The Politics of Nothing

In the relationship between violence and law [Recht], the discussion of sovereignty will be one of the central issues at stake. The cultural determination of sovereignty, as well as its medium, are closely interwoven with the theory of the state of emergency. The problem is one of the status of the state of emergency in relation to the state of exception: can emergency be taken as a permanent state, or can it be considered in a different way? From this perspective, Walter Benjamin’s melancholic ruler in The Origins of the German Tragic Drama necessarily presents a challenge to the pre-eminent thinker of the state of emergency and the power of the decision, Carl Schmitt. Such a challenge calls for investigation. To do so, I will concentrate on Schmitt’s reply to Benjamin, carried out after Benjamin’s death.² I will turn initially to a work that, despite seeming peripheral to these questions, in matter of fact concerns the central issues of political theology.³ This work is Schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba. Schmitt in Hamlet or Hecuba: The Incursion of Time in Play from 1956, is reliant upon ‘play’ – in the figurative meaning of the word. The question is whether it is possible to suspend the state of emergency. For Schmitt, this means ‘to deal with it [i.e. the emergency] playfully in an artwork that is understood as play’. The answer to this question is developed with reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which forms the background of the renewed confrontation with Benjamin’s German Tragic Drama. In German Tragic Drama, Benjamin had essentially agreed with Schmitt’s Political Theology, and ‘in 1930 expressed his thanks in a personal letter’ to Schmitt (Schmitt 1956: 64). Nonetheless, essential positions of the German Tragic Drama contradict, even subvert, Schmitt’s concepts and, in 1956, Schmitt recommences his conversation with the then-deceased Benjamin.

In brief, what does Schmitt’s work deal with? With the rejection of either a psychological or a historical exegesis of Hamlet, which also aims to ‘eliminate the prejudices of a romantic aesthetic’, Schmitt places at centre stage the curious relationship between Hamlet and his mother, whose possible complicity in the murder of her husband as well as her marriage to the murderer remain, in substance, unspeakable for Hamlet (Schmitt 1956: 70). Such silence, for Shakespeare, had nothing to do with ‘sparing the ladies’, he was not concerned with a ‘lady cult’ (Schmitt 1956: 18; we will return later to the ‘lady cult’). Rather, this impermissibility of speaking about the guilt of the mother is the ascription of a concrete historical taboo, says Schmitt, ‘and I can identify this concrete taboo’ (Schmitt 1956: 18). Here, Schmitt offers an historical explanation. The figure of Hamlet was once identified with the son of Mary Stuart – Hamlet represents James I of England. Schmitt adumbrates that Mary Stuart had also married the murderer of her husband. And, in his struggle for the English throne, James was torn between Catholicism and Protestantism, with no desire to see the burden of a murder in his own genealogy. The majority would have known, or at least guessed at, the mother’s complicity in the murder. Schmitt notes that Shakespeare was a follower of the Earl of Essex who was the second character of force behind Hamlet. This Earl of Essex, who was murdered in 1601, was in his turn a follower of James I of England. Between 1600 and 1603, the years during which Hamlet was written, Shakespeare himself was affected by the arguments concerning the succession of Elizabeth to the English throne. Schmitt underscores the consequences of these circumstances:

What happens, though, if at the same time this sovereign is not a ‘modern subject’, is not free, is not legibus solutus?⁴ What happens if the sovereign is instead an old kind of subject, subjected to nature, his own nature, and thereby continuing to exhibit his creatureliness even in his exalted position? Is it not the case, then, that the creature is the representative of other creatures, rather than a subject representing other subjects? As Benjamin showed in his book on German Tragic Drama, the import of these questions is a constitutive condition of the Trauerspiel’s genre:

