Pill Pod 217 - Gaza vs. The United States of Exception: Agamben's Homo Sacer

Pill pod discuss the public media representations of Epstein and Gaza before a seamless transition into a discussion of Giorgio Agamben's concepts of 1) Sovereignty 2) Bare Life and 3) States of Exception.

The FULL OMNIBUS edition of homo sacer is here, but the sections are also available separately.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Cruise Back Together.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
The Cruise Back Together, Hills has returned, except for.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Diego, who is he goes he's taking over the world.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
But he's a grifter for bricks.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Is bricks a good grift though?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
I mean not, No, it's not. It's not.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
It's like grifting for the Canadian government. Even if you do,
what are you really winning.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I mean, there's a potential for it to be a
good grift, but only if you're accepting money on low
ki and I definitely don't think Diego is doing that.
I would never claim such a thing.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Yeah, the good grifts are Russia and Israel, right, Russia.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Could be a good grift if you're gonna money from them,
and China too. I mean, China pays people to stay
shit online.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I'm sure Russia's part of bricks anyway, Why not?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
I can't imagine they don't. But you know, we could
get on hey that I wouldn't mind that shill.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
That hitting on the payroll of the Chinese payroll. That
would be a that might be a conflict of interest.
We give pure philosophy. Uh, and that would corrupt our,
That would that would corrupt the sacredness of the of
the podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
That's how we started. That was so yesterday. I'm we've
been willing to sell out, we've been coasting.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Everything has changed.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
We must keep it pure. Everything has to stay pure
and untainted by bricks bricks bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So what a what a week of news man Epstein,
Net and Yahoo going on one of the bro podcasts.
It's like a prank. Oh yeah, I'm not an expert
on who any of these people are, but you know,
everyone's time.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I never heard of those guys, the Nelk Boys, I
think they're called. I'd never heard of them. There's like
a whole bro podcast feed. I guess I did watch
some of it. I don't know if you guys had
a chance to. But it was hilariously softball questions, hilariously
like like very mediocre to low i Q bros being
confronted with like with like to be with to to

(02:00):
give to give credit where credit is due to like
Net Yahoo, who is like a master of state craft,
who like knows how to manipulate people and knows how
to answer questions and and like keep the conversation on
irrelevant things, just getting circles run around them.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Well, they were like, hey, so why are you starving?
Gaza and he's like, well, we're not starving Gaza. Hamas
is starving Gaza. And they're like, oh, okay, exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
They're attacking themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Why are you bombing civilians. We're not bombing civilians. Hamas
is bombing.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Oh they're firing bombs up into the air, and they're
just coming back down on themselves. They're bombing themselves.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
They're bombing themselves. Stop hitting yourself. Sto hitting.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
They're just starving themselves. Yeah, okay, that's a good that's
really convincing.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
It's pretty amazing. How like how a lot of people
who I would say like lean right are even like
kind of off the Israel train, you know, Like I
tend to listen to Piers Morgan because I hate myself.
It's like the Jerry Springer of like political debates of like.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Politically Piers Morgan's come around.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Oh Piers Morgan, That's what I'm saying. He's like, he's
like hardcore. He's had he's had a bunch of like
Israeli like ministers and like the ambassador from Israel to
like the UK, and he just hammers the shit of them.
For like his main points just tend to be like
the proportionality. But then also his big thing I guess,
being from a journalistic background, is like, okay, like all

(03:26):
this stuff you're saying, like maybe it's true, but you're
also not letting journalists in because you say it's for
their safety, So like, why don't you at least let
journalists go in to verify what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Yeah, for so long he was like, maybe we shouldn't
call it a genocide. Now he's just like.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Oh, he's straight up calling it suggests.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Like yeah, so he's come right around. He was a
big holdout on that. Yeah, even him, he finally he
finally caved. He was doing his balanced debate thing for
so long. Then he's just like fuck it, the how
much longer is it going to take for everyone to
just accept it?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
I mean he's still so unhinged on so many things,
but at least on this he's just like, well, I
just can't really like deny this. This is absurd.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Well, that is the thing about the week is there's
the two issues that right media and left media both
take the same side on, which is the Epstein stuff,
Yeah Israel stuff, both for different reasons, right.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, both I would say especially Yeah, definitely both for
different reasons, because I would say, like on the Epstein thing,
I mean my read of it is like I don't
know that like most of the left cared that much
about it, like at least not in the obsessive.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Way, not the not the QAnon way, but like not
the QAnon way.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
But they were just like, yeah, like that seems kind
of Like I would say, the left position was like
it does seem weird how he died, but like and
like maybe it'd be nice to have more information, but like, ultimately,
I don't know if I really heard that many caring
that much about it, but Mega was all about it,
And now I would say the left is enthusiastic about it,
and like mostly because it's like, you know, funny to

(04:56):
score these flops.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Even the mainstream is into it because it's anti.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
It's emblematic, it's the conspiracy of our age.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
But why why is this guy the president who's the
master of manipulation? He's acting so so guilty.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Oh so surprisingly incompetent. At Yeah, you think this guy, oh,
he's such a master of like public relations, public image,
and then he just completely fucks himself by being like
there's nothing to see here. You know that we're not
going to release the files and there's nothing to see here,
and you should all stop talking about it, really and

(05:32):
just move on. And he's like now he's now he
looks like he's part of the whole cover up and
it's ridiculous. How did he not see that?

Speaker 2 (05:40):
He's been weird about it from the beginning, Like if
you go.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
He campaigned on the promise of released the files, like
that was a major talking point, and now it's.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Like, okay, so I would say I would slightly correct you.
I would actually say that, like if you actually go
back and look at what he said. He's always been
suspiciously shifty on it. But it's his It's the people
around him him, like the crazy mega people who have
been really like tooting the horn of like we'll release Epstein,
Like it's the people around him. But if you go
back and look at the interview from like Fox News

(06:10):
from a while ago, when they're asking him like would
you release the Kennedys file, yes, would you release the
the Martin Luther King file? Yes? And then would you
release Epstein? And it was cut initially to just say
like yes, But if you watch the uncut version, he's like,
h yeah, he's like although with Epstein like less so
less so because there's a lot of phony stuff in there,
Like that's literally what he said way back in the

(06:31):
uncut version. So like he's known he was in it
for a long time and has always been suspiciously shifty
on it. But obviously he wanted to ride that mega
bull all the way to the White House, so he
just like let the people around him, Pam Bondi and
all and like you know, Bongino and all these fucking
mega nutcases to just be like we're for sure gonna
release it. And then he was like, yeah, I guess,

(06:53):
but like you but like if you go back and
you like read between the lines for a long time,
like I don't even think it's just that interview. I
think in other ones he's kind of said, well, there's
like some phony stuff in there, so I don't want
to hurt people's reputation, and like who was who is
whose reputation does he care about other than his own?
So when he says like, like there's other people that
I wouldn't want to ruin, he's talking about himself, like
there's no one else that heres about it.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
That's true, it has to be. There's something, there is
something hidden, But it's very this is a metaphysical question.
It's very funny. It's an absurdity, like someone spinning spinning
plates in a cloud of fog, a sy up FuG
because look, what even is the Epstein file? Is this
thing real? Is this an an FBI folder? And similar

(07:36):
is the client list? What is this? Is this real?
Is this something that was on his computer? Or is
it just a list of people that he worked with?
And like, don't isn't that already public? Don't we already
know that? And then the Trump people say that, they say, yes,
the Epstein files do exist, we have them on the desk,
but they're fake because Obama and Komy made them. And

(08:00):
then they go back on that and say, no, there aren't.
There aren't the Epstein files. So do these things exist?
Is Trump in them? Did Obama make them? And on
top of all that, like, there's no surprise that Trump
was friends with Epstein. Everybody has known that for years decades.

