The following review will soon appear in Telos, and we are presenting it here on the Telos Press blog in three installments. Jean-Claude Paye’s Global War on Liberty is available in our store.
Jean-Claude Paye. Global War on Liberty. Trans. James H. Membrez. New York: Telos Press, 2007. Pp. 261.
The state of emergency exists for the long term. It emerges as a new type of political system, dedicated to defending democracy and human rights. . . . [T]he citizen must be willing to renounce his/her concrete freedoms for a lengthy period of time in order to maintain a self-proclaimed and abstract democratic order. [1]
Belgian sociologist Jean-Claude Paye has collected several of his recent essays about the suspension of the rule of law, the emergence of a permanent state of exception, abuses of authority, and the generalized condition of restriction of freedom in Western societies since 9/11 in a single volume, La fin de l’état de droit, now translated, updated, and published by Telos Press under the title Global War on Liberty. [2] Paye’s essays over the past five to six years have positioned him as one of the leading critical voices of the post-9/11 era. His critique of the so-called democratic state—from the United States to Europe—and of the transformation of liberal systems of constitutional governance into police, military and security orders actually had been initiated before 9/11. [3] Unfortunately most social, political, and legal theorists (particularly in the English-speaking world) paid little attention to Paye’s incisive reflections prior to the terrorist attacks in the United States. The recent translation of some of his texts into English has given Paye’s scholarship the visibility it deserves. With the publication of Global War on Liberty, Paye finds a place among the critical theorists who must be read if one is to make sense of, carefully reflect upon, and devise challenges to the contemporary condition of state abuse, imperial domination, and proliferation of daily insecurities.
