Post on 13-Feb-2017
The Transformation of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer
by Linda M. Chambers, M.A.
Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana
English 5800
December 3, 2013
Introduction
Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life centers its discussion on the
notion that “The homo sacer is evidence not merely of an original ambivalence in the notion of the
sacred…but that the realm of the political itself is constituted by making an exception of the very people
in whose name it is created. The homo sacer thus emblematizes the sovereign’s power over life and
death, the power to designate a life that is worth neither saving nor killing. The very same possibility, he
argues, is at the origin of democracy… that is displayed in the way politics has been constituted as a
biopower focused on the population not the individual. (“Homo Sacer”).
From an historical perspective, Agamben introduces the role of the sovereign state with that of
the Homo Sacer, who represents bare life and may be killed with impunity but not sacrificed. The homo
sacer is the subject of political power, and, as a result, loses his rights as a citizen and becomes a part of
the political ban. Agamben’s initial reference to the homo sacer, was the individual labeled as the
criminal, the bandit, the werewolf—those individuals having a propensity for violence who were
rejected by society and therefore was excluded from political life. For Agamben, however, the concern is
not with the criminal, who obviously deserves to be punished, but for the general population who
crosses over the threshold from bare life into natural life. As such it is “The present inquiry [that]
concerns precisely this hidden point of intersection between the juridico-institutional and the
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biopolitical models of power.” (Agamben 6). Agamben’s explanations and theories also provide an
historical account of man’s governance of other men “…through the most sophisticated political
techniques.” (Agamben 3). In my essay, I will explore these most sophisticated political techniques to
reveal how the general population, who now represent natural life, is impacted by the sovereign power
which constitutes the foundational political paradigm, particularly, in the West. “According to Foucault,
a society’s ‘threshold of biological modernity’ is situated at the point at which the species and the
individual as a simple living body becomes what is at stake in the society’s political strategies.” (qtd. in
Agamben 3). Agamben reinforces Foucault’s notion of ‘biological modernity when he asserts it is in “…
ways in which power penetrates subjects’ very bodies and forms of life.” (qtd. in Agamben 5). Ewa
Plonowska Ziarek further supports Agamben and Foucault by stating, “With the mutation of Sovereignty
into biopower, bare life ceases to be the excluded outside of the political but in fact becomes its inner
hidden norm….” In essence Giorgio Agamben’s theories of biopolitics, biopower, and biotechnology is at
the core of power over life.
I intend to show how Agamben’s theories of sovereign power and bare life have transformed
into the general population giving new meaning to bare life as natural life within the context of
biopolitics, biopower, and biotechnology. The transformation of the homo sacer and its relationship
within the contemporary sovereign state manifests a path of destruction. Whereas the homo sacer
represented bare life that may be killed with impunity but not sacrificed, the homo sacer has emerged
as natural life that may be sacrificed with impunity. As a result, natural life represents the new paradox
of contemporary western society, and, in the words of Scott Toguri McFarlane, in his article
“Unthinkable Biotechnology: The Standing-Reserves and Sacrificial Structures of Life Itself” “…
constitutes its standing-reserves of the living-in-general…that bring forth life for some, while sacrificing
others.
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The Transformation of Bare Life to Natural Life
The transformation of bare life from the violent criminal to the general population began to take
its roots in modernity within the camp. Here, Agamben draws on the work of Hannah Arendt, who
asserts that “The concentration camps [for example, became] the laboratories in the experiment of total
domination… (qtd. in Agamben 120). With politics being transformed into biopolitics, “the extreme
destitution and degradation of human life to bare life [was] subject to mass extermination…stripped of
every political status…in which power confronts nothing but pure life…” (qtd. in Ziarek). This pure life
became the homo sacer of sovereign power into the life that does not deserve to live. Within the
concentration camp, Jews became the guinea pigs for experimentation conducted by “German
physicians and scientists” (Agamben 155). However, even within that same century, “…experiments on
prisoners and persons sentenced to death had been performed several times and on a large scale…in
particular in the United States…” (Agamben 156), which suggests that the camp not only existed within a
totalitarian society, it existed in western democracy as well.
