Carl A. Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Increasingly, market economies run on credit as well as on credulity. They are gift economies that genealogically reveal themselves as impossible political economies. The liberal democratic order ...
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Increasingly, market economies run on credit as well as on credulity. They are gift economies that genealogically reveal themselves as impossible political economies. The liberal democratic order today has become an impossible economy. Its impossibility is enabled by the unboundedness of desire for a pure gift economy—and a corresponding popular will that generates the political fantasies legitimating these desires.Less
Increasingly, market economies run on credit as well as on credulity. They are gift economies that genealogically reveal themselves as impossible political economies. The liberal democratic order today has become an impossible economy. Its impossibility is enabled by the unboundedness of desire for a pure gift economy—and a corresponding popular will that generates the political fantasies legitimating these desires.
Carl A. Raschke
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231173841
- eISBN:
- 9780231539623
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231173841.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
The crisis of liberal democracy has less to do with violent assaults on its internal makeup from either domestic or foreign agents than with what has been identified, although in entirely different ...
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The crisis of liberal democracy has less to do with violent assaults on its internal makeup from either domestic or foreign agents than with what has been identified, although in entirely different contexts and sets of circumstances, by earlier political theorists as a “legitimation crisis.” At the same time, such a legitimation crisis arises not from the failure of liberal institutions to “represent” the generic will or interests of their constituents but out of the impossibility of any conceivable politeia emerging from the complete evanescence of the general equivalent for a global political economy.Less
The crisis of liberal democracy has less to do with violent assaults on its internal makeup from either domestic or foreign agents than with what has been identified, although in entirely different contexts and sets of circumstances, by earlier political theorists as a “legitimation crisis.” At the same time, such a legitimation crisis arises not from the failure of liberal institutions to “represent” the generic will or interests of their constituents but out of the impossibility of any conceivable politeia emerging from the complete evanescence of the general equivalent for a global political economy.
Nick Vaughan-Williams
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748637324
- eISBN:
- 9780748652747
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748637324.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, International Relations and Politics
This book presents a distinctive theoretical approach to the problem of borders in the study of global politics. It turns from current debates about the presence or absence of borders between states ...
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This book presents a distinctive theoretical approach to the problem of borders in the study of global politics. It turns from current debates about the presence or absence of borders between states to consider the possibility that the concept of the border of the state is being reconfigured in contemporary political life. The author uses critical resources found in poststructuralist thought to think in new ways about the relationship between borders, security and sovereign power, drawing on a range of thinkers including Agamben, Derrida and Foucault. He highlights the necessity of a more pluralised and radicalised view of what borders arel, and where they might be found, and uses the problem of borders to critically explore the innovations and limits of poststructuralist scholarship.Less
This book presents a distinctive theoretical approach to the problem of borders in the study of global politics. It turns from current debates about the presence or absence of borders between states to consider the possibility that the concept of the border of the state is being reconfigured in contemporary political life. The author uses critical resources found in poststructuralist thought to think in new ways about the relationship between borders, security and sovereign power, drawing on a range of thinkers including Agamben, Derrida and Foucault. He highlights the necessity of a more pluralised and radicalised view of what borders arel, and where they might be found, and uses the problem of borders to critically explore the innovations and limits of poststructuralist scholarship.
Patricia Owens
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199299362
- eISBN:
- 9780191715051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299362.003.0004
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, International Relations and Politics
This chapter looks at Arendt's historical analysis of a form of war that still shapes the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter assesses her farsighted and prescient claim that late ...
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This chapter looks at Arendt's historical analysis of a form of war that still shapes the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter assesses her farsighted and prescient claim that late 19th-century wars of imperial conquest helped sow the seeds of 20th-century total war in Europe. The implications are potentially great for how we might think through the social and political processes unwittingly unleashed by various forms of violence, including so-called ‘small wars’. Arendt's writing on imperialism and European total war also reveal some of the flaws in conventional military history and strategic studies which has understood these practices as unrelated. Arendt points us toward relationships that are much closer to Clausewitz's more fundamental insight about war as a social process that transcends the nation-state. Moreover, Arendt may have been the first to articulate what today we call ‘blowback’ and she termed the ‘boomerang effect’.Less
This chapter looks at Arendt's historical analysis of a form of war that still shapes the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter assesses her farsighted and prescient claim that late 19th-century wars of imperial conquest helped sow the seeds of 20th-century total war in Europe. The implications are potentially great for how we might think through the social and political processes unwittingly unleashed by various forms of violence, including so-called ‘small wars’. Arendt's writing on imperialism and European total war also reveal some of the flaws in conventional military history and strategic studies which has understood these practices as unrelated. Arendt points us toward relationships that are much closer to Clausewitz's more fundamental insight about war as a social process that transcends the nation-state. Moreover, Arendt may have been the first to articulate what today we call ‘blowback’ and she termed the ‘boomerang effect’.
