Agamben's Work Research Articles

Elementos da Biopolítica Agambeniana na prática dos Direitos Humanos

We highlight in this article the difficulty of critical reflection on Agambenian thought with reference to what the author himself used as a paradigmatic object of exemplification, concretization and conclusion of his concepts that have been constructed for a long time and that had not yet been framed in an expressive practical expression. and contemporary in meaning. Thus, our objective here is to offer an element that integrates, from the perspective of Human Rights, the discussion about the relevance and mainly the materialization of Agabemnian thought. In this way, we carry out a bibliographical review of the works of Giogio Agamben, highlighting his main concepts and we seek to establish, in light of the arguments of José Augusto Lindgren Alves, in his article The opposite of human rights (explaining Zizek) (2002), the possibility of understanding the materialization of the internal contradiction of the Human Rights mechanism. In this way, it is justified by the need to demystify that Agamben's work is difficult to interpret and, mainly, that it does not allow for the practical significance of its own precepts and to demonstrate that, if such a scenario occurs, it is due to the so-called readings hasty and lazy people who seek at all costs this conceptual materialization in what is incompatible with these biopolitical concepts themselves. The result is the correspondence between the practical verifications of José Augusto Lindgren Alves and the theoretical framework of Giorgio Agamben, from the perspective of the opposite of the precepts of Human Rights, precisely in the name – and in the systematics, or in the system – of these same rights, mainly the level of International Human Rights Law, as well as perspectives at the domestic state level.

Vile Sovereignty: The carnival of power

In this paper we seek to extend Bakhtin’s reading of the folk carnival and apply it to help understand the carnivalesque, performative aspects of state power. Drawing on the work of Agamben, Foucault, Lacan and Žižek and recent scholarship on the role of laughter in the Stalinist totalitarian culture, we argue that the state can also laugh and that it has its own carnival tradition as well. To explore what we propose to call the carnival of power, we examine three iterations of this tradition: the festive exercise of state violence, state carnivalisers, and the carnivalesque style in governance.

Magic, Idleness and Comedy: Late Agamben’s Marxist Reaction to Neoliberal Political Theology

ABSTRACT This article deals with Giorgio Agamben's late work, arguing that Agamben’s trans secular critique of capitalist political theology is incepted from the historical conditions of late neoliberalism – with its focus on the personal “self” as its anchor. It suggests that to understand Agamben’s trans secular reaction to late neoliberalism we need historicized his thought. As historicized, it can reveal the dialectical limits of neoliberalism. To do so, the article reads late Agamben texts next to contemporary Marxist thinkers Alenka Zupančič and her theory of comedy, Todd McGowan and his analysis of Capitalism and desire and Sianne Ngai and her conceptualization of zaniness as the aesthetic representation of neoliberal precariousness. Moving on, the article focuses on Agamben’s late book Pulcinella. It argues that the book not only expresses the limits of neoliberalism but also uncovers hope and promises for comic theological renewal beyond neoliberalism and its cult of the self.

The Figure of the Slave as an Ethical Paradigm in the Work of Agamben

The Figure of the Slave as an Ethical Paradigm in the Work of Agamben

Engaging Agamben on the Time that Remains

Giorgio Agamben's work at the intersection of political theology, biblical exegesis, and culture criticism is taken up appreciatively. In an argument framed by Paul's Damascus Road experience, key texts such as 1 Corinthians 7 and Romans 9–11 are explored with Agamben, new proposals being made, to set the stage for a discussion of 2 Thessalonians 2. Successful treatment of this last text, and of the dialectic of law and lawlessness as it appears there, requires more attention to context than Agamben affords. That includes the Thessalonian correspondence as a whole, the teaching of Jesus, and the book of Daniel that underlies both. It also includes an appreciation of the narrative and liturgical framing of Pauline eschatology. While Agamben is questioned on this score, and his reading of 2 Thessalonians 2 challenged, common cause is made in critique of church/state alliances around pandemic policy, alliances based on a lawless use of law.

