// essays //
Fall 2005
Arendt's Legacy Usurped: In Defense of the (Limited) Nation State
Mira Siegelberg
"The fundamental deprivation of human rights is manifested first and above all in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective. Something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice...This extremity, and nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are deprived not of the right to freedom but of the right to action."
—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Since World War II, the idea of human rights has become an essential part of our political consciousness. And yet, right along side the human rights enterprise, there has developed a critical tradition that questions the assumption and efficacy of the human rights movement. In a 1996 essay entitled "Beyond Human Rights," Giorgio Agamben, one of the central contributors to this critical tradition argues that the nation-state is irrevocably dissolving and national sovereignty is becoming increasingly diffuse. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's articulation of the plight of the refugee in The Origins of Totalitarianism, he proposes that in this emerging political condition the refugee, not the citizen, is the only conceivable political category of being. Agamben urges us to recognize that all declarations of rights, including those put forth by the humanitarian movement which may seem to transcend the political order, are in fact tied to this fading political system and are thus subject to the same fate.
The implications of his argument are profound and extend well beyond a simple critique of the declarations of rights themselves. Agamben's argument fundamentally challenges the notion of the human rights movement, and more broadly, whether state sovereignty can ever be compatible with human rights. In order to test the validity of his argument, I will examine Agamben's argument against state sovereignty and then attempt to determine the implications of his critique for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.1 This analysis will demonstrate that the declaration presupposes the existence of the nation-state to enforce the rights articulated in the text and is therefore subject to Agamben's critique. The second, and more significant challenge, will be to evaluate the persuasiveness of Agamben's argument by analyzing whether his argument is in fact consistent with Hannah Arendt's analysis, whose legacy he claims to uphold. Lastly, I will assess whether his enthusiasm over the prospect of the disolution of national sovereignty is actually justifiable.
Drawing on other contemporary theorists I contend that Agamben's position is not justifiable and that the demise of the nation-state even in an increasingly globalized world means the demise of human rights in our political system. Both Gregory Jusdanis in his book The Necessary Nation and Michael Ignatieff inHuman Rights: Politics and Idolatry argue that as sovereignty evolves, there are still groups clamoring for nationhood and the nation-state is still the best way to preserve human rights. It is these theorists and not Agamben that ultimately present the more convincing case both in terms of their reading of Arendt and in the solutions that they offer. This study then will not only demonstrate that there are alternative, and perhaps superior, readings of the implications of Arendt's argument, but will also attest to the continuing relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Through my analysis of Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, I will assess which argument is more defensible in terms of the protection of human rights.
In Beyond Human Rights, Agamben cites an article written by Hannah Arendt in 1943, where she expresses that refugees represent a "new historical consciousness" and have no interest in gaining a new national identity, but rather seek to "contemplate lucidly their condition."2 He argues that this new form of consciousness is especially important today as when older concepts representing the political actor such as "man" or "citizen" are falling by the wayside as the nation-state slowly declines. Agamben writes joyously about starting afresh without the burden of national sovereignty and instead forming political communities based on the notion of collective displacement. He writes, "It is also the case that given the by now unstoppable decline of the nation-state, and the general corrosion of traditional political-juridical categories, the refugee is perhaps the only thinkable figure for the people for our time..."3 For Agamben, however, the refugee is not only the sole possible identity in a post-national world, but also the ideal political figure in general. Thus, Hannah Arendt's model of the individual meditating on his condition and living as a perpetual outsider of history is Agamben's ideal existential state. He writes enthusiastically, and indeed almost messianically, about building, "our political philosophy anew from the one and only figure of the refugee."4 For Agamben therefore, living in a perpetual state of exile, where each distinct community can inhabit the same realm but will respect the others respective diaspora is the best way to avoid the bloodshed and political turmoil that characterized the twentieth century. In other words, the necessity of belonging to a nation-state has been the root of modern violence.
The question remains: What is it that Agamben finds so problematic about the existence of the nation-state? Why is he so enthusiastic about the disintegration of state citizenship? In his essay, Agamben uses Arendt's elucidation of the relationship between citizenship and rights to explain why the existence of rights for the pure human stripped of any national identity is impossible. He writes, citing the chapter "The Decline of the Nation-state: End of Rights of Man" in Origins of Totalitarianism, that beginning with the French Revolution's "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," rights were subsumed into the general category of citizenship. Agamben asserts, "a stable statute for the human in itself is inconceivable in the law of the nation-state."5 For Agamben, the notion that an international body can impose and enforce an external morality on the nation-state is inconceivable, since the state only recognizes the rights of the citizen and not of the human being. Following this reasoning, declarations of rights, including the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are no longer relevant for they are premised on national sovereignty. Agamben writes,
It is time to cease to look at all the declarations of rights from 1789 through the present day as proclamations of eternal metajuridical values aimed at binding the legislator to the respect of such values; it is time, rather, to understand them according to their real function in the modern state…Rights, in other words, are attributed to the human being only to the degree to which he or she is the immediately vanishing presupposition… of the citizen.6
For Agamben, all humanitarian declarations of rights, including the 1948 declaration, implicitly reinforce the concept of national sovereignty by conflating the ability to have rights with citizenship. If someone, like a refugee, is somehow deprived of citizenship, these "rights" cease to have any meaning. Thus, even while the declaration may seem to place the rights of the individual above that of the state, it in fact leaves no room for pure human existence without a tie to a particular sovereign nation. And for Agamben, with his ideal of a world devoid of nation-states, the UDHR is fundamentally problematic.
