‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’ * Or Clawing at the Edges of the Social

Thora Margareta Bertilsson, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen Peter Fallesen, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen & Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, Denmark. *(song by Janis Joplin, text by Kris Kristofferson)

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‘Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose’

Or Clawing at the Edges of the Social

In his book on Freedom (1988), Zygmunt Bauman notes that the concept of freedom is „like the

air we breed‟: as long as it is there, we just take it for granted; when it is gone, we suffocate. In

the same vein, he reproaches sociologists for avoiding to discuss the issue of freedom; instead

the discipline is prone to hide behind economic, political, and social forms of unfreedom in

modern society. Although an essential component in all critical theory zooming in on

unfreedom(s) in contemporary liberal society, the analytical conceptualization of what freedom

is all about is, here we agree with Bauman, indeed thorny: is freedom an attribute of social or

individual life; what are the components of the social as well as that of the individual; how is the

social and the political related; is freedom related to the will of the individual; how is the will of

the individual related to collective life – to that of the Sovereign; is the nation-state a

precondition or a barrier for conceiving of freedom rights; what is the relation between the

citizen and the individual; what is the relation between the individual and h/er body? The

questions to be raised can easily multiply into a labyrinth easy to access, but exceedingly

difficult to exit (Ryan 1979) Nevertheless, we are convinced that it is an urgent task for the

renewal of critical theory adapted to post-liberal societies to dwell on the issue of freedom. In a

cynical post-liberal world, the song-text of Janis Joplin is perhaps more relevant than ever:

„Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose‟?

What we will do in the following is to relate and contrast two vital positions on how to approach

the non/freedom of modern individuals in an effort to carve out a more robust standpoint for

critical social theory; both in more general terms, but also in relation to more specific issues

haunting the modern (welfare) state. We will in turn discuss the theories on freedom of Isaiah

Berlin and Giorgio Agamben: the views of these two thinkers are chosen for the reason that they

represent – or are thought to represent – very different views on the issue of freedom, and with

widely divergent consequences for our conception of social and political theory. While Berlin

has been hailed as a liberal thinker par excellence, Agamben makes problematic the

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identification of freedom with modern citizenry; when there is nothing more left to loose, then

freedom takes rescue in „bare life‟ – the body itself becomes a last bastion of the exercise of

(negative) freedom: as an act of power! However, it is our argument that a simultaneous reading

of Berlin and Agamben‟s rather abstract notions of freedom can provide a strong approach to a

sociologically viable conceptualization of freedom within a critical theoretical framework.

Isaiah Berlin – on negative and positive freedom

Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) is known as a liberal thinker par excellence and a stout defender of

individual freedom. Commonly, such a position is difficult to defend from a sociological point of

view on the ground that social life and its demands on cooperation are left out of the

consideration. Our aim here is to revive and discuss Berlin‟s two conception of freedom in lieu

of the paramount problems of current post-liberal societies: the problems to deal with and

accommodate refugees and immigrants. Reviving Berlin‟s standpoint on the issue(s) of freedom

may also help to unwrap his legacy from its sanctioned liberalist bastion and make it available to

critical theory more widely. It is our argument, that Berlin‟s two concepts of freedom should be

viewed as the two outer points on a continuum line, wherein between we locate what we might

name different forms of empirical freedom.

Most well-known among Berlin‟s texts is undoubtedly his inaugural lecture on Two Concepts of

Liberty, on negative and positive freedom (1958/1979). Negative freedom, Berlin defines as

follows: „I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes

with my activity‟ (169). This concept of freedom is often referred to as non-interference and is as

such relating to a human being freed from outside inter-ference: „What is the area within which

the subject – a person or group of persons – is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do

or be, without interference by other persons‟ (121). Negative freedom stands in a starch contrast

to what Berlin calls positive freedom: freedom given to us through our membership in various

collectives. Foremost among positive freedom-rights are those that the (welfare) state provides to

its members such as freedom to enter schools, treatment in hospital, parent privileges, pensions

rights, etc. Another formulation in distinguishing among the two concepts of freedom is:

negative freedom is freedom from, while positive freedom is freedom to.

