2012-05-25

The state is a complex modern entity. Its logic of power is best manifested through the dialectical relationship between its efforts for closure—delimiting practices that are tolerated from those that are not—and its openness for contention and competition over its control. This dialectic enables the state to employ a combination of fierce and soft characteristics as its common sense. Both characteristics promote its superiority and its control over its human and physical environments. One of the mechanisms of state power is its monopoly on the means of violence, whose use is vital to ensure the state as an order. The modern state—unlike the absolute state—is best realized through its "counter-character": namely through the hiding of its fierce character, which best explains its logic. This hiding game is best achieved through disciplining mechanisms and governmentality. It is the generality and natural presence of the state that provides it with its best mechanisms for control, which entails the grounding effect of its potential violence. This need for stealth is even more sophisticated in democratic systems, where violence does not align with the spirit of the sovereignty of the people and is therefore expressed as the guarantor of the former or the exception that ensures the rule.

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