Agamben, Giorgio (1942– ) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...Benjamin’s work): The Open ( 2004 ), The Kingdom and the Glory ( 2011 ), and The Highest Poverty ( 2013 ). Further Reading: K. Attell Giorgio Agamben: Beyond the Threshold of Deconstruction (2014). L. De la Durantaye Giorgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction (2009). C. Mills The Philosophy of Agamben (2008). http://www.iep.utm.edu/agamben/ A comprehensive overview of Giorgio Agamben’s work, with references and further...
Agamben, Giorgio (1942– ) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature
..., Giorgio ( 1942– ). Philosopher who has published important studies on aesthetics. He graduated at Rome University with a thesis on Simone Weil and currently teaches at Verona. Deeply influenced by Walter Benjamin , his thought combines political commitment, theoretical synthesis, and critical attention to specific cultural phenomena, together with a pessimistic interpretation of modernity. He attempts to go beyond idealism and to redraw the relationship between universality and singularity, assigning a central role to the renovatory potential of...
Agamben, Giorgio (1942) Reference library
Julia Ng
Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2 ed.)
...in Western Culture (1977). Translated by Ronald L. Martinez . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Other Sources Geulen, Eva . Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung . Revised and expanded edition. Hamburg, Germany: Junius Verlag, 2009. La Durantaye, Leland de . Giorgio Agamben: A Critical Introduction . Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009. Mills, Catherine . The Philosophy of Agamben . Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. Julia...
Giorgio Agamben’s Political Theory Reference library
Oliver W. Lembcke
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Communication and Critical Cultural Studies
...on Giorgio Agamben’s homo sacer (pp. 198–221). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nancy, J.-L. (1993). Abandoned being. In J.-L. Nancy (Ed.), The birth to presence (pp. 36–47). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Norris, A. (2005). Introduction: Giorgio Agamben and the politics of the living dead. In A. Norris (Ed.), Politics, metaphysics, and death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s homo sacer (pp. 1–30). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Norris, M. A. (2018). Existential choice as repressed theism: Jean-Paul Sartre and Giorgio Agamben in...
Aut-Aut Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature
...( 1951– ). Philosophical and cultural review founded by Enzo Paci in Milan , currently published every two months and edited by Pier Aldo Rovatti . Noted for the high quality of its writing, it has published contributions from Giorgio Agamben , Gianni Vattimo , and others, and is a significant reference point for the most recent developments in contemporary thought. [ Michael Caesar...
bare life Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...life ( nuda vita ) Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben ’s concept for life that has been exposed to what he terms the structure of exception that constitutes contemporary biopower . The term originates in Agamben’s observation that the Ancient Greeks had two different words for what in contemporary European languages is simply referred to as ‘life’: bios (the form or manner in which life is lived) and zōē (the biological fact of life). His argument is that the loss of this distinction obscures the fact that in a political context, the word ‘life’...
homo sacer Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...man’, this classical concept has attracted significant attention in contemporary critical theory because Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has devoted several books to exploring the intricacies of its multi-layered meaning. Homo sacer is a paradoxical figure: it is the one who may not be sacrificed, yet may be murdered with impunity. In this sense, the homo sacer is outside or beyond both divine and human law. Agamben’s provocative thesis is that the homo sacer is evidence not merely of an original ambivalence in the notion of the sacred, as...
homo sacer Quick reference
A Dictionary of Human Geography
...outside the law, whose life is deemed of no value and who may therefore be killed with impunity. Meaning ‘sacred man’ in Latin, the term originally referred to certain categories of person under Roman law. In recent years it has been elaborated by Italian political theorist Giorgio Agamben to explore the ways in which sovereign power relegates some persons to states of ‘bare life’, i.e. exposed to violence. Geographers interested in prisons, immigrant detention centres, and sites of extreme state violence have used and reflected on this concept ( see ...
ANIMAL Reference library
Natalie Depraz
Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon
...In Agamben’s hands, bare life is linked both to an ideal conception—one where individual lives are not weighed, measured, judged, or valued against their fulfillment of certain criteria (being red, Communist, Italian, etc.)—and to a potentially dangerous one, as in instances where individuals and groups are stripped of all rights associated with such belonging and reduced to a mere nude or bare life, subjected to unqualified suffering. Leland De la Durantaye Bibliography Agamben, Giorgio . “Bartleby o Della contingenza.” In Giorgio Agamben and Gilles...
citizen Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...the land, and to perform such duties as are asked; failure to do so can result in citizenship being withdrawn. This obligation is usually thought of as mutual in that by virtue of your being a citizen the state is required to treat you in a certain way, but as the work of Giorgio Agamben , among others, has shown, the state retains the right to make exceptions, and thereby negate the very rights it is supposed to guarantee. Further Reading: R. Bellamy Citizenship: A Very Short Introduction ...
