Music: Melotron: Dein Meister (EP) (1998)
I'm happy to say it has been a mostly happy and productive today (sans saying goodbye this morning at the corner of Whitis and 25th). Finished paying the bills, wrote two letters of recommendation, got a letter back to someone up at the office to nominate another someone for well-deserved recognition, and got revisions done on the War of the Worlds essay. All that is left to write is the "punch-line" pages, where I trot out how Freud predicted Hitler and why this is bad, and then, to compare Tom Cruise's character to George W. Bush (both went from "bad father" to good father/Der Führer as a result of "terrorist" attacks). So, here's what I have so far (stage three of this rocket which, looks like, will at least be done before the end of the semester), which expands the discussion of the symbolic and imaginary fathers in Lacan:
Until the very end of the film, scene after scene reminds the viewer of the inability of State power to stop the violence and establish a sense of order and protection; consequently, the spectator is caused to sense the tremendous pressure and responsibility placed on Ray as the only individual throughout the film who has the power to protect. This power is explicitly (if not excessively) paternal. For example, during the inaugural extermination in the city, Ray discovers the only working vehicle and attempts to speed his children away to safety. After driving many miles away from the city, they stop in a rural area so that Rachel can use the bathroom. In a scene that recalls James Whale's chilling depiction of Frankenstein's monster drowning a young girl, Rachel makes her way past a grove of trees to the side of a river, where she is terrified by seeing dozens upon dozens of dead bodies floating downstream. Ray startles her from behind by covering her eyes as she screams, carrying her back toward the road where a caravan of military trucks with armed soldiers is racing by. Robbie runs after the trucks, screaming that he wants to go with them and, after they pass, gets into an argument with Ray about his ability to parent, accusing him of trying to abandon them again. Upset that Robbie considered leaving, Rachel screams "whose gonna take care of me if you go!?" The hideous mass of floating corpses, followed by scenes of military might--and then an argument about fatherhood--frames the conflict of the film as one of authority in a state of crisis. More specifically, after the first hour War of the Words presents itself as a drama about fatherhood, or rather, as an attempt to answer Jacques Lacan's famous question, "what is a father?"
What is a Father?
We would be mistaken if we though that the Freudian Oedipus myth puts an end to theology on the matter [of desire]. For the myth does not confine itself to working the puppet of sexual rivalry. It would be better to read in it what Freud requires us to contemplate using his coordinates; for they boil down to the question with which he himself began: "What is a Father?"
--Jacques Lacan[1]
The rivalry between Robbie and Ray over the care of the ten-year-old Rachel implicates the familial conflict is classically Oedipal, but, insofar as Ray is divorced, not necessarily in terms that Freud would find familiar. Perhaps the most famous of Freud's teachings, the Oedipal myth helped to explain the sexual dynamics of the Victorian family from the son's point of view: the son was jealous of his father and resentful of the fact that the father prohibits him from loving his mother in a romantic way.[2] For Freud, father/son rivalry was an overdetermined conflict that resolved itself when the son learned to identify and emulate the father, seeking a substitute for his mother via courtship or dating. In his refiguring of the Oedipal myth, Jacques Lacan tempered the psychosexual aspect by underscoring the function of the father figure as "the original representative of the Law's authority."[3] For Lacan, what is important about the cultural figure of the father is not whom he is entitled to enjoy (that is, the mother), but rather that, to the child, there is no higher authority than the father; he is the one who responds "because I say so!" in answer to the "why?" question. He is the one with the power to punish transgressions, as well as suspend the rules and norms in times of emergency or need. Consequently, the father is the original representative of the Law as such; it was he who first uttered the word "no!" or, as Moses is said to have reported, "thou shalt not!"
