The Libyan Drawers: ‘Stateless Society,’ ‘Humanitarian Intervention,’ ‘Logic of Exception’ and ‘Traversing the Phantasy’

Abstract

In this article I examine the Libyan case through diverse theoretical lenses. For this purpose, I inquire into the ways Libya under Qadhdhafi previously has been investigated in order to deconstruct the Orientalist vision of a ‘stateless society’ and to reveal the ideological interests that the stigmatization of Qadhdhafi as a ‘mad dog’ served. By looking at the current situation, the article inevitably interrogates the role of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and its ideological kernel that seems to parallel the incapacity of academic scholarship to move beyond the notion of ‘statelessness.’ Then, it investigates whether a continuation of the logic of exception that seemed to characterize the Jamahiriyya under Qadhdhafi is still present and, finally, it proposes the possible embracement of a new radical position through the Lacanian process of ‘subjective destitution’ or ‘traversing the phantasy,’ as elaborated by Slavoj Žižek.

Keywords::

• Agamben
• humanitarian intervention
• Lacan
• Libya
• logic of exception
• Qadhdhafi
• statelessness
• subjective destitution
• violence
• Žižek

Notes

¹ Asef Bayat argues that ‘refolutions’ in the case of ‘Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia followed a particular trajectory, which can be characterized neither as “revolution” per se nor simply in terms of “reform” measures. Instead it may make sense to speak of “refolutions”: revolutions that aim to push for reforms in, and through, the institutions of the existing regimes.’ A. Bayat (2013) Revolution in Bad Times, New Left Review, 80 (March–April), pp. 47–60, p. 53.

²http://www.artandpoliticsnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Libya-Gaddafi-graffiti.jpg, accessed March 20, 2014.

³ It is crucial to stress that these reports provide neither a clear definition of democracy that they claim is emerging among Libyans nor assume an a priori one. For example, 85 percent of Libyans simply may refer to democracy as an umbrella term that stands for a more just and egalitarian society. In this sense, the reports do not provide much help. See National Democratic Institute & JMW Consulting (2013) Believing in Democracy: Public Opinion Survey in Libya. Available at: https://www.ndi.org/files/Believing-in-Democracy-Public-Opinion-Survey-Report-August-2013.pdf, accessed October 3, 2013.

⁴ National Democratic Institute & JMW Consulting (November 2013) Report on Seeking Security in Libya. Available at: https://www.ndi.org/files/Seeking-Security-Public-Opinion-Survey-in-Libya-WEBQUALITY.pdf, accessed January 1, 2014.

⁵http://www.alhurra.com/content/lybia-violence-643-killed-in-2013/242183.html, accessed January 23, 2014. The latest death toll is more than 640 people killed during 2013 in Libya. In 2014, an internet webpage was set up that aims to count the number of everyday deaths in Libya, since the ‘government refuses to count,’ as it is stated in their home page (available at: http://www.libyabodycount.org/, accessed June 24, 2014). This article comments on the closure of the oil fields by militias as a potential tool for negotiating with the government: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24051371, accessed September 11, 2013.

⁶ B. Fink (2014) Against Understanding – Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key (London: Routledge), p. 19.

⁷ As Dalì explains cryptically about his work Venus de Milo with Drawers: ‘Freud discovered the world of the subconscious on the tumid surfaces of ancient bodies, and Dali cut drawers into it.’ See http://thedali.org/exhibit/venus-drawers-pompoms/, accessed May 13, 2012.

⁸ One can see this tendency in the work of Lisa Anderson through many other authors to Dirk Vandewalle.

⁹ J. Davis (1987) Libyan Politics: Tribes and Revolution (London: I. B. Tauris), pp. 42–44.

¹⁰ Ibid. p. 58.

¹¹ D. Vandewalle (2006) A History of Modern Libya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 3.

¹² See, for instance, R. Lemarchand (2013) Non-State Politics in Post-Qadhafi Libya, Working Papers in African Studies, Islam in Africa Working-Group Meeting, University of Florida.

