Society Must Be Defended, or The Archaeology of the Exception

Abstract

Andrew Neal spoke about different theoretical approaches to the problem of ‘exceptionalism’, which is the problem of exceptional practices legitimated by exceptional events/situations. As such, he dealt with Carl Schmitt, ‘securitization theory’, and finally the work of Michel Foucault, using the latter to provide a critique of the first two and sketch an alternative.

Carl Schmitt poses the problem of the exceptional limits of law, politics, liberalism, and predictability regarding the future in order to argue for the necessity of exceptional sovereign power. Schmitt deliberately conflates the sovereign response to the exceptional with the sovereign declarationof the exceptional. As such, Schmitt’s sovereign has the prerogative to declare the existence of the very thing - the exceptional event/situation - that gives it its raison d’etre.Although Schmitt’s approach contains a barely-concealed fascist ethic, he still poses the challenge that the exception takes primacy over the rule.

Securitization theory goes some way to meeting this challenge. It argues that security situations, or exceptional situations, have no objective qualities that necessitate certain forms of politics. Rather, security is a process by which issuesare made into security issues through securitizing ‘speech-acts’. Securitization theory treats security as a discourseor field that is characterized by certain types of language, ways of speaking, subject positions, institutional structures and so on. Neal argued that although this approach is needed and welcome, it still tends to reify security as an identifiable and unified special category, thus maintaining the norm/exception split and therefore supporting Schmitt’s argument that the exception takes primacy over the norm.

Neal instead sketched a different approach using Foucault’s The Archaeology of Knowledge. He suggested that to avoid reifying a special categoryor fieldof security/exceptionalism, we must describe discourses not as discrete discursive unities with identifiable limits, but as dispersed formations - as scattered archives of the already-said, multiple conceptual horizons, competing strategies and opposed subject positions. In order to meet the challenge of exceptionalism, it is essential not to reify discourses as exceptional or sovereign-centred.

Presentation summary

What is the problem of exceptionalism?

Claims about an ‘exceptional situation’

‘Exceptional’ practices legitimated by claims of an ‘exceptional situation’.

This paper tackles this problem through three theoretical areas of concern:

Carl Schmitt

Securitization theory

Michel Foucault

Carl Schmitt

Schmitt poses the problem of the exception in terms of limits:

The limits of (positive) law

The limits of liberty/liberalism

The limit of predictability (the problem of contingency)

Corresponding to:

A legal problem

A politics problem

A metaphysical problem

Schmitt uses these problems invoke the threat, urgency, and necessity of the exceptional event, or the exceptional situation.

The exception is a «real possibility».

Schmitt uses these problems to argue in favour of exceptional sovereign power.But in fact Schmitt argues for two separate things which he conflates:

The necessity of an exceptional sovereign response to the exceptional event/situation

The necessity that the sovereign must decide when the exception has arrived.

Schmitt’s politics of the exception rests on a very slippery formulation:

The exceptional sovereign is justified by the ‘real possibility’ of the exceptional event, and the ‘necessity’ of an exceptional sovereign response, but the sovereign also decides/declareswhen that exception event exists.

i.e. the exceptional sovereign is justified by something which it itself declares.

This blurring of declaringand respondingposes a problem:

Is the exceptional event/situation an ‘objective’ thing?

If so why may only the sovereign decide when an event/situation exceptional?

Why is it not simply a technical question of whether or not the exception exists?

Or is the exception purely a matter of ‘subjective’ judgement?

If so, the question is then, «whose judgement»?

Schmitt’s answer is: «the sovereign with exceptional power».

Schmitt’s politics of the exception depends a blurring of the ‘objectiveness’ and ‘subjectiveness’ of the exception, which is shown in the term he uses for it -

a «real possibility»

Example - the definition of terrorism

governments and institutions has immense difficulty in trying to decide upon a legally and politically accepted definition of terrorism

are protesters terrorists?

Are Greenpeace terrorists?

Is it not ultimately a political decision, not a technical distinction, over who is a terrorist?

The political decision seems to trump the elusive stable definition.

Therefore leading to the challenge of Schmitt -

That the exception takes primacy over the norm

(not all the time, not permanently, but in exceptional moments/situation)

The challenge - can we win the argument against Schmitt?

Securitization theory

Solves the problem of the ‘objectiveness’ of the security situation/exceptional situation.

Security a process

Characterized by certain types of language, positions of authority, certain rules through which issues can be made into security issues.

Processes of securitization.

Addresses many of the problems of Schmitt

Not simply a technical question over whether a situation is exceptional or not

But not a singular, authoritarian, sovereign decision on the exception either

Rather, a ‘heavy tradition’ of security, a field, a discourse, a body of types of language etc.

