Dancing with the Enemy: A Symposium Marking the Centennial to Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology
In honor of the book’s centennial, we gathered four senior researchers that have engaged with Schmitt’s thought: Vivian Liska, Christoph Schmidt, and Yehouda Shenhav-Shaharabani, and Raef Zreik – and asked them to discuss the book, its importance and its dangers, and its special place in critical theory. How did the critic of the Weimar Republic’s parliamentary democracy, and later one of the senior jurists of National Socialism, become a central source of influence on generations of radical leftist thought? What is it in the image of the sovereign, the declaration of states of emergency, and the demand for decision, that captures the basic patterns of politics – especially in contemporary politics of the war on terror, the movement of refugees, or the state of health emergency? What is the meaning of the secularization of the theological concepts in modern politics – what are the theological systems that still appear today? And generally, what is the secret of the Schmittian charisma and can we or ought we overcome it? This symposium, that ends the current issue, ranges between explanation of some of Schmitt’s moves and their repudiation and proposal of counter-options; and by turning to other figures connected to Schmitt in different ways – from Kafka and Benjamin and Scholem, Arendt and Agamben, to Kierkegaard and Herman Cohen – and thinking about the emergency laws in Israel/Palestine, the discussants clarify the Schmitt heritage here and now.