[-empyre-] Horit Herman Peled's post on 'bare life' in Technopanic

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Horit wrote

> Does this historical-technological phenomenon call for greater  
> responsibility on the part of artists who use this technology for  
> the increasing numbers of people who live what Giorgio Agamben has  
> characterized as "bare life"? Should artists, particularly those  
> placed in the midst of terror, entrench themselves in virtuality,  
> or should they venture into the forbidden zones inhabited by bare  
> life?
>
>
> Horit Herman Peled
> horithp@gmail.com
>
> http://www.horit.com

An important question we've been really engaged in here at -empyre-  
for the past year, and thanks for focussing attention this way again.

just a few cross editorial cross references:

previous contributions on 'bare life' and artistic practices from  
Connor McGarrigle, Susana Mendes Silva, Tina Gonsalves, GH  
Hovagimyan, Jordan Crandall,  Michele White, and -empyre- subscribers  
are found in the July 2006 archives on -empyre-   https:// 
mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2006-July/

also : Sharon Daniel recently described some of her work in  
California prisons with the voices of women inmates on -empyre- in  
January 2007:  for example, see  https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/ 
pipermail/empyre/2007-January/msg00080.html


In another recent article, for Eurozine and dcoumenta 12, Marcus  
Meissen writes:

"When Giorgio Agamben, both prior to and after 9/11, 15 discussed the  
principles of Western society, he provided a threatening image that  
gained its power from legal documents going back to the Roman Empire.  
Influenced by Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism and the  
institutional form of rights, 16 Agamben attempts to trace a  
historical process, one that is not a singular phenomenon, but a  
progression towards his primary thesis: there is an unforeseen  
solidarity between democracy and totalitarianism. According to the  
Roman legal system, the one who threatened the republic was treated  
as a public enemy: as "Homo Sacer" ââ the one without rights â 
â one was reduced to nothing but a living being who could be  
executed."


excerpts from the article below and at http://www.eurozine.com/ 
articles/2006-06-30-miessen-en.html

-----------------------
Markus Miessen

Made in Washington

Spatial Practices as a blueprint for Human Rights violations

The United States became engaged in two distinct conflicts, Operation  
Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom  
(OIF) in Iraq. As a result of a presidential decree, the Geneva  
Conventions did not apply to alâQaeda and Taliban combatants.  
Schlesinger Report. 1

Analysing the relationship between space and power, many questions  
arise about how far spatial conditions have influenced and continue  
to affect conscious violations of Human Rights. A few years into the  
twentyâfirst century, decreasing public confidence in political  
decisionâmaking and its transfer has made way for an overbearing  
universal ethics of mediated truisms. Post 9/11 in particular, one  
can trace an increasing habit of politicians to convert the misâen 
âscÃne and tools of spatial planning in order to create  
microclimates that obey no legal framework. There is evidence that  
spatial planning has been used as a mechanism to convert spaces into  
strategic weapons of physical punishment. Simultaneously, one is  
witnessing the reâappropriation of issues such as representation,  
psychological framework, and an increasingly monotheistic politics.

In 2004, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben reâinterpreted the  
US "war against all evil" as a symbolic gesture that envisions an  
alteration of the political landscape. Two months after the September  
attacks in 2001, the Bush administration ââ in the midst of what  
it perceived as a state of emergency ââ authorised the indefinite  
imprisonment of nonâcitizens suspected of terrorist activities. This  
policy, according to Agamben, should be understood as "The State of  
Exception", 2 a powerful strategy that enables the transformation of  
a contemporary democracy into a civil dictatorship. Agamben argues  
that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional  
measure, has become part of the everyday fabric...


.........

When Giorgio Agamben, both prior to and after 9/11, 15 discussed the  
principles of Western society, he provided a threatening image that  
gained its power from legal documents going back to the Roman Empire.  
Influenced by Hannah Arendt's work on totalitarianism and the  
institutional form of rights, 16 Agamben attempts to trace a  
historical process, one that is not a singular phenomenon, but a  
progression towards his primary thesis: there is an unforeseen  
solidarity between democracy and totalitarianism. According to the  
Roman legal system, the one who threatened the republic was treated  
as a public enemy: as "Homo Sacer" ââ the one without rights â 
â one was reduced to nothing but a living being who could be  
executed. 17

The Patriot Act of October 2001 allows the US government to arrest  
any individual suspected of threatening National Security. But George  
W. Bush's new military order turns those who are incarcerated in  
Guantanamo into lawless individuals, cut off from any legal support 
âstructure because of their territorial, that is spatial, status.  
Like so many other political prisoners in the course of history,  
these individuals have lost their legal identity by having been put  
through a selection of political and spatial filters. Although  
Agamben's critique is radical in the sense that it introduces an  
oversimplified and accelerated concept of comparison, what he  
essentially does is to lay bare the danger of nationalistic  
structures. The videos and photographic footage that came out of Abu  
Ghraib illustrate the drastic relevance of Agamben's theory of the  
Homo Sacer. The naked bodies piled on top of each other, its sadistic  
choreography blending into a scene that recalls the fatal imagery of  
the twentieth century.

