Talk:Giorgio Agamben

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Apologies & other notes[edit]

Apologies to whoever wrote the original article. . .I tried to edit without changing too much of the original article. I gave a summary of his comments on Aristotle, which I think are essential, but didn't go into the distinction between "zoe" and "bios". I might come back and add that in, though--I think that what I wrote still needs many additions and revisions, and if I don't get a chance to do it soon, I welcome the contributions of anyone who will. Also, I changed the last paragraph. . .I used to do Policy Debate, so I understand what the author was saying, but since most people are not acquainted with the jargon of that specific debate system, I tried to rephrase those comments in a way that would be understood by anyone interested in theory, not just people using theory for policy debate.Shakantala 17:52, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm considering deleting the section about his relevance in policy debate. I'll just seperate it as a section for now to get any opinions on this, but it seems trivial and too particular to the activity of debate. WoodenTaco 22:52, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey just to announce my intentions. Agamben's interest as a philosopher goes far beyond the most recent books, so I'm hoping to expand this page to take account of his many other contributions. In addition, "Homo Sacer" is only one volume of a larger project into which most of his work since The Coming Community falls and into which much of it has been explicitly inserted; I think the narrow focus of policy debaters on the usefulness of theory in their rounds has probably been responsible for neglecting this larger context and the ultimate stakes of the arguments. Mgasner 06:24, 23 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]


i'll be trying to expand this article in the next few weeks, have added The coming community, please comment/change. i've had a look at the foucault page as model... so will be adding a few things, any help will be greatly appreciated..Goodlucca 20:17, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

9/11 as a category[edit]

Brief note: I just reverted the subcategory again. I changed "September 11, 2001" to "9-11" in keeping with Agamben's critique of the Bush administration's instrumentalizing the events as a permanent condition. Mabuse 16:42, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Subsection title you mean? Actually, I prefer September 11, 2001, as "9/11" is commonly used in the States, but that's it. Other parts of the world refer to it as September 11 - furthermore, if you remember well, there is also another September 11 to mourn, somewhere near Santiago... I also think it is important to correct a bit the article, as Agamben certainly is critical to the US response, but it musn't mislead the reader into thinking that it is only an "anti-American POV". In other words, his political criticism must be better related to his philosophical struggle, and it should be noted that when Agamben start talking about a "state of exception", he traces it to the First World War, not to September 11. If we don't do that, the reader will not correctly understand his criticisms, which is extended to all "democracies", which all have made a more than fair use of rule by decree. Lapaz 12:38, 8 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Could it perhaps be an ironic linguistic parallel that the events of September 11, 2001, have been instrumentalised as the permenant condition (ie meaning) of the terms '9/11', even 'September 11'? I also dislike '9/11' as subsection title - to many outside the US this reads as 9th November. Kaele 11:32, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

you've got the name of Zartaloudis wrong, its thanos not thanoi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.192.189 (talk) 21:13, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

state of exception[edit]

Just a simple thing, really. "State of exception" probably should not link to "state of emergency" as they're 2 completely different things, just as the book state of exception tries to show. Im just goint to blank out the hyperlink for now.


//I think this section could use page references / citations :)) "The political power over others acquired through the state of exception, places one government — or one form or branch of government — as all powerful, operating outside of the laws. During such times of extension of power, certain forms of knowledge shall be privileged and accepted as true and certain voices shall be heard as valued, while of course, many others are not. This oppressive distinction holds great importance in relation to the production of knowledge. The process of both acquiring knowledge, and suppressing certain knowledge, is a violent act within a time of crisis." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.133.203.10 (talk) 04:22, 13 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No reason given for "POV disputed"[edit]

Why a POV tag has been added?--Sum (talk) 10:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I find those tags a bit hard on the eyes. If there is no reason it should be there, may it be removed? I have another query: why does the lead start off with (born 1942 in Rome)? I just looked at the articles about other philosophers, it shouldn't be that way. I will fix now. --TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 13:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

'Critiques of Agamben' POV tag[edit]

Looking at that section it is written as if it were an essay attempting to refute Agamben's views. Inadequate referencing and inferences extended from small quotes make the neutrality questionable, along with the use of phrases such as "it should be evident" (which would be condemned in any philosophy essay, let alone encyclopaedic synopsis). Can someone please attribute full, specific critiques to specific authors in-text and 'neutralise' the tone to fix this issue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.130.92 (talk) 13:14, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism of Agamben[edit]

