Against Biopolitics: Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, and Giorgio Agamben on Political Sovereignty and Symbolic Order¹

Abstract

While Walter Benjamin's equation of law with violence leads to his affirmation of a kind of un‐mediated divine violence and Giorgio Agamben's notion of sovereignty links politics directly with the body, Carl Schmitt's idea of sovereignty does not concern itself primarily with bare life but with an acculturated subject that links law and politics to a particular tradition. Because he is always concerned about this relationship between culture and politics, Schmitt offers a concept of the political that is better able to explain the kinds of ideological and cultural factors that impact upon politics in situations such as the Weimar Republic or the civil war in Iraq, in which cultural conflict leads to political instability. His thinking suggests that the cultural analysis of both religious and secular literary traditions can throw light on the ideological commitments that motivate political conflict.

Taking the Relationship Between Populism and Healthcare Seriously: A Call for Empirical Analysis Rather Than Moral Condemnation Comment on "A Scoping Review of Populist Radical Right Parties’ Influence on Welfare Policy and its Implications for Population Health in Europe"

“…The work of Carl Schmitt -a 20th century scholar who has fallen out of grace due to his association with the Nazi regime -has recently been (re)discovered by scholars that seek to understand a revived politics of 'us' versus 'them' and the spatial, social and juridical consequences this has. 8,14,15 Schmitt already warned in the 1950s that a proliferation of new (and rather hierarchical) institutions in search for a united Europe, would lead to chaotic and ad hoc forms of partisan (counter) organizations on the ground. This is not necessarily something to look forward to, as it could lead to all kinds of invisible and unpredictable exclusions, in different places and against different kinds of others.…”

Walter Benjamin’s Zur Kritik der Gewalt (‘On the Critique of Violence’): reception, relevance, and a mis-diagnosis?

“…The influence of Schmitt on Benjamin has been explored in depth and debated by numerous critics in a series of papers and texts including the following: (Weber, 1992) (Heil, 1996) (Bredekamp, et al, 1999) (de Wilde, 2011) (Smith, 2012) (McNulty, 2007 (Pan, 2009) (Witte, 2011) 3…”

Repositioning sovereignty? Sovereign encounters with organized crime and money laundering in the realm of accountants

“…It has been said that the sovereign mandate is tied to the establishment of order, both on the market and in general (Pan, 2009; Žižek, 1999). In Hobbes’ famous defense, sovereignty was the precondition for social order.…”