The enemy exceeds the human, arising from appetites and potentiality rather than identity

Evidence

The enemy is not the perpetrator, nor is the enemy always human. Nature often turns out on the list of usual enemies, yet the enemy is never simply natural. The enemy is not primary, but derivative of the infinity of appetites, derivative of the accidents that others are (Hobbes), that they can always be. The enemy is an outgrowth plagued by potentiality, even as the impossible possibility that is the last enemy. All of this makes the enemy quite inhuman-already inhuman, all too inhuman. Particularly mine. No enemy is worse than mine, but I have often been said to be my worst enemy (still, the enemy may bring out the best in us. It is thus often the case that “we feel more ashamed of our faults before our enemies than before our friends.” Perhaps this is what Adorno meant when he wrote of “the subject as the subject’s foe.” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 423

Categorization

• DEFINE: Definitional catalog of what the enemy is not (perpetrator, always human, primary) and is (derivative, potentiality-laden, intimate).