(Originally written for "Foundations in Media Philosophy" course at EGS)
Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
“A Brief History of the State of Exception” pp. 11-22
This passage appears as an extended note in Chapter 1, “The State of Exception as a Paradigm of Government.” In it, Agamben documents the historical emergence of the juridico-political concept of the “state of exception” in modern history, beginning in the French Revolution, and how this situation has become, paradoxically, the standard operating procedure for Western governments.
Again, Agamben looks to France to describe the earliest stirrings of this governmental notion. The constitutional crises that have troubled France since the Revolution are all grounded, he contends, in the paradoxical attempt to legislate the extra-legal “in the case of imminent danger to external or internal security” (12). Initially, the “dominant principle in the French tradition” held that only the power holding legislative power – those who make laws – could also possess the power to suspend those laws. However, during the crisis engendered by the outbreak of WWI, the executive power largely took over the powers of the legislature; in turn, the legislative powers simply delegated their authority to the executive, issuing laws that confirmed ex post facto the executive’s actions. This extension of executive prerogative into legislative spheres resulted, following WWI, to its intervention not only in military but economic “emergencies” as well, and despite debates between political rivals over parliament’s weaking of its own status, the expansion of executive power gradually became accepted by all sides as the norm. This finds its culmination in De Gaulle’s championing of Article 16 in the French constitution, which writes into law the presidential power to suspend constitutional procedures in order to protect the state in cases of extreme danger – in other words, to restore the government by suspending it. Agamben writes that although this article has not been invoked since 1961, “the declaration of the state of exception has gradually been replaced by an unprecedented generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government” (14, my emphasis).
Moving on to Germany, Agamben addresses Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which declared that the president of the Reich could “suspend the fundamental rights” of the state in order “to reestablish security and public order” (14). The article also indicated that the conditions and limitations of this article should be enumerated, but no such task was ever undertaken, leading Carl Schmitt to note that the constitution essentially “legalized a coup d’etat” (15). As in the French tradition, Agamben notes a tendency for political and military crises to be conflated with economic ones, expanding the notion of what constitutes a stability threatening emergency. The situation that this article created, argues Agamben, was that of a “protected democracy,” or a democracy served by a “constitutional dictatorship,” a contradiction in terms that can only lead to totalitarianism, in this case with the rise of Hitler.
After a brief discussion of Switzerland’s own dalliance with such political issues [presented to demonstrate that “the theory of the state of exception is by no means the exclusive legacy of the antidemocratic tradition” (16)], Agamben turns to Italian history. Unlike Germany and France – which had the possibility of exceptional situations written into their governmental documents – the governments of the Italian kingdom had no such explicit constitutional basis but instead issued numerous “emergency executive decrees (the so-called law-decrees)” (16). It was the issuance of such decrees in order to protect public order that “furnished the occasion … [for] Italian jurists to elaborate the thesis … that necessity is the primary source of law” (17). As in France, these executive decrees were always followed by parliamentary ratification, despite not needing such approval. The idea that necessity was the source of legal authority – and so in times when the state was threatened it is “necessary” to suspend normal operations – was part of the Fascist regime’s rise to power. According to Agamben, “the practice of executive legislation by law-decrees has become the rule in Italy” since the era of Fascism. These decrees are not only issued in cases of emergency; the separation of powers has largely disappeared as the executive has taken over most of the legislative role, and the parliament is essentially reduced to ratifying executive law-making.
In England, the term “martial law” is the vague concept that grounds the principle of the state of exception. As in other countries, WWI was the turning point in English legal history, when the government was granted powers to regulate the economy and limit the rights of the citizens; of course, this soon became a regular practice even outside of the situation of war.