¹³ H. Roberts (2011) Who said Gaddafi had to go?, London Review of Books, 33(22), pp. 8–18.

¹⁴ See further A. Curtis (2012) He's Behind You – How Colonel Gaddafi and the Western Establishment Together Created a Pantomime World, BBC documentary available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/hes_behind_you, accessed October 24, 2012.

¹⁵ See, for example, the BBC Four documentary, Mad Dog: Gaddafi's Secret World and the book by A. Cojean (2012) Le Proies: dans le harem de Kadhafi (Paris: Grasset). Although I do not question the possibility that Qadhdhafi committed atrocious crimes, I believe these works clearly show how ideology functions in our society. Qadhdhafi is considered only under the aspect of his derailed psychological behaviour, and there is no attempt to investigate the Libyan constellation of practices of power. In this regard, one must highlight how the documentary presents young sub-Saharian Africans as naively believing in the power of Qadhdhafi, reinforcing the canon of the intellectually limited man of colour and the diabolic dimension of the Libyan leader. Once again, this is a simplistic portrait of these dynamics.

¹⁶ S. Žižek (1994) Introduction in: S. Žižek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (New York: Verso), p. 11.

¹⁷ E. Said (1978) Orientalism (London: Penguin).

¹⁸ It is interesting to note, for example, that former American presidents often spoke of Qadhdhafi ‘in terms that implied their support for his downfall and death.’ There is a long list of terms that have been used, which range from ‘subhuman,’ through ‘cancer,’ to ‘egomaniac who would trigger World War III to make headlines,’ and so on. See C. Wright (1981–82) Libya and the West: Headlong into Confrontation?, International Affairs, 58(1), p. 16.

¹⁹ S. Žižek (2001) Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? – Five Interventions in the (Mis)Use of a Notion (New York: Verso), p. 67.

²⁰ J. Pack (2013) The Centre and the Periphery, in J. Pack (ed.) The 2011 Libyan Uprising and the Post-Qadhafi Future (London: Palgrave MacMillan), p.11.

²¹ Pack categorizes the 2011 Libyan events as an uprising rather than a revolution because the latter is considered to ‘imply the creation of a new power structure buttressed by an alternative ideological framework.” (Ibid, pp. 1–2) In the footnotes, the author is inspired by the concept of revolution as it is formulated by Jack Goldstone, who ‘foregrounds the role of ideology as legitimizing factor in revolutions.’ However, if one follows, for instance, the arguments of Žižek (1987) in The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York: Verso) it may be argued that ideology is always present. I sense much of the literature on revolution still bears a tacit expectation of positive change that inevitably biases the analysis of the process in se and per se.

²² Pack, The Center and the Periphery, p. 9.

²³ Ibid, p. 10.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Pack makes this claim in ibid. p. 10: ‘Although Qadhafi's regime deliberately avoided building institutions, it survived from 1969 to 2011 because it remained powerful enough to prevent the consolidation of rival power centers.’

²⁶http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/2011/10/20/president-obama-death-muammar-qaddafi, accessed June 23, 2014.

²⁷http://www.libyaherald.com/2014/05/04/libya-has-two-prime-ministers/, accessed May 4, 2014.

²⁸ K. Mezran and F. Lamen proposes an ‘endeavor to convince the Libyan government that an international peacekeeping presence or police force would help reassure the security situation.’ Available at: http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/publications/issue-briefs/security-challenges-to-libyas-quest-for-democracy, accessed September 12, 2012. It is also worth stressing that Libya in fact has entered into agreement with Interpol for building the security environment. Available at: http://www.libyaherald.com/2014/02/26/libya-will-use-interpol-red-notices-to-arrest-criminals-zeidan/#axzz2utxb90Tn, accessed February 28, 2014; and in this report by C. S. Chivvis & J. Martini (2014) Libya after Qaddafi – Lessons and Implications for the Future (Washington: RAND), pp. 79–85. Available at: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR500/RR577/RAND_RR577.pdf, accessed July 1, 2014.

