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Giorgio Agamben „Homo Sacer”

* The two meanings of Life in ancient Greek philosophy

zoe – the simple fact of living common to all living beings (animals, men, or gods);

bios – indicated the form or way of living proper to an individual or a group. (p.1)

* The oikos excluded from the polis.

In the classical world simple natural life is excluded from the polis in the strict sense, and remains confined, as merely reproductive life – to the sphere of the oikos, “home”. (p.2)

* The entry of zoe into the sphere of the polis as the decisive event of modernity.

“In any case, however, the entry of zoē into the sphere of the polis –
the politicization of bare life as such — constitutes the decisive event of modernity and
signals a radical transformation of the political-philosophical categories of classical
thought. p. 4

* Foucault: the modern Western state has integrated techniques of subjective individualization with procedures of objective totalization – a real “political” double bind, constituted by individualization and the simultaneous totalization of structures of modern power. (Dits et Ecrits, 4: 229-32).

* The aim of Agamben is to identify the hidden point of intersection between the juridico-institutional and the biopolitical models of power (the double-bind).

* Sovereign power as producer of the biopolitical body.

Agamben: “It can even be said that the production of a biopolitical body is the original activity of sovereign power.” (p.6)

* Modern politics.

- The realm of bare life gradually coincides with the political realm.

- Bare life becomes both subject and object of the conflicts of the political order.

- Bare life becomes both the site for the organization of State power and emancipation from it (p.9).

- knows no value (and nonvalue) other than life.

* Modern democracy.

“Modern democracy’s puzzle: it wants to put the freedom and happiness of men into play in the very place – ‘bare life” – that marked their subjection.” (pp. 9-10)

Modern democracy does not abolish sacred life but disseminates it into every individual body. (p.125)

* Sovereign and sovereignty.

The paradox of sovereignty: the sovereign is, at the same time, outside and inside the juridical order. (p.15) or the law is outside itself.

The status of exception – The exception is what cannot be included in the whole of which it is a member and cannot be a member of the whole in which it is always already included. p.25

In the status of exception it is impossible to distinguish transgression of the law from execution of the law. p.57

The sovereign decides the originary inclusion of the living in the sphere of law, not the licit and the illicit.

Sovereignty – the originary structure in which law refers to life and includes it in itself by suspending it. p. 28

Nomos – the daemon, spirit of the law.

The sovereign nomos – the sovereign nomos is the principle that, joining law and violence, threatens them with indistinction. (p.31)

The relationship between the constituted and the constituting power.

* Concentration camps as an absolute space of exception, the most absolute biopolitical space ever created.

- In the classical European medieval and modern age this zone corresponded to the New World, which was identified with the state of nature in which everything is possible. p.36

- the refugees – the appearance or rights outside the fiction of the citizen that always cover over them.

Two weaknesses of the “birth-nation‘ link: refugees (bodies without civil rights) and the denationalization and denaturalization by many European states of large portions of their own population. p.132

The separation between humanitarianism and politics that we are experiencing today
is the extreme phase of the separation of the rights of man from the rights of the citizen. p.133

- VPs (human guinea pigs) – persons for medical experiments, excluded from the political community – homines sacres. p.159

- camps are born not out of ordinary laws, but out of a state of exception and martial law (p.167). The camps are independent from any judicial control.

“The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.” (pp.168-169) Insofar as the state of exception is “willed,” it inaugurates a new juridico-political paradigm in which the norm becomes indistinguishable from the exception (p.170). “Whoever entered the camp moved in a zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exception and rule, licit and illicit, in which the very concepts of subjective right and juridical protection no longer made any sense.” (p.170)

Camps appear together with new laws on citizenship and denationalization promulgated by almost all European countries, including France, between 1915 and 1933.

Schmitt – the old nomos is constituted from localization and order.

Agamben – the new nomos is produced at the point marking the inscription of bare life within the old nomos. “To an order without localization (the state of exception, in which law is suspended) there now corresponds a localization without order (the camp as permanent space of exception). (p.175)

* Homo Sacer.

The ambivalence of the sacred – pure and impure simultaneously. The sacred includes both elements of pure and elements of impure – evil, causes of sickness (Durkheim).

Sacratio – arises from the conjunction of two traits: the impunishability of killing and the exclusion from sacrifice. p.81

“The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life — that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed — is the life that has been captured in this sphere.” p.83

The formal structure of exception – what is captured in the sovereign ban is a human victim who may be killed but not sacrificed – homo sacer.

The relationship between the sovereign and homo sacer is one of symmetry:

- the sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns. p.84

- “What unites the surviving devotee, homo sacer, and the sovereign in one single paradigm is that in each case we find ourselves confronted with a bare life that has been separated from its context and that, so to speak surviving its death, is for this very reason incompatible with the human world.’ (p.100)

- in the same way the killing of homo sacer is not a crime, the killing of the sovereign constitutes a special crime. p.102

* Biopolitics – the growing inclusion of man’s natural life in the mechanisms and calculations of power.

