“Transpolitical” Subjects and the Politics of Private Security.

This paper explores the shifting role of private security companies in security politics in national and global governmentalities. It traces the parallel evolution of state and non-state (paramilitary) forces through the dynamics of transnationalism and globalism. Within that field, it pays particular attention to how the expansion of the field of security fuels the proliferation of “private-securing” in everyday lives and how the practices of ‘private-securing’ in turn are deeply imbricated in political subjectivity of 
citizenry around the world but especially in North America and Europe. The paper argues that this mode of security politics increasingly demands and actively produces citizen subjects that are “transpolitical,” that is, intensely conditioned and regimented to interpret and internalize politics of security as apolitical. It is where security rises to the level of metapolitics as if beyond the reach of political conduct. There is an underlying political economy to this shift anchored in contemporary regimes of statecraft and governmentality. The transformations in the field of security, especially through the proliferation of private security practices in Europe and North America, serve as an instructive entry into the dynamics of this economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]