agamben- from the state of control to a praxis of destituent power

7/26/2019 Agamben- From the State of Control to a Praxis of Destituent Power

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From the State of Control to a Praxis of Destituent Power

By Giorgio AgambenOn February 4, 2014

Faced with absolute state control and the rapid eradication of

political society, only a theory and praxis of destituent power

can reclaim democracy.

This is the transcript of a public lecture by Italian philosopher Giorgio

Agamben eli!ere to a pac"e auitorium in Athens on #o!ember

1$, 201% an recently publishe by &hronos'

A reection on the destiny of democracy today here in Athens is in

some way disturbing, because it obliges us to think the end ofdemocracy in the ery !lace where it was born" As a matter of fact,

the hy!othesis # would like to suggest is that the !reailing

goernmental !aradigm in $uro!e today is not only non%democratic,

but that it cannot either be considered as !olitical" # will try therefore

to show that $uro!ean society today is no longer a !olitical society& it

is something entirely new, for which we lack a !ro!er terminology and

we hae therefore to inent a new strategy"

'et me begin with a conce!t which seems, starting from Se!tember

())*, to hae re!laced any other !olitical notion+ security" As you

know, the formula for security reasons- functions today in any

domain, from eeryday life to international conicts, as a codeword in

order to im!ose measures that the !eo!le hae no reason to acce!t" #

will try to show that the real !ur!ose of the security measures is not,

as it is currently assumed, to !reent dangers, troubles or een

catastro!hes" # will be conse.uently obliged to make a short

genealogy of the conce!t of security-"

A Permanent State of Exception

/ne !ossible way to sketch such a genealogy would be to inscribe its

origin and history in the !aradigm of the state of exce!tion" #n this

!ers!ectie, we could trace it back to the 0oman !rinci!le (alus

publica suprema le) *!ublic safety is the highest law 1 and connectit with 0oman dictatorshi!, with the canonistic !rinci!le that necessity
http://www.chronosmag.eu/index.php/g-agamben-for-a-theory-of-destituent-power.htmlhttp://www.chronosmag.eu/index.php/g-agamben-for-a-theory-of-destituent-power.html


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oes not ac"no+lege any la+,with the comits e salut

publi-ue during French reolution and 2nally with article 34 of the

5eimar re!ublic, which was the 6uridical ground for the 7a8i regime"

Such a genealogy is certainly correct, but # do not think that it could

really ex!lain the functioning of the security a!!aratuses and

measures which are familiar to us"

5hile the state of exce!tion was originally conceied as a !roisional

measure, which was meant to co!e with an immediate danger in

order to restore the normal situation, the security reasons constitute

today a !ermanent technology of goernment" 5hen in ())9 #

!ublished a book in which # tried to show !recisely how the state of

exce!tion was becoming in 5estern democracies a normal system of

goernment, # could not imagine that my diagnosis would !roe so

accurate" :he only clear !recedent was the 7a8i regime" 5hen ;itler

took !ower in February *


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6udgement, is s!lit from its tem!oral index and coincides now with the

chronological course of time, so that 1 not only in economics and

!olitics 1 but in eery as!ect of social life, the crisis coincides with

normality and becomes, in this way, 6ust a tool of goernment"

Conse.uently, the ca!ability to decide once for all disa!!ears and the

continuous decision%making !rocess decides nothing" :o state it in

!aradoxical terms, we could say that, haing to face a continuous

state of exce!tion, the goernment tends to take the form of a

!er!etual coup .tat" ?y the way, this !aradox would be an accurate

descri!tion of what ha!!ens here in Greece as well as in #taly, where

to goern means to make a continuous series of small coups .tat"

Governing the Eects

:his is why # think that, in order to understand the !eculiar

goernmentality under which we lie, the !aradigm of the state of

exce!tion is not entirely ade.uate" # will therefore follow ichel

FoucaultBs suggestion and inestigate the origin of the conce!t of

security in the beginning of modern economy, by Franois uesnais

and the Physiocrates, whose inuence on modern goernmentality

could not be oerestimated" Starting with 5est!halia treaty, the greatabsolutist $uro!ean states begin to introduce in their !olitical

discourse the idea that the soereign has to take care of its sub6ectsB

security" ?ut uesnay is the 2rst to establish security Esuret as the

central notion in the theory of goernment 1 and this in a ery

!eculiar way"

