Policing as Forestry? Re-Imagining Policing in Belgium
| Author | Patrick Van Calster,Ronnie Lippens |
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100206 |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
POLICING AS FORESTRY?
RE-IMAGINING POLICING IN
BELGIUM
RONNIE LIPPENS AND PATRICK VAN CALSTER
Keele University, UK and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
ABSTRACT
This article has two aims. First, it argues that social and political change, to a large
extent, occurs and develops within the boundaries of the imaginary – the realm of ‘vis-
ibilities’, of affect, of the senses and of emotion. ‘Visibilities’, images and imageries
often offer the bounding backdrop on, or within, which discursive or symbolic for-
mations of social and political change occur and develop. This article also situates the
ongoing debates on police reform in Belgium within social and political changes that
are taking place in that country. Reading recent legislation on police reform as an
expression, as well as a becoming of ‘policing as forestry’, we try to unearth the imagin-
ary boundaries – the visibilities, the images and imageries – that structure at least part
of the affective and emotional space within which discursive or symbolic expressions
and becomings materialize in policies and legislation. As such, this article hopes to
contribute to the study of (the emotionalities of) police reform, while it also hopes to
show how policing – the symbolic and material practice of ordering and of organiz-
ation – takes place against the backdrop of an often diffuse, though bounded, space
of the imaginary. This article presents itself, simultaneously, as (1) an analysis of recent
Belgian police reform and police reform legislation; (2) an archaeological evocation of
Belgium’s recent social and political imaginary; (3) an elaboration of a new image of
policing – policing as forestry – which may be able to subsume previous (allegedly
incommensurable) models of policing.
The Think Tank would endorse professor Huyse’s analysis of events. Here’s
what he recently said on television: every post-war Belgian government Minis-
ter should be banned to Siberia, every gendarme should be kicked out of office,
all judges and lawyers should take their exams all over again, and, last but not
least: from now onwards, a forester should be heading Belgium’s new unitary
police force. (Taken from a satirical section in Campuskrant, one of Belgium’s
university campus newsletters, 14 May 1998 issue)
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 0964 6639 (200206) 11:2 Copyright © 2002
SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
Vol. 11(2), 283–305; 023936
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SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 11(2)
INTRODUCTION
In his seminal article ‘The Mirror Stage’ (1936/1977), Jacques Lacan wrote
about the importance of vision and imagery in the constitution of subjectivity.
Young children, aged between eight and 12 months, says Lacan, go through
a ‘mirror stage’, whereby they often find themselves in front of a mirror,
which (while they would see themselves as a certain coherence amid sur-
roundings) would then lay the foundations for the production of selves and
subjectivity. This is one of Lacan’s crucial insights: subjectivity is formed in
and through a process whereby the Other is seen to be a part of some back-
drop, a part of surroundings. Subjectivity, says Lacan, is the result of loss; at
the core of subjectivity is thus a lack, is a loss of all and everything Other. As
it turns out, the further production of subjectivity, in Lacan’s scheme,
inevitably boils down to a limitless series of ever-failing attempts by the
lacking subject to regain what had been lost. Subjectivity, according to Lacan,
is then the result of this endless series of inevitably fallible attempts at restor-
ing a lost (infinite) unity. Unfortunately, with each of these attempts, the
subject inevitably and paradoxically subjectifies even more and, as such, will
drift away a little further even from the infinite fullness of being.
This Lacanian scheme holds at least two basic insights which will prove to
be important throughout this article at hand. First, the production of sub-
jectivity, according to Lacan, seems to boil down to a search for fullness. And,
second, this search emerges and develops, at the most basic level, in and
through an ‘imaginary order’, that is, in and through a pre-symbolic zone
where visuality (the mirror stage) and emotion (the sense of loss and lack, and
the hopeful anticipation of restoration) are the main dimensions. This
‘imaginary order’, this order of visuality, of images, of imagery, of imagin-
ation, this order of emotionality and sensitivity, coming before and working
underneath the ‘symbolic order’, can thus be considered as the first and basic
order for the production of subjectivity, or for the production of subjectifi-
cation, or, using other words still, for the production of subjective change.
