State violence operating outside its own rules constitutes informal sovereignty

Evidence

Sovereignty amounts in the final determination not just to the power or right to determine the state of exception, as Carl Schmitt so famously has put it. Achille Mbembe, following Foucault, emphasizes that it concerns even more basically power over the right to kill. No doubt the power over exception could be said to entail the power over killing. But the sovereign’s defining power over killing remains no matter the declaration of exceptionality. If every state killing is legitimated through the at least implicit declaration of exceptionality, exceptionality must either be instrumentally in service of sovereign power and not its ground, or it is simply moot. The sovereign’s defining power to kill accordingly must be more basic than the power over exceptionality. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 703 (#complicates, via linked claim)

From all that has been said it follows that in the phenomenon of military commandos, it is necessary to distinguish between the technical function of commandos as a special force linked to the modern war of position, and their politico-military function. As a special force commandos were used by all armies in the World War. But they have only had a politico-military function in those countries which are politically enfeebled and non-homogeneous, and which are therefore represented by a not very combative national army, and a bureaucratised General Staff, grown rusty in the service. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 887 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Conceptions of liberty are themselves constituted through violence. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1828; War-torn states serve capital as plunder zones free of state duties — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2014; State-linked extrajudicial violence against Tamils was systematic and wide-scale — Neil DeVotta, Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalist…, 338 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Sovereignty rests on the power to kill, not the power of exception #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 703
• Illegal private violence has a political function only in politically enfeebled states #complicates (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 887