Homo sacer is the sovereign’s power to choose who lives and who dies, and therefore, those who die can be killed by anyone without being a religious sacrifice back in Ancient Greek society. Normally, those who live in the “camp” and those who are bare life, will die resulting in genocide because the government sees and feels that certain people are useless in society. For example, in Ancient Greek society, women and children had no political affiliation, and this was because of the government’s ability to control how society should be. Homo sacer is achieved by an increase in biopower, and that usually happens through the government’s ability to enact policy, In particular, this book will assist our project the most because it is first-hand information written by the philosopher himself.
This book is also the most reliable for our research because understanding the whole philosophy through the actual philosopher‘s works is the most trustworthy. Even though there are many authors that work along Agamben’s works and beliefs, only Agamben himself can be most respected. Not only is the source the most reliable and trustworthy, the content to Agamben’s book is the foundation of all of our other sources which makes this source crucial to our project. Giorgio Agamben was a key philosopher and political theorist during his times and came up with many conclusions about governmental actions based off of his research. He engaged with other extravagant philosophers during his research including Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Aristotle, and Sigmund Freud. These philosophers provided much of his information and allowed him to conduct the majority of the work he has produced.
Most of his works were with the ideology, homo sacer, sovereign power, and bare life, and decided to write a book about it as a response to biopower/biopolitics, Aside from just the information, this source is very credible because it is from the European Graduate School, which is where Agamben attended. It gives a brief biography on who is Agamben and a small summary of his conclusions about biopower. Apart from controversial opinions on the government, this information was extremely important, specifically to help understand the background knowledge about Agamben himself. The article also gives an agreeable introduction to our project and our analysis ongambenr. In a project of someone’s philosophy, my partner and I must be able to share a common ground with that person before we can understand and comprehend his works.
Biopower can be summed up to be about the modern states and their control over a mass population as well as their practices to regulate subjects. This means that the sovereign, or modern states, can control who lives and dies in society, and that is also known as sovereignty. In fact, this system is being used in our current government today. For example, to justify more violence, The United States has used drone strikes to scrutinize against a certain group. It excludes the other group which does not fall under the sovereign’s group. As a result, more racism is produced, and before you know it, the government will use its biopower to kill more people, Another example in the current government is the form of health, the government chooses who to help and keep healthy and who not to. They do this by trying to cover up the root cause by blaming it on controversial issues such as different political opinions By getting rid of this exclusion, you must get rid of the justification for it, which is racis.
The source seems credible because it gives specific examples from Foucault’s book and establishes a foundation that Agamben works off of. There are specific quotes from his book which would justify the author’s knowledge on a topic as such, Foucault and his similar theory is relevant to our research because biopower is a large part of the foundation to Agamben‘s philosophy, and without knowing what biopower is, you cannot know who Agamben is, what his work is about, and how both philosophers’ works intertwine. Similarly stated in a previous article, Bruno Guilli is also a philosopher that has similar works to Agamben. However, Guilli focuses more on what the sovereign does and has done in the past He goes on to describe the sovereign as a killing war machine, and because they can exploit fundamental flaws in the legal system, the outcome and impact is a continuation of a global biopolitical wart.
The state continues to terrorize those who do not meet under race, gender, and class, Guilli makes it explicit that those who do understand the sovereign’s discourse (what the sovereign is saying) must revolt against it because that is the only way to solve this global biopolitical war, Unlike most of our research, this web source is tremendously vital to our project because Guilli focuses specifically on the outcome of the sovereign’s ability to do what they do This source ties in with our micropolitical change article because Guilli says that if we understand what the sovereign is doing, then we must revolt against it Also, because Guilli is as popular as Agamben, Schmitt, and Foucault, his ideologies are just as reliable and trustworthy. “Micropolitics” Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopiedia Britannica Online Encyclopedia.
The issues that Agamben has brought up by state sovereignty can only be solved one way: the enforcement of micropolitjcs. Micropolitics is the system of power working from the bottom up and to have the people assert agency towards the state opposed to macropolitics, which is the current system of government 7 power flow from top to bottom. A micropolitical system solves best because any alternative will result in the same harms that Agamben addresses What that means is that if you enact any type of policy to fix the legal system, it is still the state power being used in order to do so, and therefore, no political enforcement can ever solve racism. This is because if we still allow macropolitics to continue, then biopower will still be high and by engaging in micropolitics, people can get rid of the justification for more biopoweri The article seems very credible because it is from a professional encyclopedia, Britannica.
Also, the author of this article, Matthew Scherer, is an assistant professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University and also wrote the book Beyond Church and State, The article is from 2015 which makes it more reliable because it is up to date, and proves that micropolitical change is possible in the status quo. This addressment should be seen as a micropolitical change because a project about how the government acts is only an example of society can change, Like stated before, declaring people homo sacer through the use of biopower can result in genocide, Excluding many other groups not associated with the sovereign means that the government will use its biopower to kill millions of people. Those who are politically recognized are those under the same group as the sovereign, and as a result, these people do not die and that gap is shrinking right now, Agamben explains how the sovereign treats society as the “camp”.
The camp consists of those who are bare life, people who will never be able to speak their voice, making the probability of genocide even greater. The source is very credible because the author, Andrew Roberson, has done a couple articles on Agamben and has researched about him as well. On the other hand, the article is from 2011, but that should not matter because Agamben’s viewpoints on sovereignty did not change throughout the years. If anything, the continuous political actions of the sovereign are becoming a stronger mask to society. This means that circumvention of a political action is inevitable because the government will use these actions to convince people that such actions are for the better of society, when in the end, it is just another way for the government to have more power and result in more racism. Overall, this article is a crucial asset in order for our project to be successful.
