Commentary | Tianren Luo, Jingjia Xiao, and Qing Xiao, Shanghai lockdown: towards a cybernetic-biopolitical governance
‘Empire is materializing before our eyes,’ penned Negri and Hardt more than two decades ago. Yet the term ‘Empire’ should be reinterpreted, as it is no longer an accurate depiction of our contemporary situation. As the emerging model of global capitalistic domination, empire is not characterized by the withering and replacement of sovereign states by burgeoning inter-national corporations and organizations. Instead, it should be defined as the dissolution and dissemination of the state(s) aligned with capitalism into society, and by the omnipresent control of and hyper-vigilance towards even the tiniest forms of risk, heterogeneity, and/or social uncertainties (which are deemed as something lurking to subvert such domination from the perspective of the ruling capital-state).
Empire now embodies a new mode of biopolitical governance targeting potentially rebellious forms-of-life, functioning through eradicating these singularities of lives, enervating them, depriving them of their radical powers and eventually incorporating them into the totality of capitalistic domination through making them conform to particular identities for preventive purposes. To quote Tiqqun, Empire incessantly wages “preventive counter-revolution” against “anyone who might puncture holes in its biopolitical continuum.”
“The recent lockdown in Shanghai should be conceived through a new mode of governance, which we term ‘cybernetic-biopolitical governance.’”
On this basis, we argue that the recent lockdown in Shanghai should be conceived through a new mode of governance, which we term “cybernetic-biopolitical governance.” In recent months, intensified surveillance, collection of personal data without due processes, forced quarantine, and arbitrary detention have all taken place in Shanghai. As Tiqqun noted, these mechanisms combine to provide a paradigmatic panorama of how such governance operates.
In stark contrast to what some pro-empire scholars have claimed in their exculpatory commentaries on the "necessity of Shanghai lockdown," the coercive measures implemented by local authorities in response to the outbreak of Omicron have been far from temporary remedies created in times of so-called “public-health emergencies.” Instead, these measures are manifestations of a continuous, profound transformation of the forms of governance from (neo)liberalism to cybernetic-biopolitics. Here, the term “cybernetic” can only be elucidated through the fact that the order of empire is no longer established through a stringent hierarchical organization, or through the dystopian "pyramidal state." Rather, it operates on a micro rather than macro level, achieving its goals through decentralized regulators embedded into and distributed throughout the entire society to modulate intensities or fluxes (e.g., the infection flux of the virus, the migrating flux). In other words, to stabilize the metastable thus volatile situation, reminding us of Deleuze’s prophecy on the incoming society of control.
Such a prophecy is undoubtedly being realized in Shanghai. Local authorities stressed "flexibility" as they introduced measures to regulate and control movements even before the start of the lockdown, instead of merely quarantining. Since then, the apparatuses of control have stretched into every corner of the society: people can see checkpoints and NAT stations all over the city; administrative measures have been taken against free-flowing fluxes to block some while re-directing others (the so-called “grid-like management”). But we should always bear in mind that what is at stake here are the aforementioned “objectives,” understood as the deployment of powers of control and cybernetic mechanisms in the society aimed at eradicating all sorts of uncertainties and maintaining local equilibrium on micro-levels. Therefore, it is not unexpected that the Chinese government's slogan, "maintaining stability," recalls the fundamental motif of cybernetics.
Information, according to its original definition, reduces uncertainties. And such accumulation of information is precisely implemented by reducing the singularities of individuals into particularities, by representing them through pre-determined general categories (everyone is defined through a set of data tracing and classifying their activities). Only on this premise can we comprehend why continuous surveillance and exhaustive collection of personal data through epidemiological surveys are indispensable.
However, this does not provide the whole picture: we must wonder how such information extortion is feasible in Shanghai. The Empire instigated micro-fascism among its residents, urging them to police each other, to report any form of irregularity or singularity that may be considered latent threats, or, in other words, to collude with the Empire's cybernetic governance. This was the exact situation during the Shanghai lockdown: actually, we have witnessed members of residents’ committees eager to inform the Shanghai CDC (Center for Disease Control) of probable virus carriers and illegally confine their neighbors.
We can now conclude that in the double senses demonstrated above, cybernetic governance is at the same time biopolitical: firstly, the exhortation of information wages war on the unrepresentable singularities, namely, the forms-of-life, which are the site of radical powers that challenge the order of the Empire and are considered as potential threats or uncertainties through the lens of the latter; secondly, the reactionary mobilization of the citizen constitutes an immuno-political community which obtains its identity through the exclusion of the others recognized as potential threats. Domestication (of forms-of-life) and exclusion (of potential risks), these two dimensions jointly delineate the cybernetic-biopolitical governance defining the Empire.
However, it must be highlighted that the cybernetic-biopolitical governance has deep roots in Chinese tradition. The unfolding Empire has found its prototype in the ancient Chinese Empire, whose core doctrine of governance practices is based on the ‘legalism’ thought, though always veiled under the Confucianism ideological cliches (just as in the present situation, the ideological sphere in China is crammed with propaganda justifying the zero-COVID policy (of course by referring to the Confucianism tradition!) diverting people’s attention from the real mechanism of governance, i.e., its legalism kernel). Through his notorious “Tao of the Sovereign,” Pre-Chin Legalist Han Fei Tzu has already recapitulated the most crucial traits of the Empire, that is to say, the immanence of the state to the civil society, and "the articulation of apparatuses that will allow cybernetic self-regulation."
In this regard, we tend to reject the allure of agreeing with the sinofuturists (e.g., Anna Greenspan), who associate the revival of Chinese political or philosophical (between which little difference can be made since philosophy is closely related to politics for ancient Chinese) tradition with a drive to the incarnation of some kinds of futurist hypercapitalist-posthumanist landscape in China. Instead, we believe that such a tradition is always-already at work at the core of the cybernetic-biopolitical governance exercised by the Empire, whose only purpose is to preserve its dominance and perpetuate the mundane and banal present indefinitely.
That is to say, China-Empire has no “future”; since future per se implies possibilities of change, i.e., risks or uncertainties, which are being eliminated through the Empire’s cybernetic-biopolitical governance. Along with Zhang Ge who coined the term "sino-no-futurism" contra the prevalent speculation whirling around the concept of sinofuturism during the 2020 Wuhan lockdown, we hold up another version of sino-no-futurism in which the future is literally being eradicated. However, we should underscore that this insight does not necessarily lead us to pessimism or even worse cynicism; instead, only by firstly being clearly aware of the urgent situation we are faced with, are we capable of figuring out a real solution, seeking ways out and drawing lines of flight away from the domination of Empire.
Tianren Luo studies philosophy at Fudan University. Through his research, he attempts to re-vitalize the radical potential of the practices of the minority and seek a way for possible resistance in the future which can be genuinely deemed as counter-power.
Jingjia Xiao studies philosophy at Fudan University. He is currently assisting in investigating juvenile delinquency in mainland China at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Qing Xiao is a final year undergraduate student from the Communication University of China. His research interests are political communication and popular culture. He is committed to becoming a communication scholar focusing on the underestimated efforts of marginalized people.
To cite this essay, please use the entry suggested below:
Tianren Luo, Jingjia Xiao, and Qing Xiao, “Shanghai lockdown: towards a cybernetic-biopolitical governance,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, August 8, 2022; https://doi.org/10.52698/OEAO2842.