A contextual analysis of law and the "state of exception": Spatialization of emotions and engulfed apathy

In the context of the American War on Terror, the focus of this eclectic text is to traverse between the past and the present and vice versa to argue that law is hegemony, which in the state of exception, transmutes itself into sheer force. Law with its promises of universality, objectivity and impartiality does not lead to a peaceful and sustainable future mindful of diversity and plurality of our common world and the Mother Earth. Law is bound by violence and the sovereign’s decision, as well as the complex web of significance that are not meant to protect all in the house of modernity which has predominately relegated emotions to the private realm. However, as Walter Benjamin argues, the state of exception has become the rule and as Giorgio Agamben maintains, a paradigm of government in liberal democratic states. Spaces of exception and exclusion, like Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp (GTMO) testify to how the state of exception has showed the true face of the sovereign in excluding “the other” from the Western juridical field. In other words, GTMO is the epitome of engulfed apathy, and a violent space, where in the name of security and democracy, a 15-year-old Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen by birth, was held captive and was tortured. The American War on Terror has undermined the democratic principles of liberty, equality and justice for all, heading towards world alienation. This text draws on the literature of Hannah Arendt and espouses her calls for political participation as a way to undermine the violence of the sovereign