Life Excluded from Law: Agamben, Biopolitics, and Civil War

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Gavin Rae
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Western Politics

This chapter focuses on Giorgio Agamben’s work on biopolitical sovereignty. It focuses on Homo Sacer and State of Exception to show that Agamben links sovereign violence to the establishment of a state of exception, wherein life is controlled through its exclusion from the juridical order. With this, Agamben continues the biopolitical line that sovereignty is orientated towards the regulation of life rather than the establishment of juridical order. The second part of the chapter ties this to Agamben’s discussion of civil war to argue that, contra Foucault, Agamben holds that the fundamental division marking Western politics is not a racial one, but one between oikos and polis, private and public. From this, Agamben argues that this political division makes possible and so subtends the sovereign decision to exclude individuals from law by establishing a state of exception. The key point is that Agamben links sovereign violence to life by excluding the latter from the juridical order. The chapter concludes by critically evaluating Agamben’s proposals to overcome this.

scholarly journals Borgerkrig fra Athen til Auschwitz:

2015 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Mikkel Flohr
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Western History ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Starting Point

The starting point of this article is the concept of civil war in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer-series. In spite of its relative obscurity, Agamben insists that civil war is the fundamental political structure, which has characterized all of Western history since Ancient Greece. As such it constitutes a privileged vantage point from whence it is possible to discern the limitations of his political thought. These limitations originate in his deployment of Carl Schmitt’s state of exception, which serves to include civil war in the sovereign order – this entails that classical modes of political contestation and conflict e.g. revolution, are always already internal to the sovereign state, and can therefore only serve to reaffirm it. The state of exception thus produces an inherent incapacity to think or move beyond the sovereign state. Agamben subsequently attempts to challenge the state of exception albeit with varying degrees of success. This suggest the necessity of taking exception to the exception and explode the conceptual coupling of civil war and sovereign power, in order to create a space where it is possible to think political contestation within or beyond the works of Agamben.

Plato

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Ojakangas
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Homo Sacer

There are not many books by Agamben in which Plato does not figure. In The Man Without Content (MC 52–64), Agamben discusses the Platonic discrepancy between politics and poetry; in Stanzas, he examines Plato’s conceptions of love (S 115–21) and phantasm (S 73–5); in Infancy and History (IH 73), Agamben takes up Plato’s concept of time (aion and chronos), while in The End of the Poem (EP 17) he examines Plato’s criticism of tragedy. In Language and Death (LD 91–2), he gives an account of Socrates’ ‘demon’ and Plato’s Idea (eidos) – though he investigates the latter more thoroughly in Potentialities (PO 27–38), in which he also briefly touches upon Plato’s doctrine of matter (khôra) (PO 218). In Idea of Prose (IP 120–3) and The ComingCommunity (CC 76–7), it is the Platonic Idea again that is under scrutiny, albeit more implicitly than in Potentialities. In Homo Sacer (HS 33–5), Agamben offers an interpretation of Plato’s treatment of Pindar’s nomos basileus fragment and the sophistic opposition between nomos and physis, whereas in The Sacrament of Language (SL 29) he touches on Plato’s critique of oath. In The Signature of All Things (ST 22–6), Agamben gives an account of Plato’s ‘paradigmatic’ method, while in Stasis (STA 5–12) we find an analysis of Plato’s conception of civil war (stasis).

Between the utopian imaginaries of literature and international law: The question of the insurgent child in international legal discourse and Kris Montañez’s Youth

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
José Duke S. Bagulaya
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Utopian Vision ◽  
The World ◽  
Realistic Representation ◽  
The One

