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Notes NOTES TO INTRODUCTION 1. This is the word used in Saro-Wiwa’s rotten English, which is the language employed throughout the novel. The word “uselessed,” in particular, is very interesting from the point of view of the present study. It indicates both the idea of unproductive labor and the notion of the construction of disabilities. 2. I say “real suspension” in the sense of Walter Benjamin’s “real state of emergency ” (see Chapter 2). NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. See Kojin Karatani’s treatment of the problem (2003: 100–112). 2. See Loiret 2003: 123. Loiret quotes the following passage by Thomas Aquinas: “In a more special and perfect way, the particular and the individual are found in rational substances which have dominion over their own actions, and which are not only made to act, like others, but which can act of themselves; for actions belong to singulars ” (Summa Theologica I, q.29, a.1). 3. There is some similarity between the concept of the dignity of individuation I am presenting here and that of subsidiarity, another contender of sovereignty, especially when applied to international human rights law, as Paolo Carrozza (2003) does in his excellent article on this subject. However, they are ultimately two different concepts . I briefly discuss subsidiarity and point out its difference from the dignity of individuation in the remark at the end of this chapter. 4. For a discussion of individuation in the Middle Ages, including the legacy of the Early Middle Ages and the Scholastic background of modern philosophy with a particular reference to Leibniz, see the volume edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia (1994). 160 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 5. On the problematic aspect of the concept of autonomy and independence, see also Kittay 1999. I deal with Kittay’s work in Chapter 5. 6. Some of these questions are concretely treated in Chapters 4 and 5. 7. I deal more extensively with Pothier and Devlin’s position in Chapter 5. 8. “The passage from potentiality to act, from language to the word, from the common to the proper, comes about every time as a shuttling in both directions along a line of sparkling alternation on which common nature and singularity, potentiality and act change roles and interpenetrate” (Agamben 1993: 20). 9. I refer to Marx’s slogan again in Chapter 5. 10. As David Held says, “The doctrine of sovereignty has . . . two distinct dimensions : the first concerned with the ‘internal’ aspect of sovereignty; the second concerned with the external. . . . The former involves the belief that a political body established as sovereign rightly exercises the ‘supreme command’ over a particular society. . . . The latter, external, dimension involves the claim that there is no final and absolute authority above and beyond the sovereign state” (1995: 100). 11. On subsidiarity, see the remark at the end of this chapter. 12. The distinction between right and law is, of course, present in Hobbes as well. But whereas in Hobbes it is used to defend the doctrine of sovereignty, in Leibniz the opposite is the case. 13. Being a Christian philosopher, Leibniz cannot completely dismiss the notion of miracle, but he has to justify it somehow, saying that even “miracles conform to the general order.” To do this, he distinguishes between God’s most general laws, which are without exceptions, and what he calls “certain subordinate maxims,” which are the same as what “we call the nature of things.” These latter are simply “God’s custom, with which he can dispense for any stronger reason than the one which moved him to make use of these maxims.” Thus, God “has particular volitions which are exceptions to [the] subordinate maxims” (1989a: 40; emphasis added). This is perhaps one of Leibniz’s weakest moments . He recuperates the notion of exception, typical of sovereignty, which he attributes to God only. However, the truth he has established remains valid, and that is that God does not use his volition in ways other than those determined by his understanding. 14. See Karatani’s treatment of this question, although in the context of Kant’s philosophy, where the other is the transcendental (2003: e.g., 53, 70). 15. The relationship between singularity/universality and particularity/generality is rather difficult. Going back to Deleuze, Karatani says that “while the connection between particularity and generality requires a mediation or a movement, that between singularity and universality is direct and ummediated” (2003: 102). But what of plurality ? And in what sense...