Why Agamben?

Last weekend, another political theorist asked me why I thought Agamben had become popular. Someone asked Paul a similar question a couple of days ago. It's interesting that people ask this question. I've not heard it asked about, say, Zizek or Badiou. So why do people ask it? And, what's the answer?

A prelude--I don't think the answer rests on why Agamben might be interesting to philosophers. The reason is that Agamben's popularity is now interdisciplinary. His ideas have spread around the humanities and social sciences. More people cite him in passing without exactly engaging his thought (for example, Henry Giroux and Zygmunt Bauman). And, the cited text is nearly always Homo Sacer.

Why do people ask the question? Because Agamben goes against the dominant tenets of post- structuralism even as he is cited by posties. He offers essentialism in the guise of genealogy--one essence of sovereignty that stays the same over millennia and produces/relies on the production of the same excess, homo sacer. Whereas other thinkers have emphasized specificity, differential productions and relations, Agamben does not. Differences in sex, sexuality, ethnicity, language group, kinship, class don't appear in his work; they aren't key conceptual components of his thought. Also odd is the working of power--the only kind that interests Agamben is sovereign power, another counter to Foucauldian emphases on discursive power, combinations of power-knowledge, disciplinary power, colonizing power.

So, why Agamben? A good answer might start with Michael Hardt's book on radical political thought as well as reviews of Agamben's pre-Homo Sacer work. And even though I think that this would be necessary for a good answer, I actually suspect that it won't tell us much because the interdisciplinary popularity, the viral spread, occurs with Homo Sacer. The real question, then, might be why Homo Sacer.

I think that the concept of bare life attracts people looking for something to hold onto after identity politics. Identity politics resulted in a complete fragmentation such that rooting any political claim in an identity became impossible. The category 'woman,' for example, fragmented into myriad identities of ever greater specificity. Bare life conceptualizes a remainder, product, and irreducibly political embodiment. It's ontological claim rests not on a fundamental identity but on its relationship to sovereign power. In one broad stroke, all the incompatible differences--and their differential relations to power, culture, experience, society--are swept away and one can talk critically about state power in relation to a mode of human being.
Agamben's attack on sovereignty resonates with left and postie rejection of the state. It continues the left front of attacks on the state (one strand of which goes to Hardt and Negri) and on law as viable tools of politics, forms of political collectivity. And, it resonates with postie emphasis on micropolitics and multiple sites of politics insofar as it makes sovereignty the opponent to be defeated (as opposed to the market).

Additionally, bare life is not a notion of subjectivity. It shifts questions away from the subject, which seemed to have reached an impasse, and toward a key operation of sovereign power--its reliance on the exception as a way to include what is excluded.

Finally, in case notions of bare life and sovereignty seem too blunt, there is the intermediating 'zone of indistinction.' Sometimes clarification isn't possible, so we enter into the muddy zone, the confusing zone. This concept works for contemporary thinkers grappling with the complexity of the world, with indeterminacy and undecideability.

The key notions in Homo Sacer, then, seem appropriate to our time. They change the terrain of thinking, enabling thinkers to side step some tricky impasses. But, they don't change it too much; they work with some already existing pressures against the state or state forms (even as they fail to give us much insight into varying state processes and the workings of law, the interconnections between state and economy, the goals toward whicht taking state power might aspire).

Comments

[AT]

Hi Jodi,

I think everything you say about Agamben's popularity is correct, but you're leaving out the big one -- Homo Sacer anticipated the Bush/Cheney administration's decision to make Carl Schmitt it's official political philosopher. Guantanamo, torture, secret rendition, executive absolutism -- these are the social context that, I think, have put Agamben on the map, here but also abroad, where they're bearing the brunt of Bush's constitutional depravities. So while you're right about the rest of it, it's Bush who's given Agamben his current fame and fortune (however earned it may be on philosophical grounds as well).

Cheers,
Adam

[Jodi]

Hi Adam, good to hear from you. The thing is, Homo Sacer was published in English in 96. I read it soon after it came out and know that other people were talking about it then. You might well be right that he seemed prescient, that he seemed to anticipate the worst that was to come. But, is it the case that Agamben's popularity escalates after , say, 2002? I had the sense that it was on that trajectory before hand.

[Adam Thurschwell]

Jodi, yes, that's the question. I think he did make somewhat of a splash before 2001, but my sense is that he's only become "mainstream" (or virtually mainstream) since then -- Adam

[NotOften]

Thanks for the post on Agamben Jodi. I am interested in Agamben's thought, and came about his work much later than the late nineties. For me it was Zizek's references in the 911 book that sent me to Agamben's large volume of works. In my view, Agamben's success has much to do with the general indeterminacy of law for a long period of time in the US, following Bush and Rove's decisive actions to suspend civil liberties (of resistance), in the face of crisis brought forth by the attacks. In other words, Agamben gave lefties tools (by conjuring the aporias of sovereignty) to talk about contemporary political problems 'on the ground.' Agamben offered a theory that began to rethink political action as opposed to identity politics, as you suggested. I agree with your take quite generally, but wonder if the critique of essentialism is the best way to challenge Agamben. After all, this critique is the very thing that Agamben refuses to engage. To charge Agamben with essentialism is to miss his point. Agamben is not an Althusserian.