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A sociologist can profitably look at the two forms of freedom as the difference between ascribed

versus achieved: in the first case, the individual is – qua individual - assigned a sacred quality,

while in the latter case, the individual achieves a set of (freedom) rights because of membership

in socio-political communities. As a corollary, negative freedom is by definition vague and

diffuse assuming many different concrete expressions dependent on context, while positive

freedom is more specific; positive freedom (rights) are most often guaranteed by law.1 When

formulated in more specific terms, also negative freedom can assume a law-like character: The

right of persons, or group of persons, not to be the subjects of torture is declared as

„fundamental‟ in international law, and in most domestic laws as well. However, a de jure

declaration is not necessarily a de facto declaration. Nevertheless, a breach with torture law, as in

the case of the American military‟s behaviour in the Abu Ghraib prison in the aftermath of the

second Gulf war, has, if the will of the Legislator is pursued, consequences for the perpetrators.

However, when reading Isaiah Berlin‟s essay „Two concept of liberty‟, a rather subtle point is

made that especially a first time reader might tend to overlook. The point is surprisingly simple.

The two notions of freedom that Berlin introduces, the positive and the negative, are just two

ways of theorizing freedom – the notion of freedom could be looked at in many other ways than

the two presented by Berlin, but nonetheless these are the ones he has chosen. But why these

two, one might ask? Because it is between these two theoretical poles that Berlin locates what we

could call the empirical human being. While we agree with Berlin that modern human existence

is suspended between the freedom from and the freedom to, we also believe that Berlin perhaps

overlooks a rather important aspect – the body in which these notions of positive and negative

freedom is inscribed. Such an overlooking of the body is especially regrettable in the light of his

insistence on the „empirical human being‟ as the locus of freedom; he is arrogantly critical of

identifying individuals as solely abstract social categories (i.e. as the citizen). During their life-

span, empirical human beings assume a multitude of social roles such as mothers, fathers, sons,

daughters, employees, etc., but the only common denominator remains the body itself. However,

this does not deter Berlin from arguing that negative freedom holds an intrinsic value.

1 With reference to the legendary Swedish sociologist, Johan Asplund, it seems suggestive to link the two concepts

of freedom to that which Johan Asplund calls „social responsivity‟ and „abstract sociality‟ (1987).

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Well aware of many absurd (social) implications of formulating freedom as non-interference, we

shall nevertheless proceed with Berlin‟s own insistence of its intrinsic value.2 Non-interference,

Berlin continues, does not necessarily entail a picture of man as a Robinson Crusoe, isolated

from other human being. It refers rather to a social relation where we may conceive of

intervention in the lives of other persons along a continuum: from the point where the coercive

intervention of others in the life of an individual is almost complete as in the case of parents

intervening in the activities of their children for the reason that it is in the best interest of the

child to be governed. Also prisoners are to a great extent under surveillance from the outside,

although they may have a little free space left to their own discretion in their respective cells.

Michel Foucault‟s famous picture of Panopticon reveals the control mechanisms in operation as

the power of surveillance, as does his concern with „bio-politics‟; how modern societies install

both bodily and mental control into their members (1977). Indeed, it can be asked, as we will do

subsequently, if not Foucault‟s popular treatises reformulate and revive the relation between the

two kinds of freedom that Berlin chose to label respectively negative and positive. Foucault-

disciples as for instance Giorgio Agamben calls attention to the productive span of situating the

issue of freedom between a positive and a negative pole, that we attend to in the discussion that

follows.

The other extreme point along a social continuum is when two or more people interact in full

recognition of one another‟s right to a „free space‟. Erving Goffman provides us with rich

illustrations of how such mutual recognitions proceed without interference: when walking along

a street, individual walkers occupy the same circumscribed space but when seemingly ignoring

one another, they have to take care of one another‟s presence in order not to cause discomfort to

one another. A lot of „recognition-work‟ is demanded in order to uphold the freedom rights of

one another in such seemingly a-social situations (1963).3 Goffman‟s many observations as to

forms of silent „rule-following‟ profoundly qualifies Jean Paul Sartre‟s dichotomy between

social and non-social action: there is, in Sartre‟s view, a qualitative difference between a mute

2 As noted by both friends and foes of Berlin (Ringen 2008; Taylor 1979), it is especially his concept of negative

freedom that has caused concerns and quarrels. 3 A point elegantly demonstrated by novelist China Miéville in his The City & The City (2009) which portrays daily

life in two distinct urban environments sharing the same physical, but not social, space. From early childhood the inhabitants of the two cities learn to unsee their counterparts in „the other city,‟ thereby living physical next door, but never socially acknowledging each other.

