Sovereign Times: Acts of Creation

Abstract

Contemporary understandings of sovereignty have generally followed, or borrowed heavily from, Carl Schmitt’s theory of the exception, which Giorgio Agamben refers to as a “topological” concept. Schmitt conceives of the sovereign as a figure who exists both inside and outside of the juridical order. This paper suggests that Schmitt’s theory of the sovereign exception involves not only a topology, but also a temporality, in that it treats the decision as a single, compacted instant — one in which crisis, decision, and decider all miraculously leap into existence. It further suggests that Agamben’s interpretation of Saint Paul’s “ho nyn kairos” or “time of the now,” and his distinction between the prophet and the apostle, effectively reinforces the Schmittian conception of “sovereign time.” As an alternative, I refer to Jacques Derrida’s work on iteration and undecidability, and maintain that genuine decisions cast us into, rather than delivering us from, the aproias of time.