepherd.<br /><br />Grube, the German editor of Archytas’ Fragments, says that this proves a Hebrew influence unique in Greek literature. Other commentators, such as Delatte, say that the comparison between gods, magistrates, and shepherds was common in Greece. It is therefore not to be dwelt upon.<br /><br />I shall restrict myself to political literature. The results of the enquiry are clear: the political metaphor of the shepherd occurs neither in Isocrates, nor in Demosthenes, nor in Aristotle. This is rather surprising when one reflects that in his Areopagiticus, Isocrates insists on the magistrates’ duties; he stresses the need for them to be devoted and to show concern for young people. Yet not a word as to any shepherd.<br /><br />By contrast, Plato often speaks of the shepherd-magistrate. He mentions the idea in Critias, The Republic, and Laws. He thrashes it out in The Statesman. In the former, the shepherd theme is rather subordinate. Sometimes, those happy days when mankind was governed directly by the gods and grazed on abundant pastures are evoked (Critias) , Sometimes, the magistrates’ necessary virtue – as contrasted with Thrasymachos’ vice, is what is insisted upon (The Republic). And sometimes, the problem is to define the subordinate magistrates’ role: indeed, they, just as the watchdogs, have to obey “those at the top of the scale” (Laws).<br /><br />But in The Statesman pastoral power is the central problem and it is treated at length. Can the city’s decision-maker, can the commander, be defined as a sort of shepherd ?<br /><br />Plato’s analysis is well known. To solve this question he uses the division method. A distinction is drawn between the man who conveys orders to inanimate things (e.g., the architect), and the man who gives orders to animals; between the man who gives orders to isolated animals (like a yoke of oxen) and he who gives orders to flocks; and he who gives orders to animal flocks, and he who commands human flocks. And there we have the political leader: a shepherd of men.<br /><br />But this first division remains unsatisfactory. It has to be pushed further. The method opposing men to all the other animals isn’t a good one. And so the dialogue starts all over again. A whole series of distinctions is established: between wild animals and tame ones; those that live in water, and those that live on land; those with horns, and those without; between cleft- and plain-hoofed animals; between those capable and incapable of mutual reproduction. And the dialogue wanders astray with these never-ending subdivisions.<br /><br />So, what do the initial development of the dialogue and its subsequent failure show? That the division method can prove nothing at all when it isn’t managed correctly. It also shows that the idea of analysing political power as the relationship between a shepherd and his animals was probably rather a controversial one at the time. Indeed, it’s the first assumption to cross the interlocutors’ minds when seeking to discover the essence of the politician. Was it a commonplace at the time? Or was Plato rather discussing one of the Pythagorean themes? The absence of the shepherd metaphor in other contemporary political texts seems to tip the scale towards the second hypothesis. But we can probably leave the discussion open.<br /><br />My personal enquiry bears upon how Plato impugns the theme in the rest of the dialogue. He does so first by means of methodological arguments and then by means of the celebrated myth of the world revolving round its spindle.<br /><br />The methodological arguments are extremely interesting. Whether the king is a sort of shepherd or not can be told, not by deciding which different species can form a flock, but by analysing what the shepherd does.<br /><br />What is characteristic of his task? First, the shepherd is alone at the head of his flock. Second, his job is to supply his cattle with food; to care for them when they are sick; to play them music to get them together, and guide them; to arrange their intercourse with a view to the finest offspring. So we do find the typical shepherd-metaphor themes of Oriental texts.<br /><br />And what’s the king’s task in regard to all this? Like the shepherd, he is alone at the head of the city. But, for the rest, who provides mankind with food? The king? No. The farmer, the baker do. Who looks after men when they are sick? The king? No. The physician. And who guides them with music? The gymnast – not the king. And so, many citizens could quite legitimately claim the title ‘shepherd of men’. Just as the human flock’s shepherd has many rivals, so has the politician. Consequently, if we want to find out what the politician really and essentially is, we must sift it out from ‘the surrounding flood’, thereby demonstrating in what ways he isn’t a shepherd.<br /><br />Plato therefore resorts to the myth of the world revolving round its axis in two successive and contrary motions.<br /><br />In a first phase, each animal species belonged to a flock led by a Genius-Shepherd. The human flock was led by the deity itself. It could lavishly avail itself of the fruits of the earth; it needed no abode; and after Death, men came back to life. A crucial sentence adds: “The deity being their shepherd, mankind needed no political constitution.”<br /><br />In a second phase, the world turned in the opposite direction. The gods were no longer men’s shepherds; they had to look after themselves. For they had been given fire. What would the politician’s role then be? Would he become the shepherd in the gods’ stead? Not at all. His job was to weave a strong fabric for the city. Being a politician didn’t mean feeding, nursing, and breeding off spring, but binding: binding different virtues; binding contrary temperaments (either impetuous or moderate), using the ‘shuttle’ of popular opinion. The royal art of ruling consisted in gathering lives together “into a community based upon concord and friendship,’ and so he wove “the finest of fabrics.” The entire population, “slaves and free men alike, were mantled in its folds.”<br /><br />The Statesman therefore seems to be classical antiquity’s most systematic reflexion on the theme of the pastorate which was later to become so important in the Christian West. That we are discussing it seems to prove that a perhaps initially Oriental theme was important enough in Plato’s day to deserve investigation, but we stress the fact that it was impugned.<br /><br />Not impugned entirely, however. Plato did admit that the physician, the farmer, the gymnast, and the pedagogue acted as shepherds. But he refused to get them involved with the politician’s activity. He said so explicitly: how would the politician ever find the time to come and sit by each person, feed him, give him concerts, and care for him when sick ? Only a god in a Golden Age could ever act like that; or again, like a physician or pedagogue, be responsible for the lives and development of a few individuals. But, situated between the two – the gods and the swains – the men who hold political power are not to be shepherds. Their task doesn’t consist in fostering the life of a group of individuals. It consists in forming and assuring the city’s unity. In short, the political problem is that of the relation between the one and the many in the framework of the city and its citizens. The pastoral problem concerns the lives of individuals.<br /><br />All this seems very remote, perhaps. The reason for my insisting on these ancient texts is that they show us how early this problem – or rather, this series of problems – arose. They span the entirety of Western history. They are still highly important for contemporary society. They deal with the relations between political power at work within the state as a legal framework of unity, and a power we can call ‘pastoral’, whose role is to constantly ensure, sustain, and improve the lives of each and every one.