Political Science Fiction

Kevin brought up Ender's limited list of "people he considered human," and I think this is essential in analyzing Ender through the lens of Carl Schmitt. According to Ender's paradigm, in each fight against a Stilson, he fought on the side of humanity, consciously or not. According to Schmitt:

Such a war [for humanity] is necessarily unusually intense and inhuman because, by transcending the limits of the political framework, it simultaneously degrades the enemy into moral and other categories and is forced to make of him a monster that must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed. In other words, he is an enemy who no longer must be compelled to retreat into his borders only (36).

This jives with Ender's own strategies during his own battles. What I had interpreted as a rare comedic thought on Ender's part, "his private list of people who also qualified as human beings," becomes something scary, almost dangerous in light of his own actions.

Schmitt's theories work well within the world of Starship Troopers. While Schmitt refutes the notion that the military should be in charge, or that war is an ideal state, the civilian citizen dynamic could be backed up by Schmitt's own words. In Starship Troopers, in order to become involved with the political, one must first serve in the military. If, according to Schmitt, "the friend, enemy, and combat [i.e. political] concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing," then it makes sense for anyone to influence that classification of friend or enemy to have had a first-hand experience with killing and the effects of that classification (33).

I think that some of Schmitt's ideas come out of the Western individualist culture. Schmitt states that "to demand seriously of human beings that they kill others and be prepared to die themselves so... that the purchasing power of grandchildren may grow is sinister and crazy" (48). I wonder what he would say about a culture in which people choose to end their own lives to salvage their family name. I would really like to know what Schmitt would have to say about a communitarian culture such as those in Asia. to demand seriously of human beings that they kill others and be prepared to die themselves so that trade or industry may flourish for the survivors... is sinister and crazy.