Adrian Little and Moya Lloyd
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633999
- eISBN:
- 9780748652723
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633999.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Democratization
This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and ...
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This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and political commentators, including Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, William Connolly, Jacques Ranciére, Claude Lefort, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben. By examining critically the accounts of democracy advanced by these theorists, the book explores how a more radically conceived theory of democracy might be extended in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction. It draws on the insights of radical democratic theory to explore a range of concrete political cases (e.g. the struggles of indigenous people, same-sex marriage, societies emerging from prolonged social and political strife, and the role of social movements in opposing processes of globalistion) in order to illustrate its practical nature.Less
This book addresses the idea of radical democracy and, in particular, its poststructuralist articulation. It analyses the approach to radical democracy taken by a number of contemporary theorists and political commentators, including Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Judith Butler, William Connolly, Jacques Ranciére, Claude Lefort, Sheldon Wolin, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Giorgio Agamben. By examining critically the accounts of democracy advanced by these theorists, the book explores how a more radically conceived theory of democracy might be extended in a more egalitarian and inclusive direction. It draws on the insights of radical democratic theory to explore a range of concrete political cases (e.g. the struggles of indigenous people, same-sex marriage, societies emerging from prolonged social and political strife, and the role of social movements in opposing processes of globalistion) in order to illustrate its practical nature.
Matthew Hart
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195390339
- eISBN:
- 9780199776191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195390339.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. ...
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The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. Identifying this as a “major” discourse of the vernacular, the chapter uses the work of Jean Bodin and Giorgio Agamben to explore the importance of “major” vernacular discourse to the hegemonic function of nation‐states. The chapter then identifies “synthetic vernacular” poetry as verse that reworks “minor” vernacular discourses, thereby opening a gap within the homology among languages, peoples, and states. The chapter finally illustrates the limits of the synthetic vernacular concept via Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis (1957).Less
The chapter begins by questioning Philip Larkin's argument that W. H. Auden's early poems are “successful” because they assert a relationship of identity among dialect, audience, and social theme. Identifying this as a “major” discourse of the vernacular, the chapter uses the work of Jean Bodin and Giorgio Agamben to explore the importance of “major” vernacular discourse to the hegemonic function of nation‐states. The chapter then identifies “synthetic vernacular” poetry as verse that reworks “minor” vernacular discourses, thereby opening a gap within the homology among languages, peoples, and states. The chapter finally illustrates the limits of the synthetic vernacular concept via Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachis (1957).
Justin Clemens and Nicholas Heron
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Giorgio Agamben has emerged, in the past five years, as one of the most important continental philosophers. This burgeoning popularity of his work has largely been confined to a study of the homo ...
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Giorgio Agamben has emerged, in the past five years, as one of the most important continental philosophers. This burgeoning popularity of his work has largely been confined to a study of the homo sacer series. Yet these later ‘political’ works have their foundation in Agamben's earlier works on the philosophy of language, aesthetics, and literature. From a philosophy of language and linguistics that leads to a broader theory of representation, Agamben develops a critical theory that attempts to explore the hiatuses and paradoxes that govern discursive practice across a broad range of disciplines. Gathering some of the most important established and emerging scholars to examine his body of work, this collection of chapters seeks to explore Agamben's thought from these broader philosophical and literary concerns, underpinning its place within larger debates in continental philosophy.Less
Giorgio Agamben has emerged, in the past five years, as one of the most important continental philosophers. This burgeoning popularity of his work has largely been confined to a study of the homo sacer series. Yet these later ‘political’ works have their foundation in Agamben's earlier works on the philosophy of language, aesthetics, and literature. From a philosophy of language and linguistics that leads to a broader theory of representation, Agamben develops a critical theory that attempts to explore the hiatuses and paradoxes that govern discursive practice across a broad range of disciplines. Gathering some of the most important established and emerging scholars to examine his body of work, this collection of chapters seeks to explore Agamben's thought from these broader philosophical and literary concerns, underpinning its place within larger debates in continental philosophy.
