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Expansion, Exhaustion, Evaporation
Expansion, Exhaustion, Evaporation, (the fate of the political)
*all questions are leading, but not rhetorical*
I would like to begin by quoting Jodi’s post, she writes:
- “At stake in the emergence of the partisan is the permanent destabilization of the political and of the political as itself another name for the temporal and spatial destabilizations wrought by the technologies producing something like a global.”
- Jodi’s formulation indicates a nagging question: Is it better to assume applicability in the case of a thinker like Schmitt? Are his categories and ideas applicable, or outdated? What is left of his thought when stretched out over the partisan? Even farther?
- Thus, and first of all, the question of expansion. At what point does the current situation become prohibitive for the continued expansion of Schmitt’s ideas? When do we abandon his conceptions, his theories, as simply no longer applicable to the world we live in? When is it no longer Schmitt we are talking about, really, but something new? What would it mean to persist in speaking his vocabulary in spite of its obsolescence?
- When is it, in short, that we give in to the feeling of desperate exhaustion that pervades the entirety Concept of the Political? Leo Strauss in his superb commentary on the essay, writes, “[Schmitt] affirms the political because he sees in the threatened status of the political a threat to the seriousness of human life. The affirmation of the political is ultimately nothing more than the affirmation of the moral.” Can we imagine the progress of this threat? The disappearance of politics; its mourners tramping around, asserting its continued presence in a disturbing, nostalgic, morality play? What would that look like?
- Indeed, the first question for the translation of Schmitt to the contemporary political lexicon would be the question of terrorism. We might want the terrorist to be a partisan, but this is a lie. The terrorist does not exist – at least in the way the partisan does. That the partisan insurgents in Iraq are called terrorists only redoubles the point. The terrorist exists only as a pure concept of the enemy, and as such, its purity belies the evaporation of the state. Insofar as the state has created an enemy that exists no place, with no name, and has no coherent ideology, it is only possible to assert that the state itself stands for no name, no place, and no coherent ideology. It has evaporated.
- Does anyone actually know what happened on 9/11? This is not to cast a vote in favor of the conspiracy theorists – rather it is just to reaffirm the concrete undecideability of the event that created what now circulates as terrorism.
- I would like to draw a parallel between Schmitt’s expansion of the political to include the partisan, and the Government’s expansion of the friend/enemy distinction with the now famous “with us or against us” quote. This comparison takes place insofar as both attempts to stretch the friend/enemy distinction well beyond the point of coherence rebound onto the political itself. The partisan is more telluric mystic than political agent, as his descent into irregularity certainly confounds the ‘high-point of politics’ understood as the collective, public recognition of the enemy. (for more, see Jodi’s post) Similarly, the invocation by the US Government of a global, all encompassing friend/enemy distinction, must, by Schmitt’s own terms, herald the end of politics itself.
- Three final questions then:
- Are we witnessing the persecution of a worldwide systematic application of violence that can no longer be called political? by Schmitt’s terms? By whose terms can it still be so-called, and, following, what is gained in the way of explanatory power by the continued circulation of the category itself?
- Can there be no distinction more in need of entrenchment than that between terrorist and partisan? How much longer can we afford to let the undecidabilty of 9/11 haunt us as the idea of a pure enemy?
(Still no such thing as a spectacular bandage, and we had better get over it)
- In light of all this, has the dialectic ever promised greater hope than it does today? An impossible question to be sure, but, reading Schmitt I became more convinced than ever that if the political was threatened in the thirties, it may now be one worse; exhausted, impoverished to the point of self-parody, and approaching the emptiness of Schmitt’s own valorizing polemic.
