10.13135/2036-542X/7967
In this article I discuss and criticize Giorgio Agamben’s conception of sovereignty for being too legalistic and apolitical and thereby incapable of identifying a political and emancipatory potential in the concept of sovereignty. Through readings of Pindar and Aristotle, and Agamben’s interpretations of them, I show that Agamben sees the Greek basileus (king or kingship) as the predecessor of the modern doctrine of sovereignty rather than — what would have been more obvious — Aristotle’s notion of kyrion (supreme or supremacy). Consequently, I develop an alternative to Agamben’s reading of the genealogy of sovereignty by engaging with Aristotle and by showing how this conception of sovereignty entails both political and democratic elements — what Agamben had criticized as essentially missing from the logic of sovereignty. In the last part of the article, I use my criticism of Agamben’s conception of sovereignty and the alternative to it developed through my reading of Aristotle to discuss Agamben’s interpretation and dismissal of the political legacy of the French Revolution, which I see as symptomatic for Agamben’s (mis)comprehension of sovereignty. Due to his conception of sovereignty, Agamben argue that we should abandon it. I argue instead that it must be reappropriated.
application/pdf
2036-542X
7967
1
it
Nicolai von Eggers
Trópos
Reappropriating Sovereignty: 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
8
Monografica
2015-07-15
2023-07-30
2015-07-15
2023-07-30
155-179
1
Nicolai von Eggers
2015/07/15
10.13135/2036-542X/7967
155
2036-542X
1
179
Reappropriating Sovereignty: 
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/7967/6697
8
                                                     trópos • anno VIII • numero 1 • 2015 – ISBN 978-88-548-8594-3
                                                        DOI 10.4399/97888548859439 – pag. 155-179 (giugno 2015)




                                        Reappropriating Sovereignty
            A Critique of Giorgio Agamben’s Abandonment of Sovereignty

                                                                        N  E



   : In this article I discuss and criticize Giorgio Agamben’s conception of
      sovereignty for being too legalistic and apolitical and thereby incapable of
      identifying a political and emancipatory potential in the concept of sovereignty.
      Through readings of Pindar and Aristotle, and Agamben’s interpretations
      of them, I show that Agamben sees the Greek basileus (king or kingship) as
      the predecessor of the modern doctrine of sovereignty rather than — what
      would have been more obvious — Aristotle’s notion of kyrion (supreme or
      supremacy). Consequently, I develop an alternative to Agamben’s reading
      of the genealogy of sovereignty by engaging with Aristotle and by showing
      how this conception of sovereignty entails both political and democratic ele-
      ments — what Agamben had criticized as essentially missing from the logic
      of sovereignty. In the last part of the article, I use my criticism of Agamben’s
      conception of sovereignty and the alternative to it developed through my
      reading of Aristotle to discuss Agamben’s interpretation and dismissal of the
      political legacy of the French Revolution, which I see as symptomatic for
      Agamben’s (mis)comprehension of sovereignty. Due to his conception of
      sovereignty, Agamben argue that we should abandon it. I argue instead that it
      must be reappropriated.


   : Sovereignty, Agamben, Aristotle, French Revolution, Popular Sovereignty,
      Abandonment.


In his acclaimed critique of the political logic of today’s dominant political
system, most notably the series of books known under the label of Homo
Sacer, Giorgio Agamben attempts to formulate a theory of emancipation
that will supposedly facilitate abandoning the governmental machine and
replace it with a form–of–life that will negate the effectiveness of the law.
Whereas many radicals — especially Marxists — argue that emancipation
will ensue from the destruction of the existing politico–economic order (by
way of the class struggle) and the constitution of a new emancipatory one,
Agamben explicitly opts for a strategy of emancipation that neither engages
with the existing political struggles nor has any aspirations of constituting a
competing political order. Instead, Agamben favors a sort of refrainment

                                                                                                             
     Nicolai von Eggers


or detachment from politics as embodied in the figure of Bartleby who
“prefers not to”.
    Agamben’s political philosophy and search for emancipation consequently
takes the form of an abandonment of central concepts of political thought.
Agamben does not so much interpret political concepts and philosophies, nor
does he deconstruct them, much rather he tries to find ways to abandon them.
That is to say, Agamben’s emancipatory philosophical strategy is to look for
ways to render operative concepts inoperative. Agamben has formulated this
intention or strategy explicitly in his “Notes on Politics”, a text foreshadowing
the subsequent Homo Sacer books. Here, Agamben writes that “terms such
as sovereignty, right, nation, people, democracy and general will by now refer to a
reality that no longer has anything to do with what these concepts used to
designate”, and that consequently “[t]he concepts of sovereignty and constituent
power, which are at the core of our political tradition, have to be abandoned”
(A : ff; my emphasis).
    As we read in the above quote, the political concept that is perhaps most
important to abandon, according to Agamben, is the concept of sovereignty.
Following this intention, the first Homo Sacer book opens with a critique of
“the logic of sovereignty” (A : –), and though Agamben in
his later works has moved away from the concept of sovereignty in order
to abandon a series of other important political concepts such as economy,
duty, the state of exception and effectiveness (A b, b, a
and b), all of his work since “Notes on Politics” attest to a search for
a power opposed to the logic of sovereignty, that is, a power (potenza)
aware of its own impotence (impotenza), which will “break everywhere the
nexus between violence and right, between the living and language that
constitutes sovereignty” (A : ). Agamben has attempted to
locate this impotent power in figures such as ‘inoperativity’ (A a
and a), Paul’s “as not” (A a), and the Franciscan attempts
to create a form–of–life that negates the law without neither destroying
it nor creating a new one (A b) . Most recently it has become
the concept of ‘destituent power’ that is invoked as a potential means of
abandoning the old concept of ‘constituent power’ and its insoluble link to
the logic of sovereignty (A a, b). According to Agamben,
sovereignty is thus still at the core of modern political theory and praxis,
and emancipation is synonymous with abandoning the logic of sovereignty.

      . What Philippe Lacoue–Labarthe and Jean–Luc Nancy has referred to as a ‘retreating the
political’ ().
     . Agamben’s reading Franciscan form–of–life and its relation to law can be seen as an attempt
to find an example of an actual practice of the ‘playing with the law’, which he in other places views
as what defines emancipation (A b: ; : ). However, as Agamben admits, the
Franciscan experiment was ultimately unsuccessful (A b: ).
                                                           Reappropriating Sovereignty   


