The state of exception at the legal boundaries: Re-evaluation of a critical concept

Abstract

This article focuses on the notion of the state of exception, accounting for its legal and political meanings. In discussing Agamben's analysis of the state of exception, the article provides an alternative genesis of the state of exception, with a special focus on the role of liberalism, nuclear war, and the sources of the state of exception that was instituted in the U.S.A. after the terrorist attacks on September 11. The article stresses that the state of exception should not be described as an "anomic state" that suspends the law, but that the relationships are much more complex, wherein the legal and non-legal "organically" intertwine. The article ends with an analysis of the neoliberal relationship to the state of exception.

Keywords

• state of exception
• illegality and anomie
• agamben
• liberalism
• nuclear war
• neoliberalism