Ordering Iraq: Reflections on Power, Discourse, & Neocolonialism

Several years into the occupation of Iraq, there remain questions as to that nation’s relative sovereignty. Given the degree of political, economic, and military control by the US government, numerous commentators characterize Iraq as a neocolonial state. Indeed, the design for nation-building has been firmly established by external rather than internal forces; those developments invite closer scrutiny into the nature of power in a post-9/11 world. Accordingly, this critique sets out to explore the conceptual underpinnings of neocolonialism by turning critical attention to discourse and biopower shaping the reconstruction of Iraq. The analysis similarly attends to state crime, especially controversial economic tactics banned under international and federal laws. So as to contextualize those violations within a broader social and legal framework, the discussion considers the significance of states of exception and institutionalized impunity. Foucault’s writings figure prominently among these reflections on order, governmentality, and power. Nonetheless, in an effort to contribute to a wider theoretical agenda for critical criminology, the article also draws on other interdisciplinary sources, including Agamben (State of exception, 2005), Gregory (The colonial present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, 2004) and Hardt and Negri (Empire, 2001; Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire, 2004).

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Michael WelchEmail: URL: www.professormichaelwelch.com