‘Bare Life’ and Judith Butler’s Misinterpretations:A Critical Review of Butler’s Intervention and a Comparative Study on Diaspora’s Identity

Abstract

Giorgio Agamben’s ideas of sovereign power and ‘Homo Sacer’ received a lot of criticism because the decline of nation-states due to globalization tends to be equated with the weakening of sovereignty. Especially, Judith Butler argues that the process of removing the heterogeneity within the citizens to invent those who are the foundation of the nation-state cannot be explained by the operation of sovereign power and the mass production of ‘bare lives’ presented by Agamben. Butler explains the ‘statelessness’ in the sense that the situation of global violence is out of territorial conditions, and also highlights the ‘statelessness’ to deconstruct the basis of the nation-state and explore the possibility of resisting it. According to her, given the diaspora produced across territories and the operation of power, this violent exclusion today is caused by neoliberal governmentality, not sovereign power. And it is necessary to see power working in many ways to materialize the diaspora and resist state violence. For Butler, the concept of diaspora is presented as a resistance practice and ethical request of the dispossessed. However, this thesis aims to reveal that Butler’s criticism against ‘bare life’ is misread. Butler’s misinterpretation arises from the difference in perspective of Agamben, who reads Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt. If sovereignty is an anachronism to Butler, the original form of sovereignty is biopolitics to Agamben. In addition, Butler considers Arendt distinguishing between the public and private realms and maintaining a discriminatory perspective on the private, whereas Agamben reads that Arendt paid attention to the modern reality in which this public/private distinction is collapsing. Unlike Butler’s criticism, ‘bare life’ does not exist outside of the polity or power. Even if the citizen belong to the nation state, there is the potential for them to become a “bare life,” or diaspora at any time, which reveals the possibility of rethinking the identity of the diaspora.