Summary: | Recently, within liberal democracies, the post-Westphalian consolidation of security and intelligence has ushered in the normalization not only of security in ‘securitization’ but also of intelligence in what is proposed here as ‘intelligencification.’ In outlining the features of intelligencified governance, my aim is to interrogate the view that effects or traces, and productivity rather than negation is as persuasive as commonly thought by the constructivists. After all, counter-intelligence is both about purging and reconstructing the archive for undisclosed values. In practice, what is being normalized is the authorized and legalized use of release and retention protocols of politically actionable information. The intelligencification of governmentality affords a sovereignty shell-game or the instrumentalization of sovereign power by interests that are dependent on, yet often inimical to, the power of state, national, and popular sovereignty.
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