/ne of the main !roblems goernments had to co!e with at the time

was the !roblem of famines" ?efore uesnay, the usual methodology

was trying to !reent famines through the creation of !ublic granaries

and forbidding the ex!ortation of cereals" ?oth these measures had

negatie e=ects on the !roduction" uesnayBs idea was to reerse the

!rocess+ instead of trying to !reent famines, he decided to let them

ha!!en and to be able to goern them once they occurred,

liberali8ing both internal and foreign exchanges" :o goern- retains

here its etymological cybernetic meaning+ a good "ybernes, a good

!ilot canBt aoid tem!ests, but if a tem!est occures he must be able

to goern his boat, using the force of waes and winds for naigation"


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:his is the meaning of the famous motto laisser faire, laisse/ passer+

it is not only the catchword of economic liberalism& it is a !aradigm of

goernment, which conceies of security Esuret, in uesnayBs words

not as the !reention of troubles, but rather as the ability to goern

and guide them in the good direction once they take !lace"

5e should not neglect the !hiloso!hical im!lications of this reersal"

#t means an e!ochal transformation in the ery idea of goernment,

which oerturns the traditional hierarchical relation between causes

and e=ects" (ince go!erning the causes is icult an e)pensi!e, it is

safer an more useful to try to go!ern the eects' # would suggest

that this theorem by uesnay is the axiom of modern

goernmentality" :he ancien regimeaimed to rule the causes&

modernity !retends to control the e=ects" And this axiom a!!lies to

eery domain, from economy to ecology, from foreign and military

!olitics to the internal measures of !olice" 5e must reali8e that

$uro!ean goernments today gae u! any attem!t to rule the causes,

they only want to goern the e=ects" And uesnayBs theorem makes

also understandable a fact which seems otherwise inex!licable+ #

mean the !aradoxical conergence today of an absolutely liberal

!aradigm in the economy with an un!recedented and e.uallyabsolute !aradigm of state and !olice control" #f goernment aims for

the e=ects and not the causes, it will be obliged to extend and

multi!ly control" Causes demand to be known, while e=ects can only

be checked and controlled"

/ne im!ortant s!here in which the axiom is o!eratie is that of

biometrical security a!!aratuses, which increasingly !erade eery

as!ect of social life" 5hen biometrical technologies 2rst a!!eared in

*4th century in France with Al!honse ?ertillon and in $ngland withFrancis Galton, the inentor of 2nger !rints, they were obiously not

meant to !reent crimes but only to recogni8e recidiist delin.uents"

/nly once a second crime has occurred, you can use the biometrical

data to identify the o=ender" ?iometrical technologies, which had

been inented for reciidist criminals, remained for a long time their

exclusie !riilege" #n *


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inented for animals, for criminals, strangers or @ews, will 2nally be

extended to all human beings" :herefore, in the course of ()th

century, biometric technologies hae been a!!lied to all citi8ens, and

?ertillonBs identi2cation !hotogra!hs and GaltonBs 2nger!rints are

currently in use eerywhere for #D cards"

!he "e#politici$ation of %iti$enship

?ut the extreme ste! has been taken only in our days and it is still in

the !rocess of full reali8ation" :he deelo!ment of new digital

technologies, with o!tical scanners which can easily record not only

2nger !rints but also the retina or the eyeBs iris structure, biometrical

a!!aratuses tend to moe beyond the !olice stations and immigrationoHces and s!read into eeryday life" #n many countries, the access to

studentBs restaurants or een to schools is controlled by a biometric

a!!aratus on which the student 6ust !uts his or her hand" :he

$uro!ean industries in this 2eld, which are .uickly growing,

recommend that citi8ens get used to this kind of control from their

early youth" :he !henomenon is really disturbing, because the

$uro!ean Commissions for the deelo!ment of security Elike the

$SP0, $uro!ean Security 0esearch Program include among their!ermanent members the re!resentaties of the big industries in the