re: Adam; I think it is extremely misleading to suggest that Schmitt became "the political-philosopher" of the Bush regime. It is off-handed remarks such as this that makes it impossible to really understand what happened in the US on 911 and thereafter. This is similar to those who claim that Leo Strauss took over the White House during the same time. Let's be clear: who was it really, Schmitt or Strauss or both? Reading both Schmitt and Strauss (and Agamben, of course) reveals that it is not quite so easy to make direct links as such. Yes, there are threads of continuities, but certainly not a direct and causal path that it seems you wish to establish. In other words, things are more complex than "Schmitt and Strauss invaded Iraq on...". That seems to be what you are trying to say

[Adam Kotsko]

I think of Homo Sacer as a confused book. Maybe it reflects our continued confusion, and maybe what unites its myriad readers is their failure to understand it.

[Jackie]

Hi Jodi,
Thanks for starting this discussion. I really appreciate your comment about the post-911 framework, as I think I agree with you in noticing how easy it is assume a posture of passivity in the face of the anti-terrorist security state, when in fact this work was underway well before 9-11.
Two scholars researching this are Christian Davenport, who is studying police tactics as a post-WTO protest phenomenon (http://www.russellsage.org/scholars/davenport_christian) and Jonathan Simon, whose work on the criminal/security state system I know you also know. (http://governingthroughcrime.blogspot.com/)
Back to Agamben, I think what you say about bare life is right. But why does one need Agamben and not, say, Hobbes or Weber, and especially Arendt, to say this? I mean, why the resonance of a fancy language for a pseudo-political history of homo sacer and not just the obvious point that states do not respect people but instrumentalize them and make them easily killable, a potential inherent to the concept of sovereignty?
The above are rhetorical questions (which of course you are free to answer) but the pressing one I'm wondering about now is: what would be different if people wrote about sovereignty and the politics of war and other expressions of contemporary state violence today and did not use Agamben but used other theorists of sovereignty? Do you really think that the ideas he's discussing could not be expressed? (Again, I'm very sincere about this question, curious as to what you think about this.)

[doublegenitive]

I think one has to situate Agamben's popularity among the general messianic or post-secular turn in continental philosophy, from late Derrida and various neo-Heideggerian ethical/ theological strains, to Zizek's and Badiou's own differently orientated contributions. And all of this coming with the peak-interest point of Benjamin's messianism. Any answer to why Agamben, probably has to ask why this stuff in the 90s, early 00s, given the publication/translation lag (for those who don't publish at a frenetically Zizekian pace). Agamben's probably the most Benjiminian and mystical of these writers and, at the same time, uses this tendency in ways in distinct opposition to those writers who might be interested in articulating limited philosophies of right. His critique of notions of human rights remains, despite all of the problems I have with his thought, for reasons similar to yours, pretty invaluable (and this is one of the ways he differs from, say, Arendt and maybe Weber). Even if you can get it elsewhere. In this, the defining moment for Agamben is triumphant globalization and the anti-globalization movement as well as the humanitarian disasters and interventions of the 90s (the post-911 stuff kind of folds into this).

[Jodi]

Not Often--my point regarding essentialism is that anti-essentialism was dominant in the left academy. GA comes in and it's like it never happened. I don't think of this as a critical claim--just as a descriptive claim. It marks, for me, a point where Agamben breaks with a prevalent way of thinking and so where is popularity should be explained. Also, I thought that Adam T was using shorthand regarding Schmitt--I didn't think he meant Schmitt the way people mean Strauss. I thought it was just a gesture to the kind of politics, not its theoretical basis.

Double-genitive--I think your points are well-taken, but they apply to philosophers, primarily. What I'm wondering about is the interdisciplinary. When you mention globalization and anti-globalization for Agamben, are you talking about Coming Community or Means without End? It's hard for me to see that theme in Homo Sacer.

Jackie--those are good hard questions. With regard to Agamben, I would say that his way of posing it is a matter of archive and Foucault's move to power over life made it harder to say states make people easily killable and nearly impossible to talk about the continuation of sovereignty. and, if we think about Foucault spread throughout the academy, then it could be that folks who had read Foucault experienced a kind of lack, well, retroactively, after Agamben came along to fill it.

What is also interesting to me is that it seemed around Empire that notions of decentered and distributed sovereignty were coming in to account for the ways that economic globalization and financialization were rearranging state power (I think that these notions are still useful--Paul has an article on the Strong Neoliberal State in Theory and Event that makes a related the argument; it resonates with Jonathan Simon). Maybe this is a hint: Agamben was appealing to people who didn't want to have to think about economic globalization and could make the state the exclusive bad guy rather than having to think about forms of interconnection between state and economy.

An interesting article could be written on your last question, but I would say yes, drawing from other theorists of sovereignty would express ideas Agamben cannot express, ideas that should be expressed. I would also say that insofar as his basic notion is, well, basic, it could be expressed to--doesn't Arendt say something somewhere about rights being given to people once everything else is taken away? Or something like that regarding being stripped of citizenship?

