State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben

In his monograph, State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben portrays a view of so-called democratic politics in which the "state of exception"– normally a provisional attempt to deal with political exigencies during times of crisis– has become the dominant technique of government. Faced with the prospect of a "global civil war," contemporary governments, Agamben argues, have set forth a perpetual and fictitious state of crisis in order to secure unqualified control though a permanent state of exception. (Here one is reminded of the "nightmares" described by Adam Curtis in his documentary Power of Nightmares.) What distinguishes this historical singular phenomenon from its antecedents in the democratic-revolutionary tradition (including variously martial law, emergency powers, emergency decrees, states of seige, and other "states of necessity") is that it is not a provisional legal measure to deal with a special situation, but rather it is the permanent suspension of the juridicial order. That is to say, that state of exception as become a de facto situation, unrelated or contrary to the system of rules that a community normally recognizes as regulating the actions, or life, of its members. The phenomena not only includes the suspension of personal liberties, extension of military authority into the civil sphere, and the expansion of of powers of the government (including, in some instances, the conferral on the executive of full powers to issue decrees having the power of law), but it allows for the radically erasure of any legal status (life being the biopolotical equivalent) of individuals who for some reason cannot, or are willed not to, be integrated into the political system.

(Harry, Cathy, Massimo)