Bare life: asylum-seekers, Australian politics and Agamben's critique of violence

I argue here that we may gain insight into the political challenges posed by asylum seekers using terms supplied by Giorgio Agamben's analysis of the ‘rotten ambiguity’ of modem rule of law. Appealing to the language of human rights to address the status and suffering of would-be refugees is inadequate to the extent that it fails to interrogate (1) the terms on which ‘belonging’ and ‘displacement’ are politicised in the nation state and (2) the nihilistic form of modem law. I explore these limitations by locating Agamben's thought in relation to that of Schmitt, Benjamin and Arendt, and contrasting his account of the ‘state of exception’ in which we live with a perspective that would invite us to see human rights as redressing excesses of sovereign power. My discussion leads me to partially endorse Agamben's view that humanitarian concern for refugee entrenches deeply problematic aspects of the sovereign power of the nation state. I also argue, however, that we might think beyond his criticism of the nation state, to consider how democracy would need to be reconceived in order to allow the political claims of refugees to begin to be heard in their full force.