Finally, Agamben comes to the US, where he figures the theory of the state of exception as part of the “dialectic between” executive and legislative powers over the right of “sovereign decision” (19). He locates the conflict in various textual ambiguities in the US Constitution: who has authority to suspend habeas corpus (Article 1 – probably Congress); Congress’ power to declare war and support the armed forces; the conflict between this power and the president’s status as “Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. He traces the conflict back to the Civil War and the actions of Abraham Lincoln, who claimed exceptional powers as a means to protect the union during a time of extreme danger – again, supported by claims of public necessity. Agamben states that despite the textual ambiguities, in wartime Congress is largely reduced to a ratifying power. Woodrow Wilson claimed even broader powers than Lincoln, although he usually went through the process of having Congress explicitly delegate to him the powers he wanted. And to return to the issue of the slippage between military and economic situations, he discusses the consistent deployment of the rhetoric of war to discuss economic emergencies – the New Deal, Agamben notes, was accomplished by Roosevelt assuming exceptional powers. Turning finally to the present day, he argues that post-9/11 Bush has been engaged in an operation to “produce a situation in which the emergency becomes the rule, and the very distinction between peace and war (and between foreign and civil war) becomes impossible” (22).
A few important points from this section:
• The paradox of the state of exception. The state of exception is, as the name suggests, ostensibly an aberration, a temporary moment in which the norm is excepted, occluded, suspended. The goal of this exception, however, is to return to the norm, a paradoxical situation in which the juridico-political establishment is suspended in order to protect that very establishment. It seems, then, to be an impossible situation: an exercise of political power that should work to dissolve itself. A Foucaultian analysis of the tendency of power toward extension and accretion would seem to be useful here as a way to describe why it is that the exceptional quickly becomes the normal.
• The textual basis of the state of exception. The root of the theoretical problem of the state of exception seems to be, in my opinion, its location at the limits of textual articulation. The US Constitution is perhaps the clearest example of this. Insofar as what is legal must be written or articulated in order for it to be legal, the state of exception requires one to articulate the inarticulable, to write a law that unwrites itself, or a law that unwrites the legal itself. Whether the articulation of the state of exception precedes its enaction (as in Germany and France) or follows the practical application of exceptional measures (as in Italy) this problem of textual authority emerges. The issue then becomes, it seems to me, one of interpretation, and thus of decision. How to determine what is exceptional, what is necessary? When the emergency begins, when it ends?
• This historicity of the state of exception. Agamben only goes back to the late eighteenth century, largely, I think, because of the separation of powers between legislative and executive that really only emerges in modernity; but it would be productive, I think, to explore older historical precedents for the suspension of normal legal and political operations in the case of exceptional situations. One obvious place would be the principle of the dictator in the Roman Republic; another could be the Hebrew Testament and the ancient Israelites demand for a king to protect them from their enemies. The late medieval and early modern periods would also be interesting to study in light of Agamben’s theories: how did the Protestant Reformation(s) serve as “exceptional” situations that resulted in unusual arrogation of authority? Would Henry VIII’s dissolution of England’s ties to the Roman Church qualify as an “exceptional” act? Or is such a situation only possible when there is a clear division of powers that the state of exception then erodes?
Monday, September 2, 2013
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
What D&D Character Are You?
I Am A: True Neutral Human Wizard (5th Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-14
Dexterity-14
Constitution-14
Intelligence-19
Wisdom-16
Charisma-15
Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.
Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)
Ability Scores:
Strength-14
Dexterity-14
Constitution-14
Intelligence-19
Wisdom-16
Charisma-15
Alignment:
True Neutral A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment when it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.
Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.
Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)
Monday, July 22, 2013
Haphazard thoughts on Horkheimer and Adorno's "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
Originally prepared as part of the "Foundations in Media Philosophy" course at the European Graduate School.
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Englightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. pp. 94-136.
In this wide-ranging, insightful, and at times problematic (in my opinion) essay, Horkheimer & Adorno discuss the processes by which “culture” in modernity has become industrialized, and the effects thereof. Their argument seems based first on the Marxian notion of the relationship between base and superstructure; that is, the economic base – the systems of production that organize the material relations between individuals in a given society -- are in the first (and final?) instance determining of the superstructure – broadly speaking, the cultural and ideological (what Althusser would call “imaginary”) systems by which a society represents and understands itself. Given that their object of analysis is the culture of late industrial capitalism, the phenomenon that most concerns them is the subjection of artistic creation to the logic of industrialization and mass production.
