scholarly journals Agamben's Theories of the State of Exception: From Political to Economic Theology

2021 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-74
Author(s):  
Tim Christiaens
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Economic Theology

Playing with Death

2021 ◽  
pp. 647-660
Author(s):  
Steed Vernyl Davidson
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Book Of Jeremiah ◽  
Central Claim ◽  
Rhetorical Violence

The task of identifying a single rationale for the violence on display in the book of Jeremiah may end with a coherent answer, but perhaps not a satisfactory one. That violence serves a reforming purpose seems satisfactory to theological readers in search of theodicy, as well trauma analyses that find the violence problematic but understandable. Other interpreters of Jeremiah, such as feminists and postcolonialists, struggle with the gratuitous and seemingly arbitrary nature of the violence. While not an attempt to rationalize the violence, this chapter engages the arbitrariness of the violence through a systematic analysis of four targets of violence in the book of Jeremiah: the prophet, the feminized Israel/Judah as adulterous wife, foreign nations, and the earth. By distinguishing these separate targets, the chapter examines how gender, sexuality, nationality, and speciesism intersect in the enactment of the rhetorical violence in the book. These delineations also set the stage for a central claim of the chapter, that of exceptional violence. Building upon Carl Schmidt’s notion that exceptional violence stems from exceptional vulnerability that requires the state of exception to use unrestrained violence, the chapter considers how the violence as narrated in Jeremiah not only performs this exceptionalism but also has exceptions. By examining who/what dies from the violence in the book, the chapter points out how the politics of death is played out upon different targets.

Between the utopian imaginaries of literature and international law: The question of the insurgent child in international legal discourse and Kris Montañez’s Youth

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
José Duke S. Bagulaya
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Utopian Vision ◽  
The World ◽  
Realistic Representation ◽  
The One

Abstract This article argues that international law and the literature of civil war, specifically the narratives from the Philippine communist insurgency, present two visions of the child. On the one hand, international law constructs a child that is individual and vulnerable, a victim of violence trapped between the contending parties. Hence, the child is a person who needs to be insulated from the brutality of the civil war. On the other hand, the article reads Filipino writer Kris Montañez’s stories as revolutionary tales that present a rational child, a literary resolution of the dilemmas of a minor’s participation in the world’s longest-running communist insurgency. Indeed, the short narratives collected in Kabanbanuagan (Youth) reveal a tension between a minor’s right to resist in the context of the people’s war and the juridical right to be insulated from the violence. As their youthful bodies are thrown into the world of the state of exception, violence forces children to make the choice of active participation in the hostilities by symbolically and literally assuming the roles played by their elders in the narrative. The article concludes that while this narrative resolution appears to offer a realistic representation and closure, what it proffers is actually a utopian vision that is in tension with international law’s own utopian vision of children. Thus, international law and the stories of youth in Kabanbanuagan provide a powerful critique of each other’s utopian visions.

‘I Am the Law’: District Commissioner Fiction and the State of Exception

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-53
Author(s):  
Katherine Isobel Baxter
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Law ◽  
Indirect Rule ◽  
District Commissioner

Chapter Two identifies and anatomizes an important subgenre in the adventure tradition in literature: District Commissioner fiction. This subgenre is significant because, while in the nineteenth century the colonial hero was typically represented as a buccaneer outside the law, District Commissioner fiction repositions the hero within and as the law. Edgar Wallace’s Sanders of the River series is read alongside works by Arthur E. Southon in relation to theories of the state of exception, to demonstrate how the District Commissioner and the policy of indirect rule that he represents are figured exceptionally, standing outside the law as the force of law.

Postlude Pardoning and Liberal Constitutionalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-274
Author(s):  
Bernadette Meyler
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Liberal Constitutionalism

Its historical association with monarchical sovereignty has tarred pardoning with an illiberal brush. This Postlude examines Carl Schmitt’s Constitutional Theory, Political Theology and other writings to argue that the pardon resembles the sovereign decision on the state of exception. The vision of pardoning as opposed to liberal constitutionalism dates further back than Schmitt, however; it appears as well in the writings of Immanuel Kant, one of the foundational figures of modern liberalism. Only by disassociating pardoning from sovereignty can it be reconciled with constitutionalism. The Postlude concludes by turning to the work of Hannah Arendt as one source for a non-sovereign vision of pardoning.

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