Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the
midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the
indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities
and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here,
distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such
circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or state of
exception, has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy
that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian
states.
The sequel to Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life,
State of Exception is the first book to theorize the state of exception
in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben's view, the majority
of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United
States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming
instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben
argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a
provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a
normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of
the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout
Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl
Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida,
Benjamin, and Arendt.
In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original
ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden
relationship that ties law to violence.
