We discussed section 2 of Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Among the themes of our discussion were:

The differences between simple biological life and politically qualified life, as it exists in a contradictory relation in the case of homo sacer, as that which is excluded from both the sacred and the profane and yet still included by way of exclusion in the law.

Contemporary applications of these concepts to efforts made to manage the coronavirus pandemic; in particular, mask mandates and the debates over lockdowns; affinities between these in their basic assumptions about life.

The importance of the act of killing as the sovereign act; how this act joins the sovereign and the homo sacer in the realization of the first “properly political space of the west” as distinct from earlier secular and religious spheres of life.

The question of an “exit” from this situation; as a first step to this answer, the centrality of investigation and critique of the foundational categories of the west (sovereign power/bare life).

–Tony Iantosca

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