Robin Mackenzie
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199580910
- eISBN:
- 9780191723025
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199580910.003.0019
- Subject:
- Law, Comparative Law
This chapter shows how Giorgio Agamben's anthropological machine not only deploys ascriptions of animality in order to include or exclude humans, but also assigns apparent similarities with, and ...
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This chapter shows how Giorgio Agamben's anthropological machine not only deploys ascriptions of animality in order to include or exclude humans, but also assigns apparent similarities with, and differences from, humans, in order to subject nonhuman animals to judgements of worth and entitlement. It deploys the figuration of bestia sacer, as a mirrored other of Agamben's homo sacer, in order to argue that the anthropological machine provides a means of determining who counts, and who does not, for all animals, whether human or nonhuman. Through providing answers to the question of who is like whom, who is not, and why and how this matters, it produces rationales for practices of inclusion and exclusion tailored to circumstance. The chapter concludes by suggesting that bestia sacer, the excluded nonhuman animal, is contained not only in zones of exception outside the protection of the law, but exists also within neo-liberal citizens.Less
This chapter shows how Giorgio Agamben's anthropological machine not only deploys ascriptions of animality in order to include or exclude humans, but also assigns apparent similarities with, and differences from, humans, in order to subject nonhuman animals to judgements of worth and entitlement. It deploys the figuration of bestia sacer, as a mirrored other of Agamben's homo sacer, in order to argue that the anthropological machine provides a means of determining who counts, and who does not, for all animals, whether human or nonhuman. Through providing answers to the question of who is like whom, who is not, and why and how this matters, it produces rationales for practices of inclusion and exclusion tailored to circumstance. The chapter concludes by suggesting that bestia sacer, the excluded nonhuman animal, is contained not only in zones of exception outside the protection of the law, but exists also within neo-liberal citizens.
Nick Mansfield
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823232413
- eISBN:
- 9780823235735
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823232413.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
No topic has caused more discussion in recent philosophy and political theory than sovereignty. From late Foucault to Agamben, and from Guantanamo Bay to the “war on terror,” the issue of the extent ...
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No topic has caused more discussion in recent philosophy and political theory than sovereignty. From late Foucault to Agamben, and from Guantanamo Bay to the “war on terror,” the issue of the extent and nature of the sovereign has given theoretical debates their currency and urgency. New thinking on sovereignty has always imagined the styles of human selfhood that each regime involves. Each denomination of sovereignty requires a specific mode of subjectivity to explain its meaning and facilitate its operation. The aim of this book is to help outline Jacques Derrida's thinking on sovereignty—a theme which increasingly attracted Derrida towards the end of his career—in its relationship to subjectivity. It investigates the late work Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, as not only Derrida's fullest statement of his thinking on sovereignty, but also as the destination of his career-long interest in questions of politics and self-identity. The book argues that in Derrida's thinking of the relationship between sovereignty and subjectivity—and the related themes of unconditionality and ipseity—we can detect the outline of Bataille's adaptation of Freud. Freud completed his “metapsychology,” by defining the “economic” nature of subjectivity. In Bataille's hands, this economic theory became a key to the nature of inter-relationship in general, specifically the complex and shifting relationship between subjectivity and power. In playing with Bataille's legacy, Derrida connects not only with the irrepressibly outrageous thinking of philosophy's most self-consciously transgressive thinker, but with the early twentieth century scientific revolution through which “energy” became ontology.Less
No topic has caused more discussion in recent philosophy and political theory than sovereignty. From late Foucault to Agamben, and from Guantanamo Bay to the “war on terror,” the issue of the extent and nature of the sovereign has given theoretical debates their currency and urgency. New thinking on sovereignty has always imagined the styles of human selfhood that each regime involves. Each denomination of sovereignty requires a specific mode of subjectivity to explain its meaning and facilitate its operation. The aim of this book is to help outline Jacques Derrida's thinking on sovereignty—a theme which increasingly attracted Derrida towards the end of his career—in its relationship to subjectivity. It investigates the late work Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, as not only Derrida's fullest statement of his thinking on sovereignty, but also as the destination of his career-long interest in questions of politics and self-identity. The book argues that in Derrida's thinking of the relationship between sovereignty and subjectivity—and the related themes of unconditionality and ipseity—we can detect the outline of Bataille's adaptation of Freud. Freud completed his “metapsychology,” by defining the “economic” nature of subjectivity. In Bataille's hands, this economic theory became a key to the nature of inter-relationship in general, specifically the complex and shifting relationship between subjectivity and power. In playing with Bataille's legacy, Derrida connects not only with the irrepressibly outrageous thinking of philosophy's most self-consciously transgressive thinker, but with the early twentieth century scientific revolution through which “energy” became ontology.
