From Schmitt to Foucault
Inquiring the Relationship between Exception and Democracy
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Abstract
This article examines the debated relationship between liberal-democratic politics and states of exception in conditions of emergency. After Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben, it is often maintained that today we live in a situation of perennial exceptionalism, where emergency measures have become a regular practice even by governments we name ‘democratic’. In these circumstances, exception is deemed to threaten democracy and hinder individual and collective political agency. Yet, such interpretation remains rigidly focused on the expanded governmental powers ushered by the exception. The article first unpacks how the relationship between exception and democracy has been differently addressed by juridical and biopolitical approaches. Then, it attempts an alternative heuristic: it discusses possibilities of democratic associative practices in emergency by looking at the notion of resistance that Michel Foucault links with power. This route remains unexplored in the literature on the concept of the exception.
Contributor Notes
Sara Raimondi is a doctoral researcher and visiting lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster in London. Her research focuses on theories of immanence in political theory and their implications for conceptions of political action and difference. She has a BA in Philosophy (2007–2010) and an MSc in Economics and Political Science (2010–2012) from the State University of Milan, Italy and a MA Degree in Democratic Politics and International Relations from the University of Westminster (2013–2014).