²⁹ M. Forte (2012) Slouching Towards Sirte – NATO's War on Libya and Africa (Montreal: Baraka Books), pp. 31–68.

³⁰ As documented in the report by the UN Human Rights Inquiry Commission in Libya (2012) ‘The Commission found that thuwar also used inherently indiscriminate weapons in their military offensives against cities perceived as loyalist. Of particular concern is their conduct in Sirte. The Commission found that almost every building exhibited damage. The most common damage and weapon debris observed was from Grad rockets, and heavy machine-gun fire from 14.5 mm and 23 mm weapons. Dozens of buildings are uninhabitable due to their structural integrity being compromised, with multiple walls and roofs collapsed. Numerous buildings exhibited impacts from shells consistent with fire from 106 mm recoilless rifles and 107 mm rocket artillery, using both High-Explosive Anti-Tank rounds and High Explosive Squash Head rounds. Although some of the buildings were likely used by the Qadhafi forces and were therefore legitimate targets for attacks, damage was so widespread as to be clearly indiscriminate in nature.’ Available at: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session19/A.HRC.19.68.pdf, accessed April 13, 2012.

³¹ Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte, p. 34.

³²http://www.meltingpot.org/Nuove-intese-tra-Italia-e-Libia-Ancora-sulla-pelle-dei.html#.U-HrpFV_uSo, accessed June 22, 2014.

³³https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id = 1428427, accessed June 23, 2014.

³⁴http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/06/22/libya-whipped-beaten-and-hung-trees, accessed June 23, 2014.

³⁵ Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte, p. 34.

³⁶http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1365-some-bewildered-clarifications-a-response-to-noam-chomsky-by-slavoj-zizek, accessed August 26, 013.

³⁷ S. Žižek (2006) Objet a in Social Links, in: J. Clemens & R. Crigg (eds.) Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis: Reflections on Seminar XVII (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), p. 115 [emphasis in original].

³⁸Žižek, Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism?, p. 67.

³⁹Žižek, Mapping Ideology, p. 10.

⁴⁰ Forte, Slouching Towards Sirte, p. 261.

⁴¹ This protest coincided with the larger protests in the Middle East against a film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad that an American-Israeli in California produced and which was promoted by an extreme anti-Muslim Egyptian Christian campaigner, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula. See http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/09/2012915181925528211.html, accessed September 16, 2012, and: http://www.theguardian.com/world/middle-east-live/2012/sep/12/libya-egypt-attacks-muhammad-film-live, accessed September 13, 2012.

⁴² M. Capasso (2013) Understanding Libya's ‘Revolution’ through Transformation of the Jamahiriyya into a State of Exception, Middle East Critique, 22(2), pp. 115–128.

⁴³http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/06/27/libya-june-1996-killings-abu-salim-prison, accessed April 23, 2014.

⁴⁴Homosacer is the person that one ‘is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice.’ As argued in my previous article, ‘by applying Agamben's theoretical approach, it is possible to see how the absence of a precise legal regulation and the creation of the Revolutionary Committees (RCs) reflected that confusion between exception and rule [...] so those expressions like ‘counter revolutionaries, agents of the West, maladies, and stray dogs,’ which Qadhdhafi used during his speeches, led the actions and framed the practices of the RCs in the name of a revolutionary legitimacy. Indeed, ‘enemies of the revolution’ was a ‘flexible category that expands and contracts with the needs of the moment.’ In this way, the Libyans became homines sacri.’ Capasso, Understanding Libya's Revolution, p. 117.

⁴⁵ Ibid. p. 116.

⁴⁶ G. Agamben (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press), p. 62.

⁴⁷ G. Orwell (2003) 1984 (Milano: Mondadori).

⁴⁸ H. Matar (2006) In The Country of Men (London: Penguin Books), pp. 179–188.