<br /><br />The well-known ‘welfare state problem’ does not only bring the needs or the new governmental techniques of today’s world to light. It must be recognised for what it is: one of the extremely numerous reappearances of the tricky adjustment between political power wielded over legal subjects and pastoral power wielded over live individuals.<br /><br />I have obviously no intention whatsoever of recounting the evolution of pastoral power throughout Christianity. The immense problems this would raise can easily be imagined: from doctrinal problems, such as Christ’s denomination as ‘the good shepherd’, right up to institutional ones, such as parochial organisation, or the way pastoral responsibilities were shared between priests and bishops.<br /><br />All I want to do is bring to light two or three aspects I regard as important for the evolution of pastorship, i.e., the technology of power.<br /><br />First of all, let us examine the theoretical elaboration of the theme in ancient Christian literature: Chrysostom, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and, for monastic life, Cassian or Benedict. The Hebrew themes are considerably altered in at least four ways:<br /><br />First, with regard to responsibility. We saw that the shepherd was to assume responsibility for the destiny of the whole flock and of each and every sheep. In the Christian conception, the shepherd must render an account – not only of each sheep, but of all their actions, all the good or evil they are liable to do, all that happens to them.<br /><br />Moreover, between each sheep and its shepherd Christianity conceives a complex exchange and circulation of sins and merits. The sheep’s sin is also imputable to the shepherd. He’ll have to render an account of it at the Last Judgement. Conversely, by helping his flock to find salvation, the shepherd will also find his own. But by saving his sheep, he lays himself open to getting lost; so if he wants to save himself, he must needs run the risk of losing himself for others. If he does get lost, it is the flock that will incur the greatest danger. But let’s leave all these paradoxes aside. My aim was just to underline the force and complexity of the moral ties binding the shepherd to each member of his flock. And what I especially wanted to underline was that such ties not only concerned individuals’ lives, but the details of their actions as well.<br /><br />The second important alteration concerns the problem of obedience. In the Hebrew conception, God being a shepherd, the flock following him complies to his will, to his law. Christianity, on the other hand, conceived the shepherd-sheep relationship as one of individual and complete dependence. This is undoubtedly one of the points at which Christian pastorship radically diverged from Greek thought. If a Greek had to obey, he did so because it was the law, or the will of the city. If he did happen to follow the will of someone in particular (a physician, an orator, a pedagogue), then that person had rationally persuaded him to do so. And it had to be for a strictly determined aim: to be cured, to acquire a skill, to make the best choice.<br /><br />In Christianity, the tie with the shepherd is an individual one. It is personal submission to him. His will is done, not because it is consistent with the law, and not just as far as it is consistent with it, but, principally, because it is his will. In Cassian’s Coenobiticul Institutions, there are many edifying anecdotes in which the monk finds salvation by carrying out the absurdest of his superior’s orders. Obedience is a virtue. This means that it is not, as for the Greeks, a provisional means to an end, but rather an end in itself. It is a permanent state; the sheep must permanently submit to their pastors: subditi. As Saint Benedict says, monks do not live according to their own free will; their wish is to be under the abbot’s command : ambulantes alieno judicio et imperio. Greek Christianity named this state of obedience άπάθεια.. The evolution of the word’s meaning is significant. In Greek philosophy, άπάθεια denotes the control that the individual, thanks to the exercise of reason, can exert over his passions. In Christian thought, πάθος is willpower exerted over oneself, for oneself. Απάθεια delivers us from such wilfulness.<br /><br />Christian pastorship implies a peculiar type of knowledge between the pastor and each of his sheep.<br /><br />This knowledge is particular. It individualizes. It isn’t enough to know the state of the flock. That of each sheep must also be known. The theme existed long before there was Christian pastorship, but it was considerably amplified in three different ways: the shepherd must be informed as to the material needs of each member of the flock and provide for them when necessary. He must know what is going on, what each of them does – his public sins. Last and not least, he must know what goes on in the soul of each one, that is, his secret sins, his progress on the road to sainthood.<br /><br />In order to ensure this individual knowledge, Christianity appropriated two essential instruments at work in the Hellenistic world: self-examination and the guidance of conscience. It took them over, but not without altering them considerably.<br /><br />It is well known that self-examination was widespread among the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and the Epicureans as a means of daily taking stock of the good or evil performed in regard to one’s duties. One’s progress on the way to perfection, i.e., self-mastery and the domination of one’s passions, could thus be measured. The guidance of conscience was also predominant in certain cultured circles, but as advice given – and sometimes paid for – in particularly difficult circumstances: in mourning, or when one was suffering a setback.<br /><br />Christian pastorship closely associated these two practices. On one hand, conscience-guiding constituted a constant bind : the sheep didn’t let itself be led only to come through any rough passage victoriously, it let itself be led every second. Being guided was a state and you were fatally lost if you tried to escape it. The ever-quoted phrase runs like this: he who suffers not guidance withers away like a dead leaf. As for self-examination, its aim was not to close self-awareness in upon itself, but to enable it to open up entirely to its director – to unveil to him the depths of the soul.<br /><br />There are a great many first-century ascetic and monastic texts concerning the link between guidance and self-examination that show how crucial these techniques were for Christianity and how complex they had already become. What I would like to emphasise is that they delineate the emergence of a very strange phenomenon in Greco-Roman civilisation, that is, the organisation of a link between total obedience, knowledge of oneself, and confession to someone else.<br /><br />There is another transformation – maybe the most important. All those Christian techniques of examination, confession, guidance, obedience, have an aim: to get individuals to work at their own ‘mortification’ in this world. Mortification is not death, of course, but it is a renunciation of this world and of oneself: a kind of everyday death. A death which is supposed to provide life in another world. This is not the first time we see the shepherd theme associated with death; but here it is other than in the Greek idea of political power. It is not a sacrifice for the city; Christian mortification is a kind of relation from oneself to oneself. It is a part, a constitutive part of the Christian self-identity.<br /><br />We can say that Christian pastorship has introduced a game that neither the Greeks nor the Hebrews imagined. A strange game whose elements are life, death, truth, obedience, individuals, self-identity; a game which seems to have nothing to do with the game of the city surviving through the sacrifice of the citizens. Our societies proved to be really demonic since they happened to combine those two games – the city / citizen game and the shepherd / flock game – in what we call the modern states.