Violence and law

Benjamin, Schmitt, Agamben and the state of emergency

Abstract

In light of the “debate” between Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt on the state of exception, this article seeks to illuminate the complex relationship between violence and law as a key to understanding the state of emergency in which we live and the idea of history as catastrophe. Between the possibility of revolutionary violence “outside” law and a doctrine that attempts to redirect anomic violence into a legal context, it now seems conceivable to conceive the sphere of sovereignty as a “zone of absolute indeterminacy between anomie and law”, as Giorgio Agamben proposes. In this sense, it is suggestive to seek in Benjamin’s philosophy of history the keys to understanding the irreducible link between violence and law, as a starting point for redefining history, assessing oblivion as a legal-political category, and thinking a revolutionary escape from the state of exception.