Sovereign Exception, Destructive Exception

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
Willy Thayer
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Rule Making

This chapter discusses Walter Benjamin's “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” which refers to a regime of sovereign representation where the state of emergency is the rule. It explains the paradigm of sovereignty that is constituted teleologically from exception, as the foundation and conservation of representational regimes. For Benjamin, the state of emergency is equivalent to “progress as a historical norm.” The chapter also looks at the commissary-sovereign state of exception that is functional to a policing critique and a politics whose prerogative is to put the regimes of representation into crisis. It analyzes a prerogative that subsumes the destructive character of the exception within a dialectical concentration of the rule, making the spectrality of destruction a function of the system of representation.

The Philippines

2019 ◽  
pp. 405-432
Author(s):  
Romel Regalado Bagares
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Paradoxical Phenomenon ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
Executive Agreements ◽  
Rule Making

This chapter assesses international law in the Philippines. The primary entry points of international law in Philippine jurisdiction are the Incorporation Clause and the Treaty Clause of the 1987 Charter. The chapter considers the paradoxical phenomenon of the supposedly dualist device of treaties opening a quasi-monist door to international legal obligations in the form of executive agreements that do not require the concurrence of the Senate but become binding on the Philippines by Executive imprimatur. Moreover, as quasi-monist devices, executive agreements function both as a sword, giving direct effect to international law—especially in the protection of rights—and as a shield, raising barriers to public or international accountability according to political considerations. The four other entry points for international law in Philippine practice include the direct effect by the Supreme Court’s rule-making powers, constitutionalization, statutory application, and international law in the State of Exception.

Notstandskontrolle

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Weber
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Case Law ◽  
The State ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Level System ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Judicial Control ◽  
States Of Emergency ◽  
Multi Level

Between 2015 and 2017, France, Turkey and Ukraine, as member states of the European Convention on Human Rights, declared a state of emergency according to Art. 15 ECHR. The events associated with the suspension of Convention rights show the current significance of the legal standardisation of political and social states of emergency. In the end it is all about the question of who ultimately controls the state of emergency: the sovereign state, the state community with a supranational judicial control, or both in terms of a horizontal overlapping of powers in the European multi-level system? Art. 15 ECHR still leaves unanswered questions to which the Strasbourg organs have responded over the years with a differentiated jurisprudence and with the granting of a certain margin of discretion. The book deals with these issues in the light of ECtHR case law and case studies on France, Turkey and Ukraine.

scholarly journals Network Society, Network-centric Warfare and the State of Emergency

2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Dillon
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
The State ◽  
Network Society ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Network Attack ◽  
Biopolitical Power ◽  
Strategic Logic

This article describes the new strategic discourse of network-centric warfare that has come to dominate US operational doctrines and concepts as well as strategic thinking. It also describes 11th September as a network attack. The state of exception becomes the rule via the confluence of geopolitical with biopolitical power and the strategic logic of network-centric thinking, and with it the problematization of security goes hyperbolic in the form of `The Terror'.

scholarly journals Borgerkrig fra Athen til Auschwitz:

2015 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Mikkel Flohr
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Western History ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Starting Point

The starting point of this article is the concept of civil war in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer-series. In spite of its relative obscurity, Agamben insists that civil war is the fundamental political structure, which has characterized all of Western history since Ancient Greece. As such it constitutes a privileged vantage point from whence it is possible to discern the limitations of his political thought. These limitations originate in his deployment of Carl Schmitt’s state of exception, which serves to include civil war in the sovereign order – this entails that classical modes of political contestation and conflict e.g. revolution, are always already internal to the sovereign state, and can therefore only serve to reaffirm it. The state of exception thus produces an inherent incapacity to think or move beyond the sovereign state. Agamben subsequently attempts to challenge the state of exception albeit with varying degrees of success. This suggest the necessity of taking exception to the exception and explode the conceptual coupling of civil war and sovereign power, in order to create a space where it is possible to think political contestation within or beyond the works of Agamben.

scholarly journals Stan wyjątkowy w perspektywie filozofii prawa. Próba definicji

2020 ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Weronika Adamska
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Character State ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Normative Fact ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Do So

The aim of this paper is to propose a definition of the state of exception within the framework of the philosophy of law. The nature of the state of exception is both a legal and a political one. For this reason, it is a subject of inquiry in various disciplines. As a consequence of its hybrid character, state of exception is hard to define, which leads to definitional scepticism. As a criterial definition is impossible to reach, I believe that it should be replaced with a paradigmatic one. Such a definition should take into account the acquis of, among others, philosophy, history or political science, so that it may apply to different methodological approaches. In order to do so, I present the main definitional groups (state of exception as a normative fact, as a constitutional dictatorship, as a political fact, and as a legal void). Next, using the criteria that are common to all those definitions, I propose and analyse three constitutive elements of the state of emergency: a crisis, a suspension of ordinary laws, and a temporary character of this suspension. The definition I propose can help to assess whether a given state is a form of a state of exception. This is of a particular relevance as emergency laws are nowadays widely discussed in the context of terrorist threats.

scholarly journals The Making of a Totalitarian Surveillance Machine: Surveillance in Turkey Under AKP Rule

