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'''Giorgio Agamben''' (born [[1942]]) is an [[Italy|Italian]] [[philosopher]] who teaches at the University of [[Verona]]. He also holds a professorship at the [[European Graduate School]], teaches at the [[:fr:Collège international de philosophie|Collège International de Philosophie]] in [[Paris]] and at the [[University of Macerata]] in Italy, and has held visiting appointments at several American universities. He became famous for his investigations on the [[concept]]s of [[state of emergency|state of exception]] and ''[[Homo sacer]]'' {{ref|stateofexception}}.
== Biography ==
Agamben was educated at the [[University of Rome]], where he wrote a thesis on the political thought of [[Simone Weil]]. Agamben participated in [[Martin Heidegger]]'s Le Thor seminars (on [[Heraclitus]] and [[Hegel]]) in 1966 and 1968. In the seventies he worked primarily on linguistics, philology, poetics, and medievalist topics, where he began to elaborate his primary concerns, though without as yet inflecting them in a specifically political direction. In 1974-1975 he was a fellow at the [[Warburg Institute]], where he wrote ''Stanzas'' (1979).
Close to [[Elsa Morante]], on whom he has written, [[Pier Paolo Pasolini]], in whose ''[[The Gospel According to St. Matthew]]'' he played the part of Philip, [[Italo Calvino]], [[Ingeborg Bachmann]], [[Pierre Klossowski]], [[Jean-Luc Nancy]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[Jean-François Lyotard]], his strongest influences include [[Walter Benjamin]], whose complete works he edited in Italian translation. Agamben's philosophy draws from [[Michel Foucault]] as well as from Italian neo-marxist thought. He frequently cites [[Carl Schmitt]] and Walter Benjamin. While sometimes being cryptic in his writings, in interviews he makes himself clear as a public thinker in Foucauldian tradition who is interested in social conflicts on a global scale.
=== Criticism against US response to "9-11" and biometrics ===
Giorgio Agamben is particularly critical of the United States' response to [[September 11, 2001 attacks|September 11, 2001]], and its instrumentalization as a permanent condition that legitimizes a [[state of exception]] as the dominant paradigm for governing in contemporary politics. He warns against a "generalization of the state of exception" through laws like the [[USA PATRIOT Act]], which means a permanent installment of [[martial law]] and [[emergency powers]]. In January 2004, he refused to give a lecture in the United States because under the [[US-VISIT]] he would have been required to give up his [[biometric]] information, which he believed stripped him to a state of "bare life" (''zoe'') and was akin to the [[tattooing]] that the [[Nazis]] did during World War II {{ref|Lemonde}}{{ref|Truthout}}.
However, Agamben's criticisms target a broader scope than the US "[[war on terror]]". As he points out in ''State of Exception'' (2005), [[rule by decree]] has became common since World War I in all modern states, and has been since then generalized and abused. Agamben points out a general tendency of modernity, recalling for example that when [[Francis Galton]] and [[Alphonse Bertillon]] invented "judicial photography" for "[[anthropometric]] identification", the procedure was reserved to [[criminals]]; to the contrary, today's society is tending toward a generalization of this procedure to all citizens, placing the [[population]] under permanent suspicion and [[surveillance]]: "The political body thus has became a criminal body". And Agamben to remind that the [[Jews deportation]] in [[France]] and other occupied countries was made possible by the photos taken from [[identity cards]] {{ref|Lemonde_2005}}. Furthermore, Agamben's political criticisms open up in a larger philosophical ''[[critique]]'' of the concept of sovereignty itself, which he explains is intrinsically related to the state of exception.
== Work ==
In ''The Coming Community'' (1993), Giorgio Agamben writes:
:''If human beings were or had to be this or that [[substance theory|substance]], this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible... This does not mean, however, that human are not, and do not have to be, something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at this point). There is an effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: ''It is the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality...'' {{ref|Com}}
This potentiality of life would become one of Agamben's main threads, throughout his critical conception of an ''homo sacer'', reduced to "bare life", and thus deprived of any rights. Henceforth, Agamben intents to think a kind of "[[subjectivity]] without subject": humans are "an effect", "but this is not an essence nor properly a thing", but the "simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality". This "coming community" opposes itself to [[sovereignty]], which reduces through the state of exception qualified life (''bios'') to bare life (''zoe'').
=== ''Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life'' (1998) ===
{{main|Homo Sacer}}
In his main work ''"Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"'' (1998), Giorgio Agamben analyzes an obscure figure of [[Roman law]] that poses some fundamental questions to the nature of [[law]] and [[power (sociology)|power]] in general. Under the Roman Empire, a man who committed a certain kind of crime was banned from society and all of his rights as a [[citizenship|citizen]] were revoked. He thus became a ''"[[homo sacer]]"'' (sacred man). In consequence, he could be killed by anybody -- while his life on the other hand was deemed "sacred", so he could not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony.
To a ''Homo sacer'', Roman law no longer applied, although he was still "under the spell" of law. Agamben defines it 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 ''excluded'' from law itself, while being ''included'' at the same time. This figure is the exact mirror image of the [[sovereignity|sovereign]] (''[[Basileus]]'') - a [[monarch|king]], [[emperor]], or [[president]] -- who stands, on the one hand, ''within'' law (so he can be condemned, e.g., for treason, as a natural person) and ''outside of'' the law (since as a [[body politic]] he has power to suspend law for an indefinite time).