One might also consider this imaginary order as the primary, foundational
order of social and political change. This may sound a little reckless, at least
to some sociologists (however, for critical notes on such sociological reluc-
tance, see, for example, Williams, 2000). Explaining dynamics of subjectivity
psychoanalytically is one thing, one might argue, but applying categories
from Lacanian psychoanalysis to the analysis of social and political events
may be quite another. Reading individual subjectivities as temporary, ever-
moving results of primary dynamics in an imaginary order, in a zone of
emotional visuality, sensitivity and imagery, and desiring imagination, may
be one thing; but can the same be said about collective subjectivities, or about
collective change, about social and political change? If one is to believe
authors like Benedict Anderson (1991) or Michel Maffesoli (1996), one
would be inclined to answer these questions affirmatively. Although neither
of these authors have been inspired by Lacanian psychoanalysis, they both
have convincingly pointed at the crucial role and importance of imagery and
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imagination (and emotion and sensitivity) in the production of collective
subjectivities, whether they be nationalist communities – to Anderson,
nationalism is a work of imagination – or, in Maffesoli’s case, hedonistic,
postmodern, neo-tribal socialities.
In this article, we will try to unearth the visibilities, the images and the
imaginations that may have been structuring the social and political economy
of emotions and affections in Belgium, during the last decade. We are particu-
larly interested here in how this social and political economy of emotion,
affect and their imagined forms has (pre-symbolically) bounded an ‘imagin-
ary’ space within which, ultimately, and recently (in 1998), significantly new
federal legislation on police reform emerged. Policing, in a way, inevitably is
about the production or reproduction of borders and orders. Policing is thus
a work of organization, of ordering, of order and this, one might argue, boils
down to the inevitably emotive and/or affectual business of inclusion and
exclusion. It is also a work of spatialization: space, especially visual space, is
what is to be organized and ordered in and through policing. One would thus
be able to argue (with Sibley, 1995 perhaps) that policing inevitably is a work
where the emotive, the affectual, the visual, imagery and imagination are
important components. Policing, and police reform, may then be a good place
to start to try and unearth a social and political economy of the ‘imaginary’
of collective subjectivities. This article envisages to do exactly that: it will
delve towards and into the social and political economy of Belgium’s collec-
tive ‘imaginary’, the limits of which have recently provided a space for the
production of newly enacted police reform legislation.
In a way, this article in itself is a work of imagination. But how could it be
otherwise? Over the past few decades or so, post-structuralists have rather
persuasively (in our view, anyway) argued that any reading of signification in
itself will turn out to be just that: a signification. The same goes for imageries
and imagination. The work of reconstructing imageries, or imagination, or,
in other words, the work of exploring the Imaginary, is an ‘imaginary’ work;
it is a work of imagination in its own right. Let us admit that right away, self-
reflexively. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze once wrote, in his book
on Foucault, the theorist par excellence of spatialization, visuality and sub-
jectivity, a passage on the latter’s archaeological method and his claim that
‘the statement is neither visible nor hidden’. The passage went like this:
Foucault shows that no statement can have a latent existence, since it shows
what in fact is said; even the blanks of gaps it contained must not be confused
with hidden meanings since they indicate only the statement’s presence in the
space of dispersion that constitutes the ‘family’. But on the other hand, if it is
so difficult to find an inscription on the same level as that which is spoken, it is
because the statement is not immediately perceptible but is always covered over
by phrases and propositions. The ‘plinth’ must be discovered, polished – even
fashioned or invented. (Deleuze, 1988: 16)
What goes for statements also goes for ‘visibilities’, images, imagery and
imagination. This ‘plinth’, say Deleuze and Foucault, has to be fashioned,
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produced out of the signs and ‘visibilities’ that incessantly cover it over, while
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