The Violence of the State of Exception and Macrosecuritization in Climate Politics

The intersection of insecurity and exception applied in climate politics is examined through an engagement of Giorgio Agamben’s theory on the limit—more specifically, violence—of law in modern politics. Agamben maintains that the sovereign law, or more precisely the sovereign ban, is applied to disasters, catastrophes, and emergencies which are increasingly becoming ubiquitous conditions of modern life. This constant declaration of the state of exception reveals that the law is in force but without concrete significance. The essential problem with the normalization of the state of exception might be summarized as the sovereign power’s separation between law and life, while replacing it with indistinction between law and violence. This discussion seeks to understand the conceptual mechanisms and processes that enable familiar apocalyptic ideas such as risk and crisis that activate the state of exception, and consequently legitimize and authorize the unleashing of violence in full complicity with law.