Schmitt Reflection

It struck me during our discussion that the War on Terror is a combines Schmitt's idea of the foe and of the increasing pacification of political dialog on 79. Instead of declaring war on an enemy (which would be violent and go against the aversion that society has developed towards war) war has been declared against an idea. The only people who are actively vilified are those who criminally violate peaceful order. This is much easier for (in Schmitt's definition) a relatively pacifist society to stomach. It seems that Schmitt is right and we prefer to have as few enemies as possible, so while there are a few terrorists who we demonize, the rest of the people are our friends who welcome our peace and freedom with open arms. Of course, this has little effect on reality, since our "friends" are nearly as or more likely than our enemies to be killed as we try to enforce peace and freedom. However, the new forms of pacifist propaganda, which Schmitt alludes to makes the "collateral damage" of wars for peace and freedom much easier for a post world war society to deal with.

Reflection

In class and blog posts, the discussion seemed to focus around the question: "How do we determine who is an enemy?" and this post is no exception. The friend-enemy distinction seems completely arbitrary like A pointing at B and saying "You are a threat to my existence. You are my enemy." As we pointed out in class, there is no physical characteristic to distinguish friend from enemy ["the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy" (27)]. Lindsay brings up that the enemy is determined because "he held the opposite belief from you so strongly that it threatened your way of life". I think it goes a little farther than this. It's not simply that the friend and enemy have opposite beliefs, but that they think their belief should replace the other. Simply holding opposite beliefs doesn't necessarily mean there is a threat to either's existence. Also Mel points out that despite being primarily alien and different, friend and enemy share a similarity ["An enemy only exists when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity” (28)]. I think this is the recognition that separates enemies from foes, which is another distiction Schmitt writes about. Enemies are recognized as human and it is only necessary to push them back to their borders while foes are seen as inhuman and the only course of action is to annihilate them.

That being said, I did more thinking about Ender's Game. In the first two invasions, I would say the buggers are recognized as the enemy that threatens Earth's existence. But for the Third Invasion, the buggers are foes that the IF hunts down and annihilates. The conflict turned from political to personal.

Reflective 4/1

I'll play devil's advocate again. How cares if Schmitt became a Nazi. Hell, my landlords in Germany were Nazis because they were young kids and all kids had to be in the Hitler Jungen. Time's change, and oh by the way, the Germans were looking for someone to blame about WWI and Hitler gave them that.

Ok, now that my rant is over I can continue. I really don't know what to write this time because I'm beginning to feel this class is rehashing the same topics class after class. That's the main reason I don't say alot in class, I know I've said what I've said a few times and the point of a discussion is for new ideas to come out. I'd rather be quiet and not talk instead of rehashing the same points everyday, it kind of makes the class a bit boring.

Schmitt still makes a pretty powerful point that everything can be seen as part of the political. The EU and Microsoft is a good example. The EU is consistently pursuing the suits against Microsoft in order to make an example out of Microsoft. The EU doesn't care that if Microsoft releases its source code to the public then hackers can get into your computer no problem. That's the main reason Linux isn't a popular Operating System, because its an open source OS (in other words you can google the source code and see the actual code that makes up the OS).

