Sovereign-less Subject and the Possibility of Resistance

Abstract

This article explores exclusionary practices of contemporary politics and alternative forms of resistance. It starts off explaining how Giorgio Agamben's theory can be understood in the context of resistance. In so doing, it turns to the arguments put forward by Edkins and Pin-Fat. In their article `Through the Wire', they identify two forms of resistance. Drawing on Agamben's thought: refusal and the assumption of bare life. This article argues that these two forms are not sufficient for thinking resistance. This is so because of a gap in Agamben's thought and the way Edkins and Pin-Fat read him. In order to explore resistance in a more fruitful way, the article critiques Edkins and Pin-Fat's conclusions on the understanding bare life as a form of resistance; it amends Agamben's account by explaining the move from bare life to whatever being, and ultimately, the article finds whatever being as a fruitful way of understanding resistance on the example of Tiananmen. At the end I conclude that the Tiananmen protest successfully challenged the sovereign power from the position of in-between.

Toward a “thoughtful lightness”: Education in viral times

“…It is a form of life that “constitutes a form of being that inhibits a space where sovereign power cannot draw lines or further exclusions…. It attacks sovereign power ‘from the outside’ where the categories of acceptance, inclusion or exclusion no longer hold” (Zevnik 2009 , p. 89). Agamben named this form of bare life a “whatever being”.…”

International misrecognition: The politics of humour and national identity in Israel’s public diplomacy

“…More recently, attempts have been made to introduce Lacanian theory into IR theory (e.g. Edkins, 1999; Epstein, 2011, 2013; Zevnik, 2009) to stress, as Epstein (2011: 336) puts it, that ‘the fundamental alienation is precisely the lack that lies at the heart of identity … what defeats the possibility of a closed, cohesive self’. Yet, because states are not people and ‘have no biological mechanisms’ (Hutchison and Bleiker, 2014: 492), representations are ‘a key link’ between individual experiences and collective political dynamics (Hutchison and Bleiker, 2014: 505).…”

A Pedagogy of Peacebuilding: Infrapolitics, Resistance, and Liberation1

“…They operate because of and in spite of power, and often despite their proponents experiencing bare life (Agamben 1998; Edkins and Pin‐Fat 2005). Indeed, bare life might be an advantage ironically in that it creates a space for the infrapolitics of peacebuilding to emerge, and where politic debate over the nature of peace can occur relatively free from international prescriptions, but also aware of them (Zevnik 2009:89).…”