The “company-camp” and the production of “naked life”: human rights and contemporary labor slave under the biopolitical perspective

Abstract

The article focuses on the issue of slave labor in contemporary brazilian reality from the theoretical framework of biopolitics – unveiled by michel foucault’s work and revisited by giorgio agamben’ s philosophical project – and the methodology of the case study. The following research problem is sought: could a company that uses slave labor be considered a space subsumed to the concept of the camp, as outlined by the agambenian work? if so, to what extent? The article is composed in two parts: in the first one, the question is to the overflowing of the state of exception in contemporaneity, relating it to the central theme of the article; in the second, from the concept of “camp” elaborated by the agambenian philosophy, we try to reveal the figure of the “firm-camp” as the space par excellence of the production of the exception in relation to the subject reduced to the condition of slave (“naked life”). The “fazenda brasil verde v brazil case”, recently judged by the inter-american court of human rights, is then presented as a prime example for the undertaken analysis.