Exception and Governmentality in the Critique of Sovereignty
Date
2014-04-30
Authors
Burles, Regan Maynard
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Abstract
This thesis investigates the relation between exception and governmentality in the critique of sovereignty. It considers exception and governmentality as an expression of the problem of sovereignty and argues that this problem is expressed both within the accounts of sovereignty that exception and governmentality articulate, as well as between them. Taking Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt as the paradigmatic theorists of governmentality and exception, respectively, I engage in close readings of the texts in which these concepts are most thoroughly elaborated: Security, Territory, Population and Political Theology. These readings demonstrate that, despite their apparent differences, exception and governmentality cannot be differentiated from one another. The instability evident in Schmitt and Foucault’s concepts show that the relation between them is best characterized as aporetic.
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Keywords
Sovereignty, Exception, Governmentality, Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault, Modernity, Politics, Aporia