Assemblage, ‘political society’ and Bhopal

a.d.davies@liv.ac.uk

An assemblage!

Source: Stephen Richards/Geograph http://www.geograph.org.uk/profile/34784

Assemblage politics

• Components and their connections– Micropolitics

Deleuzian Politics and the IDF‘this space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. […] The question is how do you interpret the alley? […] We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors....

I said to my troops, “Friends! […] If until now you were used to mov[ing] along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we

all walk through walls!”’

Cited in Weizman, 2006

Israeli troops scan walls in a refugee camp; photo by Nir Kafri (2003), from Eyal Weizman's essay "Lethal Theory"

Political Society

2004 2011

Political Society

• Critique of ‘Western’ political liberalism– Utopianism– ‘Civil society’ as the answer

• Colonial rule in India and the bourgeois state– Civil society an exclusive club– NEP and globalisation – importance of Capital

• Do adivasis (or any other marginal group) count as citizens?– Links to Foucault

Political Subjectivity

• Given the expansion of the Indian state into a mode of governing populations, how can these populations actually go about claiming ‘a place at the table’?

• Popular sovereignty vs. democracy• How does democratisation play out in

practice?

Practices

• Bypassing ‘civil society’ to negotiate directly with ‘the powerful’

• Creating and demarcating new ‘communities’ who can collectively bargain

Critiques

• Binarism– West/non-West– Bourgeois/governed– Civil/political Society

• Uniformity of ‘civil’ society• Lack of ‘possibility’

The Bhopal Disaster

Effects

• c.500,000 affected by gas cloud• 3,837 immediate deaths (MP Govt)• c.8,000 in following two weeks• Continuing health issues• Pollution of water supply

Corporate accountability

• Plant not owned by Union Carbide (UCC), but by an Indian subsidiary (UCIL)

• 1989 UCC agrees compensation package of $470m with Indian state

• 2001 UCC becomes subsidiary of Dow Chemical• Dow/UCC maintain accident caused by

‘disgruntled worker’• 2010 GOI agrees $230m renumeration

“The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world's largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical (who bought Union Carbide) has refused to clean up, and whole new generations have been poisoned. For more information, please visit http://www.bhopal.org.”

Assemblage?

Rhizomes

• Attributing causes– Disgruntled worker– Inability to recreate situation for analysis– Unkown composition of gas cloud

• Mapping effects– Measuring water toxicity– Medical treatment of variety of conditions

Political society?

• Socio-economic status• Creating a ‘community’– Empowerment of women

But...

• Transnational civil society• Links to Government of India

Striking a balance?

• The de-humanising dynamism of assemblage• Vs.• The Foucaultian power structures of political

society

Conclusions?

• Assemblage useful at the ‘coming together’ of components

• State, market, Civil AND Political Societies• Political subjectivity (in India and elsewhere)• Limits of political liberalism