María Florencia Nelli
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199559213
- eISBN:
- 9780191594403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559213.003.0020
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Griselda Gambaro's play Antígona Furiosa was written and staged after Gambaro's exile as a consequence of Argentina's so‐called ‘Dirty War’ in the mid‐1970s. This chapter discusses Gambaro's play, ...
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Griselda Gambaro's play Antígona Furiosa was written and staged after Gambaro's exile as a consequence of Argentina's so‐called ‘Dirty War’ in the mid‐1970s. This chapter discusses Gambaro's play, taking into account some of Giorgio Agamben's thoughts in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) and The State of Exception (2005). Concepts such as ‘state of exception’, ‘inclusion of the exclusion’, ‘threshold’, and ‘living dead man’, as well as the figure of the camp are approached, illustrated, and fully explored by Antígona Furiosa in so far as they are at the heart of the structure of all major modern totalitarian states, of which the Argentinean ‘Proceso’ with its thousands of desaparecidos is just a new example. This chapter seeks to examine those notions not only as they are represented in the script of the play but essentially as they are reflected in the design of the performance space.Less
Griselda Gambaro's play Antígona Furiosa was written and staged after Gambaro's exile as a consequence of Argentina's so‐called ‘Dirty War’ in the mid‐1970s. This chapter discusses Gambaro's play, taking into account some of Giorgio Agamben's thoughts in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998) and The State of Exception (2005). Concepts such as ‘state of exception’, ‘inclusion of the exclusion’, ‘threshold’, and ‘living dead man’, as well as the figure of the camp are approached, illustrated, and fully explored by Antígona Furiosa in so far as they are at the heart of the structure of all major modern totalitarian states, of which the Argentinean ‘Proceso’ with its thousands of desaparecidos is just a new example. This chapter seeks to examine those notions not only as they are represented in the script of the play but essentially as they are reflected in the design of the performance space.
S. E. Wilmer
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199559213
- eISBN:
- 9780191594403
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199559213.003.0022
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter examines some productions in the late twentieth century (Fugard's The Island, Gambaro's Antígona Furiosa, and Glowacki's Antigone in New York) that have employed Antigone as a kind of ...