(08:20):
So I don't know what is being hidden that is
not that is not known, and who's being surprised and
why is his why are his followers suddenly turning on
him because like, what does he have to be defensive
about except whatever the thing is that he's hiding, because
the QAnon had that. The QAnon people already had an
explanation for this was that he's a white hat amid

(08:44):
all the pedophiles in the swamp so that he could
do a secret war on them later. So, yes, we
are all confused. It's a pleasurable confusion of court intrigue.
What's new about this? I'm not sure what exists? Is
the world even real?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
And Epstein got that sweetheart deal in two thousand and
five or something right when he initially got caught for it,
and he ended up getting like a crazy sweetheart deal
even though there was like tons of evidence that he
was He had to go to jail like four hours, yeah, yeah,
like four hours a day. And the guy and like
the the attorney, the government attorney who prosecuted him, who
like got the sweetheart deal was this guy I'm forgetting

(09:21):
his name, but he was in the first Trump administration. No, no,
not Bill Barr. It was someone else. It was like
he was like not he was like a kind of
mid level like assistant director or assistant deputy director of
like something in the Trump administration, a Costa Acosta. That's it. Acosta.
Acosta was in the first Trump administration but was like
friends with Trump and he's the guy who like arranged

(09:42):
that crazy deal that that Epstein should have never gotten.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
So too legal system.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, jeez, what we talked about before, our theoretical evaluation
of the fascism, This is coming from the repressed sexual classes.
It's like everyone's shocked, or at least the supporters, the
fascist supporters are shocked that this guy's a sexual deviate

(10:07):
when we're like, well, duh, that's his thing that was
just repressed out of their imagination until right now. Now
it matters. It's very interesting to see the psychoscape of
the right wing.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
It's fascin I mean, there's clips there's clips of Trump
on Howard Stern when Howard Stern like in like the
late nineties or early two thousands, and Howard Stern's like, oh,
like he's like, do you and you know, do you
go for like twenty year old women. He's like, oh yeah,
He's like only and then he's like and then he's
like what about He's like how young. He's like he's
like he's like the younger, the better. And then and
literally he's like kind of like joking with Howard Stern,

(10:41):
but then he's literally what he says is his limit
when he's like, well, he's like, you know, twelve is
like obviously like a child's like, I'm not gonna go
for well.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Donald Trump is still one of.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
The Yes, there's an old Howard Stern clip where he's
he's kind of joking around with him, but he liter
but he literally says his limit is like twelve.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Oh, everyone's call the footage now too. That's the other thing,
Like people were relatively have forgotten about all the Epstein
stuff until lately, until Trump shot himself in the foot.
With all this stuff he's done. Now everyone's going back
to all the footage again and combing through it all
and trying to find new stuff. And it's just amazing,
you know, speaking of psychoscapes as a Canadian observer, this

(11:22):
is just amazing. You know. Obviously politicians will say things
to get into power, and then they won't do them.
We're going to release the files or look into it more,
and then he tries to sweep it under the rug.
It's just funny that the Americans, that's where they draw
the line, like you got to release those files. You
can't go back on that promise. Whereas in Canada we're
so polite. You know, Trudeau promises fundamental election reforms, I'm

(11:44):
going to change the first past the post system and
completely transform Canadian democracy for all eternity, and then decides
not to do it, and we go, okay, that's fine,
as long as he legalized.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
And then he gets elected twice after that too, and
then continues to get elected after that that like and
but no, but we don't draw the line there, But
America's draw the line at this fucking Your imagination can
take you places where this will all go. But maybe
Trump's name is just in there and it's nothing. He's
just a buddy Jeff Epstein. It's astonishing how many people

(12:18):
Epstein knew and had been to his house and have
been on his jets or.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
In his phone books. And he's also potentially the node
of a global pedophile or like human sex trafficking ring.
It's amazing. Of course it could be explosive. But still,
I mean, Canada's like fundamental election reforms. Fine, we'll let
that one go. America is like, no, no, we want
your dirty laundry. Get it out here, out here so

(12:44):
we can go through it. It might not make any difference,
but we draw the line here. Very different political temperament.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
They didn't care about the wall, they didn't care about
locker up. They just care about No.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
None of that's import was Trump. Had Trump ever used
sex trafficking ring? That's what we want to know, and
obviously that's important. Worry about the children, I.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Mean, they love, they're obsessed with that stuff about uh yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Will Wilhelm Reich's psychanalysis of fascism is we gave it
a little bit of a hard time, but it's correct.
The lower middle class is sexually repressed, so their interest
in politics originates only with what the ruling classes are
doing sexually. Either deviate.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
I mean this is like, this is like a this
is like this is like a long standing weird obsession
though that goes way back in history. I mean I
feel like the Satanic panic, like any way further back
than that, Like like this this suspicion that people have
a tendency to fall into. I'm not saying that they're wrong,
that there's like a cabal of like an underbelly of

(13:49):
like evil people who are like trying to abuse children,
and like you can trace it all the way back
to like the Salem witch trials, and like there's just
like always people looking out for like elites who are
like abusing children, and like, I'm not saying that that
doesn't happen, but it's like an deemon worshiping.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, this was very popular gossip in like the court
at Versailles. It was actually true though too. They would
they would get like witches to make love potions and
cast spells on the king so that they would get
his But then the lower classes hear about this and
they get obsessed with it, and then there's like basically
a fanfic industry. But yeah, just read it. Re read

(14:26):
it as a metaphor the concern for children, which of
course is important. Children figure as what innocent purity the future,
So yeah, fine, they should be defended. But read the metaphor,
and it's an obsession with where the rich and powerful
are sticking their dicks, you know, the scandalous sex parties
and predation on innocent children and ritual. Meanwhile, we're not

(14:50):
even allowed to masturbate because God is watching us. But yeah,
the obsession of how the upper class gets off seems
to be perennial. Yeah, well it is.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
You know when Reich says like sexual repression, and then
I guess what Jeffrey Epstein represents is just complete opposite
of sexual like unrepressed. Yeah, taboo Juiy's song whatever, like
way over the line, shit like way over anybody's life. Like,

(15:20):
you know, you have this sexual repression in the home
and then this public sphere obsession with disgusting sexual deviance,
and it's like, yeah, there's something going on. There's something
going on there. There's some kind of vicarious I don't know, desublimation,
I don't know the right words for it, but there's
something going on there.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Well, there's a here's another mythological trope for you. Trump,
the sexual deviant to grab them by the pussy fame,
becomes the salvific brother, the brother of light, while Epstein,
equally a sexual deviant, becomes the child of darkness. So
Trump's mythological evil twin like they are. They are Manichy

(16:03):
in opposites in this mythology, despite the fact, you know,
fact doesn't have to do with myth. They go to
the same parties. They're paling around in the same cities,
the same social circles. There's plenty of photos of them
hanging out. But yeah, they for some reason, they've been
split into the dark and light twin schema.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
I do wonder christ, the Christ and the anti Christ.
There's siblings, after all, I guess I.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Do wonder if MEGA is going to matter shift the.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Matter, But they actually feed off of one another.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
He just set the whole thing up, like putting bon
Jano and and all these fuckers, like you know, they
were going to go for this if they had a shot.
I mean, the right idea is.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
That it's going to be only democratic establishment that's going
to be implicated in all of this too. None of
the Republicans, they are all good Christians, well behaved. This
is like a test of their moral virtue. But actually
they're gonna fail.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I mean, I will say, like this is like me
giving a small amount of credit to MEGA. I mean,
I don't have much good things to say, but I
do genuinely think that a lot of MEGA is like
pretty anti establishment. So I think that a lot of
them will be pretty happy to see that like establishment
Republicans are in there like that. They'd be happy with that.
Obviously not Trump, They're going to be They're going to
resist that. But I think they're like pretty you know,

(17:17):
I think that there is kind of an an analogous
like within MEGA of like anti establishment voices, like similar
to like a lot of Democrats who are maybe more
not to not to compare you know, democratic socialists to
MEGA at all. But I know that there's probably a
lot of Bernie people who wouldn't be that mad to
see that. Like Clinton was in the Epstein files, right,
what do they care? Right? Why would they care that

(17:38):
Clinton's in the Epstein files? Right? They wouldn't care.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Well, the left might be interested more in the structural
systemic issues that the genfer Seen thing represents, whereas the
right seems to be more interested in the personality aspect
of it, the who's the who's it going to cling to?

Speaker 1 (17:56):
They're repressed and horny, that's why they care about Yeah,
they want to say want the spectacle.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
I was thinking about sending it to you guys, but
it's just I mean, in one way, it's such a
waste of time. But I don't know if you guys
saw any clips of this Medihissan Jubilee, you know, the
Jubilee thing.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
I saw the photos. I saw the photos of this
is this is what the right wing looks like? And
when is sitting there looking like a fucking Clue character?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah yeah, oh yeah. There is one guy who looks
like a Clue character. Surprisingly, he's like the most reasonable one.
I don't anyway. He just like gets he basically gets
a bunch of them to like admit that they're fascists,
like literally, there's one who literally he's like, well that
just sounds like fascistm and he's like yeah, he's like
it is. It's like I am, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
You think you think that would represent some kind of
new phase because nobody who's a fascist or whatever whatever else,
nobody who's a racist is going to admit that they're
a racist. I mean, but now now they're okay with it.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
James Lindsay has been posting about it like crazy, just
being like, look at what may look at what a
lot of meg is like I told you so, basically
saying like that's the woke right.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
I like woke right. If that's the woke right there,
they're much more interesting to watch than like the establishment
Republic definitely.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Definitely the guys who are.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Fucking each other in the bathroom stall at seapack in secret.
Bring it right out in the open. That's much more fun.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Ye exactly, it's all out in the open. That's I mean,
I appreciate that. It's kind of you know, it reminds
me of that scene in Inglorious Bastards where like, you know,
they say to the Nazi guy, They're like, well, you know,
you're just gonna go back and you're going to take
your uniform off and then we're not going to know.
It's nice that these mega are like outfront, they're just
saying it, right. It's like, it's nice to know who's
a fascist.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Well, then maybe a zeitgeist question why why is this
time of one of unrepression? Why is why is Colonel
toten Cough fine with going on a YouTube channel publicly?

