IS 319 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Biopower, Forced Marriage, Unaccompanied Minors
22 Jun 2018
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IS 319 LAST SEMINAR !
Objectives
How refugees organize themselves
AGIER READING
Difference between pure and active victims.
Pure victims-
Can think of politics of pity
Describes some sort of relationship that is foundational to humanitarian works
What is odd is I, in the humanitarian, is willing to save you, the more helpless you
become, the more important my cruscade but the point when you decide to speak
out, it does not matter.
And as long as I pity you, I will save you and if you don’t appear as pitiful, I wont
save you.
The less vulnerable you appear, the less help you need.
The more you speak, the more poltical asssertful you are and the more you are
equalize the relationship.
If you are going to speak and if theres a need to renegotitate, theres no point in
saving because it becomes a political relationship and that we need to compromise
On the one had you need help but I don’t see you as saviour but the situation
Next week’s reading for Agier: easily graspable and he will name subtitles and give
it some sort of physiology “if this were…..”, he is going to use these subtitles and
make a direct reference to a book written by Primo Levi- he’s a holocaust survivor
and wroke this book in 1944 about his experiences in cocnetraiton camp and about
human potential. It’s not grim but it’s disturbing.
His most famous book (in Italian): if this was a man (a story retold about his
experience AUshiwtiz) and what Agier is doing is asking a similar question and
how the world is being organized.
If you are in concentration camps, can we still be called a man? The modern world
can dehumanize by millions and how is this happening?
In agier’s book, hes picking it at refugee camps. He asks how a camp become a
town and positions himself against Agamben and how precarious situations allow
people to form an organized society within themselves? Hes going to bring in a
term called heterotopica (think of utopia), heterotopic: a space for all alternative
peoples but manage to organize themselves and view the camp has heterotopic
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
camp and what that looks like. He brings in “if this was a world”, similar to what
we were talking to, humanitarian reason is so central to world organization and
how do we generate refugee population and sets up conditions for non-political
refugee camps? Note that it doesn’t succeed but the situation has the basic effects
of conditioning non politics. So humanitarian is anti-political.
Politics of pity – the mentality of “I want to be structural but you need to stay
quiet”
The portray of pure victims. Its not an abstract category.
Think of britian and how he involved and how the victims wasn’t surviving as
much as they want. These types
“if this was a government what hes asking here is looking at configurations at
actual institutions that manage the refugee camps (looking at NGOs, local govt and
UN and form left hand of a global empire) – what a right hand of global empire
think conservative and left hand looks at recovering the mess “nice hand of taking
the problems caused by the right hand)
and in the process of doing that, it manages the space but Agier starts with a story
of a fairytale world while organizations claiming to serve them as a best interest.
You are free to become to be like us, but that not really true…
Notice that the intent isn’t part of this. It’s hard to imagine power and power has
nothing to do with intent but not all humanitarian is bad. What we are saying is that
theres a certain logic that expresses in a specific way and its easy not to see the
violence one is reproducing and not to mention the agonies people are facing,
people are locked in a specific effect. The intent and will had no intent.
Invisible City
Documentary done in refugee camp.
Focuses on the question of agency and refugees in camp
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Real autonomy
Background of arguments is a discussion on Agamben’s argument (that’s abstract)
And if you want to do more refugees study, you need to get yourself familiar with
his work
Strong statement on political agency in the modern world and Agamben argues
that you need to set up no political agency in the modern world
That you are not set by design to have political agency in the modern world
What is political agency?
Agamben is arguing that the power of soverign who can cal a state of exception
The sovereign can suspend the law and restore order and when states call state of
emergency, state is not bound to law and act directly with the sphere of public
without any public consequence. State of emergency is also invoked in state
emergencies. What is really scary of this is that in practicality, if you are target of
sovereign, there are no consequence of what the state does to you. That person is
homo sacer (Latin for sacred man) sacred in this term does not mean divine; it
means outside of law. How do you live your life outside of life? If you live outside
of life and there are no consequences (eg. Look at ROhingja in Burma) or seen as
state, what Agamben means is that some point somewhere ein modern politics, you
are going to end up in a camp form because if one is ejected from one specific
political community, that person needs to be put somewhere and in whereelse in a
nation state in bounded boundaries and ejected someone as not belonging, the
receiving country will have the same issue on where to put them and put them in a
bounded area because they are not protected by the law. A spatial area that
administered the bare lives of what deemed as homo sacer.
So if you take refugees camp, which is humanitarian-oriented project or
concentration camps which is a project conducted by Nazis, you are taking all the
undesirables in a bounded space to be process and the ending result doesn’t matter.
How they are processed as abstract bodies is that you are homogenized them but
you have reduced them to an abstract category (eg. Refugees, prisoners, a
biological problem) and managed as an abstract body but everyone wants her to
move along but it’s the same thing in other camps. For the same reason, when
Europe after WW2, it was the former concentration camps that served the refugees
camps because these camps were repurposed because in both camps, you are
talking about managing abstract categories who void their voices. If you don’t have
a voice, you don’t have politics.
This is expressed in Bare life / Homo Sacer (1998).
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Describes some sort of relationship that is foundational to humanitarian works. What is odd is i, in the humanitarian, is willing to save you, the more helpless you become, the more important my cruscade but the point when you decide to speak out, it does not matter. And as long as i pity you, i will save you and if you don"t appear as pitiful, i wont save you. The less vulnerable you appear, the less help you need. The more you speak, the more poltical asssertful you are and the more you are equalize the relationship. If you are going to speak and if theres a need to renegotitate, theres no point in saving because it becomes a political relationship and that we need to compromise. On the one had you need help but i don"t see you as saviour but the situation.
