%0 Journal Article
%T Between Enemies and Friends: Carl Schmitt, Melanie Klein and the Passion(s) of the Political
%A Isaac D. Balbus
%J Theoria and Praxis : International Journal of Interdisciplinary Thought
%D 2013
%I York University
%X Carl Schmitt¡¯s claim to have demonstrated an unbreakable connection between sovereignty and the opposition between friends and enemies stands as an enduring challenge to the possibility of a politics that is free from in-group idealization and out-group demonization and the inevitably pernicious consequences that follow from this political-psychological split. In this paper I take up this challenge by relying on, and extending, the psychoanalytic assumptions of Melanie Klein to identify the common yet contingent psychological preconditions of this ¡°Schmittian¡± connection, and thus to begin to clarify the conditions under which it could be broken. In locating what might be called the ¡°relative truth¡± of Schmitt¡¯s position, Klein turns out to be neither entirely an enemy nor entirely a friend of Carl Schmitt.
%K The Political
%K Schmitt
%K Klein
%K Friends and Enemies
%K Sovereignty
%U http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/theoriandpraxis/article/viewFile/36823/33463