    In this article, I wish to contest Agamben’s understanding of sovereignty
and the emancipatory strategy of abandonment inherently related to it. I will
argue that Agamben’s conception of sovereignty is at best deficient, at worst
fundamentally flawed. As I will show, Agamben’s critique of sovereignty and
its supposedly inherently oppressive character relies upon a monarchical
and legalistic conception of sovereignty. This is apparent already from the
opening chapter of Homo Sacer in which Agamben identifies sovereignty
with the Greek word basileus, although this is more precisely the word for
kingship. This conception of sovereignty naturally prevents Agamben from
seeing in it any potential for emancipation, and caught within this flawed
conception of sovereignty as monarchical, that is, as omnipotent, Agam-
ben sees no other way for emancipation than that of an abandonment of
sovereignty, or, as he also puts it, “exodus from any sovereignty” (A
: ) . In other words, Agamben’s conception of sovereignty forecloses
the possibility of democratic or popular sovereignty since the very logic of
sovereignty is, by default, perceived to be monarchical. As a consequence,
Agamben ends up with a purely legalistic understanding of sovereignty in
which there is no room for the kind of truly democratic politics, Agamben
himself is looking for (A a).
    A similar critique has been voiced by Jacques Rancière who argues that
the logical outcome of Agamben’s political philosophy is that “political con-
flict, properly speaking, thus comes to be replaced by a correlation between
sovereign power and bare life.” (R : ). In this article, I will expand
on this critique by relating the impossibility of politics proper in Agamben’s
thought more closely to his definition of sovereignty — something which
Rancière does not. It will be my argument that it is a direct consequence of
his monarchical, legalistic and deeply problematic conception of sovereignty
that Agamben is unable to find a room for democratic politics and that this
leaves him with no other solution than the strategy of abandonment.
    Against this strategy of abandonment, which time and again seems to lead
Agamben into emancipatory impasses from where he is unable to locate
feasible exit strategies, I will point towards an emancipatory reappropriation
of sovereignty. A rereading of Aristotle will help us conceive of a more suffi-
cient definition of sovereignty (kyrion or kyriarchos); one which has plenty
of room for democracy and politics. Furthermore, as I will show, Aristotle
defines sovereignty in contradistinction to kingship (baslieus), which for
Aristotle is to be understood as an economic and therefore non–political form
of government. Agamben, who defines sovereignty as basileus, wishes to
abandon sovereignty because it has no room for democracy — and for
Agamben “democracy means precisely the possibility of a political life”

    . For a critique of Agamben’s exodus–strategy, see F .
   Nicolai von Eggers


(A a) — but in perhaps the most important text of political
thought, Aristotle’s Politics, basileus (kingship) is from the very beginning
defined as non–political as opposed to kyrion (sovereignty) in which, accord-
ing to Aristotle, there is plenty of room for politics and democracy. It is
no wonder then that Agamben is unable to find ‘the possibility of political
life’ in sovereignty when from the very beginning he relies on a curious
apolitical definition of it (as basileus), and furthermore one that is directly
antithetical to democracy. Thus, as I will argue, the limitations of Agam-
ben’s political philosophy when it comes to finding ways for emancipation
and democracy stems from his sketchy definition of sovereignty.
    As for the reasons for turning to Aristotle, it should be noted that when
Jean Bodin “invents” the modern concept of sovereignty in the th century,
he refers to kyrion arche and kyrion politeuma — and not to basileus — as
predecessors of the concept of sovereignty (B : ). Even though it is
of course possible that the logic of sovereignty is derived from theories not di-
rectly pertaining to the concept of sovereignty, it is remarkable how Agamben
either overlooks or refuses to engage with the logic pertaining to both the
actual concept of sovereignty and its predecessors. This is most likely, as I will
show, an effect of Agamben relying too heavily on Carl Schmitt’s definition of
sovereignty, which emphasizes precisely the legalistic and monarchical traits
of sovereignty rather than its potentially democratic and political nature.
    In this article I first discuss Agamben’s legalistic and monarchical def-
inition of sovereignty as basileus. I then turn to Aristotle’s understand-
ing of sovereignty (kyrion and kyriarchos) and relate it to the definition of
sovereignty provided by Agamben. Finally, I end the article by discussing
sovereignty in the French Revolution since Agamben’s understanding of
the French Revolution is symptomatic for both his conceptualization of
sovereignty and the strategy of abandoning sovereignty that follows from it.
Instead of seeing in the French Revolution a potential for a democratic poli-
tics — the possibility of a political life — in the form of popular sovereignty,
Agamben conflates popular sovereignty with his own legalistic conception
sovereignty, and consequently abandons the radical democratic revolu-
tionaries, along with everything else from the French Revolution. Agam-
ben’s understanding of the French Revolution, by way of his conception
of sovereignty, thus marks the limitations of his emancipatory strategy of
abandonment.


. Agamben’s Legalistic Definition of Sovereignty

Agamben commences his Homo Sacer series with a relentless critique of
sovereignty. Part one of the first Homo Sacer book, Homo Sacer: Sovereign
                                                 Reappropriating Sovereignty   


Power and Bare Life, sets out to disclose “The Logic of Sovereignty” (A
: –). Agamben here follows Carl Schmitt’s discussion from Political
Theology in which Schmitt identifies sovereignty with the legal paradox that
the sovereign is “at the same time outside and inside the juridical order”
(Schmitt quoted in Agamben , ; Agamben’s emphasis). That is to
say, although the sovereign is juridically speaking situated outside of law,
he nevertheless has the power to alter or suspend the law. The sovereign
has a lawful right to suspend the law itself, which means that in the last
analysis, “the law is outside itself,” as Agamben puts it (A , ).
The sovereign is the always–already beyond–law character that constitutes
the legal order itself, yet at the same time he is also that which retains the
law’s relation to an outside of itself. This logic is mirrored in the figures of
homo sacer and prisoners of concentration camps who are lawfully banned
from the juridical order. These figures are not simply subjectivated by being
stripped of their status as legal subjects and thus cease to be subjects of law
at all. Instead they are de–subjectivated because they from within law are
excluded from law. They are included as excluded, as Agamben likes to put
it. In this way, law defines what is lawless. Or rather, the sovereign, being
himself beyond law, defines through law what is beyond law.
     Based on this juridical topology, it is possible to define the sovereign
solely in relation to the state of exception. The sovereign not only resides
in the territory of beyond–law, but he is also able to institute spaces and
periods of suspension of law. This is what Agamben in State of Exception
terms force–of–   law.
                      “The state of exception is an anomic space in which
what is at stake is a force of law without law (which should therefore be
written: force–of–  law)”
                        (A b, ). According to Agamben we
see the true and unmediated logic of sovereignty in the state of exception,
namely that the sovereign, because he is a force beyond law, can suspend
the law whenever deemed necessary.
     Thus, sovereignty can be illustrated as a Möbius–band of law and ex-
ception: Law becomes exception becomes law becomes exception, etc.
Even though law and exception are defined in opposition to one another,
they are nevertheless defined in relation to one another — as two sides
of a Möbius–band: never in direct contact, yet ultimately indistinguishable.
Sovereignty defines law from beyond law (thus remaining hors–la–loi),
while at the same time it is defined from within law as that which is beyond
law (thus becoming hors–la–loi). This structure of power expressed within
the logic of sovereignty is consequently what we might call force–of–      law
                                                                              
or state of exception. Consequently, no matter how unlawlike sovereignty
appears, it nevertheless always retains its meaning from its specific relation
to law. We are in other words dealing with a purely legalistic definition of
sovereignty.
   Nicolai von Eggers


