Article The Necessity of Impure Sovereignty Mike Grimshaw University of Canterbury Abstract This essay arises from an engagement with the reflections and letters of Jacob Taubes to Carl Schmitt (Taubes 2013); central to these writings is the question of the sovereign. If the sovereign is the one who decides the exception, then sovereignty is focused on this decision of what is/is not the exception – and who gets to decide. An engagement with these writings of Taubes as a Jew and friend-enemy of the Nazi jurist offers a way toward what I term the necessity of impure sovereignty. For Taubes the central question is what does pure mean and thus, dialectically, what does impure mean? To engage with this question, I begin with a discussion of Weimar and the situation that gave rise to Schmitt’s work on sovereignty. I make use of the diaries of Count Harry Kessler and also of an essay of Schmitt’s from 1926. I then turn to the writings of Taubes to Schmitt. In my view, sovereignty as understood by both Schmitt and Taubes is problematic because of its central decision for homogeneity and dictatorial democracy. Therefore, I argue for three counter-decisions. Firstly, for the necessity of the impure sovereign-decision for heterogeneity. Secondly, against the Schmittean katechon, I argue for identification with the chaotic, impure Antichrist. Finally, against history, I argue for hope and so we must make the alternative sovereign-decision to remain impure. Keywords Weimar, Schmitt, Taubes, sovereignty, sovereign-decision, impure, katechon, democracy, liberalism A Prefatory Note on the Impurity that Follows This is a deliberately discursive thought-piece that undertakes a series of digressions and conjectures en route in order to wrestle with the concept of sovereignty as is to be found in the writings of Jacob Taubes to Carl Schmitt (Taubes 2013). It deliberately leaves its wrestling with the questions evident on the page, not seeking to tidy them up or sweep them away, rather exposing the tensions that thinking seriously on sovereignty entails. For sovereignty is not an easy question to deal with, nor is it a singular issue. What is presented here could perhaps be best described as an annotative approach to the question of sovereignty, a type of thinking and writing that seeks to undo the singularity and surety that bedevil so much current academic thought and writing. If this essay is in the end an argument for the necessity of impurity, it is perhaps apposite that it occurs in an impure fashion. Introduction Our modern thinking about sovereignty has been profoundly influenced by Carl Schmitt. However, less often do we think of sovereignty as a concept developed in 78 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5617/jea.6271 Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2018, 2(2):78-91, 2535-3241