Schmitt's Life within the Academy Since 2001

The Buribunks live for their diaries and through their diaries. In this chapter, we take Schmitt’s satirical parody of academic production and recognition seriously and at face value in order to apply it to Schmitt himself, even though – or precisely because – it would presumably be anathema to him. What would Schmitt, as he lives on in the intellectual archive of the West, look like to a Buribunk? As a focus, we examine scholarly publications stimulated by and generated in the ‘War on Terror’ epoch, defined as the period following the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States. In this chapter, we approach this body of scholarship as a serious, diligent Buribunk would by systematically identifying how Schmitt’s work has been used in the literature. We then apply a mixed-methods approach combining a quantitative analysis with a qualitative account of the details of the discourse. The outcome of applying these methods is to reveal patterns and associations in the uptake of Schmitt’s works (complete with tables and figures). Our primary conclusion is that Schmitt is no Ferker, dominating the archive; rather, his impact is fragmented, spread across disciplines and presented in heterogeneous company.