« Turning the tables | Main | He may as well be talking about weblogs »
Double Fantasy
In anticipation of the upcoming symposium on Schmitt, I found a short piece by Simon 
Critchley discussing the "logic of the political" as it is used by the Bush administration. Many oberservors have noted the Schmittian influence on the current hegemons, but Critchley wishes to draw out a "crypto-Schmittianism" he sees at work. Initially his description is rather traditional: The political is the sphere that deals with external security and internal order. "The political is about the construction of an enemy in order to maintain the unity of the citizenry." This construct actually produces a "double fantasy:" the fantasy of the enemy and the fantasy of the homeland. "It is through the fantasy of the enemy that the fantasy of the homeland is constituted."
So far nothing very controversial. But Critchley believes that the Bush administration is "crypto- Schmittian" because of its hypocrisy regarding its "moralization of political judgement."
What I mean is that, in Carl Schmitt's terms, there is something chronically depoliticising about the ideology of the current administration. Going back to those ignoble lies that are being told, contemporary US imperial power espouses an utterly moralising, universalist, indeed millennial, ideology whose key signifier is freedom. Allied to freedom are notions of democracy and human rights...
Not far behind these signifiers lies the crucial question of faith and the link between faith and politics, or the triangulation of a faith that permits a moralisation of political judgments on a metaphysical basis. The astonishing and much-discussed factoid about the presence of moral values in the exit polls from last November, which caused a minor panic amongst American liberals, is deeply interesting to a humble philosopher. Citizens are making political decisions that are really moral judgments and these judgments flow from a dogmatic metaphysics; to be precise, God as the depoliticising instance par excellence. Once again, to bang this point home, this is not stupid. To critical, secular, well-dressed metro-sexual post-Kantians like us, this view of the world might well appear deluded, indeed we might think that a pro-life, anti-queer metaphysics is downright pernicious, but there is no doubt that the triangulation of faith, morality and politics is a framework of intelligibility that makes powerful sense. To go further, one might say that the strong connection between faith, morality and politics is one of the most enduring features of civil society in the US since the time of the original violent settlement, through to the eulogies of Tom Paine and Tocqueville. The left ignores that connection at its peril.
While I largely agree with Critchley, I am not sure what to make of the "depoliticizing nature" of invoking God. If we acknowledge the metaphysical presuppositions of Bush and his supporters, does that further our analysis of the situation? Or help us combat its appeal? Critchley ends his essay with an anecdote"
Let me try to summarise crypto-Schmittianism with an anecdote. In his book, Bush's Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward asked “W” if he talked to his father before going to war in Iraq. He replied in the negative, but added that he had consulted a higher father. This is at once funny, psychoanalytically revealing, and deeply serious, I think. But I have no reason to doubt “W”'s moral and theological sincerity. It reveals that a political decision of the classic friend-enemy variety is being made on the basis of the depoliticising instance of God's will. The considerable power of this kind of political thinking (and – lest we forget – it is the justifying logic of most colonialism, which is what leads one to conclude that so much contemporary politics is simply neo-colonial) is that the enemy is not just, as in classical war, unlike us, or advancing a territorial claim that we want to repel, or blocking a territorial claim that we want to make. On the contrary, on the crypto-Schmittian view, the enemy is evil and becomes, in Schmitt's words, an outlaw of humanity, an outlaw who can therefore be legitimately annihilated in the name of freedom...
To summarise my main point, the Bush administration has a clear and strong understanding of the political, but this is wrapped up in a moralising, depoliticised discourse. This combination is hypocritical but politically extremely effective. It is, indeed, lethal to its enemies.
By Alain | May 19, 2006 in Carl Schmitt, Current Affairs, Post-politics | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/361357/4924529
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Double Fantasy:
Comments
This depoliticizing thing is very evident in the current impasse of the Democratic Party -- fundamentally, the Democrats are not viewed as a noble adversary for the Republicans, but as people who are fundamentally not worthy to rule. The Democrats themselves seem to have internalized this to some degree, at least certain segments of them. The Democrats are seen as being just about "politics" -- in the sense of some kind of finally meaningless game. And maybe they are, to some extent. But at least a game has defined rules!
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | May 19, 2006 1:24:03 PM
Adam, I agree with you. By "depoliticizing" politics, the Republicans "stand for something," while the democrats just "want to get elected." The irony, of course, is that the Republicans are truly the ones who will do anything to get elected. Karl Rove is on the verge of indictment - the volume of mud and shit he has personally shovelled could fill a stadium - and he was the "architect" of Bush's re-election. Anything is justified in the service of virtue.
