Two months after the attacks of 9/11, the Bush administration, in the midst of what it perceived to be a state of emergency, authorized the indefinite detention of noncitizens suspected of terrorist activities and their subsequent trials by a military commission. Here, distinguished Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben uses such circumstances to argue that this unusual extension of power, or "state of exception," has historically been an underexamined and powerful strategy that has the potential to transform democracies into totalitarian states.

The sequel to Agamben's "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, State of Exception" is the first book to theorize the state of exception in historical and philosophical context. In Agamben's view, the majority of legal scholars and policymakers in Europe as well as the United States have wrongly rejected the necessity of such a theory, claiming instead that the state of exception is a pragmatic question. Agamben argues here that the state of exception, which was meant to be a provisional measure, became in the course of the twentieth century a normal paradigm of government. Writing nothing less than the history of the state of exception in its various national contexts throughout Western Europe and the United States, Agamben uses the work of Carl Schmitt as a foil for his reflections as well as that of Derrida, Benjamin, and Arendt.

In this highly topical book, Agamben ultimately arrives at original ideas about the future of democracy and casts a new light on the hidden relationship that ties law to violence.

吉奥乔·阿甘本，1942年出生于罗马，当代最具影响力的欧陆思想家之一，其思想承继海德格尔与本雅明，研究涵盖哲学、语言学、美学、政治与神学。代表作为《神圣之人：主权力量与赤裸生命》（1995），追溯当代主权与生命政治结构的哲学—历史系谱。晚近的重要作品则有《王国与荣光：一个对于经济与治理的神学系谱学考察》以及《至贫：修道院规约与生活形式》。

薛熙平，台湾交通大学社会与文化研究所博士生。曾以《例外状态：阿冈本思想中的法与生命》为题完成硕士论文目前研究领域为精神医疗人类学。合译有朗西埃的《歧义》。