The terrible violence of colonialism.
Can one say that indigenous Australian populations--seen as nonreligious, indolent and idle, hideous and uncivilized cannibals in the late enlightenment period be represented as an image of a "creature" that is utterly rejected and excluded from humanity? One who lives in the 'unlivable' and 'uninhabitable' zones of social life and can be seen as a homo sacer in Giorgio Agamben's sense.
If homo sacer denotes a naked or bare life that is depoliticized, and exempt or excluded from the normal limits of the state. At the same time, then the idigenous people as homo sacer are not simply cast out but are held in particular relation to the norm: it is through the exclusion of the depoliticized form of life that the politicized norm exists.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 23, 2005 11:56 PM | TrackBack