The colonial origins of the ‘permanent state of exception’
Journal Article: The colonial origins of the ‘permanent state of exception’
Journal: International Affairs Blog, on Medium
Date of Publication: 09 June 2021
Author: Mark Condos is a historian and Lecturer in War Studies and co-Director of the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War, at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and is interested in the intersections between violence, race, and law within the British and French Empires, with a particular focus on India and Algeria.
Introduction: During times of crisis, states have historically drawn upon ‘exceptional’ or emergency powers in order to govern. These typically involve the assumption of new kinds of dictatorial authority, the curtailment of basic civil rights, and a blurring of the ordinary distinctions between executive, legislative, and judicial forms of power.
Once the crisis has passed, states are meant to surrender these extraordinary powers, and return to a state of normalcy. But what if this state of affairs ceases to be temporary, and instead becomes a permanent feature of how governments operate? For the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, this is no mere hypothetical question, but the reality we now face. For Agamben, we are living in a ‘permanent state of exception’.
Agamben traces the origins of this permanent state of exception to the First World War, which saw an unprecedented number of countries around the world declare states of emergency or siege in order to manage the crises presented by a modern, industrial total war. For Agamben, the First World War opened up the possibility for a radically new form of state power that was fundamentally anti-democratic, authoritarian, and which operated through the mechanisms of a permanent state of emergency.
Agamben’s work is inherently Eurocentric, but if we turn our gaze beyond Europe to the imperial world a very different picture emerges. The unequal nature of European colonial power, premised on racial difference, rendered colonialism an inherently authoritarian and anti-democratic enterprise from the outset. Throughout much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, many of the key features Agamben identifies with the state of exception — the blurring of executive, legislative and judicial powers — were, in fact, integral features of colonial power. Emergency, according to John Reynolds, was thus not something merely episodic or interruptive, but was a ‘technique of governance’ embedded into the everyday functioning of colonial regimes.
The full text of the article is available on the International Affairs Blog website, here.
How to Cite: Condos, M. The colonial origins of the ‘permanent state of exception’. International Affairs Blog, on Medium. 2021. DOI: https://medium.com/international-affairs-blog/the-colonial-origins-of-the-permanent-state-of-exception-668e38c91a45
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