State of exception and bare life : A brief analysis of the processes of social inclusion and exclusion in modernity

Abstract

The philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmitt invites us to review the concept of sovereignty, from the crisis of the existing political-juridical models and the failure of liberal normativism.  According to Agamben, the current system, based on a pre-oriented administration of fear, aims at eliminating those somehow non-adapted, as well as to join a defence towards a new political ontology beyond the tradition of sovereignty and law. In this context, emerges the protagonist of Agamben`s work, the bare life, permanently subject to death and founded on an inclusive exclusion relation. The state of exception links life and law, violence and norm: the force-of law exercised in the state of exception conserves the law through its suspension and posits it through the exception. According to Agamben,  the exception produces a zone of indistinction, a place where factum and ius are brought into conjunction, in a space where traditional political categories loses clearness and intelligibility. It is worth noting  that in the schmittian conception, the liberal argument, which seeks "pure decisions" [derived logically from the law] as the foundation for any and all legal and judicial acts demonstrate the failure of liberal normativism, because, in the author's view, the "enigma" of legal indeterminacy  [the fact that general legal norms are unable to reveal a precise sense at the time of its incidence in a concrete case] would provide the arguments capable of recognizing the illusionary nature of the liberal state, which is based only on the criterion of "compliance with the law" as grounds for a judicial decision. From these considerations, it is proposed to discuss the existence of a continuous state of emergency, according to Agamben's argument, as well as the guidelines proposed by Carl Schmitt in the critique of liberal legal discourse and its legal / judicial formalism.