RT Article
T1 Beyond Agamben: Sovereignty, policing and ‘permissive space' in South Africa, and beyond
JF Theoretical criminology
VO 22
IS 1
SP 22
OP 41
A1 Cooper-Knock, Sarah-Jane
LA English
YR 2018
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/167910974X
AB The work of Giorgio Agamben has been widely used by criminologists and others to explore policing and sovereignty across the globe. In this article, I explore Agamben's conceptual framework, focusing on the commonly deployed ideas of ‘state of exception' and ‘homo sacer'. I highlight the limitations of Agamben's legalistic theories, and argue that they leave us with an impoverished understanding of how sovereignty is negotiated in everyday life. As I demonstrate, scholars who have attempted to adapt Agamben's ideas have failed to overcome these limitations in his analysis. I conclude that we must look for new ways forward and introduce the concept of ‘permissive space' as an alternative to Agamben's theoretical framework: an idea that allows a more nuanced and comprehensive analysis. Drawing on 10 months of fieldwork in Durban, South Africa, I illustrate the utility of this terminology for our analysis of policing.
K1 Agamben, Giorgio
K1 Everyday life
K1 Police and policing
K1 South Africa
K1 Sovereignty
K1 Polizeiarbeit
K1 Südafrika
K1 Polizei
K1 Theorie
DO 10.1177/1362480616680704