The paradoxical after-life of colonial governmentality

Employing the emergency number 911 as a device to open onto two continents of governance – one ‘hot’ the other ‘cold’, one binary, the other the disaggregation of the binary – this paper shows that colonial governmentality is marked by a paradoxical combination of the two. Moreover, it argues that colonial governmentality is the progenitor of this form of governance which today, more than ever, stalks the landscape of liberal democracy and characterises its predominate political form.