Indeed, Giorgio Agamben draws on Carl Schmitt's definition of the Sovereign as the one who has the power to decide the state of exception (or ''[[justitium]]''), where law is indefinitely "suspended" without being abrogated. But if Schmitt's aim is to include the necesity of state of emergency under the rule of law, Agamben on the contrary demonstrates that all life can't be subsumed by law. As in ''Homo sacer'', the state of emergency is the inclusion of life and necessity in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion.
Since its origins, Agamben notes, law has had the power of defining what "bare life" (''zoe'', as opposed to ''bios'': qualified life) is by making this exclusive operation, while at the same time gaining power over it by making it the subject of political control. The power of law to actively separate "political" beings (citizens) from "bare life" (bodies) has carried on from [[Ancient history|Antiquity]] to [[Modernity]] -- from, literally, [[Aristotle]] to [[Auschwitz]]. Aristotle, as Agamben notes, constitutes political life via a simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of "bare life": as Aristotle says, man is an animal born to [[life]] (''zen''), but existing with regard to the [[eudemonia|good life (''eu zen'')]] which can be achieved through politics. Bare life, in this ancient conception of politics, is that which must be transformed, via the State, into the "good life"; that is, bare life is that which is supposedly excluded from the higher aims of the state, yet is included precisely so that it may be transformed into this "good life." Sovereignty, then, is conceived from ancient times as a state of exception. According to Agamben, [[biopower]], which takes the bare lives of the citizens into its political calculations, may be more marked in the modern state, but has essentially existed since the beginnings of sovereignty in the West, since this structure of ''ex-ception'' is essential to the core concept of sovereignty {{ref|biopower}}.
=== ''State of Exception'' (2005) ===
In this book, written in the aftermath of Bush's campaign labelled the "[[War on terror]]", Agamben traces the concept of ''state of exception'' used by Carl Schmitt to Roman ''[[justitium]]'' and ''[[auctoritas]]''. This leads him to a response to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to proclaim state emergency.
==== ''Auctoritas'', "charism" and ''Führertum'' doctrine ====
Agamben shows that ''auctoritas'' and ''[[potestas]]'' are clearly distinct - although they form together a [[Wiktionary:binary|binary]] system" {{ref|Agamben}}. He quotes [[Theodor Mommsen|Mommsen]], who explains that ''auctoritas'' is "less than an [[order]] and more than an advice" {{ref|Mommsen}}.
While ''potestas'' derives from social function, ''auctoritas'' "immediately derives from the ''patres'' personal condition". As such, it is akin to [[Max Weber]]'s concept of [[charismatic authority|charism]]. This is why the tradition ordered , at the king's death , the creation of the sovereign’s wax-double in the ''funus imaginarium'', as did [[Ernst Kantorowicz]] demonstrate in ''The King's Two Bodies'' (1957). Hence, it is necessary to distinguish two bodies of the sovereign in order to assure the continuity of ''dignitas'' (term used by Kantorowicz, here a synonym of ''auctoritas''). Moreover, in the person detaining ''auctoritas'' - the sovereign -[[public]] life and [[private]] life have become inseparable. [[Augustus]], the first Roman emperor who claimed ''auctoritas'' as the basis of ''[[princeps]]'' status in a famous passage of ''Res Gestae'', had opened up his house to public eyes.
The concept of ''auctoritas'' played a key-role in [[fascism]] and [[nazism]], in particular concerning [[Carl Schmitt]]'s theories, argues Agamben:
:"To understand modern phenomenons such as the fascist ''[[Duce]]'' or the nazi ''[[Führer]]'', it is important not to forget their continuity with the principe of ''auctoritas principis'' {Agamben refers here to Augustus's ''Res Gestae''}. {...} Neither does the ''Duce'' nor the ''Führer'' represent constitutionally defined public charges - even though Mussolini and Hitler endorsed respectively the charge of head of government and Reich's chancellor, just as Augustus endorsed the ''imperium consulare'' or the ''potestas tribunicia''. The ''Duce'' 's or the ''Führer'' 's qualities are immediately related to the physical person and belong to the [[biopolitical]] tradition of ''auctoritas'' and not to the juridical tradition of ''potestas'' " {{ref|6.7}}
Thus, Agamben opposes Foucault's concept of "biopolitics" to [[right]] (law), as he defines the state of exception, in ''Homo sacer'', as the inclusion of life by right under the figure of ex-ception, which is simultaneously inclusion and exclusion. Following Walter Benjamin's lead, he explains that our task would be to radically differentiate "pure violence" from right, instead of tying them together, as did Carl Schmitt.
