Do político à segurança e de volta outra vez: Carl Schmitt nos estudos críticos de segurança

Abstract

This dissertation thesis analyses the process of intellectual reception of Carl Schmitt in Critical Security Studies. Drawing upon the methodological discussion on the history of ideas, we question the typical bifurcation between textualism and contextualism as univocal principles of interpretation of the meaning of texts. Relevant to our analysis is not only to identify what the controversial German jurist really meant to say in his texts, but that its meaning is also conditioned by the use that is made out of it, of what one can make Schmitt “say” concerning the reception of his thought. What have been the uses of Carl Schmitt in Critical Security Studies and what structure of presuppositions and interests condition the social reading of the thinker in the area? To answer such questions, the first chapter offers a brief introduction to Schmitt’s thought, with a special attention to his “international” thinking. The second chapter analyses the first reception venue of Schmitt in Critical Security Studies, where it developed a negative hermeneutics in the debates about securitization theory and the normative need to depart from the ‘Schmittean logic’ of security; the second chapter analyses the second reception venue, which involves the critique to a universal and intrinsic concept of security. To the authors of this line of interpretation, the critique of Schmitt’s theoretical framework on sovereign decisionism and the concept of the political would allow to shift the fixed grammar of security towards a more progressive and emancipative terms; the last chapter analyses the individual appropriation of Schmitt by Andreas Behnke, who developed the last reception venue until the present moment. Escaping the negative hermeneutics, Behnke builds a new Schmittean analytical framework for security, which expands on Schmitt’s bibliographical horizon and criticizes the predominantly liberal premises of Critical Security Studies