As they incisively point out at the open of the essay (and reiterate at various points throughout), nostalgia for the cultural output of pre-capitalism is based on false assumptions. This nostalgia, they write, views the culture of modernity as both “chao[tic]” (94) and “exhaust[ed]” (100). The first assessment is based, it would seem, on the apparent lack of any sort of common culture, as attested to by the great diversity in cultural products on offer to modern consumers – raucous and nonsensical cartoons; big band jazz with its “standardized improvisations” (124); endless advertisements for a variety of consumer products; radio serials of all sorts; movies of all genres, including romantic comedies, banal tragedies, mysteries and suspenseful thrillers, etc. – as well as the speed by which these cultural products are replaced by the newest and greatest stars and products. In spite of what seems to be a lack of coherency among these cultural products (in terms, I suspect, of superficial content and form), they are unified on the level of their material production. As products of the consumer capitalist machine, these phenomena are radically identical: they all bare the marks of the “technical apparatus and its personnel” (96) that have produced them. Moreover, these products effect the processes of “classification, organization, and identification of consumers” (97). The differences between films or cars or radio serials are superficial and serve only to mark the individual consumer, who responds by occupying a particular “level” or space within the capitalist system. (Here would be an appropriate place to put H&A in dialogue with Althusser on the concept of interpellation.) The individualist mentality that informs this consumer market enables an ever more refined taxonomy of those who are subject to its operations, but the individualism that a consumer can achieve is only, according to this essay, a mask for the workings of capital, which become ever more efficient in withdrawing value from the human the more s/he lives according to the dictates of the system.
The second view, that modern culture lacks the “energy” it once possessed, similarly ignores the reality of capital’s effect on artistic production. In converting culture into a full-fledged industry (or series of industries), capitalism has infused Western culture with a “rigor” beyond any previous traditions: “Every phenomenon is by now so thoroughly imprinted by the schema that nothing can occur that does not bear in advance the trace of the jargon” (101). Thinking about the culture industry in comparison to a more traditional “base” industry, such as automobile manufacturing, is useful here; H&A seem to describe the production of cultural products as occurring in an assembly-line sort of manner. Just as in an automobile factory, the products of the cultural factories are rigidly structured according to a certain formula, and the operation is organized so as to extract the maximum efficiency and value from all resources, including human.
H&A may be accused of a bit of romanticizing nostalgia themselves at this point in the argument when they compare the monolithic “style” of modern culture to that of the past: as opposed to modern artists, who don’t really seem to deserve the title in H&A’s opinion because of their absolute submission to the demands of the consumer market machine, “[t]he great artists [of the past] were … those who adopted style as a rigor to set against the chaotic expression of suffering …. [and who] resist[ed] the style they incarnate[d]” (103). Here is, I think, a good place to tease out what I see as problems with H&A’s thesis. While extremely useful in examining the radical change that industrialization has effected on the artistic process, it seems to break down the more specific and focused one’s analysis becomes. That is to say, the base-superstructure relationship is too rigid and totalizing, and thus as the foundation of their argument it causes H&A to overlook the potential for the sorts of “tension” and ideological subversion that mark (in their view) the great works within the products of industrialized culture. This goes beyond the standard deconstructionist/post-structuralist approach to every text as being by nature incomplete and contradictory. The example that strikes me most powerfully is their approach to jazz, which they treat with what seems to be a great deal of disdain. I know that part of my resistance here is from my own great love of jazz, but as a musical style it has always been involved with subversive political and cultural impulses. H&A mention Benny Goodman at one point, and I imagine that when they talk about jazz they think primarily of white bandleaders and groups, as those are the artists that got regular radio play and were popular in the mass culture of their day. Certainly there’s an argument to be made that these artists were coopting African-American culture and profiting on it, but even still, artists like Goodman were active in pursuing (in limited form) desegregation and greater racial equality in a pre-Civil Rights era. And African-American jazz musicians were radical not only in their style but in their politics; H&A are writing at the dawn of the bebop era, a style that challenged traditional aesthetics in a number of ways and led eventually to further revolutions in jazz and popular music. That these styles have been appropriated by consumer capitalism is not, I think, a critique of their aesthetic value but rather a significant point about the power of capitalism to incorporate just about anything into its operations.
