VULNERABLE MISSION

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
architecture, and coinage. 22 In the Roman Empire, the dying Gaul was the image of
the archetypal barbarian, while now Hollywood takes up the mantle by creating villains
to match the political climate. 23 Today, the ubiquity of advertisement is easy enough to
see: from television to billboards to user-specific internet advertisement, empire takes
captive the imaginations of the populace to serve its own economic interests. These last
two characteristics—myths and imagery—are missing from Münkler’s defining features,
while they relate to Hardt and Negri’s concept of biopower. In fact, imagination may
be a better term than biopower, for in the “capture of imagination,” subjects can be
manipulated toward certain ends by their own will rather than external force. This is the
very heart of biopower.
The language of empire, as we have seen, is at times ambiguous and fraught with abstraction.
Many institutions, from political states to corporations, can display qualities of
empire. This aspect of empire as a qualitative term relates to theologian Walter Wink’s
discussion of the language of the powers in the New Testament. He argues that the various
words for powers in Scripture refer at the same time to both spiritual and material
realities, and that these realities are not different, but rather, “simultaneously the outer
and inner aspects of one and the same indivisible concretion of power.” 24
To conclude, I suggest that empire is an inner aspect of many external realities which
function together in a global network of power relations. Various institutions (governments
and supra-governmental organizations, like the IMF or NATO) work with
the help of ideologies (e.g., capitalism, progress, democracy, and security) to create a
boundaryless empire. There is no one epicenter to this empire, rather, it has many foci,
from the economic centers of London, New York, and Tokyo to the military nexi of
the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the Israel Defense Force in Tel Aviv. Internetbased
Facebook, Twitter, and Google further function as gathering points through social
technology. These epicenters of power are bolstered by a combination of military and
socioeconomic structures, as well as biopower in the form of foundational myths with imagery
supporting these myths.
RHETORICAL INTIFADA
In the global economy, it is not the emperors who are stripped of their decency. In a version
of the story “Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils,” Alphonse Allais shows this
with striking imagery. As Salome the dancer removes her veils one by one, king Herod,
overcome with desire, keeps crying out, “go on, go on,” until Salome, already naked,
begins to rip the flesh from her body. “Listen,” cries the prophet Micah, “you . . . who
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22 Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Jerome Lectures 16 (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1988).
23 For description of the Gaul as the archenemy of Rome in visual art and literature, see Brigitte Kahl,
Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2010). For Hollywood’s treatment of contemporary villains, see, for instance, Helena Vanhala, The Depiction
of Terrorists in Blockbuster Hollywood Films, 1980–2001: An Analytical Study (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2011),
and Jack Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Brooklyn: Olive Branch Press, 2001).
24 Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1984), 107.