state of exception

quotes from state of exception by giorgio agamben 

“what the law can never tolerate – what it feels as a threat with which it is impossible to come to terms – is the existence of a violence outside the law; and this is not because the ends of such a violence are incompatible with law, but because of 'its mere existence outside the law' (benjamin 1921, 183/239). the task of benjamin's critique is to prove the reality (bestand) of such a violence: 'if violence is also assured a reality outside the law, as pure immediate violence, this furnishes proof that revolutionary violence – which is the name for the highest manifestation of pure violence by man – is also possible' (202/252). the proper characteristic of this violence is that it neither makes nor preserves law, but deposes it (entsetzung des rechtes [202/251-52]) and thus inaugurates a new historical epoch.”

“in an extensive study published in 1980, h.s. versnel attempted to answer this question by proposing an analogy between the phenomenology of mourning – as attested to in the most diverse places by anthropological research – and periods of political crises, in which social institutions and rules seems suddenly to dissolve. Just as, during periods of anomie and crisis, normal social structures can collapse and social functions and roles break down to the point where culturally conditioned behaviors and customs are completely overturned, so are periods of mourning usually characterized by a suspension and alteration of all social relations. 'whoever characterizes the critical periods as. . . a temporary substitution of order by disorder, of culture by nature, of kosmos by chaos, of nomos by physis, of enomia by anomia, has implicitly characterized the period of mourning and its manifestations' (versnel 1980, 584-85). according to versnel, who here cites the analyses of the american sociologists berger and luckman, 'all societies are constructions in the face of chaos. the constant possibility of anomic terror is actualized whenever the legitimations that obscure the precariousness are threatened or collapse.' (585)”