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This chapter examines some productions in the late twentieth century (Fugard's The Island, Gambaro's Antígona Furiosa, and Glowacki's Antigone in New York) that have employed Antigone as a kind of homo sacer, and then applies this analogy in a more detailed discussion of Seamus Heaney's version of The Burial at Thebes at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2004. Heaney's version was inspired by President Bush's ‘war on terror’ and the detention and ‘rendition’ of suspected terrorists in prisons beyond legal redress. The language deployed in the play echoed statements made by President Bush and evoked his administration's unwarranted invasion of Iraq and torture of prisoners. By comparing recent versions of Antigone that represent her as homo sacer, subjected to a liminal state between life and death, the chapter demonstrates how the ‘state of exception’ theorized by Georgio Agamben has become normalized in the twenty‐first century. It draws parallels between the ‘exceptional’ actions of governments such as the Bush administration and the Argentinian dictatorship, making up the laws as they go along, removing people from their homes and environment, and incarcerating or disposing of them outside the polis, outside the reach of their friends and families. Moreover, it shows that Western governments are taking advantage of the ‘war on terror’ to develop new methods of social control (such as increased security measures by the US Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, including more intensive customs inspections, omnipresent CCTV cameras, heightened threat alerts, etc.) that deprive citizens of their civil rights. By applying Agamben's notions of ‘homo sacer’ and ‘state of exception’ to these adaptations, as well as Slavoj Žižek's and Judith Butler's comments on recent political developments, it demonstrates the claim that Antigone makes on behalf of the disenfranchised of the world.Less
This chapter examines some productions in the late twentieth century (Fugard's The Island, Gambaro's Antígona Furiosa, and Glowacki's Antigone in New York) that have employed Antigone as a kind of homo sacer, and then applies this analogy in a more detailed discussion of Seamus Heaney's version of The Burial at Thebes at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 2004. Heaney's version was inspired by President Bush's ‘war on terror’ and the detention and ‘rendition’ of suspected terrorists in prisons beyond legal redress. The language deployed in the play echoed statements made by President Bush and evoked his administration's unwarranted invasion of Iraq and torture of prisoners. By comparing recent versions of Antigone that represent her as homo sacer, subjected to a liminal state between life and death, the chapter demonstrates how the ‘state of exception’ theorized by Georgio Agamben has become normalized in the twenty‐first century. It draws parallels between the ‘exceptional’ actions of governments such as the Bush administration and the Argentinian dictatorship, making up the laws as they go along, removing people from their homes and environment, and incarcerating or disposing of them outside the polis, outside the reach of their friends and families. Moreover, it shows that Western governments are taking advantage of the ‘war on terror’ to develop new methods of social control (such as increased security measures by the US Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, including more intensive customs inspections, omnipresent CCTV cameras, heightened threat alerts, etc.) that deprive citizens of their civil rights. By applying Agamben's notions of ‘homo sacer’ and ‘state of exception’ to these adaptations, as well as Slavoj Žižek's and Judith Butler's comments on recent political developments, it demonstrates the claim that Antigone makes on behalf of the disenfranchised of the world.
Robert Eaglestone
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199265930
- eISBN:
- 9780191708596
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199265930.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter looks at the impact of the Holocaust, and Levinas and Derrida's response to it, on the category of the human. Drawing on Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, Giorgio Agamben's work on the ...
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This chapter looks at the impact of the Holocaust, and Levinas and Derrida's response to it, on the category of the human. Drawing on Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, Giorgio Agamben's work on the Holocaust is analysed in the light of Levinas and Derrida. The issues raised at the start of the book about identification are then considered. Drawing on a range of thinkers (Jean-Luc Nancy, Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe, Paul Gilroy) and testimonies, it is argued that it is the shifting patterns of identification that are crucial in relation to understanding both the Holocaust and its impact on the contemporary world, especially in relation to race. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Levinas and Derrida's thought offers a rigorously reflective and easily lost ‘postmodern humanism’.Less
This chapter looks at the impact of the Holocaust, and Levinas and Derrida's response to it, on the category of the human. Drawing on Heidegger's Letter on Humanism, Giorgio Agamben's work on the Holocaust is analysed in the light of Levinas and Derrida. The issues raised at the start of the book about identification are then considered. Drawing on a range of thinkers (Jean-Luc Nancy, Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe, Paul Gilroy) and testimonies, it is argued that it is the shifting patterns of identification that are crucial in relation to understanding both the Holocaust and its impact on the contemporary world, especially in relation to race. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Levinas and Derrida's thought offers a rigorously reflective and easily lost ‘postmodern humanism’.
Michèle Lowrie
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195389579
- eISBN:
- 9780199866496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195389579.003.0011
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter analyzes an episode of civil disturbance in early Roman history—Spurius Maelius' attempt to seize royal power as told in Livy—according to Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty. ...
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This chapter analyzes an episode of civil disturbance in early Roman history—Spurius Maelius' attempt to seize royal power as told in Livy—according to Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty. (Agamben revives a Roman category, the homo sacer, in his discussion of sovereignty's power over the lives of citizens.) The chapter measures Maelius against ancient and modern definitions of the homo sacer and argues that Livy's Maelius story tells us more about the Augustan period's understanding of the relation between sovereignty and citizen life than about early Rome.Less
This chapter analyzes an episode of civil disturbance in early Roman history—Spurius Maelius' attempt to seize royal power as told in Livy—according to Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty. (Agamben revives a Roman category, the homo sacer, in his discussion of sovereignty's power over the lives of citizens.) The chapter measures Maelius against ancient and modern definitions of the homo sacer and argues that Livy's Maelius story tells us more about the Augustan period's understanding of the relation between sovereignty and citizen life than about early Rome.
