Psycho-Politics: Giorgi Agamben Homo Sacer as the Homo Psychologicus

Abstract

Alexis de Tocqueville writes in “Democracy in America” that democracy relaxes social bonds but tightens natural bonds (2004, p. 691). Making redundant the old social structures of hierarchy and formality, democracy would make possible spontaneous, direct and natural social relations. Or, as Tocqueville writes on democratic manners:

They constitute something like a thin and poorly woven veil, through which each person’s true feelings and individual ideas can easily be seen.

(2004, p. 713)