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queue waiting for a bus (1976) and that of a debating Oxford society.4 In the first instance, social

life is merely incidental and physical (we happen to be at the same place at the same time), while

in the latter instance, social life is „psychical‟: people take account of one another, and control

their conduct, in „taking turns‟ as to who has the right to speak. Goffman‟s brilliance in

observing rule-following also in the squatters of the non-social profoundly widens our

consideration of an infinite social continuum in constant operation: how „sacred‟ individual

territories arise and are upheld as a matter of routine and habit. From such a sociological point of

view, this is our suggestion, it seems meaningful to view even routine social interaction as

generated by a whole number of various spatial and temporal freedom recognitions: turn-taking

in speech is clearly a case in point where we refrain from interfering until occasions arise;

avoiding stepping into the bodies of other people is another illustration of how we routinely seek

to respect the freedom of others while at the same time we expect the same recognition from

others. To unduly intervene in the time-space matrix of another person is what Goffman calls

degradation work; in special circumstances such work amounts to „ceremonies‟ undertaken by

collectives (Goffman 1961; Garfinkel 1956). Mobbing seems a case in point. On the more

formal-juridical level, the treatment of refugees and immigrants in today‟s advanced liberal

societies can best be illustrated as the state‟s official degradation ceremonies of expelled

individuals: in order not to adjust to normal routines of social action in the countries to which

they have escaped, refugees, including children, are not allowed to socialize outside their strictly

assigned (asylum) camp territories. In the language of Berlin and Goffman, expelled individuals

are stripped of their access to humanity; they are reduced to „bare life‟ and become the „homo

sacer‟ of modern liberalism (Agamben 1998; Fallesen 2008).

But how come then that freedom, which should – according to the name – be the most central

value within a liberal democracy so easily can be curtailed within the very same? It is valuable to

take note of a cleavage within the liberal tradition itself, or to what some have referred to as the

tragic vs. the progressive version of liberalism.5 Berlin‟s quarrels with some of his fellow

liberalists in the classical tradition, notably with J.S. Mill relates to the worth of freedom as non-

4 This dichotomy is also the one pursued by Max Weber in his classic definition of social action (1978:4).

5 Alex Callinicos (1999:67-68) labels the tragic version of liberalism „agonistic‟, a position he also says was that of

J. S. Mill in referring to a discussion pursued by Berlin‟s primary biographer, John Gray. I admit that a more complex elaboration as to immanent value-conflicts is called for, but we can for reason of space not enter into such a discussion here.

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interference as non-reducible to any other also necessary social values: freedom cannot (and

must not) be justified in terms of the social consequences that it may generate: it is a „sui generis‟

(Berlin 1979:174). Mill‟s view on freedom is, in Berlin‟s words, prone to link its worth to other

worthy human pursuits such as truth, happiness, a free market, democracy, efficiency, genius,

originality. To Berlin such associations risk depriving the issue of freedom of its intrinsic value:

democracy can curtail freedom while dictatorship under some conditions can allow for its growth

– at least for some. Originality and genius can certainly flourish also in societies that we would

not think of as free: Tsarist Russia is an example while such qualities can meet sharp resistance

in more free societies such as our own (178).6 Linkages between freedom and other worthwhile

human values clearly occur, but they should be looked upon as felicitous historical

circumstances, rather than as a consequence of there being „social laws‟.7

Concomitant to this polemic within the liberal tradition that history itself is to be seen as the

march of freedom and democracy, as if there would be an Aristotelian telos hidden in nature,

resides Berlin‟s observation that the value of (negative) freedom is more of an exception than a

rule in the history of mankind; and that its negative formulation, in contrary to the positive

version, probably will never become a popular banner of social mobilization. Its appeal among

wide population strata, whether liberalists or socialists, is likely to be quite restricted for the

reason that as an inner motivation and force, freedom is deeply individual.8 When called upon by

the masses, freedom is often mixed with other equally worthwhile social values as opposition

against oppression, injustice or tyranny.

