Gigantomachy Concerning a Void: Philippine Martial Law, Fictive Exception, and Sovereign Indecision

Abstract

What went right in the Philippine EDSA Revolution of 1986? A protracted martial law was ended. What went subsequently wrong? Normalised emergency has come to define Philippine political society, tragically demonstrated by the continuing drug war and the recent Anti-Terrorism Law-sanctioned slaughters. The transition from permanent martial law to a normalised emergency is driven by the liberal fear of the Schmittian challenge of the absolute sovereign—thus pushing the encodement of emergency powers within the law and, as such, normalising them. But Carl Schmitt was primarily correcting a perceived weakness of the Weimar Republic by preserving the potential for exceptional powers within the law, and as such, within its liberal system. Instead, his real opponent was Walter Benjamin, the other protagonist in what Giorgio Agamben describes as a “gigantomachy concerning a void.” At stake was the theoretical appropriation of the concept of exception. Is its decision the monopoly of the sovereign as Schmitt claimed? Or is it outside the law and the sovereign can only exclude it as Benjamin maintained? But, for us trapped in a state of exception that is the rule, the more important question is: How does this debate resolve the theoretical and practical puzzles raised by the ruinous practice of an after-martial law experienced as normalised emergency?