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Life in the State of Exception

What is life if it is not in a "state of exception"? We live in the suspension of life. There is a fascinating articulation by none other than Carl Schmitt, who, in his Dictatorship and Political Theology, expounds this concept. The true intensity of law is realized in its suspension and its exception. Norm remains unrealised unless it is suspended in its realisation. Just like "state of emergency" is declared to suspend the juridical order so as to protect it from internal or external aggression. In the same line of reasoning, the freedom of speech and expression as a fundamental right in normal sense remains in the Constitution without any realisation unless law like sedition comes into the picture, or the power of contempt comes at issue, in that condition only, the freedom of speech and expression is visualized in its full intensity. I mean, who talks about a norm, unless a fact of its violation becomes possible. Just like, who talks about life unless its suspension, i.e., death is perceived as inevitable. To read state of exception as exception is a mistake. Every exception is a corrupt copy of its pure norm, a deviation in immanent sense, to refer Deleuze's marvellous work, Difference and Repetition, a phantasms, which is as normal as the established pure norm. I mean, which day or which moment is normal? Every moment is an exception of its previous one. Our life is, in fact, lived in exception. There is no perfect and normal moment. Every moment is the suspension and realisation of life. Every moment is passing on and realising itself at the same moment. Every moment is a fullstop, though we perceive it as a comma. Life cannot be captured in a normal routine, it is, in fact, realized in its exception, its suspension, and it goes on permanently in the state of exception.


What happens in actuality that the moment we keep certain thing as normal, the excitement dies forever for that thing, in that very moment, exception is carved out, which suspends the normal permanently in order to realise the excitement and guilt of its violation. The life of law and juridical order is just like a language. There are abundance of signifiers, floating in the space of reality, but does it mean that it is related to something called real in the objective world? You can't find a word with a perfect signification, without having any scope of interpretation and interpolation. It is, in fact, a deviation, a difference from Platonic concept in an immanent sense, which is realised in its deviation and suspension. Life is just like excitement in the state of exception. Make it normal, you will avoid going near to it. Make it a routine, you'll lose the interest of it. Just like stability is a myth, a "normalized myth", which is realised in its constant suspension. The life of law is alive only in the "State of Exception". Just like desire is alive in its non-realisation. The moment a desire is actualized it is no longer a desire. It is as normal as anything else.

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