1. Assemblage, ‘political society’ and Bhopal

3. An assemblage!
Source: Stephen Richards/Geograph

4. Assemblage politics
Components and their connections
Micropolitics

5. Deleuzian Politics and the IDF
‘this space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. […] The question is how do you interpret the alley? […] We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors.... I said to my troops, “Friends! […] If until now you were used to mov[ing] along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!”’ Cited in Weizman, 2006

6. Israeli troops scan walls in a refugee camp; photo by Nir Kafri (2003), from Eyal Weizman's essay "Lethal Theory"

7. Political Society
2004
2011

8. Political Society Critique of ‘Western’ political liberalism
Utopianism
‘Civil society’ as the answer
Colonial rule in India and the bourgeois state
Civil society an exclusive club
NEP and globalisation – importance of Capital
Do adivasis (or any other marginal group) count as citizens?
Links to Foucault

9. Political Subjectivity
Given the expansion of the Indian state into a mode of governing populations, how can these populations actually go about claiming ‘a place at the table’?
Popular sovereignty vs. democracy
How does democratisation play out in practice?

10. Practices
Bypassing ‘civil society’ to negotiate directly with ‘the powerful’
Creating and demarcating new ‘communities’ who can collectively bargain

11. Critiques Binarism Uniformity of ‘civil’ society Lack of ‘possibility’
West/non-West
Bourgeois/governed
Civil/political Society
Uniformity of ‘civil’ society
Lack of ‘possibility’

12. The Bhopal Disaster
30 metric tonnes vented from tank

14. Effects c.500,000 affected by gas cloud
3,837 immediate deaths (MP Govt)
c.8,000 in following two weeks
Continuing health issues
Pollution of water supply

15. Corporate accountability
Plant not owned by Union Carbide (UCC), but by an Indian subsidiary (UCIL)
1989 UCC agrees compensation package of $470m with Indian state
2001 UCC becomes subsidiary of Dow Chemical
Dow/UCC maintain accident caused by ‘disgruntled worker’
2010 GOI agrees $230m renumeration

16. Sathyu Sarangi
“The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world's largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical (who bought Union Carbide) has refused to clean up, and whole new generations have been poisoned. For more information, please visit

17. Assemblage?

18. Rhizomes Attributing causes Mapping effects Disgruntled worker
Inability to recreate situation for analysis
Unkown composition of gas cloud
Mapping effects
Measuring water toxicity
Medical treatment of variety of conditions

19. Political society? Socio-economic status Creating a ‘community’ But...
Empowerment of women
But...
Transnational civil society
Links to Government of India

20. Striking a balance? The de-humanising dynamism of assemblage Vs.
The Foucaultian power structures of political society

21. Conclusions? Assemblage useful at the ‘coming together’ of components
State, market, Civil AND Political Societies
Political subjectivity (in India and elsewhere)
Limits of political liberalism