Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben

Aug 12, 2007 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

After having read a chapter from this previously, I read the whole thing this summer. Agamben is not as subtle as Foucault, but I think he takes the question of biopolitics in the direction it needed to go after Foucault's untimely death. "Bare Life" is such a useful concept. I heard Ewa Ziarek give a talk a few months ago on "bare life" as a form of resistance, and my head is still buzzin' with the after-echos.

like 3 likes · see review

Apr 11, 2007 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those looking to think about politics in a new way

Shelves: philosophy, political-theory

Agamben's claim in this book is that modern political theory (i.e., from Hobbes on forward), is premised on the State of Nature, the War of All Against All. This means that whatever form of government is chosen, it tends invariably towards either anarchy or to the concentration camp. Why? Because the government will be too weak to defend its citizens, and the State of Nature will reassert itself; or, with increased demands for rights on the parts of citizens, the state will need to enact ever mo...more

like 2 likes · see review

Apr 08, 2007 Julianne is currently reading it

Many interesting insights, but I'm a bit frustrated by methodology: it often feels like he's working on the wrong level of abstraction for the points he's trying to make. There are a lot things I don't understand about this book, some of which are probably the result of mere ignorance (and the fact that I'm only half way through) and some of which seem very hard to imagine an adequate understanding of in any case (for example: an ontology in which potentiality is freed from Being? how would that...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 10, 2011 Jonas Pothelm added it

As a member of a reading group now reading Agamben, what have I learned?

After the first meeting :

1. 'Homo Sacer: sovereign power and bare life' is part of a cyclus which includes in its inner circle at least 4 parts (Agamben already wrote 3) and with a few satelite writings around. Reflection about Homo Sacer is impossible without noticing the broader cyclus ('Paulus', 'L'Ouvert', ...).

