Liberal Enmity: The Figure of the Foe in the Political Ontology of Liberalism

Abstract

The article ventures a deconstruction of the contemporary liberal `politics of enmity'. Against the attribution to Carl Schmitt of the valorisation of the extreme relation of political enmity, we argue that the asymmetrical `ultra-politics', in which the `just enemy', existentially equal to the Self, is supplanted by the image of a morally reprehensible `foe' is decidedly un-Schmittian and rather characterises the liberal mode of enmity. Our deconstruction of this `ultra-politics of the foe' proceeds through the elucidation of the paradoxes of the political ontology of liberalism, which permit the exclusion of the `enemy of liberalism' as an inhuman being, whose existence is `contrary to nature'. The article concludes by elucidating the contemporary relevance of the figure of the foe, a being excluded from both nature and humanity, in the context of the struggle against international terrorism.