Agamben concludes his chapter on " ''Auctoritas and potestas'' " writing:
:"It is significative that modern specialists were so enclined to admit that ''auctoritas'' was inherent to the living person of the ''pater'' or the ''princeps''. What was evidently an [[ideology]] or a ''fictio'' aiming to be the groundwork of ''auctoritas'' ' preeminence or, at least, specific rank compared to ''potestas'' thus became a figure of right's {law - "droit"} [[immanence]] to life. (...) Although it is evident that there can't be an eternal human type that would incarnate itself each time in Augustus, Napoleon, Hitler, but only more or less comparable ("semblables") mechanisms {"dispositif", a term often used by Foucault} - the state of exception, ''justitium'', the ''auctoritas principis'', the ''Führertum'' -, put in use in more or less differents circumstances, in the [[1930s]] - overall, but not only - in Germany, the power that Weber had defined as "charismatic" is related to the concept of ''auctoritas'' and elaborated in a ''[[Führertum]]'' doctrine as the original and personal power of a leader. In [[1933]], in a short article intending to define the fundamental concepts of national-socialism, Schmitt defines the ''Führung'' principe by the "root identity between the leader and his entourage" {"''identité de souche entre le chef et son entourage"''} (we shall note the use of weberian concepts)." {{ref|6.8}}
Agamben’s thoughts on the state of emergency leads him to declare that the difference between dictatorship and democracy is thin indeed, as [[rule by decree#Giorgio Agamben's critique of the use of decrees-law|rule by decree]] became more and more common, starting from [[World War I]] and the reorganization of constitutional balance. Agamben often reminds that [[Hitler]] never ''abrogated'' the [[Weimar Constitution]]: he ''suspended'' it for the whole duration of the [[3rd Reich]] with the [[Reichstag Fire Decree]], issued on February 28, 1933. Indefinite suspension of law is what characterizes the state of exception. Thus, Agamben connects Greek political philosophy through to the [[concentration camps]] of 20th century fascism, and even further, to detainment camps in the likes of [[Guantanamo Bay]] or immigration detention centers, such as [[Bari]], [[Italy]], where asylum seekers have been imprisoned in football stadiums. In these kinds of camps, entire zones of exception are being formed: the state of exception becomes a status under which certain categories of people live, a ''capture'' of life by right. Sovereign law makes it possible to create entire areas in which the application of the law itself is held suspended, which is the basis of [[George W. Bush|Bush administration]]'s definition of an "[[unlawful combatant|enemy combatant"]].
==== ''Interregnum'', ''justitium'' and ''nomos empsuchos'' (the sovereign as "living law") ====
In the chapter preceding ''Auctoritas and potestas'', Agamben advances an explanation of the transformation of ''justitium'', a technical term referring to the state of exception, declared to cope with ''[[tumultus]]'' state (rebellion, uprising, riots...), at the end of the [[Roman Republic]], into a term simply referring to the mourning of the sovereign's death during ''[[interregnum]]'' periods:
:"The correspondence between ''justitutium'' and mourning here shows its true signification. If the sovereign is a living ''[[nomos]]'', if then [[anomie]] and ''nomos'' coïncide in his person without any left-over, then anarchy (which, at his death, when the link attaching him to law his broken, threatens to unleash itself in the city) must be ritualized and controlled, by the transformation of the state of exception into public mourning and of mourning into ''justitium'' (...) Before acquiring the modern form of a decision on emergency {Schmitt's definition}, the relationship between sovereignty and state of exception presents itself under the form of an identity between the sovereign and anomie. As living law, the sovereign is deeply ''anomos''. Here also the state of exception is the life -more secret and true - of the law." {{ref|5.3}}
The first formulation of the thesis according to which "the sovereign is a living law" found its first formulation on the treaty "On law and justice" by pseudo-[[Archytas]], conserved by Stobée with Diotogène's treaty on sovereignty. It is the first attempt to conceive a form of sovereignty completely enfranchised from laws, being itself the source of [[legitimacy]]. This theory must be radically distinguished from [[natural rights]] theory or [[Antigone]]'s appeal to the "eternal and unwritten laws" to which even monarchs must abide, as it is a theory of sovereignty (in fact, it is quite the reverse of Antigone's rebellion).
Pseudo-Archytas distinguished the sovereign (''[[basileus]]''), who is the law, from the [[magistrate]] (''[[archōn]]''), who limits himself to observing the law. "Identification between law and sovereign has as consequence, writes Agamben, the scission of law into a "living" law (''nomos empsuchos''), hierarchically superior, and a written law (''gramma''), which is subordinate to the first one". He then quotes A. Delatte's ''Essais sur la politique pythagoricienne'' (Paris, 1922), himself quoting the pseudo-Archytas:
:"I say that all communities are composed of an ''archōn'' (the magistrate who commands), a commanded one, and, as tierce party, laws. Among those ones, the living one is the sovereign (''ho men empsuchos ho basileus''), and the inanimate one is the letter (''gramma''). Law is the first element, the king is legal, the magistrate accorded to law, the commanded free and all of the city happy; but, in case of corruption ("dévoiement"), the sovereign is a [[tyrant]], the magistrate is not accorded to law and the community is unhappy."
== Endnotes ==
#{{note|COM}} ''The Coming Community'' (1993), section 11.
#{{note|stateofexception}} Generally speaking, "state of exception" includes German ''Notstand'', English state of emergency and others [[martial law]]. Agamben prefers using this term as it underlines the structure of ''ex-ception'', which is simultaneously of inclusion and exclusion. "Ex-ception" can be opposed to the concept of "example" as developed by [[Kant]].