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Mmmm?

Speaker 2 (19:52):
Yeah, that is interesting. I don't know. I wonder if
we're hitting a boundary of like what's what it's possible.
I mean, that guy who said he was a fashions
by the way, he did lose his job like afterwards,
But like I just wonder, like what, like where are
we hitting the limits? Like the walls of of like
what of how far it is, how possible it is

(20:13):
to be like kind of the diametric opposition to woke
like you know, like oh.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah yeah, Like if wokeness is a version of political correctness,
it's just political correctness by another name, which has been
with us for centuries. The pendulum is swinging, Like, what's
what happens at the extreme end before the pendulum starts
swinging the other way? Transgression? Political transgression, sexual transgression? Is

(20:41):
that not going to come? When political correctness gets to
its stifling the most sort of authoritarian conclusion and then
it starts swinging back the other way, We're going to
start seeing complete transgressions, like not not just the way
that like Jijak like to do it right, Like Gjck's like, oh,
I'm a non politically leftist and he gets like a

(21:01):
lot of laughs for that. But now the whole entire
he's ahead of the curve, right whatever, But now the
whole entire political atmosphere is starting to catch up to that.
Maybe that's it, And and you know, this desire for
the Epstein files is kind of channeling that fascists admitting
that they're fascists now is kind of channeling that.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
You know, It's funny this keeps coming up. I mean
our first or maybe second episode we did, if we
count the Jordan Peterson was all about conspiracy theories, right,
And I feel like that's I feel like roads often
lead back to that. And I guess I was just
thinking about that because I just wonder, like, is there
any chance that, like, if the Epstein Files get released,
that they're gonna be they're gonna in any way satisfy Like,

(21:47):
I just know that they're not, Like I I'm even
if there's stuff in there, Like, I just like know
that they're not going to be as explosive or interesting
as the hopes of the people.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
They will be hyped up. It's like seeing a movie
that has just been so hyped and even if it's
a good movie, it's just letdown because of the hype.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
Well it's and and also they want to keep the
conspiracy alive. I feel like I feel like they're just
going to compulsively want to be like, well, the Deep
States still held some of it back.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Well there's your deconstructive reading. It can't come out because
then it would be over and we what do we
have after that. The conspiracy is now in the light.
It's been brought to light. The secret, the uncanny. You
can't bring it out of its hiding place exactly to
be what it is or else it needs to be
replaced by something new. But what's going to replace that?

(22:33):
I don't see how anything can replace that.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
That pattern. That pattern comes up all the time, and
really quickly. Actually in the New South Park episode at
one point, because there's a scene where Cartman is like
like where they're talking about how they can say the
f slur again about gay people. They can. It's like
wokeness is over. It's like I can call people retards again,
and yeah, and Cartman's crying because he's like he's like,
this is horrible. What's the point of saying it anymore?

(22:57):
If I'm allowed to say it? That's right. It's like
a way, like in a way, he's kind of like
like showing that that that thing that It's like, it's
like the very transgression that keeps the like the desirability
of the transgression alive. It's like it's like the absence
of having the thing that you think you want is
the thing that makes you want the thing yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
L con coming back.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
No, that's some Lacanian ship right there. It's some One
of the first episodes we did was about political conspiracy
theories on the left.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Right, Yeah, let me let me tie this those those
well back with litour Yeah, go for it. Well it
was with It was with a Gombin. A Gombin was
our third episode.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Oh yeah, so right right, but you know, I I.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Poisoned the well in my own head against a Gombin
because of the COVID ship that he said back when
it was it was politically incorrect to do so. But no,
he was, he was. He was like still wrong, he was.
He was very He wrote he wrote like six books
on the state of exception basically, right.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Oh yeah, you guys, this whole Homo Saker series is
like this, seven or eight volumes.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, so the Homo Saker you brought it up on
our previous one. That's not a slur. That was the
first book in the series. I looked at the second
book in the series, but I couldn't show up last
week because emergency. That was a state of exception. But anyway,
the reason that my own mind poisoned myself against a

(24:31):
Gombin because a Gombin. We should say he's like a
critical theory grad school staple, like not like there are
that many a Gombeens, but kind of you read it
in a survey class. You read it as here's an
example of what critical theory is doing lately, you know,
because he's still alive. But then with the COVID thing,

(24:52):
and he's saying that, well, this is a government power grab.
This is a state of exception. Is people staying inside
with no functional purpose except to grab power. That was
our fourth episode and we were like, this is this
is really stupid. Yeah yeah, so yeah, I p I

(25:12):
poisoned myself against him from that time. But then re
looking at it, and this is what I kind of
wanted to bring up with reference to the state of exception,
bringing up with respect to the way the Trump administration
is going, this makes a lot more sense in terms

(25:33):
of what what constitutes a state of exception. And my
thought with that is basically within within the way Trump governs,
you know, everything is an executive order. I suddenly is
is twenty times the size that it was two weeks ago,
a little version of the SS. But you never know

(25:54):
what's what's happening where the power is where to grab
power if you could, who has it, who's illegal, who's
not illegal, what what your status is as a citizen.
So all this stuff together describes the state of exception,
and that's why I wanted to bring it up with
respect to like Alligator Auschwitz and you know, just the

(26:16):
Trump administration. It seems like an extended state of exception.
And that's, in my opinion, a much better application of
his own theory than what he thought the application of
his theory was, which was COVID lockdowns.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Well, actually, I mean that that's that's good, and I agree.
I know that the idea for the last episode where
Pills was unable to join us was kind of where
I was going to teach the Schmidt version and they
were going to teach me the A Gombin version. I
feel like we got halfway there of like the A
Goombin version. I think I did it, you know enough.
I mean, I think, to be fair, Schmidt is probably
a lot simpler than than a Gombin.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, a Gombin is really difficult, Like he is a
currently living continental theorist. His difficulty is right up there
with the last wave Fuco and dary Da and Lakan's
he's just as difficult. He seems like a much clearer writer,
but the thought is still very tough. So I did

(27:12):
struggle a little bit.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
If pills, if you wanted to kind of finish that
job off, if we wanted to do a little a
little discussion of a gombin or clarify. I don't know
if you listened to our last.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Episode, but well I edited and put it up.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Well it's okay, So that means he didn't listen to it.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Definitely listens to every episode much closer.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
I listened very carefully to each moment. Yeah, so I
mean Eric, Eric did a good job. But Eric, because
I edit his mind so often, I can see his
mind working and.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
He oh, that's a disturbing thought.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
He can't get past a definition that he doesn't know
and then dives all the way down the rabbit hole
into that definition and kind of missed the overall point
a little bit. But yeah, he gave a very good
definition of homo sacre, which was good barrel barrel life.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah, and so what's so, what's the what's the broader
definition that he missed?

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Do you think, Oh, it's the broader application.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
So Oh yeah, I don't have facility with these concepts.
I'm still building it.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
So yeah, well, like we said, we we all had
to read this ship at least for one week in
the grad school intro courses usually. But yeah, if you
start with you start with the Karl Schmidt, and Karl
Schmidt kind of describes the state of exception as what

(28:34):
it sounds like, it's an exception from the rule. And
a Gombin picks this up and he has a much
broader application for it. He says that state of exception
is the paradigm for not just politics now, but all
politics all the time, including and especially liberal politics in

(28:55):
our Western liberal democracies. The thing is, we we have
so many name and headings and conditions for states of
exception that it seems like we actually don't have states
of exception. It seems like, oh no, we have democracy
and rule of law all the time, and we never
actually descend into this state of exception thing. But what

(29:18):
his point is, so far as I see it, especially
in his second book in this series, is that the
state of exception is always like peeking through You never
actually have the conditions of law and order, except that
people are almost always willing to accept it. But it's
very tenuous and there's eruptions that pop through all the time.

