Rethinking Schmittean conceptualization of 'the political' in times of despair: Derrida, Nancy, Stiegler

This study aims to question the validity of the Schmittean definition of the political in today's hyper-industrial capitalism through continuity and rupture and to demonstrate that the Schmittean perspective is one of the reasons for the contemporary crisis of together life. At the same time, it discloses that the Schmittean concept of the political cannot be a solution to the problems faced by today's shaped by digital technologies and the free market economy. Today's temporality, which Stiegler describes as the age of despair, needs a new and another definition of the political to re-construct the desire for living together. To reach a new political imagination, this study will first reveal the violence generated by the Schmittean friend-enemy concepts by deconstructing the identity through Derrida's concept of différance. Then with Nancy's democracy theory, populist policies will be presented in detail, which is the continuation of the identity in the form of Schmittean us/them. And the extent of the political 'we', which could bring a non-essentialist demos will be discussed. Finally, by the political economy-based reading of Stiegler, the symbolic misery caused by hyper-industrial capitalism and algorithmic governmentality will be considered as a demonstration of the current crisis of being-with while the possibility of transforming this crisis into an opportunity by the pharmacological character of the technique discussed. In this frame, this study will seek to search for the possibility of life as being-with that can create affection, through a new concept of the political which is related to philia and the 'other', based on care and responsibility.