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Title: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian (Stanford, Calif.).) by Giorgio Agamben, Daniel Heller-Roazen ISBN: 0-8047-3218-3 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: On the consequence of the split between Bios and Zoe
Comment: The obscurity embedded in the Roman Law that declared one who was condemned to death "sacred" is never really clarified here. It is better and more succinctly described in _Means Without Ends_.
In this is book, Agamben soberly traces the origin of the single most deracinating event in human history: the Holocaust. Soberly, because Agamben sees the Holocaust not as an anomaly, but as an unavoidable consequence given the political origin of the West. But this book is not so much about the Holocaust per se, but about the various historical interventions concerning the notion of the Sovereign that wove the matrix of Western politics into what it became capable of in the 20th century.
The locus of Agamben's view of modernity is the (concentration) camp. Agamben stresses the fact that the camp is not only a place where the unspeakable takes place but more importantly and fundamentally where a human being is stripped "Naked", stripped of 'bios' and exposed as mere 'zoe', such that anything--including the unspeakable--CAN be done to him since nothing could be considered a criminal act. The camp, according to Agamben, is "the space that opens up when the state of exception starts to become the rule."
Agamben argues that the camp is the new biopolitical NOMOS of the planet by connecting the dots that Carl Schmitt first drew but left unconnected. Closer to the homefront, Agamben's meditation ultimately takes us to see the totalitarian implications behind those "gated communities" in the US today, and the impossibility of dying without the State's approval. If a good life is hinged on the hope of a good death, should the State define and decide who shall get "good death" (euthanasia)?
Rating: 2
Summary: Go read LaCapra for a sound critique of Agamben/the "sacred"
Comment: This book is a key text in the work of Giorgio Agamben and holds a special place in the growing cult surrounding him today, but like Remnants of Auschwitz that follows it, is deeply flawed and must be read with caution. Certainly worth reading, but not to be approached uncritically (as on display in the review below). D. LaCapra has recently written a cogent critique of Agamben's appropriation of the standpoint of the victims, essentially robbing them of their own voices and conflating their position with that of the perpetrators's in what Primo Levi termed the "grey zone", simply to further his own discourse (albeit an original one) on the Sublime (what LaCapra calls the "Traumatic Sublime"). Look for LaCapra (and a growing number of critics focusing upon Agamben's work, which is one of the latest fads in Academia) to balance this text. By all means read it; but maintain a critical distance (again, unlike the slavish "review" below, which is an attack on William Haver in the guise of an engagement with Agamben).
To the author of that mean-spirited review (obviously a former, disgruntled student of Haver's--and since I have encountered so few in my long acquaintance with him, I have a feeling I know who it is), I simply respond: Haver is anything but a "career academic writing for tenure" (he already has it) and his thinking, teaching and writing are an inspiration. I agree with the earlier review lauding his work and placing him, rightfully, alongside Hardt and Negri, et al. At any rate, beware Agamben's reading of the Muselmann in Remnants in Auschwitz, which is the logical outcome of his original, but flawed, thesis in Homo Sacer.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Important On-going Project, but stay away from Haver
Comment: This book is part of an extraordinary, multi-volume project. And part of an on-going effort to continue thinking with Foucault, Deleuze, and Benjamin at the final point of their work (when it was interrupted by their untimely deaths).
However, to respond to one of the other reviewers: the comparison of William Haver with Agamben is completely off-base. Haver cannot hold a candle to Agamben. Agamben is patiently fleshing out the contours of an important, but little understood or acknowledged concept: the state of exception. Haver is a careeer academic who writes and publishes in order to get and keep tenure. Comparing them is patently absurd.
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Title: Means Without End: Notes on Politics (Theory Out of Bounds, V. 20) by Giorgio Agamben, Vincenzo Binetti, Cesare Casarino ISBN: 0816630364 Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: 13 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive by Giorgio Agamben ISBN: 189095117X Publisher: Zone Books Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil by Alain Badiou, Peter Hallward ISBN: 1859844359 Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences by Slavoj Zizek ISBN: 0415969212 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy by Giorgio Agamben, Daniel Heller-Roazen ISBN: 0804732787 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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