2. Altought Agamben refers often to Foucault, his main iltellectual resources remain Hannah Arendt (and Heidegg...more

like · see review

Jul 03, 2010 Bryan added it

Political Ontology and Bio-Politics: Agamben begins his inquiry into sovereignty in the light of the problematic left to contemporary political ontology via Hobbes, Schmitt, and up to Heidegger (Dasein being that being who's very being is always at stake for that being, and ontological difference), post Heideggerian political thought (Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Derrida) and finally Foucault's bio-politics. While Agamben's criticisms of these thinkers is brief (and somewhat reductive) it does se...more Political Ontology and Bio-Politics: Agamben begins his inquiry into sovereignty in the light of the problematic left to contemporary political ontology via Hobbes, Schmitt, and up to Heidegger (Dasein being that being who's very being is always at stake for that being, and ontological difference), post Heideggerian political thought (Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, and Derrida) and finally Foucault's bio-politics. While Agamben's criticisms of these thinkers is brief (and somewhat reductive) it does serve the importance of situating his own conception of bio-politics, sovereignty and life as a radicalized "state of exception".
The Logic of Sovereignty is not one of a mere inclusion of beings into a political sphere or form of life specific to it (bios) which emerges or is transformed from an originary bare life (zoe). Rather Sovereignty establishes itself as "sacred" or "set apart" from the polis. There is nothing legal about law, in that the very founding moment of political ontology is apolitical and extra-juridical (because there is no normative law that has been set up yet). Benjamin distinguishes between two forms of violence (constituting and constituted). However, while the Sovereign constituting power of law must claim to be wholly outside the law in order to have created it, it must also regulate and constitute its power through law itself, thus including itself within the law. The Paradox of Sovereignty then is that its life is an "inclusion through exclusion". The signifier of law is absent (or non-signifying form) but is signified through this very non-signification of absence.
Homo Sacer then is the non-criminal criminal , the "extra-juridical" exception that is designated by the sovereign. The homo sacer can be legally killed by any person but is not a juridical killing. That is to say, killing the sacred human is not homicide nor is it sacrifice. The norm of political subjects are set against the exception of the homo sacer, but also included in the norm in its very opposition and ability to exile homo sacer. Agamben sees homo sacer and the sovereign to have this very inclusion by exception in common. Both the Sovereign and homo sacer can be killed but not sacrificed. (It is not a legal issue to kill a King but rather a heretical or anti-juridical one in this account). The Werewolf (half man and wolf inside the city and outside of it, man and animal, political and non-political) and the Sovereign, the inside and outside become an "indistinction" which no longer holds up for modern politics.
The Camp is the modern political space or "coming to light" of this "indistinction" between nature and law in the form of bio-politics. Modern politics as bio-politics takes life as what is at stake for its own life. Bare life as the state of exception, or the sacred, now becomes the rule. As for homo sacer everyone was sovereign, for the sovereign everyone is homo sacer. "The Enemy" as constitutive outside to the norm of civil society now becomes the inside in a society as war carried out by other means (politics). Society as life itself is the `enemy outside which is inside'. In fact, it was the rule from the inception of western politics. The camp then refers to the Nazi bio-political movement where law and fact are indistigusihable. The "suspension of law" and "states of emergency" are not purely juridical, and the holocaust cannot be understood in terms of law alone, but can only be understood as the indefinite suspension necessary for sovereign power to kill without crime, and without sacrifice.
One of the strengths of Homo Sacer is that it is able to weave the problems of political ontology together with the historico-political configurations and aporias of Nazism/mythology/capitalism/ and statism. In a subtle way Agamben is challenging the whole of contemporary political ontology to begin to rethink politics in terms of (actual)potentiality: (Life). Bio-politics as the state of exception (as rule) is no longer oriented toward the impossibility of the law (as form of the law without signification) but is rather concerned with the form-of-life (as indistinction/exception). A political ontology that is not concerned with the impossibility of laying claim to bare life as such, or the fascist mobilization of its totality and implementation, but rather with the practical creation and proliferation of non-statist, non-hierarchical experimentations in political practices that would create new ways of living and maximize the diversity of lives that would decide these ways. Life as potentiality (never reducible to any given definition or determination (totalitarianism) always calls for the emergence of a new politics of the actual, pointing always to the inexustablity/infinity of Life itself.
Critique of Agamben's somewhat reductive (although appropriate) critique of Heidigger, Battaille, Nancy, Derrida etc. aside for a moment, what remains a gapping hole in this work is the complete lack of eco-critical perspective on life. Almost every time Agamben speaks of life it is always in terms of a human life (a human political refugee, a proletariat, the life of a human political body, or a human sovereign king or people). It is his call for the creation of a people (resonances with Deleuze here) that he seems to close up his work on life. His very inquiry into the `open' of Bare Life (potentiality) as always political (indistinction) is closed up through the work in his neglect of animal, plant, and non-organic life, and hierarchical (statist?) (almost humanist) privileging of the bios politicos of the human.(less)

like · see review

Apr 18, 2013 Ira rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In defining Homo Sacer Agamben runs through the etymological origin of the term both within the studies of Roman law and anthropological findings of Levi-Strauss, Mauss, Durkheim amongst others. According to him, the task of metaphysics par excellence is the politicisation of naked life. His reference to Schmitt is functional to explaining the paradox of sovereignty that lies in the notion of Ausnahme: ‘Sovereign is whoever decides on the state of exception’. According to this, exception is gran...more In defining Homo Sacer Agamben runs through the etymological origin of the term both within the studies of Roman law and anthropological findings of Levi-Strauss, Mauss, Durkheim amongst others. According to him, the task of metaphysics par excellence is the politicisation of naked life. His reference to Schmitt is functional to explaining the paradox of sovereignty that lies in the notion of Ausnahme: ‘Sovereign is whoever decides on the state of exception’. According to this, exception is granted the highest status for the formulation of positive right, expressing at once the limit of sovereign power and its legitimation. Only in so far as the value of positive right can be suspended in a state of exception, it is able to define normality as its realm of validity.

‘It is not the exception that gets subtracted from the rule, but the rule that, suspending itself, gives raise to the exception and only in this way can constitute itself as rule, by constantly maintaining a relation to it. […] The situation that is created by exception can neither be defined as a factual situation, nor as a situation of right, but institutes between the two a paradoxical threshold of indifference’. [Homo Sacer: il potere sovrano e la vita nuda. Torino: Einaudi, 1995, p. 22-23]

According to Schmitt then, the sovereign does not establish what is legal and illegal, but rather the originary implication of the living within the sphere of right, or, in his words, the ‘normal structuration of life relations’, which the law needs. The decision relates neither to a quaestio facti nor to a quaestio iuris, but to the relation itself between fact and right.

