Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben’s ‘Bare Life’ and the Politics of Aesthetics

Downey, Anthony

doi:10.1080/09528820902840581

Cited by 56 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…However, in addition to periodic raids carried out by the police unit in charge of public order in the city ( đội trật tự đô thị ), street vendors suffer various types of harassment, such as demands for bribes, intimidation, threads, and outright theft . It is in these violent instances of the corrupt exception that we can most clearly discern the shadowy appearance of Agamben's homo sacer , “the one‐time citizen rendered outlaw who has no recourse to law other than that of the sovereign's power over his life and death” (Downey :111)—or, at the Vietnam–China border, over the small‐scale traders’ bowls of rice or congee.…”

Section: Predatory Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border

Endres

2014

American Anthropologist

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In Vietnam's postreform era, the proliferation of profiteering opportunities have, in addition to creating new forms of corruption, transmuted previously prevailing types of corrupt acts in multiple ways across different levels of state-society relations. Everyday corrupt practices have thus become an essential means of economic survival for many. Starting from the metaphorical framing of petty bribery as "making law," I propose the notion of what I term "corrupt exception" as a conceptual tool to explore the power dynamics of petty corruption between state agents and small-scale traders at the Vietnam-China border. Whereas bribery is felt by local traders to create better profit opportunities, the corrupt exception likewise pushes them into a de facto illegality where they remain subjected to arbitrary "lawmaking" and excluded from legal protection. I show that the metaphors employed by small-scale traders to negotiate complicit relationships with corrupt state officials both contest and reinforce the exercise of a localized form of sovereign power in a permanent state of corrupt exception in which "law" is "made" in exchange for bribes. [corruption, cross-border trade, metaphor, exception, sovereign power, Vietnam, Lào Cai City] RESUMEN A través de los distintos niveles de las relaciones Estado-sociedad en la era post-reforma de Vietnam, la proliferación de oportunidades de beneficio ha transformado en múltiples maneras las formas de corrupción anteriormente prevalecientes, al tiempo que han surgido nuevos tipos de actos corruptos. Así, las prácticas cotidianas de corrupción han devenido un medio esencial de subsistencia económica para muchos. A través de la interpretación metafórica de la pequeña corrupción como "hacer ley," propongo el término "excepción corrupta" como una herramienta conceptual para explorar las dinámicas de poder de la pequeña corrupción en la frontera entre Vietnam y China. Al tiempo que el soborno es percibido por los comerciantes locales como una herramienta para crear mejores oportunidades de beneficio, la excepción corrupta los conduce a una ilegalidad de facto dentro de cuyo marco dichos comerciantes permanecen sujetos a un "hacer ley" arbitrario y, por lo tanto, los excluye de cualquier protección legal. En este artículo muestro que las metáforas utilizadas por los pequeños comerciantes para negociar una complicidad compartida con los oficiales estatales corruptos, desafían, al tiempo que refuerzan, el ejercicio de un poder soberano localizado en un permanente estado de excepción corrupta donde "la ley" es "hecha" en el intercambio de los sobornos. [corrupción, comercio transfronterizo, metáfora, excepción, poder soberano, Vietnam, Ciudad Lào Cai] E very morning, scores of Vietnamese transporters and trader intermediaries gather at the Lào Cai-Hekou border gate and wait for the checkpoint to open at 7:00 a.m.

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Section: Predatory Harassmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border

Endres

2014

American Anthropologist

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“…2) El dispositivo "articula dos elementos que, a primera vista al menos, parecen excluirse u oponerse" (Castro 2008, p. 89); el dispo- 7 Existen además diversos trabajos que se ocupan del concepto de imagen indirectamente, centrados en algunos de los temas o autores de referencia: la imagen en relación con el concepto de gesto (Levitt 2008), la cuestión del mesianismo y la imagen histórica (Honesko 2009), la imagen y la visibilidad del concepto de ejemplo (DeCaroli 2001), la lectura de Agamben del "devenir imagen del capital" y el espectáculo en el pensamiento de Debord (Costa 2011 y Murray 2008) o la "imposibilidad de la imagen" en las figuras del musulmán y el homo sacer (Buch 2007, Downey 2009y Chow 2006.…”

Section: El Problema De La Imagenunclassified

“…Aunque no podemos desarrollar el tema aquí, es desde esta perspectiva que debe entenderse la figura límite del musulmán como un "muerto-vivo" en Quel che resta di Auschwitz (1998a), y entonces también el debate que ha generado en torno a la posibilidad de "imaginar", "representar" y "testimoniar" tal figura límite de lo humano. Sobre esta cuestión, véase Downey 2009, Buch 2007y Chow 2006 entrecruzan aquí con un análisis de la relación paradójica de esos cuerpos con la vida y la muerte, y en este punto todas las figuras iluminan de algún modo la vida del homo sacer como la de una vida expuesta a la muerte. Sin embargo, como veremos, la vida del homo sacer no posee imagen alguna, es de algún modo un "punto ciego", esa región más oscura del poder que Agamben quiere iluminar.…”

Section: La Imagen Del Soberanounclassified

La dimensión estética del poder soberano en Giorgio Agamben

Ruvituso¹

2016

dianoia

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“…Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's theorisations of lives lived on the margins of social, political, juridical, and biological representation, De Vos further proposes that the de-humanisation and de-subjectivation of the prisoners that took place during the Stanford Prison Experiment constituted "the prisoners as the humiliated and debased homo sacer of the psychological discourse" (2010: 164). Likewise, critics have drawn parallels between human subjects that populate Ż mijewski's projects -often stripped down to the point of physical and mental humiliation -and Agamben's homo sacer (see, Möntmann, 2006;Downey, 2009). Some, like Jan Verwoert, even go as far as to argue that Ż mijewski's collaborators "are stripped bare and unconditionally subject to a social experiment performed on their bodies .…”

Section: Holocaust Testimony Ethics and Affect In Artur Zmijewski'smentioning

confidence: 99%

Performing European Memories

Gluhovic

2013

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Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations.Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces 'Culture' which is institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternate, and treats 'Performance' as either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations.

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Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben’s ‘Bare Life’ and the Politics of Aesthetics

Cited by 56 publications

References 0 publications

Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border

Making Law: Small-Scale Trade and Corrupt Exceptions at the Vietnam-China Border

La dimensión estética del poder soberano en Giorgio Agamben

Performing European Memories

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