Giorgio Agamben

Sovereignty and Life

Matthew Calarco, Steven DeCaroli, Matthew Calarco, Steven DeCaroli

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780804750509
  9780804750493
• eBook ISBN:
  9781503624948
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Giorgio Agamben has come to be recognized in recent years as one of the most provocative and imaginative thinkers in contemporary philosophy and political theory. The essays gathered together in this volume shed light on his extensive body of writings and assess the significance of his work for debates across a wide range of fields, including philosophy, political theory, Jewish studies, and animal studies. The authors discuss material extending across the entire range of Agamben's writings, including such early works as Language and Death and more recent and widely acknowledged works such as Homo Sacer. Readers will find useful discussions of key concepts and theories in Agamben's work, such as sovereignty and bare life, along with more critical analyses of the political stakes and consequences of his theoretical and political interventions.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Contributors
• The Work of Man
• Bare Life or Social Indeterminacy
• The Complexities of Sovereignty
• Boundary Stones
• Whatever Politics
• From Sovereign Ban to Banning Sovereignty
• Giorgio Agamben: The Discreet Taste of the Dialectic
• Approaching Limit Events
• Jamming the Anthropological Machine
• Biopolitics, Liberal Eugenics, and Nihilism
• Agamben and Foucault on Biopower and Biopolitics
• The Ontology and Politics of Exception
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Index