Abstract This article argues that international law and the literature of civil war, specifically the narratives from the Philippine communist insurgency, present two visions of the child. On the one hand, international law constructs a child that is individual and vulnerable, a victim of violence trapped between the contending parties. Hence, the child is a person who needs to be insulated from the brutality of the civil war. On the other hand, the article reads Filipino writer Kris Montañez’s stories as revolutionary tales that present a rational child, a literary resolution of the dilemmas of a minor’s participation in the world’s longest-running communist insurgency. Indeed, the short narratives collected in Kabanbanuagan (Youth) reveal a tension between a minor’s right to resist in the context of the people’s war and the juridical right to be insulated from the violence. As their youthful bodies are thrown into the world of the state of exception, violence forces children to make the choice of active participation in the hostilities by symbolically and literally assuming the roles played by their elders in the narrative. The article concludes that while this narrative resolution appears to offer a realistic representation and closure, what it proffers is actually a utopian vision that is in tension with international law’s own utopian vision of children. Thus, international law and the stories of youth in Kabanbanuagan provide a powerful critique of each other’s utopian visions.

Life and Limb

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Medical Treatment ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Medical Facilities ◽  
Private And Public

This volume assembles selections from writings on the American Civil War in fiction, first-hand accounts and contemporary reportage, all supplemented with photographs. The focus falls on the injuries sustained by participants and on their medical treatment. Writers and poets are included who drew on their experiences as nurses, combatants or observers. The volume focuses thematically on nursing, medical facilities, photography, amputations, battlefield accounts, and the war’s aftermath. The excerpts are supplemented by critical studies by specialists in the different aspects of the Civil War. Each excerpt is introduced by brief editorial commentaries, guiding the reader towards further related material and an overall introduction to the volume addresses the blurring between private and public documents as well as the different methods of recording these events.

Undocumented Migrants As Homo Sacer: Cases From Botswana and South Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 002190962094634
Author(s):  
France Maphosa ◽  
Christopher Ntau
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Undocumented Migrants ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Law

The concept of homo sacer originates from ancient Roman law under which an individual who committed a certain kind of crime was excluded from society and all his/her rights as a citizen were revoked. This paper uses a few selected cases reported in the media of Botswana and South Africa to demonstrate why undocumented migrants in the two countries fit Agamben’s description of homo sacer. While migrants in general, whether documented or undocumented, are targets of violence, exploitation and discrimination in these countries, undocumented migrants are particularly vulnerable because of their ‘illegal’ status. Although violence against undocumented migrants is not formally endorsed by the state, their description as a problem or a threat to society places them in a state of exception which is virtually outside the protection of the law.

What Happens in Vegas: Hunter S. Thompson's Political Philosophy

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-170
Author(s):  
JASON VREDENBURG
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Las Vegas ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Hardt And Negri ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Antonio Negri ◽  
The Relationship

In the forty years since its publication, Hunter S. Thompson's most famous work, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has received relatively little attention from scholars, in spite of its continuing popularity and acknowledged influence. Because the narrative is so thoroughly rooted in what Thompson called “this foul year of Our Lord, 1971,” the novel is generally approached (when it is discussed at all) as a historical artifact, a gonzo first draft of history, with its fortunes rising and falling with the counterculture of the 1960s. This article argues that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, far from being merely an epitaph for the 1960s, actually anticipates the more recent work of political theorists Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri. Thompson's work, like Agamben's, concerns the emergence of the state of exception and the homo sacer as new paradigms for the relationship between citizen and state; and, like Hardt and Negri, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas attempts to formulate a response to the emergence of global empire.

Passage to Less than India: Structure and Meaning in Whitman's “Passage to India”

PMLA ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 88 (5) ◽  
pp. 1095-1103
Author(s):  
Arthur Golden
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spiritual Direction ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Body ◽  
Leaves Of Grass ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Fourth Edition ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
Private And Public

