Homines Sacri of Eskibahçe: An Agambenian Reading of Louis de Bernières’ Birds without Wings

Abstract

This study aims to provide a political criticism of the 2004 novel Birds without Wings
by the English author Louis de Bernières, as the political background and overtly
political subplot of the novel render it open to one. In order to develop its own
argument the study reads Bernières’ novel through the political concepts of the
contemporary Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben, focusing mainly on two of them that
can be found in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life of Agamben, and created
by the sovereign in relation with the sovereign exception or ban: The first concept is
an indistinct concept of life, namely a naked or as Agamben puts it, a bare life. And
the second is the homo sacer (sacred man), the one who dwells in this naked life. Living
in a small village named Eskibahçe, the characters in Louis de Bernières’ novel are
described as birds without wings that “are always confined to earth, no matter how
much [they] climb to the high places and flap [their] arms” by the author himself
(2005, p.621) and they are turned into homines sacri (sacred men) during a state of
political emergency as the footfall of the upcoming change. Therefore, the study aims
to examine all the homines sacri in Birds without Wings of Louis de Bernières by an
Agambenian reading.

Keywords

• homo sacer
• sacred man
• bare life
• sovereign exception
• population exchange

References

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