<br /><br />As you may notice, what I have been trying to do this evening is not to solve a problem but to suggest a way to approach a problem. This problem is similar to those I have been working on since my first book about insanity and mental illness. As I told you previously, this problem deals with the relations between experiences (like madness, illness, transgression of laws, sexuality, self-identity) knowledge (like psychiatry, medicine, criminology, sexology, psychology), and power (such as the power which is wielded in psychiatric and penal institutions, and in all other institutions which deal with individual control).<br /><br />Our civilisation has developed the most complex system of knowledge, the most sophisticated structures of power: what has this kind of knowledge, this type of power made of us? In what way are those fundamental experiences of madness, suffering, death, crime, desire, individuality connected, even if we are not aware of it, with knowledge and power? I am sure I’ll never get the answer; but that does not mean that we don’t have to ask the question.<br /><br />II<br /><br />I have tried to show how primitive Christianity shaped the idea of a pastoral influence continuously exerting itself on individuals and through the demonstration of their particular truth. And I have tried to show how this idea of pastoral power was foreign to Greek thought despite a certain number of borrowings such as practical self-examination and the guidance of conscience.<br /><br />I would like at this time, leaping across many centuries, to describe another episode which has been in itself particularly important in the history of this government of individuals by their own verity.<br /><br />This instance concerns the formation of the state in the modern sense of the word. If I make this historical connection it is obviously not in order to suggest that the aspect of pastoral power disappeared during the ten great centuries of Christian Europe, Catholic and Roman, but it seems to me that this period, contrary to what one might expect, has not been that of the triumphant pastorate. And that is true for several reasons: some are of an economic nature – the pastorate of souls is an especially urban experience, difficult to reconcile with the poor and extensive rural economy at the beginning of the Middle Ages. The other reasons are of a cultural nature: the pastorate is a complicated technique which demands a certain level of culture, not only on the part of the pastor but also among his flock. Other reasons relate to the sociopolitical structure. Feudality developed between individuals a tissue of personal bonds of an altogether different type than the pastorate.<br /><br />I do not wish to say that the idea of a pastoral government of men disappeared entirely in the medieval church. It has, indeed, remained and one can even say that it has shown great vitality. Two series of facts tend to prove this. First, the reforms which had been made in the Church itself, especially in the monastic orders – the different reforms operating successively inside existing monasteries – had the goal of restoring the rigor of pastoral order among the monks themselves. As for the newly created orders – Dominican and Franciscan – essentially they proposed to perform pastoral work among the faithful. The Church tried ceaselessly during successive crises to regain its pastoral functions. But there is more. In the population itself one sees all during the Middle Ages the development of a long series of struggles whose object was pastoral power. Critics of the Church which fails in its obligations reject its hierarchical structure, look for the more or less spontaneous forms of community in which the flock could find the shepherd it needed. This search for pastoral expression took on numerous aspects, at times extremely violent struggles as was the case for the Vaudois, sometimes peaceful quests as among the Freres de la Vie community. Sometimes it stirred very extensive movements such as the Hussites, sometimes it fermented limited groups like the Amis de Dieu de l’Oberland. It happened that these movements were close to heresy, as among the Beghards, at times stirring orthodox movements which dwelt within the bosom of the Church (like that of the Italian Oratorians in the fifteenth century).<br /><br />I raise all of this in a very allusive manner in order to emphasise that if the pastorate was not instituted as an effective, practical government of men during the Middle Ages, it has been a permanent concern and a stake in constant struggles. There was across the entire period of the Middle Ages a yearning to arrange pastoral relations among men and this aspiration affected both the mystical tide and the great millenarian dreams.<br /><br />*******************<br /><br />Of course, I don’t intend to treat here the problem of how states are formed. Nor do I intend to go into the different economic, social, and political processes from which they stem. Neither do I want to analyse the different institutions or mechanisms with which states equipped themselves in order to ensure their survival. I’d just like to give some fragmentary indications as to something midway between the state as a type of political organisation and its mechanisms, viz., the type of rationality implemented in the exercise of state power.<br /><br />I mentioned this in my first lecture. Rather than wonder whether aberrant state power is due to excessive rationalism or irrationalism, I think it would be more appropriate to pin down the specific type of political rationality the state produced.<br /><br />After all, at least in this respect, political practices resemble scientific ones: it’s not ‘reason in general’ that is implemented, but always a very specific type of rationality. The striking thing is that the rationality of state power was reflective and perfectly aware of its specificity. It was not tucked away in spontaneous, blind practices. It was not brought to light by some retrospective analysis. It was formulated especially in two sets of doctrine: the reason of state and the theory of police. These two phrases soon acquired narrow and pejorative meanings, I know. But for the 150 or 200 years during which modern states were formed, their meaning was much broader than now.<br /><br />The doctrine of reason of state attempted to define how the principles and methods of state government differed, say, from the way God governed the world, the father his family, or a superior his community.<br /><br />The doctrine of the police defines the nature of the objects of the state’s rational activity; it defines the nature of the aims it pursues, the general form of the instruments involved.<br /><br />So, what I’d like to speak about today is the system of rationality. But first, there are two preliminaries:<br /><br />(1) Meinecke having published a most important book on reason of state, I’ll speak mainly of the policing theory.<br /><br />(2) Germany and Italy underwent the greatest difficulties in getting established as states, and they produced the greatest number of reflexions on reason of state and the police. I’ll often refer to the Italian and German texts.<br /><br />***********************<br /><br />Let’s begin with reason of state. Here are a few definitions:<br /><br />BOTERO: “A perfect knowledge of the means through which states form, strengthen themselves, endure, and grow.”<br /><br />PALAZZO (Discourse on Government and True Reason of State, 1606) : “A rule or art enabling us to discover how to establish peace and order within the Republic.”