Abstract

The Copenhagen School and its related securitization theory have been unanimously considered among the most important developments in the Security Studies of the past 30 years. The merit of this success lies in having brought the discourse of security from an objective / materialistic sphere to an intersubjective / linguistic sphere. In this article we will examine the main characteristics of the discourse on securitization, including criticism, focusing in particular on the alleged theoretical / political relationship between the Copenhagen School and the famous German jurist Carl Schmitt. The “exceptionalµ logic of securitization theory does not escape parallelisms with the Schmittian theory of the state of exception. As we will try to illustrate, in addition to several similarities, there are also considerable differences between the two.