the camps text by JOHN JEFFERSON SELVE In recent years, the concept of the “camp” has become a philosophical cliché. Before going any further, though, we should recall its importance in the thought of the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. Since 1997, in books ranging from Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life to The Use of Bodies [published this year], Agamben has renewed our approach to contemporary politics in the wake of Michel Foucault and his concept of biopolitics. What is a camp? It’s the place where the power structure is revealed to be sovereign power: that is, where a decision made by sovereign power to affect life is carried out. Camps stem from a state of exception, from the proscription of society in its ontological limits. These limits tend nonetheless to melt away, and in melting to generalize the structure of the exception. For an example, we need…