Hamlet & Redemption:
Victoria Kahn investigates the literary writings of constitutional scholar Carl Schmitt -- and cuts him no slack

One might expect that an interest in early modern literature ensured solitary months in dark, dusty library basements, debating long-dead conversations by longer-dead thinkers. In the case of Victoria Kahn, Berkeley professor of English and Comparative Literature, that assumption couldn't be more wrong.

Though her primary interest is 17th century texts, Kahn continues to seek out lively controversy and debate. She found exactly that in 20th century German constitutional scholar Carl Schmidt (1888-1985), whose writings and political thought have undergone a bit of a Renaissance in recent years.

Carl Schmitt in 1933

Schmitt was a supporter of the Nazi party during the 1930s and a vocal anti-Semite. Even so, his writings on constitutional law remained in discussion even after World War II, cited by contemporaries like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin. However, his star faded and aside from a few obscure references, Schmitt largely disappeared from scholarly study, until recently.

Kahn recognizes the challenge in studying a subject whose stimulating ideas are compromised by terrible political affiliations and bigoted writing.

"Although I'm participating in it, I think there's something disturbing about the interest in him," she says. "I think it has to do with this interest in violence -- there's a fascination with Schmitt's justification of violence."

Schmitt had argued that a nation's sovereign had the right -- was in fact defined by the ability -- to resort to violent means in order to maintain the stability of the state. Even a constitutionally bound nation could suspend its laws in order to ensure its own survival.

The German scholar was also preoccupied with existential decisions that could spell life or death for the state and its citizens. One such decision was making plain the distinction -- in an official sense -- between friends and enemies of the state. For Schmitt, putting Germany's Jews in the latter category was not a problem, despite his academic and personal friendships with some Jews.

Like pro-Fascist Ezra Pound, Nazi party member Martin Heidegger, and slave-owning Thomas Jefferson, Schmitt posed a dilemma for anyone who wished to study him. How does one separate the man's work from racist beliefs, political views or a particular place in time and history that could -- and perhaps should -- disqualify his contributions to modern-day humanity?

Answering the question of whether to listen to history or to a man's own version of it

"There's been a stigma attached to him," Kahn says. "Justifiably. In a way, that makes Schmitt even more interesting because then you have to confront the question of how it is that somebody who had such obviously bad judgment and was such an obvious anti-Semite could say anything that we would want to take seriously."

"Many of the things he did were very disgusting," Kahn says. "What's interesting is that he still offers this very trenchant analysis of the problems of constitutional law that scholars of jurisprudence take very seriously."

Even if Kahn doesn't consider herself a serious scholar of 20th century constitutional law, Schmitt interests her because of some of his other intellectual pursuits. Schmitt wrote extensively on Thomas Hobbes -- a staple of Kahn's work -- and much of his writing and thinking seems informed by his reading of early modern texts. Even more surprisingly, Schmitt wrote a book on Hamlet after the end of the war, a fact that piqued Kahn's curiosity.

"Why is Schmitt so interested in Hamlet in 1950?" Kahn asks.

The answer can only be understood by unraveling the German scholar's argument, she says. Schmitt accords the play a kind of literalism that most Shakespearean scholars don't. "It's immediately engaged with the political conflicts of its period," Kahn says, summing up Schmitt's argument. "The tragedy of Hamlet reveals to the audience the existential crisis that individuals in Shakespeare's time were confronted with as a result of the Reformation: whether or not to choose Protestantism or Catholicism. It was an existential and politically loaded decision."

Furthermore for Schmitt, the play's plot mirrors a royal murder during Shakespeare's era, in which Mary, Queen of Scots was complicit in the assassination of her husband in order to marry her lover. Mary's son, James VI of Scotland assumed the British throne as James I only two years after Hamlet's first performance.

For Schmitt, "this tragedy has a political seriousness and -- whatever you make of the character Hamlet -- the play Hamlet reveals this moment of historical crisis."

"Here's this scholar of constitutional law," Kahn says. "Why would he take the trouble to make an argument about Hamlet?"

Kahn believes that Schmitt makes Hamlet a stand-in for himself. "Schmitt is getting on in years and it's an apology for his life," Kahn says. "He reads Hamlet confronting a political crisis, like the one that he confronted."

A young Carl Schmitt

Does that somehow redeem Schmitt from his membership in the Nazi party and his anti-Semitic writings? Not for Kahn, but it certainly makes him a more interesting figure to study.

"Schmitt never reneged on his earlier writings, so it wasn't as though he recognized that he made a mistake," she says. "He was never apologetic. He seemed to think that everything he did was justified by the political or historical crisis of the moment."

After presenting a paper on Schmitt's reading of Hamlet and Hobbes at a colloquium earlier this year, the Berkeley professor is currently working on revising her work for publication. Given her subject matter, the piece could go equally well in a political science or literary journal, a rare place to be academically.

"It leads to a kind of schizophrenia," Kahn says of her politic-thought-meets-literary-studies bent. "Who is my audience?"

With a high degree of interest in Schmitt among political scientists and scholars of literature alike, Kahn's exploration of Schmitt's life using a little-known text -- the Hamlet critique -- is unlikely to have any trouble finding an audience.

"I'm interested in what Schmidt has to say about these 17th century texts, but really my agenda is to use the 17th century texts to criticize Schmidt," Kahn says. "Because Schmidt is both a figure of contemporary interest for political theorists and literary people, and because he comments on 17th century texts, it's a way for me to engage in some contemporary debate." -- Todd Dayton