The Contingent Necessity of the State

On the Irrelevance of Radical Critique

Bibliographic Data

ID12848236
AuthorsThor Hvidbak (Aarhus University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume9
Issue2
Pages121-147
Publication date2008-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDistinktion Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1600-910X • E-ISSN: 2159-9149
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1600910x.2008.9672967
OpenAlexW2004466766
LanguageEN
References cited31

This article explores the relation between violence and political order from the perspective of the state as an emergent political entity. Based upon a genealogy of raison d'État juxtaposing the accounts of mainly Luhmann and Foucault, it proposes to analyze the emergence of politics as an autonomous sphere and rationality, an art of government irrevocably tied to the state and its status as both an abstract regulatory idea (in the Kantian sense) as well as a set of concrete practices and institutions. The problem of state violence is discussed in relation to ideas of state necessity and the phenomenon of coup d'État. The article asserts that the question of state-induced exceptions can be given new perspective through a scrutiny of the 16th and 17th-century debates, where the issue was discussed with specific relation to the emerging state complex. The state formula evolved as a contingent necessity with increasing complexity and elaborate measures for contingency control. Political legitimacy is bound to the state and in a sense an internal construction of politics, a self-description which always can be deconstructed. However, critical deconstructive portrayals of contemporary political order as inherently violent or as a permanent state of exception fail to analyze the workings of this order; they overemphasize exceptions and misunderstand the point of contingent necessity. Taking Agamben as the most notable representative of such critique, this article contends that his speculative and ahistorical approach not only fails to understand basic features of societal order, but also risks political irrelevance due to its misplaced focus. KEYWORDS: AgambenFoucaultLuhmannpolitical orderpolitical violenceraison d'Étatstate formationstate of exception

Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Positive economics · State (computer science · Computer Science · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Philosophy · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics

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