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The Killing Machine Of Exception: Sovereignty, Law, And Play In Agamben’S State Of Exception, Puspa Damai

Puspa Damai

Giorgio Agamben’s slender but profound monograph on the state of exception is an intervention into a world that is becoming more and more exceptionalist. The events of 9/11, the War on Terror, and the successive decrees and acts authorizing fingerprinting, interrogation, and indefinite detention of suspects in terrorist activities, all testify to Agamben’s prophetic portrayal of contemporary politics in which the state of exception—normally a provisional attempt to deal with political exigencies— has become a permanent practice or paradigm of government. When the exception becomes the rule, it results, argues Agamben, not only in the appropriation of the legislative or …

Philosophers Of War: The Evolution Of History's Greatest Military Thinkers, Daniel Coetzee, Lee Eysturlid

Lee W. Eysturlid

The philosophy of war is usually treated in the context of philosophy as a discipline in the same way military justice is compared to justice, and military music to music. That is to say, it is presented as a red-headed stepchild at best or, more likely, as an illegitimate offspring, Carl von Clausewitz, the West's defining military philosopher and its most familiar figure, barely rates a footnote and an index entry in general histories of philosophy—even those with a German emphasis.

The same point can be made about military thought. Theoretical analysis of war is commonly understood in practical contexts: …