Giorgio Agamben and the Politics of the Living Dead Author(s): Andrew Norris Source: Diacritics, Vol.

30, No. 4 (Winter, 2000), pp. 38-58 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566307 Accessed: 05/10/2008 15:30
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GIORGIO
THE

AGAMBEN OF THE

AND

POLITICS DEAD

LIVING

ANDREW NORRIS

Death is mostfrightening, since it is a boundary. -Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics And as the same thing there exists in us living and dead and the wakingand the sleeping and young and old:for these things having changed roundare those, and those having changed roundare these. -Heraclitus, Fragment88 Whatis politics today?Whatis its relationshipto the traditionfrom which it emerges? The questionsare difficult ones to answerin partbecause contemporary politics seems so schizophrenic.In affluentWesterncountriespolitics is increasinglya matterof spectacle on the one handandmanagedeconomies on the other.HannahArendtseems quite is confirmedin her claim thatthe once-gloriouspublic realmof appearance fundamento when it is overrunby concerns more appropriate the privaterealm, tally degraded such as household managementand gossip. If this "unnatural growth of the natural" inclines us to nostalgiafor a time when the two realmswere more decisively sepa[47] rated, such nostalgia is likely intensified by the "ethniccleansing," rape camps, and and But genocide that we now associate with names such as "Yugoslavia" "Rwanda." as improbableas any flight to the past may be, it is even less likely thatthe politics of that past could help us navigate the treacherouswaters of our currenttechnological society. I have in mind not only the familiarclaim that the attemptedgenocides of our time are only made possible by quite modem forms of technology, organization,and but experience,1 also recent scientific and "medical"advances.Considerjust two: first, the corporatedriven and controlled development of biotechnologies, in which huge such as "all humanblood are multinationals acquiringpatentsto genetic "information" cells that have come from the umbilical cord of [any] newbornchild." If there is any doubt that such developmentswill lead us to redefine the humanbeing, these may be laid to rest by the case of John Moore, an Alaskan businessmanwho found his own body partshadbeen patented,withouthis knowledge,by the Universityof Californiaat Los Angeles andlicensed to the SandozPharmaceutical [Rifkin60-61 ]. So Corporation much for Locke's attemptto groundthe institutionof privatepropertyin the fact that "every Man has a Propertyin his own Person"!2In its place we seem to be moving Hans Bill Tom I amgrateful Giorgio to Joe Agamben, Campisi, Connolly, Rockmore, Sluga,and
Eric Wilson their helpful commentson earlier drafts of this essay. I would also like to thank for Yasemin for her help. Ok 1. For an excellent discussion of this, see Baumanl2-30. 2: 2. Locke,Two Treatisesof Government 27. Thereis, however,no necessarycontradiction

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diacritics 30.4: 38-58

towardsomethingmore like the "logical synthesis of biology and economy"called for by the National Socialist Institutallemand in Paris in 1942 [Agamben,Homo Sacer 145]. A similarprocess of redefinitionis alreadyunderwayin the field of death, a phenomenonthat scientists and lawyers arehaving a harderand hardertime pinningdown. Whereonce deathwas defined by the cessation of the movementof the heartand lungs, recent life supporttechnologies have forced scientists to define death in terms of such technologies. WitnessDoctor NormanShumway'sdefense of the definitionof deathas braindeath:"I'm saying that anyone whose brainis dead is dead. It is the one determinantthat would be universallyapplicable,because the brainis the one organthat can't be transplanted"163]. By implication,if andwhen technology is developedthatallows [ for braintransplants, even those whose brainsare "dead"will be broughtback to some kind of life, perhapsas organfarmsfor otherswho are less ambiguouslyalive. GiorgioAgamben,from whose book Homo Sacer: SovereignPower and Bare Life I takeboth this last grisly example andits analysis,arguesthat,contrary appearances, to such developmentsdo not representa radicalbreakwith the tradition.His analysis both builds upon andcorrectsMichel Foucault'sclaim thatpolitics in our time is constituted by disciplines of normalizationand subjectificationthat Foucaultlabels "bio-power." For Foucault, biopower is fundamentallymodem. "Whatmight be called a society's 'thresholdof modernity,"' writes, "hasbeen reachedwhen the life of the species is he wagered on its own political strategies.For millennia, man remainedwhat he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additionalcapacity for political existence; modem man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question" [143]. This passage seems to imply not only that modernityis political in a different way than the previousmillenniahad been, but thatit is more political, even essentially so. If politics was an "additional capacity"withAristotle,now politics is of ouressence, and life has become its object. Agamben echoes such claims at times, and argues, for instance, that "the politicizationof bare life as such . . . constitutesthe decisive event of modernityand signals a radical transformationof the political-philosophical categories of ancient is thought"[4]. But he also maintainsthat this transformation made possible by the metaphysicsof those very ancientcategories.As in Nietzsche's discussion of nihilism, on Agamben's analysis, biopolitics fulfills the potentialof its origin in turningagainst thatorigin.3Hence,AgambenarguesagainstFoucaultthatlife in some sense always has been the definitive object of politics. His argumentbegins with a review of Aristotle's distinction,in the first book of Politics, between bare life (to zen) and the good life (to eu zen): "we may say thatwhile [thepolis] grows for the sake of mere life, it exists for the sake of a good life" [1.2.8]. Agambenrightly arguesthatthis distinctionhas served that to here,as Lockealso maintains ourbodiesbelongto God,andthatour tacitconsent the institution money takesus beyond limitations theinitial the [2: of of formof private property 6, the or 36, 50]. Notcompletely of course;anda defender UCLA, Sandoz so, of corporation, the look to "As as proponents organ of farming might for support Locke's spoilagelimitation: much use it anyonecanmake of to anyadvantage lifebefore spoils;so much hebyhislabourfix of may a Property in.... Nothing madebyGod Manto spoilor destroy" 31]. Onecanobject was for [2: on a number grounds ghoulish to to bodiesthat,still "warm, of proposals develop"neomorts," " and deadnoralive,andhencebeyond purview rights the that of pulsating, urinatingareneither us into cite might protect (?)frombeingturned organ farms;butonecanhardly a lackof either industriousness a desireto makeuseof all thatGodhasgivenus. or 3. It maytakecenturies a peopleto experience disgustwithlife thatinitially the made for them people:theexhaustion Europe deathof God)is a contemporary a event,albeitone (the of thathas beenin genesis twothousand timehas comewhenwe haveto payfor for years. "The for havingbeenChristians twothousand years:we are losingthecenterof gravity virtue by of whichwe lived;we arelostfor a while" [Nietzsche, to Power20]. Will

