Veille et état d’exception

Abstract

Watchfulness and State of Exception

This article intends to link watchfulness to the state of exception. Ordinarily, both concepts do not have any close connection, since watchfulness belongs to the field of metaphysics, and the state of exception to the field of political study.

Nevertheless, thanks to authors such as Agamben (who, in Il Timp che chesta, develops a theological frame of the state of exception) we can include the first concept with the other one. Thus, we discover that the „sleeping state” corresponds to the „as if state” in biopolitics. From there, watchfulness adopts and dialectically embraces the posture of the Paulinian „as if not” and facilitates the overcoming of nihilism, which is inherent in societies of surveillance which always coerces Man’s power of acting towards the Origin.

Keywords: watchfulness, biopolitics, exception, Agamben, Boutang