Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets Through Capital, Power, and Labor by Alice Sparkly Kat

Author:Alice Sparkly Kat [Sparkly Kat, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BODY; MIND & SPIRIT, Astrology, General, Social Science, Folklore & Mythology, Social Classes & Economic Disparity
ISBN: 9781623175313
Google: WOv4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2021-05-18T23:38:48.854520+00:00

Public Enemy #1

The Romans had two words related to fighting: tumultus (tumult) and bellum (war). While war was fought on the borders against the enemies of those within the great expanse of empire, which can have the effect of uniting the empire against a common enemy, tumult is related to the word “tumor,” which means an abnormal swelling or internal disturbance. Unlike formal warfare, tumult is not the fighting of a known external enemy but the fighting of different factions within the state itself. It is a state of special disorder, internal unrest, or civil war. Eris, goddess of discord, represented social unrest or tumult.

In the event of tumult, Roman law allowed for a special type of exception called the iustitium, which translates to “standstill” or “suspension of law.” When the state was under threat by powers that sought to disturb it, the law would be abandoned, and the Senate released all magistrates from any restrictions of lawmaking. During an iustitium, the Senate was allowed to do whatever it took to preserve the structure of the state, even activities that were illegal. In other words, when threatened by either external or internal forces, ancient Rome went into an extralegal state in which the normal laws of the land were suspended, and might became right. Roman law and norms of conduct were only valid during times of peace. When under threat, Rome entered a dictatorship, and an elected military commander, the auctorias principis, had full power. Under an iustitium, an auctorias principis was able to commit acts that were normally illegal.

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls the emergency suspension of law a “state of exception,” and he points out that the state of exception is an inherent contradiction of the law. Agamben describes the state of exception as a structure where the rule of law does not exist—a structure into which the enemies and the threat (perceived or real) are contained so that outside of the structure, law can go on as normal. He writes that because the protection of the law also means the abandonment of the law, the law is not founded upon its own effectiveness, moral certainty, or even its ability to protect itself. The law is justified on the basis of an extralegal state in which all violence is allowed and no law exists. Agamben argues that the state of exception, which is a state without law, “seems, for some reason, to be so essential to the juridical order that it must seek in every way to assure itself a relation to it, as if in order to ground itself the juridical order necessarily had to maintain itself in relation with an anomie.” Lawlessness is embedded into Roman law.

Agamben writes that the state of exception is integral to law. When law becomes that which is abandoned when it’s not obeyed, it becomes a thing that is enforced only through extralegal violence. Because the law (violence is not okay) must be abandoned to be enforced (violence is okay), its very existence is exceptional and contradictory.

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