X/Xs: Toward a general theory of the exception

Alternatives

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 81-112

  Trozorov, Sergei ^a  

^a PETROZAVODSK STATE UNIVERSITY   (Russian Federation)

Author keywords

Decision; Exception; Sovereignty; The political; Transgression

Indexed keywords

EID: 18844430519     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540503000104     Document Type: Article

References (162)

1. See, for example, Bryan S. Turner, "Sovereignty and Emergency: Political Theology, Islam, and American Conservatism," Theory, Culture, and Society 19, no. 4 (2002);
2. Jef Huysmans, "International Politics of Insecurity: Unilateralism, Inwardness, and Exceptionalism," paper presented at the BISA annual conference, December 15-17, 2003.
3. See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998);
4. and idem, Etat d'Exception (Paris: Seuil, 2003).
5. See also Jenny Edkins, "Sovereign Power, Zones of Indistinction, and the Camp," Alternatives 25, no. 1 (2000) for an application of Agamben's concept of the state of exception.
6. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1976) ;
7. idem, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985);
8. idem, Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
9. The renewed interest in Schmitt in political and international relations theory is particularly evident in the aftermath of the influential readings by Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1996)
10. and Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, note 2.
11. See the contributions to Chantal Mouffe, ed., The Challenge of Carl Schmitt (London: Verso, 1999), note 4, for critical reinterpretations of Schmitt's work from a variety of theoretical backgrounds.
12. See also Chantai Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, note 4;
13. Andrew Norris, "Carl Schmitt's Political Metaphysics: On the Securalisation of the 'Outermost Sphere'," Theory & Event 4, no. 4 (2000);
14. Mika Ojakangas, "Existentially Something Other and Strange: On Carl Schmitt's Philosophy of Concrete Life," in Sakari Hänninen and Jussi Vähämäki, eds., Displacement of Politics (Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 2000);
15. Jef Huysmans, "The Question of the Limit: Desecuritisation and the Aesthetics of Horror in Political Realism," Millennium 27, no. 3 (1998);
16. and William Rasch, "Conflict as a Vocation: Carl Schmitt and the Possibility of Politics," Theory, Culture and Society, 17, no. 6(2000).
17. See Simon Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992);
18. Jenny Edkins, Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999);
19. R. B. J. Walker, "Polis, Cosmopolis, Politics," Alternatives 28 no. 2 (2002): 267-286;
20. Huysmans, note 4;
21. Mark Doucet, "Standing Nowhere(?): Navigating the Third Route on the Question of Foundation in International Theory," Millennium 28, no. 2 (1999).
22. See Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).
23. See Jef Huysmans, "Minding Exceptions: Politics of Insecurity and Liberal Democracy," paper presented at the BISA Annual Conference, December 16-18, 2002;
24. idem, note 1;
25. Jenny Edkins and Veronique Pin-Fat, "Life, Power, Resistance," paper presented at BISA annual conference, Birmingham, December 15-17, 2003.
26. See Sergei Prozorov "Three Theses on Governance and the Political, "Journal of International Relations and Development 7, no. 3 (2004)
27. Political Pedagogy of Technical Assistance: A Study in Historical Ontology of Russian Postcommunism (Tampere: Studia Politica Tamperensis, 2004), chapters 1 and 5. A number of works in political and international theory have relied on a certain combination of insights from Schmitt and Foucault and poststructuralism more generally.
28. See, for example, Chantal Mouffe, ed., The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, note 4;
29. Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, note 4);
30. Slavoj Zizek, "Carl Schmitt in the Age of Post-Politics" in Chantai Mouffe, ed., The Challenge of Carl Schmitt, note 4;
31. William Rasch, "Conflict as a Vocation: Carl Schmitt and the Possibility of Politics," Theory, Culture and Society 17, no. 6 (2000);
32. Jef Huysmans, "The Question of the Limit: Desecuritisation and the Aesthetics of Horror in Political Realism," Millennium 27, no. 3 (1998);