Bare life continued to take shape on matters regarding life that does not deserve to live, and it is
here where Agamben draws on the works of Karl Binding, who was known as a well-respected expert on
penal law (Agamben 136). Binding asserts that suicide, for example, is “man’s sovereignty over his own
existence… [and, therefore,] cannot be understood as a crime…yet also cannot be considered as a
matter of indifference to the law…” (qtd. in Agamben 136). Agamben further acknowledges Binder in yet
another area of sovereignty of man over his own existence; namely, euthanasia, where Binder asks
“Must the unpunishability of the killing of life remain limited to suicide, as it is in contemporary law…or
must it be extended to the killing of third parties?” (qtd. in Agamben 137-138). Nonetheless, it is
Binder’s proposal that “…the request for the initiative be made by the ill person himself…or by a doctor
or a close relative, and that the final decision fall to a state committee composed of a doctor, a
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psychiatrist, and a jurist.” (qtd. in Agamben 139). In this case, suicide and euthanasia enters into the
threshold of sovereign power over life and illustrates the transformative events that tie the biological
body to the sovereign power.
Among the most controversial claims of Agamben, however, rests more with human rights as a
group. “He argues that with this transformation [of subject into citizen] modern democracy does not
abolish bare life but instead ‘shatters it and disseminates it into every individual body’” (qtd. in
Gundogdu). We see this manifested in other areas of natural life involving disease and vaccines, for
example, and “Limiting factors such as costs, distribution, manufacturing and most importantly, finite
resources, places a stress on identifying the population we need to supply the vaccination….Thus, we
have the most at-risk population brought into a plane where infection of influenza is unlikely [but
possible] to result in death” (Tu’itahi 5). These individuals of natural life, represent the general
population that is often found in camps such as schools, hospitals, asylums, and armies (Tu’itahi 5).
Giorgio Agamben refers to the ambivalence of individuals representing bare life and challenged
sovereign law’s domination and a citizen’s rights when he stated, “This is why the camp is the very
paradigm of political space at the point at which politics becomes biopolitics and homo sacer is virtually
confused with the citizen.” (171)
It is my contention that some of the motivations behind the transformation of bare life to
natural life is also born out of capitalism and greed. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, began
from several hundreds of small barely profitable firms to just several large highly profitable firms that
came about between 1940 and 1950 according to the article, “Making the Market: How the American
Pharmaceutical Industry Transformed Itself During the 1940s.” This was a direct result of the “…
introduction of new political frames that force[d] a dramatic change in the organization and level of
competition in [the] industry.” (“Making the Market”). This parallels with Foucault’s notion of “society’s
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‘threshold of biological modernity’” (qtd. in Agamben 3), and illustrates “the passage from the
‘territorial State’ to the ‘State of population’ and on the resulting increase in importance of the nation’s
health and biological life as a problem of sovereign power … (qtd. in Agamben 3). Again, with respect to
the pharmaceutical company, I use Foucault’s notion that there was a need for “…the growing inclusion
of man’s natural life in the mechanisms and calculations of power.” (qtd. in Agamben 119). Since bare
life has been a part of Western democracies (hidden in a sea of secrets), with no identifiable borders, it
stands to reason that “modern politics is about the search for new…targets…” (Ziarek), in other words,
new citizens representing natural life.
Biopolitics
Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer representing bare life emerged as natural life and is said to be
an outgrowth of politics into modern biopolitics wherein “Foucault’s investigations into modern forms of
power reveal how the legal and economic system of civil society require free and responsible subjects
who are themselves constituted through the most meticulous subjection of their bodies and biological
processes…” (qtd. in Vatter 3). As such, the social and political implications of the sovereign state’s
intervention of power over life, is deeply rooted in “…the political domination of biological life
[occurring] through law…” according to Vatter (6). Since “…biopolitics marks the threshold of
modernity…” according to Foucault, “…it places life at the center of political order.” (qtd. in Lemke 1). Of
primary importance here, however, is the role of the sovereign power’s legal and economic system and
its impact on natural life. The forces of biopolitics through which natural life has been transformed, is
subjected to “…a government-population political economy relationship…” (Lazzarato 11). This political
economy that Maurizio Lazzarato’s article “From Biopower to Biopolitics” refers to is anchored in a
whole range of relations “…that extends throughout the social body…” (12). In some cases, this
strategical transformation shifts to unethical practices under the domination of the sovereign state upon
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its citizens and under a political structure that sanctions it. Thus, “…we can observe a displacement and
gradual expansion beyond the limits of the decision on bare life… [and that] [t]his line is now in motion
and gradually moving into areas other than that of political life, areas in which the sovereign is entering
into an ever more intimate symbiosis not only with the jurist but also with the doctor, the scientist, the
expert, and the priest.” (Agamben 122). Maurizio Lazzarato further contends that “’life’ and ‘living being’
are at the heart of new political battles and new economic strategies…” He also demonstrated that “the
‘introduction of life into history’ corresponds with the rise of capitalism.” Thus, “The patenting of the
human genome…the development of artificial intelligence, [and] biotechnology…” (Lazzarato), for
example, have all come into question as natural life represents the object of these dynamics and with
the rise of capitalism (Lazzarato). Miguel Vatter also supports the notion that “…there is an intimate link
between the constitution of a capitalist society and the birth of biopolitics….” which will later be
discussed within the context of biopower and biotechnology.
