Sentinel matters: the techno-politics of international crisis in Lebanon (and beyond)

Abstract

In this article I focus on the crisis experts in Lebanon and, in particular, on one celebrated expert response to crisis, the crisis report. I suggest looking at the report as a techno-political tool that seeks to produce and disseminate knowledge about crisis and conflicts in different parts of the world, while packaged and structured in a universal format. As a first step I analyse the particular features of this format, such as size and scale. The main argument is that the report presents itself as an assemblage of a series of technical characteristics that help to shrink the world and make it fit the model format of the crisis expert. In a second step I open up the perspective and link the report's micro-format to bigger questions on governing the world today. Here, I argue that, within current imaginaries of emergency, impending crisis and global terrorism, the crisis report functions as a particular kind of sentinel. I show that it can speak through the language of constant alertness and, crucially, the production of sentinel subjectivities that must be continuously monitored. © 2014 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com.