Relaciones Internacionales (Feb 2021)
The Hegemon’s Perspective, Part I. On the inner source and morphology of world power and hegemony
Abstract
Modernity unfolds through the unrelenting exploitation, appropriation, and dispossession of human and natural substance; through the radical devaluation of nature, both human and extra-human; on hierarchy, racism, patriarchy, all in service to capitalist accumulation. A grasp of what lies at the base of one of the most important world-historical mechanisms of power formation and systemic reproduction that has hitherto kept the capitalist world-system/ecology going, hegemony, can be relevant for the formulation of new strategies of contention and practices of anti-systemic movements against this perverse mode of life organization. Such a grasp, thus, can be regarded as part of the anti-systemic program towards a more just society and ecologically-devoted humanity. Understanding how a hegemon can form and produce power can be conducive to the comprehension of how to jam or confront such a world-systemic mechanism, which is pivotal for the unabated expansion and reproduction of capitalism. This investigation endeavors to shed some light on this agency of world-historical power and systemic re/production. More to the point, it will posit a methodological way of reading and understanding the inner source and morphology of the hegemonic power. This paper, however, represents the spadework for further research. As we shall see, the complexity of the argument imposed a provisional “ecological expurgation”. As a consequence, nature will be silenced in Part I. The reasons for such a painful expurgation will be clear once we delve into the articulation of analysis and narrative. Such methodological and conceptual weakness is to be overcome through further research in Part II. It shall posit a complete hegemon’s perspective, namely, a world-ecological perspective on the hegemonic power. Part I, hence, will explore part of the material relational complexity that spawns hegemony in reality. On the present groundwork indeed, an understanding of the hegemonic power through post-Cartesian, that is, a world-ecological lens, could be unfolded to the fullest, both methodologically and historically. Provisional and fictional separation calls for permanent and lifelike reconstitution —which is the final aim of the research—. Part I will not engage in a traditional analysis of hegemony as a projection of power towards and onto world space. By contrast, it will deal with how a hegemon succeeds in projecting such power; that is, how the hegemon manages to internally generate power enough to make masses and states throughout the world captive and legible to the hegemon’s project of world leadership and historical development. What is seldom acknowledged is that a hegemon, before projecting power outward, must develop an internal formula. Hence, through this (provisional) methodological frame it will be argued that it is not simply an overt power that defines a hegemon, but its infra-structural power. More to the point, in Part I will posit the hegemon as a regime of power accumulation wherein state, capital and society work hand in glove with a particular degree of coherence developed within the established, or legal, boundaries of its territorial sovereignty. The internal organization of power that originates from this “coherent work” breeds hegemony, that is, the capacity to project power towards and onto world space. Part I purports to provide a way to explain analytically the hegemon’s organization, control, and logistics in order to understand sociospatial capacity for infrastructural power — a mode for investigating the tangled whole of powers, relations and networks that makes and permeates the fabric of the hegemon itself -. I would here hint at the world-ecological reading of the hegemon. In short: the world-ecological perspective of the Hegemon thinks of hegemonic power not solely as infra-structural power but as infra-relational power —meaning the capacity to historically design first, and then organize the project of power, science and nature by activating operations to harness the relational forces between humans and nature (as well as within both and their own inextricable intertwining) in service of capitalist power—. The hegemon is thus an organization of human-and-extra-human space that extensively and intensively re/produces, organizes, mobilizes and maximizes human-and-extra-human wealth, knowledge and interaction better than any other organization in the modern world-ecology. In short: before projecting power outward, the hegemon must develop a socioecological formula. Thus, from a complete hegemon’s perspective, hegemony is firstly an inner actual world-ecological design of the world. This is the idea behind the methodological and historical investigation of world-ecology to be carried out. Part I maintains that hegemonic power is the product of a trialectic unity of state, capital and society in which multiple overlapping and intersecting spatial networks of power, and the attendant immanent relations, are viewed as constitutive of the working totality. A hegemon deploys the most coherent – efficient and effective – design and operationalization of infrastructural power. Complementary then, hegemonic infrastructural power is to be also seen as the specifically-organic product and conflation of extensive and intensive power – firstly, within its own legal space and borders. The hegemon is a regime of power accumulation that extensively and intensively re/produces, organizes, mobilizes, and maximizes wealth, knowledge and interaction better than any other organization in the modern world-system. Hence, compared to any other jurisdiction that vies with it, a hegemonic regime manages to generate and combine the highest organizational cooperation (put simply: cooperation among the largest number of people with and through the most expansive management of resources – extensive power) with the greatest organizational command (put simply: the highest level of commitment from participants and utilization of resources – intensive power). The investigation of networks and relations, (bundled by) extensive and intensive power, is, in short, the method being argued for. As a whole, this will allow us to see the socio-spatial dynamic of infrastructural power production and to account for (the coherence of) the hegemon’s structure – the hegemony’s source. Finally, this is to prepare the ground, on the one hand, for the factual analysis of the hegemons’ historical development, since it purports to provide a useful framework to investigate the hegemons’ historical organization as well as the manifold web of power relations contained within it. On the other, it provides, as a whole, the springboard through which to unfold the world-ecological perspective on the hegemon, both methodologically and historically.
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