Open access
BIOPOWER AND A SLAVE, A „ CAMP MUSLIM” AND AN UNEMPLOYED PERSON
Edward KAROLCZUK1
Anthropology – Psychology – Human Hybridization
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1-4 (72-75) 2012, Publication date: 25 October 2012
Abstract The opposite of traditional politics is biopolitics. According to Michael Foucault, it was the force which told people to live and let them die by grace. Biopolitics became indispensable for the development and existence of capitalism. The Nazi biopolitics involved depriving its victims of their own subjectivity. It pushed concentration camp prisoners into the state of vegetation, indifference and extreme objectification; it made them musselmen. As a result of hunger and stress, musselmen were completely exhausted both physically and mentally. They were walking dead barely able to stay on their feet. In order to define the negative border of humanity, Agamben introduced the notion of so called naked life which had exactly the same meaning as homo sacer. It referred to people who were useless and rejected by the system, unemployed migrants deprived of their civil rights, coma patients remaining in intensive care units and being subjected to medical experiments in camps as well as tortured people. According to Orlando Patterson, slavery is an example of boundary terms. Musselmen resembled slaves in many respects; however, the situation they found themselves in was much worse. A slave and musselman’s death was caused by excess labour supply, whereas unemployed people usually die either because of the lack of work or in the process of looking for it. They are as deprived of their subjectivity as slaves and musselmen and they canot become economic entities. Both Agamben and Primo Levi consider the problem of being a musselman in the context of judging Nazi war criminals and testifying their crimes. It seems that musselmen should be the most reliable witnesses since they reached the bottom; however, it is not true as most of them did not glance off the bottom and come back to life. Unemployed people who were a terror to workers reached the bottom in the free market economy, whereas musselmen who were a terror to prisoners in directed economy. In a modern society the situations in which hard labour leads to physical and mental destruction of a human being cannot take place. Therefore, the main axis of the fight should take the form of demanding to shorten the working time to the level at which the rule of full employment and the liquidation of the whole phenomenon of being a musselman among working people could be realized. Hunger strike of unemployed people is absolutely pointless.
Rejonowy Ośrodek Doskonalenia Nauczycieli i Informacji Pedagogicznej „WOM” w Rybniku
E-mail: edward.karolczuk@gmail.com