Abstract

LEON-GONZALEZ, Adolfo. Terror and Exception. The Inner Enemy in the Phenomenology of Modern (Civil) War: From Beccaria to Benjamin. Tópicos (México) [online]. 2023, n.66, pp.153-186.  Epub June 19, 2023. ISSN 0188-6649.  https://doi.org/10.21555/top.v660.2180.

Since the 19th century, a permanent state of alarm against terrorism in modern liberal democracies has allowed the coexistence of apparent socio-legal normality and the state of exception, the space in which the law is suspended to protect itself from a threat to its power. The current means of police and espionage typical of modern anti-terrorist warfare serve to test Benjamin’s hypothesis that the state must always resort to a higher level of authority and legality, for it is impossible to defend its order within the framework of the law itself. This article analyzes the concepts of violence and exception in Benjamin in depth based on the ideas about the death penalty and state police developed in his essay “The Critique of Violence”, put into dialogue with the ideas of authors such as Beccaria, Schmitt, Agamben, and Honneth.

Keywords : violence; W. Benjamin; death penalty; state of exception; political police; terrorism.

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