Village Buildings bibliography: Difference between revisions

*Agamben, Giorgio. (1998). ''Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life''. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. br /> &nbsp; See especially Ch.7, "The Camp as the 'Nomos' of the Modern". <br /> &nbsp;"In his main work "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" (1998), Giorgio Agamben analyzes an obscure figure of Roman law that poses fundamental questions about the nature of law and power in general. Under the laws of the Roman Empire, a man who committed a certain kind of crime was banned from society and all of his rights as a 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." [...] <br /> &nbsp;"Agamben opines that laws have always assumed the authority to define "bare life" — ''zoe'', as opposed to ''bios'', that is 'qualified life' — 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 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 (Gk. ζῆν, ''zen''), but existing with regard to the good life (εὖ ζῆν, ''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 the power which determines what or who is to be incorporated into the political body (in accord with its ''bios'') by means of the more originary exclusion (or exception) of what is to remain outside the political body—which is at the same time the source of that body's composition (''zoe''). 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. <br /> &nbsp;▼