Posted by: Alain | May 19, 2006 1:44:55 PM
I believe that the "depoliticizing" aspect of the Bushian approach to politics which Critchley refers to is the idea that there are laws that are beyond time/space and historical conditioning. Bush's pronouncements sound as though he's saying something eternal, absolute and without question. For his base, of course, this goes without saying. However, even for those on the Right who have no religious proclivities, there's still the notion that some essential "human nature" exists and that Bush's style of down-home rhetoric reflects that truth about what it means to be a human being.
Posted by: cynic librarian | May 19, 2006 2:13:15 PM
Schmitt's point involves the tendency of liberalism to devolve into ethics and economics and to seek to eliminate the political distinction between friend and enemy. So liberalism has the competitor (economic category) and then the bad or evil other (ethical category) rather than the enemy proper. Although this schema is helpful, it seems to me that it misses something crucial in current politics, namely, the reformation of the terms of friend and enemy economically and morally such that our friends are those we trade (compete) with and our enemies are evil. To this extent, the issue is not one of depoliticization at all but a specific kind of politicization that prevents the emergence of the so-called loyal opposition. It doesn't have to be this way: the Democrats could have emphasized their political alternatives, they could have fought for the welfare state, for health care, for multilateralism in international relations. Basically, I disagree with Simon, then, on the question of depoliticization: even if politics is presented in moral terms, one can deploy other moral terms politically. Further, to call this hypocritical misses the point: all political moves have to articulate themselves to some kind of ideal which continues to retain its ideal quality.
Posted by: Jodi | May 19, 2006 2:56:14 PM
Jodi, I want to apologize in advance because I do not have much time to respond now. So I may be misunderstanding you but it sounds like you are not that far from what I take to be Critchley's position. It's not that the democrats cannot use moral terms to counter the claims of the Republicans - it is that the Republicans invoke God to foster the fantasy that they are acting "above" or beyond political interests. They deploy "depolitization" as a vey successful political strategy that is also extremely dangerous. As to hypocrisy, I think his point is the way in which the Republicans use Faith and Morality cynically, to further very narrow interests - and invoke democracy and freedom to perpetrate vicious crimes. I don't think he denies that political action involves the articulation of ideals.
But I may be misunderstanding your disagreement with him. I will try and get you a fuller response soon. Thanks again.
Posted by: Alain | May 19, 2006 3:57:50 PM
There are two factors of Critchley's essay that heven't been covered in the comments above. First, Critchley suggests that the religious terminology used by the Bush apologists for their decision making appears to take the political decisions out of the political realm. This is the fantasy part of Critchley's essay. The fantasy involves a duplicitous use of religious rhetoric to cover for what are really political decisions. Second, these political decisions are really the stuff and substance of every political system per se. That is, the use and maipulation of fear and terror. The religious terminology ameliorates the brute reality of these political gestures by the Bush fantasy machine.
Posted by: cynic librarian | May 19, 2006 4:03:41 PM
Hello Cynic Librarian. Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I really enjoy your blog because you always link to interesting material. I notice that you linked to the same Critchley essay we are discussing. I completely agree with your last comment - the religiosity of the current Junta is used to mask their real motives.
One place I (and possibly Jodi) would part with Critchley is reagarding what I would call the "logical order of priority." In this essay he seems to emphasize the way Faith is used strategically to implement the larger agenda. But I suspect the reverse is also the case - the neoliberal economic agenda helps create the ideological space for the implementation of the evangelical agenda. For example, one could look at the so called "Faith Based initiatives" that funnel public funds to private churches. Part of the justification is religious organizations provide social services more effectively than the government, their located in the community, they know what needs to be done. This ought to be seen within the broader context of a general move toward privatization and the outsourcing of social services.
I apologize for the brevity of the response but thank you again for your thoughtful comments. By the way, my significant other is a retired librarian and she really enjoys your blog as well.
Posted by: Alain | May 19, 2006 6:10:21 PM
I hate to go all retro-Marxist here, but ever since the rightwing corporate hegemonic counteroffensive began to organize itself and coagulate in an alliance with disciplinary social conservatism and religious fundamentalism in the 1970's, it was clear that the aim was precisely to "de-politicize" politics, in favor of the "free" market, since the politicization of social relations blocks and interferes with the scope of a purely economic rationale, that is, with the operations of oligopolistic interests. The ideological mobilization of privatistic resentments and social anxieties by the oligopolistic apparatus is at once the precondition of its ascendency and the only means that could rationalize the distributional and soci-structural effects of its hegemony, that is, that could sustain the very conditions it creates. The reification of phalangist reaction as "transcendent", extra-social, at once covers over, deploys, and provides compensation for the paranoid anxieties, which the conditions of corporate hegemony at once produce and exploit, while performing the offices of depoliticization in a way the is politically manipulable. (But it might be worth adding that the representation of an apolitical stance has often been a motif of conservatism, e.g. Mann's "Reflections of an Unpolitical Man". That would go to the attitudes of the penultimate echelon of the coalition, which neither buy the demogogic appeal, nor reap the lion's share, crudely put, the top 2% to 10% of the income distribution). But I'd doubt that many Busheviks would have even heard of Carl Schmitt, let alone have sought to consciously apply any putative lessons to be derived from his work. (The only ones who would have even heard of him would be the Strauss cultists and they are primarily concentrated in the legal/constitutional wing of the apparatus). The irony would then be that the Busheviks are unconsciously deploying a quasi-Schmittian conception/practice of the political in the service of the very depoliticized economism that Schmitt criticized in the liberals. With respect to Jodi's comment, I would doubt that the Schmittian conception of the political even allows for a "loyal opposition", since its preoccupation is with the constitution and organization of sovereign power: it's the near and the far enemy that define the parameters of "loyalty". On the other hand, Schmitt's point about the distinctiveness of the political, in contrast to the moral, if not quite the religious-existential, is that the moralization of politics is itself politically dangerous, a point shared, if somewhat differently, with Arendt.
