The Politics of Caesura: Giorgio Agamben on Language and the Law

The concept of division or caesura is central to the political and legal philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. This paper examines the different ways in which Agamben characterises the law in terms of caesura, and the manner in which this analysis of law is grounded in his analyses of language. I argue that there are two forms of legal division to be found in Agamben’s political analyses. The first is the division that occurs when the legal system produces determinate identities, such as those of nation, and socio-economic status. However, this form of division is itself predicated upon the division that delimits the law as such, the caesura between political and bare life. The way that Agamben sets up both of these political problems is deeply indebted to his analyses of the ‘presuppositional structure’ of metaphysical language—the fracture between signification and its excess.

Particular Rights and Absolute Wrongs: Giorgio Agamben on Life and Politics

Over the past decade, as human rights discourses have increasingly served to legitimize state militarism, a growing number of thinkers have sought to engage critically with the human rights project and its anthropological foundations. Amongst these thinkers, Giorgio Agamben’s account of rights is possibly the most damning: human rights declarations, he argues, are biopolitical mechanisms that serve to inscribe life within the order of the nation state, and provide an earthly foundation for a sovereign power that is taking on a form redolent of the concentration camp. In this paper, I will examine Agamben’s account of human rights declarations, which he sees as central to the modern collapse of the distinction between life and politics that had typified classical politics. I will then turn to the critique of Agamben offered by Jacques Ranciere, who suggests that Agamben’s rejection of rights discourses is consequent to his adoption of Hannah Arendt’s belief that, in order to establish a realm of freedom, the political realm must be premised on the expulsion of natural life. In contrast to Ranciere, I will argue that far from sharing the position of those thinkers, like Arendt, who seek to respond to the modern erosion of the borders between politics and life by resurrecting earlier forms of separation, Agamben sees the collapse of this border as the condition of possibility of a new, non-juridical politics.

Rethinking Regime Politics

Many recent studies of “regime politics” argue that judicial review is ultimately used to promote the interests of the dominant governing regime. I explore this claim by evaluating whether the invalidation of federal laws by the US Supreme Court fits the empirical expectations of the regime politics approach. I find that the Court frequently invalidates statutes when (1) the ideology of the Court diverges from that of the sitting elected branches (suggesting that the Court does not fear sanctions or nonimplementation), and (2) the ideology of the sitting elected branches converges with that of the elected branches that enacted the statute (suggesting that the Court is defying the sitting elected branches). My findings suggest that the Court does not primarily use judicial review to promote the interests of the dominant governing regime.     

Agamben and Authenticity

The article argues that the contentious and complex concept of ‘authenticity’, which Agamben develops from Heidegger, forms a central continuity between Agamben’s earlier work, which focuses more on language and art, and his later work, which focuses more on politics. Moreover, I suggest that although this concept is often unquestioned and elided in his work, it plays a crucial role in the deep structures of his thought. Moreover, the ‘unthought concept’ of ‘authenticity’ is of concern because, while authenticity might possibly have a role to play in the sphere of how we come to understand and relate to artworks, there are reasons to be suspicious of this concept in the political realm if, indeed, these two ‘realms’ can be understood separately. If these two spheres cannot be clearly separated, as seems more likely, then it is even more important to explore and question the terms and cluster of concepts around ‘authenticity’.     

Agamben and Marx: Sovereignty, Governmentality, Economy

This essay reconsiders Marx’ prehistory of capital through the lens of the work of Giorgio Agamben, who in the wake of Foucault has proposed a bio-political theory of sovereignty that breaks down the analytical separation between sovereignty and governmentality that Foucault in his work tries to maintain. Although Agamben mentions Marx only once in his study of sovereign power, I argue that his study nevertheless contributes to our understanding of the capitalist relation as not only a governmental but also a sovereign power relation. In the first part of this essay, I show through a philological commentary on Marx’ use of the adjective ‘vogelfrei’—translated as free, rightless, without protection, outlawed—to characterise the proletariat, that the Marxian proletariat is a figure of what Agamben in his study of sovereign power calls bare life. In the second part of the essay, I show that this sovereign dimension of the capitalist relation is also substantiated by Marx’ analysis of the logic of the capitalist relation as that of the exception. After Carl Schmitt, who wrote that ‘sovereign is who decides on the state of exception’, Agamben has argued that the logic of the exception is the logic of sovereign power. Reconsidered through the lens of Agamben’s argument, Marx’ account of the prehistory of capital reveals that there is a sovereign logic of the exception at work in the capitalist relation. In the final part of the essay, I start from Agamben’s single reference to Marx in his study of sovereign power to discuss the importance of my conclusions for Agamben’s political message.     

