Permanent State of Exception in the Southern Periphery of Europe

Abstract

This paper approaches the continuing crisis in the southern periphery of the European Union from the perspective of the resource to the state of exception as a mechanism for exercising sovereign power (Agamben, 2004). Such governing mechanism has presently acquired new centrality as a way of managing complex situations when power and sovereignty are under dispute in the context of crises which both “just happen” and are imposed on the people. They “just happen”, interrupting the pace of capital accumulation, while their weight is imposed on the lower classes of Europe’s southern countries. In our approach, we shall analyse three different dimensions of this permanent crisis (Agamben, 2019) which has shattered old certainties and consensus and has established a new political era that consolidates the regime of economic and political power within the EU.