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as the foundationof the Westerntraditionof political philosophy,in that politics has been distinguishedfrom essentially private enterpriseson the groundsthat it is conof cernedwith somethingmorethanthe perpetuation biological life. Because the end of is differentfromthatof the variousrealmsof barelife, such as family life, slave politics holding, and village association,its principleof orderis differentas well. ForAristotle the "somethingmore" that distinguishesthe political is the realizationof the human capacity to structurea just common life in the community'snoncoercive,deliberative reflection upon the question of what justice is and what concrete measuresit entails: of "Justicebelongs to thepolis; forjustice, which is the determination whatis just, is an of the political association"[Politics 1.2.66]. For all of their disagreements, ordering the vast majorityof contemporary politicalphilosophersareunitedin theircommitment to this self-reflexive project, and to its identification of the political and the just.4 projecttoday standswithAgamben,however,suggests thatthis politico-philosophical out the foundationsthat Aristotle proposed for it, namely the categorical distinction between bare life and the good or political life. And this is not because an element foreign to Aristotle's schema has polluted or subvertedit, but because the schema has itself.5 deconstructed Whatis the instabilityhere thatwould allow for this? When we readthe first book of Politics it appearsthatAristotle is laying out a chronologicalaccount of the rise of the polis. Humanbeings began living in families, then they acquiredslaves and formed villages, untilfinally they achieveda self-sufficient(autarkes)mode of life. But to treat the this as nothingmore than a historyis to misunderstand natureof the boundarythat humanbeings cross when their communitybecomes self-sufficient, and to assume, as Foucaultdoes in the passage cited above, that political life can be simply added on to humanlife. Aristotle,however,expressly denies this: "Theman who is isolated-who is unable to share in the benefits of political association,or has no need because he is alreadyself-sufficient-is no partof the polis, and must thereforebe eithera beast or a To god."6 be trulyhumanone mustbe a memberof a polis, for it is only as such thatone can truly speak:"Themere makingof sounds serves to indicatepleasureand pain, and is thusa facultythatbelongs to animalsin general.... But languageserves to... declare what is just and unjust"[Politics 1.2.16]. This conceptionof the humanlife as not simthe claim-whichAgamben 4. Thismayseemto contradict Arendtian accepts-that "Socielse for dependence thesakeof life andnothing asety is theformin whichthefact of mutual to with are and the connected sheersurvival permitted sumes publicsignificance where activities as the Condition However, accepting fundamental distinction appearin public"[Human 46]. liberal between goodlifeandmere hashardly the from political philosophy turning life precluded that the backand subordinating publicrealmto the interests theprivate-a subordination of the the distinction between two.It is simply but eliminate categorical redefines doesnotentirely a one thatin liberalism "goodlife"is increasingly procedural the matter, thatmostefficiently MichaelSandel our between discrete the privatelives.Thedebatebetween regulates conflicts but is andJohnRawls, instance, notovertherelevance theAristotelian distinction, overthe of for to understands and himself be of definition preconditions justice.Henceeachpartyto thedebate andRawls424ff. Sandel to Compare project. contributing theAristotelian 317ff his 5. Agamben one, (the froma deconstructive apparently discussion distinguishes analysis enallowsitselfto become on that is uncharacteristically unclear) thegrounds deconstruction in withparadoxes an unhelpful [54]. Be thatas it may,I am usingthe termquite way tangled a it finds theassertions treatsto require logical looselyhereto referto a modeof analysisthat and suchas logic and rhetoric, structure say, binaryoppositions performative constative (of, unravel. innerandouter, politicallifeandbarelife)thattheythemselves language, does 6. Politics1.2.14.If thisstatement-which, Agamben notcite-strikesus surprisingly, Ethics as hyperbolic, needonlyrecallthemoregeneral we pointthatBook10 of Nicomachean within because particularly human arete onlybe realized can the endswitha callfor thePolitics a politicallife.

40

ply a given but an achievementis definitive of the notion of humanculture.Most of us tend, however, to consider only the good andjust life to which we aspire.Agambenin contrastfocuses on the life thatfails to achieve humanity;the remains,as it were, of our becoming moral,just, and political. I say "as it were,"because "merelife" cannottruly be exuviated. It too is humanlife, thoughperhapsnot fully so. In his discussion of Aristotle'sPolitics Agambenarguesthat Politics . . . appears as the trulyfundamentalstructure[struttura]of Western metaphysicsinsofaras it occupies the threshold[soglia] on which the relation between the living being and the logos is realized [si compie]. In the "politicization"of bare life-the metaphysicaltask par excellence-the humanityof living man is decided [si decide].... Thereis politics because man is the living being who, in language, separates and opposes himselfto his own bare life [nudavita] and, at the same time,maintainshimselfin relationto that bare life in an inclusive exclusion [un' esclusione inclusiva]. [8]7 "Threshold" a word thatoccurs again and again in Agamben'stext, and it invariably is signifies a passage that cannot be completed, a distinction that can be neither maintained nor eliminated.8 The fundamental political distinctionbetween bare life and the good, just life lived in accordancewith the logos proposeshumanityas a project,one of self-overcoming.But this project,as such, relies upon "theexclusion (which is simultaneously an inclusion) of bare life [una esclusione (che e, nella stessa misura, un'implicazione) della nuda vita]"[7]. Bare life is a necessarypartof the good life, in thatthe good life is both whatbarelife is not andwhatbarelife becomes, "asif politics were the place in which life had to transformitself into good life and in which what had to be politicized were always alreadybare life" [7]. This is not a dialectic between two comparablemomentsof the human,for it is only political life thatis trulylived in language, and thatcan truly speak. Bare life is mute, undifferentiated, strippedof both the generand the specificity thatlanguagemakes possible. If it is relatedand comparedand ality evaluated,that is always in the terms and in the service of what it is not: political life. But since political life defines itself in termsof its genesis from and its nonidentitywith barelife, political life is defined by its relationwith the nonrelational.9 ... "Exteriority

7. Onpoliticsas metaphysics, 44 and compare ff., 182, and the discussion Heidegger of Levinas 150-53. at 8. HomoSaceris divided three into introduction. first is deThe parts,withan additional the votedto thenature sovereignty, secondto thatof theHomoSacerof thetitle,andthethird of " to "the as entitled Camp Biopolitical Paradigm theModern. Eachof theseendswitha section of "Threshold" doesnotannounce butI believethewordis derived this, (Soglia). Agamben from to andmeant refer backto theselines,which foundin thefirst "Threshold": thewords are "In of it to the 'to it Benveniste, render victim sacred, is necessary separate fromtheworld theliving, of it is necessary cross the threshold separates two universes: is the aim of the to that the this [66]. If thisis so, eachpartof thebookendsin the "no-man's-land" between [159] killing'" life and death.Eachtherefore servesas a different to the samegoal, thatof the confusion path of this with discussion politicsandlife. Compare conception thethreshold Jean-Luc of Nancy's of Deathof theVirgin his essay "OntheThreshold": in "Death: areneverthere, we Caravaggio's we arealwaysthere. Insideandoutside, once"[115]. at 24 9. Compare ("Thesovereign is is exception thusthefigurein whichsingularity representedas such,whichis to say, insofaras it is unrepresentable"), ("thesimple 29 positingof relation thenonrelational"), ("therelationship abandonment nota relation"), with 60 is and of 110("Thebanis essentially thepowerof maintaining in relation something ... to itself presupposedas nonrelational").

diacritics / winter 2000

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is trulythe innermostcenterof the political system, andthe political system lives off it" [36]. This accountof the paradoxicalinclusive exclusion of barelife in the metaphysics of politics can be seen as a more radicalversion of Arendt'sparadoxicalclaim in The that Originsof Totalitarianism "aman who is nothingbut a man has lost the very qualities which make it possible for other people to treat him as a man" [300]. Similarly, Agamben's more radicalaccount of the logic at work here has obvious affinities with anddebtsto Hegel's analysisof the law of identityas a self-contradictory principlethat, as such, provesto be a law of contradiction: those who assertthe principle"A= A... do not see thatin this very assertionthey arethemselves saying thatidentityis different; for they aresaying thatidentityis differentfromdifference;since this mustat the same time be admittedto be the natureof identity,their assertionimplies that identity,not externally, but in its own self, in its very nature,is this, to be different"[Hegel 413]. The resultingconcept of negation is for Hegel the engine of history,and as such it allows him to reconcile his claim that history progresses with the evident fact that the most glorious and praiseworthyempires are inevitably ground under in the course of that progress.Negation as the dialectical and historicalmovement of Reason therebyultimately producesor reveals itself to be a harmonious,rationaltotality.In contrast,on Agamben'saccount,the Aufhebungof politics is never achieved:barelife and political life are never reconciled, and political life's every attempt-the attemptthat defines political life-to mediateits own relationshipwith the life that it is not fails in the end. More significantthan the differencesbetween Agamben and Hegel is the fact that for both it is the movementthroughnegation that is essential, not the fiction of a static result. Hence, on Agamben's account, politics must again and again enact its internal distinctionfrom bare life. It must repeatedlydefine itself throughthe negationof bare life-a negationthatcan always take the form of death.10 The analysis of the metaphysicalmovement of the living being "into"language these claims has been an ongoing concern of Agamben's."l earlier His that undergirds Languageand Death: ThePlace of Negativityinvestigatesthe metaphysicalconnection as between humanmortalityand the humancapacityfor languageparticularly it is delineatedin HeideggerandHegel. Agambenbegins the book by citing the former'sclaim (from On the Wayto Language) that "Mortalsare they who can experience death as death. Animals cannot do so. But animals cannot speak either.The essential relation between deathand languageflashes before us, but remainsunthought" [xi]. He goes on this to try to "think" relationthrougha considerationof the originarynatureof negativity in Heidegger'sthoughtof Da-sein and Hegel's thoughtof the Diese, and arguesthat "boththe 'faculty' for languageand the 'faculty' for death,inasmuchas they open for humanitythe most properdwelling place [la sua dimorapiu propria], reveal and disclose this same dwelling place as always alreadypermeatedby and foundedin negativity" [xii]. There is, Agamben argues, a structural parallel between the ambiguousplace of deathwithin the humanlife and the place of indicationwithin language.Each serves as a limit or thresholdwhich one can place neitherwithin nor without the life or system
10. Indeed,on Hegel 'saccount it must: "nichtdas Leben,das sich vor dem Todescheuntund vor der Verwiistung bewahrt,sonderndas ihn ertdgtund in ihmsich erhalt, ist das Lebendes rein Geistes" [qtd. in Schnddelbach46]. 11. In an earlier workAgambenwrites of "an unwrittenbook" on this theme,The Human In Voice, of which his writtenworksafter 1977 serve as theprologue and afterwords. this unwritten workthereare "numerous drafts" transcribingthepassage in Politics whereAristotlebases man'spolitical natureuponhis ability to speakofjustice and injustice[see Agamben,Infancyand History3 and 7-8].

