State of Exception 1st Edition by Giorgio Agamben (PDF)

Description

Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or “state of exception,” has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states.The sequel to Agamben’s Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception is the first book to theorize the state of exception in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben’s view, the majority of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida, Benjamin, and Arendt.In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I was not even aware of Agamben until the pandemic, where both his views on the pandemic and the concept behind this book came into renewed importance in debates on the response to the pandemic.The book is short and easy to read, but the chapters get bogged down in references. So to read this, you need to go back to Schmitt and Benjamin and maybe to Hobbes and more and more.

⭐The State has employed from time to time a political action by declaring an emergency and suspending the laws and/or Constitutions of the country. This state of emergency is what Agamben calls the “State of Exception.” Readers will be familiar with declaring a state of emergency more from the results of a natural disaster, such as a catastrophic forest fire, or, as readers from California are most familiar with now, a prolonged drought.This is not the emergency Agamben means. He is mainly concerned with states of emergency precipitated from social or political events. For instance, Napoleon declaring a state of siege due to the Reign of Terror. More modernly, Agamben discusses the state of exception with regards to the current War on Terror.Agamben examines the historical record and customs of the European countries with regard to these emergency measures. The state of exception has different names in different countries.In Germany it was Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, employed by Hitler to gain absolute power.In Switzerland it was a Constitutional provision giving the federal government power to take all measures to “guarantee security.”In Italy it was a provision of emergency executive decrees.In France it was the suspension of rights whenever there was a “state of siege.”In England, it was the institution of martial law.Here in the United States it is Article I of the United States Constitutional which provides for the suspension of habeas corpus in times of insurrection. This provision has morphed, recently, into the “War on Terrorism;” the suspension of all rights, not simply to habeas corpus, to persons providing “material support” to terrorists; and other features not mentioned by Agamben, such as the concept of the “unitary executive,” granting near dictatorial power to the Executive; the declaration of “permanent war” — a de facto state of exception — on terrorism; and the term “War on Terrorism” itself. The list could go on and on.Agamben sees many dangers with these sovereign powers. One, his historical analysis demonstrates that once granted, these powers are rarely withdrawn voluntarily. Two, if they are withdrawn, the reason is usually due to factors other than the reason these emergency powers were invoked, such as in the complete breakdown of the governmental apparatus, whether through war, Nazi Germany being an extreme example, or otherwise. Three, these sovereign powers are detrimental, if not positively antithetical, to the concept of a functioning democracy. And, four, while the historical record demonstrates these emergency powers were infrequently invoked, more contemporaneously they are the rule rather than the exception, whether invoked by traditional democratic or totalitarian States.While Agamben does not employ this terminology, the State of Exception is a cancer to democratic institutions. Again, this is certainly true of Germany, when, as Agamben reminds us, Hitler’s actions after he obtained power, while horrific, were all “legal,” and within the bounds of his legal emergency powers.Agamben’s book, then, is a word of caution. It is Agamben’s way of warning that a state of exception, once invoked, is a slippery slope, having its own costs to democracy.

⭐Giorgio Agamben provides a thorough historical and legal contextualization of the state of exception, defining its critical nature and development. Defined as the expansion of executive power in response to existential threats to the nation, the state of exception has become the norm of executive power throughout Western democracies. Analyzing the legal and political theory that has given rise to the state of exception, Agamben delivers a highly detailed description of this legal concept. From its origins in Roman law, Agamben traces the evolution of the state of exception through two political scholars, Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. Today, the state of exception has allowed the President of the United States to unilaterally expand executive power into legislative and judicial domains.Response:While the quality of Agamben’s legal analysis and research cannot be questioned, he neglects to analyze the state of exception from a political science lens, specifically in terms of institutions and structural limitations. There are two primarily limitations to any utilization of the state of exception, the complexity of Western political systems and the electorate. Given the highly bureaucratic nature of any Western political system, Presidential decrees will unavoidable reach resistance within the system. Obviously, fervent nationalism (Nazi Germany) or traumatic national events (September 11) can consolidate a political regime and reduce structural resistance but this situation does not represent the norm.Additionally, the President and his political party ultimately must answer to the electorate. Unless the President is able to subvert this process as well with the state of exception, the electorate may abandon the President in favor of a completely different candidate. The shift from a substantial support for the Bush Administration to the 2006 Democratic Congressional majority and the subsequent election of Barak Obama exemplify this. In short, further empirical evidence and analysis is required before one can emphatically claim that the state of exception has eroded the foundations of democracy and reduced Western democracies to police states.Bottom-line:For legal scholars or those interested in the expansion of executive power, this book provides a great deal of pertinent analysis. For the majority of readers, finding the book at a library and reading the first chapter as well as the last few pages will be more than enough. Unless the topic of this book deeply resonates with you, there are more important books to spend your money on.For more reviews and a summary of Agamben’s main paints, find us at Hand of Reason.

⭐Agamben’s State of Exception is an extraordinary work in several ways. It is superbly written, which is critical to the task of conveying such a complex subject. Agamben weaves his topic of ‘exception’ through philosophical, legal and historical frameworks, and succeeds in demonstrating how the topic must be viewed from multiple angles. Yet it is not simply from different ‘view points’ that Agamben argues; he presents his thesis with an abundance of knowledge – indeed erudition. This work is clearly of contemporary relevance, and Agamben amply demonstrates this. Yet he instructs the reader on how deeply historical and increasingly diffuse the topic is, extending to the political theory of Roman and Greek thinkers, and tracing the continuity of thought to present thinkers, and to events that bring the topic right into the living rooms of us all.

⭐Excellent book for everyone to read and learn about the systematic abuse of judicial system. I often think many judges sitting on the bench need to read this book. Even I go as far to say Supreme Court justices need to refresh their moral stand every and each time by reading this book on consistent manner and specially before ruling on important issues related to human rights and politic.

⭐Individual pages fall out when gently flipping through book. Very poor manufacturing quality! Not worth the retail price given how flimsy the book is.

⭐This amazing work reviews the historical development of the state of exception. The question is, if we can place this state of exception inside the sphere of the law and in what range it is applicable. The conclusion could be that all democracies in our time live partly in the state of exception by a predominantly system of safety and security in which rules and mechanisms become the status of lawful actions. This should provoke a very critical perspective on the state of our ‘western’ democracies.

⭐wonderful, erudite and philosophically informed introduction to what Agamben calls the “state/s of exception”…

⭐Arrived on time. It was like described.

⭐great thanksxxx

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