⁴⁹ See link to the full text of the law: http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/05/14/political-isolation-law-the-full-text/#axzz2roaUY6Sl, accessed May 22, 2013. There are only a few institutional figures of the new government in Libya, who have been affected by the law: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-09/libya-s-66-billion-wealth-fund-replaces-chairman-amid-probe.html, accessed July 9, 2014; and http://www.brookings.edu/∼/media/research/files/papers/2014/03/17%20libya%20lustration%20david%20mzioudet/lustration%20in%20libya%20english.pdf, accessed March 17, 2014.

⁵⁰ See link to the full text of the law: http://www.gnc.gov.ly/legislation_files/635260814004403644.pdf, accessed January 30, 2014; and a commentary http://www.trust.org/item/20140130090006-k6kj5/, accessed January 30, 2014.

⁵¹ Human Rights Watch (2014) Priorities for Legislative Freedom – A Human Rights Roadmap for a New Libya, pp. 38–43. Available at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/libya0114ForUpload_0.pdf, accessed March 1, 2014.

⁵² See link on the clashes in Tripoli at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/16/libya-militia-attack-tripoli-fears-conflict, accessed November 18, 2013.

⁵³ For instance, the clashes between Tebu and Arab tribes resulted in 86 deaths; see http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?docid = 4f8550982, accessed April 13, 2012.

⁵⁴ International Crisis Group (2013) Trial by Error: Justice in Post-Qadhafi Libya, p. 28. Available at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/∼/media/Files/Middle%20East%20North%20Africa/North%20Africa/libya/140-trial-by-error-justice-in-post-qadhafi-libya.pdf, accessed April 20, 2013.

⁵⁵ Amnesty International (2013) Barred from their Homes – The Continued Displacement and Persecution of Tawarghas and Other Communities in Libya, p. 4. Available at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE19/011/2013/en/1bdf76a5-fbf9-4264-a637-066c665c75c4/mde190112013en.pdf, accessed November 1, 2013.

⁵⁶ Ibid.

⁵⁷ Roberts, Who said Gaddafi had to go?, pp. 8–18.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ B. Hibou (2011) The Force of Obedience: The Political Economy of Repression in Tunisia (Cambridge: Polity Press), p. 287.

⁶⁰ S. John-Richards (2012) Asylum and the Common: Mediations between Foucault, Agamben and Esposito, Birkbeck Law Review, 2(1), p. 26.

⁶¹http://www.aawsat.net/2014/02/article55329325, accessed February 25, 2014.

⁶² Although the concept it is developed in the whole book, this passage is quite illuminating: ‘It is precisely the polysemic character of every antagonism which makes its meaning dependent upon a hegemonic articulation to the extent that, as we have seen, the terrain of hegemonic practices is constituted out of the fundamental ambiguity of the social, the impossibility of establishing in a definitive manner the meaning of any struggle, whether considered in isolation or through its fixing in a relational system.’ E. Laclau & C. Mouffe (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso: London), p. 170.

⁶³ Ibid. p. 193.

⁶⁴ For a quick, yet insightful, analysis about the series’ making and content, see Valerie Stocker's article at: http://muftah.org/libyan-phobia-dilemmas-and-challenges-of-life-after-gadhafi/#.U754wvldWsw, accessed September 2, 2013. The different episodes are available on YouTube, see link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = JhOZW7-XQuY, accessed September 2, 2013.

⁶⁵http://muftah.org/libyan-phobia-dilemmas-and-challenges-of-life-after-gadhafi/#.U754wvldWsw.

⁶⁶ M. Sharpe & G. Bucher (2010) Zizek and Politics: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), p. 12.

⁶⁷http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = vTaZOVMRl5Q, accessed September 2, 2013.

⁶⁸http://muftah.org/libyan-phobia-dilemmas-and-challenges-of-life-after-gadhafi/#.U76biPldWsw, accessed September 2, 2013.

⁶⁹ G. I. García & C. G. A. Sánchez (2008) Psychoanalysis and Politics: The Theory of Ideology in Slavoj Žižek, International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2(3), p. 9.

⁷⁰http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id = 1031, accessed March 24, 2014.