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thatit defines. Death is somethinglike an ostensive definitionwith which one seeks to pick out the nonlinguisticrealitythatlanguagediscusses andthatmakeslanguagemeaningful. Just as "the limit of language always falls within language"such that it "is always containedwithin as a negative," so death both is and is not "an event of life."12 Because of this structural parallel,death assumes a privileged place in the logic of the of human life. As in the passage cited from Heidegger above, and as in "meaning" Heidegger's early insistence that the authenticor properresponse to humanmortality entails heeding the silent call of conscience, deathshows what languagecan never say, andin so doing serves as the revelationof the negativegroundof the human.13We might animal"arethereby say thatdeathbecomesbeautiful.The two momentsof the "speaking "fromthe dawn of Greekthought,the humanexperience cast into an endless struggle: of language(thatis, the experienceof the humanas both living and speaking,a natural and a logical being) has appearedin the tragic spectacle divided by an unresolvable conflict."The formthis conflict takes is thatof the sacrificialviolence thatserves as the ungroundedgroundof all praxis [Languageand Death 58-62, 88, 105-06]. Homo Sacer advancesthis analysis in at least two ways: in its reflectionsupon the kind of "life"thatis involved in this process, andin its considerationof the distinctively political aspect of this movement.In Languageand Death the metaphysicalmovement into a relationshipwith the logos does not essentially involve the living body, nor does Agamben spend much time drawing out the implications of this metaphysics for the The body."4 namesFoucault,Arendt,and Schmitt-each of which figureprominentlyin Homo Sacer-do not appear,and when Agamben does speak of the practicalimplications of metaphysics(that"whichenacts [compie]the experience[I'esperienza]merely shown [mostrare]by logic" [Languageand Death 88] he speaksof "ethics"repeatedly, and only two or threetimes of "politics."15Nonetheless, the developmentandextension of the analysis does not alterits fundamentalstructure.

Tractatus 12. Languageand Death 17 and Wittgenstein, Logico-Philosophicus6.4311. Both

is to here and in his appendix The ComingCommunity, by Agamben influenced the early statusof ethicsandhis related insistence the that understanding themystical of Wittgenstein's As in to restsupon to language's ability show(zeichen) things. ability say(sagen) things language cannot contain analysisof theconditions its ownapplicaan DavidPearsputsit, "language of tion"[11]. To 13. '"And whatis one summoned? one'sown self.... Thecall is lacking kindof to any and and Conscience It utterance. doesnotevencometo words, yetis notat all obscure indefinite. in BeingandTime252; cf. Lanspeakssolelyandconstantly themodeof silence"[Heidegger, guageandDeath54-62]. is that that the 14.SeeLanguage Death:"Metaphysicsnotsimply thought thinks experiand it thinks expethis enceof language thebasisof an (animal) on voice,butrather, alwaysalready dimension a Voice" note is rienceonthebasisof thenegative of [61]. I should thatthisstatement the makesit clearthatit is Agamben's considered However, context phrasedas a conditional. that view,as it is on thisbasisthathe concludes Heidegger in theendto escapemetaphysfails that as ics-a conclusion is hardly providing it does thejustification muchof insignificant, for to That true to own Agamben's attempt movebeyond Heidegger. said,it remains thathisattempt do thisis in manywaysa working of theproblem theplace of theanimalinfundamental out of a that and detailbyDerrida of ontology thecritique metaphysics,problem is laidoutinadmirable
in the sixth chapterof his Of Spirit:Heidegger and the Question.

whilesignificant, 15. See Language Death86-88, 91. Thisdistinction, and shouldnot be to as commitmenttheHeideggerian exaggerated, Agamben's given interpretation "ethos" namof thantheindividual's character habit.Compare or and abodeof man"rather ing "the Language " "Letter Humanism258. For evidence Agamben conception on that 's Death93 andHeidegger, retains as to familiarconnotations privacy opposed thepublicity of of theethicalnonetheless of
the political, see Languageand Death 107.

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The termsof this discussionmakeplainAgamben'sdebtto Heidegger.In so doing, they open his analysis to the threatof quiet dismissal by political theorists, many of whom are weariedby the abstractness the density of this language.In this regardit and is crucialto note how well Agamben'sanalysis accountsfor otherwiseobscurefeatures of canonicaltexts thathe himself ignores. We might begin by comparingthe passages fromAristotleupon which Agambenfocuses with Socrates'sstrikinglysimilarclaim in the Critothat"thereally important thing is not to live, but to live well." This claim is in fact the centralmove in Socrates'sjustification of his active participationin his own of execution.He in otherwordsenactsthe sacrificeof barelife thatthe prioritization the life entails. Aristotle's use of this formulationto describe a political life that is good meant to endure on both the level of biology and virtue is obviously more problematic-a fact thatmay go some way towardexplainingAristotle'sown celebrationof the kalos death. Nor is this the only such momentin the Platoniccorpus.We mightconsideras well the second book of Plato's Republic:this gives us as clear a pictureof politics as the metaphysicalmovementdescribedby Agambenas any other,generatingas it does ajust city from the inadequaciesof Adeimantus's"city in speech," a city whose exclusive focus upon the satisfactionof bodily need prohibitsSocratesand his companionsfrom discerningthe natureand origin of justice. In the first book of the Republicjustice is conflict [332e, 333a].Tradeis present tentativelyassociatedwith tradeandwith interstate in Adeimantus'scity, as is at least the abstractpossibility of war [372b], and so one might assume thatjustice will be as well. Yet Socrateshesitates to say this. When he asks "where. . . would justice and injusticebe" [37le] in such a city, Adeimantusreplies, "'I can't think,Socrates,... unless it's somewherein some need these men have of one another"[372a]. Though this sounds very much like the picturewe ultimately of get, in which justice is a matterof the internalstructure the city, where each person does his own, propertask, and each particular finds its meaning and its satisfactionin the balancedwhole, SocrateshardlyembracesAdeimantus'stentative,initial formulation with enthusiasm."'Perhapswhat you say is fine,"' he replies. "'It must really be consideredand we mustn'tback away"' [372a]. The considerationsthat follow, however, are entirely circumscribed the guiding assumptionsof the city's founderconby cerningneed and satisfaction,and they producenothingmorethanan almostcomically banallist of the materialarrangements the city, its procreation its productionand of and of "bread,wine, clothing, and shoes" [372a]. consumption It is at this point thatGlauconloses patienceand objects thatthis is no humancity at all. When Socratestakes up Glaucon'ssuggestionthatthey must considera city that is driven by the desire to satisfy more than the needs of mere life, he notes that "in considering such a city ... we could probablysee in what way justice and injustice naturallygrow in cities" [372e]. Why have they not been able to do so up to now? Why does Socratesimply thatAdeimantus'sanswerwas inaccurate, becausethey were not in a position to answerthe questionof justice? The answeris thathe has silently accepted Glaucon'scriticismsof the city of mere life. This acceptanceis implied when Socrates says of pigs: "'This animal wasn't in our earliercity-there was no need-but in this one there will be need of it in addition"'[373c]. For Socrates to say this of the city Glaucon has moments before termed "a city of sows" would appearto be an ironic confirmationof Glaucon's objection: it is unlikely that Socrates believes pork to be necessaryto the feverish life of luxury.It is more likely thathe says pigs were unnecessary in the "healthy"city because, as Glaucon claims, the citizens themselves were pigs. This silent agreementleads Socratesto help in the constitutionof Glaucon's"feverish"city, where the aspirationto satisfy more than the needs of life will requirethe sacrificeof life in war.It is this city which ultimatelyissues forththejust city which, as

