Sovereign power, zones of indistinction, and the camp

Alternatives

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 3-25

  Edkins, Jenny ^a  

^a ABERYSTWYTH UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 23044518414     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540002500102     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
2. The parallel is suggested by Primo Levi's use of the above verse from Coleridge as an epigraph to The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (London: Abacus, 1989).
3. Primo Levi, "If This Is a Man" and "The Truce," trans. Stuart Woolf (London: Abacus, 1987), p. 17.
4. This is captured in Anne Michael's Fugitive Pieces (Toronto: McLelland & Stewart, 1998), where Ben is an example of the response of the second generation. It is not until the end of the novel that Ben is able to tell us: "I know the elation of ordinary sorrow. At last my unhappiness is my own" (p. 292)
5. Levi, note 2, p. 54.
6. Ibid., p. 66.
7. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 188.
8. Earlier versions of three of the essays were presented as papers at the British International Studies Association Annual Conference at the University of Sussex in December 1998, two of them at a panel sponsored by the ESRC Politics of Emergency Group. I would like to thank Debbie Lisle, who convened the sessions, and the ERSC for its funding of the seminar series currently run by the group. For details, see the ESRC Politics of Emergency Group web page at http://www.aber.ac.uk/∼jfe.
9. In Agamben's account, this invisibility remains. The figure of bare life is continually referenced as male. I return to this point near the end of this article.
10. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought, 2nd ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993).
11. Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
12. For a discussion of these separations, see R. B. J. Walker, Inside/ Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
13. As defined by Carl Schmitt in Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
14. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1978), p. 3.
15. Agamben, note 7, p. 29.
16. Which would correspond in a general way to the Derridean constitutive outside. See Henry Staten, Wittgenstein and Derrida (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
17. Agamben, note 7, pp. 168-169.
18. This creature appears as male throughout Agamben's writing.
19. Agamben, note 7, p. 82.
20. Ibid., p. 4.
21. Ibid., 187.
22. Alexis de Tocqueyille, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Vintage, 1990), vol. 2, p. 197;
23. quoted in Michael Shapiro, "Literary Geography and Sovereign Violence" (see Shapiro's article in this issue of Alternatives).
24. Shapiro, article in this issue.
25. Ibid.
26. Erin Manning, "Beyond Accommodation" (see Manning article in. this issue of Alternatives).
27. Erin Manning, "Beyond Accommodation" Alternatives this issue Ibid.
28. Michael, note 4.
29. Manning article in this issue.
30. Welcome to Sarajevo directed by Michael Winterbottom, with Frank Cottrell Boyce as screenwriter (1997).
31. Agamben, note 7, p. 38.
32. Patricia Molloy, "Theatrical Release: Catharsis and Spectacle in Welcome to Sarajevo" (see Molloy article in this issue of Alternatives).
33. Debbie Lisle, "Consuming Danger" (see Lisle article in this issue of Alternatives).
34. Jenny Edkins, Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming).
35. Of course, the state of nature and the state of emergency are functionally similar in relation to sovereign power: both are included by exclusion from the political order.
36. Michael Dillon and Julian Reid, "Global Governance" (see their article in this issue of Alternatives).
37. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), p. 338.
38. Agamben, note 7, p. 120.
39. As discussed in Dillon and Reid, note 35.
40. Agamben, note 7, p. 170.
41. Ibid., pp. 173-174.
42. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (London: Abacus, 1989), pp. 23-24.
43. Ibid., p. 24. On page 90, Levi notes the similarity between the camp entry rituals and those of military barracks.
44. Ibid., p. 25.
45. Ibid., p. 31.
46. Ibid., p. 96.
47. The political process that produces and involves famine itself remains largely invisible; see Amrita Rangasami's argument that famine is the final stage of a process of oppression in the two-part article "Failure of Exchange Entitlements Theory of Famine," Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 41 (1985): 1747-1752
48. Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 42 (1985): 1797-1801.
49. Barbara Hendrie, "Knowledge and Power: A Critique of an International Relief Operation," Disasters 21, no. 1 (1997): 57-76.