Alongside Schmitt, Agamben’s point of reference is Benjamin and his critique of violence. Agamben criticised the tendency to see constituent power as that which is granted with the task of defending the constitution. In this move, the revolutionary moment that brings about a constitution and which makes constituent power irreducible and external to constituted power and juridical order, is relegated to a ‘pre-juridical’ and merely factual status. Agamben then cites Benjamin’s idea of a relation of constituent to constitutive power as that of a violence that brings about right to a violence that preserves it. In this sense, the constitution presupposes itself as constituent power (see Sieyés and Negri), and in this form it expressed the paradox of sovereignty.

‘Just as sovereign power is presupposed as state of nature, that is then maintained in a relation of exclusion with respect to the state of right, so does it separate itself into constituent and constitutive power and still relates to both by placing itself in their point of indifference.’ Ibid. p. 48

Violence, according to Benjamin, occurs where exception and rule become undistinguishable. He calls the link between violence and right naked life (blosses Leben). Naked life is thus the element which, in a state of exception, holds the most intimate relation to sovereignty.

See here for more:
http://www.generation-online.org/p/pa...(less)

like · see review

Feb 17, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Agamben argues that the "bare life" of man under modernity is inherently politicized; it is this notion that allows for the concept of the "rights of man," though these rights are theoretical rather than always in effect. This is because sovereignty is based upon an exception: the sovereign is outside the law, and is always sovereign over another exception which Agamben deems the homo sacer, the life which can be killed (without legal repercussion) but not sacrificed. Homo sacer is included in t...more

like 2 likes · see review

Jun 05, 2011 Justin Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

All the best continental philosophy* books display the best and worst things about continental philosophy: they introduce a profoundly useful concept and make a number of interesting but lesser points about the world in general while they do it. They also needlessly confuse the concept itself, display far too much irrelevant learning (of the "I was reading book x while I was writing book y, therefore book x and y are somehow connected" variety), and make statements that are so over-the-top and r...more All the best continental philosophy* books display the best and worst things about continental philosophy: they introduce a profoundly useful concept and make a number of interesting but lesser points about the world in general while they do it. They also needlessly confuse the concept itself, display far too much irrelevant learning (of the "I was reading book x while I was writing book y, therefore book x and y are somehow connected" variety), and make statements that are so over-the-top and ridiculous that any sane reader will only retain her sanity by keeping in mind Adorno's marvelously self-referential claim that all real thought is exaggeration.

According to this implausible statement of mine, Homo Sacer is among the best continental philosophy books. Agamben introduces a very useful and interesting concept by thinking about a)sovereignty, particularly as discussed by Schmitt; b) the figure of homo sacer and the much discussed 'ambiguity of the sacred'; and c) Foucault's concept of biopower. The concept is 'bare life,' which is what the figure of homo sacer is meant to have, what sovereignty rules over, and what Foucault (ait Agamben) was really trying to get at.

This should all be plain sailing, really: the sovereign, Agamben suggests, doesn't so much decide on the exception as decide on the boundaries of legality. The sovereign has the power to turn someone (or some group) into homines sacres, or 'bandits,' or, more making the idea a bit clearer, outlaws. Homo sacer, the outlaw, is both no longer subject to the law- but also no longer protected by it. He can kill you if he wants, but you can kill him without having any legal problem. So the sovereign and the outlaw both stand at the boundaries of human law, civilization etc... When you're in this position, though, you don't really have a full 'life' as such. You aren't a citizen, you aren't a subject- now you're bare life. I doubt it's very nice. This brings with it some interesting points about Heidegger (Dasein as a kind of benign bare life, which is no longer subject to power structures or politics or whatever), anthropological investigations of the sacred and a bunch of other issues in which you might be interested.