Zsuzsanna Várhelyi
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199738960
- eISBN:
- 9780199918676
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199738960.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion in the Ancient World
Zsuzsanna Várhelyi analyzes the Roman notion of sacrifice as it can be seen in the tentative sacrificial interpretations of politically high-stake murders in the late republican period. Starting with ...
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Zsuzsanna Várhelyi analyzes the Roman notion of sacrifice as it can be seen in the tentative sacrificial interpretations of politically high-stake murders in the late republican period. Starting with the killing of Tiberius Gracchus at the hands of Scipio Nasica, the pontifex maximus in Rome in 133 BCE, Roman political debates incorporated assumptions about what could constitute rightful religious acts. Adopting theoretical considerations from Giorgio Agamben’s study of homo sacer, a person turned ‘sacred’ who therefore falls outside the regular rules of human conduct, she suggests we examine these killings as part of the same zone of indistinction between sacrifice and homicide. This bloody period of killings, including many in religiously implicated ways, did not stop until under Julius Caesar and Augustus a close association emerged between the proper execution of power and the proper performance of sacrifice—a key part of the religious powers of the first emperor, Augustus.Less
Zsuzsanna Várhelyi analyzes the Roman notion of sacrifice as it can be seen in the tentative sacrificial interpretations of politically high-stake murders in the late republican period. Starting with the killing of Tiberius Gracchus at the hands of Scipio Nasica, the pontifex maximus in Rome in 133 BCE, Roman political debates incorporated assumptions about what could constitute rightful religious acts. Adopting theoretical considerations from Giorgio Agamben’s study of homo sacer, a person turned ‘sacred’ who therefore falls outside the regular rules of human conduct, she suggests we examine these killings as part of the same zone of indistinction between sacrifice and homicide. This bloody period of killings, including many in religiously implicated ways, did not stop until under Julius Caesar and Augustus a close association emerged between the proper execution of power and the proper performance of sacrifice—a key part of the religious powers of the first emperor, Augustus.
Simon Gaunt
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199272075
- eISBN:
- 9780191709869
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272075.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter examines the bio-political implications of sacrificial desire in troubadour lyric by re-examining the model of sacrificial desire elaborated in Chapter 1 in the light of work by Michel ...
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This chapter examines the bio-political implications of sacrificial desire in troubadour lyric by re-examining the model of sacrificial desire elaborated in Chapter 1 in the light of work by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, using the notion of sovereignty. Three troubadours are taken as paradigmatic of the late 12th-century tradition: Arnaut de Maruelh, Raimon Jordan, Gaucelm Faidit.Less
This chapter examines the bio-political implications of sacrificial desire in troubadour lyric by re-examining the model of sacrificial desire elaborated in Chapter 1 in the light of work by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, using the notion of sovereignty. Three troubadours are taken as paradigmatic of the late 12th-century tradition: Arnaut de Maruelh, Raimon Jordan, Gaucelm Faidit.
Nicholas Heron
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823278688
- eISBN:
- 9780823280537
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823278688.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
To the question that animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology—namely, whether Christianity is exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things ...
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To the question that animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology—namely, whether Christianity is exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or whether its concepts instead underpin secular politics, thereby conditioning and informing its practices—this book advances a third alternative: Christian anti-politics, it contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, it argues, in concert with Giorgio Agamben’s recent intervention in this field of inquiry, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: It seeks to understand our current conception of government in the light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics also in turn precipitates a concurrent shift in the organisation of power; an organisation whose determining principle, the book contends, is liturgy (understood in the broad sense as “public service”). To date, only an emphasis on its acclamatory dimension has made the concept of liturgy available for political theory; this book seeks to position it instead as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, it argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.Less
To the question that animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology—namely, whether Christianity is exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or whether its concepts instead underpin secular politics, thereby conditioning and informing its practices—this book advances a third alternative: Christian anti-politics, it contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, it argues, in concert with Giorgio Agamben’s recent intervention in this field of inquiry, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: It seeks to understand our current conception of government in the light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics also in turn precipitates a concurrent shift in the organisation of power; an organisation whose determining principle, the book contends, is liturgy (understood in the broad sense as “public service”). To date, only an emphasis on its acclamatory dimension has made the concept of liturgy available for political theory; this book seeks to position it instead as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, it argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.