<br /><br />CHEMNITZ (De Ratione Status, 1647) : “A certain political consideration required for all public matters, councils, and projects, whose only aim is the state’s preservation, expansion, and felicity; to which end, the easiest and promptest means are to be employed.”<br /><br />Let me consider certain features these definitions have in common.<br /><br />Reason of state is regarded as an ‘art’, that is, a technique conforming to certain rules. These rules do not simply pertain to customs or traditions, but to knowledge – rational knowledge. Nowadays, the expression reason of state evokes ‘arbitrariness’ or ‘violence’. But at the time, what people had in mind was a rationality specific to the art of governing states.<br /><br />From where does this specific art of government draw its rationale? The answer to this question provokes the scandal of nascent political thought. And yet it’s very simple: the art of governing is rational, if reflexion causes it to observe the nature of what is governed – here, the state.<br /><br />Now, to state such a platitude is to break with a simultaneously Christian and judiciary tradition, a tradition which claimed that government was essentially just. It respected a whole system of laws: human laws; the law of nature; divine law.<br /><br />There is a quite significant text by St. Thomas on these points. He recalls that “art, in its field, must imitate what nature carries out in its own”; it is only reasonable under that condition. The king’s government of his kingdom must imitate God’s government of nature; or again, the soul’s government of the body. The king must found cities just as God created the world; just as the soul gives form to the body. The king must also lead men towards their finality, just as God does for natural beings, or as the soul does, when directing the body. And what is man’s finality? What’s good for the body? No; he’d need only a physician, not a king. Wealth? No; a steward would suffice. Truth? Not even that; for only a teacher would be needed. Man needs someone capable of opening up the way to heavenly bliss through his conformity, here on earth, to what is honesturn.<br /><br />As we can see, the model for the art of government is that of God imposing his laws upon his creatures. St. Thomas’s model for rational government is not a political one, whereas what the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seek under the denomination ‘reason of state’ are principles capable of guiding an actual government. They aren’t concerned with nature and its laws in general. They’re concerned with what the state is; what its exigencies are.<br /><br />And so we can understand the religious scandal aroused by such a type of research. It explains why reason of state was assimilated to atheism. In France, in particular, the expression generated in a political context was commonly associated with ‘atheist’.<br /><br />Reason of state is also opposed to another tradition. In The Prince, Machiavelli’s problem is to decide how a province or territory acquired through inheritance or by conquest can be held against its internal or external rivals. Machiavelli’s entire analysis is aimed at defining what keeps up or reinforces the link between prince and state, whereas the problem posed by reason of state is that of the very existence and nature of the state itself. This is why the theoreticians of reason of state tried to stay aloof from Machiavelli; he had a bad reputation and they couldn’t recognize their own problem in his. Conversely, those opposed to reason of state tried to impair this new art of governing, denouncing it as Machiavelli’s legacy. However, despite these confused quarrels a century after The Prince had been written, reason of state marks the emergence of an extremely – albeit only partly – different type of rationality from Machiavelli’s.<br /><br />The aim of such an art of governing is precisely not to reinforce the power a prince can wield over his domain. Its aim is to reinforce the state itself. This is one of the most characteristic features of all the definitions that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries put forward. Rational government is this, so to speak: given the nature of the state, it can hold down its enemies for an indeterminate length of time. It can only do so if it increases its own strength. And its enemies do likewise. The state whose only concern would be to hold out would most certainly come to disaster. This idea is a very important one. It is bound up with a new historical outlook. Indeed, it implies that states are realities which must needs hold out for an indefinite length of historical time – and in a disputed geographical area.<br /><br />Finally, we can see that reason of state, understood as rational government able to increase the state’s strength in accordance with itself presupposes the constitution of a certain type of knowledge. Government is only possible if the strength of the state is known; it can thus be sustained. The state’s capacity, and the means to enlarge it, must be known. The strength and capacities of the other states must also be known. Indeed, the governed state must hold out against the others. Government therefore entails more than just implementing general principles of reason, wisdom, and prudence. Knowledge is necessary; concrete, precise, and measured knowledge as to the state’s strength. The art of governing, characteristic of reason of state, is intimately bound up with the development of what was then called either political statistics, or arithmetic; that is, the knowledge of different states’ respective forces. Such knowledge was indispensable for correct government. Briefly speaking, then: reason of state is not an art of government according to divine, natural, or human laws. It doesn’t have to respect the general order of the world. It’s government in accordance with the state’s strength. It’s government whose aim is to increase this strength within an extensive and competitive framework.<br /><br />********************<br /><br />So what the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors understand by ‘the police’ is very different from what we put under the term. It would be worth studying why these authors are mostly Italians and Germans, but whatever! What they understand by ‘police’ isn’t an institution or mechanism functioning within the state, but a governmental technology peculiar to the state; domains, techniques, targets where the state intervenes.<br /><br />To be clear and simple, I will exemplify what I’m saying with a text which is both utopian and a project. It’s one of the first utopia-programmes for a policed state. Turquet de Mayenne drew it up and presented it in 1611 to the Dutch States General. In his book Science in the Government of Louis XIV, J. King draws attention to the importance of this strange work. Its title is Aristo- Democrutic Monarchy; that’s enough to show what is important in the author’s eyes: not so much choosing between these different types of constitution as their mixture in view to a vital end, viz., the state. Turquet also calls it the City, the Republic, or yet again, the Police.<br /><br />Here is the organisation Turquet proposes. Four grand officials rank beside the king. One is in charge of Justice; another, of the Army; the third, of the Exchecquer, i.e., the king’s taxes and revenues; the fourth is in charge of the police. It seems that this officer’s role was to have been mainly a moral one. According to Turquet, he was to foster among the people “modesty, charity, loyalty, industriousness, friendly cooperation, honesty.” We recognize the traditional idea that the subject’s virtue ensures the kingdom’s good management. But, when we come down to the details, the outlook is somewhat different.