Reading Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer:

"The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice -- and sacred life, that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed -- is the life that has been captured in this sphere."

and

The crimes that merit sacratio do not "have the character of a transgression of a rule that is then followed by the appropriate sanction. They constitute instead the originary exception in which human life is included in the political order in being exposed to an unconditional capacity to be killed."

*

also reading Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale, which just arrived at SPD, hot off the COMBO press, looking darn swanky; the Stan App's-edited half of the New Yipes reader, and whoa is that Of Grammatology a certain boo picked up through interlibrary loan? I'm not sure I can yet begin. It's a COW.