All this aside, however, the essay is powerful and insightful, and I was particularly interested in their discussion, later in the essay, of the psychic effects of industrialized culture on consumers and producers alike. There’s clearly a psychoanalytic inflection to their reading, as they propose, for example, that the reproduction in film of the quotidian suffering the audience itself experiences “fosters the resignation which seeks to forget itself in entertainment” (113) – a sort of traumatic repetition that allows the individual a neurotic “satisfaction” that takes the “hopeless situations which grind down filmgoers … [and] transform[s] … [them] into a promise that they may continue to exist” (123). This is another point at which I think a question may be raised regarding H&A’s thesis. Fundamental to their analysis, it seems to me, is the passivity of the consumer: “No mechanism of reply has been developed, and private transmissions are condemned to unfreedom” (96). The culture industry they describe is a highly hierarchical and autocratic one, in which a few technically and financially empowered owners govern the production of most culture. Certainly these industries have grown and globalized since then, but they have also fractured, and the technological revolutions of the last decades has created a huge space for “replies” by consumers, who now can be producers of highly sophisticated content in just about any media once dominated by these industries. In one sense, this fracturing can be seen as part of the continuing individualization and classification described above – everyone can have a web presence and communicate globally, but these are governed by certain forms and norms. However, the potential for radically democratic political and aesthetic movements has also been demonstrated: not only do we have the Arab Spring on Twitter and Facebook, but we have teenagers recording original music and distributing it to fans around the world without having to give 90% of their profits to a record label. The question now becomes, I think, about the tipping point between hierarchically governed culture and democratically produced and distributed culture; corporations are always trying to get ahead of the latest fad, but consumers are ever more effective at staying ahead and becoming independent producers governed by their own standards and disregarding the norms of “the culture industry” – or so I hope.
Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Englightenment as Mass Deception.” In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. pp. 94-136.
In this wide-ranging, insightful, and at times problematic (in my opinion) essay, Horkheimer & Adorno discuss the processes by which “culture” in modernity has become industrialized, and the effects thereof. Their argument seems based first on the Marxian notion of the relationship between base and superstructure; that is, the economic base – the systems of production that organize the material relations between individuals in a given society -- are in the first (and final?) instance determining of the superstructure – broadly speaking, the cultural and ideological (what Althusser would call “imaginary”) systems by which a society represents and understands itself. Given that their object of analysis is the culture of late industrial capitalism, the phenomenon that most concerns them is the subjection of artistic creation to the logic of industrialization and mass production.
As they incisively point out at the open of the essay (and reiterate at various points throughout), nostalgia for the cultural output of pre-capitalism is based on false assumptions. This nostalgia, they write, views the culture of modernity as both “chao[tic]” (94) and “exhaust[ed]” (100). The first assessment is based, it would seem, on the apparent lack of any sort of common culture, as attested to by the great diversity in cultural products on offer to modern consumers – raucous and nonsensical cartoons; big band jazz with its “standardized improvisations” (124); endless advertisements for a variety of consumer products; radio serials of all sorts; movies of all genres, including romantic comedies, banal tragedies, mysteries and suspenseful thrillers, etc. – as well as the speed by which these cultural products are replaced by the newest and greatest stars and products. In spite of what seems to be a lack of coherency among these cultural products (in terms, I suspect, of superficial content and form), they are unified on the level of their material production. As products of the consumer capitalist machine, these phenomena are radically identical: they all bare the marks of the “technical apparatus and its personnel” (96) that have produced them. Moreover, these products effect the processes of “classification, organization, and identification of consumers” (97). The differences between films or cars or radio serials are superficial and serve only to mark the individual consumer, who responds by occupying a particular “level” or space within the capitalist system. (Here would be an appropriate place to put H&A in dialogue with Althusser on the concept of interpellation.) The individualist mentality that informs this consumer market enables an ever more refined taxonomy of those who are subject to its operations, but the individualism that a consumer can achieve is only, according to this essay, a mask for the workings of capital, which become ever more efficient in withdrawing value from the human the more s/he lives according to the dictates of the system.