A survey of some of the statements and articles contained in Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicates that Agamben's assumption is correct. The document does indeed seem to presuppose the concept of national sovereignty. In fact, the declaration states explicitly in the preamble that it is "essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations" and that "member states have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for the observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms," thus indicating that the effectiveness of the declaration is contingent on the compliance of the family of nations. The declaration not only assumes the existence of an international system, but also suggests that promoting peace between nations will further advance the cause of human rights. Later on, article 15 states that "everyone has a right to a nationality" and article 28 asserts, "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality," thereby acknowledging that human rights operate within a national order and that belonging to a nation is a fundamental right.7
The concept of national sovereignty is thus clearly embedded in the declaration and in order to understand Agamben's rejection of the nation-state and to anything wedded to it, such as the UDHR, it is helpful to examine Homo Sacer, in which he expands on the issues mentioned more concisely in the 1996 essay. In the book, Agamben explains how the essence of state power lies in its ability to exclude and to decide on the state of exception, rendering certain people into "bare" or "sacred" life. Humanitarian efforts to correct this failing are unsuccessful since they do not mediate the problem of bare life and instead perpetuate the state of exception which renders the non-citizen into a figure that can be sacrificed. He writes, "In the final analysis, however, humanitarian organizations…can only grasp human life in the figure of bare or sacred life, and therefore, despite themselves, maintain a secret solidarity with the very powers that they ought to fight."8According to Agamben, human rights efforts are in fact complicit in rendering the refugee, or the individual without the rights of a citizen, into a figure representative of naked life, which as Hannah Arendt first pointed out, is without relevance in the international system. It is evident from Homo Sacer that Agamben has a definitive perspective on the nature of sovereignty, and ultimately believes that the nation-state can only operate as an instrument of exclusivity and oppression. Efforts, therefore, to create a law above that of nation-states have failed to correct its flaws and ultimately remain fatally tied to it. In light of these assumptions, it is abundantly clear why Agamben welcomes the institutions imminent demise and refuses to concede that a humanitarian ideology can ever be consistent with national sovereignty.9
Agamben's argument presents a strong critique of the UDHR and at any attempt to synthesize national sovereignty with the protection of human rights. But is he really faithful to Hannah Arendt's argument in Origins of Totalitarianism? Or does he simply misappropriate her argument to support his own beliefs about the nature of state sovereignty? Looking closely at other theorists who come out in favor of the nation-state, it is clear that the answer is no. These other thinkers present a more plausible and convincing case in favor of state sovereignty and ultimately prove much more consistent with Arendt's original argument.
In Homo Sacer, Agamben writes in reference to the chapter in Arendt's book in which, "linking together the fates of the rights of man and the nation-state, her striking formulation seems to imply the idea of an intimate and necessary connection between the two, though the author herself leaves the question open."10 He explains that a reasonable inference to draw from her study is that the refugee represents a "limit concept" that problematizes the link between nativity, nationality, and citizenship. According to Agamben, the clear implication of this analysis is the necessity of creating new political categories that would eliminate the state of exception and the vulnerability of bare life in the nation-state.11 Although Agamben concedes that Arendt herself never produced a definitive statement rejecting the nation-state, he suggests tha the refugee's plight exposes the irremediable flaws of sovereignty follows logically from her analysis.