Indeed, Berlin‟s radicalization of freedom as a non-negotiable human value, often in tragic

conflict with other worthwhile human pursuits, has affinities with the position of many radical

social theorists such as Adorno, Arendt, Foucault, and more recent Agamben, primarily known

for their critique of modern liberalism. Such claims may at first sight appear conspicuous as we

have become so accustomed to associate his legacy with crude liberalism. In his critique of the

6 In this regard, an affinity is apparent between Berlin‟s formulation of negative freedom with that of Alexis de

Toqueville‟s criticism of modern democracy in its eager to merge freedom and equality as actually curtailing the value of freedom (Toqueville 2000). 7 Berlin‟s conception of freedom in his political philosophy should also be seen as a conjugate to his philosophy of

social science and his polemics against „social laws‟ of whatever kind. 8 Max Weber‟s view on science and politics expresses similar (tragic) views; however important science and politics

are in shaping collective life, the individual always stands alone with regard to the central question of „the meaning of life‟(1946:143).

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„legislator‟ view of freedom represented primarily with Rousseau and Hegel, we will attempt to

show where in fact the radicalism of Berlin may reside.

Berlin‟s critique of freedom as residing in the „positive rights‟ bestowed upon the individual by

virtue of h/er membership in a collective such as the nation-state should really be seen as

stemming from his critique of a predominant and might-oriented view of modern Sovereignty: as

encapsulating the inner wills of all rational individuals inhabiting a bounded territory, and hence

invested with the power to bespeak their true interests. Such a notion borrows from J.J. Rousseau

the idea that the „rational freedom‟ of individuals reside in the social contract in which they have

succeeded in abolishing their „empirical self‟ (with passions and interests) for the sake of their

„rational self‟. As opposed to our dispersed empirical selves, a union among men is only possible

by means of strong social identification of belonging. This view is but a secular version of the

religiously derived „homo duplex‟: that our real selves reside not in the here and now of earthly

societies, but in God‟s kingdom. 9

In its secularized form, „homo duplex‟ enables us to conceive of such sociologically predominant

ideas as that of the tension between the subject and the object, I and me, which then can be

resolved by means of Hegelian reflection, a higher form of self, that allows for peaceful rational

union. Such formulations also allow for the social self to take command of the empirical self (the

body). The legislator view of Sovereignty is thus not limited to collective life of the ruler, but

also to our inner intimate life where the Legislator demands that we are in rational command of

our bodily passions and interests. A prolongation of this view for social and political life is that

the Sovereignty is bestowed with (omnipotent) power to rule in „the best interest‟ of the ruled.10

As positive freedom(s) are given to us by virtue of our belonging in Sovereignty, by the same

token these freedom(s) can be taken away: the prisoner looses a great deal of freedom rights, a

toll that in accordance with positive law is in his own interest; in its extreme Hegelian version,

the prisoner wants his own unfreedom.

Berlin clearly accepts that in any „well-ordered‟ societies (to use a phrase from a more recent

liberal thinker, John Rawls), positive rights need be balanced with negative rights, a minimum

9 The church father Augustine raised the following conundrum: „Can slaves be free?‟, a problem that could be

solved by separating the body from the soul. The more enslaved the body, the wider is the horizon of freedom in the Kingdom of God (Arendt 1977:158). 10

A point also found in Kant‟s What is Enlightenment (1784/2009).

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space of freedom where individuals are free to move outside the interference of others. How the

balance is to be achieved is up to any historical society with its traditions and mores to find a

solution to: there can be no „principled‟ law equally valid for all societies in time and space. This

is yet another implication of Berlin‟s denial that there be „social laws‟ of the same robustness as

that of nature‟s laws.11

The real value of Berlin‟s criticism of the Legislator-view of the social

and the individual lies, we will suggest, is his insistence to revitalize our „empirical selves‟ as

individuals occupying territories with more or less fluent boundaries. His liberal plea to guard a

little space of freedom to individual (to act without interference) that our époque of civilisation

has achieved (who knows for how long?) from being abolished once more, now within liberal

society itself, can in fact be seen as a plea to safeguard a fragile humanity from destroying its

central ethos. To invest in too strong an Administrator view, disguised as Legislator, in order to

bar the entrance of unwanted others, Liberal Society produces in its midst, and with large accept

of its citizenry, the „bare life‟ of its own outcasts. Positive rights can easily be plucked like the

feathers from a bird; negative rights are more fragile as their loss risks dehumanizing both the

victim and the perpetrator.

