September 26, 2022
Me and the Left right now
Me and the Left right now.
We all want freedom of movement across borders. And it is absolutely, an hypocrisy for international corporations to move product freely but restrict the movement of people, across these same borders.
What is a country? Or a nation-state, which the topic will dance around forever. It's many things; at the very least: security, territory, population. What does that mean, at least in the most surface level and readily apparent way? On a basic level, there is a social contract. But, at minimum what is the social contract that makes up the state? That's kind of the problematic that Foucault takes up sometimes, and I merely want to interpret here some thing that he wrote about but very obliquely. "Territory" as in borders. Free movement of people across borders is some thing I support, but to have "open" borders in the sense that the movement is unrestricted and without consequence, is not the actual desired goal. Free movement of people is. What is "territory?" Foucault says that properly speaking it is the pastoral power of WHEN. Telling people when they can and when they can through the standard processes of the modern state, you might say post-Hegel, in the sense of borders; in a more general sense it is always a when in this pastoral power, when governing territory.
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