Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian philosopher who teaches at the University of Verona. He also holds a professorship at the European Graduate School, teaches at the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris and at the University of Macerata in Italy, and has held visiting appointments at several American universities.
Works
(Only English translations are listed here; there are translations of most writings to German, French, and Spanish. There also is an updated list of publications including translations to other languages at http://www.egs.edu/faculty/giorgioagamben.html ).
In his central work "Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life" (1998), Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben analyzes an obscure figure of Roman law that poses some fundamental questions to the nature of law and power in general. Under the Roman Empire, a man who committed a certain kind of crime was banned from society and all rights as a citizen were revoked. He thus became a "homo sacer" (holy man). In consequence, he could be killed by anybody - while his life on the other hand was deemed "sacred", so he could not be sacrificed in a ritual ceremony.
To a homo sacer, Roman law did not apply to anymore, although he was still "under the spell" of law. He was excluded from law itself, while being included at the same time. Now this figure is the exact mirror image of the sovereign - a king, emperor, or president - who stands, on the one hand, within law (so he can be condemned, e.g. for treason, as a natural person) and outside of the law (since as a body politic he has power to suspend law for an indefinite time).
Since its origins, Agamben notes, law has had the power of defining what "pure life" is by making this exclusive operation, while at the same time gaining power over it by making it the subject of political control. The power of law to actively separate "political" beings (citizens) from "pure life" (bodies) has carried on from antiquity to modernity - from, literally, Aristoteles to Auschwitz. In a daring but plausible move Agamben connects Greek political philosophy to the concentration camps of 20th century fascism, and even further, to detainment camps in the likes of Guantanamo Bay or Bari/Italy, where asylum seekers have been imprisoned in football stadiums. In this kind of camps, entire zones of exception are being formed. Sovereign law makes it possible to create entire areas in which the application of the law itself is held suspended.
Agamben's philosophy draws from Michel Foucault as well as from Italian neo-marxist thought. He frequently cites authors as different as Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. While sometimes being cryptic in his writings, in interviews he makes himself clear as a public thinker in Foucauldian tradition who is interested in social conflicts on a global scale. In particular, he warns of a "generalization of the state of exception" through laws like the USA PATRIOT Act which would mean a permanent installment of martial law and emergency powers across our countries.
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