    By defining sovereignty in relation to the state of exception, Agamben
essentially follows Carl Schmitt who in Dictatorship defined the modern
conception of sovereignty in relation to the institution of dictatorship. Going
back to the th century, Schmitt identifies dictatorship in the theory of Jean
Bodin as a form of commissary dictatorship in which a commissar is given
certain sovereign–like prerogatives by the sovereign in order to solve a crisis
(S : –). These prerogatives could include direct control of
military units, the right to judge, the right to kill, the right to raise taxes, or
other measures normally belonging exclusively to the sovereign. Further-
more, these prerogatives, whatever they were, were always defined clearly in
terms of temporal and geographical validity, thus retaining the sovereign’s
sovereignty except for small zones of well–defined exceptions. The dictator
is thus a legally defined, exceptional figure with a quasi–sovereign status,
subjected to sovereign power from where he receives both his (sovereign)
powers and certain explicit limitations.
    With the advent of the French Revolution, according to Schmitt’s analysis,
commissary dictatorship was replaced by sovereign dictatorship (S
: ). In sovereign dictatorship, there are no well–defined geograph-
ical, topological or temporal zones of exception since sovereignty itself
takes the form of an exception. During the French Revolution, the existing
politico–legal system disintegrated and was replaced by a revolutionary
government. The revolutionary government (existing in the years –)
was not subject to constitutional law since the respective constitutions of
 and  were suspended. The dictator or the dictatorship is therefore
no longer subject to a sovereign who defines and limits the sovereign pow-
ers of the dictatorship. Instead, it is the dictator himself — in the form of
the revolutionary government — that becomes sovereign and whose rule
consequently takes the form, initially, of an exception with no one but the
dictator — the revolutionary government — to define its geographical and
temporal limitations. Sovereignty is thus unlawful, in the precise sense of
the word, yet at the same time it is that which defines what is lawful and
what is not; what it is that is to be subsumed to law and what it is that is to
be excluded or banned from it.
    According to Schmitt, this figure of the sovereign dictator ultimately stays
with modern constitutional theory through the concept of ‘constituent
power’. In Schmitt’s words: “[sovereign] dictatorship does not appeal to
an existing constitution, but to one that is still to come, [and therefore it]
cannot be eliminated by any opposing constitution” — “this is the meaning
of constituent power” (S : –). In other words, modern
sovereignty is not bound by law as it operates according to the logic of a
state of exception. Nevertheless, it is always defined from within law and
as that which grounds law. Based on these investigations from Dictatorship,
                                                         Reappropriating Sovereignty       


Schmitt formulated the following year his infamous dictum: “Sovereign is
he who decides on the state of exception” (S , ).
   It is this logic of sovereignty that Agamben makes the subject of his cri-
tique. Though the sovereign is identified as hors–la–loi (by both Schmitt and
Agamben), the sovereign is nevertheless always identified in relation to law.
What matters here is that sovereignty is defined directly in relation to law
and that we are therefore dealing with a legalistic definition of sovereignty.


. Sovereignty as basileus

As we have seen, Agamben’s definition of sovereignty is linked to a certain
logic of law. Agamben expands on this argument in Homo Sacer, § “Nomos
Basileus”, which begins in the following manner:

   The principle according to which sovereignty belongs to law, which today seems
   inseparable from our conception of democracy as the legal State [Stato di diritto]
   does not at all eliminate the paradox of sovereignty; indeed it even brings it to the
   most extreme point of its development. (A ,  / , )

    Following the dominant conception of sovereignty in today’s democra-
cies, Agamben links sovereignty intrinsically to law. And Agamben contin-
ues: “Since the most ancient recorded formulation of this principle, Pindar’s
fragment , the sovereignty of law has been situated in a dimension so
dark and ambiguous that is has prompted scholars to speak quite rightly of
an ‘enigma’” (ibid., ). This enigma or paradox of the sovereign’s relation
to law is the one I have presented in the above.
    In order to substantiate his claim about the enigma that penetrates the
sovereign’s relation to law Agamben continues with a discussion of Pindar’s
fragment from which I will only quote the first line: “Nomos ho panton
basileus”. In the English translation of Homo Sacer this reads: “The nomos,
sovereign of all” and thereby follows the translation provided in the foot-
note in the Italian edition “Il nómos di tutti sovrano” underpinning the
connection between sovereignty and law.
    Though it is of course a delicate matter when it comes to ancient texts,
the precise and most likely correct translation of ‘basileus’ is ‘king’ and
not ‘sovereign’. Rendering ‘basileus’ as ‘king’ and not as ‘sovereign’ is sup-
ported by several lexica including, most notably, William Slater’s Lexicon to
Pindar, which gives only one suggested translation ‘basileus’ namely “king”
(Slater ), and the authoritative translations of Pindar’s fragment  such

   . I have not been able to find out whether this translation is Agamben’s own, or whether
Agamben quotes it from an existing Italian translation of Pindar.
      Nicolai von Eggers


as Hugh Lloyd–Jones’ and William Race’s both render nomos ho panton
basileus as “Law, the king of all” (L–J : ; P : ;
my emphasis).
    Agamben, of course, goes on to problematise the translation and, conse-
quently, the understanding of Pindar’s fragment, however what he problema-
tises is the translation of ‘nomos’ as ‘law’ and not ‘basileus’ as ‘sovereign’.
Thus, when Agamben criticizes Hölderlin’s translation of Pindar’s frag-
ment — “Das Gesetz, Von allen der König” — he attacks Hölderlin’s use
of Gesetz, without even mentioning that Hölderlin, in contradistinction to
Agamben, uses the word ‘king’ (König) for ‘basileus’ and not ‘sovereign’. In
the following discussion Agamben therefore writes:

      If Hölderlin (like Schmitt) sees a principle higher than simple law in the nomos
      basileus, nonetheless he is careful to specify that the term ‘sovereign’ refers here
      not to a ‘supreme power’ (höchste Macht) but to ‘the highest ground of knowledge’.
      (A : )