(29:43):
So even this is why I was rethinking our opinions
of him. From pillpod number three, is it is true
that the COVID lockdowns are a state of exception because
it is not legal for the government to order you
to say stay home, so it is technically a state
of exception. But if you're saying that the COVID lockdowns

(30:07):
are a state of exception, then the rest of us
are going to go, well, that doesn't really fucking matter.
I'm happy to stay home because I know the reason
for it, I know the effect of it, and I
know what I'm preventing.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, it's it's it's it's depending if he means a
state of exception, like and this is I think can
be a problem with a lot of kind of critical theory.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
It sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Built into this. Yeah, is there a value judgment built
into the description? Right? Is he saying this is bad?
And then that's where I think people can get a
little lost, and I might be hostile and just be like, well,
like I don't know, staying home, But then like staying
home is it doesn't seem that bad in that circumstance,
like like, but maybe it's not normatively as normatively charged
as I'm reading it to be. But then I guess

(30:49):
the other really quick thing I want to say, which
is interesting, is like that actually does sound closer to
Schmidt than maybe it seems, because Schmidt does also make
this whole argument about how the exception proves the rule.
So in a sense, the rules depend on the exception
and the exception depends on the rules. That in a
way they're both operating at the same time, because ultimately,

(31:10):
at the core, the thing that's securing it all is
a kind of decisionism, which is someone just making a
decision about the exception. Right that, Like that, like the
rules only work because there is ultimately sovereignty that that
just arbit can basically arbitrarily make a decision, So like
the rules are based on an originary kind of exceptional decision.

(31:32):
So like the divide is not as clean as like
a liberal might think it is. Obviously, I mean, obviously
they're both critics of liberalism, right.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
So I think the reason, as Pills was saying, that
it just peaks through and we never really see it too,
is that sovereignty is more so the potential for the
wholesale suspension of the juridical political order itself, not just
this or that law, not just an exception to this
or that rule, but wholesale suspension. It's the potential to

(32:00):
do that, and it's the originary act of having done
that that makes it like, you know, the difference with
Schmidt is this, like the sovereignty the decision, the decision
is on whether or not there is a juridical political
order or not, right, and then that becomes you know,
Aristotle bequeathed us this figure of sovereignty in his politics

(32:25):
that's been haunting political philosophy for the past two millennia.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, and to say that another way, just because I
want to make sure the distinctions clear here. There are
laws about how and when the government can break the laws,
right when they can impose quarantine or curfew or even
martial law. But you have to forget the case is
when the suspension of the law is written into the law.

(32:52):
Because the times that you can declare martial law or curfew,
these are already established within the juridical order, within the
legal system. So audience who knows fuco right, You know, discipline,
the disciplinary society, self discipline, the control of bodies, and movement, biopolitics.

(33:13):
That applies to legal suspension of the law. But a
Gombin wants to go further than that and say, what
is the legal suspension of the law or the non
legal suspension of the law. What does that rest on
and when does it happen? And for him, martial law

(33:34):
is not an exception. It might appear as an exception,
but the state of exception that a Gombin is speaking
of is the exception of the whole of the law.
The law is a concept, right, Because the law is
a concept ultimately depends on something else, on something somewhere else,
which is sovereignty. So martial law in the face of

(33:58):
sovereignty is always potential, neither legal nor illegal. And it's
difficult to notice this kind of stuff when it's happening,
but it's always happening around us, right at small scales.
But if you know laws for what they are, and
I think a Gombin's a scholar, a legal scholar or

(34:18):
something like that, those are most of his references. But
when you ask what the laws depend on and then
you apply his analysis to it, it comes out as
something more like a text. Right, laws are not really
binding rules, they're sort of deferential guidelines, and you need
interpreters and you need context, like how you would analyze

(34:42):
a law as a derridean or something. But a Gombin's
point is that the legal system, the juridical order, written law,
all of this stuff, if you're focusing on it as
the center of the social order, you're mistaken. There's something
else that is central to the social order and stands
indeed even outside of the social order, and that's this

(35:06):
kind of sovereignty.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Right, yeah, for that for him, the figure of that
is not the quarantine. It's not the disciplinary regime. It's
the camp. It's the maybe not even the internment camp,
like it's the death camp, would be his, Like, those
are the Homo Sakers of the modern world. They're they're
condemned to be outside of society. They can be killed

(35:29):
without without you know, the Jews in Germany during World
War Two were stripped of their citizenship, Right, Homo saker,
they can be killed without penalty. You can kill them
on site and there will be no consequences. It's this figuratively,
this figurative space in which people like that can exist
in that state is unique to this modern biopolitical state

(35:54):
of exception. This this radicalization of Fukuot's ideas.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
I think another way to say, Homo saker might be
human animals.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Yeah, like even even animals are sacrificed, right, so so
there's even there's a sense in which it's even below animals,
like not even within the order of life itself kind
of thing. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
I mean, that's that is true, but you have animals
that are fit to sacrifice and certain other ones that
are not. They're unclean. Although I was citing, right, you
have Goalt, you know, because Gaza state of exception true,
and you can you can you can figure that out
because you know what apply, what laws apply there? Certainly
international law should apply, right, but do any laws truly apply?

(36:41):
Does international law apply there? Which sovereignty exists in Gaza currently?
Is it a punishable offense to kill a Palestinian currently?
These are all rhetorical questions. I think you can figure
out where I'm going with it. But the true question
here that a Gombin is asking not with respect to

(37:04):
Gaza as at the current moment, but sovereignty in general.
What is the structure of sovereignty in general? Is it
different from Gaza to here, to downtown Toronto and listen,
of course this it sounds like an insane, unhinged leftist
conspiracy theory, and it is offensive to draw a comparison

(37:27):
between downtown Toronto and Gaza. But what is in a
Gombin's analysis the difference in structure fundamentally? Is it a
difference in degree? Is it a difference in kind? And
this is the kind of structural analysis that's I hope
not too provocative, but the structural analysis of the law.

(37:48):
What is the law? What is the sovereign's relation to
the law, and how is the sovereign exempt from it?
How is a state of exception created? And if you
look at it that way, he's saying, like the juridical system,
the legal system, if it's the only thing other than sovereignty,

(38:11):
then it's an illusion. Right at any point, sovereignty is
more real than the rules that we follow. Liberal democracy
doesn't say that. The buy into the social contract is
to say no, it's real. It's real because we all
believe in it. But the twist here the state of
exception here is that the sovereign, despite what we want

(38:34):
to talk about with respect to our freedoms and our
democracies and our ability to participate in the process, ultimately
it is just sovereignty. There's no difference. There's nothing special
about modern liberal democracy. So and if you count how
many times he says indiscernibility, undecidability, uncertainty, indifference, apoia, every

(39:00):
single page is about like what is what is actually
shifting right? We don't have these rights. We are trying
to maintain these rights, and while society is stable, we
don't notice. That's that's kind of the point that moves
past fucout a little bit. We don't notice any of
this stuff here in Canada in twenty twenty five. We

(39:23):
might notice it in ten years or twenty years from now,
we might notice it. Or the Trump policy towards immigrants
and birthright citizenship, that's like where it's at the forefront,
but right now we're chilled, so we don't really see it.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
He's also openly like disobeying court orders and stuff, which
is like kind of definitional. It's like definitional state of
exception stuff kind of and actually just yesterday, I was
listening to like New York Times the Daily, and they
were interviewing a whistleblower who is like a like a
government lawyer who basically his job is to argue in front,
like in favor of government policies. And he did that

(39:59):
for and the first Trump administration, Like, that's just your job.
Your job is to argue to defend whatever government policies happen.
And he actually ended up becoming a whistleblower because he
said that this time the Trump administration has been basically
telling him to lie to the court, which he was like, look,
I'll defend whatever you want me to defend, but I'm
not gonna lie. And one of the things he was

(40:19):
lying about was like that a Brego Garcia guy who
like was sent to Al Salvador illegally, and like he
said that, like they basically told him that he should
he should say that, like even though internally they knew
that it was a mistake. He was like, do not
admit that it was a mistake to judges, right, Like,
do not admit that was like a mistake in deportation.

