The organizing logics of predatory formations: Militarization and the spectacle of the (in)security state

The state’s security mandate has always been negotiated in relation to the need to police and secure both the nation’s borders and the population from external and internal threats. By militarizing both public space and private living, the violence of the security state is critical in securing and exacerbating extreme levels of urban segregation. The criminalization and often militarized policing of communities most affected by capitalism’s disassembling dynamics are no longer just a means to construct the semblance of security or to repress revolution but have themselves become a source of lucrative profits. State sponsored violence also has a long history of using the spectacle of militarization as a weapon of mass distraction to divert attention from the effects of disassembling dynamics. The neoliberal security state not only follows a carceral logic that physically segregates and confines the disadvantaged populations that predatory formation has made expendable, but through incarceration, it has made surplus bodies profitable commodities.