Post-Politics in Context by Ali Rıza Taşkale

Author:Ali Rıza Taşkale [Taşkale, Ali Rıza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General, Political Ideologies
ISBN: 9781317282495
Google: U9kRDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30082010
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Katechon

In a revision of Foucault’s account of biopolitics, I shall suggest that bio-politics is a measured attempt to combine the existing order and legitimacy of a neoliberal economic theory in order to decrease resistance. In a sense, therefore, modern biopolitics is doing here to the ‘sacralised neoliberal order’ what Schmitt did to the exception, turning its revolutionary potentiality (Benjamin) into a counterrevolutionary politics of event. Modern biopolitics is therefore katechontic. Every epoch has its own Satan and seems to be generating its appropriate katechon. In this sense, the antagonism is between the Satan and the katechon. To clarify this point, let us now turn to Schmitt’s katechon (from the Greek for ‘to hold down’). In The Nomos of the Earth, Schmitt (2003) contends that the legacy of Roman law, and temporal political orders established over the centuries, is katechontic: what is the best possible order that prevents decay, the victory of ‘evil’, and resists the Anti-Christ, the end of finite time? With the katechon, or the ‘restrainer’, Christianity emerges as an empire whose centre is Rome, and gains a juridical, cultural, and pros-ecutorial imperial power within history.

The katechon is what transforms eschatological time into the time of Christian Empire, always prepared to act against the apocalypse. Empire, according to Schmitt, ‘meant the historical power to restrain the appearance of the Antichrist and the end of the present eon’ (2003: 60). The empire becomes the katechon because it delays the fulfilment of history. It sustains, restores the order, and thus fights the absolute state of lawlessness.

The idea of the katechon refers to the second letter of the apostle Paul to the community in Thessalonica, where the apostle Paul is explaining why the Lord has not arrived yet (see Hoelzl 2010: 98). Verses 6–7 constitute the central parts of the letter: ‘And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed when his time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who now restrains it is removed’. The passage is a Pauline warning to the primitive community in Thessalonica against the revelation of the lawless activity of ‘Satan’, of Antichrist, upon whom God sends a ‘strong delusion’, ‘so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness’ (II.2.11). According to the apostle, the lawless Satan threatens to replace God, the throne of God. We are also told that the Christ will return soon to delay the apocalypse and institute the reign of God. In order for the second coming of the Lord, the lawless Satan has to be revealed. As such, the lawless Antichrist is already visible but has not been fully revealed yet (Hoelzl 2010: 100). The reason for this, however, is not clear.

The katechon is an appointee of God to overturn the current evil world, to prevent chaos. There is also no dispute about the importance of the katechon in Schmitt’s thinking: ‘I do not believe that any historical concept other than katechon would have been possible for the original Christian faith’ (Schmitt 2003: 60).

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