ABSTRACT
The Buribunks is a short text that is usually read as a novel (parodic fiction or science fiction). This contribution aims to ‘take seriously’ the scientific form of this text and to propose an alternative reading. To this end, it is asserted that The Buribunks is the scientific article that it pretends to be. Indeed, it argues that Carl Schmitt used a literary technique, namely pastiche, to ‘correct’ Hegel’s dialectic with Kierkegaard’s decisionism. On the one hand, his collage permits him to charge Cartesian mechanised modernity; on the other hand, this practice of pastiche plays a role in laying the foundations of Schmitt’s decisionism few years later. In this regard, pastiche is understood neither as a postmodern style nor as a literary genre, but rather as a literary technique that can be used in different writing – fictional as well non-fictional. It is a technique used, among others, by modernist litterateurs as a critical tool, as well as a creative and subversive one. In short, the chapter argues that The Buribunks is a pastiche aimed to be a radical critique of Cartesian neutralised modernity and a sketch of Schmitt’s decisionist theory, given that this critique and Schmitt’s legal theory are highly entangled.