A study, however, of the chapter in Origins of Totalitarianism in which Arendt cogently describes the plight of the refugee indicates that Agamben ignores key aspects of her argument which show that she in fact does not jettison the nation-state project altogether. Indeed, contrary to what Agamben suggests, Arendt implies that it is the perversion of the nation-state system, and not the nation-state itself, which led to the refugee crisis. Arendt exposes the inner working of state sovereignty, but nonetheless explains, "Modern power conditions which make national sovereignty a mockery except for giant states, the rise of imperialism and the pan movements undermined the stability of Europe's nation-state system from the outside. None of these factors, however, had sprung directly from the tradition and the institution of nation-states themselves."12 Thus, according to her analysis, in the interwar period it was the breakdown of the European nation-states that left masses of people rightless. States that sought perpetual expansion and defied the rule of law represented the perversion of the nation-state system. She writes, "For the nation-state cannot exist once its principle of equality before the law has broken down…Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states."13 The exclusion therefore of certain individuals from possessing citizenship rights is not a function of national sovereignty at all but rather a direct result of excessive sovereignty. Finally, in direct opposition to Agamben's solution to the refugee crisis, she asserts that becoming a figure of bare life—a figure that according to Agamben the nation-state can sacrifice without consequence— means losing the attachments of professional and communal life, and that it is only the restitution of that condition of belonging that can protect individual life. It is when the nation-state falls apart that human life becomes "sacred" and the state of exception becomes possible. Arendt eloquently writes,
The paradox involved in the loss of human rights is that such a loss coincides with the instant when a person becomes a human being in general- without a profession, without citizenship, without an opinion, without a deed by which to identify and specify himself- and different in General, representing nothing but his own absolutely unique individuality which deprived of expression within and action upon a common world, loses all significance.14
In other words, the solution to the refugee problem cannot be abandoning the nation-state project altogether, since it is the very right to belong to a polity that defines human rights. While Agamben imagines a coming community premised on the idea of permanent exile, Arendt declares that it only through living in a state of belonging that the individual retains these rights at all. Interestingly, Hannah Arendt's article, which Agamben selectively uses to buttress his own position is from 1943, while her later essay in Origins from 1951 expresses an entirely different perspective on whether it is better to belong to a nation or simply to "contemplate lucidly" one's condition. Agamben simply avoids this issue by referring back to her earlier essay. In a letter to Hannah Arendt from 1970, Agamben introduces himself as a young writer who had been inspired by her writings. He wrote, "I am a young writer and essayist for whom discovering your books last year has represented a decisive experience. May I express here my gratitude to you, and that of those who along with me, in the gap between past and future feel all the urgency of working in the direction you pointed out?"15 The evidence, however, from The Origins of Totalitarianism suggests that Arendt was committed to analyzing the problems created by excessive nationalism, not in destroying the notion of nation-states and citizenship altogether. Agamben, inspired by her writings, took her ideas in a direction that is not in fact a plausible implication of her work.
Other contemporary theorists likewise interpret the implications of Hannah Arendt's explanation of the relationship between rights and citizenship, and do so much more faithfully than Agamben. Indeed, two other thinkers who write critically on the subject of the nation-state–Michael Ignatieff and Gregory Jusdanis–reject Agamben's thesis. Instead, both advocate a form of limited national sovereignty, which seems to be the more logical inference to draw from Arendt's argument. Michael Ignatieff asserts, "Arendt teaches us, moreover, that rights cannot be protected by well meaning movements of global cosmopolitanism…but only by legitimate and democratic nation-states, which guarantee rights as part of their constitutional architecture and which provide clear remedies in law and a guarantee of civic inclusion to all its members regardless of origins." He explains that for Arendt, "It is citizenship—real actual belonging in political community—not abstract belonging to the human species—which will protect the human rights of all."16 Arendt believed that the best and only solution to the refugee problem is to maintain good national governments, not to laude their dissolution.
Ignatieff elaborates on this theory in Human Rights: Politics and Idolatry. He explains that fifty years after "the human rights revolution," most people depend on the state for rights, and if they do not have a state, aspire for or fight to have one. However, he qualifies this statement by acknowledging that the nature of sovereignty is changing and that states are becoming increasingly deferential to international law. "In practice," he says, "the exercise of state sovereignty is conditional to some degree on observance of proper human rights behavior."17 Ignatieff cautions that it is "Utopian" to look forward to the demise of state sovereignty since it remains the basis of international order and "national constitutional regimes represent the best guarantee of human rights."18 At the heart of Ignatieff's position, therefore, is the conviction, which follows closely from Arendt's thesis, that legitimate institutions alone are the best guarantee of human rights protection.
In The Necessary Nation, Gregory Jusdanis not only proposes an alternative to giving up on the nation-state project, but also articulates some of the fundamental flaws in the scenario envisioned by Agamben in Beyond Human Rights. The alternative Jusdanis offers is—like Ignatieff's proposal— a form of limited national sovereignty. He proposes a federal system, which he says, "can prevent endless territorial fragmentation by allowing various groups to exist in a corporate political structure that does not threaten their ethnic, racial linguistic or religious values." In practical terms, this means that groups, states or nations would govern themselves while participating in supernational political institutions."19 He also contextualizes the philosophical stance that Agamben and others take, explaining that "the idealization of cosmopolitanism, diaspora, and hybridity had become… a characteristic feature of cultural studies in general and postcolonialism in particular." Jusdanis then cites an argument that is similar to Agamben's which claims that it is possible for a people to maintain its distinct culture without the possession of land. Jusdanis responds to this assertion by asking incredulously, "In the absence of a state, how can diasporas defend themselves if the need arises?" In the condition offered by the authors, "The authentic life, it seems, is one of perpetual scattering, migration and exile."20 In these few sentences, Jusdanis articulates the unavoidable questions at the root of Agamben's imagined coming community.
At the end of Beyond Human Rights, Agamben implores the nation-state to "find the courage to question the very principle of the inscription of nativity as well as the trinity of state-nation-territory that is founded on that principle" before "extermination camps are reopened in Europe."21 For Agamben, it is national territorial sovereignty itself that creates concentration camps. Arendt however, contrary to what Agamben may think are the implications if her theory, asserts the opposite quite clearly. She write, "The pragmatic soundness of Burke's concept seems to be beyond doubt in light of our manifold experiences. Not only did the loss of national rights in all instances entail the loss of human rights; the restoration of human rights as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only through the restoration or the establishment of national rights." 22 In this quote, Arendt appeals to Edmund Burke's argument from his Reflections on the Revolution in France that one can ultimately only appeal to hereditary rights and not to any abstract notions of human rights and she states unambiguously that the preservation of rights can only be obtained by appealing to national rights.