#{{note|Lemonde}}{{fr icon}}{{cite news | title=''Non au tatouage biopolitique'' "No to Bio-Political Tattooing" | date=2004 January 10 | publisher=[[Le Monde]] | url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=834932}}
#{{note|Truthout}}[http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/3249|"No to Bio-Political Tattooing" By Giorgio Agamben, [[Le Monde]], Saturday [[10 January]] [[2004]]
#{{note|Lemonde_2005}}{{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''Non à la biométrie'' ("No to Biometrics")|date=2005 December 5|publisher=''[[Le Monde]]|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/web/imprimer_element/0,40-0@2-3232,50-717595,0.html
}} ([http://souriez.info/article.php3?id_article=283 also available here])
#{{note|biopower}} Of course, this understanding of "biopower" is distinct from Foucault's use of the term.
#{{note|Agamben}} Giorgio Agamben, ''State of Exception'' (2005)
#{{note|Mommsen}} [[Theodor Mommsen]], ''Römisches Staatsrecht'' ("Roman Constitutional Law", volume III) (Graz, 1969)
#{{note|6.7}} Agamben, ''State of Exception'' (''ibid.''), chapter 6 " ''Auctoritas'' and ''potestas'' ", §7.
#{{note|6.8}} Agamben, ''ibid.'', chapter 6, §8.
#{{note|5.3}} Agamben, ''ibid.'', chapter 5, §3.
==Bibliography==
(Only English translations are listed here; there are translations of most writings to German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. There also is an updated list of publications including translations to other languages at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgioagamben.html).
* ''Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture'' (1992)
* ''Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience'' (1993)
* ''The Coming Community'' (1993)
* ''Idea of Prose'' (1995)
*{{cite book
| title = Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
| publisher = [[Stanford University Press]] (1998)
| id = ISBN 0804732183
}}
* ''The Man without Content'' (1999)
* ''The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics'' (1999)
* ''Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy'' (1999)
* ''Means without Ends: Notes on Politics'' (2000)
* ''Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive'' (2002)
* ''The Open: Man and Animal'' (2004)
* ''State of Exception'' (2005) (excerpt available [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/009254.html here])
* ''The Time That Remains: A Commentary On The Letter To The Romans'' (2005)
* Various articles published by ''[[Multitudes]]'', available [http://multitudes.samizdat.net/auteur.php3?id_auteur=304 here].
* {{it icon}} {{cite news|title=''Nei campi dei senza nome''|date= 1998 November 3|publisher=[[Il Manifesto]]|url=http://www.ilmanifesto.it/g8/archivio/lavoro_e_migranti/3b333676a4b9c.html}}
* {{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''Gênes et la peste'' ("[[27th G8 summit|Genoa]] and the plague")|date=2001 August 27|publisher=[[L'Humanité]]|url=http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2001-08-27/2001-08-27-249331}}
== See also ==
*''[[Auctoritas#Giorgio Agamben's explanation of Auctoritas|Giorgio Agamben's explanation of Auctoritas]]''
*[[State of Emergency#Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to proclame state emergency, and Giorgio Agamben's response|Agamben's response to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to decide state exception]]
*''[[Basileus]]''
*''[[Homo sacer]]''
*''[[Interregnum]]''
*''[[Justitium]]''
*[[Unlawful combatant]]s
==External links==
*"[http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgioagamben.html Giorgio Agamben Faculty Website European Graduate School]"
*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/agamben.htm Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Agamben]
*"[http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437 Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life, German Law Journal, Vol. 5 ([[1 May]] [[2004]])]"
*[http://www.nplusonemag.com/agamben.html "Apocalypse Deferred"] A review of Agamben's work in [[n+1]] magazine, by [[Mark Greif]] (Fall 2005).
*"[http://www.mail-archive.com/nettime-l@bbs.thing.net/msg00974.html Review of State of Exception]"
*"[http://formoflife.blogspot.com/2005/11/review-of-giorgio-agambens-time-that.html Review of The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans]"
*{{es icon}} ''[http://www.comunalia.com/Seminario/ Seminario Agamben]''
*{{fr icon}}[http://multitudes.samizdat.net/article.php3?id_article=1135 ''"État d'exception" de G. Agamben''] by [[Sandra Salomon]] in ''[[Multitudes]]'', 2003, August 8.
*{{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''L'État d'exception'' ("State of Exception")|date=2002 December 12|publisher=[[Le Monde]]|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=784885}}
*{{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''Une biopolitique mineure'' ("A minor biopolitic", interview with Agamben)|date=1999 December|publisher=[[Vacarme]]|url=http://www.vacarme.eu.org/article255.html}}
* {{it icon}} [http://www.filosofico.net/agamben.htm filosofico.net Italian page dedicated to Agamben]
* {{en icon}}/{{it icon}} [http://www.generation-online.org/t/negriagamben.htm "The Ripe Fruit of Redemption", [[Toni Negri]] reviews Agamben]
{{portalpar|Philosophy|Socrates.png}}
[[Category:1942 births|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Living people|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Natives of Rome|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:20th century philosophers|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Italian philosophers|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Academics of the Warburg Institute|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Political philosophers|Agamben]]
[[Category:War on terror|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Emergency laws|Agamben, Giorgio]]
[[Category:Politics]]
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[[Category:People]]
'''Giorgio Agamben''' (born [[1942]]) is an [[Italy|Italian]] [[philosopher]] who teaches at the University of [[Verona]]. He also holds a professorship at the [[European Graduate School]], teaches at the [[:fr:Collège international de philosophie|Collège International de Philosophie]] in [[Paris]] and at the [[University of Macerata]] in Italy, and has held visiting appointments at several American universities. He became famous for his investigations on the [[concept]]s of [[state of emergency|state of exception]] and ''[[Homo sacer]]'' {{ref|stateofexception}}.
