The enemy concept resists any single disciplinary location, making its history near-impossible

Evidence

Is the question of the enemy a philosophical, legal, or psychological question? Is it a culturally contained, even a historical and (finally?) a political one? Aside from Carl Schmitt’s attempt not so much to revive as to virtually establish the concept of the enemy and to locate the decision concerning the distinction between friend and enemy as the condition of the political, aside from Jacques Derrida’s groundbreaking reflections on the enemy in Politics of Friendship, there is very little to authorize or even enable the claim that one could ever write a history of the enemy. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 81

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction as the defining political concept, the key term for everything that follows.