The echoes of a darkened World

Dark times in Hannah Arendt and the state of exception in Giorgio Agamben

Abstract

This article examines the persistence of the "dark times" highlighted in Arendt’s philosophy, arguing that contemporary democratic regimes maintain forms of dehumanization through the adoption of the state of exception as an ordinary governing technique and the obscuring of public space. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben, the article shows how these mechanisms produce subjects excluded from legal protection and deprived of political recognition. The articulation between "dark times", "bare life", and "state of exception" reveals zones of indistinction that trivialize violence and abandonment, which echo throughout history and persist as a dilemma of our time.