33. Michael C. Williams, "Words, Images, Enemies: Securitisation and International Politics," International Studies Quarterly 47 (2003). However, the work of Mika Ojakangas stands out in developing the more controversial argument that the approach of both authors is marked by the same conceptual logic.
34. See Mika Ojakangas, "Existentially Something Other and Strange: On Carl Schmitt's Philosophy of Concrete Life," in Sakari Hänninen and Jussi Vähämäki, eds., Displacement of Politics (Jyväskylä: SoPhi, 2000);
35. and Ojakangas, "Sovereign and Plebs: Michel Foucault meets Carl Schmitt," Telos 119 (2001). It is this line of reasoning that I seek to develop in this article.
36. See Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, or Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? (London: Verso, 2000);
37. idem, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003);
38. idem, Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (London: Routledge, 2004).
39. See, e.g., Dirk Baecker, "Why Systems?" Theory, Culture, and Sodety 18, no. 1 (2001);
40. Gunther Teubner, "Economics of Gift-Positivity of Justice: The Mutual Paranoia of Jacques Derrida and Niklas Luhmann," Theory, Culture, and Society 18, no. 1 (2001), for a discussion of the parallels between Luhmann's systems theory and poststructuralist orientations, particularly in relation to theorizing the paradoxical nature of the "system" as constituted by the exclusion of its outside.
41. Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 9-11.
42. Archaeology of Knowledge Ibid., p. 10.
43. The notion of the diagram is presented as Foucault's key concept by Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (London: Athlone Press, 1988), p. 72. For the methodological application of this notion
44. see Prozorov, Political Pedagogy, note 8.
45. Ojakangas, "Sovereign and Plebs," note 8, p. 4.
46. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University, 1998), p. 144.
47. I b i d.
48. Ojakangas, note 4 (emphasis in the original).
49. See, for example, David Campbell, "Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles and Post-Structuralism," Millennium 27 no. 3, (1998);
50. Jenny Edkins, et al., eds., Sovereignty and Subjectivity (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999);
51. and William Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
52. See Deleuze, note 12, esp. pp. 120-122.
53. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, note 3, p. 12.
54. Deleuze, note 12, pp. 89-90.
55. For discussions of the "austerity" of Foucault's ontology, see Todd May, "Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise in Foucault and Deleuze," Angelaki: Journal of The Theoretical Humanities 5, no. 2 (2000);
56. Peter Hallward, "The Limits of Individuation, or How to Distinguish Foucault and Deleuze," Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 5, no. 2 (2000);
57. and Prozorov, Political Pedagogy, note 8, chapter 5.
58. Cf. Michel Foucault, "A Preface to Transgression," in Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 32.
59. See Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundations of Authority'," in Drucilla Cornell, et al., eds., Reconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (London: Routledge, 1992);
60. Derrida, "Justice, Law and Philosophy: An Interview With Jacques Derrida," South African Journal of Philosophy 18, no. 3 (1999).
61. Derrida "Justice, Law, Philosophy," note 23, p. 281.
62. Schmitt, Political Theology, note 3, p. 5, 20.
63. Ojakangas, note 4, p. 67.
64. See Ojakangas, "Sovereign and Plebs," note 8.
65. See Foucault, note 22.
66. Norris, note 4, p. 8.
67. Ibid., p. 13;
68. cf. Derrida, "Force of Law," note 23, p. 14.
69. See Slavoj Zizek, "The Inherent Transgression," Cultural Values 2, no. 1 (1998).
70. See also Prozorov, "Three Theses," note 8, for a discussion of the obscene nature of the sovereign act.
71. See Walker, note 5. For a more detailed analysis of sovereignty as a historically specific resolution of the problem of authority, see idem, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
