What should strike us as the most significant aspect of our political landscape today is not the fact that most states seem to abuse the expedient of the state of exception as a means to increase the breadth and autonomy of their powers34, but rather the fact that this abuse appears to be generally regarded as legitimate by citizens of those states. Most of us today are citizens not of dictatorships but of – at least de jure – democracies. The inflation of executive power and the subsequent waning of certain individual liberties are hence not imposed on us, but rather something that we – either willingly of unwittingly – allow to happen. If we regard citizens as rationally-driven calculators of costs and benefits, however, this phenomenon seemingly defies all logic. Granted, one could argue that the safeguarding of life and physical integrity is in itself a benefit worth any cost, and therefore rationally justifies the limitation (or even the abdication) of some individual rights and liberties. But if that choice clearly harbours the potential to lead us to a political situation in which caused the very “public use of reason” that made it possible in the first place to be abolished, should it still be rationally desirable?
Agamben’s theory regarding the true status of the exception in today’s politics – which, as himself acknowledges, echoes Walter Benjamin’s earlier assertion that “the state of exception [...] has become the rule” (Benjamin, 1942, 697/257, apud Agamben, 2005, p. 6) – appears to be, in light of all that has been discussed, a fairly accurate diagnosis of the situation. But something can – and should – be added to this idea, for although the end result may be clearly perceived, the causes of the process leading up to it still warrant further clarification. How exactly did the exception managed surreptitiously become the norm? What were the political, sociological and psychological conditions that made it possible? In order to properly answer these critical questions, I would argue, one must take the issue beyond the realm of conventional political theory and take into account the key role played by emotions in politics.
The tacit choice, made by a majority of individuals, to accept the dubious legitimacy of the political status quo embodied by the permanent state of exception –
34 Essentially promoting an “abolition of the distinction among legislative, executive and judicial
powers”(Agamben, 2005, p. 7) or, more succinctly, an absorption of legislative power by the executive branch.
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along with everything the latter entails concerning individual rights and liberties – thus appears to be the result of a combination of the factors that we have been discussing in the preceding chapters. First and foremost, the citizens of today’s western liberal democracies are the (often) unsuspecting heirs to currents of political thought – such as liberalism, cosmopolitanism and economicism – that are deeply permeated by markedly rationalistic conceptions of human nature and politics, which are therefore systematically fostered and reinforced in the minds of individuals.
Secondly, and partially caused by this first aspect, there is generalised ignorance regarding the true nature of the processes of deliberation, motivation and decision-making, which are commonly regarded as being essentially (or even exclusively) based in cognition and logical reasoning, despite a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary stemming from the fields of neurology and neuropsychology. This evidence demonstrates that emotions not only exert a decisive influence – both potentially beneficial or detrimental – upon such aspects of our mental life, but that the latter are actually not even possible in the absence of a healthy and fully-functioning emotional processing system.
Thirdly, because human beings are essentially social animals, the processes of deliberation and decision-making do not occur ex-nihilo in the mind of the individual, but actually exist – and must therefore be understood – as phenomena inscribed in a socio-political context which both influences and is simultaneously influenced by them. The psychological dynamics of life in a social unit and their effect on our perception of the world around us, our pre-conceptions, our prejudices, and even our inclination towards certain opinions, decisions and actions, must therefore be acknowledged as a key component of our political existence. The fact that it commonly is not, and that hence each of us tends to operate under an excessively optimistic evaluation of our own critical prowess, enhances the efficacy of mechanisms of political influence which can be encompassed by the umbrella notion of propaganda, and which are made ubiquitous and inescapable by the scope of contemporary mass media.
Finally, the fact that most states are today grounded upon some form or derivative of liberalism renders their citizens ill-equipped to comprehend the nature of the exception – its “topological structure” in regards to conventional law of “being-outside and yet belonging” (Idem, p. 35) – and its relationship with the
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manifestation of sovereignty as a concrete political reality. Our difficulty in properly evaluating the legitimacy and extent of the state of exception is also the result of a normativist conception of politics that itself struggles to incorporate it into its rigid and formalistic schemata.
