UC Santa Cruz

The rebellion and its subsequent suppression in Hama, Syria in 1982 left the cityravaged and the Muslim Brotherhood broken. Critical theories of the state have displaced repressive violence in favor of productive understandings of power. Yet repressive violence has persisted as a political tool, as illustrated by the history of Hama and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Studying the city of Hama makes visible the modalities of power deployed by the Syrian state—the state, for however many ways it has been demystified, still retains tremendous power over the spatial configuration and reconfiguration of territory. Using Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt’s theories of the state to examine the destruction and reconstruction of the city, I argue for the necessity of conceptualizing repressive and productive power as part of a single economy of power. Repressive power makes possible productive forms of power that produce, maintain, and reproduce subject. Turning to the political theories of Michael Foucault and Louis Althusser, I show that their theories of productive power are in fact predicated on repressive power. This insight into the relationship between the modalities of power expands our understandings of power, but also creates space for comparisons to other cities that have experienced violent modernization in the 20th and 21st centuries.