Carl Schmitt, meet the piggies

On page 23 of my book, Rooter is quoted as asking Pipo, "If you have no other city of humans, how can you go to war?" To Novinha and Libo, this question reveals either that piggies want wars, or whether they see them as unavoidable. What's really going on here, is that Rooter has demonstrated an understanding of the works of Carl Schmitt and is getting at a much bigger question. According to Schmitt, "Were a world state to embrace the entire globe and humanity, then it would be no political entity and could only be loosely called a state" (57). A single state cannot exist in isolation, without an enemy. Rooter knows that "There's no honor for you in killing Little Ones," that the pequeninos cannot be the enemy. The existence of only one human city is, in Rooter's eyes, a contradiction. He isn't concerned with war, but with alliances. He knows that there must be more than one human city, and if there aren't any more on Lusitania, then there must be other worlds with humans. By the end of Speaker for the Dead, the reader finds out that the piggies are extremely curious about spaceflight, and most of their questions came out of that curiosity.

I wonder what Schmitt would have made of Valentine's (Demosthenes') four orders of foreignness (p34). The important distinction in this work is that of ramen and varelse:

"The third is the ramen, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible."

Is there any room for these classifications in The Concept of the Political? They do increase the resolution of our analysis, but does it matter? Gobawa Ekimbo doesn't think so: "When it comes to war, human is human and alien is alien. All that ramen business goes up in smoke when we're talking about survival" (313). It's easy to imagine Schmitt agreeing, but he does admit in his writing that he doesn't know how things will change in the future, and acknowledges that his conception is meant for a specific time and place. Regarding a future all-encompassing world order, Schmitt says, "If and when this condition will appear, I do not know. At the moment, this is not the case" (54). This statement leaves the door open for different circumstances and therefor a different interpretation.

I also feel that Val's apparent oxymoron, "human, but of another species," needs to be addressed, but first I would like to know what you guys think thus far. How would Schmitt change his conception of the political in the second millenium after the adoption of the Starways Code. Would he?

Misunderstandings

One of the major themes in Speaker for the Dead was misunderstandings. The book puts forward the idea that if you can understand someone, and they understand you, then all of the problems between you can be solved. The entire point of the section where Ender speaks for Marcao was that once the people of Lusitania understood why Marcao had acted the way he had for all those years, while they couldn't condone him for it, they couldn't really condemn him for it either. This is the function of a Speaker for the Dead. But the misunderstandings don't end with the humans. In Ender's Game the reason for the xenocide was a misunderstanding, and all of the problems between species in Speaker also stem from them. The piggies kill humans without knowing that they will not get a third life. The humans in turn treat the piggies with fear and distrust since they have killed two respected members of the community. The problems between Jane and Ender are also started by one race not understanding the other, because Ender did not grasp the significance of turning off Jane's implant.

Even though all the problems begin with a lack of understanding, Speaker seems to be suggesting that humans as a whole will try to block communication that might be painful, even if it will bring healing understanding. This is true on a personal scale with Novinha, preventing her children from knowing the truth about their father, and on the political scale with the Starways Congress preventing any real communication with the piggies. Card is telling us that two-way communication will always be important for any relationship, and that it will be especially important when and if we meet another sentient race. This stance is made clear since all of the problems between the Lusos and the Piggies are solved within a day of real communication beginning. Of course the Starways Congress, the stand-in for the human desire to not communicate reacts by planning to blow up the planet. The message is clear: if we cannot speak with those we have differences with, the more violent parts of our brain will win out and one side will be destroyed.