If one peculiarity of the state is its emphatic claim to truth and authority, the other is its unique configuration of space. In the previous chapter we explored Schmitt's ideas on the history of political authority, and the slow process by which the particular order enshrined by the ‘Westphalian’ state was unravelled from within by the privileging of the individual. In so doing, we have relied heavily on aspects of Schmitt's work that stress religious and eschatological themes, as well as his more conventional engagement with political theories of the state. We turn now to the second historical dynamic that Schmitt creates in his work – the history of spatial consciousness. According to Schmitt, changes to the nature of spatial consciousness over time both made the state form possible in the first place, and then came to pose a mounting challenge to the continuing coherence of the state concept in late modernity. A clear parallel therefore exists between the internal process of unravelling outlined previously, and a second historical dynamic that effectively challenges the state form from the outside by undermining one of its key characteristics – territoriality.

Although handy as shorthand, the characterisation of these histories as ‘internal’ and ‘external’ threatens all kind of confusion and obfuscation. A note of caution is required. Both processes implicate the historical existence of the state as an effective political unit, and involve consideration of a complex web of normative phenomena.