The state is inevitable, but not monolithically--- “refusal to draw lines” in practice become refusal to do anything that could ever make the world better for the victims of biopolitics

I have argued that Agamben has two competing theories of the state in play within his work. His first theory of the state posits the state in a determined relation to the economy. From this position, he can more easily describe political change as the economic forces determining the state bear within them the seeds of the coming community. This is a theory, however, that disguises its reliance on a form of power to secure the conditions of possibility for a common relation to communicability, and he does not address the consequences of the possible weakening of that form of power—the globalization of spectacular capital—for the commonality that it enabled. If spectacular capital should weaken, on one hand, or if it produces not commonality but polarities, on the other, then presumably the commonality that it theoretically enabled would either wane with the weakening of this power formation or simply not exist. Agamben’s second theory of the state posits the state as a determining force over human life. Agamben establishes the state in this determining position by borrowing from Schmitt’s theory of sovereign decisionism. Yet, in so doing, he erects a theoretical roadblock preventing passage to the coming community. Although I have suggested that he hasn’s conceived of three possible ways whereby subjects might decide to act to render this state power inoperative or perform actions enabling the suspension of sovereign law and messianic passage beyond this sovereign state, each of these three forms of political subjectivity fails to do the theoretical work demanded of it. Bartleby’s manifestation of a pure potentiality might render inoperative modern state government as Foucault has described it by disrupting the linkages among the series of institutions and subjects that the modern state relies upon to govern, but it is unclear how Bartleby would affect the Schmittian unitary sovereign decision maker upon which Agamben bases his theory of the state in Homo Sacer. Agamben also points to anomic 168 Political Theory Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 4, 2013 carnivals to suggest that states of emergency can become something more, and his theory of the gesture might contribute to a description of how a carnival might become something politically revolutionary. This would require, however, forcing the gesture into a relation of transcendence with regard to carnivalesque performances—an unacceptable move for a theory that embraces immanence to the extent that Agamben does. It also misrepresents why the carnivalesque harbors emancipatory political potential within it. Finally, Agamben indicates, through the example of the apostle Paul and the remnant of those who faithfully adhere to messianic law, the possibility of active political subjects adequate to the challenge of state sovereignty. This argument, however, contradicts his earlier positions embracing potentiality over the acts emblematic of sovereign decisions, and an experience of being beyond any idea of law. It also, by relying on a determinate situation to create the conditions of possibility for a successful speech act, occludes the forms of power needed to maintain this situation against other ontological possibilities much as his first theory of passage beyond the state of integrated spectacle did. This argument also begs the question of how this messianic community might relate to that which remains other to its situation. That is, Agamben must address the very questions that his ontological approach to state sovereignty intended to avoid— questions of power and otherness. In sum, Agamben remains haunted by the very problems that motivated not only his critique of the state but also his attempt to remove this inquiry from political philosophy to “first” philosophy. 43 At the end of Agamben’s theory of the state, politics remains. There are four implications of this critique for political theory and the state. First, the modern state is poorly understood as transcendent, unitary, and sovereign. The “state” encompasses a variety of institutions, many of which predate modernity.44 The Foucauldian understanding of government, I suggested, is the practice by which articulations between these institutions are forged—and non-state institutions are joined to this chain—and they are mobilized toward various purposes. The plural nature of this ensemble is precisely what gives extension to the modern state.45 Second, if we treat the state as an ensemble of institutions, then the concept of a state of emergency is poorly suited to understanding our political present. Agamben rightly criticizes the USA PATRIOT Act in State of Exception. This law, like most laws that are passed in an ongoing legal system, amends a variety of other laws and sits on a foundation created by these other laws, such as the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The Antiterrorism Act created the possibility of attributing guilt by association since it criminalized the provision of material support for Passavant / The Contradictory State of Giorgio Agamben 169 Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 4, 2013 organizations that the administration deems “terrorist”—provisions that the USA PATRIOT Act builds upon.46 From this perspective, current policies are less “exceptional,” unfortunately, and more a continuing development of a national security state apparatus that has been built through legislation like the National Security Act of 1947, through discourse, and through the creation of stakeholders (the military-industrial complex).47 In other words, another state formation is struggling to emerge through the ruin of liberal democracy in the United States, and this emergence (and ruin) is hastened by those who seek to enhance surveillance and presidential powers, while diminishing the power of courts and legislative oversight as a response to September 11, 2001.48 Third, any social formation is constituted by elements of both contingency and determination. By emphasizing pure potentiality, Agamben misses this and either cherishes the excessive quality of pure potentiality to the neglect of the exigent needs of the present, or neglects how the active political subjects he does defend are embedded within finite commitments that necessarily persevere through the foreclosure of other possibilities. Some contemporary political theorists concerned with injustice and the lack of democracy also emphasize contingency, excess, and potentiality over determination, finitude, and acts.49 These theorists correctly seek to disrupt oppressive patterns. Since politics—hence political change—would not be possible under conditions of absolute determination, emphasizing contingency or excess makes sense. Yet reflection upon the retraction of certain state services from places like the Bronx during the late 1970s permits us to see how neither justice nor democracy is served by excessive economic duress or violence. Not only are these contingencies unjust, but also their incapacitating effects prevent democratic practices of government where the latter necessarily presupposes some collective capacity to direct and achieve collective purposes. State actions that mitigate chaos, economic inequality, and violence, then, potentially contribute to the improved justice of outcomes and democracy. Political theorists must temper celebrating contingency with a simultaneous consideration of the complicated relation that determination has to democratic purposes.50 Fourth, the state’s institutions are among the few with the capacity to respond to the exigency of human needs identified by political theorists. These actions will necessarily be finite and less than wholly adequate, but responsibility may lie on the side of acknowledging these limitations and seeking to redress what is lacking in state action rather than calling for pure potentiality and an end to the state. We may conclude that claims to justice or democracy based on the wish to rid ourselves of the state once and for 170 Political Theory Downloaded from ptx.sagepub.com at UNIV OF MICHIGAN on July 4, 2013 all are like George W. Bush claiming to be an environmentalist because he has proposed converting all of our cars so that they will run on hydrogen.51 Meanwhile, in the here and now, there are urgent claims that demand finite acts that by definition will be both divisive and less than what a situation demands.52 In the end, the state remains. Let us defend this state of due process and equal protection against its ruinous other.