Clawing at the Edge of the Social

As we observed already in the opening paragraphs, Berlin chose to conceptualize the issue of

freedom from two mutually exclusive positions; that of the negative vs. the positive endpoint.

Our critical remark with regard to Berlin‟s conceptual opposites is about his negligence of the

excluded third – that of the naked human body which is both the bearer of (positive) rights and

which - as human being – is assigned a sacred quality. We will conclude our essay on freedom

by addressing the territorial and bodily spaces as also constituting the very boundaries of the

social.

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, whose thinking takes its origin from Michel

Foucault‟s work on biopolitics and the history of sexuality as well as Carl Schmitt‟s ideas of the

position of the sovereign, argues that prior to the modern notions of positive and negative

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Berlin is opposed to the view of a unitary science where the social and the human sciences would follow in the steps of the natural sciences and search for the „laws‟ under which one could subjugate historical events for the reason that such a view denies the possibility of human freedom (1979b).

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freedom, and thereby also the modern form of democracy (we use here democracy in the widest

form of the word) could be introduced, a more important aspect had to be created: the idea of the

human body as something unique in a juridico-political sense of the word. This was done in

England in 1679 with the instigation of the habeas corpus, which from then on commanded that

the body of an accused individual must be presented in front of the court, and that s/he in person

can demand that the validity of the accusation should be tried before a court of law (Agamben

1998:123). Thereby the body was placed as the „ground zero‟ of political and juridical rights, and

the form of these rights (be they positive or negative) must be derived there after. 110 years later

this point was substantiated by the French declaration of the rights of man and citizen wherein

the positions of man and citizen seems to be indistinguishable from each other – the rights of the

citizen could not be distinguished from the human body in which they were inscribed (127). This

is also what Foucault argued as being the birth of the problem of the population – a move from a

territorial state definition, where the only true sovereign body was that of the ruler, to a nation

state. Here the sovereignty of the state was inscribed into the bodies of the subjects of the state,

thereby making them both citizens and biopolitical subject extraordinaire, bearer of both positive

and negative rights/freedom, and giving them the possibility of creating life, identity, and form

of existence within a given society (Foucault 2008:75ff). But as every coin has two sides, every

position must also have an opposition. When the citizen was created as a theoretical figure its

excluded opposite was created in its shadow: the refugee (Agamben 1998:126ff; Nyers 2006:

28ff).

It is important to understand that neither the citizen nor the refugee can be looked directly upon

as empirical categories. Instead we must first understand the citizen as a position. The notion of

the citizen is based on a narrative combining blood and soil. „Because I am born on this specific

piece of land, my body are inscribed with these rights and freedoms.‟ This is the narrative that is

the ontological foundation of the modern nation state – the body state (Agamben 1998:129). One

might argue, a bit vulgar, that the citizen, and thereby the nation, is identified by the passport.

This also sheds some light upon the position of the refugee: s/he is the individual belonging to no

piece of land, holding no passport. When we then bear in mind the argument, that we are unable

to distinguish between human and citizen within the frame of the nation state, a rather strange

figure appears: The refugee becomes in Hannah Arendts words: „a man who is nothing but a man

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(Arendt 2000: 41)‟, but since the logic of the modern nation state specifically argues that man

and citizen are indistinct from each other, what appears in front of our theoretical gaze is a

biological entity without rights and freedom, and unable to declare him- or herself to be a man.

Agamben has named this individual homo sacer: the subject that cannot be sacrificed but can be

killed without penalty – the individual whose only political value is its status as having only

biological life. A form of being located at the limit of subjectivity, whose political existence is

defined solely by the absolute unpolitical – the body. As the biological nature of the body is the

only element of being that an individual in no way can change or act upon (with the exception of

suicide or self mutilation, as we will touch upon later), the position of the refugee is founded on

the threshold of becoming a biopolitical object, thereby losing its position as a „human being‟

(Agamben 1998: 183).