By Squibb | June 11, 2006 in Carl Schmitt | Permalink
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I don't think there's much doubt about the obsolescence of Schmitt's conceptual framework, rooted as it is in a classical (Euro-centric) horizon of "Christendom", (or Latin Christendom, to be more exact). And I hinted below that the "Partisan" essay, which seems to me to concern the Cold War as much as anything, is symptomatic of an exhaustion on Schmitt's part. But from the beginning, Schmitt was already dealing with the problem of the possible obsolescence of his framework: the "state of emergency" concerned as much the recognition of the irreversible differentiation of modern societies and the erosion of any traditional basis for the authority of state, as any actual threat to "public safety"; that is, the threat to "public safety" redoubles that of the indeterminacy of "the public" itself, as the gathering/perennial legitimation crisis of the sovereign state itself. But the value of Schmitt's work was never any "positive" doctrinal solution that it would propose, (which veered, at any rate, into utter catastrophe), but in its problematization and aporetic questioning of its own framing terms of reference, on ever-shifting grounds: not just "the political" and its relation to sovereignty, but legality, constitutionality, legitimacy, "democracy", and the sources of power qua "legitimate" authority as coercive "violence". What I want to bring out in all that is what I detect as an ambivalence and contradictoriness in his very conception of the political: the threat to the political is something apolitical, something that can not be brought under its sway, a neutrality, in civil society as much as in external affairs, that withholds itself from sovereign authority and its legitimation, disrupting its certification of "order",- and yet the "end" of the political is precisely such depoliticization, such neutralization of destabilizing conflict. The "definition" of the political as determined by the distinction between friend and enemy is descriptive-analytical, referencing at once how political processes involve ever shifting alliances formed across differences through the identification of a common opponent, an enemy whose valorization exceeds differences, and how sovereign power incorporates the political through the organization of such a distinction as the quasi-permanent potential of mortal violence. But at the same time as such a definition of the political strips it of moral considerations,- (and the moralization of politics always paradoxically represents a supreme threat to the political for Schmitt, as underwriting limitless violence),- it contains a peculiar normative component: the relation between enemies, mediated by the potential for mortal violence, is also peculiarly one of respect. It is the capacity to respect, (rather than, of course, love) for the enemy, as opposed to any bonds of friendship, philia, across irreconcilable differences and lethal potentials, that not only forms the mark of distinction of the cold, clear-eyed realm of the political, but, odd as this sounds, I think, forms the self-limiting principle for Schmitt, by which the political can form a realm of established order.
This whole classical conception of the political as sovereign order, however, is underwritten by the classical notion of death as the political ultima ratio. But death here can not signify simply Hobbesian self-preservation, which would be the atomistic/economistic reduction of social life, the very thing that threatens the essential tension of the political for Schmitt, through its indifference to, separation from, and endless differential conflict within the integration of political order, resulting in the meaninglessness of human life as the mere aggregation of the masses. Rather, if I'm roughly right in my interpretation so far, death, as ultima ratio, has to be upheld through the relation of emnity, which is what ties sovereign order to theology, to some residual notion of Christian eschatology as extra-worldly and final, a salvation/ressurection that counter-balances the necessary iniquities of the (political) world and butresses its "final" authority. (And this, of course, is to be invideously opposed to any progressive, "Jewish" notion of the Messianic, to any notion of intra-worldly redemption/reconciliation.) Again, what has been sought all along is some "principle" in the relation between the political and legal-constitutional order that would be mutually self-limiting and allow for the dispositive decision-making capacity of "legitimate" sovereign authority, which at once gathers and neutralizes the conflictual potentials of the political. And that "principle", in the end, is to be found(ed) in the balance of emnities. I don't think I need to expatiate on the multiple ways in which this whole conception is outmoded. The only question would be what, if anything, might remain of heuristic value.