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a just city, literally breeds its inhabitants-that is to say, a city that self-consciously reenactsthe genesis of the just life from bare life. Indeed, Socratescalls for more than simple breeding:the political "artof judging" is in fact made possible by an "artof medicine,"the practiceof which involves thatthe doctor"let die the ones whose bodies are [corrupt],and the ones whose souls have bad naturesand are incurable,they themselves will kill" [409e-410]. Socrates here openly accepts that his biopolitics must at the same time be a thanatopolitics.Here, perhapsmore clearly than in the few lines from Aristotle upon which Agamben focuses, we can see that Arendt is both exactly right and exactly wrong when she arguesthat "politicsis never for the sake of life."16 It is the movement from bare life to political life that defines both bare life and political life.17Politics thus entails the constant negotiation of the thresholdbetween itself and the barelife thatis both includedwithin and excluded from its body. But such a thresholdis hopelessly unstable, as is signaled by the fact that politics is both the passage from bare life to itself and what lies beyond this passage.'8The titles of the
16. The Human Condition 37. For a more contemporary example of the relevance of Agamben'sanalysis, consider WilliamConnolly'sclaim that "Identityrequiresdifferencein order to be, and it convertsdifferenceinto otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty."On the face of it it would appear that Connolly'sanalysis of the paradoxes of political identity is limited to a discussion of our need to distinguish ourselvesfrom other individualsand groups without reifying that distinction by claiming that the other is so differentas to be inferior or threatening.Connollyhoweverhas remindedme that his analysis here of self and other is open to a thirdelement, that of life: "Thereis more in my life than any official definitionof identitycan express. I am not exhaustedby my identity."Significantlythis greater me is not me: "thisabundance is in me but is neitherme nor mine"; hence it "can help me to recognizeand attendto the claims of the other in myself." On theface of it the structureof this paradox would appear to exactly replicatethat ofAgamben'sbare life, which both is and is not a momentof the life of the of polis. Wemustthen ask whetherthe acknowledgment a life that "I" live but that is not "mine" can avoid the metaphysicalquandariesofAgamben'sanalysis [see Connolly64, 120]. 17. Agambenbegins by identifyingbare life with zoe, "thesimplefact of living commonto all living beings," as opposed to bios, "which[in ancient Greek] indicated theform or way of livingproper to an individualor a group" [1, 4]. But in thepassage fromAristotle'sPolitics upon which he places such importance,the distinctionbetween bare life and political life is between two variantsof zoe. Moreover,on 88 "simplenatural life" ("la semplice vita naturale") is contrastedwith "lifeexposedto death(bare or sacred life)" ("la vita esposta alla morte[la nuda vita o vita sacra]"). Presumablythis is because simple natural life is not in itself in relation with political life, and sacred life is defined by precisely that relationship. This is corroboratedby Agamben'sassertion on 90 that sacred life is "neither political bios nor naturalzoe" but rather "thezone of indistinctionin which zoe and bios constituteeach other in includingand excluding each other" [and see 106, 109]. If we take thisprocess as the metaphysicalmovementof politics, this seems to come closest to Agamben'sconsideredview; but it is clearly incompatiblewith the claims made earlier in the book.It is also unclearhow consistentit is withAgamben'ssuggestions that his bare life is or can be a form of "purelife" ("pura vita") [171]. Nonetheless,manyof the confusions that seem to plague Agamben'suse of the term "bare life" are only superficial: on 114-15, for instance, he writes that "Sacrednessis a line of flight still present in contemporary politics, a line that is moving into zones increasingly vast and dark, to the point of ultimately coinciding with the biological life [vita biologica] of the citizens." This might appear to repeat the same contradictionto which I have just pointed; but this appearance is deceiving: it is because biopolitics in the form of sacred life defines both bare life and political life that these definitionscan change, and even, as in modernity,collapse into one another. 18. The instability of the distinction between political and apolitical life may already be signaled in Aristotle'stext: This entirediscussion is an explicationand defense of his claim that, pace Plato 'sStatesman,"Itis a mistaketo believe that the 'statesman'is the same as the monarch of a kingdom,or the manager of a household, or the master of a numberof slaves" [1.1.2]. The order of thefamily is not "the determinationof what is just" but the rule of thefather and hus-

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threepartsof Agamben'sbook markthe differentmomentsof its unraveling: "TheLogic of Sovereignty,""HomoSacer,"and "TheCampas Biopolitical Paradigmof the Modem." Withthe rise of sovereigntywe witness the constitutionof a politicalauthority that correspondsto the ambiguitiesof this thresholdmore closely then did the polis. Soverbut eignty,on this account,is not simply a momentof the rise of the nation-state, instead an expressionof the innerdynamicsof the logic of politics. Agambenhere follows Carl Schmitt's analysis of the sovereign as "he who decides on the exception" [5].19As to (1'eccezioneor die Aus-nahme),"according its Agambennotes, the word"exception" outside(ex-capere),andnot simplyexcluded" etymologicalroot"refersto whatis "taken [18]. The sovereign, in other words, has the legal authorityto decide who shall be removed from the purview of law, as in a state of martiallaw or the Schmittianstate of emergency.Sovereigntyis the law's thresholdwith the nonlegal;as Schmittwrites, it is "aborderlineconcept... one pertainingto the outermostsphere"[5].20It is the point at which the law entersinto relationwith thatwhich has no legal standing. In identifyingthe thresholdbetweenthe legal andthe nonlegal,sovereigntydefines them both. This is perhapsclearer in Schmitt's text than in Agamben's. "Thereis," Schmittwrites, "nonormapplicableto chaos. For a legal orderto make sense, a normal situationmust exist, and he is sovereign who definitively decides whetherthis normal situationexists" [13]. A state of emergencyis the productof the collapse of the normal order;but the normalorderis only the absence of a state of emergency.21 Agamben's gloss on this is that The exception [l'eccezione] does not subtract itself from the rule [regola]; rather,the rule, suspendingitself, gives rise to the exceptionand, maintaining itself in relation to the exception,first constitutes itself as a rule .... The sovereign decision [La decisione sovrana] of the exception is the orginary juridico-political structure[struttura]on the basis of which what is included in thejuridical orderand what is excludedfromit acquiretheirmeaning. [ 1819]. He concludes from this that "Whatemerges in the limit figure [figura-limite]is the radical crisis of every possibility of clearly distinguishingbetween membershipand inclusion,between whatis outsideandwhatis inside, betweenexceptionandrule"[25]. Once the rule acknowledgesthatit gives rise to exceptionsfor which it cannotlegislate, every case can, in principle,be understoodin these terms. The only way to avoid this In not to and band,who is analogous a slave-owner a monarch. all threecases, domination, is deliberation, theordering of principle, as theendis notthegoodlife,buttheperpetuation just in assertsthatourperceptions goodandeviland of life.However, theface of all of thisAristotle makeupboth"afamilyanda polis"[1.2.12]. just andunjust to here true 19. It might better say thatAgamben appropriates be Schmitt, it is certainly for et theme is defined that a thathisborrowings Heidegger, from Hegel,Schmitt, al.pursue common morebyAgamben byhis sources. than 20. Fora verysimilar discussion on (albeitoneconducted a lessmetaphysical plane)of the 's the enriseof sovereignty, Bartelson. see Here,as inAgamben discussion, riseof sovereignty the tails the destabilization "theverydividethatpreviously separated insideof republican of " in was anarchic outside, a destabilization which"whatformerly relegated politics fromitsmore nowmovesintotheverycenterof politicalactionandunderstanding" to theoutside [330-31; HomoSacer35-36]. compare is Bodin claimthatsovereignty 's 21. It should clearthatthisdoesnotnecessarily be repeat The the sourceof law, wherelaw is definedas command. sourceof the law neednot be the doesdecideon theexception, but then,in so doing,it decideson the sovereign; if thesovereign normas well[see Bodin38, 51].

