Homo sacer named a life stripped of all political rights

Evidence

Agamben recalled the legal concept of the homo sacer, coined in the archaic Roman Law: the concept of a human being who could be killed without punishment, but at the same time – being absolutely Other, alien, indeed inhuman – a kind of being who could not be used in ritualistic religious sacrifices: his murder had no religious significance. Homo sacer was totally ‘useless’, completely outside human society and exempt from all obligations and other considerations due to other humans on account of their humanity. Homo sacer’s life was ‘nude’ – that is, stripped of all social quality and political rights, and as such unprotected, made into a sitting target for every frustrated sadist or murderer, but also a recommended target for everyone seeking to conform and exercise their civic duty. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 704

Agamben (1997) recalled the legal concept of the “homo sacer” coined in the archaic Roman Law: the concept of a human being who could be killed without punishment, but at the same time — being absolutely Other, alien, indeed inhuman - a kind of being that could not be used in ritualistic religious sacrifices and whose murder had no religious significance. “Homo Sacer” was totally “useless” - completely outside human society and exempt from all obligations and other considerations due to other humans on account of their humanity. Homo Sacer*s life was “nude” - that is, stripped of all social quality and political rights, and as such unprotected, made into a sitting target for every frustrated sadist or murderer, but also a recommended target for everyone seeking to conform and exercise their civic duty. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 457

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core of the biopolitics concept the reader is scaffolding; pairs with the bare-life / sovereignty problematic.
• XREF: Powers the necropolitics and bare-life vocabulary the Islamophobia readings assume; connects to Foucauldian biopower.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 704; David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 457