Explain what Agamben Means by homo sacer and explain his thesis that [i]n Western Politics,
bare life has had the privilege of being that whose exclusion founds the city of men (p.7)
In Homo Sacer Giorgio Agamben traverses the history of Western politics, engaging with its
ancient roots as well as modern democratic and totalitarian states. Perhaps the central claim of
the text is that bare life has had the privilege of being that whose exclusion founds the city of
men (Agamben, 7). The term bare life for Agamben is connected to the ancient Greek word zoe
which refers to the simple fact of living common to all living things (animals, men, or gods)
(Agamben, 1). Zoe is the simply unqualified life, which for the Greeks was distinct from the
meaning of the word bios. Bios referred to the form or way of living proper to an individual or
group (Agamben, 1). Bios signifies a qualified life, and as Agamben points out, is the form of
life referred to when the Greeks speak of political life. Zoe is largely absent from political
discourse and this is most apparent in Aristotles Politics.
For Agamben the stage of Western politics was set in Aristotles claim that one is born
with regard to life [zoe], but existing essentially with regard to the good life [bios] (Agamben,
2). This passage represents the way in which zoe immediately gives way to bios in political life
and politics in general. Zoe then is included in politics by way of its exclusion (7). In this sense
politics only takes place when, as an individual or a group, a particular way of life (bios) is
decided upon or pursued and bare life (zoe) is superseded. Agamben wants to think through what
this supersession or exclusion (with respect to zoe or bare life) has meant and still means for
Western politics.
Agamben sees the distinction between zoe and bios, bare life and political life as present
in modern politics and sees this at work in the meaning of the common word people. The word
people, for most modern European languages contains a double meaning, he writes as if what
we call people were in reality not a unitary subject but a dialectical oscillation between two
opposite poles: on the one hand, the set of the People as a whole political body, and on the other,
the subset of people as a fragmentary multiplicity of needy and excluded bodies (Agamben,
177). The former is synonymous with bare life and the former with political life (177). For
Agamben modern politics (whether capitalist, socialist, right or left) is seeking to overcome this
distinction but fails. Whether it is the Naziss attempt to eliminate the Jews (which were
transformed into bare life) or todays democratico-capitalist project of eliminating the poor
classes through development reproduces within itself the people that [are] excluded and also
transform the entire population of the Third World into bare life (Agamben, 180). For Agamben
this distinction will only be overcome in a politics that takes seriously this divide and seeks to
make people and People, bare life and political life and zoe and bios coincide.