Revisiting the policy implications of COVID‐19, asylum seekers, and migrants on the Mexico–U.S. border: Creating (and maintaining) states of exception in the Trump and Biden administrations

AbstractPublic policy choices continue to bring dramatic changes to migration practices in the era of the coronavirus in the United States. In this article, we argue that the COVID‐19 pandemic facilitated the creation and maintenance of states of exception while continuing to destabilize practices at the Mexico–U.S. border through the politics of fear. Specifically, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), Zero Tolerance Policy (ZTP), COVID‐19 CAPIO, Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA), and Title 42 used an arcane section of U.S. law to immediately expel asylum seekers and refugees. We show that these policies highlight the formation and maintenance of states of exception consistent with the work of Agamben. We further discuss how the politics of fear can reinforce hegemonic narratives targeting asylum seekers while shaping political agendas that lean toward a specific brand of nationalism using public health as a context. The U.S. government under the Trump administration—and the Biden administration to a lesser, yet continuous, extent—constructed these policies aimed primarily at refugees and asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico thereby violating laws and international treaty obligations.Related ArticlesDuman, Yoav H. 2014. “Reducing the Fog? Immigrant Regularization and the State.” Politics & Policy 42(2): 187–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12065.Garrett, Terence Michael. 2020. “The Security Apparatus, Federal Magistrate Courts, and Detention Centers as Simulacra: The Effects of Trump's Zero Tolerance Policy on Migrants and Refugees in the Rio Grande Valley.” Politics & Policy 48(2): 372–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12348.Maggio, James. 2007. “The Presidential Rhetoric of Terror: The (Re)Creation of Reality Immediately after 9/11.” Politics & Policy 35(4): 819–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2007.00085.x.

People vs. peoples: sacrifice and the foundations for sovereignty in 1640’s England and contemporary northeast Syria

ABSTRACT Engaging with state-centric perspectives on sovereignty, and particularly Giorgio Agamben's work, this article argues that despite sovereignty's permanence at the level of the state, the principles upon which it is built can change dramatically. Further, such change may in turn greatly transform the reach and power of the state itself. Using the trial of King Charles in 1649 as a case for of how divine right was replaced by embryonic popular sovereignty through an act of sacrifice, the article contends that several new revolutionary movements are now in turn aiming to overturn popular sovereignty in a similar way. Drawing on secondary material and fieldwork contextualization, the article contends that the Kurdish movement in Syria is currently struggling to disaggregate the state's people into a host of peoples, whose opportunities for political participation depend upon conforming to an ideologically construed vision of human nature. This, the article suggests, may set the frame for revolutionary resistance in the future.

The Remnants of Giorgio Agamben: The Omnibus Homo Sacer upon Its Completion.

This essay reviews Giorgio Agamben's Omnibus Homo Sacer, a monumental project of nine books that was recently completed after two decades. Alongside outlining the project's key claims, the essay reflects on its uneven reception: it seeks to explain why Agamben's claims on politics, law, and violence received enormous attention, while his writings on economics and religion were largely ignored. The essay in particular discusses the values and limits of Agamben's work for historians.

:Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism and Liberalism

:<i>Infectious Liberty: Biopolitics between Romanticism and Liberalism</i>

Giorgio Agamben's political formalism

ABSTRACT This article takes as its point of departure Agamben's comments about how sovereign nation-states responded to the pandemic – by requiring people to wear masks, socially distance, work from home and live under lockdown. Agamben has characterized such measures as ‘fascist’ and has been criticized for that characterization. Against the inflationary critical value of Agamben's ‘camp’ as a paradigm to judge the political form of ‘sovereignty’, this article considers the notion of form in Agamben's work through the lens of how it has recently been revitalized in literary studies in the work of Caroline Levine and Anna Kornbluh. The article does so to distinguish between the state's response to the pandemic (on the one hand) and fascism (on the other), and to think the state's response to the pandemic as a sovereign practice of care. While the article does not dispute that some of the techniques and technologies of such a practice may resemble those of a sovereign practice of control that might, in another historical context, be the techniques and technologies of fascism, it argues that in order to effectively resist fascism one must recognize the plurality of sovereignty's forms and pursue its critique rather than its wholesale rejection.

COVID-19, asylum seekers, and migrants on the Mexico-U.S. border: Creating states of exception.

The COVID‐19 pandemic illuminates possibilities for creating states of exception while simultaneously destabilizing the Mexico–U.S. border through the politics of fear. Specifically, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), Zero Tolerance Policy (ZTP), COVID‐19 CAPIO, Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACA), and Title 42—using the pandemic under an arcane section of U.S. law to immediately expel asylum seekers and refugees, in particular—highlight the formation of a state of exception consistent with the work of Agamben. They also document how the politics of fear is used to reinforce hegemonic narratives targeting asylum seekers while attempting to reinforce political agendas that lean toward a specific brand of nationalism using the lens of public health as a context. The U.S. government under the Trump administration, and the Biden administration to a lesser extent, constructed these policies aimed primarily at refugees and asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, thereby violating laws and international treaty obligations.Related ArticlesCorrea‐Cabrera, Guadalupe. 2013. “Security, Migration, and the Economy in the Texas–Tamaulipas Border Region: The ‘Real’ Effects of Mexico's Drug War.” Politics & Policy 41(1): 65–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12005.Duman, Yoav H. 2014. “Reducing the Fog? Immigrant Regularization and the State.” Politics & Policy 42(2): 187–220. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12065.Garrett, Terence M. 2020. “The Security Apparatus, Federal Magistrate Courts, and Detention Centers as Simulacra: The Effects of Trump's Zero Tolerance Policy on Migrants and Refugees in the Rio Grande Valley.” Politics & Policy 48(2): 372–35. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12348.