Now for the bad stuff:
i) this interesting concept does not allow you to make wildly exaggerated claims like 'economic development turns the entire population of the Third World into bare life,' or 'concentration camps signal the political space of modernity.' Regardless of whether some people are treated as bare life, the vast majority of us remain citizens.

ii) Aristotle's discussion of potentiality in book theta of the Metaphysics has nothing to do with sovereignty, no, nothing at all, and no matter how much fancy footwork you do you will not make them have any relevance to each other. Pindar might have something to do with it, but in a very uninteresting way. Kafka probably has something interesting to say about it, but Agamben doesn't tell us what. Benjamin certainly does, but you could only explain what in a freestanding book length essay on him. All this means that about two thirds of part one of this book are gratuitous and quite irritating. This is a side-effect of the argument-by-outlandish-example method, which also takes up too much space in part three: 'scientists sometimes turn people into lab rats' adds nothing to the concept of bare life.

iii) And finally, I actually have a complaint of substance: despite all the talk of bodies and biopolitics and what-not, Agamben's work is the worst kind of obfuscating idealism. I say this as someone who doesn't mind a little idealism every now and then. But saying 'the Romans conceived of homo sacer in this way... and now we're all homines sacres' leaves out a couple of pretty important *millenia,* through which one probably can't track the figure of homo sacer. What possible effect could this fascinating but arcane legal dispute have today? How is it that such ideas have some immediate impact on people who have never had a politically theoretical idea in their lives?
Agamben could answer, say, 'that's not what I mean; it's not that these ideas have actual worldly effects in the present. It's just a way to think about our world.' That would be okay.
*But*, I'm pretty sure that's not what's going on. He routinely says things like "only a politics that will have learned to take the fundamental biopolitical fracture of the West into account will be able to... put an end to the civil war that divides the peoples and cities of the earth," p 180. I suppose we could dedicate the next twenty years to re-thinking the relation between politics and bare life and sovereignty and so on. We could try to get an absolutely true political theory that steps beyond all of western history and metaphysics, since *only* then will injustice cease. But I'd like to think it isn't *only* when you have a perfect political theory that you can take steps to stop the environmental, political, economic, social and cultural havoc that we seem intent on wreaking.

*yes, I am aware that continental/analytic is a silly distinction, but it holds in this case.(less)

like 2 likes · see review

Srinath Jayaram My frustrated response to the Agamben as theorist-du-jour and homo sacer as the new theoretical figure to be found everywhere is based in your third a...more My frustrated response to the Agamben as theorist-du-jour and homo sacer as the new theoretical figure to be found everywhere is based in your third and most important critique. The problem is precisely, as you put it, what is to be done in the interim, that is between now and the promised future when philosophers will have prevailed and "justice for all" will replace "justice for those who have papers and/or property".

More specifically, however, I am concerned that something quite important is being overlooked in the the contemporary wave of thinking about the relationship between biopolitics and sovereignty. And that is the geography of foucault's ambit, which concerns itself with the political, and juridical history and criticism within a largely circumscribed understanding of Europe as the autonomous subject of history. Everything that Foucault and Agamben are dealing with (whether in proper names such as Schmitt, Clausewitz, and Benjamin or in roman law, the birth of biopolitical diagrams of power and so on) is an intellectual response to the new forms of subjectivation and desubjectivation of European populations (in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century even though Foucault seems to see this as part of a longer history). The vague and under-specified nod to the "plight" of "the third world" is a meaningless gesture which accomplishes one of two objectives: (1) For Foucault "their" problems are "theirs", "our" problems are "ours" and never shall the twain meet. (2) For Agamben we are all "homo sacer," a reformulation of "we are all Jews". The former maintains the "colonial rule of difference", the latter conscripts the "third world" subject into fighting European political struggles.

But the theoretical problem of the "third world" is not adequately addressed either by the institutions of subjectivation or by the practices of desubjectivation, because colonial subjects didn't start out as properly human subjects (in the enlightenment sense of the term) in the eyes of the modern/colonial state. Yet, suddenly everyone claiming to do postcolonial studies is talking about Foucault and Agamben as if Foucault and Agamben are talking about the sacred suffering figures of postcolonial studies (peasants, subalterns, tribal indigenous).

What has escaped most critics (like Agamben) is that while Europe has slid further into Agamben's nightmare scenario of a rapidly increasing floating population of "outlaws", postcolonial states are actually attempting to expand the ambit of "equal protections under law". There are of course too many problems with the specific ways in which this is being done. But unlike in Europe, where the denial of rights is being made to seem increasingly normal, justified and necessary, it is worth noting that it has become possible for Indians to think of and demand something as seemingly outrageous as the "right to food" for its starving millions. And more important, that this demand is becoming increasingly popular.

