Throughout modernity, as classical social theorists from Simmel (1990) to Weber (Runciman, 1978) have demonstrated, the body was exposed to a succession of post-feudal transformations (e.g., increasing trade, the introduction of the police, surveillance and democracy together with mounting agnosticism and alienation) that combined to create the civilized modern body. The progressive, scientific and yet increasingly disenchanted rationalized modern body, for example, was a civilized and territorialized body residing within that ever more urbanized array of technical and economic, political, mediatized, dynamic, bureaucratic, experiential and cultural configurations recognized as the modern metropolis (Simmel, 1969: 47-60). Socialization, the process of training the body to play its part in the social order by means of familial symbols, shared social ideas, religious practices and often class-bound languages was understood by most in the modern era as a reliable explanation of social reality. Thus, for many, a critical appreciation of what roles either children or adults were performing or meanings they were receiving in modern social life through their interaction with others was absent. From the viewpoint of the modern (or any other) social order, then, socialization was vital since without the routinisation and synchronization of roles and meanings the system would disintegrate. It was for these reasons and because the process of socialization was perceived to be so influential, for example, that the bulk of modern states, predominantly uncontroversially, disapproved of home or self-education whilst favoring and assuming control of public or mass education.

Following the arrival of the modern technology, such as mass communications media (the printing press, photography, cinema, radio and TV), concepts of space and time, everyday life, social interaction and the visual were rearranged. Modern media institutions, for instance, began manufacturing and replicating commodities for increasingly advanced public and private spectators and listeners in the form of newspapers, photographs, movies, sounds and images (Thompson, 1995). Launched by the industrial revolution, the modern transportation revolution also had significant social, geopolitical and geostrategic effects on the industrial revolution itself, on maritime power and, subsequent to the introduction of the railroads and the invention of the steam engine, on the modern body's knowledge and conception of space and time. Shifting from feudal to industrial speed, geopolitics slowly transmuted into "chrono" or speed politics as the rising antagonism of the feudal body towards the countryside culminated first in its movement to the city and second to its own conversion into a modern body (Virilio, 1999a: 17-18).

Given the above, it is scarcely astonishing to find that the recently modernized body was somewhat alienated both from itself and from its increasingly civilized environment. In spite of this, the range of opportunities presented to the alienated modern body for its consumption and enjoyment, ranging from the purchase of mass produced television sets and cars to holidays and clothes, kept on increasing.

In the meantime, the dilemmas of the modern state also proliferated as it sought to comprehend and command the developing theories and realities of space and time in addition to the appearance of chronopolitics and the growing hostilities between the countryside and the city, between the feudal body and the modern body. The construction of what Lyotard (1984) termed grand narratives or philosophies, that declared their capacity to offer totalising rational accounts and the ability to operate on the authority this conferred upon them regarding the body and much else besides, also grew to be indispensable within modernity. For at this social juncture the task of grand narratives was both to supply political, philosophical and scientifically rational explanations of the body whilst rejecting the formerly perceived legitimacy of conversing with the spirit world or divine beings. Marxism, for instance, considered the history of humanity and social action from the viewpoint of its "scientific" theory of dialectical materialism (Marx, 1976: 493-4). According to dialectical materialism, the entirety of human historical development is the history of class struggle, a perspective that, like many other modern grand narratives, refuses the authority of every other account whilst passionately believing in its own statements concerning the truth.

The rationalist, civilized and materialist modern body was, in addition, a messianic body or a body that adhered to the Protestant ethic, a religious ethic encompassing the meticulous management of corporeal activities, systematic social planning, toil, abstinence, occupational perseverance and an unwavering dedication to accomplishment (Weber, 1930). Providing the cultural framework within which modern capitalism could grow, the Protestant ethic therefore played a crucial role in advancing industrialized forms of production, social organization, technological development, a class-based division of labor and its related social institutions. In this way, then, and as Elias (1994) has described it, the civilizing process was a development that was crucially connected to humanity's increasing liberation from the great effort of mere survival and the growth of complex classes, cultural arrangements, civilized human behavior and political organizations such as the state. During modernity, therefore, and by means of the forces of rationalization, the body was territorialized and socialized, technologized, set in motion, alienated, customized, politicized, narrativized, materialized, managed, capitalized and, above all, civilized.

By contrast, in hypermodernity, and as postmodern social theorists such as Bauman (2000, 2002a) have revealed, the body and its social environment are currently entangled within what I call a sequence of hypermodern upheavals. These disturbances range from the rise of global capitalism and the widespread introduction of technological surveillance to the weakening of democracy together with increasing social and military nihilism and separation (Kroker and Kroker, 2003: 2). Consequently, it is my argument below that one of the most important results of these contemporary disruptions is the embryonic formation of the militarized hypermodern body. The militarized hypermodern body, for example, has become aware of the fact that it is situated within the deterritorialized framework of the hypermodern city. The hypermodern city is a city where the association between the territory and the world is not only increasingly ambiguous but also continually set in motion (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 85-6; Armitage and Roberts, 2003: 87-101).

From my hypermodern perspective, militarization refers to the practice of informationalizing and socializing the hypermodern body to engage, for instance, with the computerization of education using cyberspace. Thus in the hypermodern era militarization can be appreciated as the pursuit of complete control by way of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) (Levidow and Robins, 1989). Yet what is critical for an understanding of the quest for total control by means of ICTs is that it is a project that is essentially concerned with the attempt by the US military in particular to convince citizens to act in accordance with the principles of cybernetic organisms or cyborgs. At the level of the hypermodern social regime, therefore, the practice of militarization is fundamental not least because, without the habituation of cybernetic functions and the harmonization of militarized sensibilities, the militarized model of control, circulated by means of ICTs, will soon cease to operate. In hypermodern states, for example, the practices associated with the militarization of education are well-established, as is evidenced by the US State's espousal of cognitive based instruction and psychology which frequently relegates students to what Noble (1989: 13-41) calls "mental materiel." Motil (2002: 1-2), for instance, has noted how, concurrent with the recent introduction in the US of "no child left behind" legislation that disallows financial support to schools that do not disclose student information to military recruiters, the most recurrent contemporary educational message to school children today is "orderliness." Military recruiter Captain John J. Zeigler, for example, replied to questions from High School students in The Bronx about why the US planned to invade Iraq in 2003 by saying that it was "not important whether we support this" since "our job is to obey"(Medina, 2003: 1).

A further system with widely acknowledged US military origins is of course the hypermodern technology of the Internet (Virilio and Lotringer, 2002: 139-40). But whilst the increasingly critical place of the Internet in everyday life and reality is freely accepted today, what is commonly unacknowledged is how its models of spatial mediation, accelerated transmission, daily imagery and social reality contribute to the pervasive environment of hypermodern uncertainty in the epoch of the "live." Unlike modern media institutions, for example, hypermodern media institutions, as demonstrated by numerous instances including the tragedy of September 11th, 2001, are predisposed to unnerving their audience. To be sure, hypermodern media institutions relentlessly produce, highlight and continually repeat a comparatively small number of shock and stock images for their audience (Armitage, 2001c: 177-80). In addition, and initiated by the development of ICTs, the hypermodern information revolution is giving rise to major social, chronopolitical and geographical transformations. Not the least of these pos-tindustrial transformations, after the launch of mobile telephony, the high-speed Internet and the search engine, is the hypermodern body's contemporary pursuit of real time information, a mission that alters its experience of speed, space and, through interactivity, social relations (Armitage, 2001a: 27). Progressing from the TV screen to the computer screen, the chronopolitics of the hypermodern militarized body is thus gradually moving from the relatively secure physical space of the civilized modern city to the insecure "speed-space" of the militarized hypermodern city (Dercon, 2001: 69-81). As a result, the modern civilized body is currently being transformed into a militarized hypermodern body. What is more, it is a body that has discovered that it is unnecessary to embark on any more physical voyages since it has already arrived in the cybernetic world of stasis beyond the computer screen that Virilio (1999b) describes as polar inertia.

