"State of Exception" Author: [Italy] Giorgio Agamben Translator: Xue Xiping Publisher: Northwest University Press

This book is the third work in Agamben's "Homo Sacer" series, and is a further development of the historical-philosophical investigation plan of Western biopolitics. Agamben continues to extend his language-legal thinking, trying to reposition the concept of "sovereignty" as a product of the "state of exception". On the one hand, he starts from reviewing the history of the state of exception in modern Western countries and traces back to Roman law to examine its exemplary origins. On the other hand, he thinks about the way out of the "state of exception" in the ideological debate between Schmitt and Benjamin, and thinks about the possibility of transcending the opposition between "authority" and "authority" and opening up a new space for political action. The simplified Chinese version included in the "Spiritual Translation Series" was fully revised by the translator of the original Taiwan Maitian version.

Indeed, the state of exception has reached its apex in global deployment today. The normative aspect of the law can thus be erased and violated without sanctions by a kind of governance violence; while it ignores international law externally and declares a state of exception internally, it still claims to apply the law.

Living in a state of exception means experiencing these possibilities simultaneously, but always trying to interrupt the machine that is leading the West towards global civil war by separating the two forces: the forces that make laws and the forces that abolish them.

——Agamben

The State of Exception is a timely and compelling exploration of the ability of state power to withdraw legal guarantees and legal rights, while simultaneously abandoning its subjects to the improvisation of legal violence and strengthening the power of the state. Rather than understanding the state of exception as merely contingent and limited, in fact, its initiation has become fundamental to the construction of modern state power. Agamben sensitively considers the historical and philosophical implications of this power, offering a remarkable reflection on “life” and its tension with normativity. This is an erudite and challenging book that calls on us to “shut down the machine” and break the violent stranglehold that law imposes on life.

—Judith Butler

Giorgio Agamben, born in Rome in 1942, is one of the most influential contemporary European thinkers. His thoughts are inherited from Heidegger and Benjamin, and his research covers philosophy, linguistics, aesthetics, politics and theology. His representative work is "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" (1995), which traces the philosophical-historical genealogy of contemporary sovereignty and biopolitical structures. His recent important works include "The Kingdom and the Glory: A Theological Genealogical Study of Economy and Governance" and "The Greatest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Forms of Life".

Xue Xiping is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. He completed his master's thesis on "State of Exception: Law and Life in Agamben's Thought" and is currently researching in the field of psychiatric anthropology. He has co-translated Rancière's "Ambiguity".