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March 2, 2007
"24," Christ Figures, and Executive Power
I confess that I don't, but Jerome Eric Copulsky does, and he offers some provocative thoughts about it this week at the University of Chicago Divinity School's site "Sitings": Early on, I hit upon the show's secret: "24" is a sustained lesson in controversial jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt's decidedly illiberal concept of sovereignty. "Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception," Schmitt proclaimed at the beginning of his 1922 treatise Political Theology. To have this power is to stand outside the law, to decide upon the state of exception, when the normal rules do not apply. If we follow Schmitt's claim that "significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts," the human sovereign is the political analogue of the omnipotent God.
What better description could there be of counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer, the hero of "24"?I can't test Copulsky's analogies since I don't know anything more about the show than what I hear so many people saying about it. But if you're at "24"-ophile, check out Copulsky's piece.
Posted by Eric at March 2, 2007 6:31 AM