School Shootings, Bare Life, and the State of Exception: An Inquiry With Agamben

• In Event: Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating With Wisdom the New Educational Landscape

Abstract

The relation between perpetrators of mass shootings in schools and the gun lobby can be characterized by a “relation of exception” that assumes a kind of sovereignty over “bare life.” Drawing on Agamben’s concepts of “bare life,” “form-of-life,” and the “state of exception,” I argue that there is a complicity of inclusion and exclusion in which the gun lobby fosters a view of the white shooter as isolated individual exception. In this “relation of exception” a sovereignty over bare life is arrogated in multiple ways. Our educational task then, involves exposing and deposing the language of non-responsibility, exceptionality, and sovereignty over bare life when it comes to school violence and violence’s other forms and contexts.

Author

• Harvey Shapiro, Northeastern University