Thursday, June 10, 2004
(12:06 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The State of Exception
I am currently reading Alenka Zupančič's The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Theory of the Two (an excellent book that everyone should read right after they read Taubes). This post, however, has nothing to do with her main project; I just have a couple lines that seem to me to be pertinent:
... (surplus-) enjoyment is no longer a hidden support for the law; rather, it becomes one with the law, as if a kind of short circuit between the two had been established. This could also be expressed in terms of what, in his book Homo sacer, Giorgio Agamben develops at the political level: modern politics is characterized by the fact that the "state of emergency" (the state that is, at one and the same time, the exception to as well as the support of the rule of law) is itself becoming a rule of law. (51)So now I'm going to list examples:
- Why is it that the debate on torture is determined by the exceptional "ticking time bomb" scenario, when in the overwhelming majority of cases torture is unambiguously immoral and unacceptable?
- Why is it that our whole approach to terrorism was based on the long-shot chance of terrorists getting ahold of "weapons of mass destruction" when the single biggest example of terrorism in the history of the world illustrated that they are usually able to get the results they're after with primitive methods?
- Why is it that the exceptional situation of compromising with the right wing in order to maintain one's ability to govern has become the primary policy of most liberal/left-wing politicians?
- Why is our entire economic policy geared toward creating a situation in which the occasional "entrepreneur" can become fabulously wealthy, when such situations are usually a long-shot and when such policies make things difficult and even hopeless for the vast majority who are content to get by with putting in an honest day's work?
