Through an analysis of the relationship between the enemy and the sovereign in the thought of Carl Schmitt, Petar Bojanić examines “the ‘placement’ and ‘erasure’ of violence in(to) sovereignty”. Violence is not a “substitute” for sovereignty; sovereignty is a figure: “a shape, sculpture, institution, figment, imagination, form, Gestalt, type, person, physiognomy…” Besides the work of Carl Schmitt, the author examines the figure of violence through the reading of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, fragments from Hegel’s writings, as well as works of Thomas Hobbes and Hannah Arendt. The final essays in this work are dedicated to the questioning of ‘pseudo-sovereignty’ based on the examples of states of the former Yugoslavia.

Violence, The Figures of Sovereignty
Petar Bojanić

Publishers
Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory
University of Belgrade

“Filip Višnjić”
Belgrade

Book Series
Fronesis

240 pages

Year of publication: 2007

ISBN 978-86-82417-17-0