- State of Exception is a book written by the Italian philosopher
Giorgio Agamben. The English translation is by Kevin Attell of the monograph
Stato di eccezione. Agamben states the state of exception increasingly
appears to be dominant in contemporary politics. Political crises appear
only to be understood on political and not juridical grounds. For this
reason Publius suggests we do not see a political movement striving to
restore our civil rights. Politically it is not viable. The mentality of
resistance is simply not capable of expression in America today. We will
march when convenient and go home, break windows, but struggle over civil
rights like we were all living in the Jim Crow North and Jim Crow South
we will not do. No one is being lynched after all. Not here. Only "over
there" does it happen, Johnny told us about it when he came home on
leave to the suburb he knows as home. Our crisis is that as a people or
a nation of citizens we do not understand.
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- Agamben begins his inquiry with an analysis of the legal
basis behind the National Socialist persecution of unwanted groups. This
law, the Verordnung zum Schutz vom Volk und Staat (Decree for the Protection
of the People and the State), was proclaimed on February 28, 1933, a day
after the Reichstag fire. For Agamben, this juridical measure can be considered
to be the starting point of the Third Reich as an example of what he calls
the "state of exception," the suspension of the juridical order.
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- After September 11, 2001 the United States saw a political
and legal movement into a state of exception. Were at least 5,000 men swept
off the streets to disappear? How do we know they were not? The French
critical theorist Baudrillard describes 9/11 as a hyperreal spectacle that
is so extreme that it generates an extra degree of fictional supplementarity,
and it is this process of "reinventing the real as the ultimate and
most redoubtable fiction" that, for him, makes certain the possibility
of global capitalism's death. Paul Virilio, in his book Ground Zero, while
not sharing this optimism, suggests the USA was the victim of the forces
that it conjured. For Virilio, the multinationals and wealthy elite of
Arab society are as enamored of technological nihilism ("philanoia",
or a love of madness) the United States, and the suicidal actions of the
terrorists are as expressive of this disposition as the western technology
fetish. As much as the technological logic of western capitalism, the anonymity
of the attacks is expressive of a "global covert state. This is where
I observe that this global covert state is not really an Empire but has
to be and can only be the one Agamben has explored. Iraq and Afghanistan
as nations torn by war serve to celebrate and disclose the nature of the
covert state and the secret prisons and torture centers exist and are invisibly
used against you or I. We have a responsibility to ourselves to take civil
and legal action to take back the law and break the state of exception.
There is a window that has not entirely shut where mass mobilization and
resistance in support of restoration of law can force the hand of the new
government.
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- Comments to: cstegiel@gmail.com
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