(40:42):
So anyway, that's just like I guess a concrete example
of the kind of stuff like where I mean, where
maybe like Trump could be seen as like blatantly kind
of doing stuff that's like a judicial or like extra
judicial like sovereign edicts or something. I'm still not really
sure if I understand, like how that like the Auschowitz
thing though, because I know you were saying like that,

(41:02):
I know that sounds crazy, and then you went on
to explain it pills, But then you explained it in
a way where I was like, well, how is then
that saying that like Auschwitz's.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Well, I was going to say, he gets back to
this overall argument, sort of cutting the difference between Fukot.
He says, Fuko never brought his insights to bear on
what could well have appeared to be the exemplary place
of modern biopolitics, the politics of the great totalitarian states

(41:31):
of the twentieth century. The inquiry that began with the
reconstruction of the Grant, the Grand and fell mament in
the hospitals and prisons did not end with an analysis
of the concentration camp. So he's saying, you know, Fuco's
disciplinary take on biopolitics did not you know, we got prisons, quarantine,

(41:53):
we got hospitals, but we didn't get an analysis of
the concentration camp. On the other hand, Hannah Aren't does
give us this in the context of the totalitarian regimes,
but she only takes it so far. And he wants
to combine their insights, and he says here the concept
of bear life or sacred life is the focal lens
through which we shall try to make their points of

(42:14):
view converge. That is Fucaus and Hannah Arenz. So on
the one hand, you have Fucaut's failure to analyze this
sort of I mean shattering moment, right, the realization of
this death, these death camps, and then sort of Hannah
Arntz sort of failure to tie this back to a

(42:36):
biopolitical regime. That so he's going to use this concept
of sacred life. And sacred life is just like the
underside of the sovereign. Right, if the sovereign is kind
of in this in between state, both at the center
of politics politics can't function without it, but also outside
of politics, right, the sovereign can suspend laws, laws don't
apply to the sovereign. There's a mirror, there's a kind

(43:00):
of inverted mirror that sacred life reflects on that well,
sacred life is when the person is you know, not
fit for sacrifice, but can be killed without consequence.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
And if you don't want to talk about Auschwitz, then
the modern example that he points to is Guantanamo.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
There, you're stripped of rights, stripped of juridical due process,
you're stripped of identity. You just you know, got a
bag on your head. So that flip side shows like
what what you will become in the face of the
sovereign if the sovereign decides. Now, we don't have to
deal with Guantanamo Bay very often, right, because mostly we

(43:43):
have a stable economy, stable political system. Every four years
we have our votes. But if pushed, if necessary, that's
one of the terms we haven't used that old Greek
term in philosophy, necessity, if necessity, if nature ever demands it,
then and the sovereign will show you as a citizen
of Canada or America or wherever, if it's required, you

(44:06):
will be reduced to bare life. Yeah. Ultimately, the system,
the system of rights, privileges citizenship. All of this is
actually an illusion, and at the bottom it is the
sovereign versus bare life. Because that's the thing that threatens
the sovereign. And it's not like there's a way that
is the nature of the sovereign. It's it's the power.

(44:27):
It's the power to decide the undecidable. So it's like
divine basically.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
Yeah, like more, Yeah, simply it's a figure. It doesn't
have to be a person. Yeah, it's the figure who
decides the undecidable.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
And it's true that ultimately these are like human beings
with positions making the decisions that are ultimately attributed to sovereignty.
But you can tell the difference between a sovereign or
a person who's acting as the figure of the sovereign
and someone who's not because the person who is acting
as the figure of the sovereign, their words become reality,

(45:07):
whereas if I were to declare something, there would be
no consequence. Necessity is the condition.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I mean, Aristotle presumably came from a democracy, right Athenian democracy,
which maybe isn't so democratic as we might think, but
it was nominally and he still bequeathed us this figure
of the sovereign that defined political philosophy all the way
through our famous figures, right, Hobbes, Locke, all them. They

(45:34):
struggled with this concept too. What's the place of the sovereign?
How do the people relate to the sovereign? How does
the sovereign regulate relations between citizens? Right? How is the
relationship between the public and the private sphere? It's this
figure of the sovereign. Right, Because you can't make new
laws through legal mechanisms, right, you need some outside point

(45:58):
that can suspend laws, or when there's protests that can
martial state violence in order to preserve laws and strip
those protesters of their right to interfere those kind of
So there's like, you know, ben beny means distinction between
law establishing violence and law preserving violence. Right, Both of

(46:18):
those are functions of the state represented in the figure
of the sovereign as far as I can tell. In fact,
the decision is what mediates between those two forms of violence.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Right.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
The decision can be to establish a law, the decision
can be to suspend a law in order, and the
decision can be to then use that suspension to preserve
law law preserving violence.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
I like can't tell if this is useful or not. Like,
I feel like there's a way in which this framework
almost sounds like it almost sounds like it's either just
describing something that kind of seems like trivially true in
the sense of like just not that interesting. Like it's
like okay, like obviously, like all of our systems are

(47:01):
based on a bit of an illusion where we're all
like sort of agreeing to it, but at the bottom
there's like some kind of decisionism that's happening, and it's
like yeah, sure, like I mean, what what what would
we I mean, I guess my retort to that would
just be like yeah, like of course, like what kind
of system could exist that would be like one ironclad
like like that, like if if you want to be

(47:23):
like that pedantic about it, I guess like sure. But
then there's like another more controversial claim I guess that
he could be making that is basically like anything could happen,
and like laws are kind of irrelevant, they're like pure illusion.
They don't mean anything. And that that I think is
a controversial claim that I don't think that I would

(47:44):
agree with. I think they have like an impact on
like what happens.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
So that's like kind of where I'm at in reaction
to how you guys are talking about it.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
They don't not have an impact. That's not he's saying.
He's saying, there's there's norm versus necessity, and norm is
what prevents necessity from doing whatever it wants. But then
like environmental conditions can be such that the norm is
willing to accept anything. Right, and then his two examples

(48:15):
are of course COVID and then nine to eleven and
World War two. When push comes to shove, our system
shows itself for what it is.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
This contingent. Yeah, I mean, but why is that interesting?
I don't know, Like it just seems like I'm just
trying to figure out, like why is that a Well.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Those are huge consequences for the history of political theory,
the history of socio legal theory, like the social contract,
for example, that's an illusion. There's no such things as voluntarism,
especially in politics. There's no liberal end of history. Liberalism
is just a temporary deviation from more blatant obvious forms

(48:51):
of sovereignty.

Speaker 2 (48:52):
Well I don't, I don't. I actually don't see how that,
like how that follows, because I think that you could
still like in Asian a social contract like so for example,
like the fact that like we have like all these
institutions in Canada let's say versus I don't know, like
a like a place like North Korea, right, where like

(49:14):
literally it's just like one person rule cull to personality.
Like the fact that we have this system and this
kind of a social contract makes a difference to like
what's possible, Like it's still still doing something.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Isn't a social contract supposed to be democrat like in
order to form a democratic society. It's voluntary and it
forms a democratic society with with representation.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
But well, I mean, I think, I think, I think
the democracy question is a bit is a bit different.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
Even fascism can emerge within the context you can within
a social contract. You can have fascism or you can
have democracy. It doesn't matter. It goes againt political thinking.
Like oh, after after the fall of the Soviet Union,
you know, if if we just give them capitalism and
give them access to the market, and you know, same

(50:03):
with China, right, democracy will naturally form. Like nobody believes
that anymore. But that was like the argument in the
nine one.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Well, first of all, like the democracy question is is
kind of irrelevant because like even like liberals know that
like democracy is not necessarily like I mean, it's really
more about a balance of powers, right, And if you
go back and you look at like the founders of
the of the US, I mean they're worried about democracy.
They're trying to limit democracy on purpose in the federalist papers.
Like so it like to me, it's more like the

(50:32):
question is more about like the rules, like how how
much of how much of security or of an impact
are those rules going to give a society in terms
of stability, right, and like whether they're democratically elected or not,
and like and like yeah, like sure, we can pretend
that we think our rules are going to protect us
in every circumstance, and I think it's just trivially true

(50:53):
that that's not going to happen in all like obviously,
like there's going to be circumstances. And that's just like
not a very interesting claim to me. It's like it's
kind of obvious. Like but then I guess there's like
another way in which I guess he's saying something stronger
than just that obvious kind of claim.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Or well, for example, you said, you said we have
US and we have rule of lah blah blah blah,
and then there's North Korea and they don't so there's
like a distinction in kind here. He wouldn't except rules, Yeah,
he would say, okay, he would say Korea or North
Korea also has a balance of power.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, they don't.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
We can't be like, oh, they're a dictatorship and we're not.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Okay, I'm glad. I'm glad that helps clarify to me,
like my suspicion, which is that this is like doing
one of those annoying critical theory things where it's just
being like, everything is this right, everything is power, everything
is state of exception. Like it's just it's flattening distinctions.
It's it's like it's preventing us from making like normatively relevant,