Which is where the "Partisan" essay is to be located, as a "neutralized" reflection on the Cold War, conceived as an utter collapse of any "legitimate" sovereign framework,- (and thus as the exhaustion of the whole schematism of Schmitt's thinking),- in an unbounded pursuit of power-politics as a kind of global political-technological nihilism. The total annihilatory power of nuclear weapons is figured in the notion of absolute, unrestrained emnity. And the partisan is figured ambiguiously, as, on the one hand, qua the figure of global revolution, one side of this absolute emnity, and, on the other, as "telluric" and defensive, as what has been driven out of the world of totalized global power-politics, as the banished cypher of political self-limitation. But, of course, there is something that is glaringly unmentionable here, which seals the obsolescence of this thinking: namely, the Holocaust. Without claiming to recuperate its horror, or define its "meaning", I think one can at least say that the Holocaust indicates the final end of the old ultima ratio that formed the horizon of Schmitt's political thinking. What was enacted in the Holocaust was not simply the total annihilation of peoples or persons defined as enemies, not simply a manifestation of "absolute emnity". More that that, I think its "aim" was the retraction of the very existence of those murdered, of their ever having been, such that its victims were degraded to the point of utter inhumanity, wherein their deaths amounted to an afterthought. (Jews were to be exterminated because they were "unaesthetic", a blemish on the beautiful, fusional, harmonious totality of the Herrenvolk state.) The "project" of the Holcaust, from without its psychopathic insanity and malignant horror, represents the complete neutralization and final de-politicization of a state and its people in utter reactionary regression. Whether or not this could figure a new "ultima ratio" of world politics, it certainly signifies the "death" of the old one, and the exhaustion and obsolescence of Schmitt's framework for thinking the political.
But precisely this "death" of the political is perhaps the point from which to begin to address both terror, as the totalized despotic exercize of violent state-power, in the absence of, indeed, as a substitute for, any possible political legitimation, whether domestically in totalitarianism, or externally in the form of colonial wars and imperialistic adventures, and terrorism, whether as a tactic, strategy or end-in-itself, as the aggression of excluded subaltern groups against the centers of "sovereign" decision-making at their weakest point, namely their pretension to "protect" their subject/citizen populations. Perhaps one might usefully begin by re-thinking the relation between politics and its neutralization, between the production and the reconciliation of conflicts.
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 13, 2006 1:13:06 AM
I'll try and keep this reply limited to certain "themes" that arise in this post.
On the applicability of Schmitt...
The first and most crucial point to keep in mind is that Schmitt did not see the heart of his work as ever going "out of date." He may have been a historicist (the Christian Epimetheus), but his was a historicism of a peculiar kind: the kind that claimed pure and whole knowledge. If one is going to historicize Schmitt or poo-poo his applicability, one ought to begin by taking Schmitt at his word so one does not--to paraphrase Strauss--mistake their own prejudices or misunderstandings for his knowledge.
On "expanding" Schmitt...
The project of expanding Schmitt is absurd if Schmitt has indeed presented pure and whole knowledge. If he has failed to do so, then that is another matter entirely. Again, it would be altogether more worthwhile to make sure one has a clear grasp of Schmitt before making heady deteriminations concerning where his ideas need "expansion" or "tweaking." I do agree, however, that once one begins to "expand" Schmitt, one runs the risk of no longer speaking about Schmitt's ideas any longer. The chance of distortion is just too great.
On the disappearance of politics
In Schmitt's 1933 revision to his essay, he was more than emphatic that politics will not disappear; the threat to the political is a threat of obscurantism, not an existential threat. I suspect that, for Schmitt, a world without politics is no world at all; it would be like imagining a world without space and time. That doesn't mean that the concept cannot be blurred; that attempts cannot be made to purposefully evade, overcome, or extinguish it. And truly, as Strauss points out and Schmitt's writings emphatically agree, it doesn't mean people can't fall away from a serious life, even if the end of their "striving" is unattainable.
On the state & terrorism...
These remarks are decidedly confusing. You appear to be asserting that the state can only exist in relation to an enemy (e.g., terrorism). Where do you draw this idea from? Even if terrorism is the fiction you describe it to be, why would the state evaporate because of it? Further, does terrorism need anymore coherent of an ideology than the fact it presents an existential threat to the state for it to be an enemy? And when we speak of the mode of intensity (the way Schmitt would have the political understood as coming into being), are not more specific instances and organizations of terrorism more of an existential threat? Do not some fall closer to the Providential enemey--the most intense form of politics?
