The Suicide State

When he refers to civil war as “self-laceration,” Carl Schmitt evokes a strange figure, whereby the state could be bound for self-destruction. In this essay, I am less interested in civil war than in the conception of a state as suicidal. What could that even mean? What could be gained by asking whether there are, among states, suicide states? What kind of destruction, what kind of politics, are thereby made manifest? My concerns ultimately align, I hope, with the knowledge of militarization.