Page 13 - Issue17

issue 17
March 2020
12 ELITE

A STATE OF EXCEPTION IN A

LIQUID MODERNITY : THE

SYRIAN CASE

E V E N T P H O T O G R A P H E R A N D V I D E O G R A P H E R
Ahmed Shindy Ibrahim
Assistant Lecturer, Political Science Dept. Misr Univreisty
for Science and Technology

The contribution of the famous Italian philosopher, Giorgio sovereignty, and any attempt to resist or deviate f rom this
Agamben, in addressing the State of Exception repre sents an authority is a defiance to sovereignty and its arra ngements,
important starting point in the interpretation of t he foretaste hence leads to civil war, which is an extension of the state of
and outcomes of the Syrian crisis situation. He pro vides an exception and is a direct response from the state t o these
explanation for the crimes committed by whoever has the internal conflicts.
power; especially that the experience of the state of exception
(or a state of emergency) in southern countries ind icates that it Perhaps the division of views trying to evaluate th e Syrian
can not be canceled, but rather legitimized, and to become a situation crisis reflects what Agamben refers to, that the
part of the legal system and political practice, wh ere the state state of exception becomes established as a model o f
of civil war turns into a natural state, and the ex ceptional governance as if it is " the state of exception app ears as a
becomes natural. threshold of indeterminacy between democracy and
absolutism. ” where the exception becomes the legal
The state of the exception is a fundamental pillar to the framework of the governance, then the violence and the state
governance in the Syrian context, as the Syrian mod ern state of war aims to maintain the legal status of the st ate of
is governed by the emergency law launched in 1962. Since exception, as it is justified legal violence in the eyes of some,
then, this law has become a main instrument for the public and tyrannical violence criminalized in the eyes of others.
affairs management in the country, and a perfect re flection of
the sovereignty in the state. According to Karl Sch midt, and The haziness of the Syrian scene does not come from the
Agamben after him, it is the sovereign who has the power to difficulty of vision or the lack of clarity in the practices of the
approve or terminate the state of exception. Also, the Syrian Syrian regime, as well as a number of parties conte nding with
Party “al-Baath ” taking power in March 1963 influenced the it towards civilians, but rather from the fragility of moral
approval of the emergency Law. As well as, when the Syrian judgment on these practices. In a modern reality ch aracterized
President Bashar al-Assad emphasized, on March 2011 , by liquidity by the expression of Zigmont Baumann, the liquid
taking steps to overthrow The emergency law, after a month evil wears the dress of goodness and represents the ethical
of ongoing street protests, is only a proof that th e ruler is the practices that are in reality ethics without morals . The Syrian
sovereign, with absolute power, where the individua l becomes regime considers that its battle is a fatal battle to survival, the
a homo sacer of this power, and takes citizenship p osition survival of the state that governs the exception, i n the face of
according to the level of his loyalty to the sovere ignty. any party that wants to end the state of exception, and return
to the "natural" that became in its understanding e xceptional
With the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, in light of practices liquid evil .
and its rapid transformation of the state of civil war in a form
of a war of all against all in the Hobbesian specta cle par Finally, it can be said that the liquid evil, which represents the
excellence, it appears that the state of civil war represents a practices of the exception in Syria, is beyond lega l while
direct result of the rule of the state of exception for decades; faking morality and presents itself as the good rea lity, and
as the population is separated and owed to them acc ording to then strips the humanity of its dreams and alternat ive projects
their ideological, ethnic and sectarian proximity f rom who by the expression of Kafulls
own

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