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Lawless Sovereignty: Challenging the State of ExceptionYork University, Canada Giorgio Agamben describes the origins of sovereign power, that power which constitutes the state of exception, as a force that gains its strength in the `unlocalizable' space between fact and law. Terming this space the `zone of indistinction', Agamben illustrates the particular manner in which the state employs law through exception, helping to reveal the paradoxical and omnipotent qualities of sovereign power. While the implications of his analysis hold that this form of power should be confronted and challenged, Agamben does not arrive at how this may be pursued. By reading Agamben's writings alongside selected anti-colonialist texts by Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, it is possible to gain insights regarding both the dangers inherent to this type of sovereign power, and how it can be challenged. It is argued that the type of state that governs by means of exception creates the conditions that lead to its own undoing. Groups whose consent to the state's juridical order was historically tenuous, if not altogether absent, lay claim to a distinct position that is always already external to state sovereignty and law. Challenges from this position gain force by appealing to an extra-state sovereignty that represents universalized justice rooted in lawlessness.
Key Words: anti-colonialism • justice • law • legal studies • sovereignty • state • universality
Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2,
199-220 (2009) |
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