Talk:Homo sacer

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The language in this article behaves as though the philosopher's conclusions have been proven (e.g., He then shows that "quote"). Also, I'm not sure if the heavy quotations from this currently copyrighted book in an encyclopedia are a copy violation. Sophy's Duckling 00:48, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, does anyone know of an independent source (i.e., one that has NOTHING to do with Agamben) on what exactly homo sacer was in ancient rome (I can find no references to him, aside from Agamben's book, on google, or in my textbooks)? Sophy's Duckling 01:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Is the following paragraph necessary, or is it already covered in the article on Agambem?

Agamben describes the effect of homo sacer as "bare life", or a schism of one's biological and political lives. He said that life exists in two capacities. One is natural biological life (Greek: Zoë) and the other is political life (Greek: bios). As bare life, homo sacer finds itself submitted to the sovereign's state of exception; homo sacer 's status as a political creature has been removed, denying its status as a sovereign subject yet allowed to retain biological life.

You won't find many texts about the Homo Sacer, which has been brought to attention through Agamben's works. It is thus normal that Agamben constitutes the main reference for the article! Maybe if you are a specialist of Roman law, you may be able to find interesting things in a good library. Lapaz 23:37, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] “Sacer” is not “sacred” here

Sacer translates more accurately as “untouchable” in this case. It was used in this sense in Classical Latin, and has Indo–European cognates, including in Sanskrit, where it means precisely “untouchable” or “fearsome”. I’m afraid I don’t have the exact references here, but it should be mentioned in the article somehow.

This article only seems to refer to Agamben's book, in which Sacer is only translated as 'sacred'. I hope that helps. The Anonymous Bob (talk) 03:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)