Conclusion: Carl Schmitt

Not looking to cut off at the last bits of discussion or to discourage future posts on the topic, but below is an interim index to the Carl Schmitt discussion, here at Long Sunday and elsewhere.  Should anyone be aware of any other discussions, please leave a comment with the URL.

I'd like to thank all the contributors - posters and commenters alike - for their participation.  The 'symposium' was far more successful than I had anticipated, given the length of the paper and the tendency of people to divide between those who can't look past his political affiliations and those who try to.

While there are no future symposiums under discussion at this time, I'd encourage people to write on nationalism/patriotism as we approach Canada Day (July 1) and the American Independence Day (July 4) and as we sit in middle of that soccer tournament.  Might I suggest the next formal discussion be on the topic of privilege?

At Long Sunday:

• Long Sunday Admin - "Carl (und Karl)"

• John Barner - "Variations on a Theme: La Complainte du Partisan"
• Charles Dennis Bourbaki - "How shame and envy maketh 'the enemy' to go 'round; knights, be ye forever wroth, then with name cast vote, whilst women watch and nearly swoon"
• Jodi Dean - "'Oh Enemy, There is no Enemy': The Partisan Disruption of the Concept of the Political"
• Nate Hawthorne - "Partisan of No Part"
• Adam Kotsko - "At Least Not On This Planet"
• Adam Kotsko - "Bibliographical Comments on Carl Schmitt"
• Craig McFarlane - "Introduction: Carl Schmitt"
• Craig McFarlane - "The Two Politicals"
• Luke Mergner - "On Schmitt's 'Theory of the Partisan'"
• Angela Mitropoulos - "Schmitt, At a Tangent"
• Brett Neilsen - "Continuation, Continuation"
• John Ransom - "Blogging Schmitt"
• John Ransom - "Schmitt and Weber"
• John Ransom - "What We Lose With 'the Partisan'"
• Carlos Rojas - "Schmitt and Mao"
• Gary Sauer-Thompson - "From The Partisan to the Political"
• Anthony Paul Smith - "The Becoming-Partisan of Thought: Fragments on Schmitt and Deleuze/Guattari"
• Squibb - "Expansion, Exhaustion, Evaporation"

Also at Long Sunday:

• Jon - "Buddies! (or not)"
• Alain Wittman - "Double Fantasy"
• Alain Wittman - "The Führerprinzip"

Elsewhere (friends and enemies):

• The Decline - "Robots and Humans Philosophically Discussed"
• Gabriel - "Ah, Carl Schmitt..."
• Gabriel - "Ah Choo! More Carl Schmitt..."
• Le Colonel Chabert "The Impure vs. The Fascio"
• Le Colonel Chabert "Warrior Clerks"
• Le Colonel Chabert "Not Belfagor"
• Nate Hawthorne - "What in the hell ... is de-theologization?"
• Nate Hawthorne - "What in the hell ... is the political?"
• Nate Hawthorne - "What in the hell ... is self-interest?"
• Nate Hawthorne - "What in the hell ... is anomie?"
• Nate Hawthorne - "What in the hell ... is the last word on power?"
• Limited, Inc - "On the Schmitt fest"
• Angela Mitropoulos - "Four things about Schmitt"
• Angela Mitropoulos - "Not yet counter-partisan"
• Gary Sauer-Thompson - "Carl Schmitt: The Partisan"
• Waggish - "Carl Schmitt"

Comments

[s0metim3s]

Phew, wasn't that humungous. I'll add my gratitude to Craig for arranging the reading, the task of which always turns out to be much more difficult than it appears.

[Jodi]

Well done, Craig.

I'm all for the privilege topic. The big question is what do we read? what will set it up well? Bourdieu comes to mind, but there has got to be a lot of other stuff out there.

[Craig]

It is interesting that no one can come with a single essay, chapter - let alone a book - on the topic of privilege.

[Nate]

There's a short list of books that are related to this theme in the Wikipedia entry on white privilege. Several of them are books I've been meaning to read for a good long while. There's also the journal Race Traitor, which could be described as dedicated to understanding and dismantling at least one type of privilege. Along a slightly different line, googling and wikipedia search for "labor [or "labour"] aristocracy" turns up a lot as well.

[s0metim3s]

I confess I'm always slightly taken aback at the word/concept of privelige. It seems particularly North American to me. That's not to say it's not worth discussing, only to note that I think it carries the perspective - as in: angle of vision - of that which it seeks to analyse.