(51:50):
important distinctions between things, which I think is stupid. I
don't like it.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Dude, sire. This is not looking around the world and
saying every where is the same. He's a scholar, which
means he's reading doing a typical philosophy history reading ancient
to modern in a specific tradition, legal theory, where legal
scholars from Roman antiquity to Carl Schmidt to nineties modern

(52:18):
democratic theory, they all maintain the term of sovereignty without
really announcing it or without really acknowledging that they're they're
hiding it there or looking at its function. Very it's
a very typical critical theory project.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
I read. You know, normativism and decisionism are two different
like legal frameworks, right, Like Schmidt originated decisionism, right, which
is a different option than normativism. If you want to
take a normative perspective, that's fine. I'm sure decisionists would say, yes,
norms are important, but they don't matter, right, because it's

(52:58):
the sovereign decision. Right. Like, look what he says here,
We were just talking about social contracts and stuff. He says,
contrary to our modern habit of representing the political realm
in terms of citizens' rights, free will, and social contracts,
from the point of view of this of sovereignty, only
bare life is authentically political. This is why Hobbes the

(53:20):
foundation of sovereign power. For Hobbes, the foundation of sovereign
power is to be sought not in the subjects free
renunciation of their natural rights, but in the sovereign's preservation
of his natural right to do anything to anyone, which
now appears as the right to punish. And you know
Trump does this all the time, right, Like he does

(53:42):
this kind of quasi legal punishment. I'll sue you. Right,
look what south Park was saying, He's even gonna sue Satan,
Like his powers of sovereignty are supernatural, They're not just
onto logical, right, so he you know this, even within
the strongest democracy, even in the wayest enlightenment dream, ever

(54:03):
of the utopian dream, there's no pure democracy. It's a contradiction.
Is always a sovereign element, there's always an undemocratic element.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Yeah, that's obvious.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Sure, then let's let's write let's write almost Snicker's tenth volume.
Then if it's so obvious to us.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
There's still there. It's there's still worse and better. Like, like,
that's the thing I think. I think what I object
to is, you know, inviting these things. There's no difference
between North and North Korea and and like and like
North America for example. Like I think like if like,
if that's what this analysis leads to, I mean, that's stupid.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Well that there could be differences. But if there are differences,
and he's correct, then the difference between a single party
state and a multi party state is not to be
found in their relation to sovereignty. And given the fact
that we've provided you with examples of times when it
doesn't matter whether you live in a single party state.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
I think the political system makes a difference though.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
Yeah, well, at this point you haven't engaged with the
material provided counter argument, so just the fact that you
don't like it is not going to sway.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
I mean, I mean, I think there's a the output
of mean, there's other countries too that I think you'd
be better often, like there's a lot of South American
countries or like India. I think probably has a better
political arrangement in North Korea, and I think some of
it has to do with their institutions.

Speaker 3 (55:17):
The point is, the differences are degree, not kind. There's
no difference in kind between a closed North Korean dictatorship
style society and a supposedly open American democracy. There's real
differences that matter, but like not differences in kind. They
are essentially the same thing.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
In the sense that the term of the sovereign is
ultimately necessary, ultimately the ground of the political process and
the legal system.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
But that's where I get back to my thing where
I'm like, this just seems kind of like like they're
all based on agreement. That's fundamentally kind of an illusion
that like circumstances could change and threaten. But I think so,
I mean, look like even with the Trump example, like
I do think that he's being you know, like I
think if he was in a different context, he'd be

(56:08):
doing a lot more, a lot worse stuff, but he's
kind of not being allowed to do that in a
number of different quarters. I mean, even like the South
Park episode itself, because it's like there's kind i mean,
it's not just the institutions, but it's like the culture.
There's a bunch of differences that make it so that
like there's some kind of limit. I mean, the fact
that a TV show could come out and like mock

(56:28):
the president, like mock him in a bunch of ways
that wouldn't be possible for example in like North Korea, right,
And like that's I think these things make a difference.
But sure there's like again a kind of trivial way
in which, yeah, of course, at the bottom, like all
of it is just based on kind of an illusory
like decision. But I just don't see what's like interesting
or helpful about that claim.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
I'm not saying I love a gobmin As I'm reading
along here, Well, we.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Might as well understand this properly before dismissing it out
of hand. I don't know why we were saying North
Korea and Canada are equally preferable. Like, no one's arguing
about preference at all here. It never came up. What
is the case is that an emergency situation in either
North Korea or Canada would ultimately produce a state of exception,

(57:15):
which was true, demonstrably Clear up the smoke about any
ultimate difference in the relation between the government and the
law or the legal juridical system. You don't see that
in the day to day. So you're pointing out there's
a difference in the day to day. Okay, fine, but
the day to day is not the state of exception.
What I'm talking about is what happened in COVID. Didn't

(57:35):
COVID make Canada and North Korea all of a sudden
behave indistinguishably from one another. And a state of exception
also is not just a possibility, it's an eventuality. On
nine to twelve, America was every bit as disciplinary and

(57:56):
biopolitical to its own citizens as North Korea is. Right,
it's a question of what's under the show, not a
question of what happens in the day to day. That's
why it's an exception, not the day to day.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Sure, And like the apps that could be, that could be,
that could be more, that could be more interesting place
to analyze it. I mean, in the last episode I
also even said how it's funny how in Canada we
have like literally written into our laws like states of
exception in the sense of the notwithstanding clause right where
like in our Constitution it basically says that, like we

(58:29):
have this Charter of Rights and freedoms, they're all ironclad
except notwithstanding if some province or federal government decides to
pass a law that violates the Charter, which quebect does
every four years to preserve their language laws which violate
our language rights laws.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Even the Roman exceptio thing I brought up is like
that too. There's there's exceptions built in.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
But technically that's not an exception because it's built into
the system, I guess. But literally, like anyone could pass anything,
it's not absolute, it's a written exception, but it does
kind of leave room for basically any leader to do
whatever they want hypothetically. But I know that what he's
talking about is something that's even unwritten, that's like beyond that,
because that's obviously written in Like.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
It's weird to me to think that Homo sacre or
bear life is the true political figure, as what does
that mean, like normal rights bearing citizens, Like then presumably
we're not in a state of bear life. We're in
a qualified life, all right. We're in bios, We're in
u zen. We are the ones, supposedly, US citizens are

(59:31):
the ones that the state is working towards this end.
The t los of the state is to make a
good life for its citizens. So we're not the political
subjects in this picture. We have rights. If someone murders you,
it is they will be punished. And I guess if
we were in a religious society, I don't know, sacrifices whatever,

(59:52):
we'd be fit for sacrifice. I'd be a really juicy
sacrifice for the Olympic gods.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Now you're all gamey, You're you're too You're too tight there.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Lately I've been getting a bit stringy. I gotta watch
myself or I won't be such good sacrifice material. But
the point is, yeah, we're we presumably in this in
this situation, we are not like bare life. We are
not political subjects in the sovereign system that he's outlining here,
which is a weird thought to me. And we're illusions clearly, clearly, yeah,

(01:00:26):
we we have these rights and these laws protecting us,
so so we there are consequences. We're not homost sacre.
But I just jumped to the idea that, Okay, a
Gombin is analyzing this figure of sovereignty, this figure of
the sovereign, because he wants to reimagine society without that.
He's almost making like you know, Darry does claim like

(01:00:50):
like you know, metaphysics has always been metaphorical. They pretend
they're dealing with concepts, what they really been. These are
really just metaphors, I'm kind of saying, you know, with
political forhilosophy has always been theorizing how to get away
from sovereignty and what democracy is and how to have
a perfectly democratic state and eradicate all that bad shit
like fascism and all the other liberal stuff. And yet

(01:01:12):
they continuously imagine democracy, but they don't realize they always
have to import this idea of sovereignty into it. They
cannot do without it. And that is why he's spending
books and books and books analyzing this point of where
where does sovereignty come into the picture, because he's trying
to reimagine a way when we all get together and

(01:01:34):
we say we think, okay, are we going to try
communism or like what's next? Right, and then a gobbin's
going to come in and say, let's pay attention to like,
make make sure we don't accidentally import sovereignty back into
this whole situation, because then we won't be changing, we'll
be the same again, and we'll have these eruptions of
bare life, and then we'll get into these arguments that

(01:01:56):
will just need more democracy is the cure than And
he'll say, don't seem possible. Well, not, that's the horizon, right,
that's the horizon of our thinking. We can't think, We
can't think past our own horizons. This is a deeply
hopeful project.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
The political subject, if we take seriously, like bare life,
Homo sakre is the political subject, not the rights given
liberal subject walking around so not us, but like a prisoner,
a Mexican farm worker that's allowed to stay the summer
and then has to go back like this is much

(01:02:34):
closer to political subjectivity than you know, the mean or
the middle. You want to look to the barest form
of life, the life with the least benefit from society.
What do they have? They have they have, they have
nothing to gain.

