Some topological considerations:
According to Agamben, the state of exception (0.10) constitutes a space that is
not so much a spatiotemporal suspension as a complex topological figure in which not only the exception and the rule but also the state of nature and law, outside and inside, pass through one another. It is precisely this topological zone of indistinction, […] that we must try to fix under our gaze.1
The nature of this topological figure is diffuse, as it poses a double and blurred boundary, a twilight zone between the poles of outside/inside and foreign/own implicit in the nature/law dichotomy proposed by Agamben. Furthermore, the definition of sovereign as “one who is, at the same time, outside and inside the legal system” allows us to see that
the topology implicit in the paradox is worth reflecting upon, since the degree to which sovereignty marks the limit (in the double sense of end and principle) of the juridical order will become clear only once the structure of the paradox is grasped.2
This paradox is the zone of indistinction (0.9, 0.10) from which sovereignty arises and which we can circumscribe as a terrible place that serves as a threshold not only between nature and law but also between the polis and the invisible world (0.4, 0.8). This topological configuration allows us to place the paradeisos, the ancient hunting park of kings (0.4), as the threshold between these two poles, thus giving rise to a mythopolitics based on the liminality of the underworld with the waking world, the world governed by the laws of the sovereign. Our locus terribilis embodied in the hunting park forms a double threshold that borders on the one hand with the law and the polis and on the other with nature and the invisible world.
Seen in this light, the sovereign appears as a daimonic figure who acquires his position partly through his contact with the powers of the underworld, the di inferi (0.4); that is, with a reality that lies beyond nature. Sovereignty as a daimonic pact.
Leave a Reply