Beyond Imperial Aesthetics: Theories of Art and Politics in East Asia

Beyond Imperial Aesthetics: Theories of Art and Politics in East Asia

Political Theology/Theopolitics: The Thresholds and Vulnerabilities of Sovereignty

Anthropological work on political theology has been informed by Agamben's work on the state of exception and, thus, by a Schmittian account of sovereignty as analogous to that of the God who bestows miracles. In this review, we read gestures to this analogy's limits in recent ethnographies of the state, vital force, and the Anthropocene as also pointing to the limits of anthropology's secularity and its embedding in the colonial enterprise. In so doing, we recover a potential opening to theistic force that anthropology has long fought to foreclose. We conclude by proposing a conceptual counter to political theology, grounded in negative theology as well as critical theories drawing on the force of the negative, which we call theopolitics. Theopolitics refers to a sovereignty from below characterized by vulnerability and openness to an ever-provisional messianic force that partakes in history, including the colonial history of anthropology itself.

Three great books about power. Actual analysis of concepts

In this article, three books related to power were analyzed: Kitami Masao’s “The Swordless Samurai”, Han Feitzu’s “The Book of Law and Order” and N. Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. The main judgments were highlighted and conclusions were drawn on how each author understands the power. Similar and opposite conclusions were compared. Also, the reasons for the fundamental differences between these ideas are identified. Analysis of differences on a religious basis was made using the modern Agamben's work “The Kingdom and the Glory” as it touches on the relationship between religion and power. The study used an integrated cultural-philosophical approach, in which descriptive method, comparative analysis, and synthesis can be separated from each other. As a result of this work, the following conclusions were obtained: the difference in the functions of power leads to different understanding of power; the religious environment surrounding a person largely influences his understanding of power. Based on this, different concepts of power should be compared to identify common significant positions that demonstrate the nature of power relations.

Formar o sujeito e formar o humano

O texto se propõe a discutir os conceitos de dispositivo, máquina e profanação na constituição do sujeito e da humanidade do vivente homem. Mapeamos estes conceitos no interior da obra de Agamben, ao mesmo tempo em que os balizamos no diálogo com Foucault, Heidegger e Jesi. Conclui-se que o humano é uma produção política dos dispositivos que, ao mesmo tempo que o produzem, também o governam. Palavras-chave: Dispositivo. Máquina. Profanação. Antropogênese. Agamben.

Reading Agamben from Algiers

Abstract This essay addresses the question of how colonial histories might be “written back” into genealogies of exception. Its central premise is that exception insinuates itself into and finally supplants the norm from margins (symbolic, racial, and cartographic) to centers, and so this path and its archival traces must be charted in this direction. In the first half of this essay, this question is directed through discussion of Giorgio Agamben's work on exception. The second half proposes colonial legal history, and more specifically the French-colonial period in Algeria, as terrain in which these questions could be fruitfully pursued. This discussion is primarily based on the example of the so-called Native Repressive Tribunals (1902–31), institutions of exception designed specifically for the swift trial and easy detention of Algerian Muslims. I argue that the creation of the TRIs is particularly emblematic of the racial logics through which exception is normalized and its lifespan extended in perpetuity.

Politics, Experience, and the Languages of Holiness

Abstract During the last half century, the category of holiness fell into disrepair although there are recent signs of its revitalization with the Pope’s apostolic exhortation on holiness, Gaudete et Exultate and attention being paid to the category in political philosophy (the work of Agamben and Esposito) and sociology (the work of Hans Joas). In this context, this article argues for the philosophical justification of linking holiness with prepredicative experience as it shows itself through hermeneutical phenomenology, grounded in bio-sociology, but which cannot be isolated from the particular languages of its articulation. Holiness comes into view through the languages of holiness, which in the broadest sense, include human act, and comportment toward world. This involves a discussion about holiness itself being located either in prepolitical experience or being inseparable from political and legal discourse. Of relevance here is also a philosophical discussion of holiness in relation to metaphysical realism.