But the problem of violence (whether perpetrated by the sovereign state or merely allowed by the biopolitical state to protect the interests of civil society) in the postcolony is a sign not of strength or the power of the sovereign but its weakness. Every postcolonial leftist who thinks of the postcolonial state in paranoid Althusserian terms as a purely repressive edifice with a monopoly on justified violence loses sight of this fact. The problem of sovereignty in the postcolonial world is a crisis of authority, not a crisis of power/knowledge, and most certainly not one of (mis)representation. The postcolonial left continues to conflate the crisis of authority with an epistemological crisis of representation. And it does so at its own peril!(less)
updated Aug 22, 2011 07:20am

Justin Evans What can I say? Only well said, and bravo for putting it so well! Thanks! I'm really looking forward to reading your reviews of various theory and phi...more
Aug 23, 2011 03:50pm

Apr 23, 2011 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like the main argument, but I find the AB-BA (inclusive exclusion, exclusive inclusion; wolf inside a man, man inside a wolf) abstract theoretical discussions a bit off-putting. Please don't make me read Badiou.

Luckily, these arguments are front loaded in the text. Part I is this theoretical framing of the sovereign, mostly vis-à-vis Schmitt and Benjamin. Parts 2 and 3 explain Homo Sacer and the state of exception. Part 2 argument has neat historical examples of living dead (or dead living?) w...more

like 1 like · see review

Jan 29, 2009 Damien rated it 4 of 5 stars

Agamben in a nutshell? Biopolitics is at the center not just of political modernity, but all politics. The politicization of bare life is an originary political event which secretly governs all modern ideologies. That is to say that the reduction of man to bare life, and his exposure to killing, is at the origin of politics. Agamben thus considers the intersection between the juridico-institutional and the biopolitical models of power, which he claims can never be separated. He probes this inter...more

like · see review

May 12, 2011 Bradley rated it 4 of 5 stars

See my review of Roberto Esposito - ibid..note to Agamben - the world is not one big concentration camp..then again, the more I think about it, he's got a point...ignorance is bliss. Subjectivity involves living dependently upon an other - and having one's life determined by conscience, and knowledge...hmm, if this is the criteria for determining if the world is one big Auschwitz then I have to admit he is convincing on that one - but what would a world without conscience look like? And, is that...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 29, 2012 Andrew added it

Shelves: theeeeeeory

I was introduced to Agamben as a starry-eyed 19 year old just learning about critical theory, and this is my first attempt to read anything by him in ages. I found him to be a still impressive thinker and theorist, but one with a few notable flaws...

The central metaphor of the book is, in my mind, a stretch. Are we REALLY all homo sacer? OK, we do live in a surveillance society these days, and I would agree that this surveillance society does indeed reduce humans to "bare life." But at the same...more

like · see review

Mar 02, 2009 Julian rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this for the class at Pitt I'm currently sitting in on, as a follow up to Foucault's History of Sexuality, Vol 1 and Society Must Be Defended. It was an attempt to flesh out the concept of 'biopolitics' but I think the term becomes less distinct when taken up by Agamben. Nevertheless, I think this is a great book, even though I find Agamben's thought a little less compelling than Foucault's, he seamlessly brings together much of the critical impulse of the last century of philosophy and m...more

like · see review

Aug 27, 2010 Michael Mcloughlin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Agamben's "Homo Sacer", which I came across while browsing a bookstore in Lille, goes a long way to answering the question of how states can turn to murder. A pressing problem out our time, and a problem that much occupied me while researching and writing "Last Stop, Paris: the assassination of Mario Bachand and the death of the FLQ" (Toronto: Viking, 1998.) The referenced edition is in French, which, being Latinate, retains much of the elegance of the Italian original. I did find that elegance...more

like · see review

Feb 09, 2011 mauroo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: filosofia, sociologia

The banishment of sacred life is the sovereign nomos that conditions every rule, the originary spatialization that governs and makes possible every localization and every territorialization. And if in modernity life is more and more clearly placed at the center of State politics (which now becomes, in Foucault’s terms, biopolitics), if in our age all citizens can be said, in a specific but extremely real sense, to appear virtually as homines sacri, this is possible only because the relation of b...more

like · see review

Jul 26, 2009 Yosie rated it 5 of 5 stars

A great book to illuminate the way by which violence is inherently inevitable from the sovereign -especially state- practice. Departing from Carl Schmitt's exceptionalism, that is a kind of god-like practice to arbitrarily decide an exception (especially over liveable and unliveable life), and Michel Foucault's recent works on Biopolitics, that is political technology over life, Agamben set out that the fundamental activity of sovereignty is production of what he calls 'homo sacer' - those resu...more

like · see review

May 08, 2013 Micha rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century, magister-artium, theoreticals