The militarized hypermodern body is then an increasingly individualized body (Bauman, 2001). Today, for example, the hypermodern body has become aware that it has to confront its own difficulties and doubts as an individual narrative and without the past advantages of class allegiances or the probability of future declining income disparities. The hypermodern body is thus a body that has to endure its own biographical actions, fears and social choices in a militarized atmosphere flooded with generalized insecurity, increasingly ephemeral public encounters, privatized loneliness, myriad ethical dilemmas, multifaceted dependencies and the ongoing breakdown of communal ties. Yet, simultaneously, the extreme types and often excessive amounts of consumer goods and services offered to the individualized hypermodern body within the developed economies continue to multiply every day (Armitage, 2001d: 1-2). Witness, for instance, the spending on and forces surrounding contemporary consumer goods in the US such as "Forward Command Post." This "bombed-out dollhouse," now on sale to children in the US (45$), comes complete with a "busted balustrade, crumbling bricks, bullet holes pockmarking its pretty pastel walls" and "fatigue-clad soldiers toting assault rifles" (Foss, 2002: 1-2).

At the level of the hypermodern state, though, as witnessed by the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, the key issue today is the emergence of a globalitarian political space wherein the US State and its allies' militarized chronopolitics of control essentially outperforms all other states and the rationalized and civilized geopolitics of sovereignty. In the new "planetary frontierland" (Bauman, 2002b: 87-120), consequently, joint citizenship, multiculturalism and decentralization are yielding to exclusivity, xenophobia and, above all, centralized bureaucracies involved with the administration of security policies. Additionally, and following the deterioration of grand narratives, the militarized hypermodern body nowadays looks to what Lyotard labeled little narratives or tactical alliances of concern rather than totalising rational explanations with the object of combating particular social problems whilst offering mutual yet temporary political support. The goal of the little narrative is therefore to attain restricted but immediate objectives for the hypermodern body at the same time as refusing the authority of the grand narratives of liberal or Marxian progress that are associated with modernity. Thus Hardt and Negri's (2000: 37) Marxism contemplates the contemporary and increasingly militarized condition of humankind, US-led armed containment and repression, from the perspective of a post-structuralist theory that might be termed non-dialectical immaterialism. In line with non-dialectical immaterialism, the totality of hypermodern human development is the development of the "production of subjectivity as power, as the constitution of... autonomy" (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 378). Hardt and Negri (2000: 378) therefore reject classical dialectical materialism whilst encouraging "refusal, resistance, violence and the positive affirmation of being."

The militarized and immaterialized hypermodern body is also a body that increasingly places its faith in the cultural ethics of the "spirit of informationalism" that, according to Castells (2000: 215), comprises "'creative destruction' accelerated to the speed of the opto-electronic circuits that process its signals." Moreover, the culture and spirit of informationalism is crucial for the development of hypercapitalism. Hypercapitalism can be distinguished from modern capitalism by the "speed at which processes of circulation and self-valorization occur" and by the "ephemeral nature of hypercapitalist commodities associated with its speed-of-light infrastructure of communications technologies" (Armitage and Graham, 2001: 115). Lastly, explains Virilio (1999a: 35-36), the growth of the US military-scientific complex is critically associated with the continuing erosion of the democratic spirit, the creation of technoscience and cyberwarfare, the militarization of human activities and knowledge and the establishment of key informational collective bodies like the National Security Agency (NSA). In hypermodernity, then, and through the forces of a kind of hyperrationalization, the body is currently being deterritorialized and technologically revolutionized by means of speed-space, individualized, excessively customized, chronopoliticized, little-narrativized, immaterialized, informationalized, hypercapitalized and, most of all, militarized.

As indicated, I maintain that the emergent hypermodern body is merely one consequence of the amalgamation of hypermodern developments wherein a succession of forces induce and insist that individual and collective civilian and military bodies discard their customary ties to modernity. Furthermore, I suggest that a number of temptations and commands to familiarize itself with hypermodernity presently besiege the civilized modern body. The militarized hypermodern body can as a result be described as a progressively more totally mobilized hypermodern body with a mental state and bodily attentiveness I associate with individualized social life during the War on Terrorism. Yet it is emphatically not my argument that every body is a hypermodern body given that the majority of bodies at liberty today remain, even now, caught within the processes of modernization as opposed to hypermodernization, which is a phenomenon of the advanced countries. Consequently, I propose that it is unlikely that those individual and collective civilian and military bodies that have only in recent times crossed the threshold of modernity will instantly seek to rid themselves of it. It is not, then, the developing civilized modern body or the demands of modernity as such that are my concerns in this article as I am only involved with those civilized modern bodies currently coming to terms with the forces of hypermodernity in the US. Thus, over the course of the next two sections, I argue that the militarized hypermodern body can be productively represented as a totally mobilized hypermodern body.

The Totally Mobilized Modern Body

I define the totally mobilized modern body as a body with a state of mind and corporeal preparedness connected with human existence during modern wartime. I have selected the concept of the totally mobilized modern body because it has the benefit of encapsulating numerous aspects of modernization, inclusive of the individual and collective civilian and military bodies I outlined above. Adopting a modern as opposed to a hypermodern perspective, I focus below initially on military models of mobilization and total mobilization prior to contemplating and appraising Ernst Júnger's ideas concerning total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body.

Within the military, the fundamental concept of mobilization is related to crisis action planning. The US military, for example, defines mobilization as the "act of preparing for war or other emergencies through assembling and organizing national resources" (Hill, 2003: 2). In this military tradition, as a result, mobilization simply refers to its rationale, which is to "provide the capability of the US to expand the active force rapidly and efficiently" (Hill, 2003: 2). Such a capability is necessary in order to discourage prospective adversaries, and assure allies, who have to be persuaded that the US is able to mobilize and launch its armed forces early enough to shape the formative phases of the conflict. Mobilization also requires four main groups of manpower resources: "Ready Reserve," "Standby Reserve," "Retired Reserve" and "Retired Regular" (Hill, 2003: 3-4).

However, the US military typically employs the term mobilization to refer to an escalating use of force. "Selective Mobilization," for instance, requires Presidential or Congressional authorization and is normally instituted to handle domestic difficulties rather than a national emergency. "Presidential Selected Reserve Call-up," in contrast, necessitates Presidential authority and the notification of Congress. It is usually introduced to transmit a robust message to adversaries in the absence of a declaration of national emergency and entails the short-term call up of Selected Reserve and Retired Regular. "Partial Mobilization" requires the President and/or Congress to proclaim a war or a national emergency and can include calling up over 1 million Ready Reserve, Retired Regular and, on occasion, Retired and Standby Reserve for a maximum of 2 years. "Full Mobilization" implies the President and Congress announcing a war or a national emergency and calls for the use of all four groups of manpower resources together with the inauguration of national conscription for the period of the war or emergency plus six months. Finally, "Total Mobilization" involves the President and Congress announcing a national emergency. It dictates, in addition to Full Mobilization, the absence of any social, cultural and political constraints, and the military's taking control of US production for an unspecified time period. However, in seeking to develop the concept of the totally mobilized modern body, I want to move beyond these rather technical conceptions of mobilization and total mobilization as components of US military tradition.

