State power matters: power, the state and political struggle in the post-war American novel

This article is concerned with resituating the state at the centre of the analytical stage and, concomitantly, with drawing attention to the dangers of losing sight of the state as a locus of power. It seeks to uncover the relationship between two related lines of critical inquiry: Marxist and Foucauldian theories of the state; and the attempts by three postwar American novelist (Ken Kesey, William Burroughs and E.L. Doctorow) to determine the nature and extent of this power and to consider under what conditions political struggle might be possible. It argues that such a move is needed because recent critical analysis has been too preoccupied by corporeal micropolitics and global macropolitics, and that the postwar American novel can help us in this move because it is centrally concerned with the repressive potentiality of the US state. It maintains that the resuscitation of Marxist state theories in early 1970s and a debate between Poulantzas and Foucault is intriguingly foreshadowed and even critiqued by these novels. Consequently, it concludes that these novels constitute an unrecognized pre-history of what would become one of the key intellectual debates of the late twentieth century: an engagement between Marxist and post-structuralist conceptions of the power and resistance.

The New Face of Global Hollywood: Black Hawk Down and the Politics of Meta-Sovereignty

This paper uses Ridley Scott’s 2001 film blockbuster Black Hawk Down to examine the claim that popular film is the ‘newest component of sovereignty’. While the topic of the film – the 1993 UN/US intervention in Somalia – lends itself to straightforward politicisation, this paper is equally interested in the film’s production history and its reception by global audiences. While initial reactions to the film focused on its ideological commitments (e.g. racism, collusion between Hollywood and the Pentagon, post-11 September patriotism), these readings continually posed an imagined ‘America’ against ‘the world’. This paper argues that Black Hawk Down is not about sovereignty as traditionally conceived, that is, about national interest shaping global affairs. Rather, Black Hawk Down articulates, and is articulated by, a new and emerging global order that operates through inclusion, management and flexibility. Drawing on recent theoretical debates over this new logic of rule, this paper illustrates how Black Hawk Down invoked much more diffuse, complex and deterritorialized categories than national sovereignty. In effect, Scott’s film goes beyond traditional notions of sovereignty altogether: its production, signification and reception deconstruct simple notions of ‘America’ and ‘the world’ in favour of what Hardt and Negri call ‘Empire’, what Zizek calls ‘post-politics’, and what we refer to as ‘meta-sovereignty’.

Expression of gentisate 1,2-dioxygenase (gdoA) genes involved in aromatic degradation in two haloarchaeal genera.

Gentisate-1,2-dioxygenase genes (gdoA), with homology to a number of bacterial dioxygenases, and genes encoding a putative coenzyme A (CoA)-synthetase subunit (acdB) and a CoA-thioesterase (tieA) were identified in two haloarchaeal isolates. In Haloarcula sp. D1, gdoA was expressed during growth on 4-hydroxybenzoate but not benzoate, and acdB and tieA were not expressed during growth on any of the aromatic substrates tested. In contrast, gdoA was expressed in Haloferax sp. D1227 during growth on benzoate, 3-hydroxybenzoate, cinnamate and phenylpropionate, and both acdB and tieA were expressed during growth on benzoate, cinnamate and phenylpropionate, but not on 3-hydroxybenzoate. This pattern of induction is consistent with these genes encoding steps in a CoA-mediated benzoate pathway in this strain.

Effects of the aurora kinase inhibitors AZD1152-HQPA and ZM447439 on growth arrest and polyploidy in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines and primary blasts.

BACKGROUND:
Aurora kinases play an essential role in the orchestration of chromosome separation and cytokinesis during mitosis. Small-molecule inhibition of the aurora kinases has been shown to result in inhibition of cell division, phosphorylation of histone H3 and the induction of apoptosis in a number of cell systems. These characteristics have led aurora kinase inhibitors to be considered as potential therapeutic agents.
DESIGN AND METHODS:
Aurora kinase gene expression profiles were assessed in 101 samples from patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Subsequently, aurora kinase inhibitors were investigated for their in vitro effects on cell viability, histone H3 phosphorylation, cell cycle and morphology in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines and primary acute myeloid leukemia samples.
RESULTS:
The aurora kinase inhibitors AZD1152-HQPA and ZM447439 induced growth arrest and the accumulation of hyperploid cells in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines and primary acute myeloid leukemia cultures. Furthermore, both agents inhibited histone H3 phosphorylation and this preceded perturbations in cell cycle and the induction of apoptosis. Single cell cloning assays were performed on diploid and polyploid cells to investigate their colony-forming capacities. Although the polyploid cells showed a reduced capacity for colony formation when compared with their diploid counterparts, they were consistently able to form colonies.
CONCLUSIONS:
AZD1152-HQPA- and ZM447439 are effective apoptosis-inducing agents in acute myeloid leukemia cell lines and primary acute myeloid leukemia cultures. However, their propensity to induce polyploidy does not inevitably result in apoptosis.

“Hegemony Protected by the Armour of Coercion”: Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and the State

This article argues that Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest is best understood in the context of the consolidation and expansion of the US state following the First World War and the Russian Revolution. It also argues that Hammett's novel constitutes a highly significant articulation of theoretical debates about the nature of political authority and state power in the modern era and speaks about the transition of one state formation to another. Insofar as Red Harvest explores the way in which the state's coercive and ethical character are bound up together, this article argues that Hammett's novel draws upon an understanding of political authority and state power primarily derived from Gramsci, via Marx. Gramsci insists that control cannot be maintained through force alone (and his conception of hegemony, in turn, suggests a power bloc that can become fragmented and disunited in a war of position). In the same way, Red Harvest traces the transformation of the “economic-corporate” state into the expanded or “ethical” State but crucially any ethical dimension, as Gramsci notes, is always beholden to the needs of the capitalist economy. As such, the apparently arbitrary bloodshed in the novel is conceived as a relatively minor realignment in the ranks of the capitalist classes – certainly less serious than the miners' strike that prefigures the novel. What makes this realignment significant is that it calls attention to the state both as repressive and as a site of conflict and compromise. Here, the work performed by the Continental Op and by the crime novel in general – simultaneously buttressing and, to some extent, contesting the power of the state – needs to be understood as part of the process by which the state is consistently enacting hegemony (albeit protected by the armour of coercion). The article concludes by pointing out that while Gramsci is perhaps too willing to dwell upon the state's expanded reach, Red Harvest is more interested in examining possible “cracks and fissures” in the state formation, even if the critique it ultimately offers goes nowhere and yields nothing.