Lacan argued that the father figure represented two conflicting functions. On the one hand, the father entails a protective function and is called upon from time to time to transgress social rules and laws to keep others from harm. On the other hand, however, the father entails a prohibitive and legislative function and is responsible for teaching social rules and making laws. Anyone that is designated or assumes the role of the "real" father (that is, a flesh and blood human being who is not necessarily related or male) is typically asked to navigate the figure of the father both symbolically and imaginarily.[4] Symbolically, in his prohibitive function the father intervenes in the mother/infant dyad so that the child is introduced to the social world outside of that bond; in this respect, the father represents the "introduction of a third term," a fundamental signifier or "the-Name-of-the-Father" that introduces the cut of social reality, thereby putting an end to what is a kind of harmonic, individual state of nature in which the child cannot distinguish itself from its mother.5 Understood symbolically, the father's prohibition of the infant's romantic love for the mother actually represents the demand that the child become a social subject and civic being.6 The symbolic father is not to be confused with a real person, but rather, with the function of the social in the creation of subjectivity.
The imaginary father, on the other hand, is the composite concept or "imago" of a father that any one individual harbors.[7] A real, flesh and blood father frequently must "live up to" the imaginary father harbored by his (or her) children, which is a consequence of representations-not only from daily, life experience, but from social narratives, fantasies, and images as well. For example, within the diagetic space of War of the Worlds , Ray suffers under the imaginary imago, harbored by his children, that he is a "bad father" and is charged with overcoming this image by the end of the film. Analogously, real fathers must contend with social representations of "good" and "bad" fathers, and these tend to orbit fantasies of protection (Lacan suggests these imagoes include the good father of God and the bad father of the Devil). In the United States, Hollywood film (e.g., Father of the Bride) and American television (e.g., Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver) have been a long recognized locus of the imaginary father in Western culture.
When we understand the figure of the father represents the symbolic as an agent of law and prohibition charged nevertheless with the task of protection, then War of the Worldscan be read as an imaginary negotiation of the anxieties of symbolic fatherhood.[8] In different terms, insofar as the symbolic father is a position or function that can be occupied by a real father, then Spielberg's film provides an imago in the character of Ray to help negotiate social anxiety about the paternal function. The interplay of the symbolic and imaginary father is signaled at the very beginning by the way in which it opens with the stereotype of the "dead beat" dad. The film opens by establishing Ray as the typical "bad father" of filmic fantasy who has failed to emerge from adolescence: he is a half-hour late to receive his children in the opening of the film; he drives a "hot rod," and he is re-building a car engine on the kitchen table; he has no food in the house for his children to eat; when the dangerous and destructive lightening begins to strike, he makes his daughter come outside to watch it with him. In addition to his inability to protect and provide, Ray's status as a representative of the Law's authority is also repeatedly questioned: while throwing a baseball with Robbie in the backyard, he orders his son to finish his homework: "Your mom says you got a report due Monday. You're gonna work on it when we're done here." Robbie says that it's almost finished, to which Ray responds insultingly, "bullshit!" "Just do the report," continues Ray, "we don't send you to school so you can flunk out." Robbie then evokes the fantasy "good father" of the film, his step-father Tim: "You don't pay for it, Tim does." In this scene Ray is shown to be a powerless enforcer; after Ray angrily throws the baseball into a basement window, his impotence is further underscored when the ten-year-old Rachel counsels him on his parenting: "That's not how you're going to get to him. If you want him to listen you have to . . . ." Ray interrupts, "What are you, your mother? or mine?" The figure of the mother is invoked here, of course, in terms of her prohibitive function in respect to Ray: he sarcastically acknowledges his lack of authority by referring to the parental power he lacks.