A book I read in full for a paper and did not ever use for that paper. How frustrating! I think that this concept of homo sacer is a little weak, that the enigma of it is what's so attractive about it, but I don't know how far we should try to extend and apply it. I liked best the parts about the homo sacer and the loup-garou, but that's just because I have liked for so long the concept of a werewolf as the fringe of humanity, neither part of it nor entirely out of it. Glad I read it and might u...more

like · see review

Mar 17, 2010 Riotaccordion loeffler rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is pretty amazing.
Homo Sacer is this political/social status in Greek society
that someone might get after committing certain crimes.
The Homo Sacer (Sacred Human) is a sacred being
someone who lives inside society but is also outside of it.
Homo Sacer can be killed by anyone at any time without
penalty to the assaulter but is sacred and thus can't be
sacrificed in societal rituals. Homo Sacer examines this
concept in modernity along side the state of exception.

Pretty neat.
But also won't h...more

like · see review

Apr 20, 2012 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorite-philosophy

Law and politics has never before been illuminated in half so sinister a way as Agamben shows us in this tour de force of philosophical inquiry into the role of Western (Aristotelian) government. In order to prove the truth about the nature of 'sovereign power,' Agamben defines for us (or, more accurately, reveals the paradoxes in) the life of the homo sacer, or the sacred man, a figure of Latin law in which they may be killed at any time but their death will represent neither a murder nor a sac...more

like · see review

Jun 27, 2008 W. C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Taking up the line of Foucault's work, Agamben tries to make a link between the latter's theories of political techniques and technologies of the self. He does so by locating the truth of our era in the concentration camp. How so? Insofar as political power has been defined in western thinking as that power which decides the law above and beyond the law, what Carl Schmitt called the 'state of exception', mere subjects have no inherent protection against the sovereign. Despite the grand pronounce...more Taking up the line of Foucault's work, Agamben tries to make a link between the latter's theories of political techniques and technologies of the self. He does so by locating the truth of our era in the concentration camp. How so? Insofar as political power has been defined in western thinking as that power which decides the law above and beyond the law, what Carl Schmitt called the 'state of exception', mere subjects have no inherent protection against the sovereign. Despite the grand pronouncements of the so called universal rights of man and all that blather about we the people, the important moment for Agamben is that any person can become, once the sovereign decides to make it so, homo sacer, a person who cannot be murdered precisely because she/he/it is now outside of the law. So, what does this mean?

If the concentration camps of Nazi Germany are a distant memory, one need only think of extraordinary rendition, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo (or Zimbabwe and Burma). The logical moment that allows for the removal of protections laid out by the Geneva conventions is located in the political leader who decides that the political realm they rule is in a state of emergency, hence all normal protections are impediments. At this point, law becomes nebulous and relative to the whim of the sovereign, and if you are a subject caught up in the sovereign's whim, good luck to you. Of course, political leaders have always had this power, but Agamben's point is that the truth of it is becoming increasingly apparent and prevalent. In other words, all of the wrappings of god, the people, and the dignity of the office are peeling away, and we are being left with a world of political leaders that are looking more and more like Hobbes' Sovereign--a being who has total power of her political subjects, but who is subject to no political power, who is in a state of nature in which all things are possible and, more importantly, all actions are allowed. It should be pointed out, as well, that this work was written well before September 11th and all that followed, giving the text an unfortunate prescience.