I propose initially to explore the militarized modern body and the totally mobilized modern body from Ernst Júnger's (1931) perspective in Die Totale Mobilmachung (The Total Mobilization), that is, as a depiction of the performance of the modern body and of the modern German social order in terms that actually comprehend the social implications of war. Júnger (1895-1998) was of course a German conservative revolutionary who survived the Weimar period and the Nazi Third Reich and who also lived on well after the founding of the post-war Federal Republic (Nevin, 1997; Neaman, 1999). An anti-rationalist, a famous and highly decorated World War One veteran, tireless advocate of modern technology, novelist, social and cultural intellectual of the extreme right wing, it was Júnger who first developed the idea of total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body. Reflecting on the contemporary German social regime and the social consequences of war, Júnger conceived of total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body as a way of permitting him to develop his previous and intensely personal descriptions of World War One in texts such as In Stahlgewittern: Aus dem Tagebuch eines Stosstruppfuhrers (Storms of Steel) (1920) into a more wide-ranging outline of German modernization and, in particular, the relationship between technology and society. Abounding with discussions of workers, war and warriors, aesthetics and politics, Júnger's model of the totally mobilized modern body was controversially employed by the Nazis as a rallying call (Neaman, 1999: 41) and also partly inspired by the military writings of the young General de Gaulle (Hervier, 1995: 21). It was in addition roundly condemned by Marxist intellectuals such as Benjamin (1979: 120-128) whilst influencing the writings of the phenomenologist Heidegger and celebrated by him in seminars (Zimmerman, 1990; Hervier, 1995: 55). Die Totale Mobilmachung concentrates on Júnger's assertion that, for Germany, World War One was a disaster. Moreover, Júnger contends that, as an environment in which the visceral battle for existence over extinction literally blows every other corporeal and social concern apart, the War shattered any remaining convictions that either modernity or rationality, science or technological progress would lead to "perpetual peace" (Kant, 1991: 93-130).

For Júnger, the unique characteristic of the post World War One period was the course of action involving the total mobilization of the state's technological and social resources. In fact, in Júnger's terms, total mobilization firstly caused the end of nineteenth century partial mobilization, that is, of rigid demarcations between civilians and the military, and secondly brought about the downfall of the old European monarchies. The age of partial mobilization and monarchy had, of course, limited the use of technology in war. Yet Júnger went on to argue that, in the era of total mobilization, the twentieth century, Germany's new failing civilian elite and its ideology of democratic liberalism would also be swept away, but this time by the militarization of technology. In particular, he suggested that the importance of World War One was that it transformed mere being into action and war into a dynamic labor process where innovative varieties of transport, logistics, weaponry, workers and soldiers all advanced together. Not surprisingly, Benjamin (1979: 125) severely criticized Júnger's ideas concerning the amalgamation of production and destruction, contending that Júnger's celebration of war and technology for their own sake merely displayed his own nostalgia for military heroism and a desire for "cultic war."

For his part, Júnger thought that total mobilization would become a universal political phenomenon, a phenomenon touched by the "factor of order" (Hervier, 1995: 69), inclusive of state-directed mobilization wherein individual liberties would have to be surrendered to totalitarian planning. To be sure, he considered that, by means of total mobilization, various modern technologies, global flows and frantic forces were mysteriously uniting to bring about a new if sometimes obscure mode of life founded on discipline, a nationwide enthusiasm for mobilization, personal insignificance and cultic practices. From this perspective, then, it was possible for Júnger to argue that total mobilization was a twentieth century method of eliminating nineteenth century partial mobilization and the principal reason why, according to Júnger, Germany had been defeated in World War One. As a result, Júnger advocated the eradication of the obstacles to total mobilization produced by partial mobilization and the injection of what might be termed the spirit of industrialism into German conservatism and nationalism. Indeed, Júnger suggested that, if put into practice, his policy of total mobilization would, perhaps for the first time, unite the conservative and nationalist strength of character of the German people with a sort of technological and industrial fervor. Yet, for all that, it is still uncertain what, precisely, Júnger in fact meant by the term total mobilization (Neaman, 1999: 42). In the next few paragraphs, therefore, I shall consider only those features of Júnger's model of total mobilization that intersect with my own interest in the totally mobilized modern body.

Most importantly, Júnger's notion of total mobilization dissented from the nineteenth century philosophy and traditions of limited war. The idea of limited war was also bound to a convention that attempted to establish and uphold fixed distinctions between civilians and soldiers by way of the introduction of partial mobilization by the monarchy. In other words, the introduction of partial mobilization by the monarchy involved restricting the degree to which, during wartime, technology could be employed either for protective purposes or for purposes of popular mobilization. The liberal assumption was that, where possible, personal freedom should not be given up to the requirements of wartime planning. The concept of limited war had then to do with a social if usually nationally based inclination toward civilianization. It had to do with the desire for a somewhat unexciting environment or at least one in which wars were fought for a purpose, for utilitarian ideals, for the sake of defending production and evading destruction, and with the goal of instigating total mobilization only as a last resort. In brief, the objective of partial mobilization was to preserve the distinction between peace and war even if this meant a continued skepticism with regard to the spirit of industrialism. Nineteenth century limited war was of course specifically what Júnger refused. For him, the twentieth century was to be a century of unlimited war in which the formerly rigid separation of the civilian from the soldier would be abolished by the onset of total mobilization. The totally mobilized body hence synchronized with the development and spirit of modern technology. Accordingly, in the age of total mobilization, there were to be no constraints on the application of technology, the use of weapons or on restricting the freedoms of the individual. Moreover, Júnger referred to unlimited war in terms of a national preference for total mobilization, as a kind of vitalism that delights in the aesthetics and meaninglessness of modern production and destruction. Along these lines, then, Júnger argued for the introduction of total mobilization into 1930s Germany, for the annihilation of the separation between peace and war, and for the acceptance by the German people of the spirit of industrialism. ThusJúnger's objective in pioneering, developing and applying the term total mobilization was not simply to reveal the operation of a particular utopian or perhaps dystopian society that had come to terms with the social significance of war but also to solve the technological, industrial and social problems of Germany.

Naturally, given his extreme right-wing standpoint described above, more recent commentators than Benjamin have critically assessed Júnger's hypotheses concerning total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body. Herf (1984: 92), for example, has argued that Júnger's treatise on total mobilization deserves critical scrutiny as "it was this essay that first led Walter Benjamin to write about the aestheticization of politics among the intellectuals of the Right." However, Herf has also directed a number of specific criticisms at Júnger's Die Totale Mobilmachung. First of all, and beginning with a methodological approach drawn from the Frankfurt School of critical theory but ending with one taken from liberalism (Eley, 1987: 187-197), Herf's (1984: 94) analysis maintains that Júnger supported the "worldwide trend toward state-directed mobilization" whilst making no "specific economic and political proposals concerning the relation between state and economy." Secondly, Herf (1984: 94) suggests that Júnger "radically separated technology from society, making it instead 'the expression' of a 'mysterious and compelling claim'" while leaving fundamental if dreary empirical questions concerning the appearance, progression and expansion of total mobilization aside. Lastly, (Herf , 1984: 94), there is a "sadomasochistic, spectatorial aspect to all of Júnger's strange broodings on the war." In Júnger's Die Totale Mobilmachung, for instance, discloses Herf (1984: 94-95), existential sorrow and joy are indivisible, as when Júnger wholly recognizes the anguish the militarized body must bear in modern warfare whilst simultaneously extolling the delights of senseless production, meaningless destruction and the unleashing of permanent war.