TO BE Reference library
Daniel Heller-Roazen
Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon
...impotentiality. Actuality shows itself as an impotentiality turned back upon itself: a potentiality capable of not not being and, in this way, of passing into the act. Daniel Heller-Roazen Bibliography Giorgio Agamben . Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life . Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Giorgio Agamben . Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy . Edited and translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Heidegger, Martin . Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta, 1-3: On...
Arendt, Hannah (1906–75) Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...she had in mind those people, like the Jews in Germany, who have had their citizenship revoked by the state; but also those displaced persons who find they cannot return to their state because it has been destroyed or somehow rendered closed to them. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has developed this aspect of Arendt’s work in his analyses of what he calls the homo sacer . Probably her most influential work, The Human Condition ( 1958 ) pursued the problems raised in the previous work by examining political action, specifically the establishment of...
value Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...come into conflict over issues like the right to life of the unborn foetus versus the right to decide of the mother, or equally problematically the right to die of terminally ill patients versus the medical profession’s commitment to life. As both Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben have pointed out, however, placing a value on life in this way has given rise to a new form of governmentality that they both describe as biopower . In economics, it is Karl Marx , above all others, who has devoted the most effort to thinking through what value means....
biopower Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...cared about how people live and die, but not who lives and dies. For the first time in history, Foucault argues, biological existence was reflected in political existence, and in consequence the very existence of the species itself was wagered on political questions. Giorgio Agamben ’s theory of bare life originates in this thesis as does Hardt and Negri ’s concepts of Empire and multitude . Further Reading: H. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (1983). M. Foucault La Volonté de savoir (1976), translated...
film archaeology Quick reference
A Dictionary of Film Studies (2 ed.)
...and historical work in order to unearth the complex genealogies of a range of media forms, including the cinema. Further reading: Elsaesser, Thomas ‘The New Film History as Media Archaeology’, Printemps , 14 (2–3), 75–117 (2004). Harbord, Janet Ex-Centric Cinema: Giorgio Agamben and Film Archaeology (2016). Parikka, Jussi What is Media Archaeology? (2012). https://loriemerson.net/2016/06/25/as-if-or-using-media-archaeology-to-reimagine-past-present-and-future/ Lori Emerson reflects on her work at the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado...
Biopolitics and Asian America Reference library
Belinda Kong
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture
...notoriously unstraightforward. 2 When critics invoke Foucauldian biopolitics, they may be referring to any of several models, from his notion of panoptic disciplinary power 3 to his later outlining of population control and liberal governmentality. 4 Alongside Foucault, Giorgio Agamben has played an equally influential role in shaping critical discussions of biopolitics, especially via his formulations of the state of exception, sovereign power, and bare life or homo sacer . 5 Since 2000 , a host of other figures have emerged or been reclaimed as key...
Dispositif Reference library
Ricky Crano
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory
... Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 12. 90. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 13. 91. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 12. 92. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 11, 20. 93. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 14. 94. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 14. 95. Cf. Tom Frost, “The Dispositif between Foucault and Agamben,” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2015): 1–21. 96. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 15. 97. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 22. 98. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 22. 99. Agamben, “What Is an Apparatus?,” 23. 100. Agamben,...
Educational Biopolitics Reference library
Gregory Bourassa
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Education
...of forms of death not only precede but also yield the relational conditions for the production of life. This is best captured in Giorgio Agamben’s ( 1998 ) portrait of homo sacer , the “impure” figure who, relegated to bare life , must not be sacrificed. In managing or governing homo sacer , while the figure is not to be put to death, anyone who does so can kill with impunity. Importantly, for Agamben, it is this production of bare life that is the foundational activity of sovereignty and biopower, for it creates a sovereign sphere in which...
imagined community Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...exercise of abstract thought. The imagined community is limited because regardless of size it is never taken to be co-extensive with humanity itself—not even extreme ideologies such as Nazism, with its pretensions to world dominance, imagine this; in fact, as Giorgio Agamben has argued, such ideologies tend to be premised on a generalization of an exception. Its borders are finite but elastic and permeable. The imagined community is sovereign because its legitimacy is not derived from divinity as kingship is—the nation is its own authority, it...
precarity Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
...e.g. refugees. Precarity in this sense is a condition of maximum vulnerability for which there is no obvious source of relief. The statelessness of refugees means that no state is obliged to come to their aid and give them shelter; they are therefore ‘let to die’ as Giorgio Agamben has put it. Butler’s project consists in asking how the perception of precarity can be used to ground an ethics of life. Her answer to this question is rather uncertain because, while she thinks the recognition of precarity imposes upon us an obligation to act to ameliorate...
