When I have presented parts of this book to academic audiences, my use of Aristotle's “mere life,” has so often been confused with Agamben's “bare life” that it seems important to explain why Agamben's thesis does not bear on my point. In Homo Sacer, Agamben uses the term “bare life” to depict a particular positioning of human beings in relation to sovereignty and law. Aristotle uses “mere life” to signify the limited existence of those bound to producing and reproducing human existence; he contrasts this with the lives of citizens who can realize humanness through political and intellectual life, both of which are distinctly human in part because they are free(d) from necessity defined as the basic sustenance and reproduction of life.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 475