<br /><br />Turquet suggests that in each province, there should be boards keeping law and order. There should be two that see to people; the other two see to things. The first board, the one pertaining to people, was to see to the positive, active, productive aspects of life. In other words, it was concerned with education; determining each one’s tastes and aptitudes; the choosing of occupations – useful ones: each person over the age of twenty-five had to be enrolled on a register noting his occupation. Those not usefully employed were regarded as the dregs of society.<br /><br />The second board was to see to the negative aspects of life: the poor (widows, orphans, the aged) requiring help; the unemployed; those whose activities required financial aid (no interest was to be charged) ; public health: diseases, epidemics; and accidents such as fire and flood.<br /><br />One of the boards concerned with things was to specialise in commodities and manufactured goods. It was to indicate what was to be produced, and how; it was also to control markets and trading. The fourth board would see to the ‘demesne’, i.e., the territory, space: private property, legacies, donations, sales were to be controlled; manorial rights were to be reformed; roads, rivers, public buildings, and forests would also be seen to.<br /><br />In many features, the text is akin to the political utopias which were so numerous at the time. But it is also contemporary with the great theoretical discussions on reason of state and the administrative organisation of monarchies. It is highly representative of what the epoch considered a traditionally governed state’s tasks to be.<br /><br />What does this text demonstrate?<br /><br />The ‘police’ appears as an administration heading the state, together with the judiciary, the army, and the exchecquer. True. Yet in fact, it embraces everything else. Turquet says so: “It branches out into all of the people’s conditions, everything they do or undertake. Its field comprises justice, finance, and the army.”<br /><br />The police includes everything. But from an extremely particular point of view. Men and things are envisioned as to their relationships: men’s coexistence on a territory; their relationships as to property; what they produce; what is exchanged on the market. It also considers how they live, the diseases and accidents which can befall them. What the police sees to is a live, active, productive man. Turquet employs a remarkable expression: “The police’s true object is man.”<br /><br />Such intervention in men’s activities could well be qualified as totalitarian. What are the aims pursued? They fall into two categories. First, the police has to do with everything providing the city with adornment, form, and splendour. Splendour denotes not only the beauty of a state ordered to perfection; but also its strength, its vigour. The police therefore ensures and highlights the state’s vigour. Second, the police’s other purpose is to foster working and trading relations between men, as well as aid and mutual help. There again, the word Turquet uses is important: the police must ensure ‘communication’ among men, in the broad sense of the word. Otherwise, men wouldn’t be able to live; or their lives would be precarious, poverty-stricken, and perpetually threatened. And here, we can make out what is, I think, an important idea. As a form of rational intervention wielding political power over men, the role of the police is to supply them with a little extra life; and by so doing, supply the state with a little extra strength. This is done by controlling ‘communication’, i.e., the common activities of individuals (work, production, exchange, accommodation). You’ll object: but that’s only the utopia of some obscure author. You can hardly deduce any significant consequences from it! But I say: Turquet’s book is but one example of a huge literature circulating in most European countries of the day. The fact that it is over-simple and yet very detailed brings out all the better the characteristics that could be recognized elsewhere. Above all, I’d say that such ideas were not stillborn. They spread all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, either as applied policies (such as cameralism or mercantilism), or as subjects to be taught (the German Polizeiwissenschaft; don’t let’s forget that this was the title under which the science of administration was taught in Germany).<br /><br />These are the two perspectives that I’d like, not to study, but at least to suggest. First I’ll refer to a French administrative compendium, then to a German textbook.<br /><br />1. Every historian knows Delamare’s Compendium. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, this administrator undertook the compilation of the whole kingdom’s police regulations. It’s an infinite source of highly valuable information. The general conception of the police that such a quantity of rules and regulations could convey to an administrator like Delamare is what I’d like to emphasise.<br /><br />Delamare says that the police must see to eleven things within the state: (1) religion; (2) morals; (3) health; ( 4 ) supplies; ( 5 ) roads, highways, town buildings; (6) public safety; (7) the liberal arts (roughly speaking, arts and science); (8) trade; (9) factories; (10) manservants and labourers; (11) the poor.<br /><br />The same classification features in every treatise concerning the police. As in Turquet’s utopia programme, apart from the army, justice properly speaking, and direct taxes, the police apparently sees to everything. The same thing can be said differently: Royal power had asserted itself against feudalism thanks to the support of an armed force and by developing a judicial system and establishing a tax system. These were the ways in which royal power was traditionally wielded. Now, ‘the police’ is the term covering the whole new field in which centralised political and administrative power can intervene.<br /><br />Now, what is the logic behind intervention in cultural rites, small-scale production techniques, intellectual life, and the road network ?<br /><br />Delamare’s answer seems a bit hesitant. Now he says, “The police sees to everything pertaining to men’s happiness”; now he says, “The police sees to everything regulating ‘society’ (social relations) carried on between men.” Now again, he says that the police sees to living. This is the definition I will dwell upon. It’s the most original and it clarifies the other two; and Delamare himself dwells upon it. He makes the following remarks as to the police’s eleven objects. The police deals with religion, not, of course, from the point of view of dogmatic truth, but from that of the moral quality of life. In seeing to health and supplies, it deals with the preservation of life; concerning trade, factories, workers, the poor and public order, it deals with the conveniences of life. In seeing to the theatre, literature, entertainment, its object is life’s pleasures. In short, life is the object of the police: the indispensable, the useful, and the superfluous. That people survive, live, and even do better than just that, is what the police has to ensure.<br /><br />And so we link up with the other definitions Delamare proposes: “The sole purpose of the police is to lead man to the utmost happiness to be enjoyed in this life.” Or again, the police cares for the good of the soul (thanks to religion and morality), the good of the body (food, health, clothing, housing), wealth (industry, trade, labour). Or again, the police sees to the benefits that can be derived only from living in society.<br /><br />2. Now let us have a look at the German textbooks. They were used to teach the science of administration somewhat later on. It was taught in various universities, especially in Gottingen, and was extremely important for continental Europe. Here it was that the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian civil servants – those who were to carry out Joseph 11’s and the Great Catherine’s reforms – were trained. Certain Frenchmen, especially in Napoleon’s entourage, knew the teachings of Polizeiwissenschaft very well.