Alain Badiou’s Suturing of the Law to the Event and the State of Exception

Authors

  • Antonio Calcagno King's University College at The University of Western Ontario

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/jffp.2016.712

Keywords:

Badiou, law, ultra-one, event, Carl Schmitt

Abstract

This article questions whether we can posit a more radical desuturing of the law from the event: Can radical shifts in law produce events? Can the law itself be an event, thereby conditioning the very nature of the event itself, creating a new subjectivity and a new time?  I would like to argue that the law can do so. How? Badiou begins “The Three Negations” by discussing the work of the German jurist Carl Schmitt (TN 1877). I would like to argue that the state of exception, as elaborated by Carl Schmitt, can serve as the willed decision of a sovereign that brings about an event.  We can understand the sovereign as a kind of legal subject that has the force to bring about a new event, rupturing with an established order and introducing a new form of subjectivity and time. 

Author Biography

Antonio Calcagno, King's University College at The University of Western Ontario

Professor of Philosophy

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Published

2016-10-12

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 1 (2016): African Thinking and/at Its Limits

Section

Articles

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