Biopower
This section of my essay addresses biopower and natural life. As biopower evolved in
contemporary sovereign states, it has taken on a different form according to Paul Rabinow and Nikolas
Rose’s article on “Biopower Today” that is, “It characteristically entails a relation between ‘letting die’
(laissez mourir) and making live (faire vivre)” which constitutes the new strategies for the governing of
life. Like the homo sacer, the mechanisms of power within the West have undergone a significant
transformation as well. According to Olivera Radovanovic “This is exactly what the new technology of
biopower introduced: categories such as ratio of births and deaths, the rate of reproduction, the fertility
of a population.” (19) “The perspective of human life changed entirely; now it was directed to its well-
being and longevity….[whereby] A newly established field of medicine was responsible for the public
hygiene, with agencies to coordinate medical care, centralized power and normalized knowledge,
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teaching populations how to take care of their health and hygiene.” (19). However, Radovanovic draws
from the work of Foucault by also saying that “…here we speak about the new power, which has taken
monopoly both over body and life, i.e., over life in general (21). It is through this new power that we
reach the threshold of power over life as it imposes itself on natural life. This becomes evident in
relation to diseases whereby “These bio-power dimensions…through the work of sociologists,
economists, intervention of birth rates, longevity, public health or migration…give us the ability to find
those at high risk therefore more likely to result in death.” (Tu’itahi 5). Samuel Tu’itahi in his essay
Foucault and Bio-Power, further draws from Foucault by saying “This practice is the intentional exposure
of individual bodies to a mild strain of small pox which gives the immune system a much needed test.
However, this was not always risk free recalling there is the possibility of death from the mild infection.
This could be seen as an example of bio-power’s disallowing to the point of death.” (5-6). This high-risk
population exists in camps such as hospitals, asylums, prisons, armies and schools” (Tu’itahi 5) often by
unsuspecting citizens.
If we look within the pharmaceutical industry, for example, they have found new purpose in
aligning themselves with test subjects they need by conducting trial studies with other individuals
outside of the camp representing natural life, which has its own social and unethical implications
surrounding it as well (Gutierrez). Therefore, inclusion of man’s natural life into the questionable
practices of the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t have to be restricted to the camp, the general
population also becomes natural life when subjected to the marketing ploys of the industry with
absolutely no transparency. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently issued a warning about the
corruption and unethical practices “that are endemic to every step of the pharmaceutical business….The
medicine chain refers to each step involved in getting drugs into the hands of patients, including drug
creation, regulation, management and consumption…” (Guitierrez).
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Since biopower constitutes power over the populace as a whole, serious human rights issues
have also come into question. Consider other elements of biopower involving reproduction, race,
medicine and eugenics that Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose in their article “Thoughts on the Concept of
Biopower Today” speak about. They assert:
By the end of the 1980s, policies for the limitation of procreation amongst the
poor stressed the importance of voluntary assent and informed choice…to prevent
the misery of maternal deaths and perinatal mortality.…Voluntary female
Sterilization is the most prevalent contraceptive method today, used by over
138 million married women of reproductive age compared to 95 million in 1984.
[However,] there is particular controversy over the increasing use of the
Quinacrine pellet method developed by Dr. Jaime Zipper in 1984, distributed to
19 countries… [including the U.S]….[In addition,] the use of quinacrine, often
surreptitiously… [was] aimed at particular segments of the population
considered problematic or undesirable, leads critics to conclude that these
repeat Nazi non-surgical sterilization practices, and [our] contemporary successors
to the
sterilization and population limitation campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, despite
their rhetoric of informed choice…amount to global eugenics. (24-25)
I argue nonetheless, that no matter what you call it, it constitutes manipulation in the handling of the
medicine—Quinacrine—to a population of unsuspecting women, who represent natural life, while
putting their health at risk. In essence, these women, whose lives were deemed less valuable, were
subject to unsafe sterilization practices as a method of intervention on the reproduction, morbidity and
mortality of the population.
