Sanctuary is an ancient antidote to totalizing power, not merely a religious custom

Evidence

In the march of institutional interests intent on implementing Big Other, the very first citadel to fall is the most ancient: the principle of sanctuary. The sanctuary privilege has stood as an antidote to power since the beginning of the human story. Even in ancient societies where tyranny prevailed, the right of sanctuary stood as a fail-safe. There was an exit from totalizing power, and that exit was the entrance to a sanctuary in the form of a city, a community, or a temple. By the time of the Greeks, sanctuaries were sacred sites built across the ancient Greek world and consecrated to the purposes of asylum and religious sacrifice. The Greek word asylon means “unplunderable” and founds the notion of a sanctuary as an inviolable space. The right of asylum survived into the eighteenth century in many parts of Europe, attached to holy sites, churches, and monasteries. The demise of the sanctuary privilege was not a repudiation but rather a reflection of social evolution and the firm establishment of the rule of law. One historian summarized this transformation: “justice as sanctuary.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1527

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines sanctuary/asylum as a historical counter-power concept rooted in the Greek asylon (unplunderable).
• XREF: Parallels the sanctuary-city concept with the book’s earlier themes of legal and extralegal institutional orders (Milgrom’s law merchant, the diamond bourse’s privacies). — connects to: Sanctuary is the historical name for spaces where a self can form — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1513; Sanctuary traditions of exclusion converted into protection for the vulnerable — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 338; Communities can claim sanctuary rights against instrumentarian power — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1699

Broader Connections

• Sanctuary traditions of exclusion converted into protection for the vulnerable #expands (0.90) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 338
• Communities can claim sanctuary rights against instrumentarian power #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1699