[Jodi]

Sometimes, that's fascinating. There must be some kind of genealogical explanation for this--could it be the American Revolution? or maybe the slave experience? or federalism? I wonder when privilege enters the US lexicon in a particularly political way. Could it be as late as the 60s where folks are concerned with male privilege and white privilege and class privilege? There is something disconcerting about the term, isn't there? Like class privilege suggest that somehow class distinctions (inequalities, exploitation) would be ok if they didn't result in privileges or advantages--which might suggest that the term comes in under issues of 'equal opportunity' which has been the way that liberalism in the US has justified real existing inequalities: as long as they were sedimented or generational (which they are) then they are permissable. In fact, it could be an interesting exercise to figure this out.

Anybody looking for a dissertation topic?

[Jodi]

Amazon lists books about Harvard and the Ivy League and then various undergraduate target diversity books under privilege.

[s0metim3s]

All of that Jodi, and I suspect more. Anyway, Tocqueville's remarks about equality and America are, I think, quite pertinent.

For me, they explain something particular about American politics, that appears across the political spectrum, and that I find quite remarkable. Remarkable also for the sanctification of a notion of equality, as much as its diffusion. Anyway, at some point this week, I'll try and disentangle some earlier remarks on Tocqueville.

[Gabriel Sanchez]

Well, darn...I just "reset" my blog, which sent my Schmitt posts into oblivion. Most of them were concentrated rehashes of points made over the course of this "symposium." (Yes, I now feel confident putting it in quotes after one of the operators of this blog noted the tongue-in-cheek nature of the thing.)

I think the one point that was reaffirmed to me in all of this is that the "left" (and I'm using the term generally here) have about as little of an idea of what to "do" with Carl Schmitt qua Carl Schmitt. And while I must confess some real ignorance here, it seems to me that isn't really a problem for anyone. In other words, whether one reads Schmitt against his intentions or, for that matter, against the actual arguments he makes (note the ocassional indignation by some over the fact their reading of The Concept of the Political could only be--at best--provisional until they have seen out the argument in its entirety as expressed in the third edition). Personally, I don't know what the benefit of doing that is. As someone else on here already pointed out, if we begin to dissect from Schmitt the parts we like, restate them in a new framework, and apply them in areas where Schmitt never intended them to go (or, limit them to areas where Schmitt did not recognize limits), how much are we really left with Carl Schmitt?

I spoke about the "detoxified" Schmitt before and truth be told, that is the Schmitt one is more likely to receive in the literature. The symposium on Schmitt published by the Cardozo Law Review in 2000, along with every subsequent law review article that makes mention of Schmitt since, is the "detoxified" Schmitt. His political theology is taken to be a sociological tool, not a teaching. Even the translation of Taubes's The Political Theology of Paul has done little to dissuade the Schmitt-interested parties from trying to detatch Schmitt from his theology.

As for the "toxic" Schmitt, more work needs to be done. Heinrich Meier has exposed this Schmitt for one purpose and one purpose only: to sharpen the distinction between political theology and political philosophy. Perhaps he has hinted at other avenues, but they haven't been taken by anyone I know of in the English-speaking world. (Only Taubes and Peterson in Germany seem to have addressed Schmitt on that level and their word is far from final.) As I have said before, it is those whose Schmitt's teaching could truly speak to who haven't even begun to answer him back. If any have taken up his project and done so successfully, one can be sure that with the current state of self-inflicted blindness to that project which pervades most of Schmitt-studies, no one will be wise to it.

[infinite thought]

Surely Bourdieu has lots to say about privilege - sorry can't be more precise tho.

[infinite thought]

And, oops, sorry, Jodi already mentioned him.

Veblen maybe? Chapter 8: Industrial Exemption and Conservatism:

'The leisure class is in great measure sheltered from the stress of those economic exigencies which prevail in any modern, highly organized industrial community. The exigencies of the struggle for the means of life are less exacting for this class than for any other; and as a consequence of this privileged position we should expect to find it one of the least responsive of the classes of society to the demands which the situation makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to an altered industrial situation.'

That sort of thing?

[infinite thought]

Pareto and Mosca on elites? Kinda from the, er, other side of the debate though...

Not sure privilege is primarily a US thing (unless the UK merely counts as a subsidiary these days!) - I'm pretty sure we invented various forms of cultural/class privilege, though castes obviously predate this in other parts of the world.

Or is this a point about usage of the term? A (very recent!) brief conversation with someone who spent a lot of time in the States says that someone who would be called 'upper class' in the UK is referred to as 'privileged' in the US.

[Jodi]

I think IT's suggestion of Veblen is a good one.

[s0metim3s]

Yep, I mean specifically the use of the term 'privelige' as the form of a critique. It has very particular undertones of individuation.

[Charles]

Crooked Timber plays catch-up.