L'Etat et la guerre Norme, reference, transgression

In: Études internationales: revue trimestrielle, Volume 38, Issue 1, p. 19-31

Abstract

Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, then Giorgio Agamben questioned the idea of norm in the State faced with violence, together with the question of exception. Now the state of exception comes down to dealing juridically with political matters and ignoring what really or illusorily triggers off the state of exception, namely war. A proposition to grasp both the difficulty for law to fit to the sudden appearance of violence and the outburst of the various forms of war listed in history, consists in leaving aside the idea of juridical fiction and replacing it by that of "political fictions". Thus the notion of norm will be substituted with that -- more appropriate to describe violence -- of "reference" to standard war to assess real wars. Only on that condition can exception and its starting element be considered anew, as well as the fundamental indetermination between external and internal war. Adapted from the source document.