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Additional lives put at risk and represent natural life of the general populace involve “The
continued use of known hazardous chemicals in the agricultural industry [which] illustrates Michel
Foucault’s concept of ‘biopower,’ for the system is knowingly affecting the health of its citizens for the
sake of the population as a whole.” (Seaver). In other words, “…the system is demonstrating control
over the physical lives of citizens.” and “The absence of interference on the part of the U.S. government
[for example] illustrates Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘biopower.’” (Seaver). I will explore the next
dimension of sovereign power over natural life through the use of biotechnology.
Biotechnology
It is within biotechnology where the plot thickens because it involves the manipulation and use
of living cells, bacteria, etc. to make useful products such as medicine and crops for human
consumption, and, it is the place where capitalism plays a major role. McFarlane asserts, “As capitalists
continue to use biotechnology in conjunction with patent laws to gain control over vast natural
resources, food systems, reproductive rights and health, there is no guarantee that the interest of
‘humanity’ will be served. Nor is there assurance that capitalism (which has never been a system of
justice in the classical sense) will continue to rhetorically organize its biotechnological expansion in the
name of ‘humanity’.” (15) Thus, we have “The biotechnological revolution involv[ing] the extension of
human power into life—living nature at the molecular level. As its concepts and styles of thought
colonize professional, therapeutic, and counseling discourse, and as it is absorbed into popular culture,
biotechnology begins to shape the experience of all of us.” (Jennings). We see this illustrated in the
works of other scholars.
According to Scott Toguri McFarlane’s Unthinkable Biotechnology: The Standing Reserves and
Sacrificial Structures of Life Itself, he asserts that biotechnology sacrifices the lives of some while
bringing life to others “…by way of three modes…” namely:
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The first mode is eating, where by the resources of the world were used to feed
The bodies of Western Man, a prerequisite, according to Foucault, for the develop-
ment of modern democracy. The second mode is incineration, exemplified by hot
box experiments conducted by the U.S. Air Force during World War Two, ....These
experiments enacted the fiery incorporation of bodies in militarized systems that
ultimately signified U.S. power. The third mode is feverish genomics, by which
scientists store the genomic sequences of all living things in global bioinformatics
archives…It is only by understanding biotechnology as a sacrificial structure that
theoretical work on its privileging of U.S. interests can become more ethically
charged. (iii)
McFarlane’s notion of “unthinkable biotechnology,” for example, can be seen in the works of
Monsanto, which is an agriculture company that focuses on creating sustainable agricultural products
for farmers through the production of seeds that are designed to be herbicide resistant, drought
resistant, insect resistance, and develop other traits that will produce a healthier product (Monsanto
Company). However, there are organizations such as Greenpeace International, who resist Monsanto’s
efforts based on leaked industry documents about the use of Genetically Modified Foods and chemicals
that reveal safety questions (Canadian Biotechnology Action Network). We see additional examples of
“unthinkable biotechnology.” Nexia Biotechnologies’ “…most well-known product is a herd of cloned
goats genetically engineered with the genes of spiders and capable of producing silk proteins in their
milk and urine.” (McFarlane 2). Also the BioChem Pharma in Laval, developed the “AIDS cocktail
3TC/Epivir…Novartis Lab is responsible for the production of dyes, chemicals, [and] insecticides
(including DDT), pharmaceuticals (including…psychotrophic drugs and drugs that reduce high blood
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pressure and alleviate the symptoms of epilepsy)…” (McFarlene 4). However, none of these drugs have
been produced without serious life threatening risks.
Finally, genomics is said to be ‘paving the way for the wholesale alteration of the human species
and the birth of a commercially driven eugenics civilization’ (qtd. in McFarlane 23). Various groups
involving critics and scholars alike have expressed concerns over the science community’s “…confusions
of biotechnology. The desire to initiate a Second Creation, they warn, smacks of a loss of commonsense,
and is irresponsible.” (McFarlane 16).