The whole of Schmitt’s argumentation is directed precisely towards not admitting this position of ennobling play. His arch enemy is romantic aesthetics, in which he perceives the self-realisation of play, ‘Schiller incorporated’.⁵ This is an aesthetic of the ‘amateur [Heimarbeiter]’ which, for Schmitt, closely related to the hateful ‘lady cult’ and in general, who would have thought, to ‘little kids and naughty kittens play with particular brio’ (Schmitt 1956: 41). Therefore, for Schmitt, Hamlet is not a Trauerspiel at all, but rather, a tragedy. A tragedy which, however, leaves ineradicable traces of reality. The state of emergency glimmers in these traces, and it is shaped by myth. While Benjamin abandoned myth in favour of modernity, Schmitt allows – at least in Hamlet – the origination of a new myth. This myth is based on the uncovering of those already mentioned taboos, the taboo of the queen/mother and the taboo of the avenger, as well as on its consequent, the sidestepping of the revenge taboo. As a result, Schmitt accomplishes a notable displacement. Benjamin’s opposing argument about the incapacity for action and the melancholy of the sovereign, which is clearly contrary to Schmitt’s theory, is now incorporated into Schmitt’s own theory but reconfigured as the sign of new, modern myth. Hamlet’s indecision is, according to Schmitt, the condition for the possibility that this myth ‘about the implied state of emergency in a veiled history’ has arisen, and become the model for many different historical circumstances, such as those of Germany. For Germany is, or has, long been represented by Hamlet. This is because Hamlet stands, according to Schmitt, between the two other modern figures of mythical power, namely between the Catholicism of Don Quixote and the Protestantism of Faust. Since Hamlet is positioned exactly in the middle of this religious split, he may be compared with Germany. It could even be said that Hamlet provides in the ‘in-between’ a certain unity, and through this develops into myth or expression of ‘proper tragedy’. It is not permissible to resolve this ‘in-between’ in the play of art, and hence playfully gamble it away. But, contends Schmitt, Shakespeare ‘shyly’ skirts around the taboos in Hamlet. He does not gamble them away playfully; rather, he connects them to the problematic of a character, which rewards him with the creation of a new myth.

This, however, not only transforms ‘reality’ into an unending sequence of constructions, making it ‘unreal’; in addition, it makes the political impossible in Schmitt’s definition He famously wrote: ‘The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy’ (Schmitt 1996a: 26). Without it being possible to draw here on the exact argumentation of The Concept of the Political (1932), one point must be briefly mentioned, namely that, as Derrida correctly notes, Schmitt’s concept of the political is based upon the enemy, not the friend (Derrida 1997: 138). Thus, the political is conceived as a sui generis decision, which is the reason it is untraceable onto something else. If one wishes to summarise the core of Schmitt’s work, it could be said that an attempt is being made to understand this decision between friend and enemy as that which provides the ‘standard’ for the entire life, because ‘by virtue of this power over the physical life of men, the political community transcends all other associations of societies’ (Schmitt 1996a: 47). For this to be achieved, the difference between friend and enemy must manifest not only the basis of politics, but rather, it also must be made clear that all reality is related to politics and for this reason – and despite contrary conceptions – reality is, ultimately, always determined by politics. Such politics often elude analysis, being seemingly non-political:

However, in order to represent his position, Schmitt requires his own theory of politics – a politics opposed to false aestheticisation, political and economic liberalism. This is a politics whose own theory marks the enemy. And this enemy is not a military opponent; rather the political constitutes itself in opposition precisely to those who abrogate the schema of ‘friend versus enemy’. This is, then, a fight against those who are ‘lukewarm’ – that is, those who could also be described as remaining uncommitted and who are for this reason intellectual protractors.⁹ It is only in this way that the end of Schmitt’s own discourse can be maintained, namely the perpetuating of binarism at all cost, the dominance of politics. Its arch enemy is called: the (romantic) third.