Similarly, the invocation by the US Government of a global, all encompassing friend/enemy distinction, must, by Schmitt’s own terms, herald the end of politics itself.
Could you expand on this. That's a large assertion without a lot of justification. On what basis--drawing from Schmitt's writings--do you assert that a large-scale friend/enemy distinction, the sort of which we may be seeing with the United States in the "War on Terror", marks the end of politics? Where does Schmitt in any way place sizable limits on the political?
An impossible question to be sure, but, reading Schmitt I became more convinced than ever that if the political was threatened in the thirties, it may now be one worse; exhausted, impoverished to the point of self-parody, and approaching the emptiness of Schmitt’s own valorizing polemic.
The problem is, Schmitt never saw it this way. This seems as good a place as any for me to stress how absurd it is that the only available English translation of The Concept of the Political is not the final edition of 1933, but the 1932 edition with Strauss's critique appended on. As necessary as the existence of that translation is to get a full appreciation of the mastery of Strauss's "Notes", it completely fails to give a clear picture of Schmitt's "finished" product. In '32, Strauss made clear in his notes that the essay he was responding to was not Schmitt's "last word"; the '33 edition more than confirms that fact.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 1:25:36 AM
John,
It seems that we were posting at around the same time and "missed" each other's thoughts. That's unfortunate because it would have provided an opportunity for me to refine a couple of the points above. Still, a few more remarks couldn't hurt...
I don't think there's much doubt about the obsolescence of Schmitt's conceptual framework, rooted as it is in a classical (Euro-centric) horizon of "Christendom", (or Latin Christendom, to be more exact).
Why exactly does this make Schmitt's work "obsolete"? If Schmitt provided pure and whole knowledge, then there would be grave doubts concerning your thesis. Only a direct confrontation with Schmitt's thought (which includes a full understanding of it) could ever lead one to conclude what it is or is not; whether it is pure and whole knowledge or just plain rubbish. To make a bald assertion like this in the abscence of such a thoroughgoing critique strikes me as being both unfair to Schmitt and unfair to onself (insofar as I assume you take your own intellect seriously).
What I want to bring out in all that is what I detect as an ambivalence and contradictoriness in his very conception of the political...yet the "end" of the political is precisely such depoliticization, such neutralization of destabilizing conflict.
Where are you drawing this from? A reference to even a specific work of Schmitt where I, or anyone else, might be able to reach a similar conclusion would be helpful. It seems to me you are operating under the deep misunderstanding that Schmitt believed the political was threatened. This is confirmed in both Schmitt's revision to the '33 edition where he refers to war as "metaphysical oppositions" and in Political Theology II where he affirms that war will be around until the end of time. For Schmitt, these oppositions can be veiled, but they certainly cannot be eradicated.
As for the "end" of the political, a state of peace and security does not eliminate it. Remember, the political gives rise to the possibility of war, i.e., of actual killing of another human being. War does not have to be the constant state of man (ala Hobbes). Schmitt's concern was with the obscuring effects of the liberal mentality that tried to mask this possibility. The masking itself was the problem for Schmitt, not its disappearance (which, again, is impossible).
The "definition" of the political as determined by the distinction between friend and enemy is descriptive-analytical...
How, then, do you bypass the moral element of the political that Strauss identified in his "Notes" and Schmitt incorported/responded-to in the '33 revision of The Concept...? I fear that you are cutting down Schmitt's thought to that which is intelligible to you via translation (and certainly not *all* the translations that are available of Schmitt's writings).
This whole classical conception of the political as sovereign order, however, is underwritten by the classical notion of death as the political ultima ratio.
