The political theology of the empire to come

Abstract

This article considers the character and substance of the war on terror and the global security paradigm in the light of political theology and its pivotal place in the constitution of modern liberal politics. The argument is that global liberal governance is predicated on a sacralised temporality, the historicisation of eschatology, and this claim is developed in the light of the juridical–political logic of states of emergency.

Notes

I would like to thank Michael Dillon for his invaluable criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper and for many years of passionate and rigorous debate. Thanks also must go to Tim Hickman for pushing me on the question of the historicisation of eschatology that generated many of the ideas presented here, and to Roxane Farmanfarmaian for encouraging both a clarification of the argument and a more tightly focused essay.

I am grateful to Lauren Berlant for pointing me to Morone's book. One could also revisit de Tocqueville's remark that ‘religion in America … must be regarded as the first of their political institutions’ (Tocqueville 1990, p. 305). De Tocqueville's analysis was extended further by G.K. Chesterton, who, on his return from a visit to the United States in 1921, suggested that ‘America is the only nation in the world which is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence’ (Chesterton 1990, 41).

A point developed in more length in Brocker (2003). Brocker's argument is that, despite the obvious overtones of Christian fundamentalism and ‘missionary’ zeal, President Bush's discourse is actually a prime example of a peculiarly American form of ‘civil’ religion. It is a specific disquiet and preoccupation with security rather than piety, argues Brocker, that drives foreign policy.

A now classic example of this method, with regard to the question of sovereignty, is Walter Benjamin's ‘Epistemo‐Critical Prologue’ to his study of the Trauerspiel or ‘mourning play’. See Benjamin (1998, 27–56).

Exemplary here is Spinoza (1951, Chapter 19).

It is nonetheless important to note that this narrative has been fundamentally challenged. See Cavanaugh (1995).

See Hobbes (1996, 120) for Hobbes's own explication of the status of this ‘Person’.

See Nichtweiβ (1992, 820–21) for a discussion of Peterson's unpublished essay, ‘Politik und Theologie’. For a thorough analysis of the relationship between politics and the absolute in National Socialism, see Burrin (1997).

Hence Augustine's antipathy towards Seneca, who, on the one hand, provided an unqualified rejection of political theology in his (no longer extant) work Against Superstitions but then, on the other, counselled the wise man to worship the gods in accordance with the customs of the city. According to Augustine, Seneca ‘worshipped what he criticized, performed acts which he reprehended, venerated what he condemned’ (Augustine 1972, 251). Seneca's case clarifies the fact that, for the Roman citizen, the crimen laesae religionis (impiety or lax devotion) was anything but an intellectual or theoretical matter and only came into force where there was evidence of practical disregard for the required observance of the cult.

For a remarkably thorough exploration of Savonarola's theological politics see Weinstein (1970).

This confessionalisation of politics, or the founding of modern European politics on the demands of metaphysics, is the target of Ian Hunter's study of early modern Germany (Hunter 2001).

For an overview of the development of depoliticisation and its relation to intervention on humanitarian grounds in the 1990s see Feher (2000).

The title of a seminal essay on religiously motivated terrorism in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 by Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin (2001).

State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002.

According to Jacob Taubes, these famous lines were ‘written eye to eye with the theses of Carl Schmitt’ (Taubes 1987, 28).

The mood of metaphysics, in a post‐Kantian philosophical milieu, is crucial. Relevant here is Gershom Scholem's contention that ‘Metaphysics is a legitimate theory in the subjunctive form. This is the best definition I have found so far; it says everything’ (Scholem, ‘Swiss Notebook’, cited in Jacobson 2003, 5). In contrast, note Carl Schmitt's argument that ‘the metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization’ (Schmitt 1988, 46).