Throughout history, cultures have projected what they consider "evil"  
beyond their territorial borders. Historic evidence illustrates that  
as soon as one realises that the reasons for soâcalled "evil deeds "  
can be located inside one's own territory, one refers to an existing  
"cruel" imagery on the outside in order to claim justification.

In the case of Abu Ghraib, we can trace the imagery of the colonial  
victor, but the space itself becomes exchangeable. And so does its  
historical reference. One reason for the public reception being so  
overwhelming could be described simply by tracing an existing  
imagery. Rather than evoking a shock due to its specific message, the  
images coming out of Abu Ghraib overlap with an existing twentieth 
âcentury imagery, a blend of the death camps of Auschwitz, the  
pictures of deformed bodies in Vietnam, the death squad killings in  
El Salvador, the killing of the Tutsi in Rwanda, the genocides in  
Turkey, Sudan, and Cambodia, and the war crimes of collective  
punishment in Fallujah. Such excesses would always have two things in  
common: they were tied to a particular, delineated territory and an  
imagery of the subordinate subject. In this pornography of violence,  
the stage would change, but the choreography stays the same. Trying  
to bridge the gap between associated territories and the mainland,  
the US is trying by all means to refer back to the outside, to avoid  
legal focus on their exterritorial enclaves while simultaneously  
talking about a "clean war". 18
.......

The spatial construction of Camp Delta consists of a maze of fences,  
razor wire, and observation towers. Walls are made from chainâlink  
and cells are protected from the elements by corrugated metal sheets.  
Prisoners spend most of their time in their cells, sitting on the  
floor or lying on foam mats. At night, the entire territory is lit up  
so the guards can see the prisoner's every move. The construction of  
additional detention units was completed by midâApril 2002, carried  
out by Brown and Root Services (BRS) ââ a subsidiary company of  
oilâventure Halliburton ââ approximately five miles from Camp X 
âRay. Each detention units is eight feet long, six feet eight inches  
wide, eight feet tall, and constructed with metal mesh on a solid  
steel frame. Alongside the foam mats, each detainee is provided with  
a blanket and a halfâinch thick prayer mat. 30 These conditions have  
been meticulously designed in order to alter the behaviour of inmates  
and cause symptoms such as chronic depression, suicide, interpersonal  
rejection, psychiatric disorder, and trauma. The physical design is  
intended to force confession. Imperative to the conditions in  
Guantanamo is that spatial components are used as a tool to punish  
and coerce. As soon as the aim ââ the detainee's confession ââ  
is achieved, spatial conditions are altered. Detainees who are  
willing to comply and confess have the chance to become "level one"  
detainees and live in Camp Four, where prisoners are housed in  
communal settings. The implications of this type of outsourcing of  
torture and extraâterritorial incarceration at Guantanamo are  
enormous. There is a reality to space that introduces both physical  
conditions and a framework that facilitates its existence: part of  
the suffering of those men is because they are in a specific space  
that might be too hot, too small, or enforces severe depression,  
anxiety, hallucinations, and loss of motor skills.

............
Returning to Agamben ââ totalitarianism strikes one as extremely  
modern because it proposes the omnipotence of a single person. Under  
these conditions, the individual bureaucrat only has to follow  
orders, often resulting in the plea that the individual is therefore  
not accountable. This implies renouncing one's own capacity to act,  
ultimately turning any act of cruelty into banality, pretending that  
"there is no alternative (TINA)" 34 At Abu Ghraib, spatial conditions  
were disturbing. Imprisoned in 12 by 12 foot cells that were "little  
more than human holding pits", 35 detainees waited for their call.  
What Foucault, through Bentham's Panopticon, explained as the subtle  
form of political control in the microclimate of a prison turned into  
a scenario in which there was neither political control on the micro 
âscale he describes, nor a fully operative legal framework able to  
deal with this parasitic relationship between politics and space.  
Although one can trace these territories on a map, they have been  
hoisted to a juridical metaâlevel on which humiliation through  
spatial and physical practice becomes part of the everyday fabric.

........

This text is an amended and updated version of an essay published in  
"5 Codes ââ Architecture, Paranoia and Risk in Times of  
Terror" (Basel, Boston, Berlin: BirkhÃuser 2006).

This article is published as Eurozine's contribution to documenta 12  
magazines, a collective editorial project linking worldwide over 70  
print and online periodicals, as well as other media (www.documenta.de).

 Original in English  Markus Miessen  Eurozine


-cm