Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (review)

Abstract

A book review of Agamben's Homo Sacer. The article offers a favourable outline of the thesis - on the construction of biopolitical identity through law - one that re-establishes VERTICAL power as opposed to the HORIZONTAL power of Foucault's work. Central to Agamben's thesis is the ways in which sovereignty constructs a human identity that is reconfigured from one of basic life (ZOE) to political life (BIOS), and in some cases to BARE LIFE. That transformation is through creation of a legal identity that is both inside and outside the law - the imposition of a legal category that is deprived of the protections of law - homo sacer. This identity is a figure deemed worthy of death, but may not be legally executed or sacrified - but may be killed with impunity by others. The homo sacer is an analogy for the person that is contained and captured in law, but deprived of the protections of law. Ordinarily, the cause of this juridico-political classification is the state of siege or emergency - the State of Exception.