== Biography ==
Agamben was educated at the [[University of Rome]], where he wrote a thesis on the political thought of [[Simone Weil]]. Agamben participated in [[Martin Heidegger]]'s Le Thor seminars (on [[Heraclitus]] and [[Hegel]]) in 1966 and 1968. In the seventies he worked primarily on linguistics, philology, poetics, and medievalist topics, where he began to elaborate his primary concerns, though without as yet inflecting them in a specifically political direction. In 1974-1975 he was a fellow at the [[Warburg Institute]], where he wrote ''Stanzas'' (1979).
Close to [[Elsa Morante]], on whom he has written, [[Pier Paolo Pasolini]], in whose ''[[The Gospel According to St. Matthew]]'' he played the part of Philip, [[Italo Calvino]], [[Ingeborg Bachmann]], [[Pierre Klossowski]], [[Jean-Luc Nancy]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[Jean-François Lyotard]], his strongest influences include [[Walter Benjamin]], whose complete works he edited in Italian translation. Agamben's philosophy draws from [[Michel Foucault]] as well as from Italian neo-marxist thought. He frequently cites [[Carl Schmitt]] and Walter Benjamin. While sometimes being cryptic in his writings, in interviews he makes himself clear as a public thinker in Foucauldian tradition who is interested in social conflicts on a global scale.
=== Criticism against US response to "9-11" and biometrics ===
Giorgio Agamben is particularly critical of the United States' response to [[September 11, 2001 attacks|September 11, 2001]], and its instrumentalization as a permanent condition that legitimizes a [[state of exception]] as the dominant paradigm for governing in contemporary politics. He warns against a "generalization of the state of exception" through laws like the [[USA PATRIOT Act]], which means a permanent installment of [[martial law]] and [[emergency powers]]. In January 2004, he refused to give a lecture in the United States because under the [[US-VISIT]] he would have been required to give up his [[biometric]] information, which he believed stripped him to a state of "bare life" (''zoe'') and was akin to the [[tattooing]] that the [[Nazis]] did during World War II {{ref|Lemonde}}{{ref|Truthout}}.
However, Agamben's criticisms target a broader scope than the US "[[war on terror]]". As he points out in ''State of Exception'' (2005), [[rule by decree]] has became common since World War I in all modern states, and has been since then generalized and abused. Agamben points out a general tendency of modernity, recalling for example that when [[Francis Galton]] and [[Alphonse Bertillon]] invented "judicial photography" for "[[anthropometric]] identification", the procedure was reserved to [[criminals]]; to the contrary, today's society is tending toward a generalization of this procedure to all citizens, placing the [[population]] under permanent suspicion and [[surveillance]]: "The political body thus has became a criminal body". And Agamben to remind that the [[Jews deportation]] in [[France]] and other occupied countries was made possible by the photos taken from [[identity cards]] {{ref|Lemonde_2005}}. Furthermore, Agamben's political criticisms open up in a larger philosophical ''[[critique]]'' of the concept of sovereignty itself, which he explains is intrinsically related to the state of exception.
== Work ==
In ''The Coming Community'' (1993), Giorgio Agamben writes:
:''If human beings were or had to be this or that [[substance theory|substance]], this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible... This does not mean, however, that human are not, and do not have to be, something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at this point). There is an effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: ''It is the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality...'' {{ref|Com}}
This potentiality of life would become one of Agamben's main threads, throughout his critical conception of an ''homo sacer'', reduced to "bare life", and thus deprived of any rights. Henceforth, Agamben intents to think a kind of "[[subjectivity]] without subject": humans are "an effect", "but this is not an essence nor properly a thing", but the "simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality". This "coming community" opposes itself to [[sovereignty]], which reduces through the state of exception qualified life (''bios'') to bare life (''zoe'').
=== ''Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life'' (1998) ===
{{main|Homo Sacer}}
In his main work ''"Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life"'' (1998), Giorgio Agamben analyzes an obscure figure of [[Roman law]] that poses some fundamental questions to the nature of [[law]] and [[power (sociology)|power]] in general. Under the Roman Empire, a man who committed a certain kind of crime was banned from society and all of his rights as a [[citizenship|citizen]] were revoked. He thus became a ''"[[homo sacer]]"'' (sacred man). In consequence, he could be killed by anybody -- while his life on the other hand was deemed "sacred", so he could not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony.
To a ''Homo sacer'', Roman law no longer applied, although he was still "under the spell" of law. Agamben defines it 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 ''excluded'' from law itself, while being ''included'' at the same time. This figure is the exact mirror image of the [[sovereignity|sovereign]] (''[[Basileus]]'') - a [[monarch|king]], [[emperor]], or [[president]] -- who stands, on the one hand, ''within'' law (so he can be condemned, e.g., for treason, as a natural person) and ''outside of'' the law (since as a [[body politic]] he has power to suspend law for an indefinite time).