Significantly, Agamben concludes his essay with a discussion of 425 Palestinians who were expelled from Israel and expresses his wish that the group be representative of a larger movement rejecting nationalism in favor of recognizing one's inner refugee. The reference to the group of Palestinians is too poetic to be accidental, and it is seems beyond a doubt that Agamben refers to them in direct response to Arendt's mention of the newly formed state of Israel, implying that the new refugee consciousness has superceded an older nationalistic historical consciousness. In the end, it is apparent that even while Arendt reveals the possible weaknesses of the nation-state, she nonetheless clearly expresses that belonging to a defined political community is a basic human right. She states, "something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice…This extremity, and nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are deprived not of the right to freedom but of the right to action."23 The essence of human rights for Arendt is the ability to have a voice and effect change through belonging to a political community, which is why she refers to Israel as the solution to the Jewish refugee problem. It is important to note however, that although she embraced the new Jewish state, Arendt never accepted the idea of sovereignty in its traditional 19th century form and remained skeptical of the Zionist project, which she thought was guilty of seeking excess sovereignty.24 The idea of limited state sovereignty or a federation system in which states participate in supernational institutions proposed by Ignatieff and Jusdanis therefore seems to be the most reasonable conclusion to draw from her argument.
Agamben undeniably presents a searing critique of sovereignty and a powerful vision of a borderless world devoid of the concept of "citizenship". However, the most logical reading of Arendt's argument is that she sought a stable system of government that could avoid the political excesses of the twentieth century. Further, for the reasons presented by Jusdanis in The Necessary Nation that the diasporas imagined by Agamben cannot defend themselves if the need arises, and that the desire to belong to a group is too powerful and persistent to simply wave away with the promise of communal exile, the philosopher's coming community seems entirely implausible. Indeed Agamben's solution is especially unconvincing at a time when many groups clamor for the right to have their own nation. Fifty six years after its adoption in the United Nations General Assembly, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a vestige of a dying age but rather representative of a new commitment to limited state sovereignty. In agreement with Arendt, the declaration acknowledges the right to belong to a national community and at the same time asserts that the nation-state is bound by international law. This is not to say that the current system of rights protection is not highly flawed, or that the problem of "bare life" has been eliminated. Indeed, since the creation of the UDHR there have been a number of gross human rights violations–including the genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and most recently Darfur–which all call attention to the importance of Agamben's critique. Nevertheless, the more compelling theory is that only the existence of certain boundaries along with limitation on state power can preserve the rule of law and human rights.
1 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. In the preamble the member states "pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms." What is essential to note is that only recognized member states were included in the declaration.
2 Agamben, Giorgio Beyond Human Rights. trans. Cesare Casarino, in Radical Thought in Italy, ed. Paolo Virno & Michael Hardt, University of Minnesota Press (Theory Out Of Bounds series), Minneapolis, Minnesota
3 Agamben, 16.6
4 ibid,
5 ibid, 20
6 ibid
7 It is worth noting, however, that the 1948 declaration is somewhat paradoxical, since one the one hand, the document stresses the rights of individuals, but on the other hand stresses the right to exist within a community and that freedom is only realizable in the context of belonging to a sovereign political system. While there is no doubt that the framers of the declaration were conscious of the refugee crises between the world wars and indeed sought to obtain a "stable statute for the pure human" they could not, and as will be proved later probably should not, imagine that those rights could exist without the existence of sovereign nations
8 Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Stanford California. Stanford University Press, 1998 p. 133
9 One can locate this line of thinking within a broader tradition of critiques of state power and its effects on human life, including Michel Foucault's denunciation of what he called "biopower." See his History of Sexuality and Lectures at the College de France.
10 Homo Sacer, 126
11 ibid, 134
12 Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc.1976 p. 270
13 ibid, 290
14 ibid, 302
15 Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division Library of Congress. Letter Giorgio Agamben to Hannah Arendt February 21, 1970. General, 1938-1976 (Series: Correspondence File, 1938-1976)
16 Ignatieff, Michael. "Arendt's Example": Hannah Arendt Prize Ceremony Bremen, Nov. 28, 2003 (http://ksg.harvard.edu/cchrp/pdf/arendt.24.11.03/pdf.)