The first time we encounter “right over life and death” in the history of law is the unconditional authority of the pater over his sons.

Not simple natural life, but life exposed to death (bare life or sacred life) is the originary political element. p.89

The first recording of bare life as the new political subject – the 1679 writ of habeas corpus. At it center is neither the old subject of feudal relations and liberties, nor the future citoyen, but rather a pure et simple corpus. (p.123) “It is not the free man and his statutes and prerogatives, nor even simply homo, but rather corpus that is the new subject of politics.” (p.124)

The advancement of biopolitcs, i.e. the politicization of bare life – “the sovereign is entering into an ever more intimate symbiosis not only with the jurist, but also with the doctor, the scientist, the expert, and the priest.” (p.122)

“Every society sets this limit; every society — even the most modern — decides who its “sacred men” will be. It is even possible that this limit, on which the politicization and the exceptio of natural life in the juridical order of the state depends, has done nothing but extend itself in the history of the West and has now -in the new biopolitical horizon of states with national sovereignty – moved inside every human life and every citizen. Bare life is no longer confined to a particular place or a definite category. It now dwells in the biological body of every living being.” (pp. 139-140)

“Declarations of rights represent the originary figure of the inscription of natural life in the juridico-political order of the nation-state.” (p.127).

Declarations of rights must be regarded as the accomplishment of the passage from divinely authorized royal sovereignty to national sovereignty. p.128

Corpus (the body) carries both subjection to sovereign power and individual liberties. p.125

It is up to the sovereign to decide at which point life ceases to be politically relevant and the value or non-value of life as such. p.142

A logical synthesis of biology and economy. (quoting a Nazi propaganda publication). p.145

‘The novelty of modern biopolitics lies in the fact that the biological given is as such
immediately political, and the political is as such immediately the biological given…The life that, with the declarations of rights, became the ground of sovereignty now becomes the subject-object of state politics (which therefore appears more and more in the form of “police”).” (p.148)

The twentieth century totalitarianism has its ground in the dynamic identity of life and politics.

The question of eutanasia – life and death acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision. “Life and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts, which as such acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision.” (p.164)

Three conclusions:

1. The original political relation is the ban (the state of exception as zone of indistinction between outside and inside, exclusion and inclusion).
2. The fundamental activity of sovereign power is the production of bare life as originary political element and as threshold of articulation between nature and culture, zoē and bios.
3. Today it is not the city but rather the camp that is the fundamental biopolitical paradigm of the West. (p.181)

Resistances?

- to re-affirm and re-instate the difference between zoe and bios (a bare life that is only bare life and a political life that is only political).

Every attempt to rethink the political space of the West must
begin with the clear awareness that we no longer know anything of the classical distinction
between zoē and bios, between private life and political existence, between man as a
simple living being at home in the house and man’s political existence in the city. p.187

Questions for discussion:

1. Both Foucault and Agamben are concerned with bio-power – the exercise of power on and through bodies. What types of bodies does Agamben use to develop his theory of power? What is the difference between Foucault’s and Agamben’s conceptions of the body as a site of operation of power? Does Agamben’s theory of bio-power differ from Foucault’s? If so, how?

2. In both Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality, Foucault traces the transition of power from a negative “politics of blood” exercised by a sovereign to a productive power in which norms and regulations are disseminated and reinforced throughout society.  Where does Agamben locate power?  How does his conception borrow from Foucault’s theory of power?  How does it depart from Foucault’s theory?

3. Who is Homo Sacer? What does it mean that someone can kill him “without committing homicide” (183)? Who would we characterize today as homo sacer?

4. What is the role of the state of exception in Agamben’s theory of power? Would you agree with Agamben that places such as Guantanamo, the temporary refugee camps, the zones d’attentes in French international airports in which foreigners asking for refugee status are detained – all they are states of exception and in a sense, equivalent to the Nazi’s concentration camps, from a legal point of view? Do you agree with Agamben that they have evolved from an exception to the rules to a banal normality?

5. Foucault argues that “power is everywhere…and comes from everywhere” (History of Sexuality, p.93). Agamben also states that “the bare life realm gradually begins to coincide with the political realm, and exclusion and inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoē, right and fact, enter into a zone of irreducible indistinction” (p.9). Both thinkers emphasize the fact that power has already permeated all spheres of life. In this case, is it possible to conceive of an apolitical existence? Is the retreat or escape from politics imaginable?

6. Agamben is more pessimistic than Foucault about the possibility of resisting bio-power (see pp. 187-188). Why? Do you agree?

7. Toward the end of the book Agamben tries to construct a solution: “the constitution and installation of a form of life that is wholly exhausted in bare life and a bios that is only its own zoē” (p.188). What do you think about the possible separation between the biological body and the political body? Is it possible to re-construct a duality that would return life to life and politics to politics? What would a new bare life and a new political life look like?

Tags: agamben, foucault

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