The political is the friend/enemy distinction, not "the sovereign order." Also, the concept of sovereignty that Schmitt worked with in Political Theology was drawn from Bodin who, I might add, is hardly a "classical" thinker. Also, in which thinker are you deriving the conclusion of "death as the political ultima ratio"? Again, that strikes me as decidedly un-classical and thoroughly modern (thoroughly Hobbesian to be precise).
Rather, if I'm roughly right in my interpretation so far, death, as ultima ratio, has to be upheld through the relation of emnity, which is what ties sovereign order to theology...
I don't understand this crude reduction at all. Salvation is not a (necessary) relief from political iniquity anymore than Sovereignty is automatically equated with that iniquity. If I am reading you right, you seem to be conflating Hobbes and Schmitt without recognizing that the end of Hobbes's thought is that which Schmitt was most nauseated with (i.e., the flight to security; the obscuring of the political; the unserious life). Yes, Hobbes and Schmitt share an affinity on the level of supposing man's dangerousness, but Hobbes would see the outcome of this dangerousness (the state of war) as something to be overcome. For Schmitt, man's dangerousness is no less a reality, but war--the real possibility of physical killing--is not to be extinguished by civil society. Sovereignty--in Schmitt's hands--can make demands of obedience on the populace that it can never make in Hobbes's. In fact, if it did make those demands for Hobbes, it would undermine its entire justification for existing.
I'll conclude this here as I have some things to tend to.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 12:44:26 PM
Gabriel-
You ask: Where does Schmitt in any way place sizable limits on the political?
Schmitt writes: “The political entity presupposes the real existence of an enemy and therefore coexistence with another political entity. As long as a state exists, there will thus always be in the world more than just one state. A world state which embraces the entire globe and all of humanity cannot exist…”
Thus it would seem that “if terrorism is the fiction you describe it to be,” we would be lacking ‘the real existence of an enemy’ or even ‘another political entity.’
Thus your question “why would the state evaporate because of it?” misses the point entirely, insofar as I never claimed that the state evaporated because of terrorism, but the declaration of the war belied said event. Thus the declaration by the ‘war on terror’ testifies to the obsolescence of either Schmitt’s ideas, the political itself, or perversely, both. Insofar as you have the worldwide deployment of a content-less friend/enemy distinction that is conceptually indistinguishable from Schmitt’s description of a world state, which he has asserted is impossible.
"Further, does terrorism need anymore coherent of an ideology than the fact it presents an existential threat to the state for it to be an enemy? "
See, here you missed the semantic issue that underpins the entire discussion. Terror does not pose ‘existential threats.’ Terror, (terrorism, terrorists - what have you) is not one enemy among others, it never has been, it is rather an attempt to give genuine weight to the empty concept of ‘enemy,’ itself. Thus, Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction has ceased to be the form of politics, and becomes instead some sort of active content.
Posted by: squibb | Jun 13, 2006 5:57:58 PM
Squib,
Thanks for your reply. A few of my own...
I am afraid your declarations concerning terrorism doesn't eliminate the issue as cleanly as you hope. You are relying on a belief that the the identification of "terror" as the enemy by the United States means there is no concrete enemy behind it. Yet, there are such concrete enemies with concrete ideologies which give rise to concrete aims. Those aims happen to pose an existential threat to, presumably, the West as a whole or, more narrowly, the United States in particular.
Perhaps you are confusing the rhetoric of the "War on Terror" with the actual "war on terrorists" or, even more specifically, the war being waged on particular organizations identified as "terrorist." (For conceptual clarity, we can just call them the enemy.) Even if the rhetoric of the "War on Terror" gives rise to a blind endorsement of a "war on war" (something Schmitt would no doubt find appalling), it's more important to examine the concrete situation behind the rhetoric. Taking Schmitt at his word (an important first step) that the political is total and that the political cannot cease, it seems wiser to investigate the phenomena which allegedly extinguishes the political before declaring the concept dead.