17 Ignatieff, Michael. Human Rights Politics and Ideology ed. Amy Gutman Princeton N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001 p. 17
18 ibid, p.35
19 Jusdanis, Gregory. The Necessary Nation. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001 p.218
20 ibid, 208
21 Beyond Human Rights 24.5
22 Origins of Totalitarianism 295
23 ibid, 296
24 Bernstein, Richard J. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Press, 1996
—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Since World War II, the idea of human rights has become an essential part of our political consciousness. And yet, right along side the human rights enterprise, there has developed a critical tradition that questions the assumption and efficacy of the human rights movement. In a 1996 essay entitled "Beyond Human Rights," Giorgio Agamben, one of the central contributors to this critical tradition argues that the nation-state is irrevocably dissolving and national sovereignty is becoming increasingly diffuse. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's articulation of the plight of the refugee in The Origins of Totalitarianism, he proposes that in this emerging political condition the refugee, not the citizen, is the only conceivable political category of being. Agamben urges us to recognize that all declarations of rights, including those put forth by the humanitarian movement which may seem to transcend the political order, are in fact tied to this fading political system and are thus subject to the same fate.
The implications of his argument are profound and extend well beyond a simple critique of the declarations of rights themselves. Agamben's argument fundamentally challenges the notion of the human rights movement, and more broadly, whether state sovereignty can ever be compatible with human rights. In order to test the validity of his argument, I will examine Agamben's argument against state sovereignty and then attempt to determine the implications of his critique for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.1 This analysis will demonstrate that the declaration presupposes the existence of the nation-state to enforce the rights articulated in the text and is therefore subject to Agamben's critique. The second, and more significant challenge, will be to evaluate the persuasiveness of Agamben's argument by analyzing whether his argument is in fact consistent with Hannah Arendt's analysis, whose legacy he claims to uphold. Lastly, I will assess whether his enthusiasm over the prospect of the disolution of national sovereignty is actually justifiable.
Drawing on other contemporary theorists I contend that Agamben's position is not justifiable and that the demise of the nation-state even in an increasingly globalized world means the demise of human rights in our political system. Both Gregory Jusdanis in his book The Necessary Nation and Michael Ignatieff inHuman Rights: Politics and Idolatry argue that as sovereignty evolves, there are still groups clamoring for nationhood and the nation-state is still the best way to preserve human rights. It is these theorists and not Agamben that ultimately present the more convincing case both in terms of their reading of Arendt and in the solutions that they offer. This study then will not only demonstrate that there are alternative, and perhaps superior, readings of the implications of Arendt's argument, but will also attest to the continuing relevance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Through my analysis of Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt, I will assess which argument is more defensible in terms of the protection of human rights.
In Beyond Human Rights, Agamben cites an article written by Hannah Arendt in 1943, where she expresses that refugees represent a "new historical consciousness" and have no interest in gaining a new national identity, but rather seek to "contemplate lucidly their condition."2 He argues that this new form of consciousness is especially important today as when older concepts representing the political actor such as "man" or "citizen" are falling by the wayside as the nation-state slowly declines. Agamben writes joyously about starting afresh without the burden of national sovereignty and instead forming political communities based on the notion of collective displacement. He writes, "It is also the case that given the by now unstoppable decline of the nation-state, and the general corrosion of traditional political-juridical categories, the refugee is perhaps the only thinkable figure for the people for our time..."3 For Agamben, however, the refugee is not only the sole possible identity in a post-national world, but also the ideal political figure in general. Thus, Hannah Arendt's model of the individual meditating on his condition and living as a perpetual outsider of history is Agamben's ideal existential state. He writes enthusiastically, and indeed almost messianically, about building, "our political philosophy anew from the one and only figure of the refugee."4 For Agamben therefore, living in a perpetual state of exile, where each distinct community can inhabit the same realm but will respect the others respective diaspora is the best way to avoid the bloodshed and political turmoil that characterized the twentieth century. In other words, the necessity of belonging to a nation-state has been the root of modern violence.
The question remains: What is it that Agamben finds so problematic about the existence of the nation-state? Why is he so enthusiastic about the disintegration of state citizenship? In his essay, Agamben uses Arendt's elucidation of the relationship between citizenship and rights to explain why the existence of rights for the pure human stripped of any national identity is impossible. He writes, citing the chapter "The Decline of the Nation-state: End of Rights of Man" in Origins of Totalitarianism, that beginning with the French Revolution's "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," rights were subsumed into the general category of citizenship. Agamben asserts, "a stable statute for the human in itself is inconceivable in the law of the nation-state."5 For Agamben, the notion that an international body can impose and enforce an external morality on the nation-state is inconceivable, since the state only recognizes the rights of the citizen and not of the human being. Following this reasoning, declarations of rights, including the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are no longer relevant for they are premised on national sovereignty. Agamben writes,
It is time to cease to look at all the declarations of rights from 1789 through the present day as proclamations of eternal metajuridical values aimed at binding the legislator to the respect of such values; it is time, rather, to understand them according to their real function in the modern state…Rights, in other words, are attributed to the human being only to the degree to which he or she is the immediately vanishing presupposition… of the citizen.6
For Agamben, all humanitarian declarations of rights, including the 1948 declaration, implicitly reinforce the concept of national sovereignty by conflating the ability to have rights with citizenship. If someone, like a refugee, is somehow deprived of citizenship, these "rights" cease to have any meaning. Thus, even while the declaration may seem to place the rights of the individual above that of the state, it in fact leaves no room for pure human existence without a tie to a particular sovereign nation. And for Agamben, with his ideal of a world devoid of nation-states, the UDHR is fundamentally problematic.