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conclusion is to arguethat, even in those cases where the rule cannot legislate, it still does legislate in some impoverishedsense. One would have to argue,thatis, thatexceptional cases areclearlydefinedas such by the rule. But this is in effect to deny the reality of the exception and the need of the legal orderfor a sovereign decision upon it. Withthe rise of sovereigntywe witness the rise of a form of life thatcorrespondsto it. "The sovereign sphere [sfera] is the sphere in which it is permittedto kill without committing homicide and without celebratinga sacrifice [sacrificio], and sacred life [sacra]-that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed-is the life that has been capturedin this sphere"[83]. Agambendoes not define the sacredin terms of "whatis set apartfor worshipof the deity."He is interestedin the more fundamental questionof the logic of sacrifice (from Latin sacrificium, from sacr-, sacer, holy, cursed) as revealed in the life that is sacred (from Latin sacrare, also from sacr-, sacer). What Agamben terms sacred life is, like the sovereign, both within and without the legal order(or, as its etymology suggests, both holy and cursed). It is inside the legal order insofar as its death can be allowed by that order;but it is outside it insofar as its death can constitute neither a homicide nor a sacrifice. But where sovereignty is a form of power thatoccupies this threshold,sacredlife is nothingmore than a life that occupies this threshold,a life thatis excluded and includedin the political order.Here this takes the form not, as in Aristotle,of a metaphysicalpuzzle, but ratherof a mute helplessness in the face of death. "Sacrednessis ... the originaryform of the inclusion of bare life [nudavita] in thejudicial order,and the syntagmhomo sacer names somethinglike the originary'political'relation,which is to say, barelife insofaras it operatesin an inclusive exclusion as the referentof the sovereigndecision" [85]. This is the explicit revelation of the metaphysical requirement that politics establish a relation with the nonrelational[cf. note 8]. Indeed,the sovereign decision is the realizationof the ambiguity of the distinctionbetweenbareandpolitical life. It is law (politicallife) thatis not law (insofar as it steps outside of the stricturesand limitationsof formal law) dealing with barelife (thatis, nonpoliticallife), and insofaras it does so thatnonpolitical(bare) life it treatsis political. The result is the paradoxof a sacrifice that is dedicatedto no legal or religious end [114] but thatparticipatesin and affirmsthe economy or logic of the legal/religious system as a metaphysical,political system. Where in Rene Girard's superficially similar account of sacrifice the victim is a scapegoat for the murderous desiresof the communitythatunites aroundher,herethe stakesareconsiderablyhigher. Instead of an act of self-protectionon the part of the community [Girard4, 101-02], sacrifice is the performanceof the metaphysicalassertionof the human:the Jew, the of Gypsy,andthe gay mandie thatthe Germanmay affirmhis transcendence his bodily, animallife.22

22. Agamben,I think, complicates his account unnecessarily when he concludes that the killing of bare life does not constitutea sacrifice [114]: the point is that the term "sacrifice"is here understoodin a differentway, as a move in a differentand morefundamentaleconomy,one thatproducesa transcendenceinsteadof observingone. Thatsaid, Agamben'sanalysis hereowes a great deal to Bataille 's seminal essay, "Hegel, Death and Sacrifice," one of the two Bataille to textscited in his bibliography, thoughonlybrieflyreferred in his text.In this readingofAlexander Kojeve's reading of Hegel, Bataille argues that the logic of the humanpractice of sacrifice is revealed in the Hegelian account of the role of death in the constitutionof the human. "Death alone assures the existence of a 'spiritual'or 'dialectical'being.... If the animal which constitutes man's natural being did not die, and-what is more-if death did not dwell in him as the source of his anguish-all the more so in that he seeks it out, desires it and sometimesfreely chooses it-there wouldbe no man or liberty,no historyor individual.In other words,if he revels in what neverthelessfrightens him, if he is the being, identical with himself,who risks (identical) being itself, then man is trulya Man: he separates himselffrom the animal." The simple extinc-

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I
I

instancesof this thresholdlife abound,from refugees andpeople in Contemporary whom we are tempted and concentrationcamps to "neomorts" figures in "overcomas" to turninto organfarms. Perhapsthe clearest example is that of people in camps forcibly subjected to extreme medical tests and prisonerswho have been condemned to for death who are asked to "volunteer" the same:
The particular status of the VPs [Versuchspersonen] was decisive: they were persons sentenced to death or detained in a camp, the entry into which meant the definitive exclusion from the political community. Precisely because they were lacking almost all the rights and expectations that we characteristically alive attribute to human existence, and yet were still biologically [biologicamente ancora vita], they came to be situated at a limit zone [una zona-limite] between life and death, inside and outside, in which they were no longer anything but bare life [nuda vita]. Those who are sentenced to death and those who dwelt in camps are thus in some way unconsciously assimilated to homines sacres, to a life that may be killed without the commission of homicide. Like the fence of the camp, the interval between death sentence and extion of the life of the animal body alone is not sufficient.As in Agamben'sreading of Aristotle, language too is necessary. On Bataille's account this is because "language... alonefounds the separation of elements and by founding it founds itself on it, within a world of separated and denominatedentities." The death of the animal life that is required the emergence of the for humanbeing is a death that no purely animal life could ever die. The animal, on Bataille's account, is lost in the sea of life. If it ceases to live, it is replacedby anotherof its kind,anotherthat does not differ essentiallyfrom it. In effect, it remainspresent. "Theonly true death supposes separation and, throughthe discourse which separates, the consciousness of being separated." Hence, if death is requiredin orderfor the humanbeing to separate itselffrom its animal being, to some extent that separation must already have takenplace in language. Death is not truly death-that is, it is not or does not allowfor the metaphysicalovercomingof the animal-unless " it is the death of a humanbeing. (It is in this context that Bataille cites Kojeve's "bizarre and animal.'") The circularityhere is preperfectly apt saying, that man is "'the anthropomorphic cisely thatofAgamben'sbare life: bare life is whatis notpolitical, what thepolitical life exuviates: and yet for it to performthisfunction it must in some sense be political already.Bataille is well aware of the paradoxes this entails: "In theory,it is his natural, animal being whose death reveals Man to himself,but the revelationnever takesplace. For when the animal being supporting him dies, the humanbeing himself ceases to be. In orderfor Man to reveal himself ultimatelyto himself,he would have to die, but he would have to do it while living-watching himselfceasing to be" [Bataille 12, 15-16, 19-20]. For Bataille if notfor Hegel, the solution to this is sacrifice and "thenecessity of spectacle": the explanation the almost universalpractice of sacrifice is for that human beings do in fact need to undergo this sublation; and their solution to the above paradox is to kill an animal whosephysical life stands infor their own. If we disregardBataille's emphasisupon religious ritual it is clear thathe is describingthe same AufhebungthatAgamben attributesto Aristotle-the differencebeing that Hegel and Bataille's referencesto death explicitly committhem to a process that endangers and rejects bare life. Whythen doesn'tAgamben discuss the Bataille article-why turnto Aristotleinstead?In hisfew commentson Bataille in this book, he suggests thatBataille 'sanalysis of sovereigntyis compromised its insistenceuponthe by erotic nature of sacrifice [113] and by its too-ready acceptance of the early twentieth-century anthropologicalreadingof the sacred [75]. One resultof this is that Bataille is not able to think out the specifically political natureof the logic of sacrifice he uncovers. Tolocate the genesis of that logic in Aristotle's Politics would make good this lack. This is something that Bataille is unable to do in part because he assumes that the logic of sacrifice and death is alien to Greek philosophyas a whole: "forHegel, the humanrealitywhich he places at the heart, and center,of the totalityis very different from that of Greekphilosophy.His anthropologyis that of the JudeoChristiantradition"[12], for which thefigure of Christ on the cross serves as the model of all transcendenceof the bestial.

