The state of exception, political antagonism, and “wars” on corruption

Abstract

The following work analyzes the problem of the state of exception with a focus on Brazil’s recent political situation. First, we highlight the citing of the theory of exception by conservative legal expert Carl Schmitt in the TRF-4 court, allowing the then-Judge Moro to escape punishment for having leaked the contents of a telephone call between President Dilma Rousseff and former President Lula. Second, we then use this as a basis to outline the relationship between recent legal activism, present in the so-called “war on corruption”, with a longer-term tension in law in liberal societies, that is the hiatus between legality and legitimacy. Third, and finally, we seek to reveal that the anti-corruption agenda acquired impetus by means of the politicization and polarization of the country as of 2013, particularly with the emergence in 2014 of the Operação Lava Jato [Operation Car Wash] and the prominence of Judge Sérgio Moro. Our hypothesis is that a political antagonism was configured as a political strategy, framing all social demands to have emerged in 2013 as an opposition to “corruption” and the “state”. As a theoretical-conceptual framework for the conceptualizing of political antagonism, we highlight the theoretical contribution of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffee and works pointing to the hypertrophy of Criminal Justice, with the central focus on of the figure of the enemy. Our method was bibliographical analysis and a qualitative selection of sources.