2eld, which are 6ust the old armaments !roducers like :hales,

Finmeccanica, $ADS et ?A$ System, that hae conerted to the

security business"

#t is easy to imagine the dangers re!resented by a !ower that could

hae at its dis!osal the unlimited biometric and genetic information of

all its citi8ens" 5ith such a !ower at hand, the extermination of the

@ews, which was undertaken on the basis of incom!arably less

eHcient documentation, would hae been total and incredibly swift"

?ut # will not dwell on this im!ortant as!ect of the security !roblem"

:he reections # would like to share with you concern rather the

transformation of !olitical identity and of !olitical relationshi!s that

are inoled in security technologies" :his transformation is so

extreme that we can legitimately ask not only if the society in which


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we lie is still a democratic one, but also if this society can still be

consideredpolitical"

Christian eier has shown how in the Ith century a transformation of

the conce!tuali8ation of the !olitical took !lace in Athens, which was

grounded on what he calls a !olitici8ation- Epolitisierung of

citi8enshi!" 5hile until that moment the fact of belonging to

thepoliswas de2ned by a number of conditions and social statuses of

di=erent kind 1 for instance belonging to nobility or to a certain

cultural community, to be a !easant or merchant, a member of a

certain family, etc" 1 from now on citi8enshi! became the main

criterion of social identity"

:he result was a s!eci2cally Greek conce!tion of citi8enshi!, in which

the fact that men had to behae as citi8ens found an institutional

form" :he belonging to economic or religious communities was

remoed to a secondary rank" :he citi8ens of a democracy considered

themseles as members of thepolisonly in so far as they deoted

themseles to a !olitical life" 3olisandpoliteia, city and citi8enshi!,

constituted and de2ned one another" Citi8enshi! became in that way

a form of life, by means of which the polisconstituted itself in a

domain clearly distinct from theoi"os, the house" Politics becametherefore a free !ublic s!ace as such o!!osed to the !riate s!ace,

which was the reign of necessity"- According to eier, this s!eci2cally

Greek !rocess of !olitici8ation was transmitted to 5estern !olitics,

where citi8enshi! remained the decisie element"

:he hy!othesis # would like to !ro!ose to you is that this fundamental

!olitical factor has entered an irreocable !rocess that we can only

de2ne as a !rocess of increasing e%!olitici8ation" 5hat was in the

beginning a way of liing, an essentially and irreducibly actiecondition, has now become a !urely !assie 6uridical status, in which

action and inaction, the !riate and the !ublic are !rogressiely

blurred and become indistinguishable" :his !rocess of the de%

!olitici8ation of citi8enshi! is so eident that # will not dwell on it"

&ise of the State of %ontrol

# will rather try to show how the !aradigm of security and the security

a!!aratuses hae !layed a decisie role in this !rocess" :he growing


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extension to citi8ens of technologies which were conceied for

criminals ineitably has conse.uences for the !olitical identity of the

citi8en" For the 2rst time in the history of humanity, identity is no

longer a function of the social !ersonality and its recognition by

others, but rather a function of biological data, which cannot bear any

relation to it, like the arabes.ues of the 2nger!rints or the dis!osition

of the genes in the double helix of D7A" :he most neutral and !riate

thing becomes the decisie factor of social identity, which loses

therefore its !ublic character"

#f my identity is now determined by biological facts that in no way

de!end on my will and oer which # hae no control, then the

construction of something like a !olitical and ethical identity becomes

!roblematic" 5hat relationshi! can # establish with my 2nger!rints or

my genetic codeJ :he new identity is an identity without the !erson,

as it were, in which the s!ace of !olitics and ethics loses its sense and

must be thought again from the ground u!" 5hile the classical Greek

citi8en was de2ned through the o!!osition between the !riate and

the !ublic, the oi"os, which is the !lace of re!roductie life, and

thepolis, !lace of !olitical action, the modern citi8en seems rather tomoe in a 8one of indi=erence between the !riate and the !ublic, or,

to .uote ;obbesB terms, the !hysical and the !olitical body"

