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Cyber Homo Sacer: A Critical Analysis of Cyber Islamophobia in the Wake of the Muslim Ban

2021; Pluto Journals; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.13169/islastudj.6.1.0014

2325-839X

Zeinab Farokhi,

Social Media and Politics

This article takes up Giorgio Agamben's formulation of “bare life” (1998) and applies it to the contemporary perpetuation of violent Islamophobia in online spaces, producing what I term a figuration of the (Muslim) cyber homo sacer . Particularly focusing upon the proliferation of virulent, anti-Muslim rhetoric and discourse on Twitter, I follow the hashtags #Muslimban and #BanMuslim to demonstrate how Agamben's concepts of homo sacer , state of exception, and the camp—though with important differences—helpfully illuminate the ways in which current Islamophobic and anti-Muslim sentiment online can be understand as a refiguration of Muslims as bodies which exist in a state of in-betweenness. In this “state of exception,” Muslims become more vulnerable to verbal, emotional, psychic, and ultimately physical violence, at the same time as they become less recognizable to the policies and laws which should, ostensibly, protect them.