ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a more general alternative framework to understand the violation of physical integrity rights broadly. It argues that contact between agents of the state and victims can also be established for non-political reasons. The chapter outlines Agamben’s argument and contrasts it with Christian Davenport's mechanisms of repression. Giorgio Agamben's argument suggests that physical integrity rights continue to be violated precisely when it becomes impossible to conceive of these rights in terms of traditional rights of citizens of a state. He argues that by means of the state of exception, democracies can cease to function as democracies and can temporally and spatially suspend the democratic order. The state of nature is not a real epoch chronologically prior to the foundation of the City but a principle internal to the City, which appears at the moment the City is considered tanquam dissoluta, "as if it were dissolved".