    However, not once does Hölderlin use the word ‘sovereign’ or ‘sover-
eignty’ and it is therefore hard to maintain, as Agamben does, that Hölderlin
is discussing ‘nomos basileus’ in terms of “sovereignty of the nomos [law]”
(A : ; my emphasis). Disregarding the argument Agamben
is making — that to Pindar violence (Bia) and justice (Dike) are not an-
tithetical but rather intertwined elements of ‘nomos’ — the notions of
sovereignty and kingship are completely conflated in Agamben’s argu-
ment. What Hölderlin alludes to with his translation is a particular form of
sovereignty and law (or nomos) understood in relation to the particular form
of sovereignty known as kingship. Kingship which, although may be said
to be a form of sovereignty, is clearly not identifiable with the nature of
sovereignty or sovereignty as such. However, as Agamben gives no argu-
ments for altering Hölderlin’s translation, we can only speculate as to why
he renders ‘basileus’ as ‘sovereign’. Most likely, it seems, it is the influence
of Schmitt that lurks in the background.
    The conflation of kingship and sovereignty returns with a vengeance
when Agamben defines the relation between ‘nomos’ and ‘basileus’. As
Agamben argues convincingly, Pindar has an understanding of ‘nomos’ in
which justice and violence are not antithetical principles, but instead are
two necessarily interconnected principles: without force, justice is impotent,
or, inversely, “the poet [...] defines the sovereignty of the ‘nomos’ by means
of a justification of violence” (A : ). However, when Agamben,
following the above definitions, writes that “the sovereign nomos is the
principle that, joining law and violence, threatens them with indistinction”,
and that Pindar is the “first great thinker of sovereignty”, there is no support
                                                               Reappropriating Sovereignty         


for making such claims and it only holds insofar as one is willing to conflate
kingship with sovereignty (A : ).
    Following a proper reading of Pindar, all that can be legitimately argued is
that although it is perhaps true that in the case of kingship law and violence are
joined and threatened with indistinction, there is no reason to believe that
this is the case for sovereignty as such — which is highly problematic given
that Agamben is allegedly in the midst of excavating the logic of sovereignty
as such. This is not only problematic for Agamben but also for the entire
literature on sovereignty drawing upon his analysis. Of the works I have
consulted on this matter, I have not been able to find a single mentioning
of the fact that the Greek basileus (king) is what Agamben equates with
the logic of sovereignty (C , C  DC ,
J , M  W , W , D ). In other
words, the logic of monarchical sovereignty is, unwittingly, equated with the
logic of sovereignty as such not only by Agamben, but also by those following
his analysis .


. The Logic of basileus in Aristotle’s Politics

In the opening paragraph of Politics, Aristotle makes a distinction between
different forms of powers or rulers each belonging to separate spheres with
separate logics. Aristotle formulates these definitions against other Greek

     . D () and F () have both criticized Agamben for his philologi-
cal/philosophical engagement with the Greek sources and in particular Aristotle in relation to
the distinction between bios and zoe, which they maintain is non–existent (or at least not in the
way Agamben conceives of it). As Finlayson argues, Agamben’s tendentious readings are double
problematic in that they are both suggestive bordering the untenable (and sometimes crossing the
line) and presented as mere philological facts. This is problematic in itself and because “Agamben’s
theory, though based on highly specialist material, is not addressed to scholars and specialists of
Greek philosophy, and thus not aimed at, and not usually ready by, readers who are in a position to
verify his claims” (F : ). Consequently, “[m]any readers will simply take his statements
at face value”, which we have seen is also the case for his reading of Pindar / sovereignty in Greek
thought. Against such criticism, Abbott has argued that what is essential in Agamben’s reading
of the distinction between zoe and bios is “the (more primordial) ontological difference. As such
[Agamben’s] project is based on a properly philosophical (Heideggerian) distinction, rather than a
conceptual divide with a (potentially spurious) basis in an ancient linguistic opposition” (A
: ). Though I agree with Abbott that his is the most loyal way to read Agamben and the one
that will make one most capable of understanding him, Agamben’s way of presenting philosophical
arguments do become extremely problematic, as Finlayson points out when they are reproduced
as philological and/or historical facts. However, Agamben’s tendency of projecting his philosophi-
cal conceptions onto historical material makes it very easy — especially when these readings are
tendentious or downright mistaken — to read his (mis)readings as symptomatic. In the case of his
(mis)reading of Pindar, I will argue that it is symptomatic of his legalistic and Schmittian conception
of sovereignty (which he then projects onto Greek thought). Criticizing his reading of Pindar thus
opens up for a broader critique of his (legalistic) conception of sovereignty.
      Nicolai von Eggers


thinkers who have been prone to conflate separate logics. In Aristotle’s
words,

      [t]hose who think that the nature of the statesman [politikon], the king [basilikon],
      the head of an estate [oikonomikon] and the master [despotikon] are the same, are
      mistaken; they imagine that the difference between these various forms of authority
      is one of greater and smaller numbers, not a difference in kind. (a–)


    The logic of a statesman [politikon] is, as Aristotle makes clear in unam-
biguous terms, different from that of a king [basilikon].
    When we read the rest of the Politics, however, it becomes clear that
matters are a little more complex. Even though the logic of the ‘politikon’
is different from that of a ‘basilikon’, they are, while still being mutually ex-
clusive, nevertheless both expressions of different political orders [politeias]
(a–). This does not mean, however, that they operate according to
the same logic. While the ‘politikon’ and the ‘basilikon’ are both rulers of
political orders, as can be observed empirically, the ‘basilikon’ is neverthe-
less in charge of a depoliticized rule as opposed to the ‘politikon’.
    This is made clear when Aristotle tries to explain the different logics at
work. In case of the ‘basilikon’, Aristotle draws on analogies from the man-
agement of the household [oikonomia], whereas the logic of the ‘politikon’
is far more subtle and needs to be developed on its own terms — hence, an
entire book, Politika, dedicated to this task.
    What is then the logic of ‘basileus’? As is well known, to each of Aristo-
tle’s “good” political orders correspond a “bad” one. In the case of ‘basileus’,
a good kingship, tyranny is its degenerate counterpart. As Aristotle explains,
‘basileian’ (kingship) is a form of monarchy [monarchion] “that aims at the
common advantage” (a). Tyranny, on the other hand, is “monarchy
ruling in the interest of the monarch” (b–). Furthermore, tyranny is
“monarchy exerting despotic power [despotike] over the political commu-
nity” (b–).
    These explanations of the powers exercised by the different types of
monarchs reflect Aristotle’s earlier discussions of ‘oikonomia’, the logic of
household management. ‘Oikonomia’ essentially consists of three types of
relationships: husband–wife, father–children and master–slave. When the
governor of a household appears as a master in relation to his slaves, he
is called ‘despotes’ (b), which, as we have seen, is another word for
the relation between a tyrant and his subjects. As opposed to despotic rule,
the just form of kingly power [arche basilike] corresponds to the logic of a
fathers rule over his children (b). Therefore, as Aristotle puts it, “the
government of a household [oikonomia] is monarchy” (b). The full
quote goes: “oikonomia is monarchy (since every house is governed by a
                                                          Reappropriating Sovereignty         


single ruler), whereas politics [politike] is government [or power: arche] of
men free and equal” (b–). The logic of monarchy, whether ‘basileus’
or tyranny, corresponds to the logic of ‘oikonomia’, whereas politics belongs
to a wholly different order with a separate logic. In other words, for Aristotle,
monarchy (whether basileus og tyranny) presents a depoliticized form of
rule that operates analogously to that of oikonomia, and vice versa. This
form of ‘economic’ rule is contrasted to the political form of rule, politics,
in which government or power deals with men “free and equal”.
    With this in mind, it is unsurprising that Agamben in The Kingdom and the
Glory turns from the logic of sovereignty (or rather, ‘basileus’) to the logic
of ‘oikonomia’. Although Agamben claims that moving from sovereignty
to ‘oikonomia’ marks a new course of research and critique, if we follow
Aristotle, ‘oikonomia’ and ‘basileus’ are from the beginning two similar
forms of rule operating analogously.
    Let us dwell a little on this point. Agamben claims that “the global
arrangement of Western society” is based upon “two broadly speaking
political paradigms, antinomical but functionally related to one another”
(A b: ). These two paradigms — sovereignty and economy (or
administration) — both derive from Christian theology: sovereignty from
political theology and administration from economic theology (A
b: ). Economy and economic theology are thus added to the investiga-
tions on sovereignty from the earlier Homo Sacer books, and turns out to
be perhaps even more decisive for contemporary rule than sovereignty and
political theology were. In any case, what proves to be the consequence of
the dominance of economy and economic theology is the impossibility of
politics:

