Exception

The idea of “exception” originated with Carl Schmitt’s work Dictatorship in 1921, but it was brought up again and re-popularized with Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life in 1998 and State of Exception in 2005 (Comaroff 382). According to Joshua Comaroff in “Terror and Territory: Guantánamo and the Space of Contradiction”, “The term state of exception describes a temporary suspension of constitutional statutes by executive force, such that “the law” may be preserved in the longer run; under its terms, in other words, emergency powers are invoked in order to safeguard the legal order” (382). This exception is invoked many times surrounding war or around emergencies like 9/11, and many times it is accompanied by the rhetoric of immediacy. Akin to the mindset of a state of emergency, it carries the impressions that what is declared or created is for the greater good in an exceptional time quickly and by only a few individuals. Because the legal framework may not be in place due to unprecedented circumstances, a limited number of people usually make the decisions on what is needed immediately for the greater good. Comaroff continues that states of exception are “absolute and unreferenced, without need for external justification” and their justification neither needs “legality” nor “legitimacy” (Schmitt 93 and Comaroff 382). Decisions are made quickly to fit current circumstances and may have no previous legal precedent. Depending on how long these policies are maintained though determines the length of the state of exception. Nevins takes a pessimistic view of states of exception and explains them as “places predicated on injustice, places built upon, and which make inevitable, violence of various sorts” (351).

References:

Andrew Neal cautioned against thinking of the use of power in a soverignty to only being in exceptional times; historical conditions exist which allow exceptional conditions to occur (Nadesan, 2008, p. 190).

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ., 1998. Print.

Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2005. Print.

Comaroff, Joshua. "Terror and Territory: Guantánamo and the Space of Contradiction." Public Culture 19.2 (2007): 381-405. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

Nadesan, M.H. (2008). Governmentality, biopower, and everyday life. Florence, KY: Routledge. Schmitt, Carl. Legality and Legitimacy. Trans. Carl Schmitt. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print.