Posted by: john c. halasz | May 19, 2006 11:19:31 PM
John, you can go retro-marxist anytime. I largely agree with your assessment that the neoliberal political strategy began in the 1970's (though perhaps as early as Nixon's 1968 election). Regarding the Bushevicks, I think Strauss' influence is more extensive than you suggest, and Strauss was definitely a "student" of Schmitt as evidenced by his favorable reviews of some of his work.
Be that as it may, thanks for the insightful reponse.
Posted by: Alain | May 20, 2006 11:29:03 AM
Quoting Critchley, Alain writes in his original post above,
"The political is about the construction of an enemy in order to maintain the unity of the citizenry."
And that's a summary of Schmitt's main claim. My problem begins with Schmitt and then carries over to the question of the extent to which Bush is implementing a version of it. Let me begin by saying that I agree with the cynical librarian when that writer points out the religious face of the administration is at least somewhat cynically employed.
I'll come back to that. What do we think of the claim that "The political is about the construction of an enemy in order to maintain the unity of the citizenry." Because it seems to me I can think about all sorts of other things that the political is about.
It's a pretty dessicated version of the political. Certainly politics is not *only* about this, nor does this issue -- do we have an enemy we can project our problems, desires, fears, and hopes onto? -- always dominate, even in 'definitive' cases. Sometimes I think that Schmitt is not describing the way politics 'is,' but how he would like to see it work. An ought not an is. But I just don't think it makes sense to claim that the most important or most characteristic feature of the political is defining the enemy "in a specially intense way, [as] existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible." (I took the above quote from Schmitt from Wikpidea, here:
http://urlcutter.com?5198
)
There's certainly more things that politics are 'about.' I wonder what commenters think of competing approaches to the political, like Weber's. Or Marx's.
So, first, I'm not convinced that Schmitt has captured the 'is' of politics; perhaps he's after an ought. Certainly there are outstanding examples of modern states doing a lot with the creation of existentially signiferous 'others.' That's been a very important path some authoritarian regimes have gone down. But I don't think Schmitt is restricting his definition to authoritarian regimes solely.
I guess Weber's comment would be "No no no no no," although maybe not so many no's to start with, "it's not that the the state's unique activity when it operates in the political sphere is the creation of the 'friend/enemy' distinction -- in the same way that a church's unique or most-own activity is establishing and defending the sacred/heretic dyad -- it is, rather," Weber continues fictionally, "*one* of the possible value choices a political leader can make. But it's certainly not the sole or most frequent or most-own distinction that politics is characterized by."
There's also good ol' Machiavelli. His conception of politics seems much richer to me: he treats it as a highly dangerous zone where world class improvisationists play with a volatile mix of charisma, multiple masks, and very broadly set moral parameters, within which masters of a seductive art high-wire acrobatic two- and multi-facedness amaze us with their virtù. In this conception, setting up a friend/enemy distinction might very well be a great idea. Remember (if you've forgotten, which I don't assume) Aristotle also mentions this tactic in his Politics. You know, "keep dangers close and the people won't have time to think of conspiring against you," that kind of thing. But for Aristotle, this is only one of many 'tricks' politicians can use.
Posted by: John S. Ransom | May 20, 2006 7:51:56 PM
John, you are of course absolutely right that Schmitt's idea of the political is far from definitive, or phenomenologically accurate. My interest in the Critchley essay, and its use of the friend/enemy distinction, is that it seems to capture a key component of conservative American politics today. I certainly do not share Schmitt's vision, and my hope is that a poltical ethos could emerge in the United
States that would recognize these tactics as the cynical, cruel manipulation they really are. If that makes sense? Thank you for bringing up these other thinkers who clearly have a broader (and richer) understanding of the political. I really do appreciate what your saying.
