Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power And Bare Life

Giorgio Agamben, whom furthers Foucault’s notion in his book Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998). Thus, focusing specifically on Sovereign Power; the shift of Bio-Power to Bio-Politics through the Western Law. In his provocative study, he brings his main attention to the concept of bio-politics by Foucault in the first volume of The History of Sexuality (1976) and argues the relationship between sovereign power and naked human existence to what Agamben refers to as the ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998: 1). Thus, for Agamben, stigmatisation is a natural occurrence and this nature activity is consistent with Agamben’s metaphor of a ‘wolf-man’ experience. He argues that some individuals simply do not fit into society, such as obese individuals

Agamben exemplifies the term homo sacer to be ‘the sacred man who is one that has already been judged by the people’ (Agamben, 1998: 31). Therefore, this interlinks with Goffman’s theory of ‘the spoilt identity’ as he states, ‘this discrepancy, when known or apparent, spoils his social identity’ (Goffman, 1963: 19). Consequently, this is when obese individuals face discrimination within their community for not ‘fitting in’ although Goffman insists that others should look beyond the normative expectations that is applied on one another in conversations and group interactions. Agamben offers an insight into the control that the sovereign power hold as ‘in modern bio-politics, the sovereign is he who decides on the value or lack of value of the life as such’ (Agamben, 2002: 149). Thus, taking his cue from Foucault’s notion of bio-power and bio-politics, Agamben introduces one of the most important new concepts in contemporary theory is the notion of ‘the homo sacer’ which is one whom is outside and beyond divine and human law. It is suggest that for Agamben, the ‘homo sacer is someone who, paradoxically, anyone may kill without being guilty of murder, but who, because he is sacred, may not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony’ (Birman, 2012: 8). Consequently, if an individual loses their citizenship status, all rights that were provided for them are not available. Obese individuals certainly fit into this category, once someone puts on a specific weight, society see’s one as a threat and does anything into its power to illuminate these individuals. For Agamben, it is ‘within the sovereign’s power, to the extent that he decides on the state of exception’ (Agamben, 2002: 149). Therefore, the homo sacer is the notion of the ‘banned man’ who can be killed with impunity by all and becomes