<br /><br />What was to be found in these textbooks ? Huhenthal’s Liber de Politia featured the following items : the number of citizens; religion and morals; health; food; the safety of persons and of goods (particularly in reference to fires and floods) ; the administration of justice; citizens’ conveniences and pleasures (how to obtain them, how to restrict them). Then comes a series of chapters about rivers, forests, mines, brine pits, housing, and finally, several chapters on how to acquire goods either through farming, industry, or trade.<br /><br />In his Precis for the Police, Willebrand speaks successively of morals, trades and crafts, health, safety, and last of all, of town building and planning. Considering the subjects at least, there isn’t a great deal of difference from Delamare’s.<br /><br />But the most important of these texts is Von Justi’s Elements of Police. The police’s specific purpose is still defined as live individuals living in society. Nevertheless, the way Von Justi organises his book is somewhat different. He studies first what he calls the ‘state’s landed property’, i.e.,its territory. He considers it in two different aspects: how it is inhabited (town vs. country), and then, who inhabit these territories (the number of people, their growth, health, mortality, immigration). Von Justi then analyses the ‘goods and chattels’, i.e., the commodities, manufactured goods, and their circulation which involve problems pertaining to cost, credit, and currency. Finally, the last part is devoted to the conduct of individuals: their morals, their occupational capabilities, their honesty, and how they respect the Law.<br /><br />In my opinion, Von Justi’s work is a much more advanced demonstration of how the police problem was evolved than Delamare’s ‘Introduction’ to his compendium of statutes. There are four reasons for this.<br /><br />First, Von Justi defines much more clearly what the central paradox of police is. The police, he says, is what enables the state to increase its power and exert its strength to the full. On the other hand, the police has to keep. the citizens happy – happiness being understood as survival, life, and improved living. He perfectly defines what I feel to be the aim of the modern art of government, or state rationality: viz., to develop those elements constitutive of individuals’ lives in such a way that their development also fosters that of the strength of the state.<br /><br />Von Justi then draws a distinction between this task, which he calls Polizei, as do his contemporaries, and Politik, Die Politik. Die Politik is basically a negative task. It consists in the state’s fighting against its internal and external enemies. Polizei, however, is a positive task: it has to foster both citizens’ lives and the state’s strength.<br /><br />And here is the important point: Von Justi insists much more than does Delamare on a notion which became increasingly important during the eighteenth century – population. Population was understood as a group of live individuals. Their characteristics were those of all the individuals belonging to the same species, living side by side. (They thus presented mortality and fecundity rates; they were subject to epidemics, overpopulation; they presented a certain type of territorial distribution.) True, Delamare did use the term ‘life’ to characterise the concern of the police, but the emphasis he gave it wasn’t very pronounced. Proceeding through the eighteenth century, and especially in Germany, we see that what is defined as the object of the police is population, i.e., a group of beings living in a given area.<br /><br />And last, one only has to read Von Justi to see that it is not only a utopia, as with Turquet, nor a compendium of systematically filed regulations. Von Justi claims to draw up a Polizeiwissenschuft. His book isn’t simply a list of prescriptions. It’s also a grid through which the state, i.e., territory, resources, population, towns, etc., can be observed. Von Justi combines ‘statistics’ (the description of states) with the art of government. Polizeiwissenschuft is at once an art of government and a method for the analysis of a population living on a territory.<br /><br />Such historical considerations must appear to be very remote; they must seem useless in regard to present-day concerns. I wouldn’t go as far as Hermann Hesse, who says that only the “constant reference to history, the past, and antiquity” is fecund. But experience has taught me that the history of various forms of rationality is sometimes more effective in unsettling our certitudes and dogmatism than is abstract criticism. For centuries, religion couldn’t bear having its history told. Today, our schools of rationality balk at having their history written, which is no doubt significant.<br /><br />What I’ve wanted to show is a direction for research. These are only the rudiments of something I’ve been working at for the last two years. It’s the historical analysis of what we could call, using an obsolete term, the art of government.<br /><br />This study rests upon several basic assumptions. I’d sum them up like this:<br /><br />Power is not a substance. Neither is it a mysterious property whose origin must be delved into. Power is only a certain type of relation between individuals. Such relations are specific, that is, they have nothing to do with exchange, production, communication, even though they combine with them. The characteristic feature of power is that some men can more or less entirely determine other men’s conduct – but never exhaustively or coercively. A man who is chained up and beaten is subject to force being exerted over him. Not power. But if he can be induced to speak, when his ultimate recourse could have been to hold his tongue, preferring death, then he has been caused to behave in a certain way. His freedom has been subjected to power. He has been submitted to government. If an individual can remain free, however little his freedom may be, power can subject him to government. There is no power without potential refusal or revolt.<br /><br />As for all relations among men, many factors determine power. Yet rationalisation is also constantly working away at it. There are specific forms to such rationalisation. It differs from the rationalisation peculiar to economic processes, or to production and communication techniques; it differs from that of scientific discourse. The government of men by men -whether they form small or large groups, whether it is power exerted by men over women, or by adults over children, or by one class over another, or by a bureaucracy over a population – involves a certain type of rationality. It doesn’t involve instrumental violence.<br /><br />Consequently, those who resist or rebel against a form of power cannot merely be content to denounce violence or criticise an institution. Nor is it enough to cast the blame on reason in general. What has to be questioned is the form of rationality at stake. The criticism of power wielded over the mentally sick or mad cannot be restricted to psychiatric institutions; nor can those questioning the power to punish be content with denouncing prisons as total institutions. The question is: how are such relations of power rationalized? Asking it is the only way to avoid other institutions, with the same objectives and the same effects, from taking their stead.<br /><br />For several centuries, the state has been one of the most remarkable, one of the most redoubtable, forms of human government. Very significantly, political criticism has reproached the state with being simultaneously a factor for individualisation and a totalitarian principle, Just to look at nascent state rationality, just to see what its first policing project was, makes it clear that, right from the start, the state is both individualising and totalitarian. Opposing the individual and his interests to it is just as hazardous as opposing it with the community and its requirements. Political rationality has grown and imposed itself all throughout the history of Western societies. It first took its stand on the idea of pastoral power, then on that of reason of state. Its inevitable effects are both individualisation and totalisation. Liberation can only come from attacking, not just one of these two effects, but political rationality’s very roots.