What does it mean to be anti-social? Potentiality and political ontology in The Buribunks

ABSTRACT

Carl Schmitt's ‘The Buribunks’ describes a posthuman future where the very human being of the Buribunks is ontologically entangled with the production and dissemination of their diaries. These written records serve as the medium by which Buribunks exist in a socially proper way – that form of life Aristotle, Agamben, Arendt and others refer to as bios. The individual Buribunk may exist as an organism by eating, breathing, etc., but it is only by writing that the Buribunk may live as Buribunk. To exist without writing is, for the Buribunks, not to live – radically reversing the metaphysical stakes of life established through Aristotle's argument on potentiality and Agamben's commentary thereupon concerning (im)potentiality. Drawing on the metaphysics of (im)potentiality in relation to Buribunkian diary-writing, I argue that the injustice of Buribunkdom is the foreclosure of impotentiality. That is to say, through the ‘elimination’ of the ‘anti-social’ individuals who elect not to participate in diary-writing, the Buribunks lack true freedom because their potentiality is only relevant when actualised. Schmitt's story offers a dystopian and cautionary tale about the danger posed by embracing a political ontology that necessarily limits the metaphysical freedom of the individual.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to express gratitude to the editors, guest editors, and reviewers of the Griffith Law Review, as well as Andrew Heffernan and Kailey Taplin, for their generous feedback on the manuscript. An earlier version of the discussion of political ontology, language, and voice benefited greatly from the guidance of Eleanor Macdonald.

Disclosure statement

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the work of the author and do not necessarily reflect an official position of the Algonquin and Lakeshore CDSB.

Notes on contributor

Michael P. A. Murphy is a PhD candidate and SSHRC doctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa, the Editorial Assistant at Security Dialogue, and an elected school board trustee. His research uses interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks to understand politics and International Relations, drawing on political theology, quantum physics, and continental philosophy. His research has appeared in a number of venues including Critical Studies on Security, the Journal of International Political Theory, International Relations, and Educational Philosophy and Theory. He is also an associate member of uOttawa’s research unit on the scholarship of teaching and learning, and has published and presented on active learning.

Notes

1 Schmitt (2019), p. 110.

2 Schmitt (2005), p. 1ff.

3 Schmitt (2007), p. 65.

4 Schmitt (1996).

5 Schmitt (2014), p. 123.

6 Schmitt (2008), ch. 10, esp. 140–1.

7 See Agamben (1998).

8 See Arendt (1958).

9 See Agamben (1998). It is important to recall in this discussion that zoe and bare life are not identical. Rather, there is a difference between the figure of zoe that merely exists and the abjected figure of bare life that could have participated in bios but was abjected. Agamben highlights this in The Use of Bodies, where he states simply that ‘it is important not to confuse bare life with natural life’ (2016), p. 263. For an exploration of the difference between mere life (zoe) and bare life, see Salzani (2015). For the role of abjection in Agamben's exceptionalism, see Murphy (2017a).

10 Agamben is a productive interlocutor here both because of his conceptual clarity on defining life as political ontology and due to the Schmittian undercurrent. As Prozorov has argued, Agamben engages Schmitt's ‘ontopolitics’ through the body of his Homo Sacer project, moving fully beyond it only in the final volume. Prozorov (2017), p. 97.

11 Arendt (1958), p. 25.

12 Following a convention suggested first by Adam Kotsko, I will capitalize Homo Sacer when referring to the project, italicize and capitalize Homo Sacer when referring to the work, and italicize homo sacer when referring to the figure of bare life. Kotsko (2016), p. 123n7.

13 It is worth noting, however, that these distinctions between polis and oikos, bios and zoe have been challenged by Kotsko (2018), p. 51ff and Derrida (2009), p. 315ff.

14 Agamben (1998), p. 1.

15 Elsewhere I have argued for this separation to be understood as bios referring to the ‘human-as-such’ and zoe referring to ‘life-as-such’, common to anything that we say lives. Murphy (2017a), p. 91n2. Matthew Abbott frames this distinction as one between Being as such and ontic instances of political being, highlight Agamben's debt to Heidegger. Abbott (2012), p. 27.