Indeed, Giorgio Agamben draws on Carl Schmitt's definition of the Sovereign as the one who has the power to decide the state of exception (or ''[[justitium]]''), where law is indefinitely "suspended" without being abrogated. But if Schmitt's aim is to include the necesity of state of emergency under the rule of law, Agamben on the contrary demonstrates that all life can't be subsumed by law. As in ''Homo sacer'', the state of emergency is the inclusion of life and necessity in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion.
Since its origins, Agamben notes, law has had the power of defining what "bare life" (''zoe'', as opposed to ''bios'': qualified life) is by making this exclusive operation, while at the same time gaining power over it by making it the subject of political control. The power of law to actively separate "political" beings (citizens) from "bare life" (bodies) has carried on from [[Ancient history|Antiquity]] to [[Modernity]] -- from, literally, [[Aristotle]] to [[Auschwitz]]. Aristotle, as Agamben notes, constitutes political life via a simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of "bare life": as Aristotle says, man is an animal born to [[life]] (''zen''), but existing with regard to the [[eudemonia|good life (''eu zen'')]] which can be achieved through politics. Bare life, in this ancient conception of politics, is that which must be transformed, via the State, into the "good life"; that is, bare life is that which is supposedly excluded from the higher aims of the state, yet is included precisely so that it may be transformed into this "good life." Sovereignty, then, is conceived from ancient times as a state of exception. According to Agamben, [[biopower]], which takes the bare lives of the citizens into its political calculations, may be more marked in the modern state, but has essentially existed since the beginnings of sovereignty in the West, since this structure of ''ex-ception'' is essential to the core concept of sovereignty {{ref|biopower}}.
=== ''State of Exception'' (2005) ===
In this book, written in the aftermath of Bush's campaign labelled the "[[War on terror]]", Agamben traces the concept of ''state of exception'' used by Carl Schmitt to Roman ''[[justitium]]'' and ''[[auctoritas]]''. This leads him to a response to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to proclaim state emergency.
==== ''Auctoritas'', "charism" and ''Führertum'' doctrine ====
Agamben shows that ''auctoritas'' and ''[[potestas]]'' are clearly distinct - although they form together a [[Wiktionary:binary|binary]] system" {{ref|Agamben}}. He quotes [[Theodor Mommsen|Mommsen]], who explains that ''auctoritas'' is "less than an [[order]] and more than an advice" {{ref|Mommsen}}.
While ''potestas'' derives from social function, ''auctoritas'' "immediately derives from the ''patres'' personal condition". As such, it is akin to [[Max Weber]]'s concept of [[charismatic authority|charism]]. This is why the tradition ordered , at the king's death , the creation of the sovereign’s wax-double in the ''funus imaginarium'', as did [[Ernst Kantorowicz]] demonstrate in ''The King's Two Bodies'' (1957). Hence, it is necessary to distinguish two bodies of the sovereign in order to assure the continuity of ''dignitas'' (term used by Kantorowicz, here a synonym of ''auctoritas''). Moreover, in the person detaining ''auctoritas'' - the sovereign -[[public]] life and [[private]] life have become inseparable. [[Augustus]], the first Roman emperor who claimed ''auctoritas'' as the basis of ''[[princeps]]'' status in a famous passage of ''Res Gestae'', had opened up his house to public eyes.
The concept of ''auctoritas'' played a key-role in [[fascism]] and [[nazism]], in particular concerning [[Carl Schmitt]]'s theories, argues Agamben:
:"To understand modern phenomenons such as the fascist ''[[Duce]]'' or the nazi ''[[Führer]]'', it is important not to forget their continuity with the principe of ''auctoritas principis'' {Agamben refers here to Augustus's ''Res Gestae''}. {...} Neither does the ''Duce'' nor the ''Führer'' represent constitutionally defined public charges - even though Mussolini and Hitler endorsed respectively the charge of head of government and Reich's chancellor, just as Augustus endorsed the ''imperium consulare'' or the ''potestas tribunicia''. The ''Duce'' 's or the ''Führer'' 's qualities are immediately related to the physical person and belong to the [[biopolitical]] tradition of ''auctoritas'' and not to the juridical tradition of ''potestas'' " {{ref|6.7}}
Thus, Agamben opposes Foucault's concept of "biopolitics" to [[right]] (law), as he defines the state of exception, in ''Homo sacer'', as the inclusion of life by right under the figure of ex-ception, which is simultaneously inclusion and exclusion. Following Walter Benjamin's lead, he explains that our task would be to radically differentiate "pure violence" from right, instead of tying them together, as did Carl Schmitt.
