ABSTRACT
In the 'Theory of the Partisan', Carl Schmitt attempts to cover a field which on his own account he had neglected to treat fully in The Concept of the Political, where he sets out to define the political with reference to the drawing of a distinction between friend and enemy. The revolutionary partisan is condemned by Schmitt as a fall from an essential purity. Mobility plays a central role in Schmitt's account in the displacing of the telluric dimension and threatens to dissolve the concept of the political. This chapter explores the quasi-psychoanalytical dimension of Derrida's reading and explains how he arrives at a new concept of the political. The concept of the political is central to public law theory, and determines, in turn, the understanding of concepts such as sovereignty, the state, constituent power, democracy, equality and freedom, as well as the nature of the world order.
