{"title":"告别圣人?阿甘本的冠状病毒评论中的君主权力与裸生","authors":"Sergei Prozorov","doi":"10.1007/s10978-021-09314-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The article addresses Giorgio Agamben's critical commentary on the global governance of the Covid-19 pandemic as a paradigm of his political thought. While Agamben's comments have been criticized as exaggerated and conspiratorial, they arise from the conceptual constellation that he has developed starting from the first volume of his <i>Homo Sacer</i> series. At the centre of this constellation is the relation between the concepts of sovereign power and bare life, whose articulation in the figure of <i>homo sacer</i> Agamben traces from the Antiquity to the present. We shall demonstrate that any such articulation is impossible due to the belonging of these concepts to different planes, respectively empirical and transcendental, which Agamben brings together in a problematic fashion. His account of the sovereign state of exception collapses a plurality of empirical states of exception into a zone of indistinction between different exceptional states and the normal state and then elevates this very indistinction to the transcendental condition of intelligibility of politics as such. Conversely, the notion of bare life, originally posited as the transcendental condition of possibility of positive forms of life, is recast as an empirical figure, whose sole form is the absence of form. We conclude that this problematic articulation should be abandoned for a theory that rather highlights the non-relation between sovereign power and bare life, which conditions the possibility of resistance and transformation that remains obscure in Agamben's thought.</p>","PeriodicalId":44360,"journal":{"name":"LAW AND CRITIQUE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8625667/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"A Farewell to Homo Sacer? Sovereign Power and Bare Life in Agamben's Coronavirus Commentary.\",\"authors\":\"Sergei Prozorov\",\"doi\":\"10.1007/s10978-021-09314-x\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<p><p>The article addresses Giorgio Agamben's critical commentary on the global governance of the Covid-19 pandemic as a paradigm of his political thought. While Agamben's comments have been criticized as exaggerated and conspiratorial, they arise from the conceptual constellation that he has developed starting from the first volume of his <i>Homo Sacer</i> series. At the centre of this constellation is the relation between the concepts of sovereign power and bare life, whose articulation in the figure of <i>homo sacer</i> Agamben traces from the Antiquity to the present. We shall demonstrate that any such articulation is impossible due to the belonging of these concepts to different planes, respectively empirical and transcendental, which Agamben brings together in a problematic fashion. His account of the sovereign state of exception collapses a plurality of empirical states of exception into a zone of indistinction between different exceptional states and the normal state and then elevates this very indistinction to the transcendental condition of intelligibility of politics as such. Conversely, the notion of bare life, originally posited as the transcendental condition of possibility of positive forms of life, is recast as an empirical figure, whose sole form is the absence of form. We conclude that this problematic articulation should be abandoned for a theory that rather highlights the non-relation between sovereign power and bare life, which conditions the possibility of resistance and transformation that remains obscure in Agamben's thought.</p>\",\"PeriodicalId\":44360,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"LAW AND CRITIQUE\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.8000,\"publicationDate\":\"2023-01-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8625667/pdf/\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"LAW AND CRITIQUE\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09314-x\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"2021/11/26 0:00:00\",\"PubModel\":\"Epub\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"LAW\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"LAW AND CRITIQUE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09314-x","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2021/11/26 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
A Farewell to Homo Sacer? Sovereign Power and Bare Life in Agamben's Coronavirus Commentary.
The article addresses Giorgio Agamben's critical commentary on the global governance of the Covid-19 pandemic as a paradigm of his political thought. While Agamben's comments have been criticized as exaggerated and conspiratorial, they arise from the conceptual constellation that he has developed starting from the first volume of his Homo Sacer series. At the centre of this constellation is the relation between the concepts of sovereign power and bare life, whose articulation in the figure of homo sacer Agamben traces from the Antiquity to the present. We shall demonstrate that any such articulation is impossible due to the belonging of these concepts to different planes, respectively empirical and transcendental, which Agamben brings together in a problematic fashion. His account of the sovereign state of exception collapses a plurality of empirical states of exception into a zone of indistinction between different exceptional states and the normal state and then elevates this very indistinction to the transcendental condition of intelligibility of politics as such. Conversely, the notion of bare life, originally posited as the transcendental condition of possibility of positive forms of life, is recast as an empirical figure, whose sole form is the absence of form. We conclude that this problematic articulation should be abandoned for a theory that rather highlights the non-relation between sovereign power and bare life, which conditions the possibility of resistance and transformation that remains obscure in Agamben's thought.
期刊介绍:
Law and Critique is the prime international critical legal theory journal. It has been published for 20 years and is associated with the Critical Legal Conference. Law and Critique covers all aspects of legal theory, jurisprudence and substantive law that are approached from a critical perspective. Law and Critique has introduced into legal scholarship a variety of schools of thought, such as postmodernism; feminism; queer theory; critical race theory; literary approaches to law; psychoanalysis; law and the humanities; law and aesthetics and post-colonialism. Postmodern jurisprudence, law and aesthetics and law and psychoanalysis were pioneered in Law and Critique which remains the most authoritative international source for these schools of thought. Law and Critique is keen to translate and incorporate non-English critical legal thought. More specifically, Law and Critique encourages the submission of articles in the areas of critical legal theory and history, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, law and post-colonialism; postmodern jurisprudence, law and aesthetics; legal phenomenology; and law and autopoiesis. Past special issues include: ''Critical Legal Education''; ''The Gender of Law''; ''Law and Postmodernism''; ''Law and Literature''; ''Law and Post-colonialism'', ''Law and Theatre''; ''Jean-Luc Nancy and Law''; ''Agamben and Law''. Law and Critique is ranked amongst the top 20 per cent of law journals by the Australian Research Council.