72. See John Caputo, More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), chaps. 2 and 4, for a discussion of the notion of the quasi transcendental with reference to the work of Derrida and Foucault. In my application, the term designates an inherently paradoxical ontological status of the Xs concept as simultaneously a transcendental foundation and a transgressive decision, a condition of (im) possibility of order.
73. See Agamben, Homo Sacer, note 2, part 2.
74. See Edkins and Pin-Fat, note 7. This reading of Agamben emphasizes the purely violent character of sovereign power, which makes sovereignty no longer political, insofar as power relations are irreducible to violence. From this perspective, it is reasonable to reaffirm, as the authors do, power relations against sovereignty as a violent administration of life. In my argument, however, this position only follows from Agamben's initial, " sovereign" move of collapsing the distinction between different forms of power.
75. See Carl Schmitt, Concept of the Political, note 3, p. 19.
76. See Zizek, note 8.
77. A similar point is raised by Doucet, note 5, in a Lefortian reading of the problematic of foundation.
78. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, note 3, p. 38. For an explicit denial of substance to the political
79. see Carl Schmitt, "Ethic of State and Pluralistic State," in Mouffe, ed., note 4, pp. 202-203.
80. Schmitt, Concept of the Political, note 3, p. 78.
81. Caputo, note 33, p. 10.
82. I b i d.
83. See Brady Thomas Heiner, "The Passions of Michel Foucault," Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 14, no. 1 (2003);
84. Keith Robinson, "The Passion and the Pleasure: Foucault's Art of Not Being Oneself," Theory, Culture, and Society 20, no. 2 (2003) for a discussion of the importance of the concept of passion for Foucault's philosophy and ethics.
85. Caputo, note 33, p. 183.
86. Ibid., p. 184.
87. See Simon Critchley, Very Little . . . Almost Nothing: Death, Philosophy, Literature (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 136.
88. Cf., Robinson, note 43.
89. Caputo, note 33, p. 184.
90. This is a quotation from Leonard Cohen's "You Have Loved Enough," Ten New Songs, Columbia Records, 2001.
91. Caputo, note 33, p. 187.
92. Cf., ibid., pp. 187-188.
93. See Walker, Inside/Outside, note 32;
94. and Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
95. See Derrida, "Force of Law," note 23.
96. See also Edkins, note 5, chap. 4.
97. See Derrida, "Force of Law" and "Justice, Law, and Philosophy," both in note 23.
98. Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1996), p. 92.
99. See Zizek, Fragile Absolute, note 9.
100. Julian Barnes, History of the World in 10 Chapters (London: Picador, 1990), p. 240. The understanding of love as a supplementary phenomenon, necessary-as-excessive, is advanced with unmatched elegance in Barnes's interlude in his novel. The very structuration of the meditation on love as a half-chapter entitled Parenthesis in the series of "historical" novellas demonstrates the excessive and transgressive nature of love to the order of history.
101. Jacques Ranciere, "Ten Theses on Politics," Theory and Event 5, no. 3 (2001): 7: accessed at muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory and event.
102. Theory and Event Ibid., p. 14.
103. Theory and Event Ibid., p. 8.
104. See Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in Graham Burchell, et al., eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 87-104.
105. Ranciere, note 58, p. 9.
106. Lefort, note 6, p. 11.
107. Edkins, note 5, p. 126.
108. Doucet, note 5 (italics in the original).
109. Derrida, "Justice, Law, Philosophy," note 23, p. 303.
110. Doucet, note 5, p. 295.
111. Derrida, note 4, p. 67 (emphasis in the original). For a more general discussion of this aporia
112. see Critchley, note 5, chap. 5.
113. Dominic Moran, "Decisions, Decisions: Derrida on Kierkegaard and Abraham," Telos 123 (2002), pp. 124-125.
114. See also Derrida, note 4;
115. and idem, "Force of Law," note 23.
116. Moran, note 69, p. 127.
117. Ibid., p. 125. For a similar critical reading of Derrida's ethics that emphasizes the dangers of "critical Puritanism,"
118. see Matthew Sharpe, "The Descent of the Doves: Camus's Fall, Derrida's Ethics," Philosophy and Social Criticism 28, no. 2 (2002).
119. Moran, note 69, p. 129.
120. See Prozorov, "Three Theses," note 8.
121. Moran, note 69, p. 129.
122. Derrida, cited in Critchley, note 5, p. 198.
