German Primera’s engaging work uses the recent completion of the Homo Sacer project as an occasion to assess Agamben’s work in its entirety. Demonstrating how the early writings on metaphysics and signification inform later discussions of sovereignty, theology, governmentality, power and life, it shows how the ontology of signatures and paradigms underpinning Agamben’s philosophical archaeology form the threads that cross the whole arc of his thinking, cashing themselves out in a politics of inoperability and destituent potency. Combining close engagements with contemporaries such as Foucault, Derrida and Negri, and answering a multitude of critics, Primera establishes Agamben’s distinctive place in post-Heideggerian political philosophy.