Speaker 3 (01:02:51):
The lowest common denominator.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
Yeah, prisoners, captive populations, slaves, blacks under Jim so like.
Look to whomever carries the least punishment if you were
to kill them, that's bare life. You kill a CEO,
you're probably gonna get the death penalty. You shoot up
a daycare in America, you're in prison for life, no question.

(01:03:14):
You should up a daycare in Gaza, you get a
medal of honor. But sacre is I want to stress
this so we don't mistake it. Homosaker is not like
a category or class of people. Everyone is homo saker
underneath all their layers of protections, underneath their rights and citizenships.
There's a potential homosacre in all of us if we

(01:03:36):
were to, I don't know, commit the wrong sort of crime.
Like Eric said, it's the lowest common denominator in the
face of the sovereign.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Like I said, rights bearing citizens are clearly on one
side of that line between the state of nature and
the state of civilization, right, society. Right, we are clearly
on the social side, but there is this zone of
indistinction in the middle that modern biopolitics turns into a
kind of regularity.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Right, once the sovereign is in crisis, then they can
take the rest of whatever is not homosacre. They can
take the rest of whatever your shit is away from you. Right,
they can strip you of your visa, they can strip
you of your birthright citizenship, they can put you in
Alligator Alcatraz because you have a gang tattoo. And yeah,

(01:04:25):
while it probably doesn't affect the mean right now, you know,
there's always the potential that it does. That's why the
concentration camp is the ultimate potential of any system of sovereignty.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
And you know, we did give a Gombin some shit
for being a bit conspiratorial about all the COVID quarantine stuff.
And we did one of our first episodes was like
on Latour's critique, running out of steam, and like leftist
theories just appear as like leftist conspiracy theories.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
Right, look at what.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
Those those masters of suspicion, right, nietzsche Christianity is just
a big conspiracy to get us all to be sheepish
and weak marks right his skepticism of capitalism. Right Freud
is another master of suspicion. There these these sorts of
unconscious forces that are undermining our ability to remain civil

(01:05:17):
with one another and are actually suppressed in order to
enable civilization, right like, these sorts of leftist conspiratorial thinking
that there's always there's always something horrible just behind the veil,
just behind the curtain, and are our supposed lives are
are a little bit hemmed in by.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
These Well's moments.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
I wonder I could all just disappear in a second.
And the right wing conspiracy theorists are saying kind of
the same thing, right like, the government can just come
at you anytime and black bag you, throw you in
a vent and make you disappear, which is what Ice
has been doing to immigrants.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
So look, yeah, I'm not on a goambinion. I can
see it relevance, which is why I wanted to revisit it,
which is why I recommended it as a reading. And
while it's not my guy necessarily, it is completely within
the realm of possibility that the political privileges do enter
free fall at some point in our lifetimes. At which

(01:06:17):
point we will see more a gambaniism and we can
hope that that data does not draw nearer. But yeah,
hopefully it remains unconvincing. And he's truly just too pessimistic.
That's an optimistic thought. He's just too pessimistic.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
Well let me just let me let me let me
just say about uh, because I guess I guess like
the puzzle that I still remain is like when we
did our episode on COVID, right, I remember, at least
for me, the criticism was just feels like he has
this theoretical framework and then he's just trying to like
make sense of the world. But he's like attached to
his framework, and I guess, like to a certain extent

(01:06:55):
from hearing you guys talk about it, like I see
how it applies. But then the puzzle is is it
always bad? Right?

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
So that's where I'm not sure. Is he just giving
a descriptive account or is he normatively evaluating it? Is
he like it's bad when sovereignty makes decisions based on
like exceptions? Right? Is that a bad thing? Because like
if it's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:16):
Just descrirely, it's purely distrusted.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
Okay, Well, then well then sure, that's why I think.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
That's why I might have been wrong about him on
the COVID thing. Well, no, he was freaking out about
the COVID thing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Yeah, that's the thing, So like that's that's that's why, Like,
this is why I fucking sometimes find these critical theorist
theories theorists slimy, because like you can tell that there's
clearly like a normative undertone, but then they'll just be like, well,
I'm just describing, but I'm just like, but you're clearly
pissed about this, So like, fucking take a stand.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
You put well, there's he's personally pissed, but descriptively, you
did have your rights taken away sovereignly during COVID.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Right, descriptly. But for me at the time, it just
seemed like a good idea to do that at the time.
So like, so I have no problem with it, but you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
Didn't try not to do it. That would be the
that would be when you're reduced to bare life.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Yeah, like, aren't aren't the three The three options, again
in political theory broadly speaking, have been what it was
it rationalism, descriptive no rationalism, normativism, and decisionism. Right, so
you know, rationalism is an old one, right, like the
Enlightenment rationality CONTs kind of stuff. Decisionism is coming from

(01:08:26):
Schmidt and you, you, Victor are usually look at things
through a normative framework, so you think decisions have to
be every Normativism for you engulfs the other two. So, right,
decisions have to be good or bad, whereas a decisionist
might say no, like the decision comes first, and then
you decide on what's good and what's bad. Decision comes

(01:08:48):
from a place of non normativity. Right, So yeah, I mean,
whatever whatever framework you want to engulf the others with,
that's fine. But let me let me read this into.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
Can you explain that I've never heard that there's three
options in political theory? Is that something you've come up with?

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Maybe legal legal theory? No. I was getting very frustrated
reading this because I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
And I was agreeing with Victor saying this seems to
be just neither here nor there, and so I'm like, okay,
Well a Gombin did his doctoral work in legal theory
and political science, I think, so he's been trained in

(01:09:23):
these ideas, which is what I started suspecting that I'm
not understanding this very well is because I have a
terrible background in legal theory and i'm political science. But
he knows his shit. So when he says like things
like law constituting and law preserving, like those are legit concepts,
not just from Benjamine but all over legal theory, right,

(01:09:46):
they're these there are just lots of holes in my knowledge.
And when I looked it up, I just said, okay,
these are three frameworks, right, and decisionism comes from Schmidt.
That's one of the frameworks. And I'm like, okay, that
makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Is that where law comes from. This is rationalism, normativism.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
I guess that's a basic framework for legal theory. It
was also a leader or scholar, right, so for him,
for him, yeah, the decision of the sovereign is the
ground of everything else. Normativism and rationalism are built on
this ground of decisionism. I think for him. For other people,
you might take normative claims is your basic idea, and

(01:10:22):
then everything else is based on that. I don't know,
I'm not an expert. It can be very frustrating reading
a theorist who's clearly like making normative claims right, Like,
when I read Marx's Capital, I want to read it
as like a very objective analysis. I understand that Marx
is very outraged by what he sees, and you can

(01:10:43):
read other texts and his journalism that expresses that outrage
quite well. I think one of the big examples was
that the forest laws, that was one of the main
topics he wrote about, and he expresses great political outrage whatever.
The whole intro to the new volume of Capital that
was translated was a bit about Marx's normativity or whatever,

(01:11:05):
his expressing whether what he's seeing is good or bad.
But the point is that can also undermine the analysis
because then you say, well, he's just got an ax
to grind this. None of this is legit, none of
this is objective because he's just grinding an axe. He's
just pissed, he's just angry, and it's like, I get
what you're saying, But then it runs into problems like that.

(01:11:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
I don't think that it need be that way. Like
I also think that you can give an objective description
of something like so in this case, like he could
say this is the way it works, and I could
be like, yeah, and then he could be like, here's
an example of when it was bad, and here's an
example of when it was good, and you need like
another justification, right, Like there might beast cases where a
state of exception is good is good, Like it's like okay, yeah,

(01:11:49):
like it's probably I don't know. I mean, I have
mixed feelings about the way World War two, but broadly
it was good to fight the Nazis. Right, Broadly, that
was like a good thing to do.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
I got a hold in on this. He's not saying
good or bad at all. He's saying this is the
actual structure. It's always the structure. Even in liberal democracy,
the structure is decisionism and anything else is just a fantasy.
So there's no there's no way to valuate good and bad,
like listen.

