Clemens Justin
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter shows that it is the implicit role that Giorgio Agamben assigns to the linguistic shifter that proves a necessary way station on this endless pilgrimage. In outlining Agamben's doctrine ...
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This chapter shows that it is the implicit role that Giorgio Agamben assigns to the linguistic shifter that proves a necessary way station on this endless pilgrimage. In outlining Agamben's doctrine of the shifter, it brings out the decisive importance of the philosopher's paratactical parables; that is, that the very ways in which Agamben broaches and pursues his theses are essential to his programme. Agamben identifies those philosophical, grammatical, or theological accounts of the place of being where a suture between the fact of utterance and the enigma of situation is essayed. It is deixis, a grammatical category, that Agamben exposes as the place of the Voice of language, the radically negative foundation of Western metaphysics. Agamben's doctrine of language hinges on the shifter. His special brand of materialist Christianity remains Romantic.Less
This chapter shows that it is the implicit role that Giorgio Agamben assigns to the linguistic shifter that proves a necessary way station on this endless pilgrimage. In outlining Agamben's doctrine of the shifter, it brings out the decisive importance of the philosopher's paratactical parables; that is, that the very ways in which Agamben broaches and pursues his theses are essential to his programme. Agamben identifies those philosophical, grammatical, or theological accounts of the place of being where a suture between the fact of utterance and the enigma of situation is essayed. It is deixis, a grammatical category, that Agamben exposes as the place of the Voice of language, the radically negative foundation of Western metaphysics. Agamben's doctrine of language hinges on the shifter. His special brand of materialist Christianity remains Romantic.
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.
Wolfreys Julian
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter discusses the separation of love from desire and eroticism. Following the trace of love, this chapter meditates on its non-philosophical alterity, its status as the precondition of ...
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This chapter discusses the separation of love from desire and eroticism. Following the trace of love, this chapter meditates on its non-philosophical alterity, its status as the precondition of knowledge, its spectral reappearance throughout the text of philosophy. A problematic missed encounter between Giorgio Agamben and Martin Heidegger is considered whose consequences, when rigorously followed through, imply the immemorial, transgressive experience of the ‘souvenir’ of love. Love is found everywhere in the text of Agamben. Love in the text of Agamben brings us face to face with the very grounds of history itself. Love admits — confesses and gives entrance to — its own uncanny condition. It enlightens the readers, illuminating the basis of the radical ‘otherness’ of time, and of its ‘destructive’ character with regard to history conceived as undifferentiated continuum.Less
This chapter discusses the separation of love from desire and eroticism. Following the trace of love, this chapter meditates on its non-philosophical alterity, its status as the precondition of knowledge, its spectral reappearance throughout the text of philosophy. A problematic missed encounter between Giorgio Agamben and Martin Heidegger is considered whose consequences, when rigorously followed through, imply the immemorial, transgressive experience of the ‘souvenir’ of love. Love is found everywhere in the text of Agamben. Love in the text of Agamben brings us face to face with the very grounds of history itself. Love admits — confesses and gives entrance to — its own uncanny condition. It enlightens the readers, illuminating the basis of the radical ‘otherness’ of time, and of its ‘destructive’ character with regard to history conceived as undifferentiated continuum.
Murray Alex
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter reviews the crucial relationship Giorgio Agamben forges with the work of Guy Debord and the concept of ‘the society of the spectacle’. It isolates three key moments in which a ...
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This chapter reviews the crucial relationship Giorgio Agamben forges with the work of Guy Debord and the concept of ‘the society of the spectacle’. It isolates three key moments in which a relationship between the two thinkers can be productively pursued: the critique of the spectacle and commodity fetishism, the image and cinema, and the idea of a critical ‘poetics’ of life. The role of Debord in Agamben's theoretical project is arguably much greater than the concordance in their critique of the spectacle. The work of language in power is not to obscure meaning, but to obscure the space in between, the taking place of language as such. Agamben's own call for an ‘ethics’ may seem antithetical to Debord's position.Less
This chapter reviews the crucial relationship Giorgio Agamben forges with the work of Guy Debord and the concept of ‘the society of the spectacle’. It isolates three key moments in which a relationship between the two thinkers can be productively pursued: the critique of the spectacle and commodity fetishism, the image and cinema, and the idea of a critical ‘poetics’ of life. The role of Debord in Agamben's theoretical project is arguably much greater than the concordance in their critique of the spectacle. The work of language in power is not to obscure meaning, but to obscure the space in between, the taking place of language as such. Agamben's own call for an ‘ethics’ may seem antithetical to Debord's position.
