Извънредно положение и решение за политическото
The State of Exception and the Decision on the Political

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to shed light on the conceptual history of the notion of state of exception. The starting point of the analysis is the hypothesis of the relationship between the state of exception and the idea of foundational moment of politics, as it is developed by Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Reinach, the author of the fundamental study On the State of Emergency and the Institutions of Public Salvation (1885). Reinach and Schmitt’s analyses lead to the conclusion that the state of exception – the response to a major threat for the state, was conceived as necessary, if not imperative tool for public salvation in modern politics, starting with the French Revolution. When the legal-political order is threatened in its principles, the state of exception appears as a possibility of maintaining its normative foundation beyond its established forms. Although the state of exception has traditionally been associated with authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, Reinach’s historical analysis brings us to the conclusion that the state of exception is initially related to the very establishment of the Republic: it is the result of a juridical invention, which gives impetus to the development of its legal system. Does this mean that there is no substantial difference between a state of exception and a normative order? On such premises, how to tackle the specificity of the current situation of ‘sanitary emergency’? Proposing a metacritical overview of Walter Benjamin’sCrtical ontology of violence and its problematic recent re-reading by Giorgio Agamben, the article seeks to offer a few conceptual distinctions, allowing for positive analysis and experimental investigation of the present situation.

• Details
• Contents