The United States’ narratives are weapons aimed at those who are the most marginalized by capitalist institutions. The state seeks perpetual control through puppeteering — to tether itself to the stories of those who live on the gray border between freedom and oppression that is every square inch of this land. The state almost never releases its grip on those who, if some semblance of real individual power were possible, could be a threat to the state’s corporate mission. A simple analysis can conclude that the state’s mission to control minority populations and impose cultural subjugation upon the land’s original caretakers has been mostly or entirely successful. The capitalist class and the government have created a narrative that they must have the authority to command the right to life or death, and the right to limit life in order to increase the utility of the state. In this sense, we could say the concept of policing stems from the rule-utilitarian belief that less criminal activity brings the state more happiness, and thus we should promote a strong policing force to maximize our productivity to the state.

But the state doesn’t stop at using narratives of patriotism to justify its military-industrial complex or imperialist tendencies. It also takes the stories and dreams of every oppressed citizen and twists them in order to promote its own goals and, indeed, impose more suffering. This is the idea of biopower, which confers the status of “living dead” upon every non-white citizen of this country. Before I discuss biopower, I will first introduce the apparatus that births it.

Let us conceive the United States as an ideological state apparatus, one similar to the theoretical conception of the capitalist state by Marxist philosopher, Louis Althusser. We might say there are important institutions that the state uses to maintain its power, such as religion, education, the family, law, communication and the military. Importantly, the ideology that is realized in these institutions is that of the ruling class. The ruling class uses narrative-control of these institutions in order to hold power and continue subjugation of the individuals who blindly follow these institutions in order to remain good citizens. The individual citizen participates in regular day-to-day tasks that are directed by the ideological apparatus of the state. You may go to a tax-exempt church and be told how to perform immaterial practices, such as devotion to a deity, through material practices, such as donating to the military or church. If we are ideologically nurtured by the state, we can see that, from our start within the capitalist system, our narratives are manipulated in order to accomplish an objective of producing workers — who remain subjects rather than equals within the system. If one group of citizens becomes more “equal” to the ideological state apparatus by telling their own narratives and raising their own cultural concerns, the delicate system that the state has created to maintain control over its subjects is threatened.

It is true, of course, that there are many groups that come into the United States or develop in the United States that do not adhere to the ideological state apparatus. Imagine an immigrant who flees oppression in their home country and brings with them a new cultural norm within our borders. Or, imagine a group of people who are oppressed by the ideological state apparatus and open their eyes in an attempt to control their own narrative. It is when the subjugated people seek freedom from subjugation that the state uses its strongest form of power. Now, we are ready to discuss biopower and its control over citizens as the “living dead.” There are two important components of biopower that relate to controlling the narratives of oppressed citizens — posthumous citizenship and rightless life.

According to biopolitical theory, victims of oppression and non-citizens may be more valuable to the state in death than in life. Let’s say that an American soldier is a member of a group that is oppressed within the United States. When they die, the state can claim the right to their story as a patriotic one, one of success and glory for the state. Essentially, the state can take the narrative of this oppressed citizen and refurbish it as one of glory and heroism in death. Controlling the identity of soldiers who fought in World War II and then came home to a segregated America is an example of this. So is the example of Muslim Americans who might have joined the military in the aftermath of the Patriot Act. Many were separated into a distinct form of American hero only because the United States wanted to patriotize their life stories to avoid the shrieks of terror from those marginalized citizens facing hate crimes and immigration bans based on the color of their skin or their religion. The Patriot Act, of course, was another tool of biopower, isolating many innocent Americans as suspected terrorists and constraining their freedom to unprecedented degrees. By stealing away the living stories of these oppressed citizens, the state can bulk up the ideological state apparatus and maintain control over the body politic. This is a form of “living dead” citizenship, in which the dead are kept alive only in ways that serve the interests of the state.

There is also a border that is drawn between white citizens, who are given de facto and de jure living status due to their integral ties with the ideological state apparatus, and all others, who are granted parole from social death at best and often conjured into living-dead puppets for the state at worst. The latter group is restricted from ever obtaining true political power by the state’s institutions, and is subjected to oppressive policing by the state. Essentially, they are made to be puppets whose only task is to fulfill the goals of the state, and they are restricted from expressing their own goals and ambitions in ways that threaten capitalist power.

Is there any way to fight back against this superstructure? Well, we can infer that the stories and individual narratives of oppressed citizens must be told by activist groups and activist politicians. These stories cannot be manipulated or forgotten, for they are the last line of defense against the superstructure that I’ve described. If they are lost, then total cultural destruction will prevail, and all but the white capitalist class will be in a state of living death.

Sean Reichbach is a sophomore double-majoring in economics and philosophy, politics and law.