What is it then that makes us so receptive to the state of exception today? The answer, I would argue, is intimately connected with our inability (or unwillingness) to acknowledge the rightful place of emotions in our decision-making processes and, consequently, in our political lives. This claim is not only supported by the theoretical analysis that we have undertaken thus far, but also by the contemporary instances when the state of exception becomes political practice. The latter exhibit a distinct pattern regarding the tactic commonly employed to assure public acceptance of its justification – albeit not necessarily of its legitimization: an appeal to emotion. Specifically, it is an appeal to what Aristotle categorizes as practical emotions, emotions such as fear and anger which, by definition, are intrinsically connected with and conducive to certain patterns of action. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the American government arguably instrumentalized the events themselves and others that followed them – the so-called 2001 anthrax attacks, for instance – by calling upon sentiments of fear (regarding additional attacks) and anger (against the presumed authors of the attacks) in order to justify not only the military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq – along with the loss of American lives it would necessarily entail – but also the limitation and revocation of civil liberties we mentioned above35. In fact, according to Moïsi (2009), it is both possible and plausible to regard fear as a key element in shaping and determining the contemporary political culture of the USA and Europe, along with the latter’s position in terms of global politics – thus further elucidating the prevalence and effectiveness of a political intrumentalization of that specific emotion in those cases.
In addition to these examples, we might cite others whose external appearance may seem different, but which coincide in essence: in the economic crisis of 2008, for instance, the paradoxical appeal to provide significant financial aid to banking institutions – some of which were directly responsible for causing the crisis itself – at the expense of public funds, all while enforcing austerity measures upon
35 David Altheide’s Terrorism and the Politics of Fear (2006) and Thrall & Kramer’s American
Foreign Policy and Politics of Fear: Threat Inflation since 9/11 (2009) provide interesting and thought-provoking accounts of this phenomenon.
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common citizens, was justified by exploiting the fear of an even greater danger posed by the purported imminent collapse of the entire financial system. To the time of this writing, that very fear is still being harnessed as the driving force behind the manufacturing of consent regarding the implementation of “exceptional” economic measures by several western states, measures whose immediately perceptible effect consistently is the gradual diminishing of individual economic and political self- determination. As we pointed out earlier, economic “emergencies” have come to be understood as tantamount to political emergencies in terms of both consequence and urgency, and perhaps today’s most globally and consensually acknowledged instance of a permanent state of emergency can even be said to be one of an economic nature (Žižek, 2010)
In all of the instances when the exception becomes a political instrument of dubious legitimacy, the common denominator is provided by an exploitation of the emotional frailty of individuals – with causes of the latter being, with tragic irony, found in the beliefs of those very individuals. As logically consistent inheritors of a rationalistic conception of human reason, we believe that we are above such lowly attempts at political manipulation. When we decide on the best course of action in face of a given political crisis or imminent threat, we do so subconsciously heeding the old adage that one should not decide on the ground of emotions. We believe that we have managed to completely exclude emotions from the process. We believe that we are responding rationally. Indeed, even when emotions are present we truly are, because they are an inextricable part of rationality. But in not acknowledging our emotions, we are allowing them to be manipulated and being led to believe that we are responding purely rationally. Our response, whatever it may be, is therefore endowed with the absolute certainty of logical truth. A truth which is not open to challenge and that renders all of its logical consequences logically necessary – even if among them are the concession of illegitimate powers to the State and the renunciation of individual liberties.
This emotional frailty, resulting from the overestimation of logical reasoning and a misconception of human rationality, is then amplified by a belief that our permanent access to information provided by mass media provides us the necessary knowledge to clearly perceive and evaluate everything involved in a given political issue. In truth, the complexity of contemporary politics effectively creates a veil of
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ignorance – to borrow Rawls’ term – between the reality of the problem and our understanding, placing the former beyond our ability to accurately comprehend it and forcing us to lend credence to experts on the subject. Ironically, though, this does not preclude our prejudices from influencing our decisions, but actually reinforces their effect, with the choice of experts being made more often than not on the basis of their political alignment with our preconceived notions on the issue. And if this is true even for more conventional political issues, it is even more so in the case of exceptional ones; paraphrasing Lippmann’s quote from the previous chapter, during a mutiny at sea there is no time to make each sailor an expert judge of experts
In the end, the ignorance of emotion’s place in decision-making contributes decisively towards the creation of what Jacques Ellul dubs the “political illusion”, an illusion “destined, as always, to hide a reality that haunts us and that we do not know how to master” (2004, p. 30). We wish to believe that, with methodical and surgical use of our pure rational ability, we can accurately read political problems, make consistently “right” political decisions, and ultimately control the workings of the State. The truth, however, is that the opposite is much more often the case. The political illusion of our time is thus one grounded on the overestimation of our ability to rationally control the political system, while ignoring that, by ostracising emotion from the process, we are actually creating the conditions for that system to control us. As far as our autonomous political existence is concerned, this is “an illusion which [...] presents a mortal danger” (Idem, p.190).
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