1 - Religious and Political Implications of the Homo Sacer Project

Summary

THE FICTION OF SOVEREIGNTY

One of the central observations of the Homo Sacer series concerns the inherently fictional nature of sovereignty. Though sovereign power is certainly prominent in its articulation and is crucial to the historical legacies of both politics and religion, it is not entirely clear to most if (1) this fiction is a necessary illusion of some sort, if (2) it could or should be permanently eliminated from our world in order to escape all forms of oppression (the antinomian question of whether Agamben is trying to establish an argument for an existence opposed to normative order or law) or if (3) there is another way to live in relationship to sovereignty's seemingly ineradicable power. When you consider that the marginalised figure of the homo sacer – the ancient Roman person who may be killed but not sacrificed – is established only through its relation to sovereign power, as the first volume in the series makes clear, you likewise begin to contemplate ways to bring about an end to the creation of more homines sacri in our world.

In many ways, critical receptions of Agamben's Homo Sacer series, and exactly what it is that he suggests we do with regards to sovereignty, are somewhat divided on this matter. Therefore, some scholars are left to conjecture that it cannot be removed and others to suggest that Agamben harbours an ultimately antinomian sentiment within his work. In other words, if sovereignty cannot be done away with, perhaps any lingering hints of antinomianism are themselves utopian illusions and maybe purely nihilistic ones in the end. Or, if sovereignty can be done away with, perhaps antinomianism is a defensible philosophical position vis-à-vis the existence of all law. Or, taking up the stance that one should neither capitulate to sovereignty nor eradicate it, perhaps Agamben argues for another position. This almost elusive position, one that is certainly hard to articulate in concrete positive, political terms, appears at times as allowing for a necessary illusion, at other times as antinomian, and ultimately as advocating for an altogether new relationship to sovereign power. This will become manifest in the Homo Sacer series as the possibility of what I am calling another form of sovereignty that I want to address directly as a latent outcome of his elaborations on the form-oflife lived beyond the law.