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.