Per la critica del potere. Stato di diritto, stato di polizia, rivoluzione

(For a Critique of Power: State of Rights, State of Emergency, and Revolution)

Abstract

In the attempt at denying the equation between power and violence, in this essay I seek a path that proposes neither the solution of the legalization of strength through rights nor the foundation of power on an ultimate value. I develop the juridical notion of the sovereign as the one who obeys the law at the very moment when s/he is “legibus solutus,” that is, at the moment when as source of the law s/he controls and suspends it. I then analyze the potentiality for a criticism of power that belongs to such a combination of llaw and interruption of the law, and I take distance from the interpretation of the state of emergency developed by Giorgio Agamben and from Derrida’s reading of Walter Benjamin. Lastly, I oppose the criticism of power proposed by Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Jacob Taubes with some analyses inspired by Foucault’s thought.