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215600087261093813.post-38397659205363766462010-01-09T08:31:00.000-08:002010-01-09T09:02:07.797-08:00Of Other Spaces, 1967<span style="font-style:italic;">Michel Foucault<br /></span><br />First there are the utopias. Utopias are sites with no real place. They are sites that have a general relation of direct or inverted analogy with the real space of Society. They present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down, but in any case these utopias are fundamentally unreal spaces.<br /><br />There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias. I believe that between utopias and these quite other sites, these heterotopias, there might be a sort of mixed, joint experience, which would be the mirror. The mirror is, after all, a utopia, since it is a placeless place. In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface; I am over there, there where I am not, a sort of shadow that gives my own visibility to myself, that enables me to see myself there where I am absent: such is the utopia of the mirror. But it is also a heterotopia in so far as the mirror does exist in reality, where it exerts a sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy. From the standpoint of the mirror I discover my absence from the place where I am since I see myself over there. Starting from this gaze that is, as it were, directed toward me, from the ground of this virtual space that is on the other side of the glass, I come back toward myself; I begin again to direct my eyes toward myself and to reconstitute myself there where I am. The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this virtual point which is over there.<br /><br />As for the heterotopias as such, how can they be described? What meaning do they have? We might imagine a sort of systematic description - I do not say a science because the term is too galvanized now -that would, in a given society, take as its object the study, analysis, description, and 'reading' (as some like to say nowadays) of these different spaces, of these other places. As a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation of the space in which we live, this description could be called heterotopology.<br /><br />Its first principle is that there is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute heterotopias. That is a constant of every human group. But the heterotopias obviously take quite varied forms, and perhaps no one absolutely universal form of heterotopia would be found. We can however class them in two main categories.<br /><br />In the so-called primitive societies, there is a certain form of heterotopia that I would call crisis heterotopias, i.e., there are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women. the elderly, etc. In out society, these crisis heterotopias are persistently disappearing, though a few remnants can still be found. For example, the boarding school, in its nineteenth-century form, or military service for young men, have certainly played such a role, as the first manifestations of sexual virility were in fact supposed to take place "elsewhere" than at home. For girls, there was, until the middle of the twentieth century, a tradition called the "honeymoon trip" which was an ancestral theme. The young woman's deflowering could take place "nowhere" and, at the moment of its occurrence the train or honeymoon hotel was indeed the place of this nowhere, this heterotopia without geographical markers.<br /><br />But these heterotopias of crisis are disappearing today and are being replaced, I believe, by what we might call heterotopias of deviation: those in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed. Cases of this are rest homes and psychiatric hospitals, and of course prisons, and one should perhaps add retirement homes that are, as it were, on the borderline between the heterotopia of crisis and the heterotopia of deviation since, after all, old age is a crisis, but is also a deviation since in our society where leisure is the rule, idleness is a sort of deviation.<br /><br />The second principle of this description of heterotopias is that a society, as its history unfolds, can make an existing heterotopia function in a very different fashion; for each heterotopia has a precise and determined function within a society and the same heterotopia can, according to the synchrony of the culture in which it occurs, have one function or another.<br /><br />As an example I shall take the strange heterotopia of the cemetery. The cemetery is certainly a place unlike ordinary cultural spaces. It is a space that is however connected with all the sites of the city, state or society or village, etc., since each individual, each family has relatives in the cemetery. In western culture the cemetery has practically always existed. But it has undergone important changes. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery was placed at the heart of the city, next to the church. In it there was a hierarchy of possible tombs. There was the charnel house in which bodies lost the last traces of individuality, there were a few individual tombs and then there were the tombs inside the church. These latter tombs were themselves of two types, either simply tombstones with an inscription, or mausoleums with statues. This cemetery housed inside the sacred space of the church has taken on a quite different cast in modern civilizations, and curiously, it is in a time when civilization has become 'atheistic,' as one says very crudely, that western culture has established what is termed the cult of the dead.<br /><br />Basically it was quite natural that, in a time of real belief in the resurrection of bodies and the immortality of the soul, overriding importance was not accorded to the body's remains. On the contrary, from the moment when people are no longer sure that they have a soul or that the body will regain life, it is perhaps necessary to give much more attention to the dead body, which is ultimately the only trace of our existence in the world and in language. In any case, it is from the beginning of the nineteenth century that everyone has a right to her or his own little box for her or his own little personal decay, but on the other hand, it is only from that start of the nineteenth century that cemeteries began to be located at the outside border of cities. In correlation with the individualization of death and the bourgeois appropriation of the cemetery, there arises an obsession with death as an 'illness.' The dead, it is supposed, bring illnesses to the living, and it is the presence and proximity of the dead right beside the houses, next to the church, almost in the middle of the street, it is this proximity that propagates death itself. This major theme of illness spread by the contagion in the cemeteries persisted until the end of the eighteenth century, until, during the nineteenth century, the shift of cemeteries toward the suburbs was initiated. The cemeteries then came to constitute, no longer the sacred and immortal heart of the city, but the other city, where each family possesses its dark resting place.