The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

8 Prolegomenon
of power, but at the end of the day, it is the American president who
makes decisions concerning war, resources, and trade. While this is
undoubtedly true, it can also be argued that the political iconog -
raphy of the presidency is the effect, not the cause, of asymmetrical
global political relations. Furthermore, an effective political understanding
of the situation cannot begin from the terminal effects of
power relations. Instead one might ask: what power relationships
need to be in place such that a single entity can obtain propriety over
global organization and control?
While a Foucauldian emphasis on the bottom - up character of power
relations is an important strategy for understanding the specifically
global character of power relations, Foucault himself was always skeptical
of contextualizing his work in terms of an ontology (and thus
his emphasis on epistemology or on “power/ knowledge”).
A Foucauldian analysis may reveal how power is conditioned in its terminal
effects (Homeland Security, the Patriot Act), yet it does not say
much on the existence as such of this power.
Put simply, such an analysis describes how power comes to be, but
says little about how it works or even that it exists as such. A number
of questions follow from this: What does it mean to “personify” or
to individuate entities such as the United States in terms of unilat -
eralism? (This is Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s challenge as
well, to argue that “America” and “Empire” are not mere synonyms.)
More importantly, what are the networks of power relations that
constitute the very ontology of the “unilateralism versus multilateralism”
debate?
One immediate answer is given by the myriad political analyses
concerning the United States. 2 These books hint at something intui -
tive: that the very term “American unilateralism” is a misnomer. Unilateralism
works at several layers: on one layer it connects the White
House with the House of Saud, on another with Israel, on another
with Halliburton, on another with the United Nations, and so forth.
So while it might sound like a contradiction, the Foucauldian analysis
suggests that unilateralism must be understood as a network. This
does not mean that it has no center; quite the opposite.