A survey of some of the statements and articles contained in Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicates that Agamben's assumption is correct. The document does indeed seem to presuppose the concept of national sovereignty. In fact, the declaration states explicitly in the preamble that it is "essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations" and that "member states have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for the observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms," thus indicating that the effectiveness of the declaration is contingent on the compliance of the family of nations. The declaration not only assumes the existence of an international system, but also suggests that promoting peace between nations will further advance the cause of human rights. Later on, article 15 states that "everyone has a right to a nationality" and article 28 asserts, "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality," thereby acknowledging that human rights operate within a national order and that belonging to a nation is a fundamental right.7
The concept of national sovereignty is thus clearly embedded in the declaration and in order to understand Agamben's rejection of the nation-state and to anything wedded to it, such as the UDHR, it is helpful to examine Homo Sacer, in which he expands on the issues mentioned more concisely in the 1996 essay. In the book, Agamben explains how the essence of state power lies in its ability to exclude and to decide on the state of exception, rendering certain people into "bare" or "sacred" life. Humanitarian efforts to correct this failing are unsuccessful since they do not mediate the problem of bare life and instead perpetuate the state of exception which renders the non-citizen into a figure that can be sacrificed. He writes, "In the final analysis, however, humanitarian organizations…can only grasp human life in the figure of bare or sacred life, and therefore, despite themselves, maintain a secret solidarity with the very powers that they ought to fight."8According to Agamben, human rights efforts are in fact complicit in rendering the refugee, or the individual without the rights of a citizen, into a figure representative of naked life, which as Hannah Arendt first pointed out, is without relevance in the international system. It is evident from Homo Sacer that Agamben has a definitive perspective on the nature of sovereignty, and ultimately believes that the nation-state can only operate as an instrument of exclusivity and oppression. Efforts, therefore, to create a law above that of nation-states have failed to correct its flaws and ultimately remain fatally tied to it. In light of these assumptions, it is abundantly clear why Agamben welcomes the institutions imminent demise and refuses to concede that a humanitarian ideology can ever be consistent with national sovereignty.9
Agamben's argument presents a strong critique of the UDHR and at any attempt to synthesize national sovereignty with the protection of human rights. But is he really faithful to Hannah Arendt's argument in Origins of Totalitarianism? Or does he simply misappropriate her argument to support his own beliefs about the nature of state sovereignty? Looking closely at other theorists who come out in favor of the nation-state, it is clear that the answer is no. These other thinkers present a more plausible and convincing case in favor of state sovereignty and ultimately prove much more consistent with Arendt's original argument.
In Homo Sacer, Agamben writes in reference to the chapter in Arendt's book in which, "linking together the fates of the rights of man and the nation-state, her striking formulation seems to imply the idea of an intimate and necessary connection between the two, though the author herself leaves the question open."10 He explains that a reasonable inference to draw from her study is that the refugee represents a "limit concept" that problematizes the link between nativity, nationality, and citizenship. According to Agamben, the clear implication of this analysis is the necessity of creating new political categories that would eliminate the state of exception and the vulnerability of bare life in the nation-state.11 Although Agamben concedes that Arendt herself never produced a definitive statement rejecting the nation-state, he suggests tha the refugee's plight exposes the irremediable flaws of sovereignty follows logically from her analysis.
A study, however, of the chapter in Origins of Totalitarianism in which Arendt cogently describes the plight of the refugee indicates that Agamben ignores key aspects of her argument which show that she in fact does not jettison the nation-state project altogether. Indeed, contrary to what Agamben suggests, Arendt implies that it is the perversion of the nation-state system, and not the nation-state itself, which led to the refugee crisis. Arendt exposes the inner working of state sovereignty, but nonetheless explains, "Modern power conditions which make national sovereignty a mockery except for giant states, the rise of imperialism and the pan movements undermined the stability of Europe's nation-state system from the outside. None of these factors, however, had sprung directly from the tradition and the institution of nation-states themselves."12 Thus, according to her analysis, in the interwar period it was the breakdown of the European nation-states that left masses of people rightless. States that sought perpetual expansion and defied the rule of law represented the perversion of the nation-state system. She writes, "For the nation-state cannot exist once its principle of equality before the law has broken down…Laws that are not equal for all revert to rights and privileges, something contradictory to the very nature of nation-states."13 The exclusion therefore of certain individuals from possessing citizenship rights is not a function of national sovereignty at all but rather a direct result of excessive sovereignty. Finally, in direct opposition to Agamben's solution to the refugee crisis, she asserts that becoming a figure of bare life—a figure that according to Agamben the nation-state can sacrifice without consequence— means losing the attachments of professional and communal life, and that it is only the restitution of that condition of belonging that can protect individual life. It is when the nation-state falls apart that human life becomes "sacred" and the state of exception becomes possible. Arendt eloquently writes,
The paradox involved in the loss of human rights is that such a loss coincides with the instant when a person becomes a human being in general- without a profession, without citizenship, without an opinion, without a deed by which to identify and specify himself- and different in General, representing nothing but his own absolutely unique individuality which deprived of expression within and action upon a common world, loses all significance.14
In other words, the solution to the refugee problem cannot be abandoning the nation-state project altogether, since it is the very right to belong to a polity that defines human rights. While Agamben imagines a coming community premised on the idea of permanent exile, Arendt declares that it only through living in a state of belonging that the individual retains these rights at all. Interestingly, Hannah Arendt's article, which Agamben selectively uses to buttress his own position is from 1943, while her later essay in Origins from 1951 expresses an entirely different perspective on whether it is better to belong to a nation or simply to "contemplate lucidly" one's condition. Agamben simply avoids this issue by referring back to her earlier essay. In a letter to Hannah Arendt from 1970, Agamben introduces himself as a young writer who had been inspired by her writings. He wrote, "I am a young writer and essayist for whom discovering your books last year has represented a decisive experience. May I express here my gratitude to you, and that of those who along with me, in the gap between past and future feel all the urgency of working in the direction you pointed out?"15 The evidence, however, from The Origins of Totalitarianism suggests that Arendt was committed to analyzing the problems created by excessive nationalism, not in destroying the notion of nation-states and citizenship altogether. Agamben, inspired by her writings, took her ideas in a direction that is not in fact a plausible implication of her work.
