![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Notes
1 I am paraphrasing Arendt's central claim in 'We Refugees'.
2 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 108.
3 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 92.
4 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 72.
5 Ibid., 108.
6 Foucault, ‘Confession of the Flesh’, 195.
7 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 30.
8 Ibid., 95.
9 Ibid., 31, 107, 300ff.
10 Foucault, “Confession of the Flesh,” 195; Foucault: Security, Territory, and Population, 1.
11 Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 139.
12 Ibid., 139; Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 57.
13 Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 139.
14 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 56–57.
15 Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 139. The present article focuses on Foucault’s concept of modern governmentality in general, rather than on his notion of ‘biopolitics’. Foucault’s lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics (1978–1979) analyse the political and social impact of economic liberalism that developed in the last decades of the eighteenth century. In his lectures on Security, Territory, and Population (1977–1978), which deal with the evolution of modern governmentality from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the notion of ‘biopolitics’ remains in the background. The present article focuses on these lectures.
16 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 29, 44–45. The introduction of compulsory school attendance, for instance, was accompanied by the replacement of local dialects with a standardised national language. This was a decisive step on the way from regional sovereignty, which characterise medieval feudalism, to the modern nation-state. Another example is provided by compulsory military service, through which wars that previously had been fought by feudal lords with the help of mercenaries, were made a national concern. The state’s sovereign thereby claimed the right to demand that male citizens sacrifice their lives on its behalf.
17 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 180, 183.
18 Ibid., 179.
19 Ibid., 189.
20 Ibid., 179-180, cf. 159–160.
21 Ibid., 180.
22 Ibid., 159–160, 180.
23 Ibid., 186, 179.
24 Ibid., 159–162.
25 Ibid., 178.
26 Ibid., 162.
27 Ibid., 179–180.
28 Ibid., 186.
29 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 29, 44–45.
30 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 165.
31 Ibid., 162, 165.
32 Smith: The Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II, 488.
33 Ibid, 488.
34 Ibid., 84, 809–812.
35 Ibid., 84.
36 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 180.
37 Ibid., 174, 177–179.
38 Ibid., 177.
39 Ibid., 163.
40 Ibid., 186.
41 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 3 f., 120. The links Agamben brings out in Homo Sacer between Foucault’s conception of governmentality and Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism are not considered in the following since Agamben does not connect Arendt’s account of the refugee situation within the guiding perspective of human rights to Foucault but rather her analysis of totalitarian forms of domination.
42 Ibid., 41, 46; Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 179–180.
43 Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 164.
44 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 349.
45 Ibid., 353.
46 Ibid., 357.
47 Ibid., 355–356.
48 Ibid., 164, xxii.
49 Ibid., 350.
50 Ibid., 357, 363–369.
51 The intense and controversial contemporary debate on human rights is beyond the scope of this article. I will restrict myself to Arendt’s account of the ‘perplexities’ of human rights in the modern world
52 Today, this is primarily true of many migrants from Africa, and, to some extent, from Latin America. In the global South, especially in Africa, climate change has led to the desertification of once fertile regions. The agricultural land once used to provide for the indigenous population is shrinking due to land-grabbing by China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and several Western countries. European and Japanese fishing fleets operating on the high seas deprive coastal fishermen of their livelihoods.
53 Arendt, “We Refugees,” 110.
54 Ibid., 114.
55 Arendt, The Human Condition, 178-179.
56 Ibid., 176–177. Arendt uses the word ‘men’ here in the gender-neutral sense. She translates ‘men’ in the German version of The Human Condition as ‘Mensch’, Arendt, Vita activa, 215.
57 Arendt, The Human Condition, 178.
58 Ibid., 179.
59 Ibid., 184.
60 Ibid., 234.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., 180.
64 Ibid., 184.
65 Ibid., 172.
66 Ibid., 178.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid., 208. In the German edition of The Human Condition, Arendt speaks of the 'personale Wer-jemand-jeweilig-ist' (Vita activa, S. 219). The 'personal who' is an adaptation of this particularly apt expression.
69 Ibid.
70 Arendt, “We Refugees”, 110.
71 Ibid., 116.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid., 117.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., 118.
76 Ibid., 110.
77 Foucault, Security, Territory, and Population, 108.
78 Crouch, The Globalization Backlash, 51.
79 Ibid.
80 Arendt, The Human Condition, 184.
81 Arendt, “We Refugees,” 119.
82 Cf. Amnesty International's report: Libya's dark web of collusion, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde19/7561/2017/en/
83 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 388.
84 Ibid., 395.
85 Thomas Meyer quotes this statement in his postscript to the German translation of “We Refugees”: Arendt, “Wir Flüchtlinge,” 56.
86 Crouch, The Globalization Backlash, 24–25, 33.
87 Crouch, Social Europe, 3.
88 Ibid., vii.
89 ‘As a response to this rhetoric and the discriminatory politics of the Fidesz government, in 2010, the Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller, whose father had been murdered in Auschwitz and who had narrowly escaped being murdered by the fascists herself, pointed out Viktor Orbán's dictatorial cast of mind.’: Heller. “Agnes Heller Im Interview: Ungarische Philosophin kritisiert Ministerpräsident Orban.” Stern.de, February 17, 2011. https://www.stern.de/politik/ausland/agnes-heller-im-interview-ungarische-philosophin-kritisiert-ministerpraesident-orban-3666460.html.
90 Cf. Amnesty International, Greece.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Smail Rapic
Smail Rapic is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wuppertal and founding member of the Center for Transformation Research and Sustainability (TransZent). His research focuses on the philosophy of Enlightenment, classical German philosophy, post-Hegelian philosophy and critical theory of society. His publications include the monographs: Erkenntnis und Sprachgebrauch. Lichtenberg und der Englische Empirismus (1999), Ethische Selbstverständigung. Kierkegaards Auseinandersetzung mit der Ethik Kants und der Rechtsphilosophie Hegels (2007), Subjektive Freiheit und Soziales System. Positionen der kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie von Rousseau bis zur Habermas/Luhmann-Kontrovere (2008), Normativität und Geschichte. Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Apel und Habermas (2019). Email: [email protected]