A Study On Agamben's Biopolitical Thought Via Examining The Concept Of Homo Sacer

The concept of Homo Sacer is derived from the archaic Roman law,which takes the form of a doubule exeption,both from the ius divinum and from the ius humanum.Agamben,one of the contemporary radical left-wing thinkers,reinvests it with new connotation of political philosophy,and makes it become one of the core concepts of his biopolitical thought system.Agamben's concept of Homo Sacer inherited from Foucault's theory of biopolitics,in this theory,Foucault explored the way how individuals integrated into the society of “State”,or to say,how the “State”realized the "discipline" of the individuals.However,Agamben opposed Foucault's theory of “The Birth of Biopolitics”,he did not agree with Foucault's view that the biopolitics was born with modernity,he regarded it as a kind of power rule which has been embedded in the human group and continues to the present.In Agamben 's view,the most typical and extreme display of “biopolitics” is the large totalitarian state in the twentieth century which is talked about by Arendt,at the same time,it is exactly ignored by Foucault.In this sense,Agamben made a link between Foucault and Arendt,he placed Foucault's biopolitics in Arendt's totalitarian state.In Agamben 's opinion,since the "bare life" changed to the “political life”,or to say,since the day that “biopolitics” was born,the political life which existed in a seemingly normal disciplinary society has the potential to be pushed into a concentration camp.Through the analysis of the totalitarian state,Agamben further reveals the structural cause of biopolitics,namely,the paradox of law and sovereignty.The sovereignty uses the power to make laws,in return,laws give the legal protection to the sovereignty's supreme power.The internal logic puts the human community under a supreme control of violence,in modern countries,the boundaries betweenthe bare life and the citizens are constantly expanding and moving,once the individual is abandoned by the sovereign power,it will be reduced to the homo sacer or the contemporary refugee,then it will lose the right even to be a normal human.According to Agamben,under the control of this violent,we can never find the way to break through its own,we can only look forward to the arrival of an external force.By means of the description of "Messiah",which is a coming community,Agamben expressed his criticism of the present biopolitics.In the ultimate human community as he described,human will have a “whatever being”right,and the human beings will form a "no distinction" community,they will share the equal rights,as for the individuals,the deeper qualitative change will be a kind of individual potential ability.However,including Agamben,the radical left-wing thinkers consider that the coming of this kind of external force is an accidental event,we can only explore the conditions of its occurrence,but can not predict its occurrence.Agamben,and the contemporary radical left-wing thinkers represented by him,deeply inherite the critical spirit of Marx,they continue to deny the reality of criticism,and every criticism will be a step forward in the theoretical process,while critical,while waiting for the arrival of the real event.In this paper,through the probing of the concept “Homo Sacer”,I combed and analyzed the theoretical background of Agamben's biopolitics thought and his unique achievements.At the same time,this paper also concerned with the basic theoretical path of the contemporary radical left-wing thinkers.