I allow myself here to make what I regard as a political footnote. Such an attempt to mortify the third also characterises anti-Semitic arguments. This could be shown in detail, for instance, by reading Eugen Dühring’s The Jewish Question as a Racial, Moral, and Cultural Question: With a World-historical Answer from 1881. I mention here briefly only the following. According to that which Dühring framed as an uncircumventable and substantiated argumentation, the ‘Jew’ was attributed first of all the intentionally third character: the ‘Jew’ was the character that associated with neither the one nor the other side, pursuing instead its ‘self-interested affairs’ with both sides. For Dühring, then, the ‘Jew’ represents everything that is beyond culture, since culture presupposes for him a stable identity that can mark out its opposites, something that can allow for different parties. ‘The Jew exploits consistently the spirit as well as the good of others’ (Dühring 1881: 77). He is ‘socially inept’ (Dühring 1881: 94). Consequently, he threatens not just every single nationality, but humanity as a whole. In other words, the ‘Jew’ represents – hurrying to conclude with Dühring’s cynical arguments – ‘the choice to exploit all peoples, that is, the enemy of mankind. A religion adverse to humanity cannot be tolerant. It can only destroy and oppress … there is no third’ (Dühring 1881: 97). Where corruption dominates, the Jews are the corruption of corruption (see Dühring 1881: 7–8). And by postulating already in the 1880s that the ‘Jewish’ is ‘an internal Cartago’ of humanity, Dühring demanded the consequences that the national socialists should have later realised (Dühring 1881: 157).

I do not want to pursue this parallel but, instead, I will attempt to form a systematic argument. The political, under the terms of such a discourse, presupposes the construction of a non-political third that is ‘real’ and that, even though it wants to evade the schema of ‘friend versus enemy’, is nevertheless integrated with it. And here, also, the state of emergency dominates. No third is to be permitted because the discourse of political theology only legitimates itself through the availability of such a putative third, anything that allows for a political theology can be taken for such a third in order to be negated. It is easy to see how, in such a line of thought, a structure can be grounded that can be applied (almost) arbitrarily and to (almost) anything (be it in the aesthetic or in the ethical domain). And there is always a threat of not only this or that, but of an (imminent) total demise.

There is a connection, then, between the third party – what in rhetoric and logic is called the excluded middle or tertium non datur – with the construction of an absolutely posited enemy under the conditions of urgency. Such a connection grounds not only a religiously motivated apocalyptic discourse, but also political theology as a theology without eschatology.¹⁰ In this way, the ‘real reality’ assumes the function of transcendence. Behind every banal surface and every instance of play that offers us bad art, lies the archaic force of this reality, its ‘nemein’, which can always emerge as a sudden event. The state of emergency, then, is a transhistorical category, an absolute presence, and the human voice announcing this must make known the moment of transcendence (with a libido of its own) through a particular rhetoric. For how else can one avoid the fact that the enemy is actually a friend, the enemy that I myself am? How else can one avoid – in Theodor Däubler’s words cited by Carl Schmitt in Ex Captivate Salus – that ‘the enemy is our own question as a figure’ (Schmitt 1950: 90; see Derrida 1997).¹¹

This rhetoric of absolute reality, however, cannot avail itself of any more implanted words, it does not regard itself legitimated as ‘real’ any longer through a transcendent violence. Thus it opts for another way. Although it is thoroughly metaphorised – one can recall the abundance of images in Schmitt’s vocabulary whenever he speaks of the state of emergency – such a rhetoric must nevertheless completely forget the rhetorical status of its words. For it wants to be pure reality. The trace of the impending danger should unmistakably traverse that reality as well as every tragic art. The danger should beget the reality from within itself. Hence this rhetoric paradoxically appears in its persuasio as non-rhetoric and so it substitutes the implanted instances of an apocalypse with the fiction of a ‘reality as such’. Thus, even though the words employed in this rhetoric are not spoken out of a transcendent position, they should still also effect a compelling transcendent meaning. Rhetoric introduces the argument about urgency. The reader is instructed not to linger but to accelerate the movement of his eyes so as to attain a crescendo of reading. Since all lukewarmness arises from slow reading, then the authentic, the particular worst enemy is that adversary who subverts the transcendent character of apocalyptic speech.

