A Postcolonial Reading of Agamben’s Homo Sacer Project - Conference Paper ETC2017.pdf (original) (raw)

THE "DARK SIDE" OF BIOPOLITICS NOTES TO AGAMBEN'S HOMO SACER

The "Dark Side" of Biopolitics. Notes to Agamben's Homo sacer, 2023

This paper discusses Giorgio Agamben's reading of Michel Foucault's biopolitics and biopower. Agamben intertwines Foucault's biopolitics, Hannah Arendt's insights on the distinction between the political realm and the sphere of biological life, Carl Schmitt's notions of "sovereignty" and "exception", and Walter Benjamin's syntagma "bare life" 2. While examining Agamben's use of the notion of biopolitics and the distinction between the two Greek words for life, zoé and bios, this paper will not study Agamben's employ of Carl Schmitt's, Hannah Arendt's 3 , and Walter Benjamin's theorizations on politics, sovereignty, and bare life. On the contrary, it will focus on Agamben's broad use of the concept of biopolitics, which he employs to address the outbreaks of violence against foreigners and citizens, and what he describes as the steady normalization of the state of exception that started at the dawn of the modern age.

Exile, Use, and Form-of-Life: On the Conclusion of Agamben’s Homo Sacer series

OPEN ACCESS. The last two volumes of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer series are concerned with developing a theory of use. This article offers a critical assessment of the two concepts, use and form-of-life, that form the heart of this theory: how do these two notions offer a solution to the problem of bare life that forms the core of the Homo Sacer series? First, the author describes how the original problem of bare life is taken up in The Use of Bodies and how the notion of use offers an important additional characteristic of bare life. Second, inspired by Foucault’s analysis of ancient Cynicism, the author discusses in which sense the type of ‘solution’ Agamben offers to the problem of bare life might be seen as an heir to ancient Cynicism and how this interpretation clarifies his connection of form-of-life and exile. Third, the author critically assesses the different usages of use that we can find in Agamben, by comparing how Franciscan usus, Pauline chrēsis and Platonic chrēsis are taken up in his analysis. Fourth, following Foucault, the author deepens the Platonic sense of use and its relation to taking care of justice. The article concludes with a critical assessment of Agamben’s reading of Plato’s myth of Er, in which the motifs of use, exile, and care are gathered.

The bare life and (the) modern law: a journey to some key concepts or conceptions of Agamben

2012

This text is imitating a journey which tries to explore what is completely unknown. It starts Homo Sacer and traces some key concepts namely der Muselmann, bare life, state of exception, sovereignty and nihilism in law. Doing so, it hopes to reach a general picture of biopolitics or biopower according to Agamben. So, first part of this text generally tries to clarify some fundamental concepts or conceptions in order to use them for its aim. The second part suggests an alternative reading of Agamben, centered around his concept of der Muselmann which is the ultimate figure defined by Primo Levi and Agamben chooses the term because of its resemblance to or representation of Homo Sacer. Der Muselmann was a derogatory term in its origin and very meaning has still been unclear today. So, the second part tries to clarify the meaning of der Muselmann (and unbaptized babies) from a different outlook, not from outside but inside of the referred concept. It tries to show a Muslim’s image of a...

State of the Existentially-Exceptional: Agamben’s Biopolitics and Heidegger’s Ek-sistence

In the introduction to Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben proposes that the “the protagonist” of his book is “bare life,” particularly “the life of homo sacer (sacred man), who may be killed and yet not sacrificed, and whose essential function in modern politics we intend to assert” (12). Agamben’s interpretation of “the life of homo sacer” is derived from Roman law, but it is particularly appropriated with respect to how human life, generally, is included in or excluded from the overarching political structure. For Agamben, “bare life”—a simple form of human existence—becomes zoē constituted by (or separated from) the political order of bios, by sovereignty’s “state of exception.” Essentially, not only does sovereignty exist in a politicalized construct to, chiefly, stabilize it and make determinations about who should be included in (or excluded from) the bios, but the Sovereign has a Heideggerian “ek-sistence,” due to being existentially exceptional.

Particular Rights and Absolute Wrongs: Giorgio Agamben on Life and Politics

Law and Critique, 2009

Over the past decade, as human rights discourses have increasingly served to legitimize state militarism, a growing number of thinkers have sought to engage critically with the human rights project and its anthropological foundations. Amongst these thinkers, Giorgio Agamben’s account of rights is possibly the most damning: human rights declarations, he argues, are biopolitical mechanisms that serve to inscribe life within the order of the nation state, and provide an earthly foundation for a sovereign power that is taking on a form redolent of the concentration camp. In this paper, I will examine Agamben’s account of human rights declarations, which he sees as central to the modern collapse of the distinction between life and politics that had typified classical politics. I will then turn to the critique of Agamben offered by Jacques Ranciere, who suggests that Agamben’s rejection of rights discourses is consequent to his adoption of Hannah Arendt’s belief that, in order to establish a realm of freedom, the political realm must be premised on the expulsion of natural life. In contrast to Ranciere, I will argue that far from sharing the position of those thinkers, like Arendt, who seek to respond to the modern erosion of the borders between politics and life by resurrecting earlier forms of separation, Agamben sees the collapse of this border as the condition of possibility of a new, non-juridical politics.

What is the true meaning of Giorgio Agamben’s Bare Life/ Homo Sacer?

This paper analyses Agamben’s notion of homo sacer, showing how it should not be confined to the field of a negative critique of politics. In his work, Agamben cautiously delineates a positive figure of homo sacer, whom, according to him, we all virtually are, ie. ‘homonis sacri’. Such figure would be able to subvert the form in which the relation between bare life and political existence has so far been both thought and lived in the West. How and when is this passage from negative to positive sacredness historically accomplished for Agamben? Is such transit after all thinkable? These are the two basic questions he both unintentionally formulates and leaves undecided in his book Homo Sacer (1995). Agamben further elaborates how his notion “bare life” helps in understanding contemporary issues such as the prisoner situation in Guatanamo Bay and the refugee situation that confronts our world of today.