The gradual ascent of Ray from his status as bad father whose law goes unheeded to his ability to protect and command as a good father, however, is relatively swift and complete by first hour of the film. Not coincidentally, this transformation is signaled in a scene in which the previously ambivalent state of nature takes a horridly Hobbsian turn: after the conflict with Robbie in the rural setting, they drive for some miles until they gradually discover hundreds of people marching toward the Hudson river. Suddenly, the family is ambushed at dusk by what seems like hundreds of feverish men who desperately want their vehicle. Angry and determined to escape, Ray floors the gas and speeds through the crowd; a rock is thrown into the windshield and though the hole of broken glass Ray sees that he is about to plow into a woman holding a baby. He quickly turns the van away from the mother and child, only to crash into a telephone pole outside of a small neighborhood diner. In a scene that recalls the Los Angeles riots of 1992, a mob covers the vehicle and rocks it from side to side; a number of men break the van's windows as women stand on the periphery calling for an end to the violence. One visibly panicked man tears through the broken windshield glass with his bare and bloody hands, signifying barbaric and primitive impulses (disturbingly, this man is African American).[9] Ray is torn from the vehicle and beaten, and Robbie soon follows, leaving Rachel trapped as strangers pour into it. Abruptly, Ray pulls a gun from is pant waist and shoots into the air. The crowd is immediately silenced. "Get off the car! Move!" he screams, as the subdued mob accede to his authority as a father with the potential to kill. His authority is quickly challenged when another armed man approaches Ray unawares and takes the van at gunpoint. Nevertheless, in this violent scene Ray establishes himself as the father who, however flawed, has the power to protect by means of transgression. From this moment on Ray's children never doubt this status as their father and he comes to occupy the position of the symbolic father.
Shortly after the family escapes this mob scene, however, Ray's function as the representative of the authority of the Law is challenged again by Robbie, and then, re-established with his daughter. This second challenge from Robbie, however, is not about rivalry, but rather concerns Robbie's own desire to represent the Law by becoming a soldier with the power to kill. Running away from another site of alien attack (a ferry dock on the Hudson river), the family suddenly find themselves in the midst of yet another battle in a country field. Dazzled by the bright lights and sound of explosions, irrationally, Robbie runs away from Ray and Rachel with the obvious intent of joining the military. At the top of a hill soldiers admit, with some frustration, that their weapons are have "no effect" on the alien ships. Leaving Rachel near a small tree, Ray runs toward the top of the hill and catches up with Robbie. They wrestle and Ray eventually wins by sitting on top of his son, signifying his resolute authority in this conflict. Like the military's weapons, Ray's words have no effect on Robbie: "I want you to listen to me," screams Ray. Robbie responds "I want to see this, I need to see this," as Ray repeats over him, "no, you don't! You don't!" The spectator is then shown an apparently well-meaning couple trying to take Rachel, now yards away, and usher her to safety. As Rachel screams for Ray, he is forced to make a choice: either let his son go to his certain death, or rescue Rachel from the well-meaning couple. The son and father stand and face each other solemnly as Ray decides to violate his charge as a protector and let his son go. Elated and overcome with a sense of mission, Robbie runs resolutely over the hill toward the battle scene, while Ray retrieves his daughter from the couple, repeating, "I'm her father, I'm her father." That Ray's next words are "I'm her father" is significant because he is no longer Robbie's father; Robbie has become a father in his own right. Of course, insofar as the tacit expectation of a parent is to keep their children from harm, Ray's authority is not only defined in terms of his ability to assert the law, but also in terms of his ability to relax it; once he lets Robbie go he, nevertheless, insists on his fathering of Rachel, thereby reassuring the power of protection and prohibition. Below, I suggest that insofar as the ability to relax or transgress the law in an exceptional situation is the fundamental function of the sovereign, War of the Worlds is not merely about "how a family finds its way home," but also about how a country finds its sense of security in a leader.[10]
Thirdness Trouble: Sovereignty/Fatherhood and Group Psychology
. . . life originally appears in law only as the counterpart of a power that threatens death. But what is valid for the pater's right of life and death is even more valid for sovereign power (imperium), of which the former constitutes the originary cell.
