The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

70 Nodes
swarming is simply a reminder of the defacement that runs through
all instances of “facing” the other.
“The face is produced only when the head ceases to be part of the
body.” 39
Biopolitics and Protocol
The discussion of swarming and networking hints again at a point
made throughout this book: that the preponderance of network forms
of organization in no way implies an absence of power relations or of
control structures. In fact, it prescribes them. But the kinds of power
relations and control structures are not necessarily those of top - down
hierarchies. They are of another order.
Additionally, we should stress that all this talk about networks is
not restricted to the discussion of technical systems. Networks can be
technological, yes, but they are also biological, social, and political.
Thus what is at stake in any discussion of the political dimensions of
networks is, at bottom, the experience of living within networks,
forms of control, and the multiple protocols that inform them. As we
suggest, networks are always “living networks,” and often what is produced
in living networks is social life itself. That is, if there is something
that results from networks, something produced from networks,
it is the experience of systematicity itself, of an integration of technology,
biology, and politics. Networks structure our experience of
the world in a number of ways, and what is required is a way of understanding
how networks are related to the aggregates of singularities—both
human and nonhuman—that are implicated in the network.
What is required, then, is a way of understanding politics as
biopolitics.
Michel Foucault calls “biopolitics” that mode of organizing, managing,
and above all regulating “the population,” considered as a biological, species
entity.
Broadly speaking, biopolitics is a historical condition in which
biology is brought into the domain of politics; indeed, it is the moment