Modernity and Bare Life

About Haiti Revolution and the Declaration of Human Rights

Abstract

  ‘Bare Life’ is introduced as the concept which means the biopolitique outside of the legal institution by Giorgio Agamben. An example is the life of the concentration camp. It is found not only there in 20th C but also in slavery in the birth of modern capitalism. And it is closely connected with the idea of human rights which is the sunny side of the modernity.

  The rebellion of black slaves in Haiti arose two years after France adopted the Declaration of Human Rights. It is a symbolic event which demonstrates the paradoxical relations between Bare Life and the human rights in early modern times. The human rights are certainly the idea proper to modern times, but in　Western societies they are considered as universal truth.

  While the government and the biopolitique were the two key words of late Foucault, he was also deeply interested in the enlightenment and the criticism. This paper is an attempt to propound the problems in late Foucault’s two sides which take shape of modernity and Bare Life.