Eric Daryl Meyer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280148
- eISBN:
- 9780823281619
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280148.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Inner Animalities analyses the human-animal distinction as a discursive theme running ubiquitously through Christian theological anthropology. Arguing that historically pervasive disavowals of human ...
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Inner Animalities analyses the human-animal distinction as a discursive theme running ubiquitously through Christian theological anthropology. Arguing that historically pervasive disavowals of human animality create ineradicable contradictions within accounts of human life and also install an anti-ecological impulse at the heart of Christian theology, this project constructively imagines a theological anthropology centered upon human commonality with fellow creatures. This constructive work perceives divine grace at work in human instincts, desires, and enmeshment in quotidian relations (rather than in rationality, language, and transcendence). The broadest arc of the book’s argument is that only a thickly articulated self-understanding rooted in creaturely commonality can provide an adequate basis for responding to ongoing ecological degradation. The conjunction of Critical Animal Studies with constructive theology in this study, then, aims to generate a new approach to ecological theology. The book’s analysis places ancient Christians such as Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus along with contemporary theologians such as Karl Rahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg in critical conversation with theorists of human-animal relations from Jacques Derrida and Kelly Oliver to Valerie Plumwood and Giorgio Agamben.Less
Inner Animalities analyses the human-animal distinction as a discursive theme running ubiquitously through Christian theological anthropology. Arguing that historically pervasive disavowals of human animality create ineradicable contradictions within accounts of human life and also install an anti-ecological impulse at the heart of Christian theology, this project constructively imagines a theological anthropology centered upon human commonality with fellow creatures. This constructive work perceives divine grace at work in human instincts, desires, and enmeshment in quotidian relations (rather than in rationality, language, and transcendence). The broadest arc of the book’s argument is that only a thickly articulated self-understanding rooted in creaturely commonality can provide an adequate basis for responding to ongoing ecological degradation. The conjunction of Critical Animal Studies with constructive theology in this study, then, aims to generate a new approach to ecological theology. The book’s analysis places ancient Christians such as Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus along with contemporary theologians such as Karl Rahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg in critical conversation with theorists of human-animal relations from Jacques Derrida and Kelly Oliver to Valerie Plumwood and Giorgio Agamben.
Sergei Prozorov
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474410526
- eISBN:
- 9781474418744
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474410526.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
The Biopolitics of Stalinism is the first book to investigate Soviet socialism from a biopolitical perspective. While canonical theories of biopolitics of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto ...
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The Biopolitics of Stalinism is the first book to investigate Soviet socialism from a biopolitical perspective. While canonical theories of biopolitics of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have focused on liberal and fascist rationalities of biopolitics, the case of Stalinism exemplifies an alternative mode of biopolitics, oriented less towards protecting life than towards transforming it in accordance with a transcendent ideal of communism. The book reconstructs this rationality in the early Stalinist project of the Great Break (1928-1932) and its subsequent modifications during the High Stalinist period. It then addresses the question of biopolitics on the level of the subject, tracing the way how the ‘new Soviet person’ was to be constructed in governmental practices and the role violence and terror played in this construction. On the basis of this reconstruction of the Stalinist rationality of biopolitics, this book also contributes to the theoretical debate on affirmative biopolitics, advancing a new interpretation of the relation between ideas and lives in political practice. Bringing the fields of biopolitics and Soviet studies together, this book will be of interest to a wide readership in political theory, history, sociology and cultural studies.Less
The Biopolitics of Stalinism is the first book to investigate Soviet socialism from a biopolitical perspective. While canonical theories of biopolitics of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito have focused on liberal and fascist rationalities of biopolitics, the case of Stalinism exemplifies an alternative mode of biopolitics, oriented less towards protecting life than towards transforming it in accordance with a transcendent ideal of communism. The book reconstructs this rationality in the early Stalinist project of the Great Break (1928-1932) and its subsequent modifications during the High Stalinist period. It then addresses the question of biopolitics on the level of the subject, tracing the way how the ‘new Soviet person’ was to be constructed in governmental practices and the role violence and terror played in this construction. On the basis of this reconstruction of the Stalinist rationality of biopolitics, this book also contributes to the theoretical debate on affirmative biopolitics, advancing a new interpretation of the relation between ideas and lives in political practice. Bringing the fields of biopolitics and Soviet studies together, this book will be of interest to a wide readership in political theory, history, sociology and cultural studies.