There can be little doubt that Júnger, similar to the Nazis and Heidegger, was engaged in the early 1930s with exploring the potential of and championing the international propensity towards total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body. Yet, and against Herf, I want to argue that Júnger was not a failed or impractical economic and political theorist lacking any concern with concrete policies. Instead, I submit that Júnger, like Heidegger, was a right-wing intellectual cultural and social theorist mesmerized by the aesthetics, philosophies and technologies of modernization.Júnger's writings and style, for example, are, as Struve (1973: 377-414) has demonstrated, critical rather than policy oriented. Furthermore, while Kater (1981: 263-277) has documented how, after 1933, Germany's impasse was such that there was no system of policy making, Herwig (1988: 80-115) has persuasively argued that Germany also lacked the intellectual and techno-industrial capital to equal that of the Allies, making Júnger's plans for total mobilization unattainable. Needless to say,Júnger did to a great extent dissociate modern technology from society when attempting to explain technology's manifestation as a mysterious and compelling claim that exposed the modern body to an existence lived in the alienated age of mass society. Still, this does not automatically mean that Júnger's descriptive account of the technological and social conditions of total mobilization has no theoretical importance. As Stern (1953: 11) put it, total mobilization was Júnger's "most distinct intellectual achievement" since Júnger had understood that what "nature meant to earlier ages, machines mean to ours. Technical perfection is not progress but an elementary fact. Any scale of values which disregards it, or fails to account for it positively, is as decadent and false as any earlier system would have been had it rejected nature" (Stern, 1953: 43-44).

What is more, as Herf (1984: 70) himself observes, the main basis for Júnger's motivation was his Fronterlebnis (front experience) of World War One. From this viewpoint, then, it appears reasonable to regard Júnger's effort, to square his reactionary politics with the progression of modern technology, as an original war-strewn insight into the place of the masses in a world made both nihilistic and profoundly ambivalent by machines (Kahler, 1956: 567-602; Woods, 1990: 72-91). Likewise, Júnger's disdain for routine practical issues relating to the execution of total mobilization can be judged as the result of his concern with describing intense human experience rather than with matter-of-fact or theoretically informed questions concerning policy making.

Lastly, as Herf maintains, it is true that, on occasion, Júnger's stance appears to be that of a sado-masochistic eyewitness on technology and an atypical commentator on World War One. Yet none of Herf's criticisms in this regard can diminish the fact that Júnger's figurative portrayals of technology and war are generally seen to be a vividly correct acknowledgement of the human, almost sexual, attraction to control and violence (see, e.g., Stern, 1953). Besides, Júnger saw his spectatorial viewpoint on technology in particular as being concerned with, amongst other things, the humiliation and alienation of the individual laborer, as described in his Der Arbeiter: Herrsschaft und Gestalt (1932) (The Worker). In fact,Júnger's unease about modern technology and the fate of labor also decisively influenced the Frankfurt School and Marxist theorist Marcuse's (1964) One Dimensional Man (Orr, 1974: 312-336). However, as a writer on World War One and its aftermath, there is no question that Júnger's style and texts are at variance with more or less every other comparable author. Moving elegantly from unreal yet uncannily accurate depictions of technology to sometimes terrifyingly incomprehensible scenes of workers and warriors, Júnger's fragmentary analyses rarely add up to anything that could ever be described as a program, except perhaps as one that works against the materialism of modernity (Hochhuth, 1988: 347-368).

Júnger's conceptions of total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body are thus concerned with the development of a metaphorical depiction of the war machine. They are then more exactly a brilliantly accurate appreciation of our partially erotic yet politicized fascination with violence, and rather less, as Herf argues, a sado-masochistic, spectatorial and strange meditation on warfare. Total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body in this sense are productive if provocative ideas. They are also notions that can be developed to offer a perspective on the wide-ranging anxieties regarding advanced technology and the degradation, separation and fortunes of labor. But total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body can additionally be employed as resources and incorporated into a technique of writing that makes use of new kinds of terminology, style and texts centered on Fronterlebnis. Aspiring to exploit assets and techniques that were unlike those of other writers, Júnger's descriptions of total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body advance gracefully from dreamlike to nightmarish but mysteriously precise representations of techno-workers and warriors. Distinct from the characterization of mobilization and total mobilization as constituents of military tradition, therefore,Júnger's model of total mobilization is a component of a German literary custom focused on Nietzschean-like aphorisms and a somewhat anarchic method of investigation. It follows that Júnger's theorization of total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body corresponds to any number of social regimes and modern bodies, and especially to the understanding of the social consequences of warfare. In analyzing the predicament of workers and warriors, Júnger wanted to escape from the fetters of the programmatic, and to discover and then produce and activate an examination of war that, albeit extremely controversially operated against both the Nazi regime, which he quickly came to detest (Hervier, 1995: 71), and the materialist predisposition of the era. However, in the next section, I want to introduce and develop my own hypotheses concerning the totally mobilized hypermodern body.

The Totally Mobilized Hypermodern Body

The totally mobilized hypermodern body can be characterized as a body with a "complete and permanent mindset and corporeal preparedness for war or similar emergencies involving the reorganization and disintegration of local, national and global economic, political and military rights and resources" (Armitage and Roberts, 2003: 89). The advantage of describing the totally mobilized hypermodern body in this way is that it permits me to summarize various features of hypermodernization as well as a number of individual and collective civilian and military bodies. In what follows, then, I embrace a hypermodern standpoint on the discrepancies and resemblance's between Júnger's conception of the militarized modern body and the totally mobilized modern body, and my own ideas concerning the militarized hypermodern body and the totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the new US civilian-military elite.

I want to interpret and apply the concepts of total mobilization and the totally mobilized modern body in a somewhat different manner to that presented by Júnger, who endeavored to cast off the civilized modern body by uncovering and letting loose a number of its emotional and active characteristics. In so doing, I want to reject the idea of total mobilization as an exciting and dynamic celebration of war and military daring in which individual liberties are relinquished to totalitarian planning and a life of discipline that terminates in a kind of corporeal and communal phenomenology of everyday fear. For one thing, Júnger's totally mobilized modern bodies were created from specific intellectual and human, territorial, social and historical sources that were conditional on Nazi Germany's mobilization for World War Two during the 1930s. For another, my understanding of hypermodern totally mobilized bodies is assembled from particular theoretical and individualized, deterritorialized, militarized and contemporary sources that are reliant upon the US' mobilization for the War on Terrorism in the twenty-first century. The hypermodern significance of the US' mobilization for the War on Terrorism, therefore, as distinct from the fundamentally modern significance of German mobilization for World War Two, arises not from its territorialization, from its dwelling place, but from its deterritorialization and reterritorialization, or the building of new dwelling places. The totally mobilized hypermodern body is thus produced within the context of the hypermodern cities and the increasingly militarized society of the US. Indeed, the US is now a society that has evidently come to terms with the contemporary discourse of the militarization of education and mobilization as well as with the contemporary wars on both terrorism and Iraq.

