Search results for "Agamben"

Aristotle

2017

Dionysian biopolitics : Karl Kerényi's concept of indestructible life

2014

Scholar of religion Karl Kerényi’s last book, Dionysos, is a grand attempt at reinterpreting ζωη (zoe), the Greek concept of indestructible life, which he distinguishes from βίος (bios), finite life. In Kerényi’s view, the meaning and sensual experience of zoe was expressed in its richest form in the Cretan beginnings of the cult of Dionysos. The major characteristics of this cult, as Kerényi describes, were beyond the cultural, political, and sexual limits of the Christian interpretations of life and nature. Searching for modern analogies to zoe, Kerényi explains the idea in relation to molecular biology’s minimum definition of life. Despite the fact that Kerényi’s book contains only minor…

Introduction

2022

In the introduction to the volume, the editors explain the overarching aim of the volume and contextualize the main themes of its chapters. Even if the notions of biopolitics and biopower have played a crucial role in philosophy, the humanities, and the social sciences over the last decades, they have been used in various and at times diverging senses, which has also produced different narratives about the history of biopolitics. The main aim of the volume is to clarify whether and to what extent the concept of biopolitics is applicable to antiquity. To answer such questions, the chapters collected in the volume address three main topics, namely the possible presence of biopolitical discour…

Biopolitika Mišela Fuko un Džordžo Agambena skatījumā: kopīgas perspektīvas meklējumi

2017

Šajā darbā tiek apskatītas Mišela Fuko un Džordžo Agambena izpratnes par biopolitikas problemātiku, meklējot kopīgu perspektīvu šo abu autoru skatījumā par to, kas ir biopolitika un kādas ir tās varas attiecības un tehnikas, kas tiek realizētas biopolitikas kontekstā. Šīs kopīgās perspektīvas iezīmēšana balstās Džordžo Agambena un Mišela Fuko darbu interpretācijā, norādot uz līdzīgo, kas atklājas koncentrācijas nometnes, Panoptikona, populācijas pārvaldības un izņēmuma stāvokļa analīzē. Abu autoru biopolitikas koncepciju atklātie kopīgie aspekti ir aktuāli arī mūsdienu kontekstā, tādējādi norādot ne tikai uz vēsturiskā analīzes produktīvajiem aspektiem, bet arī paverot ceļu jaunām perspektī…

A Farewell to Homo Sacer? Sovereign Power and Bare Life in Agamben’s Coronavirus Commentary

2021

AbstractThe article addresses Giorgio Agamben’s critical commentary on the global governance of the Covid-19 pandemic as a paradigm of his political thought. While Agamben’s comments have been criticized as exaggerated and conspiratorial, they arise from the conceptual constellation that he has developed starting from the first volume of his Homo Sacer series. At the centre of this constellation is the relation between the concepts of sovereign power and bare life, whose articulation in the figure of homo sacer Agamben traces from the Antiquity to the present. We shall demonstrate that any such articulation is impossible due to the belonging of these concepts to different planes, respective…

Foucault and Agamben on Augustine, Paradise and the Politics of Human Nature

2023

This article focuses on Foucault’s and Agamben’s readings of Augustine’s account of human nature and original sin. Foucault’s analysis of Augustine’s account of sexual acts in paradise, subordinated to will and devoid of lust, highlights the way it constitutes the model for the married couple, whose sexual acts are only acceptable if diverted by the will away from desire and towards the tasks of procreation. While Agamben rejects Augustine’s doctrine of original sin and reclaims paradise as the original homeland of humanity, his reappropriation of paradise remains conditioned by our turn towards our true nature, from which we have been estranged by sin. Agamben’s politics of reclaiming par…

Metamorphoses of Shamed Bodies : Sexual Violence in Euripides’s Helen

2021

In this paper I explore the connections between shame and embodiment in Euripides’s play Helen. The paper focuses on the play’s underlying theme of sexual violence and rape, and on the descriptions of metamorphoses that the mythological female victims often undergo in the face of rape. In my analysis on shame and embodiment I apply two insights from Giorgio Agamben’s analysis of the phenomenon of victim shame in The Remnants of Auschwitz. These are, first, the definition according to which shame is “to be consigned to what cannot be assumed”—that is, to be consigned to one’s self, being and physical body—and second, the claim that in shame one is affected by one’s own (bodily) passivity. Bu…

The limits of subtractive politics: Agamben and Rousseau’s inheritance

2020

The article critically engages with Giorgio Agamben’s reading of Rousseau in order to explore the affinities between the two authors’ subtractive approach to political subjectivation. In The Kingdom and the Glory. Agamben argues that Rousseau’s Social Contract reproduces, in a secularized manner, the providential paradigm of government, whose origins Agamben finds in early Christianity. This paradigm establishes a fictitious articulation between transcendent sovereignty and immanent government, presenting particular acts of government as emanating from general divine laws. We shall demonstrate that Rousseau was neither unaware of the problematic character of this paradigm nor did he venture…

(Se fosse possibile o necessaria una) Postfazione

2019

Postfazione

Precarious Sovereignty in a Post-Liberal Europe : the Covid-19 Emergency in Estonia and Finland

2020

The paper addresses a puzzle resulting from the current global state of alert: the coronavirus pandemic brought us back to the world of the allegedly sovereign nation states with borders and national governments in charge, yet in fact, this retrieved sovereignty looks very vulnerable and precarious. We explain this controversy through a triad of concepts—sovereignty, governmentality, and post-liberalism—that we apply to an analysis of a corona-imposed state of emergency in Estonia and Finland. Based on comparative case study research, we posit that sovereignty is precarious in post-liberalism due to its large dependence on the technologies of responsibilization and agency. From a biopolitic…