[-empyre-] Bare Life, Homo Sacer Internet beheadings

[G.H.Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net>]

In continuing my meditation on Agamben, I realize that internet video  
is an assertion of citizenship in the media-polis of the global  
network. In particular is the Islamic fundamentalist use of websites to  
show the beheading of Westeners on video. Agamben discusses how the  
sovereign has the power of life and death over the political body.  The  
demonstration of the beheading of a Westerner is that assertion of  
sovereignity.  The Islamist and terrorist have 2 dynamics. Since  
Western culture excludes Islam, the Islamic terrorist asserts it’s  
power over the Western exclusion by beheading Westerners while reading  
the legal, moral and religious justification for the act.
“
In contrast to arguments that understand political community as  
essentially a common 'belonging' in a shared national, ethnic,  
religious, or moral identity, Agamben argues that 'the original  
political relation is the ban in which a mode of life is actively and  
continuously excluded or shut out (ex-claudere) from the polis. The  
decision as to what constitutes the life that is thereby taken outside  
of the polis is a sovereign decision. Sovereignty is therefore not a  
historically specific form of political authority that arises with  
modern nation-states and their conceptualization by Hobbes and Bodin,  
but rather the essence of the political.” -from philosophy.com , Posted  
by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 4,  
<http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/philosophy/2005/05/ 
im_reading_agam.html>

The counterpoint to Western cultures’ glabalization and corporate  
mono-culture is Islamic fundamentalism. It’s a usurpation of authority.  
Or to use deconstruction parlance a re-appropiation of power.

Two Summers ago I was at an opening and speaking with my old friend  
Carolee Schneeman. She is one of the first women performance/video  
artists in America to deal with the issues of the female body in  
performance. I mention this for those who don’t know who she is.  In  
any case we were talking about the beheading videos. Carolee insisted  
that they were fakes. She told me that the CIA was manufacturing them  
to drum up war lust.  Around the same time a young man in California  
made a fake video of a beheading and put it on the internet just to  
show how easy it was. This reminds me of Jean Baudrillard’s discussion  
in the Crime of Art, where he talks about how we are beyond simulation  
an into a realm of performance where everything is performed. Indeed  
because of digital technologies even the supposed authenticity of a  
photograph is suspect.  Even photography becomes a performative art.   
The beheading videos have become so popular that in order to see the  
video you have to pay a fee online.  The spectacle of a Westerner being  
made to kneel with his head bowed, in bare life, about to be murdered  
is exactly what Agamben talks about.  Even as I write this, Israel is  
attacking Lebanon in retaliation for Hezbollah’s (the para-military  
terrorist group) kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. It is quite clear  
that Hezbollah has asserted it’s sovereignity in Lebanon and is  
demonstrating it with this action.  Israel is also attacking Hezbollah  
while ignoring the sovereignity of the state of Lebanon.