Similar to, but distinct from,Júnger's modern theorization, my hypermodern account of the totally mobilized body is founded on the notion that the objective of the hypermodern US State and its military-scientific complex is to totally mobilize the militarized hypermodern body and its desires. However, in seeking to accomplish this goal, the US State and the military-scientific complex have no intention of duplicating the modern principles and practices associated with Júnger's ideas relating to total mobilization and the totally mobilized body. The contemporary model of total mobilization consequently aspires to fashion a hypermodern form of existence that enthusiastically embraces crisis and conflict preparation. To be sure, the hypermodern paradigm of total mobilization is an innovative approach not only to war and emergency but also to the role of the US State and the military-scientific complex. The totally mobilized hypermodern body is then attempting to restructure both the capabilities of the militarized and individualized hypermodern body and the social body of the US, inclusive of modes of mediation, information and consumption. And it is doing so in a way that is decipherable in terms of how the US reflects on its own current world status and considers its future globalitarian standing to be, that is, as a state that continually seeks to expand its operations and armed forces speedily and effectively across the new planetary frontierland. Hence the inauguration of hypermodern total mobilization appeals to those individuals and groups who are confident of their ability to reconstruct their own and others' way of thinking and personal existence by way of the forthright dissuasion of indistinct future "enemies" and a disdain for modern methods of total mobilization. Distinct from Júnger's modern interpretation, therefore, my own hypermodern explanation of total mobilization and the totally mobilized hypermodern body aims to consider what I deem to be merely the formative phase of the US led War on Terrorism. Additionally, it seeks to deliberate on the War on Terrorism from the perspective of the US hypermodern State and the military-scientific complex. This is because it is these individual (e.g., US President George W. Bush, US Attorney General John Ashcroft and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld etc.) and collective (e.g., the White House, the Justice and Defense Departments and the Pentagon) bodies that are currently developing a profuse range of little narratives and tactical coalitions regarding their ongoing globalitarian political project concerning the globalization of totalitarianism. Accordingly, I argue below that the US led War on Terrorism can usefully be characterized and understood to a considerable degree by means of my hypermodern theorization of the totally mobilized body.

The totally mobilized hypermodern body is the operational standpoint of those bodies in hypermodernity that aim to construct for their own purposes an inclusive and enduring mindset founded on economic crisis, military combat and preparation for what I call infinite war. Such bodies as a result seek to function in and to arrange their own social world and that of others along the lines of a way of thinking which is focused on their own mental and corporeal attentiveness to the War on Terrorism and to its related State of emergency (Armitage, 2002: 27-38). Primarily concerned with the reform and logistical restructuring of regional, state and worldwide financial, governmental and martial freedoms and assets, the hypermodern body considers its totally mobilized existence as a mission specifically connected to the duties and development of the militarized hypermodern body. For militarized hypermodern bodies in the US today, however, it appears that social life within the matrix of hypermodern total mobilization is analogous to that of experiencing a hypermodern theatrical production. Exhorted by the increasingly deterritorialized players on the stage, the average US citizen is then expected to develop into a totally mobilized hypermodern body both in terms of the practices of everyday life in the hypermodern city and with regard to the reorganization of civilian-military relations. Joan Didion (2003: 54-59) encountered such bodies when, days after September 11th, 2001, and after which an astonishingly sincere kind of national yet nomadic exchange of ideas had opened up in the US about its own history and responsibilities, abruptly, the newly "Fixed Opinions" of post-September 11th America were established. The totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the military-scientific complex and the compliant hypermodern media, for example, began to mobilize on behalf of President Bush's "call to arms at the End of History" as regards the crisis and meaning of September 11th as well as the "war on terror" (Graham, Keenan and Dowd, 2003: 1-31). Frustrated by the innovative varieties of critical, collective and communal discourse being conducted and dedicated to creating a mode that exploited all the uncertain trials and tribulations of the militarized hypermodern body, the Bush administration began by quickly transforming and expanding the tragedy into the veneration of the homeland and the flag. Striving to deter and alarm potential opponents whilst taking advantage of the militarized hypermodern body's hunger for a feeling of community, the hypermodern US State and the military-scientific complex, together with the hypermodern media, subsequently began closing off any explorations of the event other than its own. It was an exploration that not only necessitated the persistent reiteration of TV images of the American flag for the audience but also the message that the US had just entered the initial stages of a new kind of cultic war. As Didion (2003: 54) found:

In the paragraphs below I shall broaden Didion's insights above into the total mobilization of fixed opinions in post-September 11th America by applying what I have conceptualized as the totally mobilized hypermodern body. In so doing I will incorporate a number of hypermodern totally mobilized bodies and questions concerning technological surveillance, infinite war and the rise of the new US civilian-military elite.

To begin with, totally mobilized hypermodern bodies discern an undeniable level of self-assurance concerning their capacity to hyperrationalize their own and others' state of mind. Demonstrating an exceptional affection for their own authority and for their ability to be able to apply ever increasing degrees of compulsion and introduce different levels of mobilization, totally mobilized hypermodern bodies thus seek to enhance their capability to realize their globalitarian political project regarding the globalization of totalitarianism. Totally mobilized hypermodern bodies are then far removed from the typical individualized body, from its fears and insecurities. To be sure, the totally mobilized hypermodern body is a powerful and vigorous body. Indeed, it is a body that senses that, in the age of hypermodern total mobilization, where the atmosphere of national emergency and force saturates the landscape, and where there are practically no socio-political limits on the US hypermodern State and the military-scientific complex, its existence is not simply an improvement on its former self but in addition a body whose performance is admired by others. US Attorney General Ashcroft, for instance, ostensibly spent the first months of his appointment before the September 11th attacks "adrift, almost bored" as he attempted to discover his socio-political role. But, say his enthusiastic assistants, the events of September 11th and the subsequent War on Terrorism "energized him" (Lichtblau and Liptak, 2003: 6). Reveling in excessive amounts of civilian and increasingly militarized personal independence from the general population, the totally mobilized hypermodern body also possesses the capacity to introduce and develop the hypermodern technology of the Internet and its associated information revolution in conjunction with other social and political bodies, agencies and military services with comparable objectives.

The newly ratified US Patriot Act, for instance, allows the totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the US State and the military-scientific complex to surf all the way through speed-space almost unhindered, tapping telephones, examining e-mails, searching public databases and scrutinizing individuals' use of the Internet (Economist, 2003: 50). Accepted by many as a hyperrational approach to winning the War on Terrorism, the bulk of these modifications, like nomadic listening devices directed towards the "suspect" body, as opposed to the appropriate technology, are intended to assist in the pursuit of real time information-sharing between intelligence and law enforcement organizations. Of course, other countries at the forefront of fighting the War on Terrorism, such as Britain, are also approving similar legislation, like The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 (Home Office, 2000). This Act regulates the exercise of a variety of investigative powers, such as the law on the interception of communications, by a range of public authorities. Yet the Patriot Act especially has many worrying characteristics. This is because it entails individual liberties being given up to a kind of globalitarian planning wherein the US State and the military-scientific complex can force Internet-service suppliers to reveal whichever records that they consider may assist their inquiries, even if the records are unrelated to a particular suspect. The totally mobilized hypermodern body is then unperturbed by the speed-spaces of the militarized hypermodern city and responsibilities which both incorporate and necessitate the exercise of a number of variable powers and independent activities connected to the socialization of war. Certainly, it is particularly at ease in those social environments where polar inertia authorizes the use and demonstration of its innovative expertise as regards the cybernetic acceleration of technological surveillance.