   [T]he fact that the living being who was created in the image of God in the end
   reveals himself to be capable only of economy, not politics, or, in other words,
   that history is ultimately not a political but an ‘administrative’ and ‘governmental’
   problem, is nothing but a logical consequence of economic theology. [...] The
   eternal life to which Christians lay claim ultimately lies in the paradigm of the oikos,
   not in that of the polis. (A a: )

    Thus, what Agambens finds — and finds problematic — in the economic
paradigm is that it is a depoliticized and oppressive rule of men leaving no
space for the possibility of a political life. The Christian administration of
men is based on the apolitical logic of the oikos (oikonomia) instead of that
of the polis (politics). However, the same could be said about Agamben’s
investigation of sovereignty. ‘Basileus’ is also, to a large extent, based in
the apolitical logic of the oikos, and by equating sovereignty with ‘basileus’
the critique of sovereignty becomes the critique of an economic logic:
a depoliticized rule of men. Though contributing with a wealth of new
     Nicolai von Eggers


material, a new perspective and a series of interesting arguments, there is
great continuity between Agamben’s critique of sovereignty (‘basileus’) and
his critique of economy since, in both cases, we are largely dealing with a
critique of the same depoliticized logic of power.
    As we shall see, Agamben thereby overlooks or disregards what a politi-
cal life might actually look like. For Aristotle, there is a strong connection
between sovereignty (‘kyrion’) and politics, just as there is a strong connec-
tion between kingship and economy. Sovereignty thus seems to hold some
sort of possibility for a political life. By equating sovereignty with ‘basileus’,
however, Agamben forecloses the possibility of seeing in sovereignty any-
thing but a depoliticized rule .


. The Logic of Sovereignty (kyrion)

In order to designate the supreme political power, what we since Bodin
have termed sovereignty, Aristotle employs the word ‘kyrion’. Monarchy,
oligarchy and democracy, the three forms of political orders, are defined as
according to who are sovereign (or supreme) [kyrion] or the supreme power
[kyrion arche]. This supreme power is essentially the control of government,
since “the government [politeuma] is the supreme power [kyrion] in a state
[poleon]” (a), and this power is either in the hands of “a single ruler
or a few or the many” (a), thus giving us respectively monarchy,
oligarchy and democracy.
   However, Aristotle quickly notes that since we have two different but
equally convincing definitions of democracy — one in which it is defined
as sovereignty of the many [kyrion to plethos], and one in which it is the
free who are sovereign [eleutheroi kyrioi] — things are a little more complex
when it comes to the logic of sovereignty than a simply question of quantity
(one, few, many). Aristotle resolves the definition of democracy in contradis-
tinction to oligarchy by stating that “it is a democracy when those who
are free are in the majority and have sovereignty over the central power
or offices [kyrioi tes arches]”, and that, correspondingly, it is “an oligarchy
when the rich and more well born are few and have this” (b–).
By way of this logic, there can be no such thing as a truly monarchical
    . Symptomatic for his depreciation of Aristotle’s Politics and the possibility of finding here a
potential for a political life, Agamben argues in passing that both the politician and the king according
to Aristotle belong to the logic of the ‘polis’ (in contradistinction to the manager of the household
and the master who follow the logic of the ‘oikos’) (A b: ). In other words, the rule of
the politician is not fundamentally different from that of the king in Agamben’s reading of Aristotle.
I would argue that Aristotle’s work is dedicated precisely to the task of distinguishing between kingly
and political rule, and more generally between the logic of politics and all those logics that may
resemble but ultimately do not pertain to the logic of politics.
                                                               Reappropriating Sovereignty        


sovereign, since it is practically impossible for a monarch to occupy all of
the central offices. Therefore, the monarch (‘basileus’), as Aristotle points
out, is not really sovereign [kyrion] (a–). Instead, his rule operates
according to a different logic than that of politics, which, as we have seen,
is one resembling that of ‘oikonomia’. In other words, politics exist only
when there is a government of men free and equal, that is, when those who
are free and equal are sovereign.
    What then is the relation between sovereignty and politics? In order to
answer this question, we should turn to a central passage from Aristotle’s
The Constitution of Athens. In complete agreement with his definition of
‘kyrion’ in Politics, Aristotle gives the following description of the political
consequences of the democrats’ military victory over the army of oligarchs
in  B.C.:

    The people [laos ] made themselves masters of everything [egine monos tou kyriarchos
    ton panton], and directs everything through decrees and jury–courts [dikasteria], in
    which the rulers [exousiastes] are the popular mass [laike maza]. (.)

    Two things must be noted here. First, sovereignty is defined as the
fact that the people — a certain group, namely those who had fought
for democracy in the war [laos] — made themselves masters of everything.
What grounds the political order is civil war, and in this case, the proponents
of democracy, the laos, defeated the oligarchs in a direct confrontation.
The underlying civil struggle of the oligarchic order broke out into the
open, resulting in a civil war in which the very political order that fostered
the civil war broke down and was replaced by a different political order
— a democratic order — created to perpetuate the democratic struggle
against oligarchic and monarchical elements. The government, though
it is of course also an administrational affair, is not simply a question of
administration but is much rather to be seen as an instrument in an ongoing
political struggle.
    Second, and perhaps more important, Aristotle emphasizes the way in
which the democrats administer their supremacy namely through decrees
and jury–courts controlled by the popular masses. In other words, the form
of political administration (decrees and jury–courts) is directly derived from
the form of sovereignty: A democracy cannot be administered in the same
way as a monarchy or an oligarchy. When the people make themselves
masters of everything [kyriarchos], it changes the very nature and form of
public offices [arches] and the very structure of power [arche]. The form of

    . A more literal translation would be ‘the people who had struggled in the war’.
    . Different translations of this passage may be found in A (: ); A ();
and L (: ), all of which I have consulted in providing the present translation.
       Nicolai von Eggers


sovereign power [kyriarchos] directly entails the form of execution of power
[arche]. In the case of democracy, the execution of power takes the form
of jury–courts, popular access to the assembly [ekklesia], appointment of
magistrates by lot, etc. Even though sovereignty also entails some juridical
practices, those juridical practices are structured according to the form
of sovereignty creating and sustaining it. If the sovereign is democratic,
“when those who are free are in the majority and have sovereignty over
government” (b), assemblies and courts will be democratic too. If
the sovereign is democratic, the political institutions will be arenas for
democratic politics. In this way, democratic sovereignty is fundamentally
different from oligarchic and monarchic forms of rule in the way that it
opens a space for politics and the possibility for a political life.
    Unlike that of Schmitt and Agamben, Aristotle’s definition of sovereignty
is thus ultimately political rather than juridical: It is the outcome of the
political struggle that defines the political nature of the sovereign and thus
forms the basis of the political system. Whatever its juridical implications,
for Aristotle, sovereignty is defined by its political foundation and what
kind of politics it makes possible — that is, by the outcome of the political
struggle preceding it and by the kind of political system it naturally entails.
Politics and political struggle are thus intrinsically linked to the struggle for
sovereignty and the exercise of it.


