VULNERABLE MISSION

UNVEILING EMPIRE
interpreting it, absorbing it, and articulating it.” 17 While missiologists might find biopower
strikingly similar to “worldview,” biopower connotes an element of createdness.
Worldview or culture are generally considered passive concepts—no one entity makes
worldview, rather all participate in it—while biopower has an active component. It assumes
both an active party and recipients. When a company advertises for its product,
seeking to create demand in consumers, or when a government dictates certain behaviors
or modes of thinking, these are instances of biopower. A good example of biopower
is in Orwell’s classic, 1984. In this dystopian novel, the main character, Winston Smith,
tries to rebel against an authoritarian state led by a larger-than-life persona, Big Brother,
who decries individuality and reason as thought crimes. Smith is eventually captured
and tortured psychologically. Finally, the novel ends with a brain-washed Smith realizing,
“it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory
over himself. He loved Big Brother.” 18 Biopower strives toward this telos—a political
subject who, shaped by the forces of empire around her, desires that which the empire
wants. The final quality, Hardt and Negri note, is that “although the practice of Empire
is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace—a perpetual
and universal peace outside of history.” 19 This dedication to peace gives empire its mission.
As Münkler notes, mission serves as a self-sacralizing virtue for empire, expanding
its necessity beyond the interests of any private actors, as well as providing a theory of
ends to justify any means needed to accomplish such a task. 20 This mantra of “peace and
security” will be discussed further below.
Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat suggest four characteristics as definitive for empires. 21
First, empires are built on systemic centralization of power. This is related to both the first and
second characteristics that Münkler describes, in dissolving equality and in gradating
power. While Hardt and Negri contend that empire today is marked by decentralization,
this does not necessarily contradict Walsh and Keesmaat, for indeed there are multiple
centers of power that both compete and work together. Second, they are secured by
structures of socioeconomic and military control. This characteristic relates to Münkler’s first,
second, and fifth characteristics, and in fact, it is the control secured by military and
economic forces that give empire, in Münkler’s definition, the ability to retain power.
Third, they are religiously legitimated by powerful myths. For instance, one common American
myth is that of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps”—in other words, if you are
poor, it is your own fault for not working hard enough—everyone can be successful if
they want to. This myth undermines the notion that economically successful individuals
or companies may have become so by disadvantaging others, as well as bolstering the
idea of the lazy poor. Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand” of the market which
self-regulates wealth represents another common myth supporting the increasingly unregulated
capital of the elite. Fourth, empires are sustained by imperial images that capture the
imagination of the population. In ancient times, these images were distributed via sculpture,
17 Ibid., 23–24.
18 George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Plume, 2003), 308.
19 Hardt and Negri, Empire, xiv–xv.
20 Münkler, 85.
21 Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity
Press, 2004), 58.
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