对民法调整对象法定化的政治社会学检讨——以学术与政治的关系为中心

一、法律现代化进程中的中国民法当前的中国社会正处于由前现代社会向现代社会的转型期。研究转型期的法律现代化进程,必须结合转型期的社会背景寻找合适的研究方法。这不论对从微观层面深化当代中国法律史的研究,还是对从宏观层面深化对中国法学的研究,都具有重要的理论意义和     

Thinking the law with and against Luhmann,Legendre, Agamben

After the failure of all enterprises in legal ontology, and after the success of all enterprises in legal system internal theodicy, the field of legal theory is now open to receive a range of more complex, less universalist, less politicised, but also more personally shaped, more fragile suggestions. My article focusses on three such ways of dealing with the law question: the work of Pierre Legendre, a French psychoanalyst and specialist of the history of administrative law and Christian religion, the work of Niklas Luhmann, the recently deceased founder of a new German schoolof sociological systems theory, and that of Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher whose re-opening of the discussion on the Benjaminian notion of bare life and its relationship to law has provoked worldwide attention. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Deterrence and social control: Rethinking the relationship

Until recent years, the operationalization of the deterrence concept has been largely legal in nature. That is, deterrence was defined in terms of certainty and celerity of arrest and severity of sanction. Contemporary research has called this narrow viewpoint into question, pointing out that legal factors are only part of the range of social-control mechanisms. One of the more important of these reformulations was found to have an analytical flaw which could have easily affected the results (Meier and Johnson, 1977). The present study corrects the analysis problems of this previous study and upholds the findings that, for a sample of adult Texas residents, extralegal factors are of more import for determining marijuana use than traditional legal deterrence. Since both legal and extralegal factors are products of the social context, deterrence may be appropriately incorporated into contemporary social- control theories.     

Drug use and violence: Rethinking the connections

This paper examines the available empirical and theoretical literature on the connections between drug use and violent crime, using the conceptual framework developed by Goldstein (1985). The authors argue that the available evidence on the drugs/violence nexus does not support moral claims about the ‘harmfulness’ of illegal drugs that underpin the criminalization of certain mind-active drugs. Instead, much of the connection between legal and illegal drug use and violence appears to be an effect of a history of criminalization of certain drugs. Law is therefore implicated in producing the connection between drug use and violence, rather than acting simply as a neutral mechanism for controlling criminal violence.     

Votes and Outcomes: Rethinking the Politics-Like-Markets Metaphor

Legislative and political bodies seldom work like markets. This paper revisits the politics-like-market analogies considering the role of logrolling in political representation. These considerations will hopefully facilitate the assessment of the normative implications of the commodification of political consensus. While certainly corroding some of the aspirational and expressive qualities of the political system, logrolling would ensure a greater opportunity for cardinal preferences to be captured in political decision-making.     

Competition Law and the WTO: Rethinking the Relationship

This essay identifies obstacles to the inclusion of a competitionlaw regime in the WTO and suggests changes that are likely tobe necessary if competition law is to become an effective partof the WTO. Two obstacles have impeded inclusion of competitionlaw in the WTO's legal regime and are likely to continue todo so. They are (i) a lack of confidence that the norms, practicesand procedures of the WTO rest on a robust conception of communityand (ii) uncertainty and concern about what form of competitionlaw might be included and what its role in the WTO would be.In order to reduce the first of these obstacles, the institutionsand members of the WTO will need to develop a conception ofcommunity that engenders widespread confidence in the WTO'sbasic modes of operation. Eliminating the second obstacle wouldrequire clarification of the kind of competition law that wouldbe acceptable within the WTO, and this, in turn, is likely torequire development of a form of competition law that is specificallydesigned for the WTO and that can elicit the long-term supportof all categories of members. The essay suggests that the competitionlaw issue is intricately interwoven with the future of the WTO.The changes that would be necessary to introduce and successfullyimplement competition law in the WTO are to a large extent thesame as those that the institution will need to make if it isto enrich its role as an institution.     

