The collective name is Romani, not Roma, as you use the term in the context of these writings?
My mistake. I apologize for using it incorrectly. Should have looked it up first.
Not to worry about that mistake.
I don’t think I understand what you mean in the first bit. What do you mean when you say bios and bare life “loses a lot of the original import”? Can you expound on that?
The first part was as opposed to the origins of the term in ancient Roman Law as per the title of the Book cited in the OP. As for the remainder, I’m in complete agreement with what you observe. A subtle difference might be in what used to be a criticism some other movements in Christianity, and might still be, i.e. “stealing God”. Grabbing the harvest of men without concern for whose land the harvest is on…and doing so with tools that are respectful of neither land nor man, but only those which seek maximizing of effects and tight controlling of people irrespective of the damage done to the local environment. To be meta analytical of my own statement, to draw that “fine line” involves retreat into the heart of the people’s own way of understanding, their and own cherished language, symbols, signs, and other inviolable means of communication. It has literally become the science of persuasion and control vs. God’s living word, Jesus. So yes, politics, as you summarize, and its employee, the science of technocracy.I don’t think I understand what you mean in the first bit. What do you mean when you say bios and bare life “loses a lot of the original import”? Can you expound on that?
I think you’re on to something interesting though. There seems to be an innate difficulty in battling against bare life because the methods that people use to fight against oppression are often complicit (or can be made complicit) in creating new kinds of oppression in turn. It actually baffles me that so many feminists are pro-choice considering that their major concern is with protecting women from what they see as damaging institutional structures, and yet they don’t see any need to protect the unborn from those very same structures.
I wonder though if even a predominantly Catholic social movement could avoid walking that same thin line in political terms. That’s not to say that the Church can’t avoid it (she can (perhaps only she can)), but that any political change (even that incited by Catholics or by a predominantly Catholic social movement) is always made via politics and is therefore prone to being reoriented by the sovereign against the very people who set it in motion in the first place. (Does that make any sense?) I’m not sure if that’s true or not but it’s a question at any rate.
I realise I’m a couple of years behind on this conversation but this question of the applicability of Agamben’s thinking on bare life, etc, to abortion is something I’ve been pondering on and off the last couple of years in relation to research that I’m doing for a PhD. I’m not trained in philosophy so it’s difficult for me to get my head around and I’m just wondering if anyone here knows of any good Catholic or at least pro-life responses to Agamben’s work? Or any resources that might better help me understand where he is coming from? Your brief conversation here has been immensely helpful already and has confirmed what my gut feeling was re. Agamben. He just doesn’t go far enough and make that final leap regarding the inviolability of all human life, and so that leaves us to fill in the gaps he’s refused or neglected to fill in. Any further thoughts or insights would be welcomed!I’m not sure if you’re still there since you posted all the way back in 2011, but I just finished reading Homo Sacer and I think what you’ve pointed out is interesting.
I’ve only read this once so I may be mistaken or not rigorous enough in my understanding, but I get the initial impression that while Agamben definitely sees human suffering as a problem (the Holocaust, for example), he’s hesitant to say outright that human life is inviolable. The reason for this seems to be that he sees the respective definitions of life and death as primarily political questions. Initially that sounds really strange (and maybe relativistic), but for Agamben, there is a sort of paradox that comes up when we try to assert the sacredness of life because it gives the sovereign (whomever that might be) a platform for defining what life means, when it begins and ends, etc. By saying, for example, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” we give the sovereign power grounds for making a decision concerning life. How can they make laws preserving our right to life without first defining what life is? So now the “definition” of life is in the hands of the sovereign (which, in general, is bad news and leads to the creation of bare life).
To oversimplify a good bit, I understand bare life as the slash that separates zoe/bios. It is life that is thought of as neither human (in the political or bios sense) nor animal, but something in between; it is life that cannot be sacrificed (or sentenced to the death penalty), but can be killed without the charge of homicide. The Jewish and Roma people during the Holocaust are an obvious example. But its easy to see how this could apply to eugenics and abortion as well. In my opinion the whole question of fetal viability is about whether a fetus is bios or mere zoe. The fact of the matter is that we don’t hold zoe to be inviolable at all. We step on bugs, eat cows, chickens, and fish, cut down trees, etc. Conversely, it seems obvious to everyone that bios is inviolable. But again, bios is basically a political category. People who have clear political value are considered bios, but the unborn, the mentally handicapped, the disabled, the poor, the racially Other, etc. are not so obviously valuable and may even appear dangerous or harmful from a political perspective. They fall somewhere between zoe and bios. This between area (at least from my understanding of Agamben) constitutes bare life.
I think the difficulty Agamben points out (but perhaps doesn’t offer a solution to in Homo Sacer) is that every attempt to prevent bare life by asserting the sacredness of life ultimately places the decision on life in the hands of the sovereign who will inevitably “define” it in the way that most benefits the nation-state (which often turns out to be pro-eugenics and pro-abortion for obvious reasons). Bleak stuff.
I get strange (frustrating) vibes from Agamben because I know he hates bare life and human suffering and wants people to be undivided, but he also never wants to say outright that eugenics is objectively wrong. I find him amazingly useful though. For rhetorical reasons I think it’s important for Catholics to provide a non-religious argument against euthanasia and abortion and I think zoe, bios, and bare life are a good vocabulary for talking about these issues.
If you’re still there, DL82, or if anyone out there would like to chime in I’d be excited to hear what other people have to say about this.
Cheers,
Preston
I might add that my research is in a discipline that is radically left-wing, progressive and feminist (the joys!) and I want to make an intelligent argument against abortion, which possibly means I will never actually get a job in my chosen field, but them’s the breaks. Battling the culture of death in academia is no easy task but one that urgently needs to be taken up I think. Young people are being completely indoctrinated in universities and they don’t even have a clue.
Thanks for your reply, I wasn’t sure whether this thread was still active. My field is Latin American Studies but my PhD is on cinema and is very interdisciplinary, it touches a lot on philosophy and psychology in particular. A total mixed bag. What area of English are you in? My BA was in English and Spanish and sometimes I wish I had gone more down the English route for my postgraduate work, but then cinema does cross over quite a bit into that area. Are you based in the U.S.? If so you might have more opportunities in a Catholic university… I’m in Ireland and it’s completely secular now unless you are working in Theology, but that area has its own problems, of course.