Closing Remarks
The arguments in my essay should make it quite apparent that the concept of homo sacer and
its transformation into natural life is rooted in the domination of the sovereign state of modernity and is
headed into a threshold leading to our own destruction. However, because of its complex nature and
the transformative events of the homo sacer, the individual representing bare life is no longer
considered part of the political ban but is inclusive of political life whereby the homo sacer, who was
once considered violent and therefore posed a threat to the polis has emerged as the often
unsuspecting citizen of natural life under the potential dangers of contemporary sovereignty. Agamben
supports this notion when he states that “The ‘body’ is always already a biopolitical body and bare life,
and nothing in it…seems to allow us to find a solid ground on which to oppose the demands of sovereign
power.” (187).
Plato once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” However, I do not think he meant that
our lives should submit to the whims and dangers that sovereign law has placed upon its citizens. Even
the need for enforcement of human rights has been felt by a community of scholars and writers in the
areas of “human health, reproduction, rights-based legislation and ethics…agriculture, ecology and
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biodiversity…and legal scholars engaging with both the ‘body of law’…and the patenting of ‘living
things.’” (qtd. in McFarlane 22). Despite the promise that biotechnology has afforded us, it has come
with a high price--with natural life as a sacrificial lamb. Unfortunately, the individual’s life within
sovereign law becomes a losing battle because “the sovereign…legally places himself outside the law”
Agamben (15) contends. Agamben further asserts, “Given the underlying assumptions of human rights,
there is no possibility of thinking them anew; we instead need to imagine a politics beyond human rights
so as to sever the tight link that holds human life in the grip of sovereign power.” (qtd. in Gundogdu),
and I will agree with that.
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Works Cited
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Print
Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. “Monsanto.” Collaborative Campaigning for Food Sovereignty
and Environmental Justice.” 28 June 2011, Press Release, www.cban.ca, 25 November 2013,
Web
Gundogdu, Ayten. “Potentialities of Human Rights: Agamben and the Narrative of Fated Necessity.”
Journal of Contemporary Political Theory. 2012, palgrave-journals.com, 9 October 2013, Web.
Gutierrez, David. “Who Issues Warning About Corruption of Pharmaceutical Industry.” Natural News. 30
April 2010, naturalnews.com, 14 November 2013, Web.
“Homo Sacer.” Oxford Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxfordreference.com, Copyright 2013, 28 October
2013, Web.
Jennings, Bruce. “Interpreting the Social Meaning of Biotechnology.” Center for Humans & Nature.
Copyright 2013 Center for Humans & Nature, PDF
Lazzarato, Maurizio. “From Biopower to Biopolitics.” Tailoring Biotechnologies. Vol. 2, Issue 2, Summer-
Fall 2006. Print.
Lemke, Thomas. “Biopolitics and Beyond. On the Reception of a Vital Foucauldian Notion.” Institute for
Social Research. n.d. PDF.
McFarlane, Scott Toguri. “Unthinkable Biotechnology: The Standing-Reserves and Sacrificial Structures of
Life Itself.” PhD Dissertation, Department of English, Simon Fraser University. Copyright by Scott
Toguri McFarlane, 2008. PDF
“Making the Market: How the American Pharmaceutical Industry Transformed Itself During the 1940s.”
n.d. Print.
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Monsanto Company. “Are Biotect Products Safe?” 2002-2013, www.monsanto.com, Web. 24 November
2013.
Rabinow, Paul and Nikolas Rose. “Biopower Today.” BioSocieties. Abstract 2006, www.palgrave-
journals.com, 13 November 2013, Web.
---- . “Thoughts on the Concept of Biopower Today.” Scholarly article. 10 December 2003. Print.
Radovanovic, Olivera. Biopower and State Racism by Michel Foucault: How the ‘Right to Kill’ Gets
Justified in the Modern Era. Bachelor Thesis, Masaryk University Department of Sociology, 2010.
Print.
Seaver, Jessica. “Pesticides, Parkinson’s and Power.” TuftScope Journal, Issue S11, 2012, Web, 24
November 2013.
Tu’itahi, Samuel. Foucault and Bio-Power: An Outline of Foucault’s Bio-Power in Application to our
Contemporary World. Massey University, Contemporary Political Theory, n.d. Print.
Vatter, Miguel. “Law and the Sacredness of Life. An Introduction to Giorgio Agamben’s Biopolitics.”
Revista de Estudios Publicos. n.d. Print.
Ziarek, Ewa Plonowska. “Bare Life.” Impasses of the Post-Global: Theory in the Era of Climate Change.
Vol. 2, Open Humanities Press, 2012, quod.lib.umich.edu., 9 October 2013, Web.