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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Killing Machine Of Exception: Sovereignty, Law, And Play In Agamben’S State Of Exception, Puspa Damai
The Killing Machine Of Exception: Sovereignty, Law, And Play In Agamben’S State Of Exception, Puspa Damai
English Faculty Research
Giorgio Agamben’s slender but profound monograph on the state of exception is an intervention into a world that is becoming more and more exceptionalist. The events of 9/11, the War on Terror, and the successive decrees and acts authorizing fingerprinting, interrogation, and indefinite detention of suspects in terrorist activities, all testify to Agamben’s prophetic portrayal of contemporary politics in which the state of exception—normally a provisional attempt to deal with political exigencies— has become a permanent practice or paradigm of government. When the exception becomes the rule, it results, argues Agamben, not only in the appropriation of the legislative or …
Messianic-City: Ruins, Refuge And Hospitality In Derrida, Puspa Damai
Messianic-City: Ruins, Refuge And Hospitality In Derrida, Puspa Damai
English Faculty Research
‘‘Listen first to those who, like myself, did not have to watch TV to know that SOME of L.A. was burning,’’ Derrida wrote to a newsletter in response to the riots triggered by the Rodney King events in 1992, adding, ‘‘L.A. is not anywhere, but it is a singular organization of the experience of ‘anywhere’’’ (‘‘Faxitexture’’ 28). At a time when one hardly needs to watch TV to know that many cities around the world are burning, or are targeted and wounded, bombed and invaded—as if the Biblical injunction, ‘‘Then ye shall appoint you cities to be cities of refuge …