For securitization theory there are no ‘exceptional situations’/’security situations’ in their own right, independent from practices of naming and interpretation.

There is no independent definition of a security issue or exception.

Issues become securitizedor ‘exceptionalized’through processes that can studied sociologically, linguistically, institutionally and so on.

Not content specific - any issue can in theory be turned into a security issue through the right processes.

«By definition, something is a security problem when the elites declare it to be so» - Ole Waever.

Problems with securitization theory

Discoursenot taken seriously enough

What do I mean by discourse? A formation of:

Modes of speaking

Subject positions

Common concepts

Common objects of concern

Types of strategy/choice

Rules of speech

Authority structures

We might imagine that the traditional approach to security is whether the words and things of security coincide.

i.e. do the facts of the issue, the ‘thing’, match the word ‘security’ properly?

Can the concept ‘security’ properly be said to apply to a situation?

I.e. is this really a terrorist?

Is this reallyan exception?

Is this really a threat?

What securitization theory does is change the question of whether the words and thingsof security coincide,

To the question of how the words and things of security are made to coincide (through securitizing speech-acts)

Securitization theory accepts the basic structural ‘realities’ of the security field, but adds an element of language and discourse.

This is a very important move, but I want to argue that it does not go far enough.

Michel Foucault

In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault criticises this ‘slender’ addition of discourse as only adding a layerof discursive contact between words and things.

Using Foucault’s language, I want to argue that securitization is only a realism and a grammar.

Securitization theory only moves from treating security as an object to treating the security field/discourse/tradition as an object (with rules, types of language, subject positions etc.)

This means that securitization theory still treats security, or rather the security field, as a special category.

For securitization theory, ‘security’ is a special category that things/issues can be moved into or out of.

It is a special category with identifiable thresholdsand limits.

E.g. a threshold at which something ceases to be a political issue and becomes a security issue.

Although the contentof the special categoryof security is not specified (thus avoiding an ‘objective’ definition of a security issue), the special category still has formal qualities.

The formal qualitiesof security are, according to Waever:

Urgency

The legitimate use of extraordinary means

Breaking free of normal rules

In other words, this notion of security is the same as Schmitt’s notion of the exception.

I.e. it sustains the discourse that exceptional situations require exceptional responses and are declared by exceptional (sovereign) agents.

I want to argue, therefore, that although securitization theory adds a level of sophistication to understanding the problem of exceptionalism, it ends up reproducing the structure, language,and conceptualisation of the discourse of the exception, that is, it reproduces a singular axis of distinction between:

Norm/exception

Politics/security

the normal/special

Treating the security field as an identifiable unity with formal qualities perpetuate the structure of norm/exception.

Therefore, we can only come away from securitization theory thinking that Schmitt was right about the exception taking primacy over the norm.

Schmitt appears to be winning the argument.

Towards an archaeology of the exception

Instead I want to propose that we employ Foucault’s archaeological approach to discourse:

describing dispersal not unity

describing a scattered arrayrather than absolute, singular axes of reference.

A decentring, not a privilegingof a centre (of decision, of process)

Not treating discourses as a special, distinct categories.

Much of the approach of Foucault and securitization theory is the same - describing discursive formations in terms of

Objects

Statements, ways of speaking

Subject positions

Concepts

Strategies

The difference is that where securitization theory describes identity, formal qualities,and recognizable thresholds,

Foucault describes oppositions, contradictions,and dispersed positions.

Not formal conditions of possibility, but historical conditions of possibility.

The archives of the already-said, not identity with formal conditions, make ‘exceptional’ statements and practices possible.

By adopting an archaeological approach, we can, instead of comparing the norm with the exception,compare the regularwith the regular.

Not a rupture, not exception

The ‘new’ is only possible in terms of the old.

Not special categories, exceptional situations,not rupture.

But a dispersed terrain of historical conditions of possibility

Not a grand category of exception, not a single axis,

But a exceptionalism made possible by a dispersed formation and correlation of existing practices, statements, histories, structures etc.

What does this mean for analysing the politics of the exception?

Describe what we have called contemporary practices of exceptionalism:

not by returning to formal metaphysical problems of contingency, an exceptional domain, special categoriesetc,

but as correlations, transformations, synthesesof multiple and dispersed existing discourses.

Describe contemporary exceptionalism as a unique constellation of discourses

Describe in terms of its own particularity/specificity,

Not in terms of formal conditions.

An archaeology of the exception would describe the dispersed history of theories, statements, concepts, strategies, and structures of authority, that coincide and correlation in unique ways to make contemporary exceptionalism possible.