ABSTRACT
The following response to The Nomos of the Earth engages with Carl Schmitt’s book from a postcolonial perspective. It is written from the personal viewpoint of a political geographer who first encountered Schmitt in German and who, therefore, cannot help but take the German edition of the book, i.e. Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, as a point of departure. Against such a background, questions of language will inevitably play a role in this response. Instead of thinking about translation in terms of originality, however, I will draw upon postcolonial ideas of transference or circulation, discussing the specific qualities of the Nomos as a travelling theory (Edward Said). Moreover, my response will critically engage with some of the arguments and historical interpretations developed by Schmitt in the Nomos. Given the postcolonial rationale of this response, I will focus on the second part of the book entitled ‘The Land-Appropriation of a New World’. Finally, I am intrigued by the peculiar usage of spatial terminology in Schmitt’s writings. Drawing upon a book on the German tradition of Geopolitik by Rainer Sprengel, I will elaborate on Schmitt’s spatiality, ultimately contrasting the latter with spatialities conveyed by postcolonial theorists.