Whyte Jessica
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter opens with Franz Kafka's notorious short story ‘In the penal settlement’, establishing its emblematic function for Giorgio Agamben. A discussion of Agamben's explicitly political theses ...
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This chapter opens with Franz Kafka's notorious short story ‘In the penal settlement’, establishing its emblematic function for Giorgio Agamben. A discussion of Agamben's explicitly political theses is presented, through Carl Schmitt and Jean-Luc Nancy's accounts of, respectively, the sovereign exception and abandonment, before returning to the project identified as the kernel of Agamben's work. Agamben offers an interpretation of the machine's destruction in which the officer inserts the injunction Be Just into the machine with the precise intention of destroying it. In Agamben's work, the blurring of law and life is the key characteristic of the state of exception. We see in the Penal Settlement how the attempt to make the apparatus inscribe Be Just into the body of the officer shatters the machine. When Agamben wishes to provide an image of being without presuppositions, he turns once again to Kafka.Less
This chapter opens with Franz Kafka's notorious short story ‘In the penal settlement’, establishing its emblematic function for Giorgio Agamben. A discussion of Agamben's explicitly political theses is presented, through Carl Schmitt and Jean-Luc Nancy's accounts of, respectively, the sovereign exception and abandonment, before returning to the project identified as the kernel of Agamben's work. Agamben offers an interpretation of the machine's destruction in which the officer inserts the injunction Be Just into the machine with the precise intention of destroying it. In Agamben's work, the blurring of law and life is the key characteristic of the state of exception. We see in the Penal Settlement how the attempt to make the apparatus inscribe Be Just into the body of the officer shatters the machine. When Agamben wishes to provide an image of being without presuppositions, he turns once again to Kafka.
Kevin Attell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262045
- eISBN:
- 9780823266319
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262045.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book traces Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's engagement with deconstructive thought from his early work to the present, showing how consistently and closely Agamben takes up (critically, ...
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This book traces Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's engagement with deconstructive thought from his early work to the present, showing how consistently and closely Agamben takes up (critically, sympathetically, polemically – and very often implicitly) the work of Jacques Derrida as his chief contemporary interlocutor. At its most fundamental level, Agamben's thought has been viewed as descending primarily from the work of Heidegger, Benjamin, and, more recently, Foucault. This book, however, complicates and expands that constellation by showing that any understanding of Agamben that does not take his relation to Derrida into account remains incomplete. Divided into two roughly chronological parts, the book begins with a section titled “First Principles” that examines the development of Agamben's key concepts – infancy, Voice, potentiality – from the 1960s to approximately 1990 and traces the way these concepts consistently draw on and respond to specific texts and concepts in Derrida's work. The second part, titled “Strategy without Finality or Means without End,” examines the political turn in Agamben's and Derrida's thinking from about 1990 onward, beginning with their crucial investigations of sovereignty and violence and moving through their parallel treatments of juridical power, the relation between humans and animals, and finally messianism and the politics to come.Less
This book traces Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's engagement with deconstructive thought from his early work to the present, showing how consistently and closely Agamben takes up (critically, sympathetically, polemically – and very often implicitly) the work of Jacques Derrida as his chief contemporary interlocutor. At its most fundamental level, Agamben's thought has been viewed as descending primarily from the work of Heidegger, Benjamin, and, more recently, Foucault. This book, however, complicates and expands that constellation by showing that any understanding of Agamben that does not take his relation to Derrida into account remains incomplete. Divided into two roughly chronological parts, the book begins with a section titled “First Principles” that examines the development of Agamben's key concepts – infancy, Voice, potentiality – from the 1960s to approximately 1990 and traces the way these concepts consistently draw on and respond to specific texts and concepts in Derrida's work. The second part, titled “Strategy without Finality or Means without End,” examines the political turn in Agamben's and Derrida's thinking from about 1990 onward, beginning with their crucial investigations of sovereignty and violence and moving through their parallel treatments of juridical power, the relation between humans and animals, and finally messianism and the politics to come.
Ttimothy. C. Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816674640
- eISBN:
- 9781452946696
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816674640.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter focuses on two of the most important thanatopolitical philosophers: Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. It poses questions regarding the primary means by which Agamben and Esposito ...