Now that we have defined the two limits of being in the context of the modern nation state – the

citizen and its shadowy counterpart, the refugee – we now move our gaze towards the empirical

subject. If we return to the notion of the empirical Man, suspended somewhere between positive

and negative freedom, how does this new biopolitical dimension then contribute to this dual

notion of freedom? To fully understand this, we must first touch upon the opposite sides of these

two forms of freedom. If negative freedom is defined as the degree that others not are allowed to

interfere with my existence, and positive freedom is defined as my possibility for participating in

different congregations, then the opposite of the first form must be action that I “cannot not due”

(necessity), and the opposite of the latter must be actions that I cannot due (impossibility).

Therefore the possibility of (social) action for a given subject must be bounded by: a) its

existence as a biological entity; b) what it by law, social norms, etc. is bound to do; and c) what

it by lack of capital, be that cultural, social, or economical – as well as norms and law – is

prevented from doing. This creates a space of potentiality of action emanating from the body,

and constrained by impossibility (the lack/loss of positive rights) and necessity (the lack/loss of

negative rights) (Agamben 1999: 134f; Fallesen 2008).

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When the right to free participation in society is constrained, and/or when certain actions are

forced upon the subject, its possibilities of social action lessens. Say that, as an empirical case,

someone is conscripted into the military, thereby forced to behave in specific ways at the specific

times, forced to dress and speak in a certain way, etc. This subject will experience a loss of

possible strategies of creating self/selves compared to existence prior to conscription. In effect

this would be a form of desubjectification, since certain forms of being would now be restricted,

but there would still be ways of keeping and creating an identity other than that of „the soldier‟ –

there would be room for certain forms of resistance against the symbolic systems (in this case

army regulations) that are forcing a specific type of being upon you, since the system is not

absolutely totalitarian. And the subject would be able to „articulate‟ these actions within the

social space, thereby constantly pushing and clawing at the edges of what is allowed by simply

acting out other „identities.‟ Articulations that would, if applied in a way constantly questioning

the validity of the symbolic systems, de facto be criticizing the symbolic systems, by resisting

Impossibility

Loss of positive

rights

Necessity

Loss of negative

rights

Con

text

(Sym

bolic

syste

ms)

Space for potential being

Body

Subjectification Desubjectification

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the form(s) of being forced upon him or her, and thereby opening up a new possibility – the

possibility of changing aspects of the symbolic systems, and thereby changing the social space.

But what happens in the case where no free participation is allowed and all allowed participation

is forced? Then the space for social action converges at a single point: the body. When the only

political value of existence is the body, then the only political act left possible is an act against

the body. Self destruction becomes a radical act of subjectification in which the subject questions

the validity of the assumption that nothing except its pulse is of value to the symbolic systems.

And it is here we return to figure of the refugee, the homo sacer. When the only political capacity

in the eyes of society is the ability to be killed, the only way of confronting this political axiom is

to claw at the only edge of the social left – the skin. Thereby asserting that there is something

above biological life, and that that something is not solemnly defined by whether or not one was

born on a specific piece of land, but instead showing that the narrative of the nation state is

nothing more than a story told about the significance of some lines drawn upon a piece of paper

called a map, and in no way sat in stone, though treated as such in modern liberal democracies.

And it is perhaps here that we find criticism in its most radical from – as a practice of freedom

clawing at the edges of the very social, showing that there perhaps is nothing left to loose, but all

to be gained, by fighting back from the basis of the body.

Negative rights, (dis)embodied selves, and the problem of the social

Our exploration in linking two very different thinkers on the problem of freedom in modern

advanced liberal societies, Isaiah Berlin and Georgio Agamben, was spurred by a presupposition

that it might help in widening our view on the relation between freedom, empirical selves (our

bodies) and the social. Berlin‟s firm standpoint on the value of negative rights has largely

excluded him from the circles of critical theory while in turn he has been hailed as a hero by

radical liberalists. Agamben‟s views on freedom are on the other hand derived from Michel

Foucault as well as Carl Schmitt, and can, by that very same token, be more easily received by

radical social theory. What we have been attempting in this essay is to „embody‟ Berlin‟s

empirical selves in suggesting that the body is the very last territory that an individual is in

possession of when s/he is dispossessed by the social territory; in the case of the refugee, the