--Giorgio Agamben[11]
War of the Worlds was almost universally criticized for the implausible and unsatisfying focus on fatherhood. After almost two hours of harrowing chase scenes, "numbing portrayals of social collapse," and "chilling references to 9/11," the story is resolved with a paean to passionate parenting: the film ends when Ray and Rachel are joyfully reunited with Robbie, the mother, and the new husband at the Boston home of the former in-laws. As one rather cloying review summarized, "when it's time to protect his kids, Ray is a great dad."[12] In part, this ending was panned because it is emotionally unfair: Spielberg asks audiences to open a would by surfacing the memories of the real trauma that concentrates U.S. political discourse, but fails to close it by deliberately keeping the narrative apolitical; the question of State authority and international political issues is deliberately backgrounded. As Stuart Klawans suggests, the rather mawkish conclusion in Thanksgiving-style homecoming, particularly after excruciating "eruptions of violence, which in length and intensity surpass all expectation," points to a blind spot in Spielberg's vision. The director's refusal to see himself as the source of ecstatic violence without reason, Klawans argues, "deserves our attention," because "this refusal of self-knowledge" is homologous to the refusal of other "daily silences-the newscasts that don't reckon up the war dead, for example, or the conversations where people won't call incipient fascism by its name."13 The critic suggests that it is as if the filmmaker threw a violently spectacular temper tantrum with profound and "vast political implications" that are abruptly abandoned in favor of teaching us that father knows best. Obviously Spielberg's silence bespeaks something off-screen.
The disjuncture between the narrative plot and the emotional experience of the spectator is the symptom of a deeper ideological labor that transcends any facile commentary on the successes and failures of the nuclear family. Insofar as War of the Worlds is a deliberate attempt to resurface and react to the trauma of September 11, 2001, the film is staging a drama in which Ray's ability to care for his children is compared to the State's ability to care for its people. Rousseau's commentary on the sovereign as father bears repeating, for it represents the true imaginary father of the film. Because of the human's self-preservative instincts,
The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage. The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him.[14]
An attention to the plot of War of the Worlds in terms of the formal, symbolic function of the father figure as a representative of the Law-indeed, the Symbolic itself-re-characterizes the focus on the imaginary father as an ideologically informed displacement of the questions about governance and the State, in effect disguising a soul-deep longing for an effective and forceful leader with the power to quickly destroy any threat to security. That the underlying, ideological message of the film concerns a failure of State authority and leadership is made plain, first, by the impotence and disappearance of the police, and second, by the ineffectiveness of the military.
What is especially curious about War of the Worlds is that, unlike other disaster films in which a global threat looms, world leaders do not appear on-screen. For example, the effectiveness of military and political leadership is one of the primary sub-plots of the 1996 alien invasion film Independence Day, whose script closely resembles the events of War of the Worlds (many critics observed the film was a derivative of Well's classic and the 1953 film). Before the invasion, Independence Day opens with scenes from the White House in which the president, played by Bill Pullman, is criticized as he passes by a television in his pajamas: "That's the problem," says Eleanor Clift of the McLaughlin Group, "they elected a warrior and they got a wimp!" Independence Day is about how a certain kind of political "father" got his groove/authority back responding to the threat of exogenous evil. Although signifiers of the State are seen and rendered helpless in the form of policemen and soldiers, in War of the Worlds no singular government leader is given screen time.
Prima facie, the reason for the absent sovereign in War of the Worlds has something to do with the ideological message it wants to intone. The film is a call to parental duty in the wake of a disaster or crisis, a theme discernable in Spielberg's family-oriented films, such as E.T., The Goonies, and Poltergeist: when your government can no longer protect you, a (broken) family can! In this respect, War of the Worlds is arguably a resurrection of the bourgeois concept of family as the only viable protection from capitalism or catastrophe, or perhaps the film is a response to the so-called crisis of fatherhood in the United States. 15 I argue that War of the Worlds is about the sovereign precisely because he is absent. Indeed, I would suggest that reading War of the Worlds as "pro-family" or "pro-father" is actually a ruse. The deeper ideological labor of the film is its yearning and call for a new, off-screen sovereign, external to the diagetic space of the film. In other words, one should be careful not to locate the ideological interpellation of the film within the storied space or its most conspicuous images, but rather, in its silences and absences. Given the film's many forebears, was well as the events of Nine-eleven, the absent sovereign most conspicuous. A closer examination of the concept of sovereignty will better demonstrate why this is the case.
What is a Sovereign?
Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception.