In Force Without Significance: Kantian Nihilism and Agamben’s Critique of Law

In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben makes the claim that Kant’s moral philosophy is prophetic of legal nihilism and modern totalitarianism. In doing so, he draws an implicit parallel between Kantian ethics of respect and autonomy, and the authoritarian constitutional theory of Carl Schmitt. This paper elucidates and evaluates this claim through an analysis of Agamben’s assertion that the legal condition of modernity is a nihilistic law that is ‘in force without significance’. I argue that the theoretical continuity between totalitarianism and the Moral Law is the problem of the undecidable, which arises when the empty ground of normative judgment comes to light.     

犯罪对象概念的反思与重构

刑法学者之所以在不同场合赋予犯罪对象不同含义,是因为我国刑法理论中的传统犯罪对象概念存在一定的缺陷。有必要重构犯罪对象概念,将“犯罪行为直接作用的具体人和物”与“犯罪客体的直接物质承担者”两种含义适当分离,在理论上区分为直接犯罪对象与间接犯罪对象,二者作为犯罪实行行为指向的事物,有时可发生部分重合,但功能上并不相同,不可相互替代。     

晚清赴日法政留学生与中国法制近代化的再思考

日本著名的中日关系史专家,原早稻田大学教育学部教授实藤惠秀在论及清末赴日留学指出:明治年代(清末)的留学教育有两个特征,其一教授的内容并非专门之学,而是普通之学;其二并非正式的教育,而是速成教育。晚清末年法制近代化的过程中,由于需要大批法政人才,许多留学生负笈东渡,在东瀛日本学习法政。他们学成归国后,在本世纪的法制近代化的舞台上发挥了重要作用。本文拟对晚清赴日留学法政以及对中国法制近代化的影响进行简单地回顾和检讨。一、留学日本与赴日留学生1.赴日留学的背景与发端。中国政府自同治末年开始向海外派遣留学生,当时最先前去的是欧美等国家,1872年第一批幼童赴美留学成为近代留学史的开端。留学的热点转向日本是在1896年甲午战争之后。甲午一战才真正使向以天朝大国为尊的清王朝大为震惊,举国上下受到极大的刺激,这次失败对中国的震动之大,远远超过了     

Rethinking the one-stop-shop mechanism: Legal certainty and legitimate expectation

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion concerning the one-stop-shop mechanism proposed in the General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter “GDPR”). The choice of regulation as the instrument to legislate on data protection is already an unmistakable indication that unification and simplification (together with respect of data subjects' interests) shall be the guide for every legal discussion on the matter. The one-stop-shop mechanism (hereinafter “OSS”) clearly reflects the unification and simplification which the reform aims for. We believe that OSS is logically connected with the idea of one Data Protection Authority (hereinafter “DPA”) with an exclusive jurisdiction and that this can only mean that, given one controller, no other DPA can be a competent authority.² In other words, OSS implies a single and comprehensive competent authority of a given controller. In our analysis we argue that such architecture: a) works well with the “consistency mechanism”; b) provides guarantees to data subjects for a clear allocation of powers (legal certainty); and c) is not at odds with the complaint lodging procedure. Our position on fundamental questions is as follows. What is the perimeter of competence of the DPA in charge? We believe that it should have enforcement power on every issue of the controller, including issuing the fines. How to reconcile such dominant role of one DPA with the principle of co-operation among DPAs? We do not consider co-operation at odds with the rule that decisions are taken by just one single authority. Finally, we share some suggestions on how to make the jurisdiction allocation mechanism (the main establishment criterion) more straightforward.     

The law and the sublime: Rethinking the self and its boundaries

Christine Battersby has argued that it is Kant (and not Descartes) who provides the paradigm model of what it is to be a self in modernity. The Kantian self is established in opposition to its other. The body is commonly envisaged as a container, with selfhood as something that is defended against the outside. In contrast, she proposes a feminist reworking of such a model of selfhood, applicable to both men and women, in which the self and other emerge over time through patterns of relationality. This paper introduces Battersby’s work by focusing upon her early analysis of Kantian aesthetics, in particular the sublime. The aim is to draw out some of the legal and political implications of her work, particularly with regard to the common law’s developing conception of privacy. This is carried out by distinguishing her ontological position from the psychology of Carol Gilligan and then by considering the overlapping concerns of Jennifer Nedelsky in the area of legal theory.