Refuge and Refugees in Myanmar: A Theravada Buddhist Response

Abstract An exploration of human rights violations against the Rohingya population, led by a Buddhist extremist group and under the watch of democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, can shed light on the interplay of religion and Myanmar's state sovereignty as it emerges within a long history of British rule and domestic military dictatorship. This article suggests that the dynamic between religion and the burgeoning democracy in Myanmar can help explain why the romanticized narratives about wandering monks in Buddhist history and philosophy do not reflect the life of stateless people in Agamben's work.

On Black Study and Political Theology

On Black Study and Political Theology James Edward Ford III (bio) THE UNAPPROACHABLE THRESHOLD; OR, THE LONG DURéE OF IMPERIAL THOUGHT His fantasies, however unreadable they were for him, were inscribed in every one of his gestures, were betrayed in every inflection of his voice…. There was something unspoken between them, unspeakable, undone, and hideously desired…. It had yet to reach the threshold of his imagination; and it had no name, no name for him anyway, though for other people, so he had heard, it had dreadful names. — James Baldwin, Another Country Despite how ready-made black lives appear for the category of bare life, the more pressing issue is how political theology serves as an object for black study. Black study is a multidimensional phrase that, for this review essay's purposes, refers to a mass research and intellection that operates within but is irreducible to the university or its credentialing functions.1 The university cannot do with or do without this study. Such (in)hospitality provides unexpected ground for altering critical vocabularies, methodologies, and canons. Giorgio Agamben's step away from his impressive Homo Sacer project signals the need to inventory that project's evolution and consider paths not taken. This essay begins by critiquing received political theology, epitomized by Agamben's Homo Sacer project, carried on between 1995 and 2014, though its many nuances cannot be addressed here. Nevertheless, pressing against the project's habitual avoidances, with an epigraph from James Baldwin as a hermeneutic, brings attention to missed opportunities for intellectual exchange that might have strengthened this inquiry into sovereignty and forms of life. Most important, this essay's first section identifies a theoretical aporia troubling Agamben's Homo Sacer project and Western knowledge production in general. [End Page 187] The second portion of the essay reviews Alexander Weheliye's Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (2014), Ted Smith's Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics (2014), and David Roediger's Seizing Freedom (2014). These works are read at the intersection of political theology and black study in hopes of finding a way out of this aporia. Therefore, this essay assumes knowledge of Agamben's writings on the part of the reader. Many references, allusions, and provocations from black thought inhabit this essay as well. This essay welcomes their inhabitation, since black study "narrat[es] thinking as generating complexities and complications in their density rather than resolving difference in its translucence."2 The essay aims to provoke new intellectual possibilities, to stage new intellectual encounters, and to perform black study's rhizomatic character. When Agamben revisited Carl Schmitt's thesis that political concepts are secularized theological concepts, he revitalized research into political theology in the U.S. academy. Because no review essay could cover political theology's broad range, this essay restricts itself to the "sovereign" and "non-sovereign" strands of political theology closest to Agamben's work.3 Agamben critically appropriates insights from the sovereign strand influenced by Carl Schmitt. However, Agamben's research is inspired by Walter Benjamin's nonsovereign political theology, encapsulated in the eighth thesis from "Theses on the Philosophy of History": "The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that 'the state of emergency' [ausnahmezustand] in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain a conception of history that is commensurate with this insight…. It is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against fascism."4 Can Agamben claim to have taken Benjamin's eighth thesis seriously without addressing the vagaries of race, slavery, and colonialism in modernity? Marcelo Svirsky and Simone Bignall, the editors of Agamben and Colonialism (2012), would answer "no" to this question. Consequently, they assembled a collection of scholarship attending to the invisibility of colonialism in Agamben's analysis. Several scholars deem this invisibility stunning, since "at the beginning of the twentieth century Western colonies occupied some 85 per cent of the world's territory" and were organized through "legal patchwork[s] and ad hoc arrangements [End Page 188] of exceptions" composed of "foreign jurisdiction, extraterritorial jurisdiction, administrative decrees, partial...

Hourglass dawns: the becoming of time as space – a note on the work of Agamben, Nancy and Jameson

ABSTRACTThe question of time has troubled Continental philosophy since Immanuel Kant, through to Edmund Husserl and past his project of phenomenology expressed, and thus terminated, in the works of Heidegger and Derrida, who left traces of messianism, nihilism and apparitions of timeless time. The contemporary works of Jameson, Agamben and Nancy attempt to move past these understandings of time, specifically with regard to the problem of the global, or what it means for a world to be a global phenomenon in relation to the problem of time in its increasing homogeneity across the world. This paper provides a tracing of the dialectic of time and its transformations in its various conceptions throughout time itself, which includes a possible challenge for archaeology.