The word piracy is derived from the Greek peiran (to
test, to try, to risk) and implicit in this definition of piracy is an
assumption about the spatial ordering of the sea vis-à-vis the earth.
This
paper examines the geopolitical framing of piracy in the international thought
of Carl Schmitt and identifies the metaphoric value of piracy for understanding
the emergence of geopolitical orders.
Dispossessed of the illusions of the
leviathan that accompany Classical realist interpretations of international
relations, the account of international politics as a discourse of piracy
allows us to understand the political articulation of spatial orders within
world politics. Carl Schmitt declares the pirate to be ‘the enemy of the human
race’ (hostis generes humani) and this paper examines how piracy is
attached to complex geopolitical orders concerned with the allocation of space,
scale and property in international politics.
Piracy tests the legitimacy of
international orders and, in so doing, gestures at popular narratives concerned
with discourses of legitimacy and illegitimacy in world politics. A
preoccupation with the ontological status of anarchy in world politics (or, status
naturalis) has meant that the politics of acquiring space has been
marginalized from the popular narrative of world politics. The pirate disturbs
political order, allowing us to see how transgressions in order are understood
as legal, criminal or exceptional in international politics.
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