50. NGO staff member quoted in ibid., p. 66.
51. UNHCR staff member, quoted in ibid., p. 69.
52. These expectations blind the agencies to the political activities that take place in the camps (and render them unable to respond when that blindness lifts), as was the case in the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire.
53. Hendrie, note 47, p. 71.
54. Another aspect that I have not discussed here is of course the use by the Ethiopian authorities of relief camps run by international agencies in Ethiopia itself as collecting grounds for resettlement programs in which political opponents of the government then in power were forcibly relocated to areas in the south of the country, away from the disputed territories and the influence of the TPLF.
55. Jennifer Hyndman argues that while camps continue to house refugees, a new set of "safe spaces" has arisen, under the names of UN protected areas, preventive zones, or most notably "safe havens." Jennifer Hyndman, "A Post-Cold War Geography of Forced Migration in Kenya and Somalia," Professional Geographer 51, no. 1 (1999): 104-114.
56. By May 1999, there were 173,000 refugees in Macedonia, 74,300 confined to camps and 91,300 with host families. Steve Boggan, "From the War Rooms of Whitehall to the Squallor of Stankovic No 1," Independent (London), May 4, 1999, p. 3.
57. Martin Shaw makes what is in some ways a similar argument based on a neo-Weberian approach. He sees the Kosovo war as part of the evolution of a historically unique "Western state conglomerate," a pooling of monopolies of violence and a concentration of state power that means that the West can be regarded as a single state (centered around though not exclusively based on NATO). He argues that this state is being produced as part of a global-democratic revolution. I argue, with Agamben, that far from being a revolutionary or emancipatory movement, the spread of democracy is just an integral part of sovereign biopolitics. The apparent genocidal dynamics of contemporary warfare can better be understood in terms of accounts of biopolitics found in Foucault and Agamben than in terms of a counterrevolutionary movement by authoritarian states outside the Western state conglomerate. The distinction is crucial since Shaw's analysis leads him to call for a further expansion of Western state power, though admittedly through global state institutions rather than war. Martin Shaw, "The Kosovan War, 1998-99: The Historical Sociology of State, War, and Genocide in Global Revolution," paper presented at "Bringing Historical Sociologies into International Relations" at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth: July 2-4, 1999.
58. See, for example, Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power," in Power/ Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, by Michel Foucault, ed. Colin Gordon (Brighton: Harvester, 1980)
59. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1991).
60. Emma Daly, "Serbs Drive Thousands from Homes," Independent Monday Review, March 22, 1999, p. 11.
61. John Davison, Rachel Sylvester, Steve Crawshaw, and David Usbourne, "NATO Urged to Hit Serb Death Squads as Massacres Spread," Independent on Sunday (London), March 28, 1999, p. 1;
62. Sarah Schaefer, "Blair Rejects Criticism of NATO Bombing," Independent (London), March 30, 1999, p. 8.
63. Peter Beaumont, Patrick Wintour, Stephen Bates and Burhan Wazir, "NATO's Tragic Errors," Observer (London), April 4, 1999, p. 15.
64. Emma Daly and Rachel Sylvester, "Serbs Wreak Revenge After Raids," Independent on Sunday, March 28, 1999, p. 3.
65. Emma Daly, "Numbed by Fatigue and Fear the Refugees Flee Serb Death Squads," Independent, March 30, 1999, p. 1.
66. James Dalrymple and Emma Daly, "In Just a Week, Kosovo Is Swept Clean," Independent on Sunday, April 4, 1999, p. 13.
67. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, quoted in Patrick Wintour and Justin Brown, "NATO Bombers Open Attack on Serbian Murder Squads," Observer, March 28, 1999, p. 1.
68. James Dalrymple, "Stateless, Landless, and Derelict: The Forlorn Lost Tribe of Kosovo," Independent, April 1, 1999, p. 1.
69. James Dalrymple, "Like an Oil Painting of Hell and Still the Dispossessed Flood In," Independent, April 3, 1999, p. 1.
70. Peter Beaumont, Patrick Wintour, Stephen Bates, and Burhan Wazir, "NATO's Tragic Errors," Observer, April 4, 1999, p. 15.