16 Agamben (1998), p. 183.

17 As mentioned above, Salzani (2015) offers the clearest account of the difference between mere life/zoe and bare life/homo sacer.

18 Recognizing, naturally, that the specific term is Latin, rather than the Ancient Greek haplos.

19 Agamben (2014), p. 47.

20 Agamben (2014), p. 23.

21 All subsequent translations from Agamben (2014), p. 23.

22 Agamben (2007), p. 7.

23 Agamben (1991), p. 44.

24 Agamben (1991), p. 44.

25 Agamben (2007), p. 59.

26 Paipais (2016).

27 Prozorov (2014a; 2014b).

28 For a review of treatments of Agamben's political ontology, see Mcloughlin (2014).

29 Schmitt (2019), p. 101.

30 Schmitt (2019), p. 101.

31 Schmitt (2019), p. 101.

32 Schmitt (2019), p. 101 and passim.

33 Schmitt (2019), p. 108.

34 Tomasello (1999).

35 Schmitt (2019), p. 102.

36 Schmitt (2019), p. 102.

37 Schmitt (2019), p. 107.

38 Schmitt (2019), p. 102 fn 3.

39 Schmitt (2019), p. 110.

40 Schmitt (2019), pp. 105–106.

41 Schmitt (2019), p. 110.

42 Schmitt (2019), p. 108.

43 Schmitt (2019), p. 108.

44 I take this term from Deleuze (1992), although the data-doubles here are presumably paper rather than electronic.

45 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

46 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

47 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

48 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

49 Schmitt (2019), p. 111.

50 Schmitt (2019), p. 111.

51 The bounded infinity may be understood most simply in the fact that there are an infinite number of potential fractions in between 0 and 1, and therefore the set $\left\{1\dots {\displaystyle \frac{1}{2},\frac{1}{3},\frac{1}{4}\dots 0}\right\}$ is both infinite insofar as it includes an infinite number of terms, but bounded insofar as none will be greater than 1 nor less than 0. For an accessible introduction to the size of infinites, see Matson (2008).

52 Schmitt (2019), p. 110.

53 See Agamben (1998); Aristotle (1998).

54 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

55 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

56 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

57 See Genesis, 3, esp. 3: 1–7.

58 I have previously argued d for understanding this relation as one of abjection, allowing for important parallels to be drawn between the work of Agamben on political relation and Marx on capitalism. Murphy (2017a).

59 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

60 De Boever (2009); Murphy (2017a); (2019).

61 Engels (2009), pp. 37, 91.

62 Murphy (2017a), p. 90.

63 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

64 Schmitt (2019), pp. 108–109.

65 Schmitt (2019), p. 109.

66 Agamben (2002), p. 48.

67 Schmitt (2019), p. 107.

68 Schmitt (2019), pp. 100–101.

69 Schmitt (2019), p. 112.

70 Schmitt (2019), p. 105.

71 Schmitt (2019), p. 105.

72 Heidegger (1995).

73 Agamben (1998); (1999); (2018b).

74 For a treatment of this relationship, see Backman (2017).

75 Aristotle (2016), IX, 3, 1046b27-29

76 Aristotle (2016), IX, 3, 1046b29-33.

77 Aristotle (2016), IX, 8, 1050b9-12.

78 Aristotle (2016), IX, 1, 1046b29-30.

79 Aristotle (2016), IX, 9, 1051a3-11.

80 Agamben (1998), p. 44.

81 On constitution and pouvoir constituant, see Murphy (2017a).

82 Agamben (2018b), esp. pp. 37–41.

83 Agamben (2018a), esp. pp. 29–31.

84 Agamben (1999), p. 182.

85 The discussion of destituent potential is, however, beyond the scope of this article. See Agamben (2016), pp. 263ff.

86 For more on Agamben's form-of-life, see Agamben (2013); Hunter (2017).

87 Agamben (1998), p. 188.

88 Agamben (1999), p. 254, and 243–271 passim. For more on Bartleby, see Lewis (2013); Whyte (2009).

89 The declaration of the state of exception has similarly been understood as an assertion of freedom and the impotentiality of the normal political order, Murphy (2017b), p. 97.

90 Agamben, (1998), p. 45.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.