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This chapter focuses on two of the most important thanatopolitical philosophers: Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. It poses questions regarding the primary means by which Agamben and Esposito revolutionize the Heideggerian division between proper and improper writing as part of constructing their own vision of the thanatopolitical. The concept of dispositif (apparatus) plays a significant role in some of Agamben’s more recent texts and is consequently linked to this thanatopolitics that emerged out of his extension of Heidegger. Esposito, on the other hand, avoids the subsequent thanatopolitics that resulted from applying an ontological critique of technology, and instead lays the foundation for a politics of life as opposed to a thanatopolitics of death.Less
This chapter focuses on two of the most important thanatopolitical philosophers: Giorgio Agamben and Roberto Esposito. It poses questions regarding the primary means by which Agamben and Esposito revolutionize the Heideggerian division between proper and improper writing as part of constructing their own vision of the thanatopolitical. The concept of dispositif (apparatus) plays a significant role in some of Agamben’s more recent texts and is consequently linked to this thanatopolitics that emerged out of his extension of Heidegger. Esposito, on the other hand, avoids the subsequent thanatopolitics that resulted from applying an ontological critique of technology, and instead lays the foundation for a politics of life as opposed to a thanatopolitics of death.
Arne De Boever
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter explores the relation between violence and justice in Giorgio Agamben's work. It investigates the essential role that Walter Benjamin's classic essay ‘Critique of Violence’ plays for ...
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This chapter explores the relation between violence and justice in Giorgio Agamben's work. It investigates the essential role that Walter Benjamin's classic essay ‘Critique of Violence’ plays for Agamben. This essay is a foundational text for Agamben's study of sovereign power. It shows links between Benjamin's obscure notion of ‘divine violence’ and his essay on ‘The Storyteller’. Carl Schmitt's sovereignty confirms the dialectic between violence and the law; Benjamin's divine violence breaks with it. Agamben's reading of Oedipus and the Sphinx turns into an implicit critique of Benjamin when he develops his preference of the enigmatic Sphinx over and against the transparency that Oedipus brings into a reflection on the story. The distinction between the violent political strike and the nonviolent proletarian strike makes perfect sense in the context of Agamben's reading of the Benjamin-Schmitt debate.Less
This chapter explores the relation between violence and justice in Giorgio Agamben's work. It investigates the essential role that Walter Benjamin's classic essay ‘Critique of Violence’ plays for Agamben. This essay is a foundational text for Agamben's study of sovereign power. It shows links between Benjamin's obscure notion of ‘divine violence’ and his essay on ‘The Storyteller’. Carl Schmitt's sovereignty confirms the dialectic between violence and the law; Benjamin's divine violence breaks with it. Agamben's reading of Oedipus and the Sphinx turns into an implicit critique of Benjamin when he develops his preference of the enigmatic Sphinx over and against the transparency that Oedipus brings into a reflection on the story. The distinction between the violent political strike and the nonviolent proletarian strike makes perfect sense in the context of Agamben's reading of the Benjamin-Schmitt debate.
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.
Justin Clemens, Nicholas Heron, and Alex Murray
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Giorgio Agamben's oeuvre is unified by a conviction of the necessity of undoing the divisive powers of language, of the essential relationship of language to law, and of the potentiality of ...
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Giorgio Agamben's oeuvre is unified by a conviction of the necessity of undoing the divisive powers of language, of the essential relationship of language to law, and of the potentiality of literature and philosophy. It develops a critical praxis that explores the hiatuses and aporias that govern the practices of life today. The contributors to this collection deal directly with key issues of politics and sovereignty by examining the plausibility of Agamben's often disturbing propositions about the status of contemporary political life, not to mention the philological, linguistic, and philosophical foundations of works such as Homo Sacer. Agamben traces connections between poetics and politics, logic and linguistics, philology and philosophy, extending the range and direction of critical responses into disciplines such as literary theory, linguistics, philology, cultural theory and, more broadly, into wider traditions of praxis. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.Less
Giorgio Agamben's oeuvre is unified by a conviction of the necessity of undoing the divisive powers of language, of the essential relationship of language to law, and of the potentiality of literature and philosophy. It develops a critical praxis that explores the hiatuses and aporias that govern the practices of life today. The contributors to this collection deal directly with key issues of politics and sovereignty by examining the plausibility of Agamben's often disturbing propositions about the status of contemporary political life, not to mention the philological, linguistic, and philosophical foundations of works such as Homo Sacer. Agamben traces connections between poetics and politics, logic and linguistics, philology and philosophy, extending the range and direction of critical responses into disciplines such as literary theory, linguistics, philology, cultural theory and, more broadly, into wider traditions of praxis. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.
Anton Schütz
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter asks whether the apparent divergences between the work of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault are due, not so much to irreconcilable methodological and political differences, as to the ...