[doublegenitive]

I do think what I say applies to Homo Sacer and it adjunct texts, even if it's most obvious in the early stuff. But I realize such a reading doesn't force itself upon you. The little adumbrations about the future that Agamben gives at the end of every one of these books seem to envision a globalized state form of included citizenry and an included/excluded bare life. But I realize that all of the material and qualitative dimensions are stripped from this account. I guess what I mean is that Homo Sacer can be read as a response to the E.U., Israel, NAFTA and the Yugoslavian War as much as, or more than, a response to a post-911 world. Even if Children of Men suggests the latter reading and, even if, I'd personally prefer a more specified and less formal account.

[NotOften]

Hi Jodi et. al - I'm still thinking about the original post. As Jodi wrote: Agamben "offers essentialism in the guise of genealogy--one essence of sovereignty that stays the same over millennia and produces/relies on the production of the same excess, homo sacer. Whereas other thinkers have emphasized specificity, differential productions and relations, Agamben does not. Differences in sex, sexuality, ethnicity, language group, kinship, class don't appear in his work; they aren't key conceptual components of his thought. Also odd is the working of power--the only kind that interests Agamben is sovereign power, another counter to Foucauldian emphases on discursive power, combinations of power-knowledge, disciplinary power, colonizing power."

I'm not sure this is only a descriptive claim. There might be something of a critical edge here. Jodi seems to be suggesting that Agamben's project is in some specific way flawed because it does not properly engage a geneological account of homo sacer; instead it focus on how homo sacer somehow stays the same, or retains some form of an essence, through an incredibly long historical trajectory. If this is true of his project, I believe the only adequate criticism is to find within his own work, in an immanent way, the problem with this. I don't believe we can validly judge Agamben (although Jodi is suggesting that she is not critiquing, but describing his work) by the fact that: he is both trendy and an object of discussion because he is doing what others are not. There must be something more substantial involved here, such as, for example, his work actually does make sense (in specific respects) especially when weighed against some of the historical-political problems that we can see around us.

Although many argue that Homo Sacer doesn't make a whole lot of sense, or is confused, there are certain elements within that work that are (and have been) incredibly productive for theory construction and more sophisticated analysis of the Bush regime, as only one example. On this basis, I might "put it out there": is ambiguity the problem with Agamben, or, rather, something that makes his work incisive and compelling?

[Adam Thurschwell]

NotOften, what Jodi said above about my Carl Schmitt reference (short-hand, etc.) is accurate. As for essentialism vs. anti-essentialism, I just posted my response to all this at Before the Law.

Adam

[Spleeno]

Isn't one point that ought to be given Agamben that sovereignty is something that seems to be working BEYOND (what we think of as) the state in the age of... let's call it the Spectacle when we're on about it? And let us add that it moght actually, contrary to the commonsensical idea that the foucauldian concept of "biopolitics" should be turned against Agamben, that there might be some problems in Foucault's attempts to so radically disengage sovereign politics from biopolitics? Can there actually be a point in repoliticing the State?

I mean, sure there are some problems in Agamben's approach and it might be easy to pick up on them (obviously), but we still lack an agambean take on Zizek or on Badiou. What does that tell us (we, rather obviously have a lacanian-zizekian take on Agamben right here)? If Agamben is so popular, where are the acolytes? Why this idea that the concept of "homo sacer" is effective and quatable right now, so "Agamben" must be really popular? A spectacular logic if I ever saw one, actually!

[whyacademy]

The question is less “Why Agamben?” and more “Why Academy?” Before one looks at Agamben in search of ultimate answers or grave errors, one needs to analyze the academic atmosphere that is ready to crown thinkers overnight and then to depose them with the same ease. If around 9/11 Agamben’s name was on everybody’s enthusiastic wet lips, today his name is uttered by the same “everybody,” only that now their lips are dry, and they have one aim in mind: to figure out why Agamben is wrong. This celebrity mentality, with all its buzz-words and posses, may be appropriate when you deal with those “star” thinkers who take advantage of their newfound glory (the guest lecturer, the American tour, the journal, the documentary, the political post), but not when it comes to Agamben, who withdraws from this spectacle, and is truly a celebrity despite himself. When you listen to all the associate-professors and scholarship-students who spend their days talking about Agamben, who (like Benjamin) never received a Ph.D. and never held a “tenure-tack” position, you feel rather embarrassed. One can only wish that "everybody" will stop talking and start reading Agamben’s plethora of studies more closely. Then they will begin to realize that the shortcomings of concepts like “homo sacer,” “bare life,” “sovereignty” and “state of exception” have to do with their own narrow ability to analyze more than a single book at a time.

One day, when “everybody” will retire from their hundred-grand-a-year professorships, they might realize, as they will leaf (or probably just brows) through the pages of the Times in their pristine retirement homes, that they failed to fully appreciate and partake in the rise of one of the greatest thinkers in their lifetime. But then, of course, there will be another star-thinker that will make them forget all about it.

[Luca]

very interesting article, I'll tell Giorgio..