Other contemporary theorists likewise interpret the implications of Hannah Arendt's explanation of the relationship between rights and citizenship, and do so much more faithfully than Agamben. Indeed, two other thinkers who write critically on the subject of the nation-state–Michael Ignatieff and Gregory Jusdanis–reject Agamben's thesis. Instead, both advocate a form of limited national sovereignty, which seems to be the more logical inference to draw from Arendt's argument. Michael Ignatieff asserts, "Arendt teaches us, moreover, that rights cannot be protected by well meaning movements of global cosmopolitanism…but only by legitimate and democratic nation-states, which guarantee rights as part of their constitutional architecture and which provide clear remedies in law and a guarantee of civic inclusion to all its members regardless of origins." He explains that for Arendt, "It is citizenship—real actual belonging in political community—not abstract belonging to the human species—which will protect the human rights of all."16 Arendt believed that the best and only solution to the refugee problem is to maintain good national governments, not to laude their dissolution.
Ignatieff elaborates on this theory in Human Rights: Politics and Idolatry. He explains that fifty years after "the human rights revolution," most people depend on the state for rights, and if they do not have a state, aspire for or fight to have one. However, he qualifies this statement by acknowledging that the nature of sovereignty is changing and that states are becoming increasingly deferential to international law. "In practice," he says, "the exercise of state sovereignty is conditional to some degree on observance of proper human rights behavior."17 Ignatieff cautions that it is "Utopian" to look forward to the demise of state sovereignty since it remains the basis of international order and "national constitutional regimes represent the best guarantee of human rights."18 At the heart of Ignatieff's position, therefore, is the conviction, which follows closely from Arendt's thesis, that legitimate institutions alone are the best guarantee of human rights protection.
In The Necessary Nation, Gregory Jusdanis not only proposes an alternative to giving up on the nation-state project, but also articulates some of the fundamental flaws in the scenario envisioned by Agamben in Beyond Human Rights. The alternative Jusdanis offers is—like Ignatieff's proposal— a form of limited national sovereignty. He proposes a federal system, which he says, "can prevent endless territorial fragmentation by allowing various groups to exist in a corporate political structure that does not threaten their ethnic, racial linguistic or religious values." In practical terms, this means that groups, states or nations would govern themselves while participating in supernational political institutions."19 He also contextualizes the philosophical stance that Agamben and others take, explaining that "the idealization of cosmopolitanism, diaspora, and hybridity had become… a characteristic feature of cultural studies in general and postcolonialism in particular." Jusdanis then cites an argument that is similar to Agamben's which claims that it is possible for a people to maintain its distinct culture without the possession of land. Jusdanis responds to this assertion by asking incredulously, "In the absence of a state, how can diasporas defend themselves if the need arises?" In the condition offered by the authors, "The authentic life, it seems, is one of perpetual scattering, migration and exile."20 In these few sentences, Jusdanis articulates the unavoidable questions at the root of Agamben's imagined coming community.
At the end of Beyond Human Rights, Agamben implores the nation-state to "find the courage to question the very principle of the inscription of nativity as well as the trinity of state-nation-territory that is founded on that principle" before "extermination camps are reopened in Europe."21 For Agamben, it is national territorial sovereignty itself that creates concentration camps. Arendt however, contrary to what Agamben may think are the implications if her theory, asserts the opposite quite clearly. She write, "The pragmatic soundness of Burke's concept seems to be beyond doubt in light of our manifold experiences. Not only did the loss of national rights in all instances entail the loss of human rights; the restoration of human rights as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only through the restoration or the establishment of national rights." 22 In this quote, Arendt appeals to Edmund Burke's argument from his Reflections on the Revolution in France that one can ultimately only appeal to hereditary rights and not to any abstract notions of human rights and she states unambiguously that the preservation of rights can only be obtained by appealing to national rights.