:he materiali8ation in s!ace of this 8one of indi=erence is the ideo

sureillance of the streets and the s.uares of our cities" ;ere again an

a!!aratus that had been conceied for the !risons has been extended

to !ublic !laces" ?ut it is eident that a ideo%recorded !lace is no

more an agora and becomes a hybrid of !ublic and !riate& a 8one of

indi=erence between the !rison and the forum" :his transformation ofthe !olitical s!ace is certainly a com!lex !henomenon that inoles a

multi!licity of causes, and among them the birth of bio!ower holds a

s!ecial !lace" :he !rimacy of the biological identity oer the !olitical

identity is certainly linked to the !olitici8ation of bare life in modern

states"

?ut one should neer forget that the leeling of social identity on

body identity begun with the attem!t to identify the recidiist

criminals" 5e should not be astonished if today the normalrelationshi! between the state and its citi8ens is de2ned by sus!icion,


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!olice 2ling and control" :he uns!oken !rinci!le which rules our

society can be stated like this+ e!ery citi/en is a potential

terrorist'?ut what is a state ruled by such a !rinci!leJ Can we still

de2ne it as democratic stateJ Can we een consider it as something

!oliticalJ #n what kind of state do we lie todayJ

Kou will !robably know that ichel Foucault, in his book (ur!eiller et

3unir and in his courses at the &ollge e France, sketched a

ty!ological classi2cation of modern states" ;e shows how the state of

theAncien 5egime, which he calls the territorial or soereign state

and whose motto was faire mourir et laisser !i!re, eoles

!rogressiely into a !o!ulation state and into a disci!linary state,

whose motto reerses now into faire !i!re et laisser mourir, as it will

take care of the citi8enBs life in order to !roduce healthy, well%ordered

and manageable bodies"

:he state in which we lie now is no more a disci!linary state" Gilles

Deleu8e suggested to call it the 6tat e contr7le, or control state,

because what it wants is not to order and to im!ose disci!line but

rather to manage and to control" Deleu8eBs de2nition is correct,

because management and control do not necessarily coincide with

order and disci!line" 7o one has told it so clearly as the #talian !oliceoHcer, who, after the Genoa riots in @uly ())* declared that the

goernment did not want for the !olice to maintain order but for it

tomanage isorer"

From Politics to Policing

American !olitical scientists who hae tried to analy8e the

constitutional transformation inoled in the 3atriot Act and in the

other laws which followed Se!tember ())* !refer to s!eak of

a security state'?ut what does security here meanJ #t is during the

French 0eolution that the notion of security > suret, as they used to

say 1 is linked to the de2nition ofpolice" :he laws of arch *L, *M


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but no one among the s!eakers E?rissot, ;eraut de SNchelle,

GensonnN is able to de2ne !olice or security by themseles"

:he debates focused on the situation of the !olice with res!ect to

6ustice and 6udicial !ower" GensonnN maintains that they are two

se!arate and distinct !owers,- yet, while the function of the 6udicial

!ower is clear, it is im!ossible to de2ne the role of the !olice" An

analysis of the debate shows that the !lace and function of the !olice

is undecidable and must remain undecidable, because, if it were

really absorbed in the 6udicial !ower, the !olice could no more exist"

:his is the discretionary !ower which still today de2nes the actions of

!olice oHcer, who, in a concrete situation of danger for the !ublic

security act, so to s!eak, as a soereign" ?ut, een when he exerts

this discretionary !ower, the !oliceman does not really take a

decision, nor !re!ares, as is usually stated, the 6udgeBs decision"

$ery decision concerns the causes, while the !olice acts on e=ects,

which are by de2nition undecidable"

