Presentation: Homo Sacer: Introduction and Part 3

Suzanne Becker
LITCS 114
Bldg. 494, room 160B
9 February 2016

Timeline

1679
Writ of habeus corpus: right for imprisoned body to stand trial to petition freedom seen as foundation of modern democracy, according to Agamben: makes bare life the new political subject.
1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man: bare life became the source and bearer of rights. The citizen is part of the state, which preserves rights.
1914–1918
First World War: unrest, increase of denationalized, denationalization processes. Birth-state link disrupted.
1920
Authorization for the Annihilation of Life Unworthy of Being Lived published by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche. Represented the first juridical articulation of the fundamental biopolitical structure of modernity according to Agamben.
1933
Nazi eugenics program, already active elsewhere, including US (and especially California).
1942
National Socialists description of population as living wealth.

The Camp