Yet, importantly, accelerating technological surveillance is the aspect of the civil liberties debate that produces the largest amount of uneasiness amongst the increasingly militarized, hypermodern and individualized bodies in the US (Economist, 2003: 50). A recent report (ACLU, 2003), entitled "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains," for example, written by the American Civil Liberties Union, explains how "improvements" in surveillance technologies, such as biometric identification scanners and cell phone location systems, have made it feasible to produce an assortment of information on almost every individualized body. In this way, the US Patriot Act is one more contribution to the burgeoning surveillance society as it wears away time-honored safeguards against privacy abuses. Consequently, the ACLU report concludes by calling for the overhauling of existing and insufficient protections and the introduction of wide-ranging privacy laws to deal with new all-encompassing surveillance technologies. However, the individualized bodies of ordinary Americans and collective bodies such as the ACLU are not just concerned about the US Patriot Act but also about projects such as "Operation TIPS," a 2002 Justice Department proposal to rally and recruit US citizens into reporting "suspicious" activity. In fact, Operation TIPS received such an antagonistic response that the Senate unequivocally barred it in the act of launching the new Orwellian-sounding Department of Homeland Security. A Pentagon plan to examine US State and business-related databases for "suspect" activity, labeled "Total Information Awareness," has also been stopped, for now. Thus, even though September 11th 2001 was a catastrophe for the US, there is nevertheless something of a rebellion being conducted by individualized hypermodern bodies, as consumers and librarians, bookshop owners, academics and university students refuse to unthinkingly divulge their records to the US State and the military-scientific complex.

Evidently, the totally mobilized hypermodern body is distinct from the militarized hypermodern and individualized body as the former exhibits an excessive affection for its own ability and that of the US to wage the War on Terrorism after the tragedy of September 11th. Actually, the totally mobilized hypermodern body thrives on the belief that, in the era of hypermodernity, of hyperrationality and techno-science, progress shows the way not to perpetual peace but to infinite war. For the totally mobilized hypermodern body, then, a new enlightenment is dawning in which fighting the War on Terrorism becomes an upbeat, even exciting, occupation. Without a doubt, it is an occupation whose chief concerns are the extension, fulfillment and manifestation of the totally mobilized hypermodern body's Nietzschean feeling for power, for the socialization of war and for the ongoing amalgamation of the entirety of the US hypermodern State's military, technological and social resources. Accordingly, the totally mobilized hypermodern body has recently expanded its War on Terrorism to incorporate a war on Iraq whilst concurrently breaching the boundaries between civilian and military life in the US. Needless to say, the totally mobilized hypermodern body cannot realize such a huge and complex globalitarian project without the collaboration of a number of other similar bodies which, as a group, I label the new US civilian-military elite.

As the powerhouse behind Bush's War on Terrorism and the US led war on Iraq, for instance, the new US civilian-military elite is comprised of a group of defense policy intellectuals and long-standing Iraq hawks (Purdum, 2003: 1-3). They include Republicans such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, previously a Reagan administration defense official who until recently supervised the Pentagon's consultative group, the Defense Policy Board. Other members of the new US civilian-military elite include William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Vice-President Dan Quayle and who currently edits the conservative Weekly Standard. However, this collection of totally mobilized hypermodern bodies also incorporates a number of Iraq specialists from the Clinton White House, like Kenneth M. Pollack, the author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002). Of course, such bodies disagree with each other on a diversity of points regarding their construction of an ever-changing array of narratives concerning the War on Terrorism and the disarmament of Iraq. Yet, as several recent critics (e.g., Harris, 2002: 1-22; Greider, 2003: 1-2) have remarked, the one thing the new US civilian-military elite do agree on is the current need for the US to pursue a hegemonic, unilateralist and military-dominated strategy. As a result, its globalitarian vision is wholly opposed to those still influential forces (represented at the level of the US State by Secretary of State Colin Powell) in the US who contend that only multilateralism can guarantee stability for global capitalist development. For their part, and in search of a democratic revolution in the Middle East, the unilateralists picture an emancipated Iraq as the precursor of democracy, the first prospective component of a sort of inverse domino theory whereby the US promotes the collapse of undemocratic governments. In other words, the new US civilian-military elite has cast aside the cold war doctrines of containment in favor of the globalitarian policy of infinite war. The unilateralists are therefore presently reviving a number of concepts originally proclaimed by the first Bush administration. Essentially, the new US civilian-military elite's proposal is that, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the guiding principle of US foreign policy must be to ensure that no new superpower arises that can compete for control of the new planetary frontierland. Since September 11th, then, the official policy of the second Bush administration has been that the cold war doctrine of containment is over and that the US is obliged to take pre-emptive action against its adversaries. The totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the new US civilian-military elite are thus bodies built for socio-political action. But they are also bodies that function best within the context of a network of high-level socio-political groupings such as the Project for the New American Century, which was instigated in 1997 by Kristol, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, among others, to encourage a forceful US presence around the globe. Equally significant for totally mobilized hypermodern bodies like that of Kristol is the sensation of being a member of a small group of people who "have been obsessing about [invading Iraq] for a decade" (Purdum, 2003: 3). The totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the new US civilian-military elite are therefore bodies that are not merely at war with terror, or even with Iraq, but at war with every other individual and collective body that they pre-emptively perceive to be an enemy.

One consequence of the above is that the totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the new US civilian-military elite actively support the shift into infinite war. Rejecting modern doctrines of containment, such excited bodies are then keen to discover hypermodern methods of dealing with the hazards of unlimited war whilst simultaneously unearthing a novel and dynamic way of life brought about by their commitment to pre-emptive strikes on their opponents. The new US civilian-military elite is thus the varied product of the initial phase of infinite war and the corporeal manifestation of hypermodern total mobilization. The totally mobilized hypermodern body is consequently wholly unresponsive to modern conceptions of limited war and to the physical materialization of modern total mobilization. In fact, it is a body that is searching for entirely activated forms of hypermodern subjectivity, authority and independence. But what kind of existence, outlook, sensitivity and considerations do such forms involve? Primarily, and within the context both of its dismissal of modern policies of containment and its repudiation of and opposition to limited war, the totally mobilized hypermodern body supports a life lived in the shadow of pre-emptive strikes.

