The enemy is sovereignty’s mirror-avatar, not an alien other.

Evidence

Nancy writes that war is the “execution or putting to work of sovereignty itself” (Nancy, Being Singular Plural, 102). But in making a decision over the enemy, the sovereign seeks to strip another sovereign of his sovereignty, to subject him, even destroy him. What is thus confronted is not other, but an alter ego. “The right to wage war is the most sovereign of all rights because it allows a sovereign to decide that another sovereign is its enemy and to try to subjugate it … It is the sovereign’s right to confront his alter ego” (ro6). If Nancy is right that sovereignty remains to be thought (“No possibility anywhere for thinking sovereignty hie et nunc or for thinking beyond it,” 109), I would want to add that this failure of thought is all the more striking regarding the enemy, at the opposite side-apparently-of sovereignty. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 831

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the enemy-operationalized as alter ego of the sovereign, echoing Schmitt and Nancy.