Significantly, Agamben concludes his essay with a discussion of 425 Palestinians who were expelled from Israel and expresses his wish that the group be representative of a larger movement rejecting nationalism in favor of recognizing one's inner refugee. The reference to the group of Palestinians is too poetic to be accidental, and it is seems beyond a doubt that Agamben refers to them in direct response to Arendt's mention of the newly formed state of Israel, implying that the new refugee consciousness has superceded an older nationalistic historical consciousness. In the end, it is apparent that even while Arendt reveals the possible weaknesses of the nation-state, she nonetheless clearly expresses that belonging to a defined political community is a basic human right. She states, "something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice…This extremity, and nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are deprived not of the right to freedom but of the right to action."23 The essence of human rights for Arendt is the ability to have a voice and effect change through belonging to a political community, which is why she refers to Israel as the solution to the Jewish refugee problem. It is important to note however, that although she embraced the new Jewish state, Arendt never accepted the idea of sovereignty in its traditional 19th century form and remained skeptical of the Zionist project, which she thought was guilty of seeking excess sovereignty.24 The idea of limited state sovereignty or a federation system in which states participate in supernational institutions proposed by Ignatieff and Jusdanis therefore seems to be the most reasonable conclusion to draw from her argument.
Agamben undeniably presents a searing critique of sovereignty and a powerful vision of a borderless world devoid of the concept of "citizenship". However, the most logical reading of Arendt's argument is that she sought a stable system of government that could avoid the political excesses of the twentieth century. Further, for the reasons presented by Jusdanis in The Necessary Nation that the diasporas imagined by Agamben cannot defend themselves if the need arises, and that the desire to belong to a group is too powerful and persistent to simply wave away with the promise of communal exile, the philosopher's coming community seems entirely implausible. Indeed Agamben's solution is especially unconvincing at a time when many groups clamor for the right to have their own nation. Fifty six years after its adoption in the United Nations General Assembly, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a vestige of a dying age but rather representative of a new commitment to limited state sovereignty. In agreement with Arendt, the declaration acknowledges the right to belong to a national community and at the same time asserts that the nation-state is bound by international law. This is not to say that the current system of rights protection is not highly flawed, or that the problem of "bare life" has been eliminated. Indeed, since the creation of the UDHR there have been a number of gross human rights violations–including the genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and most recently Darfur–which all call attention to the importance of Agamben's critique. Nevertheless, the more compelling theory is that only the existence of certain boundaries along with limitation on state power can preserve the rule of law and human rights.
1 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. In the preamble the member states "pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms." What is essential to note is that only recognized member states were included in the declaration.
2 Agamben, Giorgio Beyond Human Rights. trans. Cesare Casarino, in Radical Thought in Italy, ed. Paolo Virno & Michael Hardt, University of Minnesota Press (Theory Out Of Bounds series), Minneapolis, Minnesota
3 Agamben, 16.6
4 ibid,
5 ibid, 20
6 ibid
7 It is worth noting, however, that the 1948 declaration is somewhat paradoxical, since one the one hand, the document stresses the rights of individuals, but on the other hand stresses the right to exist within a community and that freedom is only realizable in the context of belonging to a sovereign political system. While there is no doubt that the framers of the declaration were conscious of the refugee crises between the world wars and indeed sought to obtain a "stable statute for the pure human" they could not, and as will be proved later probably should not, imagine that those rights could exist without the existence of sovereign nations
8 Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer. Stanford California. Stanford University Press, 1998 p. 133
9 One can locate this line of thinking within a broader tradition of critiques of state power and its effects on human life, including Michel Foucault's denunciation of what he called "biopower." See his History of Sexuality and Lectures at the College de France.
10 Homo Sacer, 126
11 ibid, 134
12 Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc.1976 p. 270
13 ibid, 290
14 ibid, 302
15 Hannah Arendt Papers, Manuscript Division Library of Congress. Letter Giorgio Agamben to Hannah Arendt February 21, 1970. General, 1938-1976 (Series: Correspondence File, 1938-1976)
16 Ignatieff, Michael. "Arendt's Example": Hannah Arendt Prize Ceremony Bremen, Nov. 28, 2003 (http://ksg.harvard.edu/cchrp/pdf/arendt.24.11.03/pdf.)
17 Ignatieff, Michael. Human Rights Politics and Ideology ed. Amy Gutman Princeton N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001 p. 17
18 ibid, p.35
19 Jusdanis, Gregory. The Necessary Nation. Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001 p.218
20 ibid, 208
21 Beyond Human Rights 24.5
22 Origins of Totalitarianism 295
23 ibid, 296
24 Bernstein, Richard J. Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question. Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Press, 1996
// Mira Siegelberg is a Columbia senior majoring in history with a special concentration in human rights. She is the editor of The Columbia Undergraduate Journal of History which will be publishing its inaugural issue in January.