Your quote from Schmitt indicates what is, in fact, necessary for the political, but that doesn't denote any limitation on the political once it comes into existence. Again, keep in mind that for Schmitt, the political is total and cannot be extinguished. The concrete situation(s) behind the "War on Terror" present a vast enemy (or enemies), but that possibility is fully anticipated by Schmitt.
I don't see this as me "missing the point" so much as you parading a yet-substantiated viewpoint concerning the "War on Terror." I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong, but your bald assertion is unconvincing.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 13, 2006 6:43:39 PM
Gabriel-
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. And forgive the capitals, an impoverished form of emphasis no doubt, but haste demands it.
A rejoinder:
You write:
“Taking Schmitt at his word (an important first step) that the political is total and that the political cannot cease, it seems wiser to investigate the phenomena which allegedly extinguishes the political before declaring the concept dead.”
This I do not understand. If we have taken Schmitt at his word, what could possibly allege the death of that which we have just taken as eternal? Indeed it is precisely because Schmitt is very careful NOT to give in to the absolutism you ascribe to him regarding the inevitability of the political THAT we can investigate the current situation as perhaps one in which the political as such has ceased to be present. However your formulation indicates that I have not made myself clear with regards your objections, let me try once again.
My contention is this: What is essential in unpacking Schmitt’s description of the friend/enemy distinction is that the identification of the enemy is a PUBLIC one. There is no room in his formulation for secret, private enemies. The appearance of a public enemy is equivalent to its existence in a concrete sense; quite literally a political enemy appears as such. What is remarkable about our moment is the declaration of a war on terror is indistinguishable from the appearance of the terrorist as a political/public enemy. So what?
You write: You are relying on a belief that the the identification of "terror" as the enemy by the United States means there is no concrete enemy behind it. Yet, there are such concrete enemies with concrete ideologies which give rise to concrete aims. Those aims happen to pose an existential threat to, presumably, the West as a whole or, more narrowly, the United States in particular.
My first impulse is to contest this openly. I do not believe there is an enemy worthy of the name behind what is labeled as terror, but no matter. Let’s assume for a second that there is some concrete, discrete group of people that could possibly be made to stand as an existential enemy to the west, the US, whatever, and this enemy is what is commonly assumed to be indicated as Terror. My point is that Schmitt’s formulation allows for no such assumption. If there is as wide a gulf between the enemy itself, proper, (partisans in Iraq, Islamicists in Afghanistan, Queada hackneyed nutjobs) and what is made to appear publicly as the enemy, (terrorists who hate our freedom) the key moment of politics cannot take place, the public recognition of the enemy is short-circuited by a state in desperate need of a distinction which no longer exists.
Thus when you say, “it's more important to examine the concrete situation behind the rhetoric.” I want to say why? What when Schmitt insists that whatever is what circulates publicly is in fact what matter for the political? What you would call the concrete situation is irrelevant insofar as it cannot be shown to influence or effect what is publicly accepted as the enemy. And since the rhetoric does not match up with the situation, indeed, when the rhetoric is IMPOSSIBLE TO RECONCILE with the situation, we must radically question whence the friend/enemy distinction came from in the first place.
There is a counter-argument here, but I will let you make it.
Another way of making this point would be to say that it is beyond Schmitt’s means to anticipate the ways in which the apparatus of recognition has been clouded by technology, so that his assertions about the limits of the political fail to take into account the contingency of the most essential aspect of his definition, the capacity of something like a public to recognize something like an enemy. Thus insofar as there is no public sphere, there is no public recognition, there is no possibility for said recognition, and the most essential characteristic of Schmitt’s concept of the political is not so much destroyed as removed from the realm of possibility, or, in my terms, evaporated. I find evidence for this in the rhetoric of the war on terror. I don’t doubt at all that there are wackos who want to kill us, but that is old news, and indeed, they are so pathetically insignificant on a global scale that I cannot even conjure an appropriate metaphor to render vividly enough my country’s contemptuous preoccupation with them – except to say that is speaks to the end of certain thinkings of the political, and that Schmitt’s is chief among these. However, unlike others, he gives us the possibility of recognizing his own obsolescence, but only if we resist the temptation you give into, namely, that of assuming that we will always have enemies and that Terror is just another in a long and inevitable series of groups worthy of destruction.
