SOVEREIGNTY AND STATE OF EXCEPTION IN WILLIAM GOLDING’S LORD OF THE FLIES

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the concepts of sovereignty and bare life in Lord of the Flies written by the English novelist, William Golding. An evaluation of the novel with the understanding of sovereignty as it is put forward by the Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben will demonstrate that the text can be read as the formation of civilization, contrary to the point of view that interprets the novel as the disappearance of civilization. To this end, the examples of state of exceptions, which Agamben thinks are intimately related to the formation of sovereignty and law, in the novel demonstrated. According to this approach, the social order is enabled only through the state of exception. In the novel, this state becomes apparent with the suspension of law/rule and also the degradation of the human from political existence to bare life. After the novel is analyzed through these concepts, the island and the outside the island will be shown to be similar in terms of the state of exception with a specific emphasis on the relation between the novel and imperialist/ colonial biopolitics, and thus the novel cannot be read as the disappearance of civilization. In conclusion, it will be underlined that the violence-forged relations of stranded boys on the island become as such as a result of the nature of sovereignty and biopolitics.