A. Introduction

A number of recent voices in contemporary political and legal philosophy have suggested that something is wrong with international humanitarian relief and human rights advocacy. Such a critique no longer seems to be motivated by ideologies of Social Darwinism or by beliefs in the unconditional primacy of a raison d'État over the needs and rights of individuals. Rather, it derives from a perspective that sees humanitarian activism as an ill-conceived, often merely compensatory gesture.

A more forceful and radical critique has been put forth by the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben. In noticable contrast to the sociology of globalization, which has assured us for years that state sovereignty is gradually disappearing to the benefit of a "world of flows" comprising goods, individuals, capital and information, Agamben argues in his book Homo sacer that we continue to live under the auspices of a classical state as it was conceived in early modern Europe. Accordingly, the primary charasteristic of the state is its capacity to define and occasionally erase the boundary between "normality" and "emergency" and thus the capacity to transform society into a "camp" or Lager populated by citizens reduced to "bare life." Moreover, the current western state is said to blur the line between the normal and the exceptional, between peace and war, by increasingly taking an interest in us not only as citizens, but also as embodied beings—an interest illustrated, for example, by the growing tendency towards biometric registration of travelers at border crossings. Agamben, in all seriousness, has placed this trend in an epochal relationship with the tatooing of concentration camp inmates.

His essay's far-reaching appeal rests on the fact that it combines in a single formula the moral and legal achievements of western societies—in particular the ethos of human rights—with their slides into totalitarianism. By suggesting that human rights are deeply intertwined with the forces of inhumanity against which they are being invoked, Agamben plays to a primarily...