However, just as important as the corporeal expression of hypermodern total mobilization to the new US civilian-military elite is the creation of a social and political mindset appropriate to hypermodern total mobilization. From my perspective, such a socio-political state of mind is comprised of conceptions and information that the new US civilian-military elite makes use of as it endeavors to direct the course of hypermodern life. For example, the ability of the new US civilian-military elite to construct effective socio-political discourses I consider to be an important if wholly negative contribution to the formation of a socio-political way of thinking apposite to hypermodern total mobilization. Specifically, let us reflect on the significance of what Graham, Keenan and Dowd (2003: 1-31) refer to as "A call to arms at the End of History: A discourse-historical analysis of George W. Bush's declaration of 'war on terror'". How, for instance, do such historically momentous and militarized declarations socially configure and operate to the political disadvantage of the militarized hypermodern body's mental state as it enters hypermodern total mobilization? Graham, Keenan and Dowd (2003: 1) identify four "generic features" of George W. Bush's call to arms. These generic features are: "an appeal to a legitimate power source that is external to the orator, and which is presented as inherently good"; "an appeal to the historical importance of the culture in which the discourse is situated"; "the construction of a thoroughly evil Other"; and "an appeal for unification behind the legitimating power source" (Graham, Keenan and Dowd (2003: 1). Graham, Keenan and Dowd (2003: 1) contend that "such texts typically appear in historical contexts characterized by deep crises in political legitimacy," But, as they (Graham, Keenan and Dowd, 2003: 25) readily acknowledge, examining and recognizing the generic features of Bush's call to arms is not quite the same thing as interceding critically "in any positive way or to any great effect." Consequently, critical discourse analysts and applied linguists face a number of difficult questions. For it is not altogether clear, as Graham, Keenan and Dowd (2003: 25), explain, that merely identifying and analyzing the generic features of Bush's call to arms texts can be "deployed as a countervailing force" and "an exhortation for understanding, tolerance and political sanity."

Yet surely the most important reasons why the recognition and scrutiny of such texts cannot be organized as a counterbalancing power for social broadmindedness and political wisdom are because they are mostly located within technological speed-spaces of endless movement, where there is literally no time for debate, let alone comprehension. Accordingly, and in search of instantaneous acquiescence to its call to arms, the new US civilian-military elite exercises its authority in part by means of its unceasing repetition of binary-like messages of socio-political unity and division, on TV, radio and the Internet, without ever pausing to justify its actions. In the totally mobilized world of the hypermodern body, then, in the world of "good vs evil," the cultural ethics of the spirit of informationalism have superseded the Protestant ethic. Hence the bodies of the new US civilian-military elite are bodies that are noticeably uninterested in upholding any socio-political borders between inertia and speed, or even between deliberation and impulsiveness. Accelerated to the speed of light, contemporary processes of information circulation thus transform almost everything, at least from the point of reception, and inclusive of the War on Terrorism, into an ephemeral form of hypercapitalist techno-symbolism.

Thus, whilst it is difficult to conceive of a sociologist such as Elias having an appreciation of the totally mobilized hypermodern bodies of the new US civilian-military elite, it is not hard to imagine a critic of the art of technology like Virilio having an instinct for such bodies. To be sure, Virilio draws attention not to the safety of the civilizing process but to the fears associated with the militarizing processes of the US military-scientific complex. And, in so doing, his humanitarian vision is focused on a critique of the corrosion of democracy and the threat of unlimited war. Here, civilization no longer seeks deliverance from mere continued existence but from those totally mobilized and overexcited hypermodern bodies that have been charged by the new US civilian-military elite with the development of techno- science. As Virilio (Zurbrugg, 2001: 157) put it recently: "I think that the next political struggleótaking the concept of political struggle in the broadest termsówill be the struggle against techno-scienceÖ against technology itselfónot in order to destroy it, but in order to transfigure it." Setting aside questions relating to the intricacies of class societies, if not questions regarding cultural provision and enlightened human activity, Virilio contemplates instead the rise of cyber-warfare, the militarization of human behavior and knowledge. Nevertheless, for Virilio, it no longer makes sense to look to socio-political organizations like the US hypermodern State for the development of a structured, safe and enduring state of affairs. In truth, for him, the US hypermodern State is one of the most important driving forces behind the expansion of the new planetary frontierland. The US' National Security Agency, for example, acts as a sort of "Department of World Information," bringing together knowledge not simply on alleged "enemies" but also on the world in general (Virilio, 1999a: 35). In consequence, as the militarization of knowledge gathers pace, it is no longer purely a militarization of the hypermodern body that is taking place. Rather, it is the total mobilization of the hypermodern body.

From the Factor of Order to Mutually Assured Vulnerability

In introducing and developing the concepts of the hypermodern body, the totally mobilized modern body and the totally mobilized hypermodern body, I have employed a range of theoretical texts provided by Simmel and Virilio, Lyotard and Weber, Elias and Bauman, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri and, above all, Júnger. However, in this final section, I firstly critically evaluate the significance of Júnger's conception of the totally mobilized modern body before appraising my own contemporary model of the totally mobilized hypermodern body. Júnger's application of the idea of the totally mobilized modern body is of course wide-ranging. Nonetheless, what is most conspicuous is his Darwinian and naturalist hypothesis concerning humankind, wherein the development, actions and reactions of the body and society are viewed as the intensification and manifestation of an endless struggle. I hope that by making use of Júnger's fruitful premises relating to the totally mobilized modern body in previous sections I have also made it apparent that I consider his suggestions to be provocative ones. For during the period in which he wrote Die Totale Mobilmachung, at any rate,Júnger concentrated on Darwinian and naturalist assumptions, declaring that the ceaseless struggle for existence was a war between and within the species (Nevin, 1997: 89). Clearly, I do not condone such suppositions. Indeed, for me, the relevant assertions regarding the labor of life stem from modern and post-structuralist, post-modern and hypermodern deconstructions of the body and society achieved by contemporary philosophies of decentring that move beyond traditional humanist or phenomenological ideas of the subject and object, nature and being.

Moreover, Júnger claims that the totally mobilized modern body is a body with a frame of mind and corporeal preparedness linked to the battle for survival throughout modern wartime. By the same token, I argue that the totally mobilized hypermodern body is a body with a mindset and physical awareness associated with the fight for continued existence in the hypermodern era of infinite war. Thus, whilst Júnger considers the totally mobilized modern body as a phenomenon of Germany in the 1930s, I regard the totally mobilized hypermodern body as a nascent development within the US in the early twenty-first century. It is at this crucial point, however, that all similarities between Júnger's comprehension of the totally mobilized modern body and my understanding of the totally mobilized hypermodern body cease to exist. This is because, and in complete contrast to my hypermodern conception, Júnger perceives the emergence of the totally mobilized modern body as beneficial to individual welfare, owing to its ability to unify the conservative and nationalist spirit of the German populace with that of industrial technology. The contemporary global flows associated with the contest for sustained individual subsistence in the hypermodern epoch of infinite war would not, then, correspond to the factor of order that was Júnger's chief political interest. Hypermodern currents would therefore have to be decelerated or integrated into a style of life based on discipline and a national passion for mobilization, on individual irrelevance and on cultic rituals within the context of total mobilization, wherein personal liberties would have to be given up to totalitarian planning. How are we to critically assess Júnger's perception of the totally mobilized modern body? Initially, it is vital to emphasize that the requirements of the factor of order ought not to be permitted to override all other socio-political needs. Certainly, the risks of enveloping the totally mobilized hypermodern body within a disciplined order founded, for example, on ICTs of regulation, monitoring and surveillance, as we have seen, are not only well known (e.g., Foucault, 1991) but also extreme. Similarly, it is, for example, possible to agree to some extent with Júnger's critical assessment of the protracted decline of nineteenth century European monarchism and twentieth century democratic liberalism. Yet any such agreement should not inevitably entail deciding on a way of life rooted in discipline. What is more, both the militarized and the totally mobilized hypermodern body are deterritorialized bodies whose outlook is assembled within the hypermodern city. Indeed, the hypermodern city is an elusive city that is constantly in motion and, for these reasons, any contemporary Júnger-inspired attempt to impose order would not be capable of ensuring the unqualified allegiance of either the militarized or the totally mobilized hypermodern body.