If you have been scratching your head about why executive power has become so monstrous of late (why now? what for? is it just because of what the democrats did to the executive branch after Nixon?), Agamben provides a detailed, historically placed narrative of the arrival of the Sovereign who rules the state of exception (or, in our case, the war on terror--a truly impossible, endless war that would make Orwell weep). What this work lacks, and this identifies Agamben as truly Foucaultian, is a sense of what we should do about it. Ok, one thinks by the end of this book, we have arrived at a kind of power that functions in the limit, that no longer really pays head to the old niceties and diplomatic channels, and one that will sacrifice any liberties and subjects in the name of the state of exception, but then what? Alas, Agamben can only suggest that we cannot return to old political theory, that we must think through our reality in terms of this homo sacer that now truly defines political subjectivity in its relation to political power. Nonetheless, after reading this text, you will be thinking.
(less)

like · see review

Nov 21, 2007 Jacob rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Theorist, amateur and otherwise

This book is a powerful account of the modern world, stating that if the paradigm of ancient classical politics was the polis, the paradigm of modern politics is the concentration camp. Agamben uses an obscure term in Roman law, homo sacer ("sacred man") to describe the existence of modern man in relation to the sovereign power of the state. The Roman homo sacer denoted a man who could not be sacrificed, but who could be killed at any point with no purpose and no consequences. Agamben shows how...more

like · see review

Aug 14, 2010 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

I had a little trouble with this book in the beginning. It starts off with an analysis of legal codes of the Roman Empire, and I'm not too well-versed in the Classics (my fault, not Agamben's.)

The latter half was a little easier for me. Even though I've read a lot about Agamben's homo sacer concept, I found that reading this book made it feel even less clear to me than before. As seems to be the case I find Agamben's ideas to be much clearer when other people are talking about them.

like · see review

May 24, 2011 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars

Reading this book required me to stop at least once per page to look up a word or concept that he is developing. His occasional lack of explanation for archaic Roman legal terms - that are not going to be in the dictionary - was occasionally frustrating (Thank goodness for google and wikipedia).

After finishing the book I did feel like I had the advantage of a new vocabulary with which to describe developments in modern politics and law. However, I'm confused at whether or not there is a differe...more

like · see review

Jan 18, 2011 The Awdude rated it 4 of 5 stars

This might be the most ominous book I've ever read. It focuses on the idea of the homo sacer, which is "bare life" that may be killed but not sacrificed. (Think 1940 Jew, 2011 Mexican immigrant.) Agamben amends and builds on Foucault's notion of biopower, and he puts the concentration camp at the center of his critique. It's scary stuff, but it needs to be said. Read it.

like · see review

Oct 27, 2010 Jordan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Agamben is one of the few living philosophers/people who seem to see through our society at large at what is going on. His view of power, bio-politics, and sovereignty take Foucault and Arendt (as well as Benjamin and Schmidt) even further into the contemporary situation. Brilliant read and necessary thinking.

like · see review

Nov 14, 2010 Jacques le fataliste et son maître rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: scienza, scienza-politica, filosofia, saggistica, filosofia-del-diritto

L’opera di G. Agamben Homo sacer è strutturata nel seguente modo:
1 – Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (la presente opera), pubblicato da Einaudi
2.1 – Stato di eccezione, pubblicato da Bollati Boringhieri: http://www.anobii.com/books/0192fe0c8...
2.2 – Il regno e la gloria. Per una geneaologia teologica dell’economia e del governo, pubblicato da Neri Pozza: http://www.anobii.com/books/01f5db52c...
e ripubblicato da Bollati Boringhieri:
http://www.anobii.com/books/0196e1005...
3 – Quel che...more

like · see review

Mar 11, 2010 Beanieplatypus rated it 3 of 5 stars

Intriguing investigation of sovereignty and the power society can have over an individual life. Very, very dense and a difficult read, but an absolute must for the field of political theology

like · see review

Dec 31, 2012 Joshua rated it 2 of 5 stars

I felt like an academic homo sacer: one who could be told the story, but never have it fully explained. Agamben operates in the zone of indistinction between clarity and gibberish.

like · see review

Aug 02, 2012 منى كريم rated it 4 of 5 stars

a headache in bio-politics. the introduction and the last chapter make the point. except if you want to have a boring trip in trip in Greek and German philosophy

like · see review

Jan 31, 2009 Gyewon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modernity

along the lines of oshii mamoru's jinroh (人狼) -- what does it mean by a werewolf life in the 'posthuman' age?

like · see review

title link	preview: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
avg rating	preview: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life Goodreads rating: 4.01 (1120 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85826.Homo_Sacer?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1296857435l/85826.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85826.Homo_Sacer?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben[/url]

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (11)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Books by Giorgio Agamben

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Homo Sacer: Sover...

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

combineOther Editions (11)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Books by Giorgio Agamben

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Homo Sacer: Sover...

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (11)