:he name of this undecidable element is no more today, like it was in

*Mth century, raison .6tat, or state reason" #t is rather security

reasons-" :he security state is a !olice state, but, again, in the6uridical theory, the !olice is a kind of black hole" All we can say is

that when the so called science of the !olice- 2rst a!!ears in the

*4th century, the !olice- is brought back to its etymology from the

Greekpoliteiaand o!!osed as such to !olitics-" ?ut it is sur!rising to

see that !olice- coincides now with the true !olitical function, while

the term !olitics is resered for foreign !olicy" :hus Oon @usti, in his

treatise on 3olicey89issenschaft, calls 3oliti"the relationshi! of a

state with other states, while he calls 3oli/eithe relationshi! of astate with itself" #t is worthwhile to reect u!on this de2nition+ Police

is the relationshi! of a state with itself"-

:he hy!othesis # would like to suggest here is that, !lacing itself

under the sign of security, the modern state has left the domain of

!olitics to enter a no manBs land, whose geogra!hy and whose

borders are still unknown" :he security state, whose name seems to

refer to an absence of cares :securusfrom sine cura should, on the

contrary, make us worry about the dangers it inoles for democracy,


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because in it !olitical life has become im!ossible, while democracy

means !recisely the !ossibility of a !olitical life"

&ediscovering a Form#of#'ife

?ut # would like to conclude 1 or better to sim!ly sto! my lecture Ein

!hiloso!hy, like in art, no conclusion is !ossible, you can only

abandon your work 1 with something which, as far as # can see now,

is !erha!s the most urgent !olitical !roblem" #f the state we hae in

front of us is the security state # described, we hae to think anew the

traditional strategies of !olitical conicts" 5hat shall we do, what

strategy shall we followJ

:he security !aradigm im!lies that each form of dissent, each more or

less iolent attem!t to oerthrow the order, becomes an o!!ortunity

to goern these actions into a !ro2table direction" :his is eident in

the dialectics that tightly bind together terrorism and state in an

endless icious s!iral" Starting with French 0eolution, the !olitical

tradition of modernity has conceied of radical changes in the form of

a reolutionary !rocess that acts as thepou!oir constituant, the

constituent !ower-, of a new institutional order" # think that we haeto abandon this !aradigm and try to think something as apuissance

estituante,a !urely destituent !ower-, that cannot be ca!tured in

the s!iral of security"

#t is a destituent !ower of this sort that ?en6amin has in mind in his

essay On the &riti-ue of ;iolence, when he tries to de2ne a !ure

iolence which could break the false dialectics of lawmaking iolence

and law%!resering iolence,- an exam!le of which is SorelBs

!roletarian general strike" /n the breaking of this cycle,- he writes at

the end of the essay maintained by mythic forms of law, on the

destitution of law with all the forces on which it de!ends, 2nally

therefore on the abolition of state !ower, a new historical e!och is

founded"- 5hile a constituent !ower destroys law only to recreate it

in a new form, destituent !ower 1 insofar as it de!oses once for all

the law 1 can o!en a really new historical e!och"

:o think such a !urely destituent !ower is not an easy task" ?en6amin

wrote once that nothing is so anarchical as the bourgeois order" #n the


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same sense, Pasolini in his last moie has one of the four Sal

masters saying to their slaes+ true anarchy is the anarchy of

!ower"- #t is !recisely because !ower constitutes itself through the

inclusion and the ca!ture of anarchy and anomy that it is so diHcult

to hae an immediate access to these dimensions& it is so hard to

think today of something as a true anarchy or a true anomy" # think

that a !raxis which would succeed in ex!osing clearly the anarchy

and the anomy ca!tured in the goernmental security technologies

could act as a !urely destituent !ower" A really new !olitical

dimension becomes !ossible only when we gras! and de!ose the

anarchy and the anomy of !ower" ?ut this is not only a theoretical

task+ it means 2rst of all the rediscoery of a form%of%life, the access

to a new 2gure of that !olitical life whose memory the security state

tries at any !rice to cancel"

Giorgio Agamben is a leaing continental philosopher best "no+n

for his +or" on the concepts of the state of e)ception, form8of8life an

homo sacer'

agamben- from the state of control to a praxis of destituent power

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