Agamben concludes his chapter on " ''Auctoritas and potestas'' " writing:
:"It is significative that modern specialists were so enclined to admit that ''auctoritas'' was inherent to the living person of the ''pater'' or the ''princeps''. What was evidently an [[ideology]] or a ''fictio'' aiming to be the groundwork of ''auctoritas'' ' preeminence or, at least, specific rank compared to ''potestas'' thus became a figure of right's {law - "droit"} [[immanence]] to life. (...) Although it is evident that there can't be an eternal human type that would incarnate itself each time in Augustus, Napoleon, Hitler, but only more or less comparable ("semblables") mechanisms {"dispositif", a term often used by Foucault} - the state of exception, ''justitium'', the ''auctoritas principis'', the ''Führertum'' -, put in use in more or less differents circumstances, in the [[1930s]] - overall, but not only - in Germany, the power that Weber had defined as "charismatic" is related to the concept of ''auctoritas'' and elaborated in a ''[[Führertum]]'' doctrine as the original and personal power of a leader. In [[1933]], in a short article intending to define the fundamental concepts of national-socialism, Schmitt defines the ''Führung'' principe by the "root identity between the leader and his entourage" {"''identité de souche entre le chef et son entourage"''} (we shall note the use of weberian concepts)." {{ref|6.8}}
Agamben’s thoughts on the state of emergency leads him to declare that the difference between dictatorship and democracy is thin indeed, as [[rule by decree#Giorgio Agamben's critique of the use of decrees-law|rule by decree]] became more and more common, starting from [[World War I]] and the reorganization of constitutional balance. Agamben often reminds that [[Hitler]] never ''abrogated'' the [[Weimar Constitution]]: he ''suspended'' it for the whole duration of the [[3rd Reich]] with the [[Reichstag Fire Decree]], issued on February 28, 1933. Indefinite suspension of law is what characterizes the state of exception. Thus, Agamben connects Greek political philosophy through to the [[concentration camps]] of 20th century fascism, and even further, to detainment camps in the likes of [[Guantanamo Bay]] or immigration detention centers, such as [[Bari]], [[Italy]], where asylum seekers have been imprisoned in football stadiums. In these kinds of camps, entire zones of exception are being formed: the state of exception becomes a status under which certain categories of people live, a ''capture'' of life by right. Sovereign law makes it possible to create entire areas in which the application of the law itself is held suspended, which is the basis of [[George W. Bush|Bush administration]]'s definition of an "[[unlawful combatant|enemy combatant"]].
==== ''Interregnum'', ''justitium'' and ''nomos empsuchos'' (the sovereign as "living law") ====
In the chapter preceding ''Auctoritas and potestas'', Agamben advances an explanation of the transformation of ''justitium'', a technical term referring to the state of exception, declared to cope with ''[[tumultus]]'' state (rebellion, uprising, riots...), at the end of the [[Roman Republic]], into a term simply referring to the mourning of the sovereign's death during ''[[interregnum]]'' periods:
:"The correspondence between ''justitutium'' and mourning here shows its true signification. If the sovereign is a living ''[[nomos]]'', if then [[anomie]] and ''nomos'' coïncide in his person without any left-over, then anarchy (which, at his death, when the link attaching him to law his broken, threatens to unleash itself in the city) must be ritualized and controlled, by the transformation of the state of exception into public mourning and of mourning into ''justitium'' (...) Before acquiring the modern form of a decision on emergency {Schmitt's definition}, the relationship between sovereignty and state of exception presents itself under the form of an identity between the sovereign and anomie. As living law, the sovereign is deeply ''anomos''. Here also the state of exception is the life -more secret and true - of the law." {{ref|5.3}}
The first formulation of the thesis according to which "the sovereign is a living law" found its first formulation on the treaty "On law and justice" by pseudo-[[Archytas]], conserved by Stobée with Diotogène's treaty on sovereignty. It is the first attempt to conceive a form of sovereignty completely enfranchised from laws, being itself the source of [[legitimacy]]. This theory must be radically distinguished from [[natural rights]] theory or [[Antigone]]'s appeal to the "eternal and unwritten laws" to which even monarchs must abide, as it is a theory of sovereignty (in fact, it is quite the reverse of Antigone's rebellion).
Pseudo-Archytas distinguished the sovereign (''[[basileus]]''), who is the law, from the [[magistrate]] (''[[archōn]]''), who limits himself to observing the law. "Identification between law and sovereign has as consequence, writes Agamben, the scission of law into a "living" law (''nomos empsuchos''), hierarchically superior, and a written law (''gramma''), which is subordinate to the first one". He then quotes A. Delatte's ''Essais sur la politique pythagoricienne'' (Paris, 1922), himself quoting the pseudo-Archytas:
:"I say that all communities are composed of an ''archōn'' (the magistrate who commands), a commanded one, and, as tierce party, laws. Among those ones, the living one is the sovereign (''ho men empsuchos ho basileus''), and the inanimate one is the letter (''gramma''). Law is the first element, the king is legal, the magistrate accorded to law, the commanded free and all of the city happy; but, in case of corruption ("dévoiement"), the sovereign is a [[tyrant]], the magistrate is not accorded to law and the community is unhappy."
== Endnotes ==
#{{note|COM}} ''The Coming Community'' (1993), section 11.
#{{note|stateofexception}} Generally speaking, "state of exception" includes German ''Notstand'', English state of emergency and others [[martial law]]. Agamben prefers using this term as it underlines the structure of ''ex-ception'', which is simultaneously of inclusion and exclusion. "Ex-ception" can be opposed to the concept of "example" as developed by [[Kant]].
