Zones of Indistinction: Giorgio Agamben’s ‘Bare Life’ and the Politics of Aesthetics

Abstract

The category of ‘bare life’ is used to refer to subjects who are denied both political and legal representation. For Giorgio Agamben, the subject who most immediately exemplifies the plight of ‘bare life’ is the stateless refugee. However, this can be extended, the author would suggest, to include political prisoners, the disappeared, victims of torture, and the dispossessed – all of whom are excluded, to different degrees, from the fraternity of the social sphere, appeal to the safety net of the nation‐state and recourse to international law. The concept of ‘bare life’ also provides a significant way of reflecting on contemporary art practices that take migration, statelessness, diasporic communities, human rights, and zones of conflict as their subject matter; nowhere more so that when they represent the ‘zones of indistinction’ to which ‘bare life’ is consigned.