Cutting off Mediation. Agamben as Master Thinker

Abstract

Agamben’s Homo Sacer turns centrally upon “bare life”. However, the following subjects are not thematized: natality, gender, sexuality, the relation of the sexes, the heterosexual character of the symbolic order and political culture, the interest of women in the reproduction of life. The entire question of sexual difference —like that of the difference between victim and perpetrator, between witnesses and those born afterwards— is banned from Agamben’s horizon. Thus a deep unease remains, which this paper is intended to explore. It will first present the methodological and theoretical inspirations, which Homo Sacer owes to the thought of Carl Schmitt. Secondly it will show that Schmitt’s concepts of nomos and the state of exception cannot provide a suitable basis for rewriting Foucault’s concept of biopolitics.