The original political relation is the ban, not belonging

Evidence

It is not only that “every attempt to ground political communities in something like a ‘belonging”’ can no longer be pursued or indeed legitimated, but that such a relation has never been the ground of politics: “the original political relation is the ban (the state of exception as zone of indistinguishability between outside and in- side, exclusion and inclusion).” — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 767

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s engagements with the state of exception and sovereignty in Agamben and related political theory.