The militarized hypermodern body is then presently having to confront each and every exigency regarding what might be termed the factor of disorder that is the mindset of the totally mobilized hypermodern body. Júnger was dedicated to the belief that by obeying the factor of order, people would be afforded a first-rate and practical context for their own development. On the other hand, I contend that the state of emergency, that new factor of disorder that is the planetary frontierland, is not only excessively invasive but also an indication of imminent socio-political mental and physical concern. Academics, for example, must begin to appreciate what the reorganization of the modern university means for the socio-political philosophy of the hypermodern university regarding the contemporary trend toward the suppression of freedom of expression in institutions of higher education. At Berkeley, for instance, university administrators recently declined to permit a fund-raising plea for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be posted, as it cited Goldman on the topics of suppression of free speech and her resistance to war. Berkeley administrators judged the subjects too political as the US geared up for the war on Iraq (Murphy, 2003: 1). In the face of the above, I would argue that academics ought to make more public those benefits of the modern university that are the enjoyable aspects of the factor of disorder. Such features include the experience of intellectual bewilderment, the struggle for knowledge for one's own purposes, a feeling of personal worth and the freedom to engage in and with critical thought and practices. These characteristics are important because the hypermodern university increasingly excludes what we might call the modern universitas, or the groups of academics and students that endow any university with a multiplicity of informal systems that are typically more compassionate and open-minded than its hard-headed and often insular hypermodern replacement. Disciplinarian and hypermodern assaults on the modern universitas, more often than not formulated on a vision of the hypermodern university as a business like any other, are, then, increasingly motivated by a strategy that aims to suppress freedom of expression. An absolute faith in a way of life founded on discipline, and an enthusiasm for state mobilization on personal unimportance and quasi-religious practices is therefore not only flawed but also treacherous. Certainly, the launch of hypermodern total mobilization jeopardizes the individual liberties of all those in search of the inverse of totalitarian planning.

What, then, of my own proposal that the totally mobilized hypermodern body can be rendered theoretically as a body with a way of thinking and physical awareness that is primed for war or related emergencies necessitating the redeployment and deterioration of resources? By applying such a suggestion I argued that the War on Terrorism, its associated state of emergency and the 2003 war on Iraq, are mechanisms for the creation of the totally mobilized hypermodern body. Additionally, the totally mobilized hypermodern body is almost certain to pursue the strategy of infinite war whilst manufacturing fresh states of emergency, if the apparently unlimited processes of social restructuring and the decline of political resources is allowed to continue. From a hypermodern perspective it follows that what we are currently witnessing is the totally mobilized hypermodern body's actions and reactions with regard to the emergence of globalitarianism and hypermodernization, on top of all those other excessive elements of hypermodernity that I have highlighted as being important. Hypermodernization consequently signifies an identifiable sequence of forces and events taking place within hypermodern societies like the US, in which vast quantities of deterritorialized and militarized information surge through society and education powered by hypertechnologization. Similarly, what I label hypermodernization Virilio (Virilio and Lotringer, 2002: 161) calls a "runaway train." As Virilio explains: "...the power of absolute speed, of live transmission, of cybernetic information technology is such that traditional power, which used to rely on force, on armies, on police etc., and even on wealth, can no longer hold it back. The 'runaway' is under way. This is a state of emergency." (Virilio and Lotringer, 2002: 162; original emphasis). At the same time, it appears that the runaway train is far along the track to the station called the individualized body. Undoubtedly, there are numerous techno-political signs that the state of emergency is already creating totally mobilized hypermodern bodies that "know the 'being orphaned' feeling, deprived of guides and wardens and left with the vexingly inadequate maps in the pocket and tools in the private toolbox" (Bauman and Tester, 2001: 101). Thus, the supposed consumer sovereignty of the individualized body is something of a facade and that, secreted behind the excessive expenditure on hypermodern and increasingly militarized goods and services, a new slavery of consumer subservience to pure desire is coming into being in the advanced countries (Bauman, 2002a: 180-200).

My supposition, however, is not that the civilized modern body is obsolete. Rather, it is that both the militarized and the totally mobilized hypermodern body are the continuation of the civilized modern body by militarized means. Yet the "being orphaned feeling" and excessive spending on hypermodern militarized products are creating new sorts of politicized bodies. In effect, though, my contention has been that a revolution at the level of the state is underway. It is a revolution that exposes a hypermodern unilateral rationale and call for infinite war as opposed to peaceful interactions between multilateral states. "After September the 11th, the doctrine of containment just doesn't hold any water as far as I am concerned," said President George W. Bush recently (Purdum, 2003: 3) and, in so saying, launched the war on Iraq and the hypermodern state of emergency, in which not simply modern doctrines of containment but also modern conceptions regarding the security of society are to be discarded. Given such conditions, it is scarcely surprising to find that political opinions of the individualized and totally mobilized hypermodern body has, as Didion confirmed, become more fixed and xenophobic. But, simultaneously, and by means of the arrival of the spirit of informationalism and the spread of hypercapitalism, the hypermodern state is openly experimenting with what Bauman (2002b: 82; original emphasis) calls the "present-day mutually assured vulnerability of all politically separated parts of the globe."

Finally, I must recognize that critics may well argue that the consequences of hypermodernization on the body are rather different from those offered in my explanation of the contemporary forces of change. It might be that my description is charged with a kind of military determinism, or of being rather too excessive. I am conscious that various commentators may possibly envision other, perhaps more positive, tendencies with regard to the movement from geopolitics to the militarized chronopolitics of control presently effected by high performance states and governed by totally mobilized hypermodern bodies. I am aware, also, that a number of critics might consider my standpoint as being overly excessive with regard to what I have elucidated as the escalation of technological surveillance, infinite war and the rise of the new US civilian-military elite. Even so, and in spite of any such deliberations, I maintain that developments such as the construction of a socio-political mindset apposite to hypermodern total mobilization are merely exemplars of an apparently limitless collection of newly established discourses assembled by those who perceive George W. Bush's call to arms and declaration of the War on Terrorism and the war on Iraq as long-awaited events. Schlesinger's declaration that it's "not war that is hell, it's peace that's hell" is then far from mistaken as, for men like him, a Nixon-era CIA director and defense secretary and presently influential advocate of the war on Iraq, such statements symbolize the real meaning of their globalitarian political project. Yet such scandalous announcements are not just the essence of the disciplinary discourse that is typical of the totally mobilized hypermodern body but also, in part at least, the starting place for the militarized actuality of, for example, all those civilian modern bodies recently mired in the war on Iraq. From a hypermodern perspective, as a result, the socio-political mental and physical state of the civilized modern and the militarized hypermodern body is currently being swiftly altered by means of the militarizing processes of the US military-scientific complex, inclusive of the dissolution of democracy and the materialization of both infinite war and techno-science. Naturally, countering these transformations will require further critiques of the militarization of techno-science. Moreover, it will require a Herculean attempt to redirect techno-science toward peaceful purposes by all those who oppose the militarized behavior, knowledge and hypermodern state of emergency of the totally mobilized hypermodern body. For without such an effort, critics will never develop Hardt & Negri's production of subjectivity as power, let alone the constitution of autonomy or the positive affirmation of being.

1. I would like to thank Mick Dillon, Douglas Kellner, Joanne Roberts and Mike Shapiro for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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