Separation, sovereignty and nuda vida. About the critique of separation in Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

Within the spectrum of biopolitics, Giorgio Agamben has gained notoriety for the sharpness of his approach. In the text, we analyze the presence of separation in the bio-political character of the legal and political machinery as it has been analyzed by Giorgio Agamben in both The sovereign power and bare life and Exception status. If “bare life” is a life-side-nothing on the threshold of the exception and that has been separated from any legal or political status; if the separation is based on the baneful symmetry in the sovereign and the sacer are on the legal-political order; and if the field emerges as "hidden matrix" of political space of contemporary democracies from the growing separation between birth principle and the nation-state democracies, this can only mean that the separation plays a crucial role in the bio-political operation of Western legal and political machine.