Lyrics

Hostage

Kneeling on the ground,
Blindfolded, gagged and bound.
Can’t hear a fucking sound,
But I feel them all around.
They’re watching me
…they’re haunting me.
I feel my mind is gonna split
And they don’t give a shit
Watching me…
What do they want from me?
The nights of terror never cease.
I pray and pray for my release

Hostage! I’m a hostage!

Panoptic from inside.
There is no place to hide.
Don’t need a jail or cell
Inside my private hell:
I’m watching me
…I’m haunting me.
I can’t move to get away,
I’m always lying there in wait
Watching me…
Why are they taunting me?
Eyes burn through behind my skull.
The truth seems inconceivable

Hostage! I’m a hostage!
Hostage! I’m a hostage!

Flesh unfit for meat markets,
Hammered well beyond senseless.
For what? For what, indeed?
Battered souls and bullet holes,
The Dow is up now as they close.
Whoah, and that’s the status quo!

Hostage!

Just look at what we’ve done today
We’ve been too long turning away…

Hostage! I’m a hostage!
Hostage! I’m a hostage!
Hostage! You’re a hostage!
Hostage! Everyone a hostage!
Hostage! No more: hostage!

‘Discipline’ may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a ‘physics’ or an ‘anatomy’ of power, a technology.
- Michel Foucault (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison)

Power does not simply reside in an act of force from one body on another. Power is also regulated by acts of will upon other wills. When humans engage in relationships of power with each other it isn’t the same as smashing a rock with a hammer. That’s an act of force, which is a type of power, but it’s not intersubjective power. Power relations between two subjects happen in the space where their wills meet and where societal discourses regulate assumptions. Thus, social power is dispersed in the form of discourse and knowledge. But that isn’t to say that violence isn’t a major component of the relations of power. Certainly the expectation of violence produces some of the most profound understandings we have. However, even though violence is a form of communication that establishes a relationship of wills, the power of violence should be distinguished from the power relation that is reinforced through its use. The ultimate recourse of violence is in death, but through death the relation of power is dissolved. There is nothing left to speak of. The king wields no social power if he has no subjects.

So, in order to counter the patterns of power that we wish to disengage, we need to start to unravel their discourses and establish new positions from which to speak. We need to recognize the places in which our acquiescence not only reinforces unwanted power, but creates it and redistributes it. We need to create counter-power discourses to those that allow for the dispensing of torturous socio-economic regimes. If “shock and awe”, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are not to represent the secret desires of our societies, we need to unmake the framework that allowed these atrocities to speak for us. It is too simple to dismiss them as a product of intelligence agencies in the US, because it comes from elsewhere more pervasive than just the annals of the CIA’s Kubark manual. These discourses are embedded deep in our notions of legitimate authority, terror, fear, and discipline.

(Marek Vermin)