Agamben Homo Sacer animatic (Tommie Soro video)

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NonZeroSum
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Agamben Homo Sacer animatic (Tommie Soro video)

Post by NonZeroSum »

Another really great animatic, comes up in refugee and anarchist studies a lot. DarlBundren maybe you can get a better understanding of existential anarchist political trajectory through this, as it relates to Satre's interest in Foucault and classes of people who live 'for themselves' and 'in themselves.'
DarlBundren wrote: Fri Mar 17, 2017 5:44 pm
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AGAMBEN HOMO SACER ANIMATIC
https://youtu.be/pGUxQmRNhtk

Published on Mar 6, 2014
Very rough description of homo sacer

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Full Transcript:

The big underlying question presented in the text is; why modern democratic states turn into totalitarian states?

Before we get into all that though, we have to outline the primary concepts in Agamben’s argument.

At the foundation of Agamben's theory is Homo Sacer, to understand this condition, we first have to understand the distinction between BIOS and ZOE.

Bios he describes as political life, this is just legitimized social life, life in society, which for the Greeks meant political life.

Zoe he describes as bare life, meaning animal life

In ancient Greece, every citizen had these two separate qualities, his political life as defined by his existence in society and his bare life given by God and therefore sacred, and defined by the fact that he was an animal which must sleep, eat, etc.

Interestingly, at that time, domestic life - as having no political function - was regarded as bare life, as Zoe, as they called it. Women, children and the senile would all be Zoe as they had no political life, no Bios.

The Bios-Zoe distinction is very like the mind-body distinction, am I my mind, controlling my body? Or am I my body, experiencing my mind? A Homo Sacer in Roman society, was someone who in punishment was exiled from society, and was therefore allowed to be killed by anyone, but not to be sacrificed in any religious way.

What this meant was he was expelled from the world of men, his Bios was removed and he was left with just Zoe, bare life, animal life.

But Homo Sacer is not the same thing as bare life. Homo Sacer is someone who has been forcibly reduced to bear life, just to keep these two concepts separate.

The Sacer and Homo Sacer is a bit confusing, sacred man who can't be sacrificed. The relationship between these words is important, first of all, sacred does not mean to be protected on the grounds that it is religious and therefore somehow precious, it simply means belonging to the class of things that is outside society and so sacrifice also belongs to this sphere. It is a simple inside-outside, included-excluded dichotomy that puts them together on the outside. This is his included in the form of exclusion thing that he keeps talking about.

This outside element, the other according to Levi Strauss always exists in societies, it is a constant and manifests in the sacred, priests, hermits etc. And the sacrificial.

In both cases it serves as an overflow valve for society, to allow for the system's mobility, things must be cast out and moved around to relieve pressure. There must be a place for loss, to keep the system open, like the missing square on one of those picture puzzle games.

Moving back to the kill-ability of Homo Sacer, who decides who can be legally killed, the sovereign, this is literally the definition of sovereignty, the right to kill, in the age of monarchies, the king was sovereign, this put him at the head of society, his sovereignty was legitimized by God, this will put God over the King in society, accept that as God is sacred he is part in the other class of things and so outside the structure.

It is the classic triangle social structure, the king is the subject and all others are objects, together they are whole. After the declaration of independence every man became equal, this made all the objects equal subjects, the triangle becomes a centerless system, where each part facilitates the operation of other parts. The sovereignty is shattered and dispersed among the constituents of the system, but sovereignty, the right to kill remains, only it is not given by God and it is a collective rather than individual responsibility, all are one and the same, this is the nation.

Enter biology, biology says Agamben and Foucault is the emergence of modernity, according to them, biology is a totalitarian ideology in its very nature, this is for two main reasons, firstly because of the way that it measures life, extreme examples being eugenics and genetics, but life support systems and health care screenings are the same thing, it reduces people to their animal qualities, the beastialization of man, as he says, it is so clinical and objective.

Secondly because it introduces the concept of the norm and therefore the abnormal, thus reintroducing or re-formalizing the inside-outside dichotomy, in the way it measures life it reduces people to objects, bare life, Zoe.

But the nation state designates its citizens as subjects Bios, as political.

This is where the two concepts become confused and combined. With the onset of biology Bios and Zoe are combined, Bios and Zoe, subject and object.

So in the modern nation-state, the subject is defined as an object within the system, a biological object, bare life with political rights, Zoe with the rights of Bios, this is the paradoxical nature of the position. The nation only being a manifestation of all of its parts, sees itself in terms of this paradox as well, bare life with political rights, it conceives of itself as made of the bodies of its citizens, it defines itself by its population, rather than territory, suddenly the state has a huge stake in the physical life of its constituents, it's very identity is the bare life of its citizens, it's bare life, it is now responsible for the health of its citizens, this is bio-politics, political control over bare life, which necessarily means the political control of death, phanto-politics.

Biology designates the other, through the introduction of the norm, it also sanctions the killing of the other, as it reduces people to bare life, with the state given right of Bios, political life.

So just like Homo Sacer, if you remove the citizenship of an individual or if they in fact have no citizenship, they're only bare life and therefore can be killed without committing a crime.

This is why in Nazi Germany, it was of absolute importance for the Jews to be stripped of citizenship before they could be killed, the state defined by the bare life that constitutes it, sought to purge the abnormal from its body, biology gives democratic states the opportunity to create a Homo Sacer position within it, if the abnormal, the excluded part which is still included in the system, is expelled it can be placed outside the law.

The device used by States to expel people to reduce them to bare life is the state of exception, prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were in a state of exception, refugees and asylum seekers are often in this state of exception, this is commonly employed in such instances as denial of voting rights to prisoners, the enforced life support of coma patients and the death penalty.

The concentration camps seen throughout modern history in Germany, South Africa, America and many other States are physical places which exist in a state of exception, the state of exception is simply constituted when the sovereign acts beyond the law.

Agamben sees the whole modern nation-state as in a permanent state of exception, or rather that the implementation of the state of exception is a normal thing that modern states do, this means a citizens political life, his Bios, the only thing that protects him from being killed, exploited, or denied aid or refuge, is only given with the understanding that it can be removed if he is placed in a state of exception.

So essentially all your rights can be taken away, you do not have the right to have rights, you are merely allowed to have rights, because biology makes the state focus on itself and its citizens as bare life then if you happen to suddenly be perceived as a threat to its bare life, even if you are a citizen, your expulsion, abuse or execution can be legalized and justified as modern democracy has this inherent totalitarian control over life and death, it is a totalitarian system, a camp, rarely as extreme or as brazen as Nazi Germany, but fully capable of becoming so, it is in this way that the modern democratic nation-state supposed to deliver equal rights to man, as in the foundation of its design, the ability to deprive those very rights. For Agamben the power to become a totalitarian state makes you a totalitarian state.
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