MARC DE WILDEas such, thus expiating all possible guilt. Whereas the first form of violence is a ‘‘bloody
violence over mere life for its own sake,’’ the second is a ‘‘pure violence,’’ which does not
spill any blood and aims at saving ‘‘the soul of the living.’’^47 Benjamin claims that mythical
violence demands the sacrifice of its victims, with the goal of preserving ‘‘mere life [blosses
Leben],’’ whereas divine violence can only ‘‘accept’’ that sacrifice for the sake of justice.
What is divine in life, Benjamin argues, is not mere life itself but its possible righteousness,
that is, the moral task invested in life, the fulfillment of which is postponed to an unfore-
seeable future. Thus, only the sacrifice of mere life in an attempt to save the ‘‘soul of the
living,’’ that is, justice, can bear witness to the presence of divine violence.
Analogous to Schmitt’s theologico-political convictions, Benjamin’s concept of divine
violence seems related to a certain notion of responsibility, originating in an awareness of
the radical exception. In his famous interpretation of the text, Jacques Derrida argues that
Benjamin’s concept of ‘‘divine violence’’ should be read as a call for justice beyond posi-
tive law.^48 Because the creation and application of positive law is always attended by
violence—an exclusion of that which escapes the generalizing language of rules and
norms—justice must consist in a deconstruction of the law. In Derrida’s reading, divine
violence resides in the silent call torememberthe specific otherness of all cases originating
in life itself—an otherness that remains unrepresentable within the order of general laws.
He suggests that, according to Benjamin, divine violence will only ‘‘accept’’ sacrifices that
aim to save otherness from oblivion. Although these sacrifices cannot count on a certain
result, since they are withdrawn from an economy of calculating intention, they can at
least give voice to an otherness that the violence of myth threatens to silence.^49
In this reading, whereas divine violence will refuse to accept sacrifices of life, insofar
as they have been enforcedunderthe law, it will accept those sacrifices originating in a
responsibilitybeforethe law. Thus, like Schmitt’s political theology, Benjamin’s seems to
imply the task of inventing a politics that bears witness to divine violence, though without
being able to understand itself as a direct representation of that violence. The relation
between a profane politics of pure means and a divine violence—if it makes sense to
speak of a ‘‘relation’’ at all—can only be anindirectone, mediated by solitary struggles
before the law. The possibility of the worst, the risk of life’s being sacrificed to an illusion,
that is, the specter of a justice that turns out to be mere myth, will only be realized if that
indirect relationship is misunderstood to be a direct one. As soon as the revolutionary
begins to think of his law-destroying violence as an instrument of salvation, redeeming
history through the direct intervention of the divine violence it supposedly represents, he
is bound to cause the worst, that is, a senseless sacrifice of ‘‘mere life’’ to myth.
Contemporary States of Exception
Schmitt’s concept of the state of exception is still relevant in our times, for various rea-
sons. We will have to restrict ourselves to the most urgent one. According to Schmitt,
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