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social is identical with the nation-state issuing positive rights, but can, dependent on contexts,

assume many different shades. In the case of Goffman‟s Asylum, the social is gradually being

plucked from those who are inside, and what remains are the deformed bodies of those who have

nothing left to lose. In Agamben‟s view, radicalizing that of Arendt, the refugee becomes the

homo sacer of modern liberal society and can in that respect reveal its duplex moral order:

positive freedom is by definition limited to those who carry a passport. The cutting problem of

the refugee as a social type, however, arises with regard to h/er negative freedom: to possess a

space to act without interference! Clearly, international human rights declarations can in various

degree set limits for the exercise of national Sovereignty; but lacking the power of real sanctions

vis-à-vis those of the nation-state, such sanctions can merely be moral ones. In the light of the

monumental – if not legal – power (and so much more the administrative) of the liberal

democratic nation-state backed by the majority of its people, the shaming of moral power is

indeed week. Freedom can only be possessed by the insiders; outsiders are destined to „claw at

the edge of the social‟. When the nation-state also is in the possession of the ability to define the

boundaries of the social as drawn by its own territorial space, then those who are clinging to the

fence, or did not even succeed, will fall outside the strictly social: they have no rights and we

who are inside have no obligations either.

When exterior territorial space is denied, or severely restricted (as in the camp), a venerable and

from Christianity derived view on freedom holds that when the body is in chains, then the soul

has a chance to ascend to a higher – mental – form of freedom. But such inner freedom, however

enchanted, is not at all what Berlin means by negative freedom. Such freedom is indeed

„corporeal‟: it presupposes a territorial space, however restricted. The only such space left to the

refugee, as in our case above, is the body. Bodily infliction of whatever kind signifies a token of

life – a last and desperate move to uphold a sense of worth in the face of others, including

oneself. 12

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2009 Nobel Prize Laureate, Herta Müller, reveals the same desperate move of freedom among the prisoners in an

Ukrainian post-war camp in playing and kicking with words. (Atemschaukel (Everything I Possess I Carry With

Me).Such playing with words rescues a sense of freedom while keeping hunger way, at least for a while.

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A critic would perhaps object at this point in our linking of Berlin and Agamben via the figure of

the refugee, and claim that what Agamben‟s refugee is doing is but a desperate exercise of power

and resistance rather that of negative freedom in Berlin‟s sense. However, as noted by Arendt

more explicit while more implicit by Berlin, to exercise one‟s freedom also requires „the power

to act‟; there can be no (empirical) freedom without there also being action in the form of

embodied movements. But „the power to act‟ as a freedom postulate does not entail the

„legislator‟s view on freedom‟. Berlin‟s severe criticism of this very dominant view of freedom

(power as control) in modern nation-states does in fact reveal the congeniality between his views

and those of Hannah Arendt (and by implication Foucault). When freedom is linked to the

Legislator, or the Sovereign, then it is also understood as control, preferably of others but also of

ourselves. This is the contract view of Rousseau for if the individual is unable to control h/er

passions and interests, then s/he is but a slave. Freedom in this sense is only possible as control;

control of our inner selves and those of other‟s selves. Berlin‟s criticism of positive freedom

derives precisely from its urgency to control others (and ourselves „in the best interests‟). Such

control is also „rational‟: it is controlled by our cognate rather than sensate selves. From such a

point of view, this is Berlin‟s observation, the „homo duplex‟ of modern man is furnished by an

inner and an outer selves where a hierarchy reigns: our inner (controlled) selves are viewed as in

some sense higher and/or more real selves, while our empirical, embodied selves, are viewed as

more vulgar and less social! True sociality can in this sense only be achieved via a union of our

inner cognate selves; the social, by implication, becomes rational and spiritual. The social in this

enchanted form is, as also Durkheim taught, but a replacement of God: his law is ubiquitous, and

we are denigrated to his faithful and disciplined followers. This is also the mode of reasoning

that the secular nation-states draw upon when conferring their people(s) with rights and

obligations.

But as noted not the least by Agamben, the body/state confronts its own contradiction when

faced with its stateless others; by definition, these others become mere bodies as the „homo

sacer‟ of modern liberal societies. For them: the only freedom left to loose is their own naked

bodies.

16

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