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Sex offender as homo sacer

Carleton University, Canada

The political and legal theory of Giorgio Agamben, specifically his concept of homo sacer, can be usefully deployed to understand the regulation and treatment of sex offenders. It is argued that the sex offender can be conceived of as a non-citizen or bare life — the homo sacer — and that this elucidates the degrees of violence and forms of abjection visited upon sex offenders in western societies. Through the institution of laws aimed at protecting communities from sex offenders, specifically community notification and civil commitment laws, there is the production of a ban, whereby the sex offender is displaced into a lawless space — a camp. In this `camp', the sex offender is subjected to GPS electronic monitoring, surgical/chemical castration and various other forms of sovereign violence at the hands of professionals and anti-paedophile vigilante groups. This article shows that in the exertion of sovereign power, where the sex offender is placed in the ambiguous terrain of the camp, there is a restoration of order and maintenance of the sacred.

Key Words: Agamben • bare life • sacred • sex offenders • sovereign power

Punishment & Society, Vol. 11, No. 2, 219-240 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1462474508101493


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