Because this conception of the political presupposes the for ever first (and for ever new) distinction, such a politics is concerned with the violence of the ‘foundation’. The state of exception, which paradoxically should be at best – at least in discourse – an infinitely distended moment, is itself the time of difference. Or, more precisely, the state of exception serves as the trope of difference. The reason is that what is negotiated in the state of exception is the fundamental division between the ability to either decide or not to decide that persists as the possibility to make a distinction.

¹ Translator’s note: The word ‘Enstfall’ has been rendered throughout as ‘state of emergency’ while the ‘Ausnahmezustand’ has become ‘state of exception’. (The only exception is the subtitle, where ‘Ausnahmezustand’ has been translated as ‘exception’ for brevity.) In general, ‘Erstfall’ refers to a situation of emergency which gives rises to (or causes) a suspension of law or a ‘martial law’. This suspension is referred to in German legal terminology as ‘Ausnahmezustand’. The first sentence of Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology defines sovereignty thus: ‘The sovereign is he who decides on the exception [Ausnahmezustand]’. However, Schmitt frequently uses the two terms interchangeably. The translator would like to thank Patrizia Hucke and Clare Monagle, as well as Professor Jürgen Fohrmann, for commenting on earlier drafts.

² The relation between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt requires a whole article. If one wanted to determine more clearly the relation, the contrasting texts to name only the most significant ones – would have been, on the one hand, Schmitt’s Political Romanticism (1919) and Benjamin’s The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (submitted as a dissertation in 1919 and published in 1920), and, on the other hand, Schmitt’s Political Theology (1922) and Benjamin’s The Origin of German Tragic Drama (submitted as an habilitation in 1925, published in 1928).

³ I refrain here from defining ‘political theology’, since it will progressively unfold as a concept in the development of the argument. For the role of transcendence in Schmitt, see Meuter (1991).

⁴ Translator’s note: The Roman law maxim ‘princepts legibus solutus est’ literally means that ‘the prince is not bound by the law’ or that the sovereign is above the law.

⁵ Translator’s note: English in the original.

⁶ See also Balke’s (1996) subtle analysis of causa and occasion.

⁷ Translator’s note: Schmitt derives the constitutive relation between nurture or Hegung and the law or nomos through a reference to Jost Tier’s ‘Zaun und Mannring’ (1942) – see Schmitt (2003: 75), translation modified.

⁸ Translator’s note: The author here uses Schmitt’s interplay of the Greek verb nemein (meaning primarily to take, but it is also the root for the word nomos or law) and German words ‘nehmen’ (to take), ‘Nahme’ (seizure, commonly used as a compound, e.g. ‘Landnahme’ meaning land appropriation) and ‘das Genommene (that which is taken). This interplay between words is impossible to retain in English. See Schmitt’s article ‘Nomos – Nahme – Name’, translated in Schmitt (2003: 336–50).

⁹ This is simultaneously a fight against ‘immanent speech’; see on this Brokoff (2001).

¹⁰ On a history of the concept ‘political theology’ and a re-evaluation of the meaning of the theologisation of political concepts see Assmann (2006); see also in the same book Heinrich Meier’s introductory comments.

¹¹ Translator’s note: Schmitt has actually slightly changed the citation from Theodor Däubler, who had written ‘The enemy is your [deine] own question as figure’ (1916: 58). Schmitt returns to Däubler’s verse – again rendered with the pronoun in the plural and develops it further, in Schmitt (1975: 88).

¹² About Schmitt see Brokoff (2001: 33) which also contains the relevant literature.

¹³ This conception of the outside can be distinguished from Levinas’s extrapolation of religion. This point cannot be taken up here. See Levinas (1996).

¹⁴ This recognition is both programmatic and methodological for Derrida, at least since his ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ (in Derrida 2002).