Carl Schmitt and Critical Theory: Bridging the Divide
Matthew Lowery
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Abstract
The central ambition of this dissertation will be to demonstrate that Schmitt continues to offer valuable insights on a range of topics which are of particular importance for contemporary critical theorists. Because of length constraints, I will focus on what I regard as the areas of Schmitt’s writing which might prove most fertile for contemporary critical theorists: on the nature of democracy and politics, liberalism’s relationship with reason and technology, and dictatorship, the rule of law, and the state of emergency. In order to achieve this aim, this paper will put Schmitt into a dialogue with several other authors, from Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin to Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj Žižek, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and many other thinkers in this rea, to revise some aspects of Schmitt’s theory in a more progressive, emancipatory direction
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