The Border of the Political Space: Experience of Interpretation in the Horizon of Two Paradigms of the Political

Abstract

Relevance. The political order is the spatial order (K. Schmitt); globalization as a “destruction of space” and “removal of time” is a paradigmatic change in the representation of the border. The study of the ways of drawing the border in the two Western paradigms of the political becomes a politically urgent task. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that in the paradigm of K. Schmitt’s “concept of the political”, the border is assumed to be a sovereign decision distinguishing between friend and enemy and establishing a zone of anomie by the sovereign’s decision on a state of emergency. In the economic paradigm of the political (G. Agamben), the political is represented as homogeneous, universal and global, “the sovereign’s place” is an “empty place”, while the liberal principle of the rule of law means an absolute exclusion of a sovereign decision. Objectives. Firstly, it is necessary to clarify the context in which the border issue becomes meaningful; secondly, to study the conditions for the possibility of a “border decision” in the two Western paradigms of the political; and, thirdly, to clarify the consequences of the essential impossibility of the border in the economic paradigm of the political. Methodology. A comparative analysis of the two paradigms of the political allows us to raise the question of the border as the main issue of political ontotheology in the horizon of Heidegger’s interpretation of modernity as an “incapacity for death”. Results. “The era of nihilism”, the “empty space” as a “missing centre” of the political order (and an absent centre of Western political ontology (S. Žižek)) and as a zone of anomie should be presented as a metaphysical concept connecting the real and the actual. The study of ways of understanding “empty space” reveals the meaning of the border as a constitutive principle of the political order and allows us to determine the differences in the interpretation of the border in the two Western paradigms of the political. The article identifies the political consequences of these differences. Conclusion. Based on the analysis, the following conclusion is made: the “impossibility of the border” necessarily leads to the disintegration of the political order and anarchy of the “bare life” (G. Agamben): the reality of the camp and the utopia of the “good life” are unmediated, that is, formless in their facticity.