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 535-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ozgun Topak
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
Entire Society ◽  
Surveillance Mechanism ◽  
Mass Surveillance ◽  
Emergency Measures ◽  
Coup Attempt

This article examines surveillance initiatives under the AKP rule in Turkey (2002-present). The AKP had first tested and perfected surveillance methods, including wiretapping, internet surveillance and surveillance by collaborator-informant networks, over its key opponents and dissidents to capture the state apparatus and later applied similar methods to govern the entire society. In the aftermath of the 2013 Gezi protests, surveillance began to have a mass character, even though targeted surveillance practices continued. Fearful of another popular public revolt, the AKP established a mass surveillance mechanism and empowered it by new amendments to security and communication laws, to pre-empt and suppress public dissent. The recent state of emergency measures following the failed coup attempt in July 2016 represented a further drift towards totalitarian surveillance. The personal liberties were suspended and the state of exception became a permanent condition.

scholarly journals Intervenciones Artísticas: Estado de Excepción en México

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Pablo Estévez
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
The State ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
States Of Emergency ◽  
Mexican Society ◽  
The Social

The movement of Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico began in 1994, succeeding in generating a change in Mexican society by valuing indigenous liberation practices. However, a state of emergency is instituted in Zapatista territories according to laws that grant amnesty and regulate the legal vacuum. Certain Mexican artists such as Erick Beltrán, Gabriel Kuri, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Pablo Kubli, contribute critical reflections with works sustained in the context of pure violence of the State. The theoretical framework is constrained by the theories of Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembe, who contribute to the understanding of the state of exception that the State implements by modifying sovereignty and Human Rights. The method used in the article corresponds to the reception of literary texts. The artistic pieces that are integrated by Pablo Kubli represent the interdisciplinary contribution of the social sciences and the practice of art, with images, schemes and interventions that are argumentative reflections of the environment of globalized violence, and of social resistance to the paradigm of modification of autonomy in intervened regions. In addition, a comparative approach with states of emergency of globalized countries is proposed according to the events of September 11, 2001 in New York and March 11, 2004 in Madrid, among others. Starting from the Mexican experience and from global countries, the term of sovereignty is modified by the violence of the State over territories cut off by the permanence of the state of exception and restrictions on constitutional guarantees.

The ‘State of Emergency’ or the ‘State of Exception’? Bahrain and COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-454
Author(s):  
Sanaa Alsarghali
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
State Of Emergency

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness across the globe of how constitutions respond to crisis. Typically, countries, and their constitutions, have provisions that enable governments to respond to these crises rapidly through forms of exceptional powers which suspend usual constitutional norms. These powers are often invoked after declaring a ‘state of emergency’, a constitutional clause that has strict stipulations and requirements. Certain regimes, however, have been known to abuse these exceptional powers and to use them in times of normalcy (non-crisis). This paper examines how Bahrain has used exceptional measures to confront COVID-19, within the context of its past use of such powers, and suggests that Bahrain is not in a state of emergency, but is now operating in what Giorgio Agamben has labelled ‘a state of exception’.

Sovereignty and the State of Emergency: France and the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (8) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Paye
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political System ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
Public Reaction ◽  
Intention To Change

Following the July 14, 2016, massacre in Nice, French President François Hollande once again extended for three months a state of emergency that was to have ended on July 26. An initial, twelve-day state of emergency had been declared after the Paris attacks and extended for three months by a law of November 2015. Still another three-month extension was added and came to an end on May 26, only to be extended for two additional months. Despite the obvious ineffectiveness of such a measure…it has been extended yet again, through January 2017.… This normalization of the "state of exception" has provoked only a muted public reaction. France has thus entered into a permanent state of emergency. This choice is not the result of exceptional events to which the country must respond, but rather expresses an intention to change the political system, as shown by the move to constitutionalize the state of emergency.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals Militarised violence in the service of state-imposed emergencies over Palestine and Kenya

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-37
Author(s):  
Annie Pfingst
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
States Of Emergency ◽  
Common Practices ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
Shed Light

States of Emergency are declared against the disorder-ing of state sovereign power by acts of resistance, rebellion and revolt and are characterised by the technologies of control, containment and punishment. Through spatial, archival and visual encounters with emergency landscapes and the geographies of resistance, the essay considers the historic and contemporary operations, provisions, regulations and practices authorised under state-imposed emergencies. It does so in order firstly, to bring attention to the practices authorised through state-imposed emergencies and the currency and saliency of their ongoing effects, and secondly to re-frame the militarised violence of settlement/occupation as an integral part of state-imposed emergencies in which all that is necessary will be done to protect the sovereign state from the resistance of the colonised/occupied and to effect a return to ‘order’.   Through encounters with the archival record, and the architectures, remnants and territorial arrangements found in post-colonial Kenya and across the multiple geographies of Palestine, the essay draws out seven clusters of state imposed emergency practices and effects. The work grapples with a number of questions: what is it that a declared state of emergency performs for the state? Does a state of emergency enable particular forms of militarised violence? Are there common practices to be found across different modes of state-imposed emergencies? What is the genealogy to the states of emergency across Palestine and Kenya? Does our excavation of the practices of state-imposed emergency shed light on the ways we apprehend state violence in colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial geographies? 

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