The Fiction of Sovereignty and the Real State of Exception: Giorgio Agamben’s Critique of Carl Schmitt

Abstract

Agamben is perhaps best known for his analysis of the “logic of sovereignty” drawn from Carl Schmitt. This article examines the critique of sovereignty that Agamben develops through his reading of Walter Benjamin’s messianism. For Agamben, Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty claims that the state of exception is a juridical condition, in that the law survives its suspension in the form of the “force-of-law.” Drawing on Benjamin, Agamben argues that sovereignty is a fiction that covers over the originary inoperativity of the law and the illegitimacy of authority. The purpose of Agamben’s analysis is to open space for a new understanding of the relationship between law and political action that responds to the contemporary crisis of tradition.