The figure of the Muslim reduces a life to unworthy-of-witness death

Evidence

If, for Agamben, the Muselmann is the absolutely new ethical figure of the irreducible witness to factorized death yet paradoxically incapable of speaking – the witness, in short, who in witnessing cannot bear (to) witness – then the Muslim, as I am conceiving him here, is the figure of death not worthy of witness. The object of a perfectly transparent death. Death’s evaporation. This implies the limits, the end(s) of the ethical as we have come to know it. The end in the unquestioning designation of a class of people whose potentially violent death, destruction, and delimitation become unworthy of reflection or comment other than as a new instrumentality: how to avoid the bearer of death; how to kill before being killed? — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 911

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the author’s own coinage: Muslim as ‘death’s evaporation’ versus Agamben’s Muselmann as witness-to-death — clarifying the target’s new ethical standing.
• XREF: connects to: The Muslim replaces Agamben’s witness as a figure of death unworthy of witnessing; The Muslim subject is placed outside law as a homo sacer. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 320; Muslim lives are less grievable than American ones in public memory

Broader Connections

• The Muslim replaces Agamben’s witness as a figure of death unworthy of witnessing #corroborates (0.95)
• The Muslim subject is placed outside law as a homo sacer. #corroborates (0.80) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 320
• Muslim lives are less grievable than American ones in public memory #corroborates (0.75)