Category Archives: Power

The Mask of ‘Anarchy’

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

An article by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian has been making the rounds and offers some interesting commentary on the proliferation of the V for Vendetta mask at recent #Occupy protests. Coming on the heels of the Oakland General Strike, … Continue reading →

Posted in #Occupy, Bandits, City, Everyday Life, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Law, Networks, Pirates, Power, Spectacle, The State, Violence | 5 Comments

Occupy Oakland Photo Slideshow

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

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Posted in #Occupy, City, Everyday Life, Power | Comments Off on Occupy Oakland Photo Slideshow

¡General Strike! Oakland Walks

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Today. A General Strike. Oakland will become liberated territory. I will be in Oakland with many many people. I read a great post this morning on what a “General Strike” actually means. The post draws on Walter Benjamin and Rosa … Continue reading →

Posted in #Occupy, City, Dialectics, Elites, Everyday Life, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Pirates, Power, Violence | Comments Off on ¡General Strike! Oakland Walks

Against Spectacle? “Crises” and the Infographic

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

So there’s been a lot of interesting infographics published recently that help visually represent a host of contemporary issue and crises: from Euro Debt, U.S. income inequality, and the increasingly consolidated power of corporations and banks, to the Afghan quagmire … Continue reading →

Posted in #Occupy, Bandits, Critique, Elites, Everyday Life, Guy Debord, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Networks, Political Economy, Power, Spectacle, Violence | 2 Comments

Geographies of the Outlaw

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

The word “outlaw”—outside of the law—implicitly articulates the intimate relationship between geography and the law. From the perspective of state-makers and capitalists, the groups of outlaws I’m collectively labeling “Motley Crews” (as a shorthand) pose a grave ideological and spatial … Continue reading →

Posted in Bandits, Carl Schmitt, Drugs, Elites, Forests, Frontiers, Gender, Historical-Geographies, Illegality, Insurgency/Counterinsurgency, Karl Marx, Land, Law, Michel Foucault, Networks, Pirates, Post-Colonial, Power, Primitive Accumulation, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, Terror, The Body, The Sea, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Geographies of the Outlaw

Spatiality & Power

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

“A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas… on the soft fibers of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Antonio Gramsci, Assemblages, Carl Schmitt, Dialectics, Everyday Life, Governmentality, Hegemony, Henri Lefebvre, Illegality, Karl Marx, Law, Michel Foucault, Power, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The State, Violence | 1 Comment

A Genealogy of Sovereignty

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Bartelson, Jens. 1995. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. This was a difficult book so I tried outlining it chapter by chapter: Ch. 1 – Bartelson proposes a genealogy of “sovereignty” and lays out the arguments and methods for … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Frontiers, Historical-Geographies, Land, Law, Nation/Nationalism, Niccolo Machiavelli, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, Territory, The State | Comments Off on A Genealogy of Sovereignty

Cartographic Mexico

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Craib, Raymond. 2004. Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. I remember my social studies teacher in elementary school using the peel of an orange to show us why most world maps … Continue reading →

Posted in Boundaries, Land, Law, Maps, Michel Foucault, Nation/Nationalism, Place, Post-Colonial, Power, Science & Tech., Spatiality, Territory, The State | Comments Off on Cartographic Mexico

Global Outlaws

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Nordstrom, Carolyn. 2007. Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carolyn Nordstrom’s book is an ethnography about the extra-legal, as she calls them, flows and networks, which she sees as constituting a … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Elites, Forests, Frontiers, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Scale, Sovereignty, Spatiality, The Sea, The State | Comments Off on Global Outlaws

Violent Entrepreneurs

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Teo Ballvé

Volkov, Vadim. 2002. Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vadim Volkov’s extremely impressive book details how an entire class of “violent entrepreneurs” became the handmaidens of the Soviet transition … Continue reading →

Posted in Bandits, Critique, Dialectics, Elites, Everyday Life, Illegality, Law, Networks, Power, Sovereignty, The State, Violence | Comments Off on Violent Entrepreneurs