Homo sacer
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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)
Derek Gregory’s view
Derek Gregory thinks Agamben’s theory about state of exception has much to offer, but he thinks it fails to approach it internationally. Agamben always makes the connection between souvereign power and the state of exception in a single state, while Gregory thinks the transnational implications need to get more attention. Rules and jurisdiction beyond borders are increasing. The space that Agamben attributes to the state of exception is part of the spatialities of international law. International law does not have a centred place and there is not one souvereign with power.
Not all of the actions of President Bush after 9/11 (the war in Afghanistan) were correct according to international law. The Bush administration thought it could decide to make exceptions, which Gregory explains as the Bush administration wanting to have the United States regarded as the global souvereign. The ‘coercive interrogation’ of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay was not correct according to international law about torture.
Gregory argues Guantánamo Bay is part of the global war prison, a space of exception, where law is suspended in both it’s national and international forms. His addition to Agamben’s theory is explained with the example of Guantánamo Bay. According to Gregory, the architectures of colonial power are still important for the theory about the state of exception. The population of the United States consists of a lot of different races because of the colonial time. This makes Bush’s war on terror a war against certain civilians both inside and outside the borders of the United States, a global war. Guantánamo Bay is a place where the prisoners of this global war are being held. Gregory argues the global war prison is like the ‘free and empty space’ as the European colonialists saw the Americas, where everything is possible and every law is suspended.
Gregory points out that Agamben’s theory is insufficiently attentive to the spatialities of international law, as Guantánamo Bay is placed in two legal geographies. One geography that places the prison outside the United States in order to allow the indefinite detention of its captives, and another that places the prison within the United States in order to permit their ‘coercive interrogation’. This makes Gregory think that sites like Guantánamo Bay need to be seen as potential spaces whose realization is an occasion for political struggle rather than political pessimism as Agamben argues about the politics of resistance against Guantánamo Bay.
References
Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life (Ulrich Raulff, German Law Journal No. 5 - Special Edition, 1 May 2004)
Gregory, D., 2006: The black flag: Guantánamo Bay and the space of exception. Geogr. Ann., 88 B (4): 405-427.
Created by Luuk Arends
