Agamben's Theories of the State of Exception: From Political to Economic Theology

Abstract

Agamben's Theories of the State of ExceptionFrom Political to Economic Theology Tim Christiaens (bio) He who, in this mystical alphabet, begins with A will inevitably end with Z; he who desires to worship God must harbour no childish illusions about the matter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity. —Mikhail Bakunin Giorgio Agamben's philosophy is frequently treated as continuous throughout his career. Agamben himself encourages such a reading by making explicit links between recent and earlier works. Commentators rarely question this assumption of continuity, which is odd given Agamben's long career and some statements to the contrary. The first chapter of State of Exception (2005), for example, is called "The State of Exception as a Paradigm of Government," while Agamben proclaims in a lecture some years later that "in order to understand the peculiar governmentality under which we live, the paradigm of the state of exception is not entirely adequate" (2014). As a result, secondary literature tends to focus either on the earlier volumes of the Homo Sacer project and mention the others only in passing or vice versa. I will question the assumption of continuity by examining Agamben's theory of the state of exception. I identify two approaches to the state of exception. First, I delineate how Homo Sacer (1998) conforms to Schmitt's politico-theological perspective of the state of exception as a secularized form of miraculous divine intervention. In State of Exception, there are, however, hints away from political theology and toward a view of sovereignty as an auctoritas that not only suspends but also legitimates the application of the law. In the third section, I show how The Kingdom and the Glory (2011) moves toward economic theology and [End Page 49] links the state of exception to providential government. The sovereign no longer intervenes directly by suspending the law but renders himself inactive to make a spontaneous self-government of the world under the law possible. In the final part, I address the question of the relation between the politico-theological and economico-theological models. Whereas Agamben himself favors the latter over the former in The Kingdom and the Glory, I defend the perspective from State of Exception where Agamben argues for the relevance of both depending on the degree of spontaneous obedience to the law. Under normal circumstances, the economico-theological authorization of the law suffices. The politico-theological suspension of the law, however, remains part of the sovereign's toolbox, but is only employed only in emergency situations. HOMO SACER: THE STATE OF EXCEPTION AS MIRACLE Agamben starts Homo Sacer with Aristotle's distinction between natural and sociopolitical life: "zoē, which expressed the simple fact of living common to all living beings … , and bios, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group" (1998, 1). Communities articulate their bios via the identification of a specifically human potentiality that, if actualized, provides happiness (Whyte, 25–26; Watkin, 186). In Aristotle's polis, for instance, the cultivation of logos was deemed the utmost achievement of the good life. To actualize this potentiality, the community elaborates social rules. Agamben (1998, 20), however, agrees with Carl Schmitt (10) that the application of these rules to real-life situations is problematic. General abstract rules can be applied to particular cases only through the mediation of a decision (McLoughlin 2009, 246; Whyte, 60). The applicability of a particular law makes sense only if the decision maker can also choose not to apply the rule. The authorities can make an exception to a law by refusing to apply it in a specific case. In that instance, the case is excluded from that law but is included in the sphere of sovereign authority that decides whether this event falls under the law. The same argument holds for the legal order as a whole, where this inclusive exclusion constitutes the state of exception (Agamben 1998, 21). The applicability of the legal order depends on the sovereign's [End Page 50] willingness to apply the law and thus also on his capacity to withdraw this applicability (DeCaroli, 50): "The sovereign exception … is the presupposition of the juridical reference in the form of its...