Beyond the line: Carl Schmitt and the constitutive outsider of the international

AuthorRoberto Vilchez Yamato
Date01 May 2019
DOI10.1177/0263395718755567
Published date01 May 2019
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718755567
Politics
2019, Vol. 39(2) 218 –232
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395718755567
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Beyond the line: Carl Schmitt
and the constitutive outsider
of the international
Roberto Vilchez Yamato
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil
Abstract
In this article, I offer a reading of the pirate in Carl Schmitt inspired by Reinhart Koselleck’s study
on asymmetric counterconcepts. I argue that the pirate in Schmitt marks a negative asymmetric
counterconceptual position associated with a space of exception in relation to which one may
also identify the outlaw enemy of humanity. In displacing the political and mapping the pirate’s
position within Schmitt’s conceptual order, the significance of this article’s main contribution is
to draw attention to a specific asymmetric counterconceptual structuring that marks the limits
of ‘our’ international political world with the dehumanized negativity of its constitutive outsider.
Rereading Koselleck’s methodological qualification on the structural iterability of asymmetric
counterconcepts, the article suggests that the spectre of the pirate lives on, haunting the outer
limits of the international and legitimizing abject forms of violence.
Keywords
asymmetric counterconcepts, Carl Schmitt, constitutive outsider of the international, pirate,
Reinhart Koselleck
Received: 1st June 2016; Revised version received: 27th October 2017; Accepted: 20th December 2017
Introduction
In The Legal World Revolution, his last published work (Piccone and Ulmen, 1987: 4),
Carl Schmitt (1987) dedicates its last section to a discussion on humanity as a political
subject, concluding it with commentaries on Reinhart Koselleck’s work on asymmetric
counterconcepts. Making use of Koselleck’s terms, Schmitt was concerned with humanity
becoming an asymmetric counterconcept, thus legitimizing a process of discrimination
that would turn the ‘negatively valued person’ into ‘an unperson’ whose worthless life
must be destroyed. He warned that concepts such as ‘humanity’ and the ‘human’ contain
the possibility of the deepest inequality. Approvingly commenting Koselleck’s analysis of
Corresponding author:
Roberto Vilchez Yamato, Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
(PUC-Rio), Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225, Vila dos Diretórios, Casa 20, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro CEP
22451-900, Brazil.
Email: roberto.v.yamato@gmail.com
755567POL0010.1177/0263395718755567PoliticsYamato
research-article2018
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