Book Review: The Right to Maim
‘Will Not Let Die’ and the question of ‘cool’ in academia
In a recent university lecture, the professor interrupted the lecture to ask “Is Foucault still cool?”
We were getting a general overview of the philosopher’s theories, which continue to hold a huge sway on critical international relations, more than other social sciences.
‘Cool’ is a slippery concept (this version is more Lou Reed than Aretha Franklin) and the question was partly facetious, but as with all jokes, there was a layer of seriousness to it. It got me thinking about whether concepts like biopower, power-knowledge, the panopticon* are in part so attractive because of their ‘edge’.
Which brings us to Jasbir Puar’s recent book The Right to Maim (2017).
The book is dense but rewarding. It explores ideas around disability and political oppression through the concept of ‘debility’. Puar uses ‘debility’ to argue that the kind of oppression that can be inflicted by occupying forces (for example in Israel-Palestine) is akin to the physical experiences of disability. As we will now turn to she describes the experience of the israeli occupation of Palestinians in bodily terms, so the social experience of the occupation is ‘debilitating’.
There is *a lot* more complexity to it, but for the purposes of this piece we will get to the main case that Puar uses. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has a recent policy which is intended to avoid killing Palestinians. They call it the “let live” (129) policy and the idea is that when dealing with security issues the policy dictates that soldiers should avoid casualties where possible. Taken on face value, and out of context, one could see this as a well-intentioned policy aiming to preserve life. However, Puar draws out the inhumane consequences of a seemingly humane intention, namely the rising population of Palestinians disabled through gun-shot wounds.
Puar highlights that while Palestinian fatalities have declined, violence against Palestinians has in fact increased. Rather than preserving life, the predominant impact of the ‘let live’ policy is in generating a population in need of care and support from those not yet ‘debilitated’.
This is where Puar gets the title of the book. The ‘let live’ policy is actually an “implicit claim to a ‘right to maim’ ” (original emphasis, ibid).
Taking this as the starting point, Puar considers Foucault’s formulation of biopower. Foucault originally discussed biopower as the ability of the state to ‘make live’ and ‘let die’, which is an expansion of sovereign power, or the power to ‘let live’ or ‘make die’.
Puar argues that the ‘right to maim’ and the Israeli occupation takes biopower to a next logical level of control, it is a logic of ‘will not let die’. The argument runs that, in addition to the control of the checkpoints, the occupation has created an environment where Palestinian subsistence is encouraged only to extract value from Palestinian workers and nothing more.
Now, Puar is absolutely right to broaden Foucault’s conception of biopower under the circumstances, the occupation’s control of Palestine seems to demand some new conception of what he called a control society. But this is also where the theory runs into problems. Puar, like Foucault, is so drawn to theory as dark and transgressive (i.e. ‘a right to maim’, ‘will not let die’, ‘debility’, ‘make die’ etc.) that a crucial insight into the evolution of power becomes distorted.
Taking a step back and considering ‘will not let die’ as a kind of imperative declaration enforced by society, it intuitively seems much more applicable to modern forms of medicine. A doctor keeping a patient alive is not allowing them to die when in the past they would have done. The kind of advanced medicine represented by life support, statins, emergency operations that can now maintain life from injuries which in the past would have been fatal, these activities remove the option of death in concrete ways that one could imagine Foucault himself being interested in exploring as lifespans have increased. Advances in healthcare enable life and capacitate bodies that previously would have been unable to survive. ‘Will not let die’ is not so much something that one would ascribe to a soldier aiming at a civilian’s legs, but more to a medic looking to save life, even at the cost of debility. While ‘will not let die’ is an important addition to the Foucauldian lexicon, it is much more applicable to maintaining life than maiming it.
In this analysis, ‘will not let live’ is a much closer description of the actions of the Israeli state vis-à-vis the Palestinians. In a recent response to the Disorder of Things symposium, Puar seems to respond to the inversion i’m suggesting:
What the maiming vector exposes is the liberal conceit at the heart of biopolitical thought, that “letting live” is always a gift in contradistinction to the sovereign right to kill, or the “make die” quadrant.
The problem is that ‘will not let live’ highlights a simple fact of the Israeli occupation, that Palestinians are not free, are harassed by the IDF, by settlers and the rest. This is not an attempt to cede that the IDF is acting to preserve life, they are indeed shooting people and maiming them, but is also attentive to other forms of what may be reasonably claimed as life-preserving activities. While it has no chance at being dark, subversive or unsettling, using ‘will not let live’ to describe the occupation and ‘will not let die’ describe modern medicine is also closer to lived reality.
‘Will not let die’ as a phrase, when combined with the realities of the ‘let live’ policy, evokes a sense of active torture. When combined with modern medical practice it not only takes on a different meaning, it evokes a different set of analyses and links the ‘let live’ policy with the broader practices of the occupation.
Elsewhere, Puar uses the idea of the ‘asphixatory regime of power’, adopted from Omar Salamanca (2011). Check points become choke points. The trouble is that Puar’s use of Salamanca is much closer to what Foucault would consider a discipline society (rather than a control society). A discipline society is one that ‘dealt with individuals and their bodies in practical terms’ (2003, 245). The territorial and digital enclosure that Puar describes combine to create a totalised environment of discipline. Everything, including ‘calories, megawatts, water, telecommunication networks, and spectrum and bandwidth allocation’ (2017, 134) is under this regime. This means that the biopolitical aspects of the occupation are lost right where they are needed. Puar is not looking at the generative role of governmental policies (for example, Israel’s fertility policies), or the exclusion of Palestinian voices from the legitimate national or international discourse on the Palestinian situation. And it seems that once again the reason is in order to make a point that evokes a dark and monstrous image, of choking.
Now I am aware that this should not come across as either accusatory or calling out an exclusion in a book when no book can cover everything. I also do not want to critique in order to minimise the real suffering detailed in the book, that is why I have linked to some of those details as reported in the media. No one can assume to know why a certain analysis is chosen over another. Dark and shocking imagery is absolutely appropriate when discussing dark and shocking realities. The reason to assess the book’s treatment of the IDF’s ‘let live’ policy from this perspective is to point out two things: first, that some important realities risk being missed or misconstrued, and second, that there is a shimmer of a normative tendency toward darkness in similar analyses.
The contention is that there is a tendency in this book and among some other academics (especially those with a Foucauldian bent) to contort their analysis in order to fit a darker or more evocative idea/phrase/image. As mentioned above, this could be for any number of reasons, but the assumption that it is in part social. That it is in some way aiming for a dark, cool, cutting presentation of academic knowledge. Last caveat: I don’t think I am above this, I find it alluring too, but there seems to be a trend to it, and I think it is one that doesn’t always help the analysis itself.
*That’s not to mention his book titles, Discipline and Punish (1975), Madness and Civilisation (1961), Psychiatric Power (2006).
