A colonial reading of Agamben’s ‘Homo Sacer’

Abstract

The aim of this work is to read Agamben’s political work through in the context of European colonialism. Although Agamben does not explore the colonial context in his development of a biopolitical discourse, it may be claimed that the colonial context cannot be ignored by anyone who wants to truly explore and understand the concepts that are developed by Agamben. The endeavour of this thesis is to utilise Agamben’s political philosophy and colonial studies in a mutually progressive manner.

The central claim of this dissertation is that by reading Agamben through colonial studies Agamben’s work can be read as a more complete and critical work to explain the political phenomena of the modern period; and simultaneously by interpreting colonial readings through an Agambenian perspective, a new light is shed on the manner that colonialism functioned and produced the political paradigms that are still in effect in the contemporary state of affairs. Although the latter part of the twentieth century resulted in the process of decolonisation one can still experience remnants of this historical process like the Palestinian occupied territories or the unique status of the Indian reservations within the US borders. This dissertation also argues that the biopolitical mechanisms produced by the colonial powers are still at play in current political crises like the War on Terror or the Refugee crisis resulting from the Syrian civil war of 2011 onwards. Although Agamben claims that the camp is the biopolitical paradigm of the modern, this study attempts to argue that although this claim is true it also needs to be further qualified in colonial terms. Therefore the last chapter of this study claims that the camp is the dominating paradigm of modern politics but that the camp should be read as a colonial product and mechanism, thus inferring that colonialism functioned like a large scale concentration camp and that the mechanism of the concentration camp was created and designed by colonial authorities.

The main focus of this dissertation revolved around Agamben’s Homo Sacer project that comprises a number of works but the main sources for this study is based around his published works, Homo Sacer (1995), Remnants of Auschwitz (1999) and The State of Exception (2005). In supporting the claims of this research other works were also taken into consideration and utilised as source material.