Homo sacer

From Geography

Homo Sacer

A Homo Sacer (Latin for ‘sacred man’ or ‘accused man’) is a figure of Roman law: a person who is banned, may be killed by anybody, but may not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. The status of homo sacer was a consequence of people breaking oaths. An oath in the Roman Empire was essentially a conditional self-cursing: invoking one or several gods and asking for their punishment in the event of breaking the oath. An oathbreaker was consequently considered the property of the gods whom he had invoked and then deceived. If someone broke his oath, he became a homo sacer, since he was considered property of the god the oath was sworn upon and could not longer be part of human society. All his rights as a citizen were revoked and he could be killed by anybody, which was explained as the revenge of the gods he had sworn an oath upon. On the other hand, the life of a homo sacer was deemed sacred as being the property of a god, so a homo sacer could not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony.

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life

Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses the concept of homo sacer as the main point of is work: ‘Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life’ (1998). In this work, Agamben defines homo sacer as ‘human life... included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed)’. Homo sacer was therefore being excluded from law itself and included at the same time. This figure is the opposite of the sovereign (a king or president) who is included in the law (so he can be condemned) and excluded from the law at the same time (since he has the power to decide the state of exception, where law is suspended for an indefinite time). Agamben demonstrates that all life cannot be subsumed by law. When a souvereign suspends the law by the state of exception, the decision produces a space of abandonment in which a person’s life is no longer a politically qualified life, but a merely existent life, exposed and abandoned to violence. Agamben calls this ‘bare life’.

The boundary that distinguishes the politically qualified life from the bare life is not fixed but mobile (Agamben calls it ‘indistinct’), as it is manipulated by souvereign’s decisions. The exception implies a non-linear temporality: ‘The exception does not subtract itself from the rule; rather, the rule, suspending itself, gives rise to the exception and, maintaining itself in relation to the exception, first constitutes itself as a rule’ Besides time, space is also effected: ‘The exception cannot be included in the whole of which it is a member and cannot be a member of the whole in which it is always already included.’

Agamben notes that law has had the power of defining what ‘bare life’ is by suspending the law, while at the same time gaining power over it by making it the subject of political control. According to Agamben, biopower (‘an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations.’ – M. Foucault) which takes the bare lives of the citizens into its political rules, exists in the modern state, but has existed since the beginnings of sovereignty in the West as well (Homo sacer being an example), since this structure of exception is essential to the core concept of sovereignty.

Agamben also argues that in the contemporary world, the state of exception has become the rule. He uses Nazi concentration camps and the US Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay as examples of a state of exception. Agamben sees the concentration camps as the materialization of the state of exception. In the US Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, the prisoners are denied the status of prisoners of war, so their legal status is erased. This makes them not legal subjects but beings of bare life.

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995) was the first of Agambens series of books about Homo Sacer. Other included works are:

• State of Exception. Homo Sacer II, 1 (2003),

• The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Homo Sacer II, 2 (2007),

• The Sacrament of Language: An Archaeology of the Oath. Homo Sacer II, 3 (2008),

• Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. Homo Sacer III (1998)