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ecution delimits an extratemporaland extraterritorialthreshold[soglia] in which the humanbody is separatedfrom its normal[normale]political status and abandoned, in a state of exception [in stato di eccezione], to the most extrememisfortunes.[159] When, in the United States, men condemnedto deathhave been offered the possibility of parole in exchange for "volunteering" undergotests that could not be imposed to uponthose with full rightsof citizenship[156-57], the reasoningwas quiteunderstandable, and even attractivein its economy and "fairness": given that the personhas been condemnedto die, he has essentially alreadylost his life. As far as the law is concerned his life is no longer his own, and in that sense he is a "living dead man" [131]. Hence therewill be no crimeagainsthim if his life is "lost"again.But neitherwill thatdeathbe the impositionof the deathpenalty.Indeed,it is precisely insofaras he awaitsexecution that he remains alive: his life remains only to be taken from him in the moment of Deathin the experimentthusrevealsthe paradoxesof deathrow as a sphere punishment. thatdelayed penaltymakes possible, thatof the thresholdbetween life and death.23 When the thresholdof deathrow holds more thanone or two victims, the result is the camp. Historicallydeveloping out of martiallaw, it is itself an includedexclusion from the penal system [20, 166-67]. If the Aristoteliandistinctionbetween polis life andbarelife with which we began was meantto secure and define the human,the total politicization of life that is the camp signals the collapse of this project.Agamben's characterization be understood an attempt moresystematically can as to workoutArendt's claim that "life in the concentrationcamps . . . stands outside of life and paradoxical death"[Originsof Totalitarianism 444]. Here the exception becomes the norm-or, to be more precise, the distinctionbetween the two is wholly effaced. "The camp is the space [lo spazio] of this absoluteimpossibilityof deciding [decidere]between fact and law, rule and application,exception and rule, which nevertheless incessantly decides [decide]betweenthem"[173]. In the name of the healthof the body of the nation,in the attemptto producea single and undividedpeople [179], and in responseto the decision of the Fiihrer,whose own body has itself become one with the law [184], the nation takes on the endless task of its self-delineation;thatis, it moves into the thresholdthat defines it, a thresholdthathas awaitedit since Aristotle'sPolitics. 23. Agamben notmention does but Antigone, his discussion thesymbiosis sovereignty of of and sacredlife is surelyreminiscent thismostpoliticalof tragedies. actionof theplay The of revolves around conflict thecity's a over duties toward bodythatisplacedneither a insidethecity noroutside thebodyis of oneof thesonsof thecity,butonewhohasfoughtagainstit, andas it: a resultit lays in thefields outsidethecitywall,andnot in theburial plot thatwouldmarkits are criminal to passageout of thisworld.There manywaysto characterize Antigone's refusal but out, obey Creon, perhapsthe mostdirectis to say thatshe triesto sortthis confusion by the it the acknowlburying body,andhenceputting decisively beyond city-or, more precisely, or the edgingthatit alwayshasbeenbeyond outside thecity,in thesensethatit is notwithin of and to city'sauthority holdit back of fromburial, hence fromdeath. thisseemsan imposition If themes are,strictly that its in 's speaking, foreignto theplay,consider culmination Creon soverto to tomb-which 's eigndecision condemn Antigone anunderground symbolizes perfectly Agamben threshold between anddeath.Theresultis a monstrous life confusion deathand life. In the of words theprophet Teiresias: havethrust thatbelongsabove / belowtheearth,and one of "you dishonored/a her to / indeed bitterly livingsoulbylodging in thegrave; whileonethatbelonged theunderworld/gods havekepton thisearth without dueshare ritesof burial, due the you /of of /a edictis a funeralofferings, corpseunhallowed" [Sophocles, Antigone1136-42]. Creon's between anddeath: Antigone dares of of incorporation thethreshold life If reaffirmationthecity's to insistthatthedeadaresimply andas suchbeyond will that, politics,Creon proveherwrong by her in find condemning to thethreshold which politicsanddeath oneanother

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does not in itself signal Now, the mereexistence of camps andof Versuchspersonen a the need for as sweeping and fundamental critiqueof the traditionas Agamben's.For one might well conclude thatwhat is called for is simply a reassertionof humanrights as understoodby the tradition;or, to put the point on the explanatorylevel, that the politics are conceptuallyof a piece with the genocides and rapecamps of contemporary Afterall, of transgressions JamesII andother"Beastsof Prey"and "noxiouscreatures." in Agamben himself characterizesthe Versuchspersonen just these terms: it is "precisely because they were lacking almost all the rights and expectationsthatwe characteristically attributeto human existence" and yet were still alive that they could "be situatedat a limit zone between life and death."On this accountthe horrorsof modernity are nothing more than violations of the norms of the tradition-a traditionthat And this response simply needs to be reasserted,ratherthancriticizedor deconstructed. in might seem sufficienteven if one accepts, as Agambendoes, Arendt'sargument The that Origins of Totalitarianism the emergenceof the camps signals the extremelimitations of the politics of human rights. Arendt's argumentis that the direct defense of humanrightswill alone be insufficient.On her accountwhatis neededis rathera recognition of the ultimatebasis of civil rights-what she termsthe "rightto have rights."24 This basis Arendtfinds in political action. Properlyunderstood,humanrights are civil rights:they arebased on forms of humanaction, not a set of moraltruthsaboutthe laws of God or nature.It is as political, not legal, actorsthat we are grantedrights;and it is throughpolitical action that we defend those rights. But in the presentcase we might interpretthis as nothing but a call to indirectlydefend humanrights, and not at all to questionthe distinctionbetween political life and bare life upon which the conception of rights rests. effecNote, though,thatas a practicalmatterthis solutionhas not been particularly tive up to this point. More importantly, is a conservativeone that simply attemptsto it retreatto a kinder,gentlerage. It does not attemptto understand logic of the campor the the Versuchsperson. These are horrorsthat invade our political lives and our political thinking from without. This insistence upon the foreign and external natureof these evils is both confirmed and underminedby the suggestions of Tadeusz Borowski or Primo Levi that the camps operatedin a sphere beyond good and evil. Consider the effect of readingBorowski's stories, or Levi's invitation"to contemplatethe possible meaningin the Lager of the words 'good' and 'evil,' 'just' and 'unjust';let everybody judge, on the basis of the picturewe havejust outlinedandof the examplesgiven above, how much of our ordinarymoral world could survive on this side of the barbedwire" On [92].25 the one hand, we should like to answerthat moralityandjustice mean there just whatthey meanhere, if only with the temperingof a forgivingequity.Anythingless feels like collusion with the Nazis, the final denialof the dignityof the camp victim. But if we assertthis, we presumeto judge the victims of the camps. If moralityis not suspendedin a camp, then the obligationto be just remainsjust that:an obligation.Morality is not grace. Agamben brings this out nicely in a discussion of Bruno Bettelheim's argument that the Muselmannhas passed beyond the limit of the human and the moral by renouncinghis freedomandby losing sight of the limit beyond which his life would have 24. Origins Totalitarianism Arendt of 296. makes argument sketch herein thelast the I out sectionof theImperialism "The Declineof theNation-State theEndof theRights and volume, of " Man. 25.As readers Leviknow, titleof thefirstof thesevolumes, the I of fromwhich amquoting, is by no meansa confident rhetorical In American question. a typically gesture false confiof
dence, If This Is a Man has been changed in the American edition to Survival in Auschwitz, a

blandassertion whichquite obscures Levi's precisely question.