71. Rachel Sylvester and John Davison, "NATO to Set Up Sancturies," Independent on Sunday, April 4, 1999, p. 1;
72. proposals for "safe havens" inside Kosovo were also mooted at that time: "Operation Safe Haven," Sunday Times (London), April 4, 1999, 13.
73. Tim Butcher, "British Troops Given New Orders to Help Kosovars," Daily Telegraph (London), April 5, 1999, p. 3.
74. "Conflict Briefing: Day 14," Independent, April 7, 1999, p. 2.
75. Independent, April 8, 1999, AP photo, p. 4.
76. Richard Lloyd Parry, "NATO Acquits Itself with Honour," Independent on Sunday, April 18, 1999, p. 16.
77. Later, UNHCR did register people as refugees, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) set up tracing centers (Richard Lloyd Parry, "Database of Hope Helps the Missing," Independent, April 14, 1999, p. 4.),
78. although the handing over from NATO was continually delayed as more refugees crossed into Macedonia (Richard Lloyd Parry, "Thousands More Head for Macedonia," Independent, April 15, 1999, p. 4).
79. John Hooper, "Powerless UN Looks On as Refugee Crisis Grows," Observer, April 11, 1999, p. 16.
80. Paul Waugh and Jason Bennetto, "UK Opens Old Prisons to Refugees," Independent, April 7, 1999, p. 2.
81. Mary Dejevsky, "Cuban Prison Camp Has McDonald's and Golf Course," Independent, April 8, 1999, p. 4.
82. Fergal Keane, "What Milosevic Is Doing Is Evil but It Is No Final Solution," Independent Weekend Review (London), April 17, 1999, p. 3.
83. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, "Crimes Against Truth," Independent on Sunday, April 4, 1999, p. 25.
84. Ruth Linden, "Deportations and Discursive Displacements," Sociological Research Online 4, no. 2 (1999): http:// www.socresonline.org.uk/4/2/linden.html.
85. Anne McElvoy, "Milosevic Has Caught NATO Still Living by Its Cold War Creed," Independent Wednesday Review (London), April 7, 1999, p. 3.
86. Conscripts are compelled to surrender their rights as citizens when they enter military service. This is symbolized by the shaving of hair, the parade-ground discipline, and the humiliation of the military training camp. It is a rendering bare: forming the soldier into homo sacer: life that can be killed but not sacrificed.
87. John Davison and Kim Sengupta, "Cook Pledges 'We'll Hunt Down All War Criminals,'" Independent, March 30, 1999, p. 5.
88. Agamben, note 7, p. 133.
89. Jasmina Husanovic, "Promises and Incompetencies in the 'Post-Conflict' Kosovo: A View from Below," paper presented at Carr Workshop, Aberystwyth, November 20, 1999.
90. Michel Foucault, quoted by David Campbell, "Why Fight: Humanitarianism, Principles and Post-structuralism," Millennium 27, no. 3 (1998): 497-521.
91. Agamben, note 7, p. 121.
92. See, for example, Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992);
93. "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority,'" in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. David Gray Carlson, Drucilla Cornell, and Michel Rosenfeld (New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 3-67.
94. These issues are explored in relation to famine relief in complex emergencies in Jenny Edkins, "Legality with a Vengeance: Famines and Humanitarian Intervention in 'Complex Emergencies,'" Millennium 25, no. 3 (1996): 547-575;
95. reprinted in Poverty in World Politics: Whose Global Era? ed. Sarah Owen Vandersluis and Paris Yeros (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 59-90.
96. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
97. Agamben, note 7, p. 180.
98. Ibid., pp. 139-140.
99. Margaret Kelleher, The Feminisation of Famine: Expressions of the Inexpressible? (Cork: Cork University Press, 1997).
100. The overwhelming predominance of women and children in the camps, some 80 to 90 percent rather than the 65 percent usual in refugee camps, was attributed of course to Serb genocide rather than KLA recruitment: the figure of the refugee cannot be a political figure.
101. Steve Boggan, "Victims Tell Harrowing Tales of Rape," Independent, April 13, 1999, p. 1.
102. Agamben, note 7, p. 188.