The Homo Sacer In The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears-from Biopolitical Perspective

Dinaw Mengestu,a young Ethiopian-American writer,has been focusing on writing the immigrants and refugees' life and experience,and whose family immigrant experience provides him with rich materials.This thesis would explore the predicament of immigrants and refugees in The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears who reduce to the homo sacer at any time or any place based on biopolitics,especially Agamben's homo sacer and the state of exception.Specifically,this thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter one briefly introduces the relevant literature studies on Mengestu.This part also introduces the theory frame of this thesis-biopolitics,focusing on Agamben's the state of exception and homo sacer.Chapter two tries to illustrate how the Derg government acts the role of sovereign power to declare the Ethiopian civil war,and makes the state step into the state of exception.The law is suspended,countless lives are killed without any impunity,many Ethiopians during the Ethiopian civil war descend into the homo sacer,losing their political,economical and even subsistence right.This analysis shows that the nature of war is the state of exception created by the sovereign power,Derg Party,to defend and strengthen its domination.The third chapter provides the examination of the immigrants and refugees' condition in the United States.Under fearism,they are excluded from the American mainstream society,such as the creation of the exceptional housing space and exceptional working filed for immigrants and refugees.They linger on the fringe of society and can't be protected by the law.They still can't escape the fate of homo sacer.It can be concluded that the state of exception has become the fast rule in modern state and society.Based on the former two chapters,the fourth chapter tries to discuss the possible resistance of the immigrants and refugees.It turns out that either individual or collective resistance is fruitless,the fate of these immigrants and refugees is doomed to be homo sacer for lack of political identity.Through this illustration,we can better understand the dilemma of themodern immigrants.The last chapter draws a conclusion.Through the biopolitical reading of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears,the novel reveals the predicament of refugees and immigrants as homo sacer,a depoliticized form of life and a marginal existence.