<br /><br />Third principle. The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. Thus it is that the theater brings onto the rectangle of the stage, one after the other, a whole series of places that are foreign to one another; thus it is that the cinema is a very odd rectangular room, at the end of which, on a two-dimensional screen, one sees the projection of a three-dimensional space, but perhaps the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites is the garden. We must not forget that in the Orient the garden, an astonishing creation that is now a thousand years old, had very deep and seemingly superimposed meanings. The traditional garden of the Persians was a sacred space that was supposed to bring together inside its rectangle four parts representing the four parts of the world, with a space still more sacred than the others that were like an umbilicus, the navel of the world at its center (the basin and water fountain were there); and all the vegetation of the garden was supposed to come together in this space, in this sort of microcosm. As for carpets, they were originally reproductions of gardens (the garden is a rug onto which the whole world comes to enact its symbolic perfection, and the rug is a sort of garden that can move across space). The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world. The garden has been a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia since the beginnings of antiquity (our modern zoological gardens spring from that source).<br /><br />Fourth principle. Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time - which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time. This situation shows us that the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopic place since, for the individual, the cemetery begins with this strange heterochrony, the loss of life, and with this quasi-eternity in which her permanent lot is dissolution and disappearance.<br /><br />From a general standpoint, in a society like ours heterotopias and heterochronies are structured and distributed in a relatively complex fashion. First of all, there are heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time, for example museums and libraries, Museums and libraries have become heterotopias in which time never stops building up and topping its own summit, whereas in the seventeenth century, even at the end of the century, museums and libraries were the expression of an individual choice. By contrast, the idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity. The museum and the library are heterotopias that are proper to western culture of the nineteenth century.<br /><br />Opposite these heterotopias that are linked to the accumulation of time, there are those linked, on the contrary, to time in its most flowing, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival. These heterotopias are not oriented toward the eternal, they are rather absolutely temporal [chroniques]. Such, for example, are the fairgrounds, these' marvelous empty sites on the outskirts of cities that teem once or twice a year with stands, displays, heteroclite objects, wrestlers, snakewomen, fortune-tellers, and so forth. Quite recently, a new kind of temporal heterotopia has been invented: vacation villages, such as those Polynesian villages that offer a compact three weeks of primitive and eternal nudity to the inhabitants of the cities. You see, moreover, that through the two forms of heterotopias that come together here, the heterotopia of the festival and that of the eternity of accumulating time, the huts of Djerba are in a sense relatives of libraries and museums. for the rediscovery of Polynesian life abolishes time; yet the experience is just as much the,, rediscovery of time, it is as if the entire history of humanity reaching back to its origin were accessible in a sort of immediate knowledge,<br /><br />Fifth principle. Heterotopias always presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable. In general, the heterotopic site is not freely accessible like a public place. Either the entry is compulsory, as in the case of entering a barracks or a prison, or else the individual has to submit to rites and purifications. To get in one must have a certain permission and make certain gestures. Moreover, there are even heterotopias that are entirely consecrated to these activities of purification -purification that is partly religious and partly hygienic, such as the hammin of the Moslems, or else purification that appears to be purely hygienic, as in Scandinavian saunas.<br /><br />There are others, on the contrary, that seem to be pure and simple openings, but that generally hide curious exclusions. Everyone can enter into thew heterotopic sites, but in fact that is only an illusion- we think we enter where we are, by the very fact that we enter, excluded. I am thinking for example, of the famous bedrooms that existed on the great farms of Brazil and elsewhere in South America. The entry door did not lead into the central room where the family lived, and every individual or traveler who came by had the right to ope this door, to enter into the bedroom and to sleep there for a night. Now these bedrooms were such that the individual who went into them never had access to the family's quarter the visitor was absolutely the guest in transit, was not really the invited guest. This type of heterotopia, which has practically disappeared from our civilizations, could perhaps be found in the famous American motel rooms where a man goes with his car and his mistress and where illicit sex is both absolutely sheltered and absolutely hidden, kept isolated without however being allowed out in the open.<br /><br />Sixth principle. The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains. This function unfolds between two extreme poles. Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory (perhaps that is the role that was played by those famous brothels of which we are now deprived). Or else, on the contrary, their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled. This latter type would be the heterotopia, not of illusion, but of compensation, and I wonder if certain colonies have not functioned somewhat in this manner. In certain cases, they have played, on the level of the general organization of terrestrial space, the role of heterotopias. I am thinking, for example, of the first wave of colonization in the seventeenth century, of the Puritan societies that the English had founded in America and that were absolutely perfect other places. I am also thinking of those extraordinary Jesuit colonies that were founded in South America: marvelous, absolutely regulated colonies in which human perfection was effectively achieved. The Jesuits of Paraguay established colonies in which existence was regulated at every turn. The village was laid out according to a rigorous plan around a rectangular place at the foot of which was the church; on one side, there was the school; on the other, the cemetery-, and then, in front of the church, an avenue set out that another crossed at fight angles; each family had its little cabin along these two axes and thus the sign of Christ was exactly reproduced. Christianity marked the space and geography of the American world with its fundamental sign.<br /><br />The daily life of individuals was regulated, not by the whistle, but by the bell. Everyone was awakened at the same time, everyone began work at the same time; meals were at noon and five o'clock-, then came bedtime, and at midnight came what was called the marital wake-up, that is, at the chime of the churchbell, each person carried out her/his duty.<br /><br />Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea and that, from port to port, from tack to tack, from brothel to brothel, it goes as far as the colonies in search of the most precious treasures they conceal in their gardens, you will understand why the boat has not only been for our civilization, from the sixteenth century until the present, the great instrument of economic development (I have not been speaking of that today), but has been simultaneously the greatest reserve of the imagination. The ship is the heterotopia par excellence. In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0