Proceedings of the 7th World Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Natura Sacer: Modern Totalitarianism and the Systematic Slaughter and Silencing of Our Environment
Diana Valcarcel
ABSTRACT:
Upon reading Homo Sacer, I became interested in Agamben’s position—that democratic states’ biopolitical control over our lives is ultimately a totalitarian exercise. Agamben writes, “perhaps…we are all virtually homines sacri.” (Agamben 68) But I could not help but draw parallels between how Agamben describes the figure of the Homo sacer and our present treatment of the environment. Natura sacer is a new term I develop in this project, where I present readings of how the rise of consumerism lines up with the current massacre of other-than-humans, and how this systematic silencing is just another iteration of totalitarianism, the subjecting of nature to a position exactly like that of Homo sacer. (We are, after all, just another species in this world.) I aim to provide a comprehensive overview of Natura sacer, a figure new only in name as it is old in its now-familiar conceptions—the objectification of the environment by the humans who live in it. Like Agamben wished to expand Arendt’s and Foucault’s projects, I hope to extend his to include the world we live in in the conception of the “sacer”, and so bring it within the conceptions of multinaturalism— recognizing agency and alternative modes of living, and how to speak out when living in a state that sanctions the silencing of our environment.
keywords: homo sacer, multinaturalism, other-than-human studies