Dear colleagues, I would like to invite all colleagues, and especially higher degree by research students, to attend the next seminar in the Public Law and Legal Theory Seminar Series for Semester 1. Please circulate to your networks the following details:
Dr Daniel McLoughlin (University of Adelaide, Law), presenting: "After the Failure of Peoples": Agamben on the Camp, the Nation-State, and Political Nihilism Monday 16 May, from 1.00-2.00pm in the Law Staff Common Room A light lunch will be served for those attending the seminar. Hope to see many of you there. Abstract below. Best, Ben Abstract: This paper develops a reading of one of Homo Sacer's central claims, that the concentration camp is the "nomos of the modern," in light of an account of Agamben's political philosophical method. According to Agamben, the social, political and economic transformations of the twentieth century have emptied out the conceptual and institutional architecture of the political tradition. The contemporary political constellation is, then, one of nihilism. For Agamben, a thought that resolutely faces this problem must engage in a critical revision of the political tradition. I identify two different elements to the revision of the tradition that Agamben undertakes in Homo Sacer. First, he describes the twentieth century transformation of the political landscape, and the way this has changed the operation of the political concepts we have inherited. Second, he develops an immanent critique of the tradition, which illuminates the relationship between its problematic conceptual presuppositions, and some of the political traumas of the twentieth century. I argue that this way of reading Homo Sacer provides a response to criticism of Agamben by some Foucauldian scholars, and by those who reject his radical politics in favour of a defence of the political tradition. To illuminate this account of Homo Sacer, I turn to its analysis of the concentration camp as the "nomos of the modern." What Agamben means by this is, I argue, that the camp is the political mechanism through which the State manages the boundary of the national community once political events have problematised the conceptual presuppositions of the nation-State. This analysis serves to undermine the modern attempt to articulate political existence to the State through the figure of the nation. In this way, Agamben seeks to loosen the hold of the nation-state on our political thinking, thereby opening space for new ways of envisioning political community that are not predicated on law and its production of "bare life". Dr Ben Golder * Lecturer * Faculty of Law * The University of New South Wales * UNSW Sydney NSW 2052, Australia * Phone: +61 (2) 9385 1843 * Fax: +61 (2) 9385 1175 * Website: http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/staff/GolderB/ * Some of my papers can be accessed at: http://ssrn.com/author=1207959 [cid:[email protected]] This email and any attachment(s) transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) and may contain information that is confidential or subject to legal privilege. If you receive this email in error, please disregard the contents of the email and attachment(s), delete them and notify the sender immediately. Please note that any copying, distribution or use of this email is prohibited. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the view of The University of New South Wales. Before opening any attachments, please check for viruses. UNSW ABN 57 195 873 179. CRICOS Provider No: 00098G. P Please consider the environment before printing my email.
<<inline: image001.gif>>
_______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://sydphil.info 1000 subscribers now served!! To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://sydphil.info