--Carl Schmitt[16]
Of course, much has been written about the concept of sovereignty since the eighteenth century, and one could easily detail many different types.17 After the advent of fascism and the horrific holocausts of the twentieth century, however, scholars have been drawn to discuss the inherently paradoxical character of the sovereign as a law-giver or enforcer who has the power to transgress the law. Conceptually, Hobbes resolved this paradox in the absolute collapse of power and the law, the merging of the political and juridical: Whatever the sovereign decides the people should do is justice, as long as it is in the interest of peace (peace for Hobbes is defined negatively as the absence of killing). The issue is more complicated with the popular sovereignty advanced by Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson, and others, however, because the sovereign is the result of the "will of the people" contracting under the rule of law. The paradox of sovereignty then concerns relation between its power (or politics) and the rule of law, not in a state of normalcy, but rather when asserting something exceptional, like Marshall law. In his career-long assault on liberalism, the political philosopher and Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt attempted to resolve the conceptual problem of the sovereign by embracing the paradox as its core: "it is precisely the exception that makes relevant the subject of sovereignty, that is, the whole question of sovereignty."[18]
For Schmitt, sovereignty is established or founded in moments of crisis and anomie. This is why, for him, sovereignty is fundamentally a "borderline concept," which does not mean that it is vague or ambiguous, but rather, that the character of sovereignty cannot be discerned from the mundane or routine, but only at the extremes. The fundamental character of sovereignty is only discernable when events resemble the mythic state of nature, when a polis is unquestionably in some kind of emergency, because its power is fundamentally and decisively transgressive. "Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception," writes Schmitt, meaning that the sovereign is the body or individual who is, paradoxically, legally sanctioned to declare an exceptional right to lawlessness in states of emergency.[19] Sovereignty is defined in such a moment. Such a view is comparable to Lacan's characterization of the symbolic function of the father figure as a representative of the authority of law: like the father, the sovereign-be it a group or an individual-has the legal power to determine when there is an exception to the law, broadly construed.
Insofar as the state of nature staged by War of the Worlds foregrounds no obvious sovereign, at some point in the film one would expect the father to assert the "state of exception." The character of Ray does assert an exceptional state at multiple points in the film: against the protest of a mechanic, he steals the only working vehicle to rescue his children; when the family is overcome by a mob, Ray pulls a gun and threatens to kill those who do not stand back; and the second time when Robbie pleads to leave and join the military, Ray makes an exception to moral demand and lets his son go. The most dramatic scene in which Ray invokes the power of the sovereign to suspend the law, however, is the first, visible act of human murder that comes after a lengthy, twenty-minute build. After Robbie leaves to join the military and Ray rescues Rachel in the country field, they are shepherded into a farmhouse cellar by an EMT and ambulance driver, Harlan Ogilvy (played by Tim Robbins.) The dramatic climax of the film actually takes place in the cellar with Ogilvy, a deranged character who gradually becomes unhinged. While they are holed up in the cellar and as their food supply dwindles, Ogilvy begins to make veiled treats to Ray, and suggests to Rachel that when her father dies, he will take care of her. Rivalry between the men over custody and care of Rachel builds. The group is visited by an alien spy periscope, and Ogilvy almost blows their cover in a crazed panic. Fearing for the life of his daughter, Ray decides that they are in exceptional situation and serious, moral transgressions are justified. The shooting script describes the scene well:
From the other room [a deeper cellar], Ogilvy can be heard ranting, LOUD. RACHEL: "(a whisper) Dad?" Ray finds what he was looking for, or something close enough anyway. It's an old tee shirt. He goes to Rachel and drops to his knees in front of her. RACHEL: "What are you doing?" RAY: "No matter what you hear, do not take this off. Okay?" . . . Ray reaches out and wraps the tee shirt around her head, tying to firmly in the back. . . . We [the spectator/camera] say on Rachel's face, half-covered by the dirty tee shirt, and see none of what follows, we only hear the sounds and see the reactions on Rachel's obscured face.[20]
As Rachel winces, Ray enters the room with Ogilvy, a door closes, and sounds of a struggle are heard as Rachel sings "Hushabye Mountain." The soundtrack's pounding percussion builds for an excruciating thirty seconds until, abruptly, Rachel stops singing and Ray emerges from the deeper cellar room in silence. The spectator knows that Ray has just done something exception-he has murdered a man-but was morally sanctioned to do so in his capacity as a father.