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to be sacrificedin defense of thatfreedom.ForBettelheim,regardlessof the conditions, a humanbeing can avoid becoming a Muselmannby "acceptingdeath as a humanbeing."ButAgambenarguesthat"Simplyto deny the Muselmann's humanitywould be to the verdict of the SS and to repeat their gesture."The Muselmann"does not accept he merelyembodya moraldeath,"rather "is the site of an experimentin which morality and humanityare called into question,"he is "a limit figure of a special kind, in which not only categoriessuch as dignity andrespectbut even the very idea of an ethical limit lose their meaning." To acknowledge the Muselmann's compromised humanity, of Bettelheim'slimit of the humanis denied;to avoid the moralbarbarism an imagined confrontationwith a Muselmannin which one judges his "character habits,"one and renouncesethical terminology.With the Muselmannwe find the limit of limits: clear boundariescan no longer be drawnhere [Agamben,Remnantsof Auschwitz56, 63].26 The point is not thatthe liberalrefusalto considerthe camp as thresholdrules out a solutionto this dilemmafromthe start.The very idea of a solutionhere seems offensive. The point is ratherthatthe liberalresponsecan make no sense of its own confusion.The The camp is simply evil and incomprehensible. personcondemnedto a camp is neither capableof moralitynorincapableof it. As for the difficultquestionsthis emerginglimit of the moral might raise, they too are set aside in favor of a respectful silence.27In contrast,Agamben's conception of the thresholdat least promises to more precisely delineate these confusions: the camp both is and is not a legal, political, and moral space. Hence, we should hardly be surprisedto find ourselves torn, wanting both to affirmand to deny thatthese categoriesapply here. Finally, the liberal strategyreveals its limitationswhen we recognize that the notion of the thresholdis in fact expandinginto areaswherewe will not have the luxuryof refusing to consider the inner logic of phenomenawe should like to reject as evil and What,for instance,are we to do when we are dealing with agents or incomprehensible. thathave not alreadybeen recognizedas the bearersof rights?Herethe reassertion things of rights is simply not an option. We must decide whethera neomort-a body whose only signs of life are that it is "warm,pulsating, and urinating"-is in fact a human being at all, an agent or a thing. In such cases, "life and death [cease to be] properly scientific concepts [and become] political concepts, which as such acquirea political meaning precisely only througha decision" [Homo Sacer 164]. Ironically,such decisions are increasinglymade by scientists, and not by politicians: "In the biopolitical horizon [orizzontebiopolitico] that characterizes modernity,the physician and the scientist move into the no-man's-land[terradi nessuno]into which at one point the sover[159]. These are still marginalfigures in our currentpolitieign alone could penetrate" cal life. But if Agambenis right,the concept of the marginis itself being swept away.It is this thatleads him to conclude thatthe camp is the as-yet-unrecognized paradigmof the modern.As the logic of the sovereign exception comes unraveled(or is realizedthis paradoxbeing a necessaryfunctionof thatlogic), and the impossibilityof categorically distinguishingbetween exception and rule is made manifest, the distinctionbetween barelife andpolitical life is hopelessly confused. "Whenlife andpolitics-originally divided, and linked togetherby means of the no-man'sland of the state of exception that is inhabited[abita] by bare life [la nuda vita]-begin to become one, all life becomes sacredand all politics becomes the exception"[148].28 Did 26. Thislineof analysisis alsofollowedin thesecondchapter Slavoj Zizek's Someof bodySayTotalitarianism? Shoah incor27. I do notwishto suggest silenceis inappropriate. that Claude Lanzmann's to poratessuchsilencetoprofound effectin its oblique approach thecamps. 28. Though does it, of of Agamben notdiscuss oneof thebestexamples thiscollapse therule and intotheexception ofpoliticsintolifemaybe thecorporate and of investigation purchase the

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In the end, the attemptto resist this throughthe assertionof humanrights ignores the connection between the humanismthat undergirdsthe concept of rights and the is events thatseem to conflictwith it. Agamben'sargument not thatAristotle'sor Locke's reflectionson politics carrywith them an implicit commitmentto the substantiveracist policies of National Socialism; nor does he claim that they "caused"the Holocaust (a term to which he objects [114]). What he does argue is that there is a deep affinity horrorsand the traditionof political philosophy to which between such contemporary we might turn in an effort to understandand combat such phenomena.The practical implicationwould not be thatthereis no differencebetweenAristotleor Hitler,but that Aristotle will not provide a stable point from which to critiquethose who follow after Thereis no Archimedean him, or from which to constructan alternative.29 point outside biopolitics. Politics is always a matterof the body, and "The 'body' is always alreadya biopoliticalbody" [187].

If Agamben'sanalysis and descriptionof this dilemmaof the formationof the political and of political identity is strikinglyoriginal, the nonmetaphysicalalternativetoward which he gesturesin responseis morefamiliar.In an earlierdiscussion of the politics of the sacred,he arguesthatthe sacredbearswithin itself subversivepotential,in that as a marginalsupplementof political identity,it itself lacks identity.This opens up the possibility of a mode of being thatescapes the metaphysicsof politics, andhence of thanatology. "Inthe final instancethe Statecan recognize any claim for identity.... Whatthe State cannot tolerate in any way, however, is that the singularitiesform a community without affirmingan identity,that humansco-belong without an representable condition of belonging."The Allied responseto the Nazi extermination the Jews is instrucof tive in this regard.Ratherthan acknowledgethe sacredcharacterof the Jewish people (as a people whose extermination"was not conceived as a homicide by [either] the executioners [or] the judges"), they "triedto compensatefor this lack of identity with the concession of a State identity,which itself became the source of new massacres" 87-88; cf. Homo Sacer 114]. To breakout of this vicious cycle, [Coming Community follows Jean-LucNancy in attemptingto "think" Agamben communitywithoutunity.30 In so doing, both will follow Heidegger(thoughhardlywithoutcriticism)in his attempt to develop a poetic mode of speech beyond metaphysics.WhatAgambenadds to this is his emphasisupon bare life:

human The on the genome. dayis at handwhenthedecision thehuman beingwill become rule. Thedefinition thehuman will too being,likethatof death, become fluidto serveas a guide of for thejudgments itsmodifications, lawyers, on and and will not scientists, politicaltheorists simply be ableto charttheexpansion ourpresent into boundaries thedarkseas thatconfront us. of 29. Derridastrikesa similarly ambivalent attitude toward humanism woulddethe that nounce"biologism, in racism, [56]. [and]naturalism" OnSpirit 30. SeeHomoSacer 47, 60, 182-88,and, an indication theultimately 44, for of Heideggerian nature this strategy, Jean-Luc ac150-53; and compare of Nancy(whoseinfluence Agamben HomoSacer):"thethinking community essence. . . is in effectthe as of knowledges throughout closure thepoliticalbecause assignsto communitycommon it a is of being,whereas community a matter something existence as without of quitedifferent, namely insofar it is in common letting into substance. meansno longerhaving, any in Beingin common itselfbe absorbed a common
form, in any empiricalor ideal place, such a substantialidentity,and sharingthis "lack of iden-

Thisis what I calls 'finitude"' someof thelimiphilosophy tity." [xxxviii]. havetriedto indicate tations thisstrategy "Jean-Luc in NancyandtheMyth theCommon." of of

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Onlya reflection[una rifflessione] that ... thematicallyinterrogatesthe link betweenbarelife [nudavita] andpolitics, a linkthatsecretlygoverns[govema] the modernideologies seeminglymostdistant from one another,will be able to ... return to itspracticalcalling[restituire pensieroalla suavocazione il thought Sacer 4-5] practica]. [Homo This emphasis, however, changes everything,and it is worth detailing the distance it places Agambenfrom Heideggerand the work he has inspired. When Agamben writes that political practiceis "governed"by "the link between bare life and politics" we must be carefulto note that this link is not one thathas been forgedby willful or culpablephilosophers.Politicalpracticereproducesthe older structureswe find in westernpolitical philosophynot because it is producedby thatphilosothat is distinct from each. This phy but because both express a metaphysicalquandary way of putting the mattersuggests that the relation between the two is one between "politics"and "thepolitical";on this model, the formerrefers to the empiricaldata of actions andevents and the latterrefersto the system of meaningor intelligibilitywithin which the empiricalmanifestsitself.31 One advantageof this quasi-theatrical schema is that it allows us to conceive of politics and political philosophy as distinct things that nonetheless map onto one another:the system of intelligibility is an intelligibility of events and actions andintentions.In the absenceof the latter,therewould be nothingto be eitherpoliticallymeaningfulor meaningless.Conversely,in the absenceof a conception of what meaningis and how it can achieved,no behaviorcould rise to the statusof political action at all. This distinctionis generallyderivedfrom Heidegger,ultimatelyfrom his thinking of the ontological distinctionand most immediatelyfrom his writings on technology. Heidegger argues that technology is not the applicationof scientific theory. Rather, scientific theory itself arises in response to the technological demand that naturebe reducedto "a calculablecoherence of forces"that can be representedand used for the and representation applicationof force. "Modernphysics is the heraldof enframing,a heraldwhose provenanceis still unknown."32 Although the technological mode of reone in which instrumental reason reigns supreme,that reason is vealing is a nihilistic itself not an instrument. a mode of revelation it is "the destining of revealing"or As Being in our time. Hence Heidegger's famous dictum, "the essence of technology is nothingtechnological."Hence as well his cautionthatwe neitherrespondwith "a stultified compulsion to push on blindly with technology [nor], what comes to the same, ... rebelhelplessly againstit andcurseit as the workof the devil" ["QuestionConcerning Technology"330, 340, 330]. has Lacoue-Labarthe echoed Heidegger's claims here, and suggested that "theessence of the political... is by itself nothingpolitical"["Inthe Name of..." 71], a claim thatis at the heartof his own attemptto develop a distinctionbetween politics and the political. He offers the helpful suggestion thatthe relationshipbetween politics and the
31. The best and most relevantversion of this distinctioncan befound in Philippe LacoueLabartheand Jean-LucNancy, Retreatingthe Political. For a survey of other places it can be found, see Dallmayr,particularly9, 41, 50-52, 87-88. It should be noted thatDallmayr'senthusiasmfor the distinctionleads him to gloss over differencesbetweenthe variousformulationsof it. He suggests,for instance,thatSchmitt's conceptof thepolitical is analogousto Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy'sessence of thepolitical [Dallmayr 50]; but the latter two takepains to note that this is not so. CompareRetreatingthe Political 109. Thepoint is significant only because it demonstrates how vague this distinctionremainsin most cases. 326-27. Compare"TheAgeof the World 32. Heidegger,"Question ConcerningTechnology" Picture" 116.

