INTRODUCTIONviolence, albeit without being able to understand itself as a direct representation of that
violence. They suggest that the relation between secular politics and divine violence can
only be anindirectone, mediated by solitary struggles before the law. What is at stake in
their political theologies, therefore, is the attempt to articulate a certain kind of responsi-
bility, whose essential traits elude the traditional and modern contours of practical and
moral philosophy.
In the third part of his essay, de Wilde examines whether the political theologies of
Benjamin and Schmitt can provide a clarification of the violence inherent in ‘‘contempo-
rary states of exception,’’ that is, in the border zones between positive law and bare life,
for example, within the United States as well as outside its territory, in camps such as the
ones at Guanta ́namo Bay or Abu-Ghraib, and their lesser-known doubles in Europe and
elsewhere. De Wilde argues, with Benjamin and in a certain sense against Schmitt, that,
in the most notorious among the known cases, it is not theabsenceof law that character-
izes the state of exception but the deliberately created para-legal possibility of a deperson-
alizing juridical violence, without recourse to due process, that tends to escalate in the
presence of ideologically invoked political theologies, as in the Bush administration’s ‘‘jus-
tifications’’ of the use of physical and psychological abuse. As soon as a sovereign power
starts to think of its lawmaking violence as an instrument of salvation, even with the most
inspired democratic ideals in mind, it is bound to cause and provoke the worst, namely,
a senseless sacrifice of ‘‘mere life’’ to myth.
In late June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed some of the rulings in question,
declaring the military tribunals concerning ten foreign suspects at Guanta ́namo Bay to
constitute a violation both of statutes of American military law and of the Geneva Con-
ventions (and hence ruled the applicability of its Common Article 3, which prohibits
‘‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment’’ of
prisoners): a decision to which the Bush administration responded by drafting new rul-
ings that would keep much of its earlier policy in these matters in place.^112
The important thing, de Wilde concludes, is that sovereign democracies should be-
come aware that—within the state of exception—with the emergence of unlimited au-
thority (whether existing constitutional, state, and federal, not to mention international,
laws remain intact or are suspended altogether), responsibility is likewise without limits.
Yet few powers are willing or able to limit their tendency to expand the horizon of their
interest and control. Extending their authority, they thus inevitably undermine—or, in
any case, delegitimate and invalidate—that very authority, overstepping bounds into a
void that the theologico-political once sought to mark. The question remains whether
such theologico-political marking invites or obstructs reflection and action, that is to say,
whether it construes necessities where there are none or whether it frees up possibilities,
indeed, radical novelties, together with all the responsibilities they entail.
Judith Butler, in her contribution, amplifies her profound and longstanding philo-
sophical inquiry into the critical work done by norms in the contemporary domains of
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