Pemikiran Giorgio Agamben

The big underlying question presented in the text is why modern democratic states turn into totalitarian states?

Before we get to all that though we have to outline the primary concepts in a government document at the foundation of a government’s theory is harmless to understand this condition we first have to understand the distinction between bias and zooey.

Bias he describes as political life this is just legitimized social life.

Life in society which for the Greeks meant political life.

Zowie he describes his bare life meaning animal life in ancient Greece every citizen had these two separate qualities,

Pertama: his political life as defined by his existence in society

Kedua: and his bare life given by God and therefore sacred and defined by the fact that he was an animal which must sleep eat, etc.

Interestingly at that time domestic life as having no political function was regarded as bare life.

Our Zooey as they called us women children and the senile would all be Zoe as they had no political life, no bias.

The bias – Zoe distinction is very like the mind-body distinction. I my mind controllig my body?

am I my body experiencing my mind?

A homer Sacre in Roman society was someone who in punishment was exiled from society and was therefore allowed to be killed by Anolon.

But not to be sacrificed in an irreligious way, what this meant was he was expelled from the world of men his palace was removed and he was left with chil,  sowwy, bear life, animal life.

But homo sacra is not the same thing as bear life.

Sacra is someone who has been forcibly reduced to bear life just to keep these two concepts separate.

The sacra and Homer sacra is a bit confusing.

Sacred does not mean to be protected on the grounds, that it is religious and therefore somehow precious.

It simply means belonging to the class of things that is outside society and so sacrifice also belongs to this sphere it is a simple inside outside included, excluded dichotomy that puts them together.

On the outside this is his included in the form of exclusion thing, that it keeps talking about this outside element the order.

According to Levi Strauss always exists in societies. It is a constant and manifests in the sacred, priests, Hermits etc and the sacrificial in both cases.

It serves as an overflow valve for society to allow for the system’s mobility things must be cast out and moved around to relieve pressure, there must be a place for loss to keep the system open, like the missing square on one of those picture puzzle games.

Moving back to the kill ability of Houma sacra who decides, who can be legally killed to solve them. This is literally the definition of sovereignty the right to kill the age of monarchies the king was sovereign this put him at the head of society his sovereignty was legitimized by God.

This will put God over the king in society, accept that as God is sacred.

He is part of the other class of things and so outside the structure it is the classic triangle social structure.

The king is the subject and all others are objects together they are a home.

After the Declaration of Independence every man became equal it’s made all the objects equal subjects, the triangle becomes a centerless system where each part facilitates the operation of other parts the sovereignty is shattered and dispersed among the constituents of the system.

But sovereignty the right to kill remains only it is not given by God and it is a collective rather than individual responsibility, all are one and the same this is the nation and to biology.

Biology says a common and Foucault is the emergence of modernity according to them biology is a totalitarian ideology, in its very nature this is for two main reasons firstly because of the way that it measures life extreme.

Examples being eugenics and genetics but life support systems and health care screenings are the same thing, it reduces people to their animal qualities the beastial ization of man as he says it is so clinical and objective secondly.

Because it introduces the concept of the norm and therefore the abnormal those reintroducing our reform alighting the inside-outside economy in the way it measures life it reduces people to objects.

Their life Zoe but the nation state designates its citizens as subjects by us political this is where the two concepts become confused and combined with the onset of biology bias and Zoe are combined.

Bias and Zoe, subject and object so in the modern nation-state the subject is defined as an object within the system a biological object.

Bear life with political rights.

Zoe with the rights of bias.

This is the paradoxical nature of the position the nation only being a manifestation of all of its parts sees itself in terms of this paradox as well.

Their life with political rights it conceives of itself as made of the bodies of its citizens it defines itself by its population rather than territory, suddenly the state has a huge stake in the physical life of its constituents it’s very identity is the bear life of its citizens.

It’s bear life it is now responsible for the health of its citizens this is biopolitics, political control over bear life which necessarily means the political control of death.

Frontal politics biology designates the other two the introduction of the norm it also sanctions the killing of the other as it reduces people to bear life with the state given right of bias political.

Life so just like Homer Sakura if you remove the citizenship of an individual or if they in fact have no citizenship, they’re only bare life and therefore can be killed without committing a crime.

This is why in Nazi Germany it was of absolute importance for the Jews to be stripped of citizenship before they could be killed the state defined by the bare life that constitutes it sought to purge the abnormal from its body biology gives democratic states.

The opportunity to create a homo sacer position within us if the abnormal the excluded part which is still included in the system is expelled it can be placed outside the law the device used by States to expel people to reduce them to bare life is the state of exception prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

We’re in a state of exception refugees and asylum seekers are often in this state of exception this is commonly employed in such instances as denial of voting rights to prisoners the enforced life support of coma patients and the death penalty.

The concentration camps syndrome modern history in Germany South Africa America and many other states are physical places which exist in a state of exception, the state of exception is simply constituted when the sovereign acts beyond the law the government sees the whole modern nation-state as in a permanent state of exception.

Rather that the implementation of the state of exception is a normal thing that modern states do this means a citizens political life.

His bias the only thing that protects him from being killed, exploited are denied a refuge is only given with the understanding that it can be removed.

If he is placed in a state of exception so essentially, all your rights can be taken away.

You do not have the right to have rights you are merely allowed to have rights, because biology makes the state focus on itself and its citizens as bare life then if you happen to suddenly be perceived as a threat to its bare life.

Even if you are a citizen your expulsion abuse our execution can be legalized and justified as modern democracy has this inherent totalitarian control over life and death.