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political be conceived along the lines of the relationshipbetween "a-more or less and of fully-developed photograph a negative"["Spirit NationalSocialism"150]. This nicely capturesthe relativepriorityof the philosophical,while also retainingthe necessary reminderthat both politics and the political are what they are because they represent somethingelse. It is fairly clear thatAgamben would claim the same. But there is shift here in his work.Even if we grantthatthe relationbetween the politian important cal (for example, the thematicsubjectof [momentsof] Aristotle'sPolitics) and politics (for example, the deathcamps) is a noncasualone in which both are expressionsof the essence of metaphysics, there remains a fundamentaldiscrepancybetween the roles these two play in Agamben's argument.In Agamben's work canonical texts are depicted as giving expressionto an unstablelogic, one thatinevitablycomes unraveledon of the level of (empirical)politics. Indeed,as in the openingparagraphs my own article, it is recent empiricalevents thatprovidethe pathos and the urgencyto Agamben'sdiscussion. Agambendoes not set out only to provideus with an insightfulway to readthe canon, though he does succeed in that. He sets out to address the catastropheof our time. And it will ultimatelybe addressedby that "whichenacts the experience merely shown by logic." In so emphasizingthe pathosof politics over thatof the politicalAgambensharply As distinguisheshimself from Heidegger,who if anythingtakes the opposite approach. and repeatedlystates, the dangerof technology is not the threatit Heideggerexplicitly poses to humanlife, butthe dangerit poses to the dignityof the humanbeing as thinkerHis thatis, the dangerit poses to thought.33 infamousequationof the deathcamps with is the mechanizedfood industryis wholly consistentwith this: "Agriculture now a moof torizedfood industry, essentiallythe same thing as the fabrication cadaversin the gas chambersof the exterminationcamps, the same thing as the blockades and the reducTo tion of countriesto famine, the same thing as the fabricationof hydrogenbombs."34 is food industry" "essentiallythe same thing"as "thefabrication say thatthe "motorized of cadaversin the gas chambersof the extermination camps"would seem to imply that the converse is trueas well: the metaphysicalsignificanceof Auschwitzis precisely that of a factory farm.Because of his emphasisupon bare,embodiedlife, Agambencannot take such a tack. For those appalledby the roughequatingof the food industryand the deathcamps, this is all for the better.But it does resultin a privilegingof one of the two of expressions of the metaphysicalquandary politics that we would not find purported in a purely Heideggeriananalysis. It is as if Agamben's text were enacting what he claims is the characteristically paradoxicalinclusion of life within metaphysics. The strengthof Agamben's analysis is that it does not merely add something to Heidegger'sown work,butit allowsus to see how thelatterevadestheproblems Agamben confronts.I have alludedabove to Agamben'sown discussions of the laterHeidegger's thinkingof death.I should like to conclude by noting the mannerin which the problem of life dogs Heideggerfrom the start,from Being and Time,the source of much of our 33. "What dangerous nottechnology.... Theessenceof technology, a destining is is as of to is revealing, thedanger.... Thethreat mandoesnotcomein the fromthepotenfirst instance The and has man tiallylethalmachines apparatus technology. actualthreat already of afflicted in threatens withthepossibility it couldbe deniedto man that his essence.Theruleof enframing " the himto enterintomore and truth original revealing henceto experience callof a more primal the ["Question Technology" of Concerning of 333]. Compare discussion thedignity thehuman essenceon 337. 34. Citedin Zimmerman Zimmerman 43. notesthatHeidegger here "glided over correctly thefact thatthe Holocaust a German was the phenomenon involving slaughter millionsof of he as Jews.Instead choseto viewtheHolocaust a typical era episode thetechnological afflictof ing theentireWest" [43].

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thinkingof the ontological distinctionthatAgamben'semphasisupon life both follows andchallenges. In the openingpages of PartOne of Being and Time,Heideggerbetrays an anxiety concerningthe distinctionbetween fundamental ontology and biology-an anxiety that correspondsto the introduction'ssuggestion that the former will either indicate or enact a true politics: "The existential analytic of Da-sein is prior to any psychology, anthropology,and especially biology [erst recht Biologie]" [42].35One wonders,Why "especially" biology?Why does Heideggerin his 1929-30 lecturecourse returnto the question of the biological, and addressbiology alone as a metaphysically significant positive science [see Heidegger,FundamentalConcepts of Metaphysics]? The immediateansweris that,thoughHeidegger suggests thathe pursuesa concept of the natural, conceptprovesto be insufficientto delineatethe ontologyof the worlding this of the world [see, for example, Being and Time59-60]. Heideggerseeks to distinguish his own projectfrom the work of Dilthey and Bergson and Nietzsche even as it builds upon that work. But the terms in which he does so are strikingindeed: in a paragraph that begins with the considerationof the anthropologicaltendencies of psychology, Heideggerquickly turnsto the rejectionof "a generalbiology"as a science that might provide the "ontological foundations"(ontologische Fundament)that anthropology neglects. and In the orderof possible understanding interpretation, biology as the "science of life" is rooted [fundiert] in the ontology of Da-sein, although not exclusively [ausslieBlich] in it. Life has its own kind of being, but is essentially [wesenhaft] accessible only in Da-sein. The ontology of life takes place by It way of a privative interpretation. determines[bestimmt] what must be the case if therecan be anythinglikejust-being-alive.36 is neitherpure objecLife tive presence, nor is it Da-sein. On the other hand, Da-sein should never be defined [bestimmen] ontologically by regardingit as life-(ontologically undetermined[unbestimmt])and then as somethingelse on top of that. [Being and Time46] The concluding claims are familiarenough: Da-sein is not an aggregationof life (the each of these is seen as whatit is only rather, animal)and"somethingelse" (rationality); that by way of "a privativeinterpretation" begins with Da-sein as being-in-the-world. can But neitheris it the case thatsuch an interpretation fully accountfor life-for life is not merely an abstractionfrom the unity of Da-sein-it is not exclusively founded in the ontology of Da-sein. Nur-noch-lebenis neitherdecisively includedin nor excluded from the ontology of Da-sein. It is, in otherwords, includedas a problem-or, perhaps better,includedas an exclusion. If the humanbeing could be reducedto the level of bare life it would be neitheran object nor Da-sein. What it would be remainsa mysteryalbeit perhapsone producedby our uncannyinabilityto see what is nearestto us.

35. Concerningthe relationof Being andTime to politics, considerthe use of scare quotes in thefollowing: "Philosophicalanthropology, anthropology,ethics, 'politics,'biography,and hisfaculties, powers, toriographypursue in all differentways and to varying extents the behavior, possibilities, and destinies of Da-sein" [14]. In each case Heidegger is anxious to propose his fundamental ontology as the science that can do what these ontic sciences fail to do. Simon Sparksdiscusses the allusion to politics in his introductionto Retreatingthe Political [165nl6]. 36. Heidegger'sGermanis morecategorical: "sie bestimmt das, was sein mufJ, so etwas dafi wie Nur-noch-lebensein kann."

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