Agamben's State Of Exception: An Analysis

David Grossman’s book, writing in dark holds so many views on our current way of life as human. Primarily he focuses on fear of the other, the state of exception and it’s transition into the norm and the poor use of language. He uses a situation dear to him, the Israel and Palestine conflict, to flush out these points. In this essay I am going to focus on Giorgio Agamben and his understanding of the state of exception and Robert Esposito and his understanding or immunity and autoimmune attack and. The essay will explore how we get into the state of exception according to Agamben and why we cannot return to the state of law, it will also help further explain issues like over immunization that lead to an autoimmune attack that hence also trigger

Agamben argues that this is exactly the problem as the sovereign can call a state of exception any time he or she wants. He also speaks on how once triggered, it is hard to return to the state of law. The state of exception becomes the law. David Grossman said, “The more complex and contradictory the situation becomes and the more the society has to compromise in order to contain all its disparities, the more it creates s different system for itself, an ad hoc system of norms, of “emergency values,” keeping double books of its identity.” 22-23. This also refers to the fact that the state of exception (of war and violence) transforms into the norm. He explains in his book that those in Israel are getting used to the violence, and now accepting it as a way of

Esposito claims that protection, is necessary and so immunization. But for him too much of it causes an autoimmune attack. Grossman also talks about this, he said, “Furthermore, I came to grasp the high price we were paying for willingly giving up on parts of our soul- a price no less painful than giving up land. I knew that that we were not killing only the Palestinians, and I asked why we were continuing to accept not just the murder, but the suicide too.”25-26. Identifying yourself as a particular person and then seeing someone else as an ‘other’ is not wrong but treating them less or attributing certain negative characters to them because they are an other is where the problem starts. Over time the fear of what the other can do or will do is something that has trigged the declaration of the state of exception. Esposito explains that providing security for one’s self is not a bad thing but when done excessively can cause for the person protecting himself to harm himself in the process. In order to save someone from any disease, one must first give him a controlled portion of the disease. Hence this means protection and the negation of life go hand in hand. Also Grossman said, “Better not to feel too much until the crisis ends- and if it never ends, at least we’ll have suffered a little less, developed a useful