. Agamben’s Reading of kyrion

Agamben is not completely unaware of Aristotle’s concept of kyrion. Though
he does not refer to it in any of his books, he discusses it briefly in his short
note on democracy. Here he writes:

      In his Politics, Aristotle states his intention to itemize and analyze the different
      ‘constitutions’ or ‘forms of constitution’ (politeiai): ‘Since politeia and politeuma
      signify the same thing, and since the politeuma is the supreme (kyrion) power in a city,
      it necessarily follows that the supreme power resides either with an individual, with
      a few, or with many’ (Politics aff ). [...] A more faithful translation would retain
      the closeness between politeia (political activity) and politeuma (the resulting political
      outcome), but apart from that, it is clear that the essential problem with this passage
      lies in Aristotle’s attempt to get rid of the amphibology [of politeia–politeuma] by
      using the term kyrion. With a bit of wrenching, the passage can be paraphrased in
      modern terms as follows: the constituent power (politeia) and the constituted power
      (politeuma) bind themselves together into a sovereign (kyrion) power, which appears
      to be that which holds together the two sides of politics. (A a: f )

   According to Agamben, the primary function of Aristotle’s concept
‘kyrion’ is to gloss over the split between ‘politeia’ (what Agamben trans-
                                                Reappropriating Sovereignty   


lates as constituent power) and ‘politeuma’ (government or constituted
power). Sovereignty is to be understood as that which arises when the con-
stituent power of a given group, such as the Third Estate during the French
Revolution, is institutionalized through a constitution and thereby creates
for itself a government (constituted power). Thus, Agamben claims that
‘politeia’ and ‘politeuma’ do not signify the same thing and that Aristotle
attempts to “get rid of the amphibology” of government or political activity,
constituted power and constituent power, by claiming that it is essentially
the same thing.
    However, according to Agamben’s perception of the legal paradox of
sovereignty, because constituent power [politieia] and constituted power
[politeuma] are not the same thing, sovereignty [kyrion] is introduced as
a unifying concept that is supposed to hold together and gloss over the
fundamental fissure that defines any legal order. In Agamben’s words, “with
Aristotle, sovereignty, that which is kyrion or supreme, is [...] the indissol-
uble link between constitution and government” (A a: ). The
function of ‘kyrion’, if we follow Agamben, is to unify two ultimately in-
compatible phenomena: constituent power that by definition resides outside
of law from where it constitutes law, and constituted power that by definition
resides within law from where it executes law. By unifying these two in-
compatible actions, constituting and executing law, in the figure of ‘kyrion’
or sovereignty, Aristotle both “dramatizes and heals over” the fundamental
fissure of politics (A a: ). In Agamben’s interpretation, ‘kyrion’
thus corresponds perfectly well to the logic of sovereignty and in this way
also to the figure of ‘basileus’, which as we saw earlier was the paradigmatic
case in Agamben’s exposition of the logic of sovereignty.
    There is no reason, however, that we should follow Agamben’s reading.
As I have already shown, Aristotle distinguishes very clearly between the
logic of ‘basileus’ and the logic of ‘kyrion’. What allows Agamben to sub-
sume ‘kyrion’ to what he perceives to be the logic of sovereignty (i.e. the
logic of ‘basileus’) is another extremely tendentious reading, this time of
Aristotle. To argue that ‘politeia’ and ‘politeuma’ are dissimilar in the way
Agamben argues is not tenable. ‘Politeia’ does not mean “political activity”
and definitely also not “constituent power”, as Agamben claims, but rather
‘political order’ or ‘conditions of citizenship’, ‘government’ or perhaps even
‘constitution’. ‘Politeia’ therefore does not refer to what we might call con-
stituent power but rather to what we would call constituted or executive
power. Consequently, ‘kyrion’ is not introduced to gloss over a split between
constituent and constituted power since we are — in the cases of ‘politeia’
and ‘politeuma’ in question — simply dealing with constituted power.
    If we were to look for an Aristotelian concept corresponding to con-
stituent power, it would be more obvious to locate it with ‘kyrion’ or
      Nicolai von Eggers


‘kyriarchos’ (supreme power). As we have seen in Aristotle’s discussion
of the outcome of the civil war, the people [laos] made themselves mas-
ters of everything [kyriarchos ton panton] and subsequently constituted a
democratic political order. In other words, the people won the struggle and
thereby took constituent power [kyriarchos] and with this power they con-
stituted a new political order [politeia]. When Aristotle argues that “politeia
and politeuma signify the same thing” and that “the politeuma is the supreme
(kyrion) power in a city”, it is because, as we have seen, government and
public offices are designed to perpetuate the rule and logic of those who
hold constituent power (in the case of democracy: the people) (a–).
‘Kyrion’, constituent power, is both what grounds and what is perpetuated
in a given political order. Because he does not define sovereignty in relation to
law but in relation to politics, there is no paradox or fissure in Aristotle’s argu-
ment. The people won a political struggle (or a military struggle which was
based on genuine political disagreement) and they try to ensure hegemony
through a juridical system subsumed their political logic and interests. If
there is, as Agamben claims, an “indissoluble link between constitution and
government” in the writings of Aristotle, this does not mean that we are
dealing with a paradox but much rather that we are dealing with politics
and political struggle in both cases.
    Agamben’s inability to appreciate Aristotle’s argument has great conse-
quences for his evaluation of democracy. In the opening paragraph of his
note on democracy, Agamben writes:

      Of what do we speak when we speak of democracy? What is the underlying
      rationale? [...] It might mean one of two different things: a way of constituting
      the body politic (in which case we are talking about political law) or a technique
      of governing (in which case our horizon is that of administrative practice). To
      put it another way, democracy designates both the form through which power is
      legitimated and the manner in which it is exercised. (A a: )

    Agamben is not able to find any emancipatory potential in the concept
of democracy because he all too quickly reduces it to either law or admin-
istration of law. However, as I have just shown, democracy does not, as
Agamben claims, either belong to political law or to administrative practice.
This is a false dichotomy, which resides only within the sphere of a legalistic
and monarchical conception of sovereignty. Instead, there is a third possi-
bility: Following Aristotle, we should define democracy in relation to both
the struggle of the people against the oligarchs and to the way in which a
sovereign democratic order would administrate its rule in a democratic way.
In this way, democracy appears not simply as another concept to be aban-
doned but rather as an unfulfilled promise to be satisfied, or perhaps rather,
appropriated, if one wishes to establish the possibility of a political life.
                                                              Reappropriating Sovereignty        