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This chapter asks whether the apparent divergences between the work of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault are due, not so much to irreconcilable methodological and political differences, as to the specific differences of the political situations in which they found themselves. It then illustrates how Agamben's response is to adapt a range of concepts from a range of very different thinkers, including Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. The homo sacer is devalued life, life as ce qui reste, a remnant that happens, not to ‘be’, but to be ‘around’. The question of the homo non sacer looks easy, as if a positive answer to its possibility would result, simply and in an almost self-explanatory manner, from the fact that man can, at any rate, not be said to have entered the arena of history as homo sacer, that man cannot have been created as homo sacer.Less
This chapter asks whether the apparent divergences between the work of Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault are due, not so much to irreconcilable methodological and political differences, as to the specific differences of the political situations in which they found themselves. It then illustrates how Agamben's response is to adapt a range of concepts from a range of very different thinkers, including Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy. The homo sacer is devalued life, life as ce qui reste, a remnant that happens, not to ‘be’, but to be ‘around’. The question of the homo non sacer looks easy, as if a positive answer to its possibility would result, simply and in an almost self-explanatory manner, from the fact that man can, at any rate, not be said to have entered the arena of history as homo sacer, that man cannot have been created as homo sacer.
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.
Antonio Cimino
- Published in print:
- 2022
- Published Online:
- March 2022
- ISBN:
- 9780192847102
- eISBN:
- 9780191939518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780192847102.003.0010
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the reassessment of Giorgio Agamben’s account of biopolitics by discussing some conceptual and methodological problems arising from his use of Aristotelian ...
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The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the reassessment of Giorgio Agamben’s account of biopolitics by discussing some conceptual and methodological problems arising from his use of Aristotelian texts, notably his analysis of the difference between “natural life,” “politically qualified life,” and “bare life.” The chapter begins by presenting the essentials of Agamben’s conception of biopolitics and explaining how he conceptualizes the basic characteristics of the relationship between life and the political. The ensuing reassessment moves in three directions. First, the chapter examines the notion of exception, which Agamben takes from Carl Schmitt and repurposes to develop his notion of biopolitics. Second, the chapter shows the extent to which Agamben’s conception is exposed to a number of objections. Third, the chapter focuses on the question of whether Agamben’s account of biopolitics enables us to capture the nature of power in a consistent and clear way.Less
The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the reassessment of Giorgio Agamben’s account of biopolitics by discussing some conceptual and methodological problems arising from his use of Aristotelian texts, notably his analysis of the difference between “natural life,” “politically qualified life,” and “bare life.” The chapter begins by presenting the essentials of Agamben’s conception of biopolitics and explaining how he conceptualizes the basic characteristics of the relationship between life and the political. The ensuing reassessment moves in three directions. First, the chapter examines the notion of exception, which Agamben takes from Carl Schmitt and repurposes to develop his notion of biopolitics. Second, the chapter shows the extent to which Agamben’s conception is exposed to a number of objections. Third, the chapter focuses on the question of whether Agamben’s account of biopolitics enables us to capture the nature of power in a consistent and clear way.
Levitt Deborah
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter reviews Giorgio Agamben's engagement with the cinematic dispositif, and the problem of ‘the status of the image in general within modernity’. It also proposes that Agamben's idea of ...
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This chapter reviews Giorgio Agamben's engagement with the cinematic dispositif, and the problem of ‘the status of the image in general within modernity’. It also proposes that Agamben's idea of ‘gesture’ is directed against the destruction of experience exemplified by the modern regime of ‘images’. It then suggests a new kind of pragmatic ‘media ethology’, which would shuttle between singular description and political manifestation without collapsing the one into the other. The element of cinema is gesture and not image. Because cinema has its centre in the gesture and not in the image, it belongs essentially to the realm of ethics and politics. Politics is the sphere of pure means, of the absolute and complete gesturality of human beings. Agamben submits Gilles Deleuze's vitalism to a critical genealogy of ‘life’ as the cultural object par excellence.Less
This chapter reviews Giorgio Agamben's engagement with the cinematic dispositif, and the problem of ‘the status of the image in general within modernity’. It also proposes that Agamben's idea of ‘gesture’ is directed against the destruction of experience exemplified by the modern regime of ‘images’. It then suggests a new kind of pragmatic ‘media ethology’, which would shuttle between singular description and political manifestation without collapsing the one into the other. The element of cinema is gesture and not image. Because cinema has its centre in the gesture and not in the image, it belongs essentially to the realm of ethics and politics. Politics is the sphere of pure means, of the absolute and complete gesturality of human beings. Agamben submits Gilles Deleuze's vitalism to a critical genealogy of ‘life’ as the cultural object par excellence.