#{{note|Lemonde}}{{fr icon}}{{cite news | title=''Non au tatouage biopolitique'' "No to Bio-Political Tattooing" | date=2004 January 10 | publisher=[[Le Monde]] | url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=834932}}
#{{note|Truthout}}[http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/3249|"No to Bio-Political Tattooing" By Giorgio Agamben, [[Le Monde]], Saturday [[10 January]] [[2004]]
#{{note|Lemonde_2005}}{{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''Non à la biométrie'' ("No to Biometrics")|date=2005 December 5|publisher=''[[Le Monde]]|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/web/imprimer_element/0,40-0@2-3232,50-717595,0.html
}} ([http://souriez.info/article.php3?id_article=283 also available here])
#{{note|biopower}} Of course, this understanding of "biopower" is distinct from Foucault's use of the term.
#{{note|Agamben}} Giorgio Agamben, ''State of Exception'' (2005)
#{{note|Mommsen}} [[Theodor Mommsen]], ''Römisches Staatsrecht'' ("Roman Constitutional Law", volume III) (Graz, 1969)
#{{note|6.7}} Agamben, ''State of Exception'' (''ibid.''), chapter 6 " ''Auctoritas'' and ''potestas'' ", §7.
#{{note|6.8}} Agamben, ''ibid.'', chapter 6, §8.
#{{note|5.3}} Agamben, ''ibid.'', chapter 5, §3.
==Bibliography==
(Only English translations are listed here; there are translations of most writings to German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. There also is an updated list of publications including translations to other languages at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgioagamben.html).
* ''Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture'' (1992)
* ''Infancy and History: The Destruction of Experience'' (1993)
* ''The Coming Community'' (1993)
* ''Idea of Prose'' (1995)
*{{cite book
| title = Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
| publisher = [[Stanford University Press]] (1998)
| id = ISBN 0804732183
}}
* ''The Man without Content'' (1999)
* ''The End of the Poem: Studies in Poetics'' (1999)
* ''Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy'' (1999)
* ''Means without Ends: Notes on Politics'' (2000)
* ''Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive'' (2002)
* ''The Open: Man and Animal'' (2004)
* ''State of Exception'' (2005) (excerpt available [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/009254.html here])
* ''The Time That Remains: A Commentary On The Letter To The Romans'' (2005)
* Various articles published by ''[[Multitudes]]'', available [http://multitudes.samizdat.net/auteur.php3?id_auteur=304 here].
* {{it icon}} {{cite news|title=''Nei campi dei senza nome''|date= 1998 November 3|publisher=[[Il Manifesto]]|url=http://www.ilmanifesto.it/g8/archivio/lavoro_e_migranti/3b333676a4b9c.html}}
* {{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''Gênes et la peste'' ("[[27th G8 summit|Genoa]] and the plague")|date=2001 August 27|publisher=[[L'Humanité]]|url=http://www.humanite.fr/journal/2001-08-27/2001-08-27-249331}}
== See also ==
*''[[Auctoritas#Giorgio Agamben's explanation of Auctoritas|Giorgio Agamben's explanation of Auctoritas]]''
*[[State of Emergency#Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to proclame state emergency, and Giorgio Agamben's response|Agamben's response to Carl Schmitt's definition of sovereignty as the power to decide state exception]]
*''[[Basileus]]''
*''[[Homo sacer]]''
*''[[Interregnum]]''
*''[[Justitium]]''
*[[Unlawful combatant]]s
==External links==
*"[http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgioagamben.html Giorgio Agamben Faculty Website European Graduate School]"
*[http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/agamben.htm Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Agamben]
*"[http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437 Interview with Giorgio Agamben – Life, A Work of Art Without an Author: The State of Exception, the Administration of Disorder and Private Life, German Law Journal, Vol. 5 ([[1 May]] [[2004]])]"
*[http://www.nplusonemag.com/agamben.html "Apocalypse Deferred"] A review of Agamben's work in [[n+1]] magazine, by [[Mark Greif]] (Fall 2005).
*"[http://www.mail-archive.com/nettime-l@bbs.thing.net/msg00974.html Review of State of Exception]"
*"[http://formoflife.blogspot.com/2005/11/review-of-giorgio-agambens-time-that.html Review of The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans]"
*{{es icon}} ''[http://www.comunalia.com/Seminario/ Seminario Agamben]''
*{{fr icon}}[http://multitudes.samizdat.net/article.php3?id_article=1135 ''"État d'exception" de G. Agamben''] by [[Sandra Salomon]] in ''[[Multitudes]]'', 2003, August 8.
*{{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''L'État d'exception'' ("State of Exception")|date=2002 December 12|publisher=[[Le Monde]]|url=http://www.lemonde.fr/cgi-bin/ACHATS/acheter.cgi?offre=ARCHIVES&type_item=ART_ARCH_30J&objet_id=784885}}
*{{fr icon}}{{cite news|title=''Une biopolitique mineure'' ("A minor biopolitic", interview with Agamben)|date=1999 December|publisher=[[Vacarme]]|url=http://www.vacarme.eu.org/article255.html}}
* {{it icon}} [http://www.filosofico.net/agamben.htm filosofico.net Italian page dedicated to Agamben]
* {{en icon}}/{{it icon}} [http://www.generation-online.org/t/negriagamben.htm "The Ripe Fruit of Redemption", [[Toni Negri]] reviews Agamben]
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