. The French Revolution and the Legacy of Sovereignty

The unfulfilled promises of democracy take us back to the French Revolu-
tion. As we have just seen, Agamben quickly translates Aristotle’s political
vocabulary into the vocabulary of the French Revolution by using the dis-
tinction, coined by abbé Sieyès, between constituent and constituted power
(S  and ). In fact, although never thoroughly analyzed, the
French Revolution is a constant point of reference in Agamben’s writings,
such as in Homo Sacer, State of Exception, “What is a People?” and “For a
Theory of Destituent Power”. In all cases, the French Revolution is nega-
tively assessed and presented as the moment in history when sovereignty
became all–encompassing and when the state of exception became the
paradigm of the modern political order. Thus, the French Revolution marks
for Agamben, as it did for Schmitt, the breakthrough of modern politics:
The logic of sovereignty is fused with the all–embracing nature of popular
politics, thus allowing the state of exception, the logic of including exclu-
sion, of effectiveness and duty — along with all the other elements of the
logic of sovereignty that Agamben criticizes — to assert themselves on a
much grander scale, namely on a totalitarian scale in which everything is
subsumed to the dominant political logic .
   Following Schmitt’s analysis of the transition to sovereign dictatorship,
Agamben argues that the French Revolution was responsible for knotting
together state violence and political struggles for constituent power in a
“vicious spiral”:

    The Security paradigm implies that each dissension, each more or less violent
    attempt to overthrow its order, becomes an opportunity to govern them in a
    profitable direction. This is evident in the dialectics which binds tightly together
    terrorism and State in an endless vicious spiral. Starting with the French revolution,
    the political tradition of modernity has conceived of radical changes in the form of
    a revolutionary process that acts as the pouvoir constituant, the ‘constituent power’
    of a new institutional order. I think that we have to abandon this paradigm and
    try to think something as a puissance destituante, a purely ‘destituent power’, that
    cannot be captured in the spiral of security. (A a)

   Because of its necessary connection to state violence or state terror,
the logic of constituent power, Agamben argues, should be completely
abandoned and replaced with a power to destitute or ‘destituent power’.
Destituent power would in other words essentially consist in the power to

     . Again and again, and in the tradition of the ‘totalitarian’ interpretation of the French Rev-
olution from Hannah Arendt and François Furet, Agamben draws parallels between the French
Revolution and the Third Reich. Needless to say, this seriously distorts any attempts of a serious
interpretation of the French Revolution and its democratic and emancipatory potential.
     Nicolai von Eggers


abandon everything from political struggles to administration and the state.
    In this interpretation of the French Revolution, Agamben once again con-
flates a series of heterogeneous elements, which leads him to abandoning
constituent power, political struggles and revolutionary change altogether.
Following Schmitt who saw reflected in the concept of constituent power
the advent of sovereign dictatorship (implicating revolutionary change, the
revolutionary government and the state terror), Agamben construes the
French Revolution, the security paradigm, terrorism and the state, revolu-
tionary change, political struggles and constituent power as parts of the
same undifferentiated totality: the juridical logic of sovereignty.
    Against such an undifferentiated understanding of the struggles of the
French Revolution, we should distinguish sharply between two different
understandings of constituent power and of sovereignty amongst the French
Revolutionaries. The great French jurist Raymond Carré de Malberg has
shown how, when monarchy was abandoned /, there were two sepa-
rate and contesting doctrines of sovereignty struggling to replace monarchy:
National sovereignty and popular sovereignty (where national sovereignty cor-
responds to the logic of sovereignty as ‘basileus’ and popular sovereignty
to that of ‘kyrion’) (C  M : –). National sovereignty
resides essentially with the state and is defined as that which allows the state to
operate as a rational and deliberative personification of the nation, as opposed
to the irrational and direct personal rule of royal sovereignty. The doctrine of
popular sovereignty on the other hand is defined as that form of sovereignty in
which the people subsume the state to their sovereign will. In other words,
national sovereignty subsumes its subjects to the reason of the state, whereas
popular sovereignty subsumes the state to the will of the people.
    When, following the logic of national sovereignty, the executive mem-
bers of the Constituent Assembly and Constitution Committee in 
“gave” the French nation a constitution, they were not acting on behalf of
the people, who were not seen to hold sovereignty as such, but on behalf
of the state. “The immensely important work of the Constituent consisted
in separating the state from the royal person, and to achieve this the Con-
stituent made the nation intervene, which it opposes to the king as the true
constitutive element of the state and consequently as the sole proprietor
of sovereign power” (C  M : ). According to the doc-
trine of national sovereignty it is thus the executives, the administrators
of the state, who can legitimately exercise sovereign power. One of the
most famous proponents of this doctrine was Sieyès who argued that it

    . Carré de Malberg, who takes the position of national sovereignty, uses the word “give”
(donner) underlining the Constitution being a kind of gift (don) to the people from the executives of
the state.
                                                 Reappropriating Sovereignty   


was not the people — since they were scattered individuals rather than
an assembled body (S : ) — that were sovereign, but that it was
rather the administrators of the National Assembly who could legitimately
exercise “the functions of the constituent power.” (S : )
    The doctrine of national sovereignty thus corresponds nicely to the kind
of logic of sovereignty that Agamben is criticizing. It is legalistic and it
reduces political questions to matters of administration and thus reduces
democracy and popular influence in politics to acts of acclamation of the
state apparatus and its executives.
    The logic of popular sovereignty, however, as pointed out by Carré de
Malberg, differs significantly from that of national sovereignty. We find one
of the most elaborate theorizations of this doctrine in Jean Varlet’s Project
for a Special and Imperative Mandate (). Here, the power of the people is
defined as a sovereign right that “returned to its source” in  when the
political order was overthrown (V : ). Popular sovereignty is
inalienable and can neither be ”delegated nor represented”, and the deputies
are therefore “not representatives but mandataries”, “instruments of the
people” who have no mandate to do anything other than what the people
has commanded of them (V : ). As Varlet asks rhetorically: ”Do
you think we have exercised our sovereignty completely, when we have
done nothing but electing those who are called deputies of the National
Convention?” (V : ). The state, in other words, is perceived by
Varlet as an instrument to serve the sovereign people, its needs and wishes.
    Against national sovereignty, Varlet thus posits a doctrine of popular
sovereignty in which the people have the right to call back their mandataries,
to punish them for treason if they disobey and ultimately to overthrow the
entire system whenever it does not serve the sovereign interest of the people
(such as equal rights to nutrition, education and political participation on
all levels) (V : ). Furthermore, the people have the right to
check each law and decree, to discuss politics, and to elect and be elected (as
mandataries and not as representatives) in what Varlet calls “first assemblies”.
These assemblies, it must be noted, were not simply of Varlet’s imagination
but existed in the form of the local Civic Committees that governed each
of Paris’  sections and which were particularly influential in the years
–. As has been shown in numerous works, the sections were hubs for
a vibrant and democratic political culture where the locals met to discuss
politics, to draw up petitions, to distribute foodstuffs and organize defense,
to organize demonstrations and downright revolutions as in the case of 
August  (see S , S , G  and A ).
The political life of the sections was no small part of the French Revolution.
Aside from the diffusion of these democratic ideas into large parts of society,
including the  Constitution, hundreds of demonstrations with hundreds
   Nicolai von Eggers


