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Giorgio Agamben

b. 1942

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Modern power rests on the ability to declare emergencies and reduce people to bare life that can be excluded or killed without consequence.

Placement

Structuralism & Poststructuralism · Southern Europe · Politics & Law, Society & History

Homo sacer: “bare life” and the state of exception as the paradigm of modern power.

Key ideas

  • Homo sacer
  • State of exception
  • Bare life

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Influence

Influenced by 8

  • Aristotle

    influenced by

    Agamben took from Aristotle the potentiality not to be (adynamia; ‘Bartleby, o della contingenza’, 1993) and the contrast of life and good life opening Homo Sacer (1995). G. Agamben, “Bartleby, o della contingenza”, in G. Deleuze and G. Agamben, Bartleby. La formula della creazione (1993); Homo sacer (1995); Aristotle, Metaphysics; Politics; SEP “Aristotle”

    Evidence: AI draft

    Aristotle › 384–322 BCE

  • Carl Schmitt

    influenced by

    Agamben made Schmitt’s definition of the sovereign as he who decides on the exception the starting point of Homo Sacer’s first part (1995) and State of Exception (2003). G. Agamben, Homo sacer (1995); Stato di eccezione (2003); C. Schmitt, Politische Theologie (1922); SEP “Carl Schmitt”

    Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO

    Carl Schmitt › 1888–1985

  • Martin Heidegger

    influenced by

    Agamben, who attended Heidegger’s Le Thor seminars (1966 and 1968), took up his lectures on the animal’s poverty in world and the open in L’aperto (2002). G. Agamben, Il linguaggio e la morte (1982); L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale (2002); M. Heidegger, Vier Seminare (Le Thor 1966–69; publ. 1977)

    Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO

    Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976

  • Walter Benjamin

    influenced by ✓

    Agamben took Benjamin’s thesis that the state of emergency has become the rule (1940) and his ‘Critique of Violence’ (1921) as starting points of State of Exception (2003). G. Agamben, Stato di eccezione (2003); W. Benjamin, “Zur Kritik der Gewalt” (1921); “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” (1940); SEP “Walter Benjamin”

    Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO

    Walter Benjamin › 1892–1940

  • Hannah Arendt

    influenced by ✓

    Agamben drew on Arendt’s analysis of the camps and stateless refugees stripped of rights (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951) for his figure of bare life (Homo Sacer, 1995). G. Agamben, Homo sacer (1995); Mezzi senza fine (1996); H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951); SEP “Hannah Arendt”

    Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO

    Hannah Arendt › 1906–1975

  • Michel Foucault

    influenced by ✓

    Agamben took up Foucault’s biopolitics (1976) but argued that bare life’s inclusion in politics is the original core of sovereignty, not a modern novelty (Homo Sacer, 1995). G. Agamben, Homo sacer (1995); Che cos’è un dispositivo? (2006); M. Foucault, La volonté de savoir (1976); SEP “Michel Foucault”

    Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO

    Michel Foucault › 1926–1984

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  • Jakob von Uexküll

    influenced by

    In L’aperto (2002) Agamben used Uexküll’s tick, whose world consists of three carriers of meaning, to ask how the human is separated from the animal. G. Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale (2002); J. von Uexküll, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (1934)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Jakob von Uexküll › 1864–1944

  • Aby Warburg

    influenced by

    In ‘Aby Warburg e la scienza senza nome’ (1975) Agamben presented Warburg’s pathos formulas and the Mnemosyne atlas as a science of images still without a name. G. Agamben, “Aby Warburg e la scienza senza nome” (1975; rev. 1984), in La potenza del pensiero (2005)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Aby Warburg › 1866–1929

Influenced 1

  • Achille Mbembe

    influenced

    Mbembe drew on Agamben’s state of exception and the camp as paradigm of sovereignty in describing colonial and occupied zones as spaces of necropower (‘Necropolitics’, 2003). A. Mbembe, “Necropolitics”, Public Culture 15 (2003); Politiques de l’inimitié (2016); G. Agamben, Homo sacer (1995)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Achille Mbembe › b. 1957

Works

  • 1995Homo Sacer

    Sovereign power and bare life – the camp as paradigm.

Position

Agamben takes up Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and Carl Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty. In Roman law the homo sacer was a man who could be killed with impunity but not sacrificed – a figure of “bare life,” excluded from the legal order and yet captured by it. For Agamben, this inclusion through exclusion is the hidden foundation of Western sovereign power. Its paradigm in modernity is the camp, in which the state of exception becomes permanent and people are reduced to bare life. In State of Exception he showed how emergency measures increasingly become a normal technique of government. His theses provoked sharp debate, not least when he applied them to pandemic measures in 2020.

Life & context

Agamben was born in Rome in 1942, studied law and wrote his thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil. In the late 1960s he took part in Heidegger’s seminars in Le Thor in Provence. He edited the Italian edition of Walter Benjamin’s works and taught in Macerata, Verona, Venice and elsewhere. His multi-volume Homo Sacer project occupied him for two decades.

Further main works

  • Stanzas (1977)
  • Remnants of Auschwitz (1998)
  • The Open (2002)
  • State of Exception (2003)

Appears in

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

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