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Critical Encounter Between Giorgio Agamben and Michel Foucault: Review of Recent Works of Agamben

2010; Copenhagen Business School; Linguagem: Inglês

10.22439/fs.v0i10.3121

1832-5203

Jeffrey Bussolini,

Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy

Following the trajectory of Giorgio Agamben's work since the mid-1990s not only offers a fascinating exposure to this productive period, and an important political turn, in his work, it also makes evident that it is proceeding by an ongoing interpretation of the thought of Michel Foucault.This review offers a chance to evaluate several of his texts, including the most recent ones, together in a manner that allows at least a partial exposition of Agamben's engagement with Foucault.These texts, some long translated in English, some newly translated (with attendant considerations that are noted here), and some not yet translated from Italian, show an intellectual itinerary followed in the developing work of Giorgio Agamben: one which, by his own insistence, is heavily indebted to Foucault.These texts also indicate that Foucault scholarship will continue to be influenced by the interpretations carried out in them-with the associated benefit of clarifying some of the earlier speculations about the relation between these two thinkers (which has often, as in the case of writing about the first volume of Homo sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita {Homo Sacer: Sove-reign Power and Bare Life}, 2 lacked subtlety in insisting on an absolute difference between them while failing to pay heed to significant overlap and theoretical engagement).Agamben himself has revisited and revised some of his earlier accounts (such as the omission of any reference to Foucault's analysis of the camp figure or of the Nazi state which he had earlier insisted upon in 1995) as he has read and drawn upon the Collège de France lecture courses at the IMEC and included them increasingly in his writings. 3 While he has not penned tomes analogous to the Nietzsche volumes in their size and focus, Agamben's interpretation of Foucault might in some respects be compared to Martin Heidegger's engagement with Friedrich Nietzsche.Agamben frequently returns to the texts of Foucault and places a premium upon the philosophical interpretation of certain concepts and passages.Also, like 1 The Reign and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, The Sacrament of Language: Archaeology of the Oath, Signatura rerum (The Signature of All Things): On Method. 2 Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer: il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Torino: Einaudi, 1995). 3 Anecdotal accounts indicate that Agamben has frequently visited the Foucault