°BSG part I - iustitium
Roman scholars and legal historians have not yet been able to find a satisfactory explanation for the peculiar semantic evolution that led the term iustitium - the technical designation for the state of exception - to acquire [by the end of the Republic] the meaning of public mourning for the death of the sovereign or his close relative. - Agamben, State of Exception.
Further along, however, Agamben praises Augusto Fraschetti, who argued that the connection between these two senses of the iustitium “lies not in a presumed character of mourning in extreme situations or anomie but in the tumult that the sovereign’s funeral can cause”, where the death of sovereigns are “likened to civic catastrophes”. Thereby, “the suspension of law is integrated into the funeral ceremony.”
In the final sequence of Season One of Battlestar Galactica, Commander Adama lies bleeding from an assasination attempt. For the first two episodes of the Second Season, Adama will be in a coma as riots break out and martial law is declared. Not death, then, but quite literally suspension.
Of course, this moment is preceded by a de facto military coup - Adama’s jailing of President Roslyn and her principal ally, Adama’s son, Apollo, for sowing mutiny. And the second Season of BSG unfolds as the proliferation of and commentary on the exceptions, particularly in the “Pegasus” and “Resurrection Ship” episodes which have been both nominated for Hugo awards and the most loudly denounced as unAmerican: Cain versus Adama, the conflict between the “finer points of colonial law” and the state of “we are at war”, guns-drawn skirmishes over the jurisdiction of military and civil law, and, not least, the treatment of human and Cylon prisoners and the distinctions, if any, made between them. A still from “Pegasus” (scr. Anne Cofell Saunders):
And yet, the catastrophe - in an emphatically apostrophised sense, as ‘humanity’s catastrophe’ - has already occured, the state of emergency has already been in force (for the entire series), if not already promulgated in law.
The link between mourning and the declaration of a tumultus in the iustitium, then, is perhaps not only located in the mourning of the death of the sovereign (or a member of the sovereign’s family) because the sovereign is deemed pater of familialised subjects, as Agamben notes - and the paternal aspect of Commander Adama is certainly hyperbolised in BSG, and more.
Might it not also be that the iustitium, as it comes to mean the period of mourning of the death of the sovereign toward the end of the Roman Republic, suggests a slight modification of Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty. Not the ability to decide the exceptions, but the state of emergency as the inability of the state to be decisive (sovereign) about where the border between exception and norm is located. In other words: the death throes of, or at least significant challenge to, very existence of the Res Publica.
Given these two aspects, is this perhaps why it is reproduction - or, more specifically, the politicisation of the womb - that provides the significant thread around which Season Two is woven.
tbc
Fascinating.
Kenneth Rufo [July 9, 2006 @ 3:06 am]
Where did BSG come under fire for being unAmerican?
The whole series is good, but I find the Cain episodes to be the best political sci fi I have seen or read for a long time, maybe ever. I watched the whole of BSG up to that point in a state of shock. It is uncompromising biopolitical authoritarianism, and then you meet the even worse option, the dysfunctional family which makes Adama look sensible by comparison.
If I had a critique of the series it is that, like pretty much every other movie ever made in the United States, it is fundamentally about the familly, so it is, to make a bad pun, confined in a horizon of the nuclear. Still, that isn’t a criticism, it is just a description of the material the show has reworked into something dark and sinister.
Comparing it to Spielberg’s awful War of the Worlds puts things into perspective. There is a film that tries to situate itself within a pretty explicilty theopolitical horizon of crisis - the tripods even bellow the Trumpet! - but Spielber is completely unable to handle the state of exception. War of the Worlds is really a Hollycaust movie (thanks Alphonse): the family in ultimate crisis. But it looks silly. The Titans awake because Tom Cruise is a unionist and - therefore - bad father. BSG, on the other hand, is the real deal. The Enemy, on the other hand, is just Fury incarnate, with no sense at all. In this respect, Spielberg’s Enemy is much more like Bush and Schmitt’s enemies. The BSG enemy, on the other hand, really subverts any attempt to reforge the family through trial - because they are, I think this is clear if one pays attention, more human than the humans. At some stage it is even intimated that their grivances were just.
To tell a story like that in an American sci-fi series requires, I think, a radicalization of the theological formula, which is why everything ends up being up in the air. The implication in the preview - where Starbuck speaks as if humanity is God - is really awesome.
I am very depressed I won’t be able to see this for a long time. I am off to Bougainville on Thursday. So all the best.
TCO [July 10, 2006 @ 2:19 pm]
Shucks. I failed to make sense again. Where it says “The Enemy , on the other hand, is just Fury incarnate” I mean Spielberg’s tripods.
TCO [July 10, 2006 @ 2:50 pm]
Kenneth - it’s worth a look, though I suggest watching from the beginning.
T, there’ve been debates on messageboards and the like about the unAmericanism, and some reference to a couple of articles which I haven’t saved the url for - but likely findable.
On the unravelling over the friend-enemy, human-machine distinction and grievances, of which I’ll write more soon, we’re told over and again, “They rebelled”, meaning the cylons. This being in the tradition of Bladerunner, of course, but notable. And the Dean Stockwell cylon (who is really very funny and sharp) says, rather pointedly, “Well, if we’re going to start pointing fingers”, referring to human indignation over the decimation of Caprica.
Oh, and it’s not Starbuck’s voice-over in the trailer for the 3rd Season, it’s Six’s (who is the most theological of all the cylons, unlike, say, the atheist Stockwell character (”God is superstition”). The confluence of love and absolute power that she’s referring to is likely a reference to the dispensing of antibiotics as well as control - the totalitarian state that will, I’ll hazard, actually ensure that the “human species survives”, in a strictly biopolitical, or ‘bare life’ sense, of course. (And perhaps on the condition of increasing hybridisation … )
Anyway, it’s widely been suggested that the first part of the 3rd season is even darker than any previous episodes. Blimey. I thought it was already as dark as it could possibly get. — Btw, Season 3 episode 1 - spoiler - click only if you like spoilers.
s0metim3s [July 10, 2006 @ 2:55 pm]