Alexander García Düttmann
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748634620
- eISBN:
- 9780748652440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748634620.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter investigates the relation between ‘poetry’ and ‘prose’ in Giorgio Agamben's book Idea of Prose. It also examines what is called the ‘happy medium’ of pure communicability which obsesses ...
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This chapter investigates the relation between ‘poetry’ and ‘prose’ in Giorgio Agamben's book Idea of Prose. It also examines what is called the ‘happy medium’ of pure communicability which obsesses Agamben, and its drive towards an integral actuality that attempts to restore what has never taken place, beyond the indispensable hesitations of the melancholic temperament that refuses to give up on the constitutively lost object. Prose and poetry expose themselves to one another and never succeed in constituting a unity or a stable identity. Walter Benjamin uses the expression ‘idea of prose’ to indicate a relationship between language, world, and history that can no longer be thought according to the logic of presupposition. The intuition is found that leads to the thought of the idea of prose expressed with an extreme intensity and a disturbing simplicity in a fragment from Theodor Adorno entitled ‘On Metaphysics’.Less
This chapter investigates the relation between ‘poetry’ and ‘prose’ in Giorgio Agamben's book Idea of Prose. It also examines what is called the ‘happy medium’ of pure communicability which obsesses Agamben, and its drive towards an integral actuality that attempts to restore what has never taken place, beyond the indispensable hesitations of the melancholic temperament that refuses to give up on the constitutively lost object. Prose and poetry expose themselves to one another and never succeed in constituting a unity or a stable identity. Walter Benjamin uses the expression ‘idea of prose’ to indicate a relationship between language, world, and history that can no longer be thought according to the logic of presupposition. The intuition is found that leads to the thought of the idea of prose expressed with an extreme intensity and a disturbing simplicity in a fragment from Theodor Adorno entitled ‘On Metaphysics’.
Kevin Attell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262045
- eISBN:
- 9780823266319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262045.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Chapter Three examines Agamben's theory of potentiality in relation to Derrida's central concepts of arche-writing and différance. After the more polemical engagements in the works discussed in the ...
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Chapter Three examines Agamben's theory of potentiality in relation to Derrida's central concepts of arche-writing and différance. After the more polemical engagements in the works discussed in the two previous chapters of the book, Agamben's rhetorical strategy with regard to deconstruction changes in the later 1980s, the period in which he was refining his theory of potentiality. Following an extended discussion of Agamben's idiosyncratic adoption of this Aristotelian concept of dunamis, the chapter goes on to examine how in his single essay explicitly devoted entirely to Derrida's thought, “Pardes: The Writing of Potentiality” (1990), Agamben stages what appears to be a rapprochement with Derrida, suggesting, from the moment of its title, that their central concepts are at least akin to one another. This, however, is an ambivalent or rivalrous kinship, a tenuous convergence that soon breaks opens once again into clearer disagreement in Agamben's subsequent Homo Sacer series of books (1995-).Less
Chapter Three examines Agamben's theory of potentiality in relation to Derrida's central concepts of arche-writing and différance. After the more polemical engagements in the works discussed in the two previous chapters of the book, Agamben's rhetorical strategy with regard to deconstruction changes in the later 1980s, the period in which he was refining his theory of potentiality. Following an extended discussion of Agamben's idiosyncratic adoption of this Aristotelian concept of dunamis, the chapter goes on to examine how in his single essay explicitly devoted entirely to Derrida's thought, “Pardes: The Writing of Potentiality” (1990), Agamben stages what appears to be a rapprochement with Derrida, suggesting, from the moment of its title, that their central concepts are at least akin to one another. This, however, is an ambivalent or rivalrous kinship, a tenuous convergence that soon breaks opens once again into clearer disagreement in Agamben's subsequent Homo Sacer series of books (1995-).
Conor McCarthy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474455930
- eISBN:
- 9781474480628
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474455930.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
While exclusion from law is often assumed to be an historical phenomenon, the discussion here argues that it is an enduring and important tactic of state power. Such exclusion can occur in two ...
