Post by E.E. Reed / Redsky

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Today, in class, I read Creon’s decree. Then I read the infamous dictum from the odious Carl Schmitt. Then I read from Agamben’s State of Exception. Then I looked up and I was more plain and more straightforward than I have ever been before: This is where we are now. And this is very dangerous.

“Gentlemen: as for our city's fortune, the gods have shaken her, when the great waves broke, but the gods have brought her through again to safety. For yourselves, I chose you out of all and summoned you to come to me, partly because I knew you as always loyal to the throne—at first, when Laïus was king, and then again when Oedipus saved our city and then again when he died and you remained with steadfast truth to their descendants, until they met their double fate upon one day, striking and stricken, defiled each by a brother's murder. Now here I am, holding all authority and the throne, in virtue of kinship with the dead. It is impossible to know any man— I mean his soul, intelligence, and judgment— until he shows his skill in rule and law. I think that a man supreme ruler of a whole city, if he does not reach for the best counsel for her, but through some fear, keeps his tongue under lock and key, him I judge the worst of any; I have always judged so; and anyone thinking another man more a friend than his own country, Sophocles. Antigone. David Grene, translator.

I rate him nowhere. For my part, God is my witness, who sees all, always, I would not be silent if I saw ruin, not safety, on the way towards my fellow citizens. I would not count any enemy of my country as a friend— because of what I know, that she it is which gives us our security. If she sails upright and we sail on her, friends will be ours for the making. In the light of rules like these, I will make her greater still. In consonance with this, I here proclaim to the citizens about Oedipus' sons. For Eteocles, who died this city's champion, showing his valor's supremacy everywhere, he shall be buried in his grave with every rite of sanctity given to heroes under earth. However, his brother, Polyneices, a returned exile, who sought to burn with fire from top to bottom his native city, and the gods of his own people; who sought to taste the blood he shared with us, and lead the rest of us to slavery— I here proclaim to the city that this man shall no one honor with a grave and none shall mourn. You shall leave him without burial; you shall watch him chewed up by birds and dogs and violated. Such is my mind in the matter; never by me shall the wicked man have precedence in honor over the just. But he that is loyal to the state in death, in life alike, shall have my honor.” Sophocles. Antigone. David Grene, translator.

“Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” The odious Carl Schmitt. Political Theology. George Schwab, translator.

“As long as the two elements remain correlated yet conceptually, temporally, and subjectively distinct (as in republican Rome's contrast between the Senate and the people, or in medieval Europe's contrast between spiritual and temporal powers) their dialectic-though founded on a fiction-can nevertheless function in some way. But when they tend to coincide in a single person, when the state of exception, in which they are bound and blurred together, becomes the rule, then the juridico-political system transforms itself into a killing machine.” Giorgio Agamben. State of Exception. Kevin Attell, translator.

aug 29, 2025, 3:48 pm • 26 2

Replies

In some ways, I think (to use a William Desmond term) Agamben is haunted by Christianity, the various theologies of ancient and medieval Christian Church, and the Christ he finds in Paul, John, the Synoptic tradition, etc.

aug 29, 2025, 3:55 pm • 3 0 • view

contrahistorical.medium.com/for-agamben-...

sep 23, 2025, 2:04 am • 0 0 • view

But this is what broke my heart today: None of my students disputed me. Instead, they nodded with sober recognition.

aug 29, 2025, 3:51 pm • 7 0 • view