Is it right that one section of the criticisms of Agamben come from someone's MA Thesis written only this year. While I havent read it, that is hardly substantial and weighted criticism. Has it been critically evaluated itself or was it put up by the student? Boils (talk) 16:52, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not putting an argument forth in favor or against the Master's thesis, but, to give my own take, find for Homo Sacer to be a brilliant and insightful text as an archaeology, as per The Archaeology of Knowledge, of Roman law, and critique of Carl Schmitt and the legal philosophy of the Third Reich, but overly reliant on a general gloominess in how it applies to a contemporary context, which, surely, given Agamben's former status as, quite literally, a fashionable philosopher, as, aside from certain circles within the far-left, he also became quite popular within the actual fashion industry, some academic or another has said at some point. Daydreamdays2 (talk) 21:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Hi, yes, I'm the author of the M.A. Thesis section. With respect to your comments, 3 points:

A) Authorship: Something could be written by Einstein and be wrong (unified field theorizations, for instance). Conversely, a child could write on the same topic and be correct. What I mean is that arguments made ad verecundium are not admissible. Things ought to be judged on merit, not authorship. Isn't that the whole point of Wikipedia, and the idea of democratizing knowledge?

B) Tone: Most pages like this have a "critiques" section. Is it possible to critique without being at least a little partisan? If the neutrality is truly problematic, by all means, revise.

C) Substance: To evaluate the validity of the "Critiques of Agamben" area, a person need only read 1) Homo Sacer 2) State of Exception and 3) Carl Schmitt's Political Theology. Two questions arise. The first is: What exactly is Carl Schmitt's Sovereign Exception? (That's where Agamben gets the title "State of Exception"). The second question is: Does Guantanamo Bay constitute such an exception? That's what Agamben is arguing, and scrutiny should be brought to bear on any such claim.

My most relevant concern here is, again, that both comments appear to take issue with the critiques on the basis of authorship, not substance. There was no Critiques section, so I decided to contribute.

Cheers! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keithdsherman (talk • contribs) 21:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't in fact read Carl Schmitt's Political Theology, but I am not sure that it is quite justified to hold Agamben hostage to Schmitt the way you seem to have done. I mean, of course, Agamben takes Schmitt as a point of departure, but it does not follow that all his claims need to be weighted in terms of Schmitt. It is difficult for me to provide a more substantial critique of your own position based on those three bullet points, but in general I am rather uneasy about the line of argument implying that people can only acquire rights by the will of sovereign and therefore 'Iraqi and Afghani prisoners never had any "rights" in the first place' - and thus there was nothing to violate. In fact it is precisely this Hobbesian view that Agamben is referring to with his critique of 'bare life'. --Nuwanda (talk) 01:00, 23 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have read (and written on) both Schmitt and Agamben. In my view, this entry suffers from underplaying Agamben's debt to Schmitt. Agamben does not simply take Schmitt as a point of departure, he proceeds from assumptions he holds in common with Schmitt. Both are resolutely Euro-christian and take sovereignty to be a kind of imitatio christi. Schmitt, to his credit, acknowledges another form of sovereignty (essentially popular sovereignty), though he rejects that for decisionism.
The status of rights under this form of sovereignty are uncertain at best (which of course holds for Arendt who thinks rights follow from law, and Weil, who has virtually no interest in rights at all, preferring obligations). The primary referent here however, is more likely to be the Holocaust than Guantanamo: Agamben's Muselmanner' are the Jews of the Nazi camps, not the Muslims of Guantanamo. 100.11.26.12 (talk) 19:38, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Apologies for the long delay in responding! To begin, I don't know what it means to hold Agamben "hostage" to Schmitt. Agamben draws on him. That's a fact. It's not that he has to agree with everything Schmitt says (he obviously doesn't) but if I, for instance, were to write a book called, "The General Will," taking JJ Rousseau as my starting point, I think precision in terms of definition would be very important. I had better not make casual statements, e.g. claiming that the outcome of a majoritarian democratic procedure was an instance of the General Will, simply b/c something was generally agreed upon in an ostensible democracy. As for your feeling uneasy about people only getting rights from a sovereign, I take it as meaning that you, personally, feel uncomfortable with the idea, viz. you don't like Hobbes. Am I right in assuming that? I likewise happen to believe that people have human rights, but these are rights in the metaphysical sense. Lastly, what do you mean by "it is precisely this Hobbesian view that Agamben is referring to with his critique of 'bare life'"? Hobbesian view? Sovereigns are Hobbesian in Agamben. And he doesn't critique bare life-- he explains it, condemns its production, and talks about the scary stuff that happens when Exceptions start ballooning. All I'm suggesting is that you don't need to run wild to generate that being called homo sacer. States create homo sacer all the time. By law. Please do me the courtesy of reading Carl Schmitt's "Political Theology" and probably "The Concept of the Political" before continuing this debate. I think we need to agree on what an Exception is, and who gets to make one, before we can talk about a book called "State of Exception." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keithdsherman (talk • contribs) 03:18, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Re your point (A) above, "critiques on the basis of authorship, not substance" are a fundamental principle of Wikipedia: the idea is that everything in Wikipedia should be [[1]], that is, supported by reliable sources. The idea is that Wikipedia has no mechanism for evaluating the substance of material, but we do have a method for evaluating the authorship - something published in an academic journal, for instance, will generally be an academically respectable position. An MA thesis is better than nothing, but it's not as good as a peer-reviewed source, such as a journal article or a book published by an academic press; the section would be better if it summarized criticisms of Agamben made by such sources.VoluntarySlave (talk) 06:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The other critical Schmitt text here is Roman Catholicism and Political Form. 100.11.26.12 (talk) 19:40, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In view of the above comments, I am removing the "Critiques of Agamben" section which I've created. Perhaps I'll re-post when the work becomes "respectable," as Mr. "voluntary slave" puts it. In the meantime, there will be no criticisms whatsoever on this page, so hopefully someone will post something after I take mine down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keithdsherman (talk • contribs) 05:07, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Is Agamben an "autonomist philosopher"? Is he associated with "autonomism" in Italy?[edit]