THE GREAT APPEAL of “Passage to India” is understandable. Following the Civil War and the publication of the 1867 (fourth) edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman, close to fifty, had become increasingly preoccupied in his poetry with “thoughts on the deep themes of Death & Immortality.” While he had, of course, explored these themes in his earlier poetry, this strong emphasis on the “universal” was something new and it was to continue to the end of his career. He answered a request from the English Broadway Magazine for a poem by sending five separate lyrics, under the group title “Whispers of Heavenly Death.” Published in 1868, these were, in addition to the title poem, “Darest Thou Now ? Soul,” “The Last Invocation,” “Pensive and Faltering,” and “A Noiseless Patient Spider,” which was actually composed in 1862–63 and reworked at this time with emphasis on the soul rather than on its earlier “Calamus” motif. Quite self-conscious about the spiritual direction his poetry was taking now, he indicated that he would make “no more attempts at smart sayings, or scornful criticisms, or harsh comments on persons or actions, or private and public affairs . . . never attempt puns or plays upon words, or utter sarcastic comments.” And around this time he also indicated that in the next edition of Leaves he would give special emphasis to “religious themes.”1 Whitman was entering the final phase of his career. He had come the full way around. In some dozen years, the poet of the body had given way to the poet of the soul, the poet of intense nationalism to the poet of internationalism and the cosmic.

SAYYIDA ZAYNAB IN THE STATE OF EXCEPTION: SHIʿI SAINTHOOD AS “QUALIFIED LIFE” IN CONTEMPORARY SYRIA

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Szanto
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Camp ◽  
The State ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Law

AbstractAccording to Giorgio Agamben, a “state of exception” is established by the sovereign's decision to suspend the law, and the archetypical state of exception is the Nazi concentration camp. At the same time, Agamben notes that boundaries have become blurred since then, such that even spaces like refugee camps can be thought of as states of exception because they are both inside and outside the law. This article draws on the notion of the state of exception in order to examine the Syrian refugee campcumshrine town of Sayyida Zaynab as well as to analyze questions of religious authority, ritual practice, and pious devotion to Sayyida Zaynab. Though Sayyida Zaynab and many of her Twelver Shiʿi devotees resemble Agamben's figure ofhomo sacer, who marked the origin of the state of exception, they also defy Agamben's theory that humans necessarily become animal-like, leading nothing more than “bare lives” (orzoē) in states of exception.

scholarly journals Estado de exceção como regra: a vida nua sob o “eclipse político” em Giorgio Agamben / State of exception as a rule: the bare life under the "political eclipse" in Giorgio Agamben

Profanações ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 269
Author(s):  
Maria Do Socorro Catarina de Sousa Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
State Of Exception ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Security ◽  
Original Objective

Um dos temas de maior relevância abordado por Giorgio Agamben diz respeito ao estado de exceção como paradigma político, ou seja, o estado de exceção não se restringe aos Estados totalitários, mas a uma prática governamental que vem se propagando rapidamente, inclusive nas sociedades democráticas. Assim, o presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar, a partir de duas obras que compõem o Projeto Homo Sacer, a saber, Homo Sacer: o poder soberano e a vida nua I (2002), e Estado de Exceção: homo sacer II (2004), os principais elementos que formatam a teoria agambeniana do estado de exceção como paradigma de governo e como o delineamento de suas teses nos permite falar em “eclipse político”, o qual está concretizado na impotência do cidadão diante do poder soberano, a figura híbrida que tem a sua disposição não apenas a máquina governamental, mas o próprio ordenamento jurídico desvirtuado de seu objetivo original de proteção e segurança jurídica para um complexo e malicioso mecanismo de manutenção da “ordem social”. AbstractOne of the most relevant topics addressed by Giorgio Agamben is the state of exception as a political paradigm, that is, the state of exception is not restricted to totalitarian states, but to a government practice that is spreading rapidly, even in democratic societies. Thus, this article aims to analyze, from two works that make up the Homo Sacer Project, namely Homo Sacer: sovereign power and naked life I (2002), and State of Exception: homo sacer II (2004) ), the main elements that form the agambenian theory of the state of exception as a paradigm of government and how the delineation of its theses allows us to speak in "political eclipse", which is concretized in the impotence of the citizen before the sovereign power, the hybrid figure which has at its disposal not only the governmental machine, but the legal system itself distorted from its original objective of protection and legal security for a complex and malicious mechanism of maintenance of the "social order".

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