John Lechte and Saul Newman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748645725
- eISBN:
- 9780748689163
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748645725.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Reference
Most commentators agree that human rights today are in crisis. Virtually everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation and oppression, which human rights norms – prominent as they are in the ...
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Most commentators agree that human rights today are in crisis. Virtually everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation and oppression, which human rights norms – prominent as they are in the global order – seem powerless to prevent. This book investigates the roots of the current crisis through the thought of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. While Agamben is critical of human rights, he nevertheless opens up crucial thresholds and lines of enquiry – biopolitics, the sovereign state of exception, and ‘bare life’ – which human rights theory and practice must come to grips with. The authors contend that any renewal of the human rights project today must involve breaking decisively with the traditional coordinates of Western political thought, which has come to see politics in terms of the activity of sovereign states and law-making – and as confined to the public domain. Instead, it must affirm an alternative political ontology based around notions of statelessness, inoperativeness, and the realization of the freedom and community that we already live. This alternative politics of human rights is developed through innovative approaches to language, gesture, and the image, and through key encounters with not only with Agamben, but also Arendt, Esposito, Bataille, Nancy and Benjamin.Less
Most commentators agree that human rights today are in crisis. Virtually everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation and oppression, which human rights norms – prominent as they are in the global order – seem powerless to prevent. This book investigates the roots of the current crisis through the thought of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. While Agamben is critical of human rights, he nevertheless opens up crucial thresholds and lines of enquiry – biopolitics, the sovereign state of exception, and ‘bare life’ – which human rights theory and practice must come to grips with. The authors contend that any renewal of the human rights project today must involve breaking decisively with the traditional coordinates of Western political thought, which has come to see politics in terms of the activity of sovereign states and law-making – and as confined to the public domain. Instead, it must affirm an alternative political ontology based around notions of statelessness, inoperativeness, and the realization of the freedom and community that we already live. This alternative politics of human rights is developed through innovative approaches to language, gesture, and the image, and through key encounters with not only with Agamben, but also Arendt, Esposito, Bataille, Nancy and Benjamin.
Gregg Lambert
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474413909
- eISBN:
- 9781474422352
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413909.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Gregg Lambert examines the internal relationship between the return of overtly religious themes in contemporary philosophy over the past decade and another sense of the ‘post-secular’ turn that has ...
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Gregg Lambert examines the internal relationship between the return of overtly religious themes in contemporary philosophy over the past decade and another sense of the ‘post-secular’ turn that has been taking place globally following the events of 9/11. He asks how these two ‘returns to religion’ can be taking place simultaneously without appearing as the same horizon of the West viewed from opposing perspectives of the globe? Through a series of reflections on the ‘return statements’ performed by such contemporary philosophers as Alain Badiou, John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy, Lambert discovers the unique sense of the term ‘religion’ that belongs exclusively to our contemporary perspective - a sense whose bio-political meaning is both unprecedented and foreboding.Less
Gregg Lambert examines the internal relationship between the return of overtly religious themes in contemporary philosophy over the past decade and another sense of the ‘post-secular’ turn that has been taking place globally following the events of 9/11. He asks how these two ‘returns to religion’ can be taking place simultaneously without appearing as the same horizon of the West viewed from opposing perspectives of the globe? Through a series of reflections on the ‘return statements’ performed by such contemporary philosophers as Alain Badiou, John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy, Lambert discovers the unique sense of the term ‘religion’ that belongs exclusively to our contemporary perspective - a sense whose bio-political meaning is both unprecedented and foreboding.
