Sovereignty by Omission: Rethinking Agamben's State of Exception

ABSTRACT

This article revisits Agamben's state of exception. Homo Sacer and State of Exception frame camps as spaces where law is suspended and life reduced to “bare life.” This decisionist paradigm underestimates the institutional and economic complexity of refugee management. This article proposes the concept of sovereignty by omission: Exclusion produced not by a decisive suspension of law but by legal ambiguity, bureaucratic deferral, and systemic inaction. Engaging Schmitt, Benjamin, Foucault, and Butler, the article situates omission within debates on sovereignty and rights and develops the argument through the case of Gaza. The argument rests on systematic analysis of legal, monitoring, and advocacy documents published between October 2023 and August 2025, each coded for acknowledgement, assignment, and execution. Gaza's blockade, siege, and overlapping legal regimes, invoked yet unenforced, exemplify omission, even as cultural and political life persists. Camps and enclaves are thus fractured fields of governance where abandonment and resilience coexist; sovereignty today manifests less in decision than in omission.