Need some feedback regarding a change made on December 7, 2010 by a contributor ( Woland1234 ) who change the lead sentence of this article. Before Dec 7, 2010, the opening sentence states that Agamben is an "autonomist philosopher". It now reads that Agamben is a "political philosopher". Is this a good change? I added a footnote to the article just now. I mention that an earlier version of the wikipedia page indicates that he is an "autonomist philosopher" or was associated with this group. But I am not sure. Christian Roess (talk) 05:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Looking at the editing history of 'Woland1234,' it seems safe to assume that the edit he made here was not a thoroughly considered one. Undo it if in doubt. The Sound and the Fury (talk) 20:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agamben was never an autonomist as far as I am aware. He had not developed a strident political position prior to the elimination of the Autonomia movements during '78 by the Italian state. He was published with a number of autonomists in "Radical Thought in Italy" in 1996, but this represents an early move toward his more political works, rather than as a representation of his work in Italy to date. He is also critical of a number of the primary thinkers of what is now effectively post-auonomism, for instance, crits of Negri in Homo Sacer and The Kingdom and the Glory. 128.250.5.245 (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agamben has currently been publishing articles in Ill Will and was formerly somehow associated with Tiqqun, or, at least, highly influential to them. Ill Will is more or less an insurrectionary anarchist magazine and Tiqqun, at least, were communization theorists. Communization theorists, insurrectionary anarchists, and autonomists all kind of run in similar circles, but are distinct from one another. My guess would be that Agamben is sympathetic towards that milieux without, per se, ascribing to it. In the wayback, everyone from Endnotes to Yale Law students was willing to invoke his idea of "forms of life", in my opinion, without really having any conception as to what they particularly were, and, so, since any political designation is bound to be contingent upon that, until someone becomes capable of explaining just what a form of life is in a relatively clear and concise manner, this is just bound to be within a certain zone of indiscernibility. Daydreamdays2 (talk) 20:40, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Style[edit]

Although not quite fitting for an encyclopedia, this is a delightful stylistic morsel: "filled with design, white space and random dots". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.230.124.140 (talk) 10:04, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Also, "sacred" does not quite solve the semantic problem of using the English word which means something almost entirely different from the Latin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.230.124.140 (talk) 10:06, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to with "sacred", but in regards to the sacer of homo sacer, even though the term designates someone who exists outside of the law, there's kind of this complex etymology that he gives in Homo Sacer wherein, though abandoned by law, most specifically in re the suspension of their right to life, homo sacer are still "sacred" in the sense that they live at the mercy of the gods. Daydreamdays2 (talk) 20:50, 8 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

bare life and zoe[edit]

Agamben writes in Homo Sacer: "Not simple natural life, but life exposed to death (bare life or sacred life) is the originary political element" (55). This seems to contradict the explanation in this article that bare life is the same thing as zoe. He says that bare life is not simple natural life--i.e., not zoe--but life exposed to death. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Doughboy1234 (talk • contribs) 23:11, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion[edit]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:37, 5 September 2018 (UTC) Why was this deleted? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.116.53.39 (talk) 15:17, 20 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Work section too long[edit]

The section on Agamben's Work is too long. It appears to result from summaries of individual books (rather than secondary sources). We cannot summarize all of Agamben's work in this way, it needs to be written in a style consistent with encyclopedic overview. The subsections on 9/11 and Covid are the right length but what comes prior needs to be condensed, removed, or rewritten using secondary sources. I will make some of these changes myself over time unless others object here. RDavid27 (talk) 17:52, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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