At the Gates of Fortress North America: Race-Ing the Spp and its Political Subject

Abstract

The events of 11 September 2001, as Judith Butler has noted, were experienced by Westerners as “a loss of their First Worldism.” North American deep integration is characterized, therefore, as an effort to retrieve a sense of invulnerability under the putative conditions of globalization and insecurity. As the powerful business lobby, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), asserted, “in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it…has become clear that North American economic and physical security are indivisible.” Accordingly, the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, sponsored in 2005 by the CCCE, the US Council on Foreign Relations, and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales, recommended “the creation by 2010 of a North American community to enhance security, prosperity and opportunity… Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products and capital will be legal, orderly and safe.”