In light of Joseph Trullinger’s posts on Agamben, Carl Schmitt, and political theology from the last two weeks, here is another piece by Neal Curtis along the same lines discussing the concept of sovereignty in Marvel’s 2015 Secret Wars event.

“This story, I will argue, enables us to get to the heart of a very complex concept in which law and violence, rule and exception, protection and banishment, inclusion and exclusion, inside and outside, are all intimately entwined. By doing this, the event spoke a profound truth about the dark nature of sovereignty, but by making Dr. Doom the sovereign of Battleworld the event also performed a decisive ideological function by suggesting that the dark heart of sovereignty only emerges with a super-villain in charge. It thereby wrongly suggests that once the good guys wrest back control the politics of the exception is truly the exception to the normal order of things.”

Read more here.