Posted by: Squibb | Jun 14, 2006 7:24:26 PM
Squibb,
We’re missing each other here somewhere, but I’m fine with shouldering the blame. I’m too hasty of an online writer to always be clear. Anyhow…
I wish you would offer me a textual pointer as to where Schmitt decries the absolute or, rather, totality of the political. I see no evidence that Schmitt ever thought the political can “die” or be erased from human existence (even if it could be radically obscured by bourgeois-liberalism). What I am looking for is clear evidence in his works that offsets what is clear stated in the third edition of The Concept of the Political (which he oversaw the reissue of in 1963 I believe). Is there is something in “The Theory of the Partisan” that I missed? I’ve never seen any evidence in there that he shifted from what he made so clear in two revisions of a work he ascribed the greatest importance to and which, arguably, set the “tone” for the remainder of his writings.
I agree with you wholly that the identification of the enemy is public, but one also has to keep in mind who gets to make that designation. I believe that there is always a choice—an either/or if you will—that must be made on the individual level for one side or the other. But that doesn’t mean we make our own individual designations, for the political is a crisis, an emergency situation, and who is it that decides the emergency? Who is it that determines the enemy? The answer is easy if you’ve read Political Theology.
The enemy has been identified by the one who can make that designation. You claim that there is no enemy or, at best, a great gulf exists between the real enemy the enemy that has been designated. Fine. That doesn’t change the fact that an enemy—even a possibly fictitious or empty one—has been identified. What is left to you or to I or to anyone is to either accept or reject that designated, i.e., to accept or reject the one who makes it. If we reject or if we obscure with rhetoric or do anything else, do not we become the enemy or, at least, the potential enemy (since, presumably, one needs to be revealed as the enemy to be the enemy)? Also, it’s important to keep in mind that Schmitt’s concept is not limited to interstate conflict; the political can rise within the state and even in the spheres of culture themselves.
You claim there is no public recognition of the enemy, but I am uncertain on what grounds I or anyone else should accept that. One would first have to accept your controversial (in my view at least) thesis that there is no enemy behind the “terrorist”; it seems to return to that, no? But even if you are correct, there is still the designation of the enemy and one can either accept or not accept it (by either accepting or not accepting the one who can make that determination). I don’t know where in Schmitt’s writings there is ever a necessary call for people to take a vote or sit down with all of the “data” to figure this out for themselves. That’s certainly a very democratic hope, but I don’t see that as relevant for Schmitt in any way. Surely, it was irrelevant for Schmitt that Cromwell’s rhetoric—the most intense form of politics—did not identify a “real” enemy (even though Spain was the concrete enemy behind it, we can rightly dispute that Spain an agent of the Antichrist—the very designation that made Cromwell’s rhetoric the highest in intensity).
I can’t conceive how someone as apparently well-read and articulate as yourself can miss the fact that Schmitt loathed the very thing you are talking about, i.e., the end of the political and, more critically, the absence of enemies. To Schmitt, that is a liberal fiction; a revolt against the anthropological assumption that animates his work (i.e, man’s dangerousness). There will be no “Kingdom of Heaven” until the Second Coming; man’s attempt to make it so was revolving in Schmitt’s eyes. If one believes that is even a possibility, then one already stands in opposition to Schmitt and rejects the very thing that compelled him forward.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 15, 2006 11:46:38 AM
Gabriel, you get at something I'm not clear on in Schmitt. I think I understand you, and I think I agree on your read of Schmitt, but I want to make sure.
You write: "Schmitt loathed the very thing you are talking about, i.e., the end of the political and, more critically, the absence of enemies."