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Except in the context of what's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Well, this is what democracy is to him, Like, compare
this to Fukiyama or something. This is structural and analytic
and way more attentive to the contiguity with democracy. Democracies
so called others like Fukiyama is demonstrably wrong, in no
small part because he was explicitly normati if about his
in place of doing analytic claims.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
Yeah, it's the end of history.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
No, we can infer that he doesn't like political theory
that centers on the concept of the sovereign and he
wants to think it otherwise. Right here, let me read
this quote. This, This truly, this is a quote that
from an interview with Michelle Fukou, and this truly shows
you how what a Gombin doing here is truly a
continuation of Fuco's project in a Gombin's own way, but

(01:13:05):
it is a continuation. Here's what Fuco says in two
thousand and one, daacree political theory has remained obsessed by
the person of the sovereign. All these theories are still
posing the problem of sovereignty. What we need is a
political philosophy that is not constructed around the problem of
sovereignty and therefore of law and therefore of interdiction. We

(01:13:30):
have to cut off the king's head, and this has
not yet been done in political theory. So that like
there's a perfect encapsulation of the spirit that a Gombin
is trying to capture out of Fuco is to rethink
politics without the sovereign. So I think from that we
can infer that he thinks it's all bad, or at
least is limiting or is holding us back in some

(01:13:52):
way to have our reflexive. And this isn't just remember
it's a it's an ontological question too. Rite. The sovereign
isn't just the sovereign in theory, the sovereign is really
the sovereign power, right, the locusts of power and legitimacy
is the person of the sovereign, and that's why he
there's a chapter on comparing the sovereign power to Aristotle's

(01:14:18):
notion of potency. Right like potency and actualization, dynamis and
energea right he compared. He says, the sovereign is the
point where those two things become indistinct, right, Like Aristotle
is gonna say, you know, someone who is walking can
also has the capability of not walking. Right. Just because

(01:14:40):
I'm walking right now doesn't mean I'm incapable of not walking,
just as because I'm sitting right now doesn't mean I'm
incapable of standing. But for the sovereign, when the sovereign
makes the decision, he divests himself of his incapacities.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Right, that's a crazy line divesting yourself of your incapacity.
So at any time tim the sovereign could stand up,
and it seems like an idiot is now standing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
Up, and it's like when the sovereign stands up, it's like,
or when the sovereign makes the decision, it's like the
capacity to sit down is now being given up. Like
Aristotle says, thinking about thinking of the potential of thought.
That's the point where these two things become indistinct, actual

(01:15:25):
thought about the potential of thought to think like, there's
a point. Aristotle says, we have trouble here because potency
and actuality.

Speaker 1 (01:15:34):
Are a little bit hard to tell apart.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
Now we get into kind of self referential territory there
where things become indistinct. There's a zone of indistinction there,
and sovereignty, he says, this is a perfect This is
more than an analogy of what sovereignty is. This is
like an ontological description of how sovereignty works. And I
don't fully grasp it, but it sounds really awesome, and

(01:15:56):
it gave me a nice excuse to read some metaphysics.
So I'm not complaining it, but that's how it goes.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
So he is kind of an anarchist then who.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
Co's probably on the anarchist side. I don't know about
a Gombin.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
This is written in the nineties. You have the end
of history crew. That's just saying, you know, liberal democracy everywhere,
we're all gonna settle into a nice equilibrium. It's just
gonna spread.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Quality of life context does make sense why he'd want
to write this.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Maybe then then he writes this version of it, which is,
you know, you can you can do that. People's standards
of living might increase, but at the base of your
political system, it's only the distinction between the sovereign and
bare life that's it. So the appeal to the of
this it results in political pessimism for sure, like you're

(01:16:42):
not gonna You're perhaps not gonna be trying to get
Bernie Sanders elected if you're in a Gombian maybe, but
your reaction to something like Trump will be much better.
You're not gonna be Chris Hayes freaking out that Trump
is destroying democracy, because you're never gonna have that that
first faith that our democracy under Obama, our hyperreal democracy,

(01:17:05):
is so fucking perfect.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
Yeah, executive decisions are somehow opposed to democracy or constitutional
amendments or.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
Extra judicial assassinations. You know, so like whatever you thought before,
you're going to freak out least because you wouldn't have
had that faith in the system as in the first place.
And of course, you know, I'm not going to Guantanamo tomorrow.
You aren't going to Guantanamo tomorrow. However, it's a slippery slope.
You know, some people might be going to Guantanamo tomorrow

(01:17:34):
that weren't going there yesterday. So that's that's my appeal.
That's why I think this is is of increasing not
less relevance than it was a year ago. So maybe
it's increasing relevance, maybe not, but there's my That's the
reason I suggested it as a reason.

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
I mean, it was interesting. You could you could also
just be like accept the overall description, not be surprised
when these things happen, but still have like a moral compass,
which I think every well admit that you have a
moral Everybody has a moral compass, even people who pretend
they don't and still think it's a good idea to
try to get Bernie Sanders elected while also not being
surprised that Trump won or whatever that Trump's doing all

(01:18:11):
this shit that's the right position to take.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
Well, more to his point is, you might think that
Obama is hope and change, but Guantanamo Bay is still there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Sure. Well, I mean that's just like being a utopian
if you think that those things don't happen aren't going
to continue to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:18:27):
It's utopian to think that a president could not operate
black slights and drones strike weddings. Well, that's a wad,
I mean. More to a Gombin's point is that you
should not expect stability without the ability to also operate
black slights and drone strike weddings. You've just admitted too,
that stability doesn't come from morality, it comes from sovereignty.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
Yeah, I guess, I guess it would be cynical to
also say that we can't have a good society without
those things, like politics can't do without those things. Is
also a cynical view, And that's not the view that
a Goment is taking, right, He's like, we need to again,
you know, like what fou coches.

Speaker 2 (01:19:06):
Right, So that's where the anarchism comes in a bit.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
Well, you call it anarchism and we don't really know,
Like I think, I think when I looked it up.

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
I think fu CO like escaping sovereignty is anarchy.

Speaker 3 (01:19:17):
I thought, now is well, now, now you're just saying
there's no law without a sovereign. Now you sound convinced.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):
But I'm agreeing with him, right, I'm saying, I'm saying,
I agree with you.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):
I don't think anarchy was defined as no sovereign. The
ENLiGHT the French Revolution, people that cut the king's heads
off weren't anarchists. They just wanted to get rid of
the sovereign and they did.

Speaker 2 (01:19:36):
But then they got a new one.

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
But they didn't realize, yeah, well they got one, and
they they didn't kill the theoretical sovereign as they said.
And when they all got together in the basketball court
and I mean the tennis court, the tennis courts, and they,
you know, the sovereign snuck back in through their minds. Right,
is a syop after that?

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
But there's never there's never been an example of it,
like by on a. Gomban's definition, there's never been an example.
I don't think of a society that doesn't have some
kind of a sovereign. That is probably even indigenous societies
probably had states of exception that'd be a fun that'd
be like a fun kind of anthropology to do to
see if there's like exceptions to like those kinds of

(01:20:17):
like traditional societies where they depended on well, they certainly
depend on a friend enemy distinction, and like other things.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
He does have stuff on French anthropology and well he
does bring in anthropology, but I didn't read that section
very carefully. But that was on the sake the origin
of the term sacred, because as you know, we think
of the term sacred as like something that's well, he
actually brings up the untouchables, but we think of sacred
as like a good thing. Right, If something is sacred,

(01:20:49):
it is good, and there's certain things you can't do
to it. But there's kind of if you go back,
sacred has sort of ambiguous, strange meanings, especially if you
look at that Roman law stuff that we talked about
last week.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
Yeah, we covered this with the Dirkhime stuff. Sacred means
you can't touch it, yeah, good or bad.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
But then it also has that second meaning of like
being able to kill it without consequence, which is weird.
We would think that's very strange. Like if you go
shoot the pope, you'd think there'd be lots of consequences
for that. He's not a sacred person. His person is
not sacred by this stuff, but we would think it is.
He's a sacred you know, he's the vicar of Christ

(01:21:32):
or whatever. But it's weird. I didn't read that section
very carefully, so I can't. I don't know what's going
on with the anthropology there.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Well, check out the feedback. Maybe we will return to
this depending on what happens, and we'll have to read
it more carefully at that point.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Yeah, we read three different texts, and we're trying to
debate the merits of text when we all read different ones.
But anyway, I think it's uh, it's worth think.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
I'm being frustrated by it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:01):
So, you know, I read the you can all pick
up the Omnibus Homosacre. It's like, I think it was
published in twenty seventeen or something, that's got all of
the volumes of Homo Sacre in it, of which there
are what was it nine nine volumes? Eight volumes I think, yeah,

(01:22:22):
something like that. The latest one is called the Use
of Bodies. Yeah, Homosacres, State of Exception and so on.

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
All right, Well, talk to you next week and hopefully
we are not reduced to homosacre in the meantime, Yes, yeap.

Speaker 3 (01:22:39):
Until next time, jeers,