Posted by: Alain | May 20, 2006 10:56:41 PM
Schmitt was a legal theorist, who, in the pre-Nazi Weimar writings, by which he is now backhandedly famous and influential, was primarily concerned with securing the "legitimate" authority of the constitutional/legal state in accordance with the continuity of the existence of the nation, (i.e. he was actually trying to make the Weimar constitution work, from his own peculiar perspective.) I entirely agree with you that his "definition" of the political in terms of the distinction between friend and foe fails to give any "internal" account of the constitution of the political community in the first place, as, e.g., Aristotle assumes it. But his "definition" of the political, in contradistinction to the moral, religious, economic, or anything else, is preoccupied with the nature of sovereign power as the source of law and its coercive/enforcement capacity as bound up with the constitutional paradox of the constituent/constituted power. We lefties might have far different notions of what might constitute the prior basis of constituting power, (since we are the enemies), but it must be admitted that the rhetorical shifting of the locus of sovereignty from an inbred idiot to "the people", while not insignificant, does not resolve the paradox and the recurrent problems that arise from it, (e.g. Bush vs. Gore 2000). And the "definition" of the political as being organized by the distinction between friend and foe is not prescriptive (and therefore moralizing), but is meant to address the question of how a sovereign power as a balancing and executive authority for collective action could come about amidst conflicting social tendencies. Now I myself think that any resemblance between the thought of Schmitt, wrought by catastrophe and perpetual crisis, and informed by a highly modern sense of irreversible social differentiation, however much clinging to a quasi-reactionary Catholic/nationalist authoritarian perspective, and the crude machinations of the Busheviks is largely coincidental. But the comparison does suggest something of the desperate recourses of the latent crisis of state-power amidst the contradictions of "globalization".
Posted by: john c. halasz | May 21, 2006 12:33:10 AM
Both halasz's and Alain's comments above have helped me orient to the discussion. Thanks.
Posted by: John S. Ransom | May 21, 2006 7:34:17 AM
Alain, thank you (and your significant other) for your comments about the blog and for responding to the hurried remarks I made on your original posting.
I do recognize that neoliberalism serves as the "space" or logical context in which the religious ideology of Bush and his apologists can be brought into play. Indeed, as you point out, this type of religious ideology has its own unique characteristics that differentatiate it from, say, the way that Christianity was used (or fit) in the Roman Empire, in the rise of industrial capitalism in the 19th century, and so on.
Each socio-economic era does seem to give rise to various, perhaps determined, religious possibilities and individual types. That neoliberalism has given rise to free-market evangelicals (think of Robertson and others) who spread not just the Gospel of Xrist but also American-style capitalism perhaps best exemplifies this.
The Critchley article does not address these questions directly but merely seems to describe something that, for me, is simply a fact--that the neoliberal Xtian, such as Bush, sells an economico-political agenda by asserting the non-historically conditioned form of Xtianity--a Xtianity that, according to this ideology, has no contingent accretions. It is instead a way of getting direct access to God. As such, the Bushites can declare that its political appeal is to an authority above and beyond merely historically conditioned laws, procedures, institutions, etc.
This is part, I think of what Critchley is saying the fantasy of the Bush ideology involves. The fantasy here, of course, is that the Bush ideology can assert truths that are non-contingent and that are therefore non-political.
Critchley's points about fear and terror and forming enemies falls out from this depoliticized formulation of the Bush ideology. The fear and terror are the key instruments used in governing any political system. By calling upon a higher authority, one that transcends time/space, the Bush political machinery can use these tools in such a way as to give the illusion of eternal verity. The illusion (Critchley calls it fantasy) seems, therefore, two-fold: 1) that a political ideology can be realized from sources that are non-contingent, and 2) that the implementation of it using the tools of terror and fear arise from an eternal authority, ergo beyond earthly question.
I may be stating the obvious here. If so, please disregard the comments. But I do think that Critchley has homed in on very important aspects of the Bush ideology. Critchley has done so by focusing on fear and terror, psychological elements that form the basis of any state or political structuring. The recognition of the use of fear and terror in governing a state goes back to Plato. (Note Critchley's allusion to the noble lie.) For in his Republic Plato stresses that the guardians (those who rule the state) must be taught "what to fear and what not to fear." In knowing this, the guardians thefore derive their respect for the laws and also their very ability to maintain control over Plato's version of Orwell's proles.
Posted by: cynic librarian | May 21, 2006 3:53:23 PM
Cynic librarian, thank you for the comment. I do not think you are stating the obvious: in fact, I think your restatement of the argument is a good summation of what is actually going on today. Ofcourse, it remains to be determined if an opposition (loyal or otherwise) will emerge to counter this very effective manipulation of religion.
Posted by: Alain | May 22, 2006 12:46:05 PM
Post a comment
Please note: comments are published at the discretion of the post's author and will not appear immediately. Do not submit comments more than once.