What I haven't been clear on is if Schmitt thinks this is an actually accomplishable human condition. Is the end of the political possible (in Schmitt's view)? My sense is that it's not, and that claims to the accomplishment of this are actually themselves political, perhaps despite themselves.
Is that your sense as well? I assume so, that's how I read the rest of your remark:
"To Schmitt, that is a liberal fiction; a revolt against the anthropological assumption that animates his work (i.e, man’s dangerousness). There will be no “Kingdom of Heaven” until the Second Coming; man’s attempt to make it so was revolving [I assume this is a typo and should be "revolting", yeah?] in Schmitt’s eyes. If one believes that is even a possibility, then one already stands in opposition to Schmitt and rejects the very thing that compelled him forward. "
If I'm reading you and Schmitt right, then the objection to the end of the political is not that it ends the politica, but rather something else. I'm not clear on what that is. Is it the way that this type of activity is politically? Or is it an objection to a sort of bad faith, thinking oneself to be doing one thing but actually doing another?
Posted by: Nate | Jun 15, 2006 2:02:12 PM
Ah, the sparks do fly.
No time for a proper post, but wonder if this article might be helpful in some respects, maybe in getting past a certain block (at least, for me). It may interest others too, including Squibb, I don't know. Anyway here's the PDF.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 15, 2006 2:08:30 PM
Nate,
I have no sense whatsoever that the political--in Schmitt's view--can end except at the End. I have never seen textual evidence in his writings post-1933 (when the final edition of the The Concept... was published) to steer me away from what he sets forth there. I can't say I am totally closed off to it (that would be intellectually sour), but if there were texts out there that accomplished this, I think they would have been brought to light by now.
I think Schmitt's objection to the obscuring of the poliitcal cuts along two lines...
- His moral objection on the grounds that it deprives the human race and life of seriousness.
- His theological objection that identifies the obscuring of the political with the alinging of "mankind" against God.
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 15, 2006 2:20:20 PM
Matt,
Interesting...but it looks shabby. Again, the critical faux paux is apparent: he is relying on the second, not last, edition of The Concept of the Political. More than that, he's not even intimately familiar with Political Theology. (Why an academic in 2002 could not have "accessed" the text is quite beyond me.)
All the same, I really need to read Derrida's book it seems. Drat...
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 15, 2006 2:30:47 PM
And apparently I the last edition of The Concept of the Political. Does it come gold- or silver-plated, so at least one can eat off of it?
Posted by: Matt | Jun 15, 2006 3:09:43 PM
Matt,
Let me rephrase...
Please look for my awesome forthcoming article on Plato's political philosophy. Did I mention my copy of the The Republic is missing a book and I don't have access to the Laws?
Posted by: Gabriel Sanchez | Jun 15, 2006 4:22:19 PM
Aw, shucks. One does note your tenacity.
That was blindingly quick reading, by the way.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 15, 2006 4:27:12 PM
Gabriel - Your ability to hold down multiple threads of argument at once is remarkable. I am not so agile, and will have to take a moment before responding. Lest there be any doubt, however, I wish to make clear that any burden for writing at haste, and resulting miscommunication, must be shared between the two of us. With the brunt being mine do to a slow-dying romance with a certain idea of style... no matter. My reply is forthcoming.
Matt- I once again bow to your ability to find apropos links, and will give that paper some attention. (We must make a game out of this someday, where you are given ten minutes to find, say, a link involving Derrida, Ayn Rand, and artificial sweeteners. You could choose any competition you saw fit and the winner gets a lifetime supply of Blackwell readers, or better yet, the sole existing English translation of the concept of the political, third edition, embossed on ultrafine sheets of platinum; fully equipped with a dual action subwoofer/coffee maker and a power moonroof.)
Posted by: squibb | Jun 15, 2006 4:57:20 PM
Re Matt's linked to article: how many names can you drop through the eye of a needle?
Posted by: john c. halasz | Jun 15, 2006 6:06:44 PM
Fair point.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 16, 2006 10:22:07 AM
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