I'm quietly boggling at the big empty spaces on Schmitt's map - Here Be Subhumans... I know it's considered a bit gauche to call Schmitt a Nazi, but really - for a C20 writer there's no excuse for that degree of investment in a racially hierarchised world. Even Kant - no anti-imperialist - argued that humans have to live in society because the world is round - i.e. the further you go from your own community, the closer you get to someone else's.
Philosophically, what intrigues me is the connection between national subjecthood and imperialism. It's double Hobbes - first the nation becomes a nation by constituting itself out of the multitude, then it becomes a nation among others by contrasting itself with the colonial multitude. (The antinomy over 'free space' here - outside the law, but constituted as such by the law - reminds me very strongly of Hobbes.)
In a sense, despite being Schmitt's most scholarly work, I think this is the one which most displays his Nazi tendencies (outside of those where he explicitly condemns the Jews etc.). This is because it makes every positive thing he has said (the kind of 'realist' stuff about restraint in war, about states recognising each other as equal etc.) dependent on racialised imperial subjagation. This isn't something I've seen people address very much, but it seems to me this book really means that something like the Concept of the Political has to be re-assessed. The degree of cognitive dissonance Schmitt seems to show on this is amazing; there's a quote from Theory of the Partisan which I find very telling:
"[W]ith that bracketing imposed on war, European humanity would have achieved something extraordinary: the rejection of the criminalization of the opponent, i.e., the relativization of enmity, denying the existence of absolute enmity. That was really extraordinary, something incredibly human, to bring men to the point of rejecting the discrimination and denigration of their enemy."
I mean, this is juxtaposed to his nonchalance at the exclusion of whole peoples in this.
On Hobbes, yes, I agree absolutely that there are resonances. Although, as I noted previously, I think Hobbes is more rigorous and consistent in what he does.
I'm digging the turn into Schmitt, Rob. What is also interesting is how he always seems to conceive of 'space' as having a territorial component - whether that is the land, sea or air - from what I remember. In other words, there is always something 'out there' that needs to be found, and conquered, and his fear is that when all that is used up, freedom will fall apart into some internalized warring and re-conquest of already claimed space (think of his use of Weber in the beginning). Maybe an interesting question would be about what is the actual articulation of this internationalized threat? How would it manifest itself for Schmitt and by whom?
I could see the answer being some stiffling bureaucratic regime, what he'd probably see as the collectivist state, though really the Nazis were themselves if anything the expression of liberalism's drive for regimes/orders. But I could imagine Schmitt seeing the danger coming from other angles or taking a different nature of attack. Any ideas?
Whatever the case, some great blogs, and kudos for the China link in earlier blog.
John
I think you're absolutely right on space, and it's one of the things I forgot to flag up (owing to the loss of my beloved notebook). So, whilst to some degree I did flag up the issue with 'free' space, I think it is correct to go further and problematise Schmitt's whole perspective as resting on a notion of 'territorial' space. This is where I think a turn to Marxist geography would be useful, inasmuch as it recognises space as constituted and structured by social relaitons.
This also lets us be a little less pessimistic than Schmitt about proecptive for social change etc.
In terms of 'what sort of threat' I always wonder about this. I actually think that for Schmitt the threat would not so much be about internal political regimes, as external claims of acting in the name of humanity etc.
Two thoughts. First about Schmitt's fears. I have a feeling that he was most fearful of some form of mass effort that would collectively organize around political machine - hence, his fear of bureaucracy, which is code for fear of the 'masses', which in turn is fear for any sort of progressive redistribution effort/politics, and helps explain his desire for a 'charismatic' figure. I don't know; it's a stretch. Whatever the case, I think maybe the main thing I get from Schmitt is the need to have a politics that takes a confessional stance and states the political goal/stakes (friend/enemy of sorts), which is itself always a politically organized act - in other words, Schmitt reminds us that politics don't 'just happen', that the system requires hard and regular choices by somebody, and that this is a matter of political organization.
Second, I'm with you about a more optomistic/non-territorial reading of 'space' as a way past Schmitt. In fact, we could pick up Lacan/Badiou (playing around with Hegel and Freud) who emphasize the space of the vanishing desire - 'the real', etcetera... Badiou has a great chapter in relation to Marxism in this context in Theory of the Subject (Part III: Lack and Destruction).
Great that the blog is happening more often again. 
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