Theoria

Battlestar Galactica is, apparently, a favourite television show of the denizens of the so-called “blogosphere” – especially among American “liberals” and the “theoretical” left. The latter of which I am, apparently, a member. Consequently, it seems imperative that I catch up on the best show taking place in space since Firefly. (Another show I didn’t watch when it was on TV.) Hence, a week or two ago I downloaded the first season and began watching it on the computer. The quality, however, was too low to bear, so, when I saw it at Wal-Mart at a reasonable price (I was actually in the section to contemplate the purchase of X3 – I didn’t get it), I decided to pick it up.

Since then, I have re-watched the pilot (rewatched insofar as I squinted through it on the computer screen) and the first couple of episodes; viz, “33″ and “Water.” Chances are, instead of doing work, we’ll watch “Bastille Day” and “Act of Contrition” later this evening. Apparently the present season, the third, has angered the American conservative “brigades” through the sympathetic portrayal of human suicide bombers in the first episode. “Moral equivalency,” apparently. They are, apparently, also shocked at the sudden “new” politics of the series – something they, apparently, didn’t see from the very beginning.

Of course, conservatives aren’t alone in this myopia: the American liberal “blogosphere” is just as guilty of lax viewing. None other than blogosphere superstar, Scott McLemee, can write the following:

Another of the show’s defining tensions is that between military and civilian authority. It raises the question of what elections might mean in an extreme situation—a “state of exception” in which the legitimacy of constitutional democracy is itself in doubt.

The following comments to his post are, quite predictably, not much more interesting.

All the same, the show presents some interesting theoretical questions, most importantly, it is – or, at least can be read as, an examination of some of Schmitt’s more enigmatic comments; i.e., those strange comments in The Concept of the Political, among other places, on aliens. Some things worth considering:

• An absolute outside to human politics. What becomes of politics when humanity as such is the subject and agent of politics – or, perhaps more accurately, the recipient of the politics of an absolutely anti-human political subject. This is politics at the extreme.
• Of course, politics requires a particular representation of the political. (How circular.) And representations are never complete. In this case, there is the problem of the Cylons who look, act, feel, smell, etc like humans. While the point of the show is, most likely, something to the effect of ‘anyone can be the enemy, what we should read here is the logic of the Terror. This is, in a sense, governing through fear – and, hence, the ever present danger of tyranny.
• Given that the politics of the show are the politics of extermination – the complete extermination, not of the race (as in biopolitics), but of the species, the show begins beyond the frontiers of our own politics. It isn’t the race – i.e., a subset of humanity – that is the object of politics, but entire species – all of the humans and all of the Cylons. This is an actualization, in a sense, of Bush’s rhetoric.
• Finally, we can return to the standard point: the exception. The quote above locates the exception in relation to rule within the human community and suggests that the exception takes the form of a conflict between military and political power. Between force and power, as it were.  Presumably the reference is to scenes, such as those in the pilot, where Roslin asks Adama if he will engineer a “military coup” (are there any other?) against the political government. In response, Adama agrees to a division of command between “fleet” and “military” issues. Roslin is the final authority relative to all ships, but the Galactica and Adama is the final authority on the Galactica, but whose authority over the other ships only exists insofar as there is an actual combat situation. And, in “33″ where Starbuck questions an order to destroy a transport ship that is armed with “nukes” – as though a ship remains “civilian” when itself has become a weapon. The command to destroy the ship – a military decision – comes not from Adama, but from Roslin. The same episode, with respect to a ship carrying “violent criminals,” has Roslin threaten to impose a “ban” on the ship – that is, put it outside “the protection of Galactica’s defenses” – should it mistreat the prisoners “because we aren’t at that” (she ends her line, “yet.”) And, later in “Water”, when Roslin asks Adama to provide troops to quell riots on “civilian” ships during water-shortage riots. Adama here distinguishes between “police” and “military” power pointing out that the “police” is “internal” and the “military” is “external” and that it is bad when the military and the police become the same. He says, and Roslin agrees, that “it won’t come to that.” All the same, knowing full well what they are doing, Adama agrees to dispatch the troops. Let us, finally, remember that Roslin and Adama agree on one thing: there is no war – they have already lost. That is, the exception doesn’t exist in a positive sense, but in a negative sense – it is the refusal or disavowal of recognizing that there is an exception in the first place. This negative exception closes the conflict between Roslin, who wants to engage in rescue efforts to the point of committing suicide, and Adama, who wants to wage war to the point of committing suicide. What is interesting here, is the complete lack of law in any sense, as well as the complete lack of politics. The problem, it should be noted, begins only in space when the planets, the ground of the nomos as it were, are destroyed. This, of course, brings us right back to Schmitt – and Arendt.