Schmitt

Two thoughts I had on Schmitt, first (and I'm sure this is intentional) it is possible to engage his writing with almost every novel we have read this semester. I realize that we've avoided utopian visions of the future because, lets face it, dystopias engage with our historical and political contexts in far more interesting and relevant ways. It seems though, that every author we've read agrees with Schmitt's assertion that in most cases other=enemy. While most of the protagonists we've read about don't necessarily occupy the moral high ground, it doesn't really matter, conflicts are possible because he is a stranger (Schmitt, 27). Like Liz mentioned, this goes straight to the heart of the human bugger conflict, but in this case not only are the buggers alien and strangers they are also (to the humans) morally evil and aesthetically ugly, giving humans all the more reason to exterminate them. Also, I found Schmitt's discussion on 54 very interesting in relation to not just science fiction in general, but specifically Card. Schmitt almost seems to imply that an enemy outside the planet could end friend-enemy dichotomies among humans, Card seems to agree with this in the form of the IF bringing universal stability to the world while the threat of the buggers was still present. However, literally as soon as the buggers were destroy, the friend-enemy paradigm switched back to earth as the various political groups began battling among themselves over the future of earth.
On a probably slightly less fruitful note, the historian part of my brain wouldn't let go of the fact that Schmitt ended up being a Nazi. I realize that circumstances and moments in history sometimes sweep people along with them, but it was really disturbing to me that someone who could so clearly visualize the dangerous shape that politics could take when the enemy became "an outlaw of humanity" (79) would be a party to the atrocities of the Nazi party.

Political?

In contrast to what Sara suggested right below me I happen to like the fun philosophical way of defining terms endlessly. I did find myself a little bored by the section that defined everything political had previously falsely been identified with. The overarching concept of what it is to be political is something I had never thought of in such explicit terms before and something that made perfect since once I read it. The idea of political being the realm of defining friend and foe is an absolutely perfect description. I just wish my political science education was more directly focused on this specific issue. Seems to me political science should be more focused on defining political and means of understanding friend and foe as opposed to all the boring (ok, so I like it) voting behavior stuff we do study.

The Concept of the Political

Reading Schmitt's essay was less than exciting for me. He spent much of the essay trying to differentiate terms and at points I felt like knowing German or philosophy wouldn't have hurt. As Tim pointed out, reading novels can be more interesting than essays because of the format. Which is why I'm glad we read Ender's Game before The Concept of the Political because it helped applying the humans vs. bugger situation to the friend-enemy concept.

The buggers are the perfect example of the other (or enemy when compared to humans) because they are "existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with [them] are possible" (27). In Ender's Game, the IF saw the situation as us versus them, friend versus enemy, kill them before they kill all of humanity. However, I think Schmitt doesn't see it as black and white. On page 27 he says "the morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy". Being classified as the enemy doesn't mean all the negative aspects of other antitheses apply. Especially since on the other side of the fence the roles are reversed. Schmitt goes on to say that the friend-enemy antithesis is not fixed and "in no way implies that one particular nation must forever be the friend or enemy of another specific nation" (34). Here's where I think the IF made a mistake in assuming that the buggers would only ever be their enemy and set out to negate their existence, as Schmitt would say.

And along with the bugger wars, Ender's Game looks into Earthside relations with the hegemony and Warsaw Pact. But I'll save that for after class, where I hope to understand Schmitt's concept a little better.

The Concept of the Political

Just like I said back with Weber, I feel like I've heard everything here before. Granted, I took Modernist Explosion here where the entire course looks at the Wiemar Republik, and I'm taking German as a language. Germany after WWI wanted to figure out why they lost, they were the best professionally trained army in the world and they lost without the fight ever being on German soil. Everyone who was anyone came up with theories, some more popular than others - see Nazis. I found it quite funny that Schmitt decided to piratically make everything an "antithesis of political."

And I totally agree with Schmitt saying that confusion arises from the concepts of Justice and Freedom being used to legitimize political ambitions or demoralize the enemy. These concepts are loosely defined, one man's justice and freedom might not be another's. Just look at Shari'a law, that's justice and freedom for some Muslim countries, but to the West it is repression. You can even look at authoritarian states if you want to stay away from religious issues, North Korea doesn't have its laws revolved around the tenets of a religion, unless Kim-Jon-Il-ism counts.

And to be the "devil's advocate" here for some of the numerous discussions we've had on morality and the like. Its all our faults for not taking the time to truly understand our "enemies"
and "allies." Everyone has blame, but one side or factor will make a choice and live with it. Hindsight is 20/20 after all, and I'm sure everyone has regrets about mistakes they've made with people, or the lack of understand of the "enemy."