The second view, that modern culture lacks the “energy” it once possessed, similarly ignores the reality of capital’s effect on artistic production. In converting culture into a full-fledged industry (or series of industries), capitalism has infused Western culture with a “rigor” beyond any previous traditions: “Every phenomenon is by now so thoroughly imprinted by the schema that nothing can occur that does not bear in advance the trace of the jargon” (101). Thinking about the culture industry in comparison to a more traditional “base” industry, such as automobile manufacturing, is useful here; H&A seem to describe the production of cultural products as occurring in an assembly-line sort of manner. Just as in an automobile factory, the products of the cultural factories are rigidly structured according to a certain formula, and the operation is organized so as to extract the maximum efficiency and value from all resources, including human.
H&A may be accused of a bit of romanticizing nostalgia themselves at this point in the argument when they compare the monolithic “style” of modern culture to that of the past: as opposed to modern artists, who don’t really seem to deserve the title in H&A’s opinion because of their absolute submission to the demands of the consumer market machine, “[t]he great artists [of the past] were … those who adopted style as a rigor to set against the chaotic expression of suffering …. [and who] resist[ed] the style they incarnate[d]” (103). Here is, I think, a good place to tease out what I see as problems with H&A’s thesis. While extremely useful in examining the radical change that industrialization has effected on the artistic process, it seems to break down the more specific and focused one’s analysis becomes. That is to say, the base-superstructure relationship is too rigid and totalizing, and thus as the foundation of their argument it causes H&A to overlook the potential for the sorts of “tension” and ideological subversion that mark (in their view) the great works within the products of industrialized culture. This goes beyond the standard deconstructionist/post-structuralist approach to every text as being by nature incomplete and contradictory. The example that strikes me most powerfully is their approach to jazz, which they treat with what seems to be a great deal of disdain. I know that part of my resistance here is from my own great love of jazz, but as a musical style it has always been involved with subversive political and cultural impulses. H&A mention Benny Goodman at one point, and I imagine that when they talk about jazz they think primarily of white bandleaders and groups, as those are the artists that got regular radio play and were popular in the mass culture of their day. Certainly there’s an argument to be made that these artists were coopting African-American culture and profiting on it, but even still, artists like Goodman were active in pursuing (in limited form) desegregation and greater racial equality in a pre-Civil Rights era. And African-American jazz musicians were radical not only in their style but in their politics; H&A are writing at the dawn of the bebop era, a style that challenged traditional aesthetics in a number of ways and led eventually to further revolutions in jazz and popular music. That these styles have been appropriated by consumer capitalism is not, I think, a critique of their aesthetic value but rather a significant point about the power of capitalism to incorporate just about anything into its operations.
All this aside, however, the essay is powerful and insightful, and I was particularly interested in their discussion, later in the essay, of the psychic effects of industrialized culture on consumers and producers alike. There’s clearly a psychoanalytic inflection to their reading, as they propose, for example, that the reproduction in film of the quotidian suffering the audience itself experiences “fosters the resignation which seeks to forget itself in entertainment” (113) – a sort of traumatic repetition that allows the individual a neurotic “satisfaction” that takes the “hopeless situations which grind down filmgoers … [and] transform[s] … [them] into a promise that they may continue to exist” (123). This is another point at which I think a question may be raised regarding H&A’s thesis. Fundamental to their analysis, it seems to me, is the passivity of the consumer: “No mechanism of reply has been developed, and private transmissions are condemned to unfreedom” (96). The culture industry they describe is a highly hierarchical and autocratic one, in which a few technically and financially empowered owners govern the production of most culture. Certainly these industries have grown and globalized since then, but they have also fractured, and the technological revolutions of the last decades has created a huge space for “replies” by consumers, who now can be producers of highly sophisticated content in just about any media once dominated by these industries. In one sense, this fracturing can be seen as part of the continuing individualization and classification described above – everyone can have a web presence and communicate globally, but these are governed by certain forms and norms. However, the potential for radically democratic political and aesthetic movements has also been demonstrated: not only do we have the Arab Spring on Twitter and Facebook, but we have teenagers recording original music and distributing it to fans around the world without having to give 90% of their profits to a record label. The question now becomes, I think, about the tipping point between hierarchically governed culture and democratically produced and distributed culture; corporations are always trying to get ahead of the latest fad, but consumers are ever more effective at staying ahead and becoming independent producers governed by their own standards and disregarding the norms of “the culture industry” – or so I hope.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
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