123. Critchley, note 5, p. 199-200.
124. Derrida, "Force of Law," note 23, p. 24.
125. See Ojakangas, "Sovereign and Plebs," note 8;
126. and Rasch, note 4. Cf. Richard Wolin, The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992);
127. John McCormick, Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997);
128. and William Scheuerman, Carl Schmitt: The End of Law (Boulder, Colo.: Roman & Littlefield, 1999).
129. Ojakangas, note 4, p. 67.
130. Lefort, note 6, pp. 11, 29.
131. Ibid., p. 222.
132. Edkins, note 5, p. 138.
133. Ibid., pp. 140-141.
134. Ibid., p. 141.
135. See Zizek, Fragile Absolute, note 9, chap. 9.
136. The aspiration for such an order appears to be the thrust of the "radical democratic" strands of poststructuralism, seeking to found a "properly democratic" order on agonistic pluralism. See Mouffe, Democratic Paradox, note 4. Similarly, such an aspiration is at work in David Campbell's vision of a "deconstructed identity" as a solution to the problem of the primordialist claims of nationalism in the case of the former Yugoslavia.
137. See David Campbell, National Deconstruction: Violence, Justice, and Identity in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). My argument is simply that a "deconstructed identity" is a "nonidentity" and hence not a positivity that could figure as an ordering principle. By the same token, agonistic pluralism, while being a fully commendable critical attitude, is more correctly conceived as a disruptive disposition with regard to order, rather than an ordering principle in its own right.
138. See Ian Hacking, Historical Ontology (London: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 190-194.
139. Derrida, "Force of Law," note 23, p. 35.
140. Michel Foucault, "Social Security," in Lawrence D. Kritzman, ed., Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984 (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 168.
141. Foucault, note 22, p. 34.
142. Jon Simons, "Modernist Misapprehensions of Foucault's Aesthetics," Cultural Values 4, no. 1 (2000), pp. 52-53.
143. See Michel Foucault, "Madness, the Absence of Work," in Arnold I. Davidson, ed., Foucault and His Interlocutors (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
144. Zizek, Fragile Absolute, note 9, p. 93.
145. Fragile Absolute Ibid., p. 92.
146. Derrida, "Justice, Law, Philosophy," note 23, p. 304.
147. See Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1990);
148. idem, "The Subject and Power," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, eds., Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
149. Foucault, quoted in Barry Hindess, Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. 149.
150. This theme is also raised in the work of Edkins and Pin-Fat, which seeks to "revalorise" power relations as (in the Foucauldian description) more open and indeterminate than the zone of indistinction constituted by the Agambenian image of the conjuncture of sovereignty and biopolitics. See Edkins and Pin-Fat, note 7. This revalorization also echoes Foucault's well-known account of freedom as the ontological condition of power in Foucault, "The Subject and Power," note 96.
151. See Mitchell Dean, "Liberal Government and Authoritarianism," Economy and Society 31, no. 1 (2002).
152. Edkins and Pin-Fat, note 7, p. 10.
153. Ibid., p. 9.
154. In my Political Pedagogy of Technical Assistance, I have attempted a detailed reconstitution of a Foucauldian notion of "concrete freedom" divorced from the positivity of diagrammatic constitution and dissociated from the assumption of and injunction to "identity."
155. Prozorov, Political Pedagogy, note 8, chap. 5.
156. Foucault, quoted in Samuel Chambers, "Foucault's Evasive Manoeuvres: Nietzsche, Interpretation, Critique," Angelaki 6, no. 3.
157. Michel Foucault, Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (London: Routledge, 1976), p. 39.
158. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London: Routledge, 1970), p. xvii.
159. Thomas Flynn, "Foucault and the Spaces of History," Monist 74, no. 2 (1991): p. 4.
160. Foucault, note 105, p. xvii.
161. Jacques Derrida, Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 12.
162. Thomas Dumm, Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom (London: Sage, 1994), p. 322.