Political Ontology of Giorgio Agamben

German Eduardo Primera is Lecturer in Philosophy and Critical Theory in the School of Humanities, University of Brighton, UK.

• Introduction: The Work of Giorgio Agamben: Life and PowerChapter 1 Paradigms, Signatures, and Philosophical Archaeology- The Idea of the Arche: The Moment of Arising- On Paradigms: Between Singularity and Exemplarity- On Signatures- Philosophical Archaeology and DeconstructionChapter 2 Language and Being-On the Linguistic- Metaphysical Machine in Agamben’s Thought- The Isolation of the Improper: A Critique of Signification- The Common and the Proper: How do Signatures Work?Chapter 3 The Paradox of Sovereignty: Bare life and its Paradigms- The Paradox of Sovereignty: Between Benjamin and Schmitt- Bare Life and its Paradigms: On the Figure of Homo Sacer-The Homo Sacer Project as Philosophical ArchaeologyChapter 4 The Signature of Secularisation: Economic Theology, Government and Bare Life- An Archaeology of Economic Theology: Oikonomia and the Fracture Between God’s Being and His Action- The Providential Machine: On the Collateral Effect as an Act of Government- An Archaeology of Glory and the Production of Bare Life- The Production of Bare Life and the Governmental MachineChapter 5 Neoliberalism, Governmentality, and Sovereignty: The Lessons of The Kingdom and the Glory- Agamben and Foucault: Two Genealogies of Governmentality- Neoliberalism: Rearticulating Sovereignty and Governance-The production of bare Life and NeoliberalismChapter 6 The signature of Life, Biopolitics, and Inoperativity- Foucault’s Notion of Life and the Enigma of Biopolitics- The Signature of Life and the Biopolitical Machine-Biopolitics and Philosophical ArchaeologyConclusion: The Politics of Inoperativity: Use, Modal Ontology and Destituent Power-Profanation, Inoperativity and Deactivation-The Use of Bodies: towards a theory of Use and a Modal Ontology-Destituent Power and ResistanceIndex

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.