What is disturbing about this scene is the way in which its transgression is foregrounded and contrasted with the carnage taking place outside of the cellar. The murder scene occurs three-fourths into the plot's sequence and takes place after the viewer has seen countless murders by the aliens. Up until this scene, one human after the next has been seen vaporized in quick succession. The scene in the cellar, however, builds to the murder over a long period of time. One gets to "know" the victim, and she is made to feel anguished with Ray about the decision. Furthermore, we do not see the murder, we only hear it. Visually, the spectator is shown the very attractive, lily-white face of a child whose eyes are covered with a dirty, dark green blindfold. The contrast of the visual signifiers of innocence with the sonorous signifiers of murder and death is jarring-even more excruciating than the rather explicit death-by-heat-ray scenes in the inaugural massacre scene. This contrast of styles of violence between aliens and the father figure is obviously meant to underscore the profound responsibility of the individual who declares the state of exception. Less obviously, the scene glorifies the figure of the sovereign as an authority of lawlessness, a loveable outlaw who will do anything to protect his people. Because War of the Worlds is a commentary on Nine-eleven, lauding such a model of sovereignty is more dangerous and politically disastrous than many spectators probably realize.
NEXT SECTION: Group Psychology and Exceptional States
NOTES
1 Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), 298.
2 See Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, trans. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton, 1961), 107-194; and Sigmund Freud, "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex," trans. James Strachey, The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 661-665.
3 Lacan, Écrits, 299.
4 For Lacan, men or women can function as the father; what is crucial is that whatever parent occupys this role, he or she is charged simulteaneoulsy with protection and prohibition. Although women can function as fathers, culturally is the role is overdetermined to be male.
5 See Lacan, Écrits, 65-67; and Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses, 1955-1956, trans. Jacques-Alain Miller (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 92-97.
6 See Jacques Lacan, Écrits, 297-300. For a helpful summaries, see Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1997), 61-64; and Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Jouissance and Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 55-58.
7 Evans, Introductory, 62-63; and Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-1960, translated by Dennis Porter (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 304-310.
8 Lacan specified three fathers: the symbolic father, the imaginary father, and the real father. Here were are concerned only with symbolic (cultural function) and imaginary (fantasy function) fathers as they are negotiated in War of the Worlds . In a qualified sense, the "real" father is a specific, flesh and blood human being.
9 Given the way in which this scene recalls the L.A. riots about the brutal police beating of Rodney King, it is a commentary on the underlying racism of the film, which is overwhelming in its "whiteness." Space prevents a discussion of this aspect of the film, however, whiteness is a consistent theme in Speilberg's work.
10 Michael Wilmington, "War of the Worlds ," review of War of the Worlds (Paramount Pictures movie), The Chicago Tribune/Metomix.com, available http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/movies/mmx-050629-moviewarofworlds,0,6768819.story accessed 6 February 2006.
11 Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Casarino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 5.
12 John Wirt, "War of the Worlds a Summer Spectacular," review of War of the Worlds (Paramount Pictures movie), The Advocate, available http://www.2theadvocate.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/1787416.html accessed 2 February 2006.
13 Stuart Klawans, "Alien Nation," review of War of the Worlds (Paramount Pictures movie), Dark Water (Touchstone movie), and Land of the Dead (MCA movie), The Nation (8 August 2005): 42.
14 Rousseau, Social Contract, 15.
15 See Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life, revised ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1986); and George W. Bush, "President Bush Speaks at the Fourth National Summit on Fatherhood," text of speech given 7 July 2001; available http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010607-3.html accessed 23 October 2006; and Carol Browning, "Crisis of Fatherhood." Christian Century 116 (1999): 796-797. Most recently this "crisis" has been centered on the absent father in the African American community, however, rhetoric about the perils of the absent father has been steadily building in over the past century in Europe and the United States.
16 Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 5.
17 For an overview of the many different types of sovereignty, see the entry on the concept in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sovereignty/ accessed 18 February 2006.
18 Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.
19 Schmitt, Political Theology, 5-15.
20 Friedmann and Koepp, War of the Worlds , 109.
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