state of exception
English
Etymology
Calque of German Ausnahmezustand, primarily as used by the German jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt; popularised in English by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben in the 1990s–2000s.
Noun
state of exception (plural states of exception)
- (law, philosophy) A condition in which ordinary laws or norms have been suspended by a political authority.
- 2006, Arthur Versluis, The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism, page 127:
- Out of such rhetoric emerged an American state of exception, and with it, the disturbing outlines of inquisitorial behavior.
- 2010, Flora Sapio, Sovereign Power and the Law in China, page 252:
- Regardless of how we conceive of them, rights are just abstract entitlements that, given a state of exception, can be suspended at will by the very same states that profess a belief in the universality and inalienability of these rights!
- 2017, Martin J. Murray, The Urbanism of Exception: The Dynamics of Global City Building in the Twenty-First Century, page 311:
- The progressive normalization of the state of exception has eroded rule-bound procedures that give substance to conventional regulatory regimes.
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Related terms
- state of emergency
- state of siege
Translations
suspension of ordinary laws
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