Alain Badiou’s Suturing of the Law to the Event and the State of Exception

• Published in: Journal of French and Francophone philosophy Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 192 - 204
• Main Author: Calcagno, Antonio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 12.10.2016
• Subjects: badiou, law, ultra-one, event, carl schmitt
• ISSN: 2155-1162; 2155-1162
• DOI: 10.5195/jffp.2016.712

This article questions whether we can posit a more radical desuturing of the law from the event: Can radical shifts in law produce events? Can the law itself be an event, thereby conditioning the very nature of the event itself, creating a new subjectivity and a new time?  I would like to argue that the law can do so. How? Badiou begins “The Three Negations” by discussing the work of the German jurist Carl Schmitt (TN 1877). I would like to argue that the state of exception, as elaborated by Carl Schmitt, can serve as the willed decision of a sovereign that brings about an event.  We can understand the sovereign as a kind of legal subject that has the force to bring about a new event, rupturing with an established order and introducing a new form of subjectivity and time.