The risk of democracy. Emergency and autoimmunity

Abstract

The essay examines the relationship between crisis, emergency, and governance technologies in contemporary democracies. The author argues that what emerges is the stabilization of a security apparatus that simultaneously normalizes crises and internalizes exceptions, allowing them to function operationally as an ordinary practice of governance and management of the surplus exclusions produced by social systems. From this perspective, the essay aims to reveal the paradoxical and risky logic of democracy, perpetually exposed to the threat of self-destruction.