Doomed man, sacred man

Under Roman law, a homo sacer literally meant “sacred man” in Latin but the real meaning was quite the opposite. The term referred to a “doomed person” who could be killed with impunity because people judged him or her as a criminal. This was a big puzzle to many scholars in the West, including thinkers from the ancient Roman Empire. How can a doomed man be called a sacred man?

The Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben solved this puzzle through the biopolitics theory advocated by Michel Foucault. The ancient Greeks understood life as having two types: “zoe” and “bios.” Zoe refers to a “naked life” in which people sustain life and reproduce it. Bios is a political animal, meaning “valuable life.” In ancient times, zoe and bios were clearly differentiated. Foucault’s biopolitics theory carries the insight that as separation of the two terms turn blurry, how political power (bios) will manage people’s lives (zoe) will become a key buzzword.

Through Foucault’s insight, Agamben claimed that biopolitics is not a legacy of contemporary age but the core of Western politics that has lasted since ancient times. The evidence the Italian suggested was naked life, which is generally referred to as homo sacer. Homo sacer is an entity excluded from national laws and order and thus paradoxically backs up a country`s sovereignty. Such a "doomed person" is the worst figure of exception who completely sits at the opposite side of an individual with sovereign rights, who is the supreme figure of exception. Homo sacer is the crossroads at which naked life (zoe) and politics (bios) intersect and the basis of the establishment of national power, and are liberated from it the same time. For this reason, they are “sacred existence.”

Homo sacer will always exist in the form of "wolfmen” in the Middle Ages and “pirates," who defied international laws. The problem is that such homo sacers are growing more massive and commonplace in the modern era. Jews under German Nazism, people living in Japanese colonies who became subjects of biological experiments, and illegal aliens in advanced countries are a few examples. A vivid example of homo sacer is emerging just in front of South Korea. North Korean defectors, who are wandering the Stalinist country`s border with China, are doomed people whose lives are assured neither in North Korea nor China. At the same time, they are sacred people because they constitute detonators who can maintain or topple the political reality (bios) in North Korea in the wake of Kim Jong Un’s emergence as supreme leader.

Senior Culture Reporter Kwon Jae-hyun (confetti@donga.com)