scholarly journals Extra-Legal Legality: Orientalism and Biopolitics in a State of Exception

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Igbinedion Obaretin
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Careful Attention

With recourse to the poetry of Guantanamo’s detainees, this article describes the extra-legal legality that typifies the conception and activities of post-9/11 terror-suspect prison camps. It argues that the state of exception, which has become integral in the war on terror, is not a product of necessity, but a reflection of the interplay between biopolitics, biopower, and Orientalism in the post-9/11 era. By considering the ways in which Guantanamo detainees employ poetry to plead their innocence and exhibit their suffering body as political subjects and objects, this article pays careful attention to the aesthetics of Guantanamo poetry and how it reveals the poets’ individual humanity against the fabric of the brutality and illegality packaged ironically as the ‘war on terror’.

scholarly journals Introduction: The Return of the Exception

2021 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 7-15
Author(s):  
Rafał Mańko ◽  
Przemysław Tacik ◽  
Gian Giacomo Fusco
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Emergency Powers ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The history of the 20th century, and more recently the two-decades long war on terror, have taught us the lesson that the normalisation of the state of exception (intended here as the proliferation of legal instruments regulating emergency powers, and their constant use in varied situations of crisis) is never immune from the risk of leaving long-lasting impacts of legal and political systems. With the “Return of the Exception” we intend to bring to the fore the fact that in the pandemic the state of exception has re-appeared in its “grand” version, the one that pertains to round-the-clock curfews and strong limitations to the freedom of movement and assembly, all adorned by warfare rhetoric of the fight against an invisible enemy – which, given the biological status of viruses, it cannot but be ourselves. But “return” here must be intended also in its psychoanalytic meaning. Much like the repressed that lives in a state of latency in the unconscious before eventually returning to inform consciousness and reshape behaviour, the state of exception is an element that remains nested in law’s text before reappearing in a specific moment with forms and intensity that are not fully predictable. Still, it remains cryptic whether the pandemic inaugurates a new epoch of liberal legality – the post-law – or just augurs its structural crisis.

The laws of war and the state of the American exception

2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
JASON RALPH
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The State ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
American Liberalism ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Alternative Reading

AbstractThis article examines the US response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks using Carl Schmitt's concept of the exception. It argues that the Bush administration's response is consistent with Schmitt's view, which argued that US policy continued the historical practice of drawing lines that separated ‘civilisation’ from zones of exception where the normal laws governing warfare did not apply. This suggests that the state of exception declared after 9/11 is not contingent on the rise and fall of the terrorist threat, rather it is the latest manifestation of ‘global linear thinking’ and therefore a permanent feature of American hegemony. However, the article does not accept this pessimistic conclusion. US policy since 9/11 fits squarely with a Schmittian explanation only because conservative nationalists have used the war on terror to help reconstruct a sense of American ‘exceptionalism’. An alternative reading of how American liberalism should respond to terrorism can be found in the manner in which the Bush administration's policy was rejected by the US Supreme Court.

A Test of Conscience Without Indispensable Norms: Niklas Luhmann’s War on Terror

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Werber
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Normal Functioning ◽  
Media Communication ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
The Usa

AbstractIn Niklas Luhmann’s social theory, the state of exception does not exist. His monographs presuppose the »normal« functioning of communication in world society, and this means that the borders of function systems and the differences between media and codes remain intact. Politics is politics, law is law, etc. But is this still true in the case of large scale terror attacks? In the question he posed to jurists in Heidelberg - whether »indispensable norms« are still valid - Luhmann opens a fissure in the heart of normality. By using the scenario of a »ticking bomb,« Luhmann parades the aporias of function codes before our eyes. The state of exception is normatively undecidable, but requires a decision nevertheless. These are the »hard cases« and the »tragic choices.« The essay plays out various scenarios involving dilemmas of decision in moral, legal, political, and mass-media communication and arrives at a type of »aprincipled maneuvering« that places systems theory astonishingly close to the modes of amoral theories current in the USA since »9/11«.

Diplomatic Assurances Against Torture – An Effective Strategy? A Review of Jurisprudence and Examination of the Arguments

2008 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Skoglund
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
The State ◽  
Security Threats ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Actual Risk ◽  
Substantial Risk ◽  
International Human ◽  
Controversial Area

AbstractHuman rights organisations have warned repeatedly that basic human rights are being challenged in the so-called 'War on Terror'. One particularly controversial area is the use of diplomatic assurances against torture. According to international human rights instruments, the state shall not return anyone to countries in which they face a substantial risk of being subjected to torture. In the 'War on Terror', an increasing number of non-citizens are being deemed 'security threats', rendering them exempt from protection in many Western states. To be able to deport such 'threats' without compromising their duties under international law, states are increasingly willing to accept a diplomatic assurance against torture – that is, a promise from the state of return that it will not subject the returnee to torture. There is wide disagreement as to whether and/or when diplomatic assurances can render sufficient protection to satisfy the obligations of non-refoulement to risk of torture. Whereas the human rights society label such assurances as 'empty promises', others view them as effective, allowing states to retain their right to remove non-citizens without violating international law. This article reviews international and selected national jurisprudence on the topic of diplomatic assurances against torture and examines if and/or when such assurances might render sufficient protection against torture to enable removals in accordance with international law. The courts and committees that have reviewed the use of diplomatic assurances against torture have identified essential problems of using them, thus rejecting reliance on simple promises not to torture. However, they have often implied that sufficient protection might be rendered by developing the assurances. I argue that this approach risks leading the governments into trying to perfect a system that is inherently flawed – whilst, incidentally, deportations to actual risk of torture continue. Even carefully modelled assurances render only unreliable protection against torture. For this, and reasons connected to undesirable side-effects of their use, I argue that the practice should be rejected.

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.

scholarly journals Recognizing Friend and Foe: Biometrics, Veridiction, and the Iraq War

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefka Hristova
Keyword(s):  
Iraq War ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Recognition Method ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
A Site ◽  
Identification Practices

In analyzing the deployment of biomertics in Iraq, argue that whereas the body was seen as a site of verification in 20th century surveillance and identification practices, in the ongoing War on Terror, and the Iraq War more specifically, it became a site of veridiction - a site in which the truth about the security of the state can be analyzed (Foucault 2008:32). The body thus became the basis for determining not so much one’s unique identity but one’s friendliness to the normative state order. Enemies could thus be identified and confined as a group, and in this process the state could be secured. In the ongoing of the War on Terror, the visual regime of veridiction has been further articulated to the logic of digital technologies in order to categorize an unfamiliar diverse population into a binary simplistic schema consistent of true and false, therefore friend or foe, and thus “go” - allowed to move through the country or “no go” - destined to be detained. In other words, the digitization of veridiction as the primary goal of biometrics is evident in the automation of the recognition method, the conversion of the archive into database, the transition away from the anthropological station onto mobile dispersed data-gathering enterprise, and replacement of scientific expertise with easy-to-use automated intelligence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document