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While exclusion from law is often assumed to be an historical phenomenon, the discussion here argues that it is an enduring and important tactic of state power. Such exclusion can occur in two directions – exclusion above the law (as where the state licenses itself or its agents to act with impunity) or exclusion below the law (as where the state excludes an individual or group from the law's protection). This book concerns itself with both, and in doing so, offers readings from two bodies of literature in English not normally read in tandem – the literature of outlawry, and the literature of espionage. This Introduction briefly surveys some influential previous work in this area – in particular Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of the ‘social bandit’ and Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the homo sacer and his related study of the ‘state of exception’ – and sets out the argument to follow.Less
While exclusion from law is often assumed to be an historical phenomenon, the discussion here argues that it is an enduring and important tactic of state power. Such exclusion can occur in two directions – exclusion above the law (as where the state licenses itself or its agents to act with impunity) or exclusion below the law (as where the state excludes an individual or group from the law's protection). This book concerns itself with both, and in doing so, offers readings from two bodies of literature in English not normally read in tandem – the literature of outlawry, and the literature of espionage. This Introduction briefly surveys some influential previous work in this area – in particular Eric Hobsbawm’s notion of the ‘social bandit’ and Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the homo sacer and his related study of the ‘state of exception’ – and sets out the argument to follow.
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.
Lexi Eikelboom
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198828839
- eISBN:
- 9780191867156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198828839.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter examines an alternative approach to rhythm within continental philosophy, represented by Giorgio Agamben and Julia Kristeva. These thinkers are interested in the role of rhythm in the ...
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This chapter examines an alternative approach to rhythm within continental philosophy, represented by Giorgio Agamben and Julia Kristeva. These thinkers are interested in the role of rhythm in the creation of a non-traditional subjectivity, rather than in reality as a whole. As a result, they view rhythm from within, in relation to the socially-constructed systems that govern everyday life. These concerns enable a more diachronic perspective on rhythm as a feature of human experience, and, moreover, as an interruptive feature to be leveraged in challenging human conceptions and structures. As in the previous chapter, the current chapter then turns to consider both critical theological responses by adherents to Radical Orthodoxy and similarities between Agamben and Kristeva and theologians Erich Przywara and Jean-Luc Marion. These resonances demonstrate the theological significance of Agamben’s approach, in particular, as the openness to interruptive encounter required for creatureliness.Less
This chapter examines an alternative approach to rhythm within continental philosophy, represented by Giorgio Agamben and Julia Kristeva. These thinkers are interested in the role of rhythm in the creation of a non-traditional subjectivity, rather than in reality as a whole. As a result, they view rhythm from within, in relation to the socially-constructed systems that govern everyday life. These concerns enable a more diachronic perspective on rhythm as a feature of human experience, and, moreover, as an interruptive feature to be leveraged in challenging human conceptions and structures. As in the previous chapter, the current chapter then turns to consider both critical theological responses by adherents to Radical Orthodoxy and similarities between Agamben and Kristeva and theologians Erich Przywara and Jean-Luc Marion. These resonances demonstrate the theological significance of Agamben’s approach, in particular, as the openness to interruptive encounter required for creatureliness.
Kevin Attell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823262045
- eISBN:
- 9780823266319
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823262045.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
Chapter Four examines of the relation between Agamben's major political and ethical concepts and the ethico-political turn deconstruction took in roughly the same years. Foremost among these concepts ...
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Chapter Four examines of the relation between Agamben's major political and ethical concepts and the ethico-political turn deconstruction took in roughly the same years. Foremost among these concepts are sovereignty and bare life, the twinned figures in what Agamben was among the first to concertedly investigate under the term “biopolitics.” Agamben (drawing primarily on Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin) identifies the core of sovereignty and the foundation of the law as the power to decide on the “exception,” the logic of which he elaborates as a nebulous and paradoxical inclusive-exclusion or “ban-structure” that establishes the law's power over life precisely by virtue of its self-suspension. This chapter places his theory in relation to Derrida's roughly contemporaneous readings of sovereignty, law, and violence in the thought of Schmitt and Benjamin.Less
Chapter Four examines of the relation between Agamben's major political and ethical concepts and the ethico-political turn deconstruction took in roughly the same years. Foremost among these concepts are sovereignty and bare life, the twinned figures in what Agamben was among the first to concertedly investigate under the term “biopolitics.” Agamben (drawing primarily on Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin) identifies the core of sovereignty and the foundation of the law as the power to decide on the “exception,” the logic of which he elaborates as a nebulous and paradoxical inclusive-exclusion or “ban-structure” that establishes the law's power over life precisely by virtue of its self-suspension. This chapter places his theory in relation to Derrida's roughly contemporaneous readings of sovereignty, law, and violence in the thought of Schmitt and Benjamin.
