All of the world seems to be a conflict theatre presently. Is there anywhere that is not? Maybe a natural environment with a small supportive group? Still reality tends to intrude.
War is engrained into the international state system. And war is engrained in the civic state itself as Agamben reads Hobbes. Agamben writes, ‘[i]f the dissolved multitude – and not the people – is the sole human presence in the city, and if the multitude is the subject of civil war, this means that civil wars remains always possible within the state.’[49] This is why, after his eschatological analysis, Agamben reaffirms that until the second coming of Christ, ‘the body political can only dissolve itself into a multitude and the Leviathan can only live together . . . with Behemoth – with the possibility of civil war.’[50] Civil war, we may therefore conclude drawing from Agamben’s Aristotelian terminology, lies at the threshold between actuality and potentiality. It lurks in the penumbra of social relations[51] constantly defining them and always reminding the body politic of its occult, demonic[52] origins: ‘civil war is a projection of the state of nature into the city.’[53]
All of the world seems to be a conflict theatre presently. Is there anywhere that is not? Maybe a natural environment with a small supportive group? Still reality tends to intrude.
War is engrained into the international state system. And war is engrained in the civic state itself as Agamben reads Hobbes. Agamben writes, ‘[i]f the dissolved multitude – and not the people – is the sole human presence in the city, and if the multitude is the subject of civil war, this means that civil wars remains always possible within the state.’[49] This is why, after his eschatological analysis, Agamben reaffirms that until the second coming of Christ, ‘the body political can only dissolve itself into a multitude and the Leviathan can only live together . . . with Behemoth – with the possibility of civil war.’[50] Civil war, we may therefore conclude drawing from Agamben’s Aristotelian terminology, lies at the threshold between actuality and potentiality. It lurks in the penumbra of social relations[51] constantly defining them and always reminding the body politic of its occult, demonic[52] origins: ‘civil war is a projection of the state of nature into the city.’[53]
Dr Luca Siliquini-Cinelli, Lecturer, School of Law, University of Dundee; l.siliquinicinelli@dundee.ac.uk