Foucault, Security Politics

'Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?' - Michel Foucualt, Discipline and Punish, 228

Living in Jerusalem, one lives with the stress of 'security' constantly, albeit, in some ways, for good reason. But security can never be taken as a blanket necessity, as a necessity without question. Americans are learning the perils of this, the slippery slope of security where the question of safety slides into broad, frontal authoritarian control. Not the nuanced ones that Foucault spent so much time on, but publicly advocated measures granting the government near complete access, at any time, to those it rules over. Domestic/international communications surveillance and access to financial records, all in the name of protection against an enemy who, despite their apparent hatred for 'us,' lives among us and could do anything to us at any time. The only way to 'protect our freedom' is to curb it. But these are oft made arguments, I'm interested in one a little more difficult.

There is a coffee shop on campus that I often frequent, which sits inside the actual school parameter. The parameter, much in response to a suicide bombing in the international school a few years ago, is completely sealed off; the only access to the campus is through certain checkpoint-style guard stations. In order to enter the building, unless otherwise waved past, one must have their bag(s) checked and go through a metal detector, after showing student ID. Thus, if the security guards had performed their job to the greatest detail, the campus should be completely secured. A complex of complete knowledge, complete security, a site without worry of the 'enemy.' But checking everyone to that length is impossible, or the lines would go on forever, so on sight derivations from this principle of complete security are made in an effort to make the whole process work in greater haste. This is understandable, but the definitions that are made are very different. Everyone else over Palestinians, students known from before over new students, sometimes even women over men. Some of this, indeed, stems from experience. Many here would remind me that intruders come here to only do the 'evil' deed, that Israelis would not bomb an Israeli institution and that the only people who have done the suicide bombing are usually men, if not Palestinian. But the generally applied rule, as then a marker, incorporated into the general coding of security regulation, is of interest.

Back to the coffee shop. The coffee shop sits inside the parameter, which is supposed to be entirely secure, and outside the shop sits a guard. One has to ask, if this place is so secure, what is he doing here? One would be correct to point out the laws or extra tax burdens for shops that do not have these guards, but it seems a bit peculiar regardless. Some may charge I am extrapolating, making a huge deal out of nothing, but it is a chance I am willing to take.

The guard, in my mind, shows the manners in which the 'secure' zone must be further secured. The guard, in some ways, increases that surveillance, furthering the abilities of the 'gaze' to penetrate the movements, directions and actions of the individuals involved. This is the guard's intent and purpose. No one doubts that. But the good or 'reasonable' aspects of these security measures cannot be separated from their 'power effect(s)' (as Foucault would call them), where the ultimate goal is complete knowledge, complete control, complete oversight. Moral judgments do not detract from the possibility that such measures of our 'safety' carry power effects of domination and oversight. The organization of people along gradients between 'most likely' and 'least likely' of enemies of our security cannot be removed from the attempts to establish 'security.' The scandal is not that it occurs, but that it occurs without question. Even peeking at the subject, of a darker side of security, is met with much understandable resistance; many people are baffled that such a question would be raised at all. But it such claims cannot distract from the fact that such a 'good' set of measures inherits a goal that is authoritarian if not totalitarian. The real question about such measures of security are not their necessity, but our uncritical defense of them. We might ask with great purpose what ways we contribute to our own control. Morality or necessity should certainly have a voice, but we need institute them only with the watchful eye of their limits, goals and other applications in the panoply of social practices. As Foucault reminded us, quoted above, to be outside of an extreme does not rule out the possibility of living in whole groups of relations modeled after the extreme.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans: Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1995.