It is a totalitarian system a camp rarely as extreme or as brazen as Nazi Germany but fully capable of becoming so it is in this way that the modern democratic nation-state supposed to deliver equal rights to man as in the foundation of its design the ability to deprive those very rights for a Gambon the power to become a totalitarian state makes you a totalitarian state.

I recently saw the Film by Bresson “Au Hasard Balthazar” and Agambens book came to mind. The film is about a donkey which we see the life of bios from a zoe view basically. But it turns out that in this society people are living a life with no political intentions and throughout people are mistreated by each other because they are all equals and reduced to zoe. Its barbarism basically. What they do to the donkey they do on each other. But they do not kill the donkey because of his nature the donkey becomes kind of not sacraficable but killable without punishment. In the last scene the donkey dies in a field of sheep which they leave the corpse and in death he is excluded from the middle of the sheep. Is it possible that Bresson foretook Agambens work 1966? Or am I overinterpreting things?

As I understand it, “bios” means qualified life. Bios politkos means political life. Homo sacer is situated “in between” – a site which is the zone of indistinction and between bios _ and zoe. I have not read anything from Agamben which defined the function of homo sacer and the space this individual occupies as “releasing pressure” like the space in the puzzle does and don’t really feel this is the point of Homo Sacer as a text. I also think that he did not mean biology is totalitarianism as you have stated.

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Negara dan Produksi Manusia Telanjang: Membaca HAM melalui Giorgio Agamben

Bagaimana dan prasyarat apa saja yang menjadi garis batas antara satu negara dapat disebut sebagai demokratis atau otoritarianisme?

Lalu apa akibat dari pergeseran batas tersebut?

Kemudian dan barangkali yang paling penting, apa arti “manusia” beserta sederet hak-haknya dalam kewajibanya untuk dilindungi oleh negara? Pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut adalah pertanyaan yang menghantui kehidupan manusia modern dalam kaitanya dengan hubungan rakyat vis a vis negara. Karena yang dipertanyakan adalah syarat dasar negara, maka mau tidak mau kedaulatan juga dipertanyakan pula disini.

Kepada siapa dan bagaimana negara menegaskan kedaulatanya. Permasalahan tersebut akan kita coba untuk baca melalui perspektif Giorgio Agamben, seorang filsuf Italia.

Kenapa Agamben? Pembacaan Agamben menawarkan analisa khusus terhadap dua hal;

1. Kedudukan negara demokratis-modern dan
2. Bagaimana ia bereaksi terhadap hak asasi manusia.

Dua hal penting dalam pembicaraan mengenai HAM terutama belakangan ini.

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Paradoks Negara Hukum dan Hak Asasi Manusia

Hak Asasi Manusia, dalam artianya baik secara yuridis maupun sosiologis, tidak dapat
dipisahkan dari satu hal, yaitu kedaulatan. Meskipun dikatakan bahwa hak asasi tersebut bersifat inheren atau melekat pada manusia itu sendiri, namun pada kenyataanya, pernyataan tersebut tidak dapat menjelaskan “hak untuk memiliki hak” yang baik dalam konteks tanggung jawab dari implementasinya, sedikit banyak menggantungkan dirinya pada kedaulatan negara.

Disini kemudian akan nampak, bagaimana kedaulatan menunjukkan wajahnya yang mendua; disatu sisi, negara memiliki kewajiban penuh untuk menjamin hak-hak sementara disisi lain, atas nama penjagaan hak tersebut, ia juga berhak dan melegitimasi dirinya sebagai leviathan, entah baik dengan atau tanpa instrumen yuridis merampas hak. Inilah yang dikatakan oleh Agamben, bahwa kedaulatan dalam waktu yang bersamaan adalah diluar sekaligus didalam kerangka yuridis.

Dua wajah kedaulatan tersebut hanya dapat dilihat dari situasi-batasnya, situasi dimana atas nama keadaan genting yang memaksa, peraturan maupun konstitusi dapat dikesampingkan dalam diskresi penuh pemegang kedaulatan, inilah yang disebut oleh Schmitt sebagai state of exception.

Melalui state of exception, aturan perundangan, konstitusi, semua tertunda dalam
kewenangan penuh seorang yang menegaskan dirinya, sebagaimana dikatakan Schmitt yangsekaligus titik berangkat dari Agamben, Souvereignity is one who decide state of exception.

Biopolitik adalah sebuah konsep yang terdapat pada banyak dimensi ilmu sosial, termasuk pada studi pembangunan. Konsep ini dikembangkan secara lebih luas oleh Giorgio Agamben, seorang filsuf Italia yang percaya bahwa biopolitik merupakan unsur intrinsik dalam analisa mengenai kedaulatan (sovereignty) dan peran yang dimilikinya dalam mengatur apa yang mengkonstitusikan sebuah keadaan pengecualian (state of exception).

Kedaulatan, menurut Agamben, merupakan sebuah perusahaan biopolitik yang mengontrol disiplin-disiplin di mana kekuatan kedaulatan dapat menegakkan dominasinya melalui hukum yang berlaku.

Kondisi ini memungkinkan terciptanya keadaan pengecualian di mana hukum tidak dapat dijalankan yang memungkinkan kekuatan kedaulatan untuk menegakkan perannya dengan cara yang paling kejam, termasuk membunuh semua yang ingin dieliminasi tanpa melanggar hukum yang berlaku. Keadaan pengecualian ini digambarkan Agamben sebagai ―bare life

Di mana kehidupan masyarakat direduksi serendah mungkin sehingga mereka –yang disebut Homo Sacer oleh Agamben— berada dalam impunitas dan hak-hak yang dimilikinya hilang. Bahkan mereka dapat disiksa dan dibunuh tanpa melanggar hukum.

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