Carl Schmitt, I think, is more often cited than read (the same is truthfully said about Bodin, by the way – why do we cite the major theorists of sovereignty and power and rule without ever reading them? the only edition of Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth presently in print in a reasonable edition is a severely abridged edition consisting of four chapters; there is no standard “scholarly” edition to speak of). The usual citations from Schmitt can be boiled down to two: ‘the essence of the political consists in the distinction between friend and enemy’ and ’sovereign is he who decides on the exception.’ Schmitt’s political theory deals with the conditions of possibility – or, perhaps, the impossibility – of sovereignty, the political and the law. Most of these lazy citations emphasize the wrong part; viz., ‘the distinction between friend and enemy‘ and ‘the decision on the exception.’ In part this is Schmitt’s own fault and it wasn’t a question that could be taken up until after the Second World War and that was not taken up until much later.
What, then, is the question? And what is the proper way to read these dictums? We can certainly keep these phrases in their common form, but we must italicize a different part: the question that Schmitt wanted to ask, but couldn’t answer wasn’t about friends and enemies or about exceptions and the rule, but about ‘the decision‘ and ‘the distinction.’ His question was not about exceptions and enemies, but about how we go about producing exceptions and enemies. That is, Schmitt’s question is the same as Foucault’s question: how do we make distinctions? how do we sustain distinctions? what do these distinctions do? The question, then, is a matter of ‘technologies’ – technologies that have the purpose of producing divisions, distinctions and affirming this production through decisions.
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I totally agree with your assessment. By associating him with ideas like `friend/enemy’ or `exception’ one picks up on the things that Schmitt the historical person left behind, nazi-wise. Schmitt himself was intrigued how these things come about, are produced or represented — as you pointed out, of course. Röman Katholizismus is, by the way, an excellent account of political representation `coming about’.
I still feel the weight of owing a post to the Schmitt symposium. Couldn’t do something quickly because of how important, timely, and rich the theory of the partisan was; very much appreciated being compelled to read rather than simply borrow and repeat two Schmittian maxims.
True enough Craig. The ’state of exception’ and the ‘friend-enemy distinction’ are indeed over-used and over cited for the most part today. However, these are both fundamental concepts towards a proper understanding of Schmitt (particularly his early work).
The key point that you have missed is not that the friend-enemy is about ‘us’ making distinctions. Rather, it is about the possibility of the state representative apparatus doing so. ‘State thinking’ is what Schmitt feels has been lost given the naive conceptualizations of power following increasingly strident forms of liberalism in the 19th century. So, to properly represent Schmitt’s work, in my view (and my thesis depends on it), it must be understood in relation to his central concerns regarding the sovereign state. The later ‘Theory of the Partisan’ is all about the problems that the decline of the nation-state represents for contemporary conceptions of war and politics. ‘Internationalism,’ presupposing the possibility of ‘one’ world state, does not understand that the state is predicated on an ability to define itself by distinguishing between friend and enemy. In a sense Negri is correct: no obsession with state sovereignty, no Schmitt.
The problem with that reading, Barret, (and this could be a problem for Schmitt as well) is that it tends to present a rather anachronistic concept of the state such that a particular form of the state is projected backwards (and, from our perspective) forwards through time. In short, there were politics in feudal regimes, but it is quite difficult to coherent speak of a feudal state – hence, the corrective offered by those such as Strauss or Lefort (or, looking to the past, Montesquieu) is quite helpful. I’m hesitant to reduce the exception or the friend/enemy distinction to just the state and, further, to attach a cynical intentionality to it (the state produces) and this is my fault because I used the language of production which implies intention. Rather, I think it is more fruitful to attach an analysis of “the event” or of the “aleatory” to the exception and to the friend/enemy. Hence, the question, as I tried to indicate in my original post, is how do these come about? That is, what are the conditions that must exist so as to allow the exception to emerge?
Well, yes, I think that this does expand beyond Schmitt in many ways. That is the major problem I’m having with this project. Even though I believe that concerns of sovereignty are important for contemporary analysis of politics and power (God knows the nation-state is not withering away as is supposed), Schmitt doesn’t provide us with much of a way out of law-sovereignty models of power. In that sense alone, a direct extension of his work may be less than fruitful today. This is why people like Peter Hallward have warned against a return to a neo-Schmittian Eurocentric politics.
Also, although Schmitt does not theorize “the event” per se, he is very concerned with “the concrete” as you no doubt know.
hi Craig,
do you think it’s a Schmitt-specific problem, or is this a common bad way of reading? Having asked it now seems obvious to me that it’s the second. I wonder what the conditions are that make such readings more likely, whether it’s something in a type of conversation, some institutional factors, something in the writers themselves, etc…
cheers,
Nate
From the perspective of the present, any reading of Schmitt is hopelessly overdetermined, in part due to his involvement in politics, his institutional location during his own life, and the politics of his subsequent reception. That Schmitt came to be Schmitt – at least in North America – is entirely fortuitous and there is nothing in his writing as such that would ever have predicted his post-humous career. All the same, there are texts which have provoked strong responses – both at the time of their publication – and in the present: Machiavelli’s The Prince, Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, Spinoza’s Ethics, Hobbes’ Leviathan and, of course, Schmitt and Strauss.
couldn’t agree more…
Is Schmitt’s definition of the political circular? The political distinction is the distinction between friends and enemies. The distinction between friends and enemies is the life and death distinction. The life and death distinction is political because it is authoritative. The authoritative distinction is the distinction between friends and enemies. The political distinction is authoritative because political and political because authoritative.
I think Schmitt can be read as a closet-Hegelian such that the only complete definition is circular; i.e., a totality. But I think you are forgetting the distinction between “public” and “private” – while the life/death distinction is “authoritative,” it isn’t necessarily political. First, recall (and Foucault and Agamben – but also the early modern theorists of sovereignty – remind of us this) the right of the father to kill his children; second, the blurring of the political that occurs with the rise of the social.
hi Craig,
So, you’re saying that schmitt’s becoming Schmitt (I mean, the stuff that made that happen) has made him more susceptible to a type of bad reading, yeah? That makes sense. Presumably some other thinkers are just as susceptible to bad reading if one looks solely at the work and how hard they are but the obscure ones among those texts are read less (presumably only by people who are really dedicated to them, like say medievalists or whatever) and there’s less interests/overdetermining factors involved that make bad reading more likely. Is that a fair paraphrase? If so, I’m convinced.
take it easy,
Nate
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