of thousands of participants were organized in this way (A ).
Furthermore, the doctrine of popular sovereignty not only proposed a
much more democratic organization of society. The way in which the
struggles of the French revolutionary democrats were organized was itself
democratic with participation, responsibility and fraternity as key elements
(S , A ). The radical revolutionaries thus embodied
a democratic political life organized in a struggle for popular sovereignty
and against national sovereignty and the sovereignty of the state and its
executives.
    What we see in the theory of Varlet and the political practices of the rad-
ical French revolutionaries is thus a different understanding of sovereignty
than that of national sovereignty — one that corresponds to Aristotle’s defi-
nitions. The radical revolutionaries fought together against the oligarchs
(proponents of national sovereignty) in order to create a political order in
which the political offices would be occupied by the people — any given
member of it — for the people. Their actual practice, their organization
and their political theory all attest to a promise of a different political or-
der in which the French radicals, like the democrats of  BC, would
have perpetuated their sovereign rule through a genuinely democratic sys-
tem, which would allow for a democratic political life. As with Aristotle’s
democrats, the radical revolutionaries conceptualized and practiced popular
sovereignty both as a political struggle for democratic hegemony against oli-
garchic hegemony and as that which would ground a genuinely democratic
political order.
    Because of his conception of sovereignty and the interrelated strategy
of abandonment, Agamben is either unaware of this current of radical
democrats or he simply glosses them over in silence. According to Agamben,
as we have seen, the French Revolution proves simply that “each dissension,
each more or less violent attempt to overthrow [the existing] order, becomes
an opportunity to govern them in a profitable direction” (a). Dissentious
engagement becomes part of a “dialectics which binds together terrorism
and the State”, a “spiral of security” in which resistance only contributes in
tightening the apolitical stranglehold of contemporary societies. Actually
existing democratic politics, such as that of the French revolutionaries, are
ignored as sovereignty is understood simply as apolitical administration, as
‘basileus’, rather than as the popular political struggle for democracy and
a potentially democratic way of governing. However, as Aristotle reminds
us, when the people become victorious, they will make themselves masters
of everything and perpetuate their rule with democratic institutions that
leaves no room for a monarchical and apolitical rule of society. That is, they
will change the nature of sovereignty.
                                                 Reappropriating Sovereignty   


Conclusion

As I have argued in this article, Agamben operates with a monarchical and
legalistic conception of sovereignty (as can be seen from his symptomatic
(mis)reading of Pindar), which draws heavily on Carl Schmitt, and which
makes Agamben — and his analytical apparatus — blind towards a political
and democratic conception of sovereignty as well as the emancipatory po-
tential of political struggles. As a consequence, Agamben’s definition of a
strategy to achieve the possibility of a political life, democracy, becomes ex-
tremely abstract and takes the form of abstention from the political struggle for
sovereignty. Because of the supposedly inherently apolitical and non–democratic
nature of sovereignty, it has to be abandoned if we are to emancipate ourselves
and make room for democracy. Thus, Agamben’s analysis of sovereignty is
intrinsically connected to his strategy of abandonment and vice versa.
    Agamben is nevertheless quite optimistic about abandoning sovereignty,
as Agamben himself, but also others, have pointed out (A b,
P , W , A ). As these writers emphasize,
Agamben is determined to find “possibilities of redemption within the very
same space where the logic of sovereignty operates” (Prozorov : ).
Sovereignty is not itself something which produces redemption (emancipa-
tion), but what it produces should nevertheless be invested with emancipa-
tory hope. Thus, “Agamben deploys the characteristic move of finding the
possibility of redemption in the conditions of utmost hopelessness and de-
spair” (P : ). However, the potential for redemption lies not
so much with the persons subjected to the utmost hopelessness and despair
— such as the ‘homo sacer’ or the ‘Muselmann’ of the concentration camps
— but rather in the fact that becoming aware of sovereignty’s production of
bare life points towards a non–identitarian community in which being is
“whatever–being” (A , P : ; A : ff ).
From here, apparently, it is only a short step to achieve emancipation: “One
must decide to subtract oneself from the biopolitical apparatus, to ‘play with
the law’, to profane the sacred, etc.” (P : ).
    Aside from its voluntaristic and individualist premises, this strategy raises
at least two questions: How exactly does one subtract oneself from the
biopolitical apparatus and play with the law? What does ‘playing with the
law’ even mean in a political (rather than a metaphysical) sense? The only
example Agamben can think of (apart from children playing with toys and
examples from literature such as Bartleby) is Franciscan monks — and even
Agamben admits that they ultimately failed in their attempts (A
b). To put it differently, the dominant order does not care whether
Bartleby ‘prefers not to’; as long as he ultimately does what he is told, the
dominant order will be just fine. Should Bartleby, however, no longer simply
     Nicolai von Eggers


prefer but demand not to, he will quickly meet repression and be caught up
in the old game of engaged political struggle for the right ‘not to’. “The
pharaoh does not let the Jews flee in peace” (H  N : f ),
and as Mikkel Flohr has put it in relation to Agamben’s hope for an exodus
from sovereignty: “This strategy [of exodus] requires active and potentially
violent resistance” (Flohr : ) .
    However, according to Agamben, “each dissension, each more or less vio-
lent attempt to overthrow its order, becomes an opportunity to govern them
in a profitable direction” (A a), and the strategy of abandonment
is quickly faced with a paradox — although it is a paradox it seems unwilling
to face directly since it involves the political dimensions of sovereignty. In this
way, the strategy of abandonment is “anti–strategic insofar as it explicitly re-
nounces any involvement” because “there is literally nothing in our tradition
that we can rely on as a foundation for political transformation” (P
: ). The reasons for embracing this anti–strategy — renouncement of
involvement — rests on the questionable diagnosis that “the contemporary
biopolitical apparatus prepares its self–destruction” (P : ),
and in the final analysis, the supposed self–destruction of the biopolitical
apparatus seems to be the basis of Agamben’s and the Agambenian optimism.
If, however, the biopolitical apparatus is not in the process of self–destructing
(as I believe is questionable), the strategy of abandonment would be not only
hard to maintain, as already argued, but also downright counterproductive .
Thus, instead of dreaming of the possibility of a political life (democracy) in
terms of a “life over which sovereignty and right no longer